[DnD] D&D Discussion & Enlistment (Save Ends)

You got bored of that dungeon then Pang?

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, like it was said, it was either the group or the dungeon but the whole idea of just "wander around randomly" wasn't working for this bunch. So I figured I'd set up a big bright glowing EXIT sign and have 800-lb gorillas push them toward it.

(That, and I didn't really expect them to stick around at length in the cheap one-note FF1 joke dimension so I effectively had no choice but to hit the emergency eject on that one. I'm not playing in that world long-term, so I'm not.)

How ya doing, buddy?

It was a fleeting beauty. But yeah, I really don't think any of us had any idea of where the fuck we were supposed to be going, given that many options and so few hopes for escape. That considered, hard to be purpose-driven.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Pang, just curious. What does a tent do? I thought there'd be at least a brief description, but it's only a line of text in the PHB item list.

Is it merely a 20-pound alternative to lugging around five 5-pound bedrolls?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Let's say, theoretically, that you have to camp outside, and it might rain.

Would you rather have a bedroll, or a tent?

What does a tent do. IT SHELTERS YOU AGAINST THE ELEMENTS, THAT'S WHAT

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I see!

Piece of junk.

Since the sun always shines and it never rains. As long as we don't go on boats.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Sometimes it rains indoors, too.

LIKE WHEN YOU TRY TO BURN THINGS

Most amazing jew boots

Fortunately none of us caught pneumonia from th-a-aa-choo!

I was speaking idiomatically.

no pneumonia, but we didn't get to see what was in store for us via the dioramas because of you.

Was my guess right, Pang? if so, can you post the descriptions of the rest of the dioramas? I'm curious as to how you messed with the rest of the adventures.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

All In The Same Boat depicted Scary Bob as a pirate captain, having mutinied and seized the Rosy Dawn for himself and his loyal crew of dwarven "cabin boys".

Delicious and Moist was just a satisfied orc with a full belly.

Secret Cow Level was a window onto a brutal future where Doorman's proletarian uprising was much more successful. Doorman easily subjugates the Seven-Pillared Hall and in time establishes a "Dictatorship of the People" over the entire Sea of Fallen Stars region.

Magnum Innominandum depicted events precisely as they actually happened, except that literally everyone in the diorama is wearing big floppy clown shoes — even the roc.

Small favor to ask of you all (both the current players and the peanut gallery): as Zerg noticed a while back I've been working on retooling the wiki sheets a little bit, making them a little bit more efficient. I've started with Gra-fa-zut since his had the least material to convert, and I've managed to crunch what was 13 vertical pages down to 5. Now, you'll notice the portrait, backgrounds, achievements, all that stuff is gone; that'll all be on a separate biography page for each character. Everything is in text now; not a single .png file on the page. Just heavy use of templates and tables.

Gra-fa-zut (Sheet)

Now, before I get to work converting everyone else's sheets over, I'm just looking for a little constructive criticism. What can I do to make these sheets more useful? Even if it's a small thing, throw it out there; it's easier to make the fixes now and use them going forward than to retroactively apply them to everything later.

FELIPE NO

I would put the check boxes on the page with the abilities listed. If it were me, I'd look down my powers list to see what's suitable then want to check to see if I'd used it yet without navigating away.

You might also want to list a "most used" combo or something since as the characters advance levels there's more scope for chaining together attacks (Wait till you see my minotaur build) and it's hard to remember what goes after what sometimes.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Looks very nice and clean, Pang. Text is good - lets you search for stuff. I guess I'll have to find a way to help you port over Cal's inventory list

It would be nice to see the ability score modifiers listed, perhaps as a separate row or adjacent table. There are a few powers that use these modifiers (for example Cal's utilities). Not that it's that hard to memorize (2), but it'd be handy.

It will add to the text, but I think you may want to list racial or class features in a separate section. Some of them can be quite tricky to remember especially when split between feats and powers (Garrmondo's Combat Challenge skills list comes to mind).

And also, maybe a way to distinguish trained skills from untrained ones. I understand certain actions keyed to a skill can only be triggered if you have trained in it (Acrobatics to reduce falling damage, for example). I've indicated this by bolding and italicizing them, but you may have a better implementation.

Finally, will you just put temp HP in parenthesis just as you used to? Not that we have any way of getting them with the current party though.

As you would have seen on my own implementation, I prefer the Monster Manual 3 style of listing powers. Having Traits, Standard, Minor, and Immediate Actions listed helps me strategize better than having a listing of At-Will, Encounters, and Dailies (since we have to pick from a pool of different types of actions each turn). Of course, it's a matter of personal preference; go with whatever the group as a whole prefers.

As for the check mark, having one explicitly sort of ugly-fies the layout. How about putting a big "X" as cell background on the descriptions of used powers? Not sure if this is possible via mediawiki though.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

First off, it looks really good. I like it. Let that be understood.

