D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[Madfellow]

About the bounty hunter thing, as a GM I wouldn't have any problem running the occasional sidequest involving a dangerous bounty, or something to that effect.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Originally Posted by Camelot

Because it makes sense for people who care about a modicum of mundane realism. Having only three kinds of coins would be like having only pennies, $1 bills, and $100 bills in American coinage, and the bills would be ten times heavier than they are now. We have pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, $1 bills, $5 bills, $10 bills, $20 bills, $50 bills, $100 bills, and a few larger that are only used by the extremely wealthy.

As a rule, that is exactly how RL pre-modern societies handled their coinage. Producing lots of coins is hard enough before you have the Industrial Revolution much less producing lots of different types of coins as well. Heck, the main reason you had so many different coins in, say, the Renaissance, is because so many different banks/governments were producing their own.

Again, this is why I hate appeals to "verisimilitude" or "realism."

[Dienekes]

Originally Posted by Oracle_Hunter

As a rule, that is exactly how RL pre-modern societies handled their coinage. Producing lots of coins is hard enough before you have the Industrial Revolution much less producing lots of different types of coins as well. Heck, the main reason you had so many different coins in, say, the Renaissance, is because so many different banks/governments were producing their own.

Again, this is why I hate appeals to "verisimilitude" or "realism."

And even then, a lot of times the different type of coins were made from the same materials just in different sizes.

Personally I don't particularly want to track if my character has any of 4 types of silver coins all of varying amount, and another 3 types of gold coins, again all with different and often non-metric value.

I'd rather just abstract it to you have X money currently. Gold/silver/bronze division is fine.

[Camelot]

Originally Posted by Dienekes

And even then, a lot of times the different type of coins were made from the same materials just in different sizes.

Personally I don't particularly want to track if my character has any of 4 types of silver coins all of varying amount, and another 3 types of gold coins, again all with different and often non-metric value.

I'd rather just abstract it to you have X money currently. Gold/silver/bronze division is fine.

Yeah, it's great for the game, but it falls short for the story, in my opinion. What I like to do is tell the players what treasure they find in greater detail than just a number of coins so that it seems more interesting and exciting, then tell them the coin value so they can write it down as that.

[DoctorStandard]

The Warlock is confusing to me. Do they get more favors per day as they level up? If not, are they just stuck with two pact boons and invocations forever? That seems really weak.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Originally Posted by Camelot

Yeah, it's great for the game, but it falls short for the story, in my opinion. What I like to do is tell the players what treasure they find in greater detail than just a number of coins so that it seems more interesting and exciting, then tell them the coin value so they can write it down as that.

I generally treat pp/gp/sp/cp as money of account, so there isn't necessarily any such thing as an actual "gold piece" in circulation, but all of the local and national currencies have their values measured in golds or silvers for ease of trading. When you hand a shopkeeper "thirty gold" you might actually be handing him a bunch of drachma or pfennigs or talents in whatever denomination. That gives the benefits of having the standard prices mean something in-game, and also lets you use colorful currencies to flavor the world.

[Water_Bear]

Originally Posted by Camelot

Yeah, it's great for the game, but it falls short for the story, in my opinion. What I like to do is tell the players what treasure they find in greater detail than just a number of coins so that it seems more interesting and exciting, then tell them the coin value so they can write it down as that.

Well, that's what Art Items and Trade Goods are for right?

I don't know if they changed it for 4e, but in 3.5 an Art Item (Gem, fancy hairbrush, painting, etc) or Trade Good (cow, bar of silver, bolt of silk, etc) could be traded 1:1 for its gold value, unlike other items which could only be sold for 50% of market price.

You don't need a half-dozen regional currencies to spruce up your treasure, just convert ~25% of the total into diamonds or spices. Heck, if you roll for treasure that kind of thing will happen anyway.

[Kurald Galain]

Originally Posted by Water_Bear

I don't know if they changed it for 4e, but in 3.5 an Art Item (Gem, fancy hairbrush, painting, etc) or Trade Good (cow, bar of silver, bolt of silk, etc) could be traded 1:1 for its gold value, unlike other items which could only be sold for 50% of market price.

4.0 doesn't have art items or trade goods, no. It has mundane goods, which cannot be sold period, and magical items, which can be sold for 20% market price (or an item of exactly five levels lower, same thing).

4.4 has common, uncommon, and rare magical items, that sell for 20%, 50%, and either 0% or 100% of their market price, respectively.

