@tickingnectarine From what I recall, in D&D 5e, if you're wearing light armor, you get to add your full Dex bonus to your AC; medium armor, you get to add your Dex bonus up to a maximum of +2 to your AC; and heavy armor, you don't get to add your Dex bonus at all. (But the starting AC from heavy armor is gonna be better than medium, which is gonna be better than light.) So I think that's 5e's way of simplfying avoiding/withstanding into the same thing, while still taking into account how lighter armor lets you avoid attacks more and heavier armor lets you withstand attacks more.
And DnD 3E had it that every kind of armor had its own maximum amount of Dex bonus you could add, so if you were wearing a breastplate you could get up to +3 Dex AC, but if you were wearing chainmail you could only get +2 from Dex, even though they were both medium armor. 3E sourcebooks have a whole lot of data tables. :::PPP
I'm trying to write up a house rules "rulebook" and setting but it's... really hard. like. i'm stuck on how to describe fantasy races as a concept. I just need a one paragraph blurb about "this is what fantasy races are, and what they mean for you as a player." Plus I'm trying to add classes to Savage Worlds, which traditionally doesn't have them.
Armor Class is supposed to be an abstraction, it includes natural armor, armor worn, magic, and dex bonus. ( though heavy armor can limit your dex modifier) Hit Points are also an abstraction, they are supposed to be physical damage, damage resistance, fatigue, luck, skill in combat, and even the favor of the gods. That is why they go up with your level.
You young whippersnappers have it easy. I still use THAC0, and in that system, an armor class of 3 is plate mail and 10 is normal clothing, lol
While worldbuilding I always ask myself the question "Why?" What does this monster lair here? Let's take elves for example: Why do Elves live on this world? Are they native? Space travelers? Dimensional beings? With their long life spans, why aren't they in charge of the world? Are they magical in nature? Technological? The answers to these question really help with building a believable, "logical," world.
I used to play modded 3.5 with the defense bonus from level from D20 Modern, and armor bonuses outright converted to DR... plus various levels of armor piercing.
Things are already heating up in our campaign and it's only the second session! Because I'm bad at succinct, I'm just gonna keep on telling the story like I did last post, haha. Highlights below if you want the fun bits but none of my super long narrative. :P Spoiler: The Story So Far, Part 2: Team Jailbird Go Snooping - The Plot Thickens (tw possibly cos one of the party members gets drugged? and just general a warning that spindle's a gross little cat-gnome-boy who likes to try to eat raw deer meat lmao) We begin chatting to Moira over dinner. When asked, she says she last saw the kids yesterday...apart from the already missing Sally. Spindle refuses his beef stew after asking if it was meat. Faeleth tries to convince him that cows are a vegetable, of which he is....faintly sceptical, and continues to only eat his bread and confirmed veggies. Alf arrives to check on us, and Nothing tries to fill him in on the gang's discoveries: that funny business is afoot for sure, look, see this letter? Alf agrees that it warrants investigation, and comes with us to the market where we are likely to encounter Mr Hand at this hour. As predicted, he is there, making a purchase at the exotic (or, more accurately to the signage, "ecksotic") fruits stall. Nothing initially plays safe and sends Alf to question him....but Alf comes back saying all seems innocuous. Spindle, meanwhile, noticed Hand slipping Alf some coin - bribed silence! It must be! At some point Spindle also manages to blag a free orange from a friendly, if baffled, vendor after he spends some time sniffing the fruits. Incensed by the apparent subterfuge, Nothing storms up to Hand and demands answers, waving the letter at him and threatening that if he has /anything/ to do with her missing kids, then.....then....!!!! She realises she doesn't have much of a plan there. He demands to know where the letter was found, claiming forgery, (we refuse to state any more specifically than that it was 'on the floor in a house') and a slip of the tongue reveals him to know full well it was in a basement. Proof!! Hand is more than faintly menacing, however, and staunchly denies Nothing's accusations, and attempts to pay the vocally flippant and sceptical Spindle off with...even more oranges. The kid is rolling in oranges. Oh, and those coins Hand gave Alf? Merely payment for catering for a wedding, nothing more, he says. Time for a more concrete plan... Oh, and there are more dogs. There are more dogs than usual in town. As Mr Hand leaves, we see him kick one very hard. Spindle growls at Hand as he leaves, but it's the dog that growls back. Leaving Hand to continue his day, the group hatch a scheme. Spindle disregards the scheme and makes for the house we visited before, but...that works fine. He can stand guard at the house, while Faeleth and Nothing stalk Hand and try to discern his movements. The stalking doesn't go super great (Holgar comes with) - we lose track of Hand during our discussion