Now, I am running 1280x800, and I still get a bit of a table stretch. I'm not sure where you planning on checking off used powers, so I would suggest maybe instead a row of 3, have each section (at-wills, encounters, etc.) have two columns with a conspicuous checkmark box next to them, so it's easy to tell what's used and what isn't, unless you figure something more creative to fix the tables and such.

Also, a place for temporary HP in the health section, and a way to tell what items are stored inside of other items, ie. indentation.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

About checkmarks; as Zerg says, they kind of break up the flow. Instead of the checkmarks what I was planning on was just using the cell text color as a usage indicator; if a power's unavailable its cell will be flooded with bright red. For example, this:



when used, will look like



Which seems, if anything, more eyecatching than the difference between an empty box and a checked box. I didn't clarify at all how I intended to replace the checks when I put up the original request for critique, so that's on me.

Temporary HP doesn't come up very often anymore, and it seems to me like putting it in a separate field from normal HP will just lead to it being overlooked much of the time. I just assumed we'd continue using the parentheses for that, but if there's a strong demand for a separate field I won't say no.

Ability Mods and Trained Skill Highlights have been added to the example sheet. Most of these other suggestions are good but will take a little more time to implement — especially the width issue, which I really should have seen coming by fitting the sheets to my 1600w screen.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Also a link to the character's other page would be kewl.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

If you plan to have a separate biography page, certain info under "Racial & Class Traits" block that aren't really referred to that often (if at all) can be transferred there. These include:

- Ability Scores
- Skills
- Defenses
- Origins
- For Gra-fa-zut's elemental manifestations, I'd put in a separate Traits block since both of them give conditional modifiers
- Action Points are a kind of an expendable resource, so I'd lump it together with Health

I'd also move the Health Block up, since as a player, health is the very first thing I'd check. Since there'd be a missing block, I would propose reducing the number of columns for Skills & Ability Checks. Maybe there's a way to combine this with the Ability Scores block?

As level scales up, I'd expect the number of attacks hitting NADs and inflicting statuses to ramp up. Once, you even had someone with over 6 status effects all at once. Will the "Conditions" field in the health block be adequate?


P.S. What's in the room that supposedly shoots at you? You also laid down several story seeds about drows and tarrasques. Were you planning to drop us into drowland if we proceeded north?

I was speaking idiomatically.

Pang, just curious if you've seen Iplay4E.com yet?

Also, dig on the new page layout.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Denicalis

Pang, just curious if you've seen Iplay4E.com yet?

Yeah, I use it for myself on those rare occasions when I get to play, but it's largely worthless without a DDI subscription. Even if everyone involved in the campaign could use it I'm not sure I wouldn't just stick with the wiki since I hope to expand it to a little more than just character data when I get the time.

Originally Posted by Zergrinch

P.S. What's in the room that supposedly shoots at you? You also laid down several story seeds about drows and tarrasques. Were you planning to drop us into drowland if we proceeded north?

It was a floating cube. It had a riddle. It shot arrows at you if you answered wrong. If you answered right, it gave you a priceless artifact.

You would have eventually encountered drow had you taken the tunnel gnome to the gnome encampment. The tarrasque encounter was just one of 60 or so possible destinations available through the Programmable Portal System that you guys had no special interest in.

FELIPE NO

I hope I am gauging the price of the job correctly.

Also, are the Genasi on the boat already just deckhands that will stay with us during the voyage?

Most amazing jew boots

Ways to undermine the mood your DM is trying to set #182:

My weekly game, our DM has created this really dark mood, the entire land we're in has been overrun by the undead. Living settlements are few and far between. The five of us managed to just escape from the clutches of a vampiric cult, and that's how we met.

So we're up to level 6, and prior to our latest session I was sort of needling our bard that I didn't feel very bolstered by his songs. We'd barely limped out of a couple really ugly fights, and if we didn't have a warlord to keep some of us on our feet we'd have been completely boned.

Flash to this current week, and we come across a Tristram stand-in town, utterly ravaged by demons and the undead. Our DM is a great storyteller, and he's weaving all this bleak, raped landscape mojo and has our group beset by the shambling undead the moment we open the doors to the biggest house. My Paladin|Warlock hybrid is doing his usual insane defensive stats and pulling these things towards him, our other Paladin is taking his back, helping block the door. Our Avenger is getting ready for what could be his last stand. The rogue is flitting in and out of the shadows, and our Warlord|bard decides we are in desperate need of some inspiration.

So as his turn approaches, the Paladin|Warlock blasts at the initial wave with radiant smite of both the gods and the skies themselves, the Avenger marks his target and sets his jaw, our DM paints a picture of an indefatigable wall of shambling flesh, and our bard's player reaches down into his bag, pulls out a pair of small speakers and an ipod, declares the inspiring bard song of choice, and proceeds to play the Glee cover of Don't Stop Believing.

Our DM tries to overcome this with more ambiance, but it is to no avail. For every new bard song or inspiring words, there is something else. Cee-Lo Green, Tenacious D, more Glee, Ke$ha...

By the end, we had utterly destroyed the surging horde, and our DM was rubbing his forehead and muttering: "I fucking hate players."

The bard promised not to bring the music next week, but I'm trying to convince him to go one further, bring his guitar and an amp, and shred violently whenever shit gets tense.

I hope he will.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Zephyrin

Also, are the Genasi on the boat already just deckhands that will stay with us during the voyage?

All the genasi on board are just sailors, yes.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by Pang

They were red. For reasons he could not quite explain to himself, this comforted him; he felt certain, now, that the ship would go faster.

He's not wrong, red ones always go faster.

How ya doing, buddy?

Pang, I was wondering if you could repost this particular DDi article. Don't wanna wait a month for the compiled torrent to possibly come out.

Muchas gracias.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Quote:

We continually evaluate the tools we’ve put into the game. As we design and develop rules and mechanics, we base some of the work on underlying assumptions regarding how we expect players to advance and improve their characters through their choices of mechanical elements such as feats and items. A short time ago, we evaluated the DCs for the skills subsystem and made some adjustments to the rate at which DCs scale with level. These tables appear on page 126 of the Rules Compendium as well as on the DM Screen available in the DM Kit.

If you compare the new values to the DCs from the Dungeon Master’s Guide and DMG 2, you’ll notice that the DCs are higher across the board. You'll also notice that Hard DC entries scale faster than Easy and Moderate DCs by level. Finally, the new skill DC table has an entry for each level instead of grouping levels into bands of three. These changes are far from arbitrary, as you’ll see.

Early on, we divided checks into Hard, Medium, and Easy, but we didn’t do a good job of telling DMs which one to use in a situation. We needed a system that would not only guide the DM on when to use a particular check but also describe the sorts of characters that would be attempting these checks.

The first step when evaluating the DCs was to determine what those DC categories truly represent. Then we describe our archetypical character who fits that category and determine the typical skill bonus that character might have. Finally, we set DCs based on a curve of expected values that would provide a reasonable challenge at each level—we define reasonable challenge as a d20 roll that is successful around 65% of the time (you need to roll 8+ on the die).

DIFFICULTY CLASS BY LEVEL


Easy: The action involved isn’t trivial but is still pretty simple. These are the simplest checks and should represent a reasonable challenge for characters that have no training in the skill (an untrained character). An untrained character is typically adding half his level to the skill and probably doesn’t have an ability score that helps him out. He might get another +1 by Epic tier, since all his ability modifiers have increased by 21st level. Trained characters have little risk of failure, and expert characters are nearly guaranteed success. These are the DCs that we suggest DMs should use when every character in the party is expected to make the check or for group checks (where half the PCs must succeed on the roll to earn a success for the group).

Moderate: A moderate check requires a bit of training or innate ability, or a bit of luck. These checks are aimed at skilled characters who have training in the skill, though there are other options for getting a similar skill modifier, such as having a high ability score (18+) in the skill’s key ability or combining a racial bonus and a moderate (14+) ability score. These DCs scale a little faster than easy DCs, which accounts for ability score increases or adding a feat or path feature if the key ability isn’t your primary or secondary class stat. These DCs are the standard difficulty for a skill check in a skill challenge.

Hard: These checks are designed to test characters who are even more focused on the particular skill, though there might still be some chance of failure even for these expert characters. Without additional assistance (such as a power bonus or another character’s aid), the expert PC will succeed against these DCs around two out of three times. The expert PC typically has training in the skill, and his or her primary ability score is the skill’s key ability (or secondary ability score along with a skill focus feat or racial bonus). As the character increases in level, we expect feat and item selection to provide an extra boost along the way, as well as ability score increases. This DC is a good choice to really challenge a focused PC, though it’s also a good DC to use for repeated successes with a single skill in a skill challenge (once the first, moderate attempt is successful).

All-In: As we identified these character archetypes, we also noted a fourth sort of PC—the “all-in” character. This guy takes every possible advantage toward maximizing a particular skill. He has feats, a racial bonus, starts with a 20 in the primary modifier, is trained in the skill, and searches out magic items that further advance his skill. Even with our now-higher Hard DC scale, this character is nearly guaranteed success. But it’s also difficult to get bonuses that high for more than one or two skills. Rather than push the Hard DCs out of reach of typical characters, we recognize that those characters exist and will be really good at their chosen vocation. If the DM is doing his job (and we’ve given even more tools to help with that), then that character will have his moments to shine but will also face many challenges that can't be tackled with his maxed-out skill.

These new DCs form the backbone for our skill challenges and for other skill-related rolls throughout the game. For example, escape DCs for monsters or traps can be set based on the sorts of characters we expect should have a chance.

We hope this sheds some light on the method behind our madness. Be sure to check out Rules Compendium for an in-depth look at setting up skill checks and challenges in your game!

tl;dr "the DCs are higher across the board"

I was speaking idiomatically.

Ah. That explains why the Arena skill challenge in Round 1-2 seemed too easy. I was using DMG1 values.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?