[Urpriest]

Originally Posted by Kurald Galain

4.0 doesn't have art items or trade goods, no. It has mundane goods, which cannot be sold period, and magical items, which can be sold for 20% market price (or an item of exactly five levels lower, same thing).

4.4 has common, uncommon, and rare magical items, that sell for 20%, 50%, and either 0% or 100% of their market price, respectively.

Page 124 of the DMG: 4e absolutely has Art Objects.

[Dublock]

@Grac and Siegel

I didn't mean to imply it was a good thing, I just meant that the bad DMs are just going to ignore it and do the thing they were going to anyway.

Personally I would be more then happy to work with a player who wanted to actively pursue someone.

Yes there are Art items in 4e and I had a player asked about them once, so I then made sure that I included some "works" in the sewers (since thats where they were) that made them laugh but worth little :p (I did end up giving a few worth while works of art too, just not in the sewers :P).

I personally tend to give a portion of their gold in the weapons/armor that the monsters were using, makes sense and they would pester about it anyway.

[obryn]

Originally Posted by Kurald Galain

4.0 doesn't have art items or trade goods, no. It has mundane goods, which cannot be sold period, and magical items, which can be sold for 20% market price (or an item of exactly five levels lower, same thing).

Originally Posted by Urpriest

Page 124 of the DMG: 4e absolutely has Art Objects.

And gems. And jewelry. All of which is explicitly considered "as good as currency."

Anything can pretty much be treasure, just as in any edition of the game.

-O

[Zeful]

Originally Posted by Seerow

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.

Why would they do something so stupid, cliche and uncreative? It's not April 1st for another 8 or 9 months.

[Madfellow]

Originally Posted by DoctorStandard

The Warlock is confusing to me. Do they get more favors per day as they level up? If not, are they just stuck with two pact boons and invocations forever? That seems really weak.

The current version doesn't gain any additional favors between levels 1 and 5, but does learn more invocations. At higher level's it'll also gain access to more powerful invocations.

[Menteith]

Originally Posted by Zeful

Why would they do something so stupid, cliche and uncreative? It's not April 1st for another 8 or 9 months.

Because it's "Iconic". /shrug, I got nothing, I agree with you.

[Madfellow]

Originally Posted by Dublock

@Grac and Siegel

I didn't mean to imply it was a good thing, I just meant that the bad DMs are just going to ignore it and do the thing they were going to anyway.

Personally I would be more then happy to work with a player who wanted to actively pursue someone.

Here's a funny story. So I was GMing the Reclaiming Blingdenstone adventure for my friends, and one of them made a bounty hunter. The first thing he said was, "Where's the bounty board?" After a quick search he found it, and with no other options I gave them a wanted poster for Talabrina Duskryn. The entire party then made it their mission to capture/kill Talabrina and claim the reward, without talking with any of the major gnomish authority figures to ask about quests.

So I improvised. The party went searching north of town for tracks, and after some searching found 3 sets of tracks belonging to medium-sized humaonids (which meant they couldn't belong to gnomes). They followed the tracks for 20 hours all the way to Mantol Derith, bribed their way in, found Talabrina, and set up an ambush for her on the road back to Blingdenstone. They managed to get a surprise round on her and kill her bodyguards, and then the rogue got a critical hit on a sneak attack and dealt 22 damage in one hit!

Not exactly what I had in mind, but everybody had fun.

[Nu]

Originally Posted by Urpriest

Page 124 of the DMG: 4e absolutely has Art Objects.

There's even some Toril-themed ones listed on page 44 of the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. I use these a lot in my FR Campaign. My PCs usually end up finding more art objects than coins, because I find the idea of finding a few chests full of gold kind of unrealistic.

[Cybren]

i'd prefer just having GP as the currency and allow different settings to establish different coinages. D&D is a little silly and treats gold as commonplace rather than rare

[Roguenewb]

Does anyone know anything about whether or not you can choose your own feats? Or do feats have to be from the speciality?

[DrBurr]

So I've got my group on the fence for changing my upcoming 2nd game to a Next playtest, I'll push them over Friday. But still trying to think of the best way to run it online with maptools, or similar set up, currently thinking of using a 3.5 framework, any suggestions?

Also those who've played the test so far what are some of the pitfalls encountered in game?

[Ashdate]

Originally Posted by Roguenewb

Does anyone know anything about whether or not you can choose your own feats? Or do feats have to be from the speciality?

You choose a specialty, and gain the listed "feats" as you gain levels, as long a you meet the per-requisites. I think it's awkward to call them feats, and even more awkward to not have pre-reqs for specialties but to have pre-reqs for the feats they grant, but that's the current system.

[navar100]

Originally Posted by Menteith

Because it's "Iconic". /shrug, I got nothing, I agree with you.

Maybe some people actually like the idea of a dragon-blooded magic user who can turn into a dragon or otherwise have draconic qualities. Perhaps they're experimenting 3E Heritage Feats as abilities inherent to the class. Perhaps a player will be able to choose among bloodlines as part of backgrounds. Could have been prudent to offer a second bloodline as well. Unfortunately for them Pathfinder did it first, so they need to develop something unique for the concept. Where as Pathfinder made a prestige class for a dragon-blooded sorcerer to become more dragon-like, 5E will attempt to make it inherent to the class. Might not work, but the concept is not somehow wrong.

[Knaight]

Originally Posted by navar100

Maybe some people actually like the idea of a dragon-blooded magic user who can turn into a dragon or otherwise have draconic qualities. Perhaps they're experimenting 3E Heritage Feats as abilities inherent to the class. Perhaps a player will be able to choose among bloodlines as part of backgrounds. Could have been prudent to offer a second bloodline as well. Unfortunately for them Pathfinder did it first, so they need to develop something unique for the concept. Where as Pathfinder made a prestige class for a dragon-blooded sorcerer to become more dragon-like, 5E will attempt to make it inherent to the class. Might not work, but the concept is not somehow wrong.

3.5 did it first, with the Dragon Disciple prestige class. It was completely worthless on just about every account, but they did beat Pathfinder to it. That said - it's trite and cliche, and this whole "bloodline" thing is getting obnoxious.

[huttj509]

Originally Posted by Ashdate

You choose a specialty, and gain the listed "feats" as you gain levels, as long a you meet the per-requisites. I think it's awkward to call them feats, and even more awkward to not have pre-reqs for specialties but to have pre-reqs for the feats they grant, but that's the current system.

The intent down the road has been stated to have Feats, where specialties are pre-selected feat packages. We just only have access to specialties currently (silimar to how we have levels 1-5, while internally they have stuff to at least 10, based on the penny arcade podcast).

Similarly backgrounds are pre-packaged skill bundles, though I'm not sure how they'll handle the bonus thing, they seem to just be a flavorful perk, so for folks who want to pick their own skills, it wouldn't be hard to say "pick one of the perks, or talk to the DM."

I do agree it's awkward to have pre-reqs not stated up-front for the specialty bundles, but at present it seems like a notational side effect of having them be bundles of pre-selected feats, which have their own prereqs.

[Zeful]

Originally Posted by navar100

Maybe some people actually like the idea of a dragon-blooded magic user who can turn into a dragon or otherwise have draconic qualities. Perhaps they're experimenting 3E Heritage Feats as abilities inherent to the class. Perhaps a player will be able to choose among bloodlines as part of backgrounds. Could have been prudent to offer a second bloodline as well. Unfortunately for them Pathfinder did it first, so they need to develop something unique for the concept. Where as Pathfinder made a prestige class for a dragon-blooded sorcerer to become more dragon-like, 5E will attempt to make it inherent to the class. Might not work, but the concept is not somehow wrong.

It is when before it was possible to make a Sorcerer that did not possess any BS magical heritage and was a Sorcerer literally "just because". The set of assumptions that are inherent to these kind of classes (all of them because everyone's been doing this since as long as I've been in D&D) pretty much makes any other origin pretty much non-viable. Hell it makes generally divergent settings impossible with the class and one of those things that you have to spend time to address with the setting rather than just having plug and play classes like almost every other edition of D&D. Bloodline classes dictate quite a bit of setting fluff that while you can change is just another thing that you have to document that can push players away from the setting and the game it's in.

And more importantly it is just aping Pathfinder and every homebrewer that has ever decided to "fix" the Sorcerer, they couldn't have figured something that was, while not unique, somewhat creative? They have to go down one of the most well-worn and cliche paths for the sorcerer that exists? Really?

[Water_Bear]

Originally Posted by Zeful

<Snip>

Seeing as they are transparently aping Pathfinder's Bloodlines, they will almost certainly include something like the Arcane Bloodline; your character has magical powers because... magic! In fact, in Pathfinder the Arcane Bloodline was arguably the mechanically best one because it gave the ability to use metamagic spontaneously.

Some people want Sorcerers who have no specific heritage, and gained their powers from vague mystical forces; these people will take Arcane Bloodline (or the equivilent in 5e). Some people want Sorcerers who gain powers because of their specific heritage and will use whichever Bloodlines relate to their character's lineage.

