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2012-08-16, 10:21 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Dubhshlaine, Elf Mage, in Eberron D&D 4e
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2012-08-16, 10:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Interesting. With the devs talking about having simple caster classes and complex martial classes to complement the simple fighter and complex wizard, I'd have figured they'd be making the warlock the simple caster again. if warlock is AEDU, I guess they'll both be overshadowing the martial types again.
1) The rogue gets 1d6 plus 1d6 per level, which is about the same amount of bonus damage a TWF rogue gets in 3e (1d6 per 2 levels, twice per round) except that the rogue is unlikely to get any more attacks as he levels, and HP looks like it'll be at roughly 3e levels. The sky isn't going to fall if the rogue can deal 1d6 per level per round semi-regularly.
2) The fighter being able to slaughter a challenging monster in a few rounds is a good thing. Like I said before, the fighter could 1.5-round most even-HD monsters in AD&D; a 10th-level 2e fighter facing 6 trolls has a good chance of killing them all in under a minute and coming out alive. Considering 2e also tended toward using lots of monsters per combat like 5e is rather than one big baddie, this shouldn't be a problem.
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2012-08-17, 12:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
You can call me Draz.
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I have a number of ongoing projects that I manically jump between to spend my free time ... so don't be surprised when I post a lot about something for a few days, then burn out and abandon it.
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2012-08-17, 12:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
At this stage, with the new rules on character creation and things like that, we are seeing the underlying math and mechanics of the Next edition, which is good - a step forward. There seems to still be a few kinks to work out, but the game seems to be playable and, more importantly, testable, as opposed to the early alpha packet we got last time.
At this stage, I would be interested in playtesting this here in a play-by-post format (seeing as I can't play it in real-life). There's enough going on with the moving parts of the system that some more substantial and meaty feedback and data can be acquired. I wonder if, perhaps, Saph could be troubled to run something like this.
I call Fighter!Homebrew
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2012-08-17, 12:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I like channel divinity, for two reasons.
First, I like that the cleric is less spell dependent than the wizard, the wizard is all about spells, and while the cleric is mostly about spells, there are supposed to be able to do other things. So the cleric has less spells per a day, weaker magical abilities, and a generally weaker(but suitably different) spell list. This means the cleric needs something else to make them comparable to the wizard. You can't buff direct combat ability too much without killing the fighter or rogue, so the domain spells/abilities and channel divinity are a good way of giving the cleric something extra. As an added bonus, it ensures the cleric will be the best healing/have the most undead hate even if another class with a very similar spell list(say druid), comes out.
Second, I like channel divinity for the flavor. Every class in Next thus far has some sort of "path" to customize your class(wizard doesn't but they have so many spells they don't need to). The channel divinity allows domains to have a little more flavor, without making them too good(as channel divinity is a very limited resource)."Sometimes, we’re heroes. Sometimes, we shoot other people right in the face for money."
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2012-08-17, 05:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Dubhshlaine, Elf Mage, in Eberron D&D 4e
DM for Feiticeiro's Ergodic Dungeon (Always Open!), In-Game
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2012-08-17, 07:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I don't see the difference between a "channel divinity power" and a "cleric spell", neither thematically nor mechanically.
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
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2012-08-17, 07:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Finally had a chance to look through the packet in a bit of detail and catch up on the thread. Some things that jumped out at me:
HP back to low pre-4E levels.
Booo! I thought the higher starting HP was one of the good things that they brought over from 4E. Definitely a bad step for me.
Rogue = criminal
With thieves cant and a free background that has to be thief or thug. Leave thieves cant to the DM based on his world, or move it out of the class, and think about some other options for the free background. There are plenty of concepts that fit into a sneaky backstabbing combatant that aren't criminal, so lets not pigeon-hole the class unnecessarily.
Combat Superiority for fighters
It's a start, although a grudging one so far. I like the alternative being suggested, with more powerful options that require burning dice.
Re. the concerns over the extra dice available for the more basic options - you can always give each maneouvre a maximum number of dice that can be used for it - say 2 for the basic 'do more damage' option. You can spend extra, but those extra dice are burnt.
One concern I have - when you get up to 10 dice that you can presumably split to different manoeuvres and a load of options, it may slow play down deciding what to do. Although I guess limited actions per turn will rein it in.
Back to rogues
Can we have a similar system to Combat Superiority, based on sneak attack dice for them? At the moment they don't have a heap of options.