and also an old bud of Holgar's (a loud, jovial, rotund dwarf merchant who mainly deals in booze and tobacco and the like) comes over to chat with him and briefly mentions disappearances of mine workers down at his own town (Nothing takes great note: perhaps that is relevant to her kids!) and slips Holgar a freebie potion. We don't know what it does, but it's blue. There's a large group of dogs nearby. One stands, watches us for a while. But yeah, the stalking. We go down the road towards the manor, but fail to locate Hand, only one of his attendants doing what seems like legitimate business at the local cobbler. Said attendant does spot us as he leaves (though we do a decent job of pretending to not be following him) and we realise that means we have to call off this plan - if we keep heading to the manor after this guy we are going to look so, so suspicious. Meanwhile, Spindle encounters something curious: boot prints near the sewer entrance that....stop being boot prints and start being canine paw prints. Hmm.... (He also gets bored and carves 'Spindle Was Here' into the wall, in Druidic, with a rock.) New plan! Holgar wants to camp out in some bushes near the manor to keep watch there. Spindle wants us to meet back up with him. He has entered the sewers (after a tight squeeze through the bars) and discovered newly lain trip traps that sure weren't there before. We agree: a good plan would be to watch the sewers, the house above, and the manor - clearly someone plans to return if they're re-trapping the place, and if so, this should mean someone's gonna spot them. Holgar can radio in if he sees anything, and Spindle can update Holgar if anything goes down over here. Sorted. So, how that goes... Spindle sees eyes in the darkness, which vanish with the sound of footfalls heading down the sewer - it must be cornered! Nothing and Faeleth follow, ordering Spindle to run back up and guard the house front door.....thud goes the trapdoor, and Spindle is moments too late, someone or something has already fled. More bootprints that turn to pawprints lead out of the front door. (The trapdoor also had a hastily-lain trap - it's a good thing that the girls chose to go back up through the sewer entrance because Spindle didn't even warn them!) Good news - Spindle did at least catch the direction it was headed in! Spindle uses his knowledge of tracking to follow the fleeing creature into some woodland nearby the Cairn Road, with Nothing and Faeleth in hot pursuit. Holgar, meanwhile, sights a hooded figure that he recognises as Mister Hand exit the manor and make for the Cairn Road. Holgar starts to follow him. He tries to wrench the bush out of the ground as portable cover but only succeeds in triumphantly bursting out from the foliage with a few leaves in his hands, startling some halfling passersby (but luckily not alerting the travelling Hand). He tracks him until he loses him in woodland near the roadside. Now, the trio may have lost their quarry but they have found some distant, arguing voices and a clash of metal that sounds like sword combat. They try to radio in to Holgar, or rather, Spindle does. Holgar, for an assortment of reasons (starting with last session's fog and continuing with assorted petty social scuffles) is ignoring Spindle in particular. Spindle says his name louder...and louder...and just as Nothing is about to snatch it from his hand - LOUD. The stone crumbles to dust. Luckily the shout did send to the other stone before it broke, and hey, that's where Holgar must be, we just heard his stone! Spindle barrels into him full-force by accident. The squad is reunited! On sneaking nearer, the voices get clearer - "They got away!" is heard. Nothing tries to get close enough to view the speakers...and she does. They're four sword-wielding men in armour, with a design emblazoned on the chest that features a demonic skull being consumed by fire. She can't be sure, but this feels quite a lot like bad news. She steps on a twig. The men wheel round, the anger of their argument replaced by a much colder thing. It's definitely bad news. "Forget the shape shifters, lads, we've got a demon." Nope nope nope nope nope!!! One of them rushes Nothing, who all the while yells out "No, you're wrong, I'm not, i'm not, I'm not!!! I'm not a demon, I promise, you're wrong!" - this falls on deaf ears. "I don't listen to a demon's lies!"- he swings his sword and hits for more than half of Nuth's total health... And Faeleth, the only member of the party unseen by these dudes, rushes in behind him and deals two swift, critical, and very, very fatal stab wounds to that guy, quite possibly saving Nothing's life. Spindle puts his fog to much, much better use this time: dropping it straight over two of the demon hunters! They yell out - "They've got mages!" - and carry on the attack, but another swiftly drops to Nothing's Eldritch Blast. Holgar takes a few ax swings...that miss...a lot... One of the remaining attackers turns on Faeleth after she delivers an effective but non-lethal wound to him (intending to subdue him for questioning), and he screams about how he's going to kill her for that, "you foul bitch!" He takes a sword swipe at her neck that nicks her badly, there's quite a bit of bleeding. At the insult and near-beheading, Faeleth sees red and restraint goes out of the window - the guy goes down moments later as Faeleth puts her rapier straight through his throat. The blood from that is, uh, a lot. Spindle heals her all better! Nothing levels her stave at the final man, hoping to intimidate him with the now-proven fact she could end him right there, and yells, "What shapeshifters?!" He sneers that he won't answer to a demon. Nothing blasts him. Said last man standing turns and takes a swing at Holgar (the nearest target), screaming about how if he's going to die he'll take Holgar out with him...and misses. How embarrassing! Holgar finally gets in a blow that hits home - the final hunter gets an axe straight in the mouth, mid-rant about I guess how much he hates us, and that's the fight done with. Nothing stands, stunned, for a little while, but then joins the others in looting the fallen demon hunters. They get a bit of money, some silvered blades (Spindle finds a pair of silvery daggers and approaches Faeleth to do a swap - one of her regular daggers in return for one silver one so they have one each. She finds that fair). Nothing fancy. Oh, and a tin hipflask, which Spindle pockets. .....clap, clap, clap. Mister Hand walks out into the clearing giving us the good ol slow-clap treatment. (Spindle claps in return because he doesn't grasp what's going on and is shushed by an anxious Nothing.) That crew of independent demon hunters had been a thorn in his side, he says. And as a gift for taking care of the issue, and as an incentive to stop poking our noses where it doesn't belong, he has something for Nothing. He pulls on a rope he'd been holding and who else is attached to it, bound and gagged, but Sally. Nothing rushes to her, but Hand lifts an arm in the universal gesture of 'halt' made only more emphatic (and more than mildly threatening) by the violet crackle of arcane energy surrounding his hand, and she stops in her tracks. He stresses that this is all she's getting, and the rest are his. He vanishes into thin air. Nothing rushes to Sally, unbinding and ungagging her and offering this terrified shaking kid water when she asks for it and generally fussing all over her. Sally keeps saying we 'have to get out of here'. Nothing insists the party return straight away to town, to Moira's place, because Sally needs food and rest and safety and if she's going to get it anywhere, that's where. She promises Sally that she'll get the others back, no matter what, she'll get them back. The journey back...Spindle keeps seeing movement out of the corner of his eye. Canine shapes, lupine? He can never quite discern what he's seeing. He cautiously motions Faeleth over and whispers his disconcertion (so as not to make Sally any more shaken than she already is - the kid is a wreck) but she can't catch sight of anything of the sort. The party happen across a bear. It's busy eating a deer, but Holgar, still full of unspent frustration from his lack of real battle-action in the previous fight....rushes it. He rushes the bear. He fights the bear. (At this point I was genuinely convinced the party might die for realsies.) Faeleth sticks to the treeline and takes potshots with her crossbow, first missing but then getting in some real good hits. Nothing ushers Sally behind a tree and fires off Eldritch Blast after Eldritch Blast. Holgar wails on it with an axe. Spindle doesn't attack at all, too busy being distracted by his attempts to see what's following us. Just as the bear rears up after giving a battering swipe to Holgar, Nothing manages to hit it with a bolt of arcane energy square in the chest and that's that. Or, you know, that's that until Spindle becomes determined to nosh down on the deer carcass (ew. spindle's body doesn't take it well either, thanks to a dismal constitituion roll. it doesn't take the repeated rolls to keep trying to eat it well either. or the attempt to try eating bear instead: he gets a mouthful of blast-charred bearmeat and while it doesn't make him quite as sick as the deer, it still tastes like ass) and Holgar decides he wants to take a trophy of his victory in the form of a bear face-skin mask. After some difficulty, Holgar does a great job of skinning the bear head in the end and it fits like a dream! What a Badass Look(tm). Bear mask get! The group finally get back on the road to town. The boys decide tonight is drinkin' time and head off for the local tavern, The Bended Bough, leaving the girls behind. Faeleth, Nothing and Sally arrive at Moira's place, asking if Sally can stay here and recover at least for the night. Moira agrees, giving Sally some bread and cheese and a drink with a drop of some kind of sleeping draft. Then she levels her gaze at Nothing and Faeleth and says they ought to leave. Her tone is off. The pair are suddenly very, very reluctant to leave the groggy, soon out-cold Sally here alone, but Moira gets very stern and...oddly chilly, in response to their requests to stay. "You know what I've said, Nothing. This isn't a hotel." No attempt to sway her seems to be working - Nothing wheedles to her, bargains, literally pulls out the little money she has and offers to pay as much as she can for just one night. Moira stares daggers at them both (particularly Faeleth!), tapping her foot. "I have my own reasons and they