I don't see how it limits your fluff if you have the option to take either a Bloodline based on a defined heritage or a generic "you're just a Sorcerer" Bloodline. If anything, the mechanics punish players who choose interesting Bloodlines because they are so inferior to the Arcane Bloodline in Pathfinder.

[Menteith]

When a non-Draconic power source is actually in the 5E info, then I'll believe it. Just because something's true in PF doesn't mean that it'll be true in D&D Next. To be honest, I'm not in love with bloodline powers in general, and would've liked to see something creative and new done with the Sorcerer, and was really hoping to see something that didn't marry mechanics and fluff tightly.

[Zeful]

Originally Posted by Water_Bear

Seeing as they are transparently aping Pathfinder's Bloodlines, they will almost certainly include something like the Arcane Bloodline; your character has magical powers because... magic! In fact, in Pathfinder the Arcane Bloodline was arguably the mechanically best one because it gave the ability to use metamagic spontaneously.

Some people want Sorcerers who have no specific heritage, and gained their powers from vague mystical forces; these people will take Arcane Bloodline (or the equivilent in 5e). Some people want Sorcerers who gain powers because of their specific heritage and will use whichever Bloodlines relate to their character's lineage.

I don't see how it limits your fluff if you have the option to take either a Bloodline based on a defined heritage or a generic "you're just a Sorcerer" Bloodline. If anything, the mechanics punish players who choose interesting Bloodlines because they are so inferior to the Arcane Bloodline in Pathfinder.

If I want to make a setting for running a 5e game (and I will, I've already started work on mine), I have three options when it comes to a heritage sorcerer. 1: Ban the class outright if I'm going to make any of the bloodlines impossible to achieve (dragons don't go around screwing people? No Draconic bloodline, same goes for any of the other stupid ones like Ooze or Undead). 2: Make the setting have those elements anyway even if I don't want the themes. or 3: Do what I want and just ban incompatable bloodlines (which FYI, will be all of them if I don't bother outright banning the class entirely, as I've said elsewhere, several times, for the last several years that terribly designed and implemented heritage classes (read: all of them) outright break my suspension of disbelief).

Quite frankly from a base ruleset point of view, I should have to do none of those things, classes from the base ruleset should have generic fluff that does not try to explain specifics to make the basic ruleset plug and play. Heritage Sorcerers are the opposite of this.

And everyone has pointed out the arcane bloodline, every time my dislike for this crap comes up. I've read it several times: it's still crap. I'd rather take the three feats in the entire bloodline represents (off the top of my head it would be "Spell Focus: X", "Dragonblooded Sorcerer" and "Accelerated Metamagic"), and have the entire thing by level 6 than be spoonfed a lazy set of "class features".

[TheOOB]

Originally Posted by Roguenewb

Does anyone know anything about whether or not you can choose your own feats? Or do feats have to be from the speciality?

Some of the podcasts they have released strongly imply/outright state that in the future you will get to pick your own feats and in some cases(rogue and fighter) pick your own class abilities instead of being forced down a specific path(though the specialties/paths will likely still be available). Right now they are trying to keep things simple.

[WitchSlayer]

Originally Posted by Water_Bear

Seeing as they are transparently aping Pathfinder's Bloodlines, they will almost certainly include something like the Arcane Bloodline; your character has magical powers because... magic! In fact, in Pathfinder the Arcane Bloodline was arguably the mechanically best one because it gave the ability to use metamagic spontaneously.

Whoa there buddy, you might want to cut it with the aping talk considering, as stated, 3e did it somewhat first and 4e did it as well. In fact it looks very very similar to what it was in 4e in style.

[Hylas]

Originally Posted by Camelot

Yeah, it's great for the game, but it falls short for the story, in my opinion. What I like to do is tell the players what treasure they find in greater detail than just a number of coins so that it seems more interesting and exciting, then tell them the coin value so they can write it down as that.

I was once in a GURPS game where we were rewarded with a chest full of $100 gold coins. Unfortunately we were in a small hamlet and there probably wasn't $100 worth of coins in the entire place to make change, and nothing to buy even worth that much. Talk about starving on a mountain of gold.

It gets you immersed in the barter system and it helps reinforce the disconnect between the aristocracy and the common folk.

But I'll agree that this level of role playing isn't for everyone and most people want to get back to the smashing and spell casting, however there's still adventure opportunities even with something as mundane and currency exchange. After all, imagine what happens when you're in a modern setting and don't have any quarters for the parking meter because all you have is a credit card?