Caster versatility
Currently there aren't a great number of non-combat utility spells, but even if they start that way, spells are an easy way to bulk out expansions. They will get more, and we will be back to all-powerful wizards. Especially as they don't even need to use a spell slot if they can manage 10 minutes and a bit of change for a low level spell as a ritual.
All in all - not sure. I am sure I'd prefer to play the game that is getting designed in this thread than the one in the playtest package though
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2012-08-17, 07:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Originally Posted by 1337 b4k4
An at-will ability does not have any opportunity cost other than an action/reaction, and that depends. Once you use your CS dice, you cannot use a different ability in a different phase of the turn or round that would require then expenditure of those CS dice, even if it would otherwise be triggered, so there's a much greater opportunity cost. They may not be as big a deal as a caster's daily resource slot, but they are best described as a round-based mana point system, not at-wills.*********
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2012-08-17, 07:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I think the rogue is supposed to be the skill dude again. The problem is that the current skill system doesn't really support this: a character can only be slightly better than average (i.e. +15%) in a slight number of skills (i.e. 3). Sure, rogues can take skills on their dump stat, but in practice most people want skills on their good stats anyway.
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
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2012-08-17, 08:14 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
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2012-08-17, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
bah, double-post
Last edited by caden_varn; 2012-08-17 at 08:23 AM.
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2012-08-17, 10:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I could see maybe burning one die on any maneuver with over 1 die, but all dice over 1 is outrageous, especially if you go with my suggestion that higher level maneuvers require the max number of dice you have at the level you get it. (so a 5th level maneuver takes 3 dice, a 20th level one takes 10. Making that 20th level maneuver burn 9 dice is completely unnacceptable unless those maneuvers are far beyond the power of spells, which I doubt I will ever see happen.)
Anyway, I'm going to point you back to "if that level of damage is a problem for the system, they've messed up their scaling", because hit points and damage should be scaling very quickly to make up for the lack of hit/AC bonuses. Honestly I find it a big compromise already to be stuck with flat AC/hit bonuses and have damage/hp still only progressing linearly.
As for the fighter being able to take on any monster 1v1 within 4 rounds, the expectation of encounters in 5e seems to be many monsters. The expectation also seems to be a tendency towards fast combats, 2-3 rounds for the most part. A character taking out a single on level enemy is what the game expects. If that is not the intention, the designers got their scaling wrong when they dropped hit points down, and need to bring HP back up.
It's worth mentioning too that some of my hesitation likely comes from my own biases of running BECMI most of the time, and really the only other frame of reference (D&D wise) I have is 4e, I haven't spent nearly enough time in 3.x to accurately gauge where these numbers are falling in relation to that system.
I don't see the difference between a "channel divinity power" and a "cleric spell", neither thematically nor mechanically.
With thieves cant and a free background that has to be thief or thug. Leave thieves cant to the DM based on his world, or move it out of the class, and think about some other options for the free background. There are plenty of concepts that fit into a sneaky backstabbing combatant that aren't criminal, so lets not pigeon-hole the class unnecessarily.
...
Can we have a similar system to Combat Superiority, based on sneak attack dice for them? At the moment they don't have a heap of options.
All in all - not sure. I am sure I'd prefer to play the game that is getting designed in this thread than the one in the playtest package though
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2012-08-17, 10:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Warlock and Sorcerer are up.
Sorcerer seems to follow the spell level progression from 3.5, where he gets his spells a level later than the Wizard. He also has a more restricted spell list, in addition to getting only 1 spell known per level.
In exchange for all of this, he gets to use spellpoints, which as far as I can tell have no logical progression to how many you get per level. It's almost like they tuned the spell point gains with the assumption the sorcerer would gain new spell levels at the same time as the Wizard, and then changed what level he gains his spells at the last second without modifying the spellpoints.
Oh, and the Sorcerer also has bloodline abilities. In particular the Playtest Sorcerer is Draconic, and thus gets a Dragon Breath, Dragon Scales, and Dragon Strength.
On the one hand, it is really annoying that, as predicted, the class is entrenched in its fluff. There is no way you could call this Sorcerer as Wizard, at all. On the other hand, the sorcerer does have one new mechanic that is interesting: After he has spent so many spellpoints, he manifests a passive ability. For example after spending 3 willpower, you gain +2 to melee damage rolls. After spending 10 willpower, you manifest dragon scales giving you resistance to an energy type. It may not be the best bonus in the world, but it's something I don't recall seeing before, and is fairly interesting.