are my own," she says, when Faeleth tries to question her on why she even feeds the streetflock but won't let Nothing bunk for just this one night. (Or, uh, something like that.) Faeleth isn't having any of it, and her only natural 20 skill check of the night is for intimidating this old lady into letting us stay, with a long, unflinching stare. Moira's not happy about it, though, and she roughly gestures to a bare corner of the room for us to sleep in, but we get to stay the night. ....Back to the tavern. Turns out that The Bended Bough is exactly where Holgar started the bar fight that landed him in jail, and the staff are having none of it, the boys are barred. Holgar and Spindle protest strongly at this, but nope, no can do. Spindle tries and fails to claim his arrival with Holgar was pure coincidence. Holgar grabs someone else's drink and chugs it out of spite. Spindle demands to at least have his hipflask filled, or else. Or else what? Or else he stabs the guy in the ankles. (Spindle SOMEHOW manages to be more intimidating than the dwarf twice his size, and gets his flask filled with near-luminescent green booze - for free! He takes one swig. He's a tiny teenage gnome and is utterly plastered within moments. He tries to jump on Holgar's back for a ride but sort of just ineffectually jumps /against/ his back instead.) They still can't go in The Bended Bough though. The guy suggests they go to The Green Dragon down the road instead. So they do that! ....The Green Dragon is near empty. The barman seems to barely be paying attention when they order, there's only a couple of other patrons. Spindle cracks out his ukelele and plays a surprisingly competent little tune for a shockingly inebriated gnome. A couple of people (humans? I think?) slink out not long after they get there, and Spindle gets a....canine vibe from them. He growls at them, one growls back and gets cuffed upside the head by the other. Spindle growls harder, and they whine as they leave, metaphorical tails between their legs. Spindle chugs on down his second drink of the night - a serving of vodka and rum that would be fine for a human, but is a devastating amount of alcohol for someone two feet tall, and he passes out on the floor. Holgar has a kind of okay beer. Oh! The barkeep actually knows this one beer that goes down really well with dwarves, does Holgar want to try it? It's called Basilisk Venom - not actual basilisk venom, of course! just a cool name, it's spiced, you see.... Holgar, of course, is down for that. The guy pours out this veritable cocktail of beers, ciders, and sprinkles some herbs and powders into it that make it go all fizzy. It looks pretty great. Holgar drinks it, and starts feeling some kind of a way. He knows what being drunk is like, and this isn't it. This is tiredness. This is falling asleep. This...is being drugged. He hears Hand's voice say something smug and ominous that I the writer can't heckdamn remember before he falls unconscious. And thus ends the session. Highlights included our gnome breaking our stones of farspeech just as Nothing was about to snatch them off of him by yelling into them real loud Holgar trying to yank an entire bush out of the ground (while hiding inside the bush), failing, and jumping out with a triumphant cry and two fistfuls of leaves, badly startling the passersby our gnome getting bored during his stakeout and writing Druidic graffiti in the wall with a rock that read, simply, 'Spindle was here' @inchwyrm rolling a nat20 to intimidate a (exceedingly shady) little old lady into letting us sleep over at her house Holgar deciding sneaking is overrated and rushing a bear in the woods that hadn't even seen us, but considering it 100% worth it because now he has a bearskin mask and it's badass Spindle trying to eat some of the deer the aforementioned bear was noshing down on, rolling a dismal constitution roll and being made violently ill because it's gross raw deer...and then trying to continue eating the deer. When that failed again, he tried to eat some bear instead, and discovered (to nobody's surprise but his) that raw bear meat is...also super gross! Who knew! Spindle ending up in posession of what is probably his own body weight in oranges?? We rescued Sally, my missing little halfling friend!! Or, uh, I guess, were gifted Sally back by a decidedly menacing butler. Hey, gotta count those small victories, right? Achievement get? Spindle getting utterly plastered on approximately one swig of mystery glowing green booze, but still managing to play the ukelele with surprising skill. (His player actually got his ukelele out for this and gave us a lil tune. Best prop!) Nothing nearly getting straight-up murderated by demon hunters and being rescued by Faeleth's speedy intervention with some amazing and highly deadly critical-hit stabs. A good time all around and I'm so excited to get back to it next week. C:
Also because I am so long-winded that this needed to be cut across two posts..... Spoiler: excited rambling new-to-d&d talk about the roleplay element and my character I've never got like, super invested in roleplaying a character before D&D? Like, I've had OCs who I love and am invested in but I don't RP them, and I had characters I RP'd but rarely in scenarios I felt anything very strong about. But this has been a super different experience! It's really exciting and I love it a lot?? Like, I know it's gonna be like that for me in particular right now because this first storyline is very Nothing-centric, but it's really cool because it's helped me solidify her character - the first session was kind of me getting a feel for her and her place in the world (helped massively by the DM because the way Alf's rapport with Nothing was played sort of gave me context cues for what her life is like and sort of I could bounce off of that) but this session felt a lot easier to just react in-character to things? And especially the demon hunters. Like, I'd already characterised Nothing as used to things being kinda rough for her, she's probably got into enough fights or had fights picked with her, and probably lost a lot of them before she got her Sweet Magicks. And with that in mind, it was cool because immediately when they turned on her it hit me like 'this situation has never happened to Nothing. She's used to being beefed with and periodically beaten up for being a tiefling but right now a dude is coming at her with a sword, specifically at her, this tiny 15-year-old kid, with the obvious intent of Kill The Demon.' and AAAAAAAAA IT WAS EXCITING just to play that panic reaction and now Nothing thinks Faeleth is The Literal Best Person Ever because as far as Nuth is concerned she was literally about to get murdered and the Cool Tall Elf Lady swoops in and just messes the guy uuuuup and straight-up saves her life and basically I could talk about my excitement to be part of this story all day Bless our DM and his giving this tiny noob such an exciting first story to get all hyped up over.
hi guys! I'm getting interested in going back to playing dnd, but i haven't played since 3.5 was the hot new thing, and i'm not sure how to get back into playing. i've looked online and off and there's no one around me that plays - roleplaying isn't a very well known hobby in my country - and i don't have any irl friends that i can turn into players. so that leaves me with online groups, but... i'm not sure how to find a group to play online. I know there's a subreddit for that, but i'm not really sure that's a good idea... is there a place you'd suggest?
have you checked out the kintsugi dnd games in its galley's turn? i'm not sure if any of them are open for more players right now, but i think it might be a good place to start.
I'll add that 5e is much more similar to 3.x than 4e was, if that helps any. I imagine there are 3.x games, too, but if you want to do 5e it's not as much different as some editions are.
i have the materials for 5e, and i really like what i see! I haven't played since high school, around ten years or so, so even if there were 3.5 games i'd have to relearn everything all over again, so changing editions isn't too much of a problem. finding people willing to babysit me through the process, though... that's another can of worms I did, but i didn't see any that seemed to be accepting new players ):
this is the eternal problem; far more people want to play than want to DM I'd offer, because I actually enjoy DMing, but that's how I ended up running two games simultaneously with two more on hiatus x_x
I loved dming back in my day ): worldbuilding is my favorite part of any creative process so it's exactly my cup of tea. but yikes, dming two games at the same time sounds really overwhelming
It's not too bad right now. One's really slow-paced PbP as we're all on different schedules, the other is just me running a pre-made adventure for my girlfriend whenever we feel like playing, so it's low-prep and low-pressure. But, yeah, I tend to over-commit. 5e is a lot like 3.5, but way more streamlined and simpler (as opposed to 4e which was streamlined but also a very different game). I think you'd pick it up pretty quickly.
Question: Since dice are super expensive and/or really inconvenient to go buy IRL where I am, does anyone have any experience with those dice sets on amazon that come up when you search for polyhedral dice? Like I don't mind if they have cosmetic imperfection, just that they're produced decently enough to role balanced. Bc something like that would be great, you can get like 7 sets of dice for 11€ on my local amazon and if they're like, alright but obvs nothing fancy I could hand some out to my players too. Buuuut yeah, if they're crap I'd rather pay more/get someone to drive me to the game store. So anyone ever tried/bought those? Sorry if this isn't the right thread, but I figured dice advice is D&D adjacent enough.
Sunday night, the players in my pirate game were fighting some cyclopses, and thanks to a well-timed Dominate Person to the boss and a bad roll to save against it on my part, they ended up talking to the cyclopses instead of just killing them. since their leader was now acting friendly to the party, the other cyclopses were happy to hang out with them. and then, of course, the inevitable... one of the players starting hitting on a cyclops. me: "well... roll Diplomacy." player: "TWENTY-FOUR!!!" me: *deep sigh* "fine. you can fuck the cyclops if you want." this party i s2g. (she IS a pretty cool cyclops though. http://orig02.deviantart.net/1e54/f/2014/351/4/e/shaija_by_alexalexandrov-d8a69mh.jpg )