The Warlock, unfortunately, is far less interesting. Rather than AEDU, it's just AE. With some rituals thrown in as well. It gains no daily powers, and its utility powers are wrapped up with its Encounter Powers, and all of those powers are pretty underwhelming. You get 2 Lesser invocations per encounter, which is roughly comparable to how many spells a Wizard is casting each encounter... yet the Warlock's invocations are far weaker. They have one that lets them go Ethereal for a round, which is cool and potentially useful, but then they have one that lets them turn out the lights and gain darkvision (oh hey look at that guy who just screwed over the whole party), and one to deal like 2d6 damage in a tiny area.
At least Eldritch Blast is a bit better than in 3.5, as it starts at 3d6 instead of 1d6. Unfortunately it doesn't scale as quickly, you hit 4d6 at level 3, but no bump at level 5.Last edited by Seerow; 2012-08-17 at 10:17 AM.
If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-08-17, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-08-17, 10:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
EDIT: Link.
These are two classes that really get so many different things, that operate and trigger from so many different angles, that I have to see them playtested to have any idea how they balance out.
The Sorcerer is, for some reason, the arcane gish/cleric, and may be just as overpowered as the current Cleric is in Next.
The Warlock is noticeably weaker with a strict 2-per-encounter structure to all of its relevant powers. The Rituals are almost meaningless because not only do you get them later than Wizards, but you also can only choose from the smallest, most niche, list of spells.
I still find both classes to be quite interesting, and, in comparing them to the other classes, I would say that the new ranking is something like this:
Cleric/Sorcerer > Wizard > Fighter/Warlock > Rogue. I put Fighter and Warlock as "equal" because, while the Fighter is much better in combat, the Warlock is much better out of combat. In many ways, strangely, the Warlock feels like it can do everything the Rogue wishes it could.Last edited by Ziegander; 2012-08-17 at 10:43 AM.
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SpoilerSpecial Thanks: Kymme! You and your awesome avatarist skills have made me a Lore Warden in addition to King of Fighter Fixes!
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2012-08-17, 10:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Okay that's far more reasonable. I could go for something like along those lines.
This is only true if the enemies scale that quickly too. There's no reason why they couldn't reduce the power scaling of monsters and keep a slow scaling for player HP and damage values. I mean, look at early D&D, a white dragon was only a 6HD creature with d4/d4/2d8 damage. In the current beastiary, we have a Gnoll Leader with 5HD + 5 and d12+3/d12+3 damage. So there's room to scale back the monsters if they wanted. But I do agree they need to pick a scaling system and use it.
Even so, 2 attacks at d12+3 is going to average 19 points of damage. A Fighter with a d8 weapon, +4 strength mod, and 3d8 CS dice, will deal 22 points of damage on a hit. That disparity really isn't that huge. With the 2d8 the Fighter has now, it's 17.5, almost identical to the Gnoll, even before accounting for the Gnoll getting an extra +4 damage on each of those attacks from Savagery. (also not accounting for hit/AC differences, which brings things back in the Fighter's favor).
On a related note: I wish I could figure out why some of the to-hit numbers are so low. I mean do these monsters not have any sort of proficiency bonus to hit at all? The Gnoll actually looks like it has a -1 penalty to hit for some inexplicable reason.
Having thought this over a bit more, I'm actually tending to agree with you. That sort of damage output encourages the quick and deadly combat and can reduce the slow HP grind that some 4e encounters turned into.
It's worth mentioning too that some of my hesitation likely comes from my own biases of running BECMI most of the time, and really the only other frame of reference (D&D wise) I have is 4e, I haven't spent nearly enough time in 3.x to accurately gauge where these numbers are falling in relation to that system.
It seems to me it's mostly about giving standard clerical duties like healing a spell like resource, without forcing your cleric to expend his actual spell slots on that, or having to give the cleric a bunch of free spell slots. A reaction to the idea that a cleric needs to spend their spell slots on healing all the time. Whether it's a good mechanic and worth the additional mental space remains to be seen.
I really don't get it, this is a problem they had solved in 4e, and now they're stepping back and trying to solve it again in a way that pisses off everyone except grognards who can't understand that hp is not meat damage.If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-08-17, 10:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
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2012-08-17, 10:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I'm not quite sure I agree here, mostly because while the Rogue is still the class with the least complexity, they have the ability to auto succeed on the majority of the DCs the game recommends you use with at least 6 skills. They also have the best attribute as primary, meaning versatile enough to be good at both melee and ranged, and in both of those areas they pump out the highest single target damage in the game. I would peg the Rogue as better than the Fighter, in and out of combat, and comparable to the Wizard in combat (Wizard shines in AoE, Rogue shines in single target); while the Wizard dominates out of combat. Warlock vs Rogue out of combat is tougher, I'd probably rank them as close to equal.
Either way, Rogue's not at the bottom of the totem pole, he's got a fair bit of versatility and power behind him, he's just exceedingly simple, nearly as boring as the Fighter from the last playtest but not quite.If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-08-17, 11:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
That depends on the GM - speaking personally, I probably wouldn't have decided how much of that information to give out, and am relying on the roll to see. As for the heraldic lore check, there are potentially any number of uses (e.g. interpreting completely unknown and very old heraldry to piece together a lost bit of genealogy during a succession crisis).
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-08-17, 11:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Ah, I misunderstood how the Rogue's Scheme feature actually worked. I don't know if I like that Rogues get a an additional background, but maybe it makes sense. They really should just call it Jack of all Trades and fully integrate the Rogue as the "Background Master" class and be done with it. It would give the Rogue his "one unique thing" and offer lots of additional options (as well as the ability to not be a criminal).
With so many skills, and such expertise with them, the Rogue does feel a bit more powerful now. Again, I really have to see how this stuff plays out now to get a good grasp on the overall balance.Homebrew
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SpoilerSpecial Thanks: Kymme! You and your awesome avatarist skills have made me a Lore Warden in addition to King of Fighter Fixes!
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2012-08-17, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
To elaborate on this point: it seems, that the Bloodline has a huge impact on the general outline of the class. So, saying the Sorcerer is a gish would be rather inaccurate. The Dragon Sorcerer is a gish.
Overall I really like the Sorcerer. It seems like a very interesting class to play. My favorite part are the changes/boni you accumulate at certain thresholds of spend willpower. It's both very flavorful and interesting to play
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2012-08-17, 12:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Curious if they're trying real hard not to use Pathfinder's solution of Channeling Energy for healing/hurting undead and make Turn Undead a feat for those clerics and campaigns that need/want the Olde Ways. They'd be trying to come close as possible to similarity without it being exactly the same. In Pathfinder it works quite well. Multiple person simultaneous healing of multiple d6's at a range 3 + CHA modifier per day goes a long way to not needing to cast Cure Spells so often.
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2012-08-17, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-08-17, 12:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-08-17, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
There isn't much of one. That said, channel divinity powers can be run through domains for domain effects, which is nice. Sun gets a light burst, War gets Channel Divinity attached to an attack, and presumably more stuff will show up at higher levels. I actually like how they are handling Domains with Channel Divinity - the domains have a larger effect than just spell access (e.g. Fire and Radiant resistance), and Channel Divinity insures that you have healing spells, keeping the option to channel it into divine powers instead.
The obvious worry is that the cleric is too powerful, but we're still at an early enough play test that I'm not too worried - though the subset of play testers with no mechanical aptitude giving bad data could screw things up if the developers show typical WotC competence.
On the Sorcerer: It's nice to see them move somewhat over to Psion style casting, but the spell list just being a subset of the wizard spell list is not appreciated. Similarly, lagging a level behind in spells is not a feature that they needed to keep, and I'd rather they have avoided a bloodline flavored mechanic. They might also need to tone down the power a little bit, though there's obviously room for bringing other classes (Read: The Fighter) up. The Dragon origin could certainly use toning down, given that it pretty much equals the fighter even when not using spells - it rivals the Fighters melee attack, there's a free +2 damage, and you get resistance on top of it. Dragon Strength vastly outpaces Jab and Dragon Scales vastly outpaces Parry, though they do at least cost daily resources. This is without getting into Dragon Breath, which you don't appear to actually have access to despite it being written down.
On the Warlock: It looks mostly good, though having to use favors on invocations is a bit irritating, particularly as you get a whole two of them at first level and never appear to get more - Granted, a short rest recovers them, but still. The balance of the invocations is also odd - Shadow Veil, a minor, is much better than most of the lesser invocations, and all of the invocations are really good (Eldritch Blast is fantastic, Visage of the Summer court is brokenly overpowered).Last edited by Knaight; 2012-08-17 at 12:50 PM.
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-08-17, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-08-17, 12:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-08-17, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Took me some time to figure it out, like always with that damn site.
But that said: "YES! Yes! Sorcerers are arcane psions!"
Thats the most optimal scenario I've not even dared hoping for.
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2012-08-17, 12:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting