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

[Water_Bear]

Originally Posted by Starbuck_II

What no. Aragorn the 1/2 elf (he had elves on his background, if your uncle was an elf, you are a 1/2 elf not a human) was a Paladin (remember he used lay on hands to heal Frodo).
Legolas the elf was the Ranger (bow type). And Gimli the dwarf was the Fighter.

Apparently I'm bad at detecting sarcasm, so sorry if you're not serious but...

Aragorn healed exclusively by using herbs, and failed to heal Frodo of his wounds from the Morgul blade. Elrond Half-Elven was the one who used magic to heal Frodo.

Again, Aragorn had elven blood... diluted by millenia of breeding with humans. The line of Numenoreans was descended from Elrond's mortal brother, but after thousands of years he was almost completely human.

Plus, the Paladin in D&D is a holy knight, where Aragorn fought primarily on foot. The ranger, which is equally tied to Divine magic, is much closer to his capabilities and background. Plus, he was literally a Ranger; one of the Rangers of the North.

[noparlpf]

Originally Posted by Stubbazubba

I could be wrong, but I don't think Aragorn had any Elven uncles. His father-in-law, and thus his wife, are both Elves, but Aragorn's Elvish ancestry goes way, way back to the first King of Numenor, Elros Tar-Minyatur, who is Elrond's brother, yes, but that means his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-throw-in-a-few-dozen-more-greats uncle is an elf, not an uncle. Elros became mortal, though, his progeny are all 100% human, regardless of what that super-great uncle Elrond is.

Yeah. Aragorn's line was generally superior to ordinary humans, but by the time they got all the way down to him he was basically a slightly above-average human.
And there's no suggestion he'd fit the Paladin archetype. He's proficient with melee weapons and the bow, his background is in the wilderness, he's a tracker and a hunter and a protector. Sounds like Ranger to me.

Edit: Oh yeah, D&D Rangers use divine magic, and I don't think Aragorn really did that. I always forget they have magic because I don't like that flavour and always switch it for other things.

[Kurald Galain]

Well, the 1E/2E ranger may be Aragorn, but the 3E/4E ranger is Drizz't. The idea that rangers are elf-related healing nature guys is rather outdated; nowadays they are just dual-wielders.

[lesser_minion]

Originally Posted by Starbuck_II

What no. Aragorn the 1/2 elf (he had elves on his background, if your uncle was an elf, you are a 1/2 elf not a human) was a Paladin (remember he used lay on hands to heal Frodo).

That's not even remotely correct.

Healing knowledge is somewhat commonplace in Middle Earth. Aragorn did not treat Frodo using "lay on hands", he used an obscure herb that nobody else remembered (and it was actually as effective as any attempt to treat the wound could have been).

He does perform some magical feats -- successfully using Saruman's palantir, for example -- but those aren't paladin things in D&D.

The closest thing the Lord of the Rings actually has to a D&D paladin would probably be Glorfindel, who can even use Turn Undead according to the books.

[Wulfram]

Aragorn the Ranger is a Ranger, Aragorn the King is a Paladin. He's multiclassed.

[Kurald Galain]

Originally Posted by Wulfram

Aragorn the Ranger is a Ranger, Aragorn the King is a Paladin. He's multiclassed.

1E/2E paladins can't multiclass

[lesser_minion]

Originally Posted by Wulfram

Aragorn the Ranger is a Ranger, Aragorn the King is a Paladin. He's multiclassed.

Pretty sure the correct answer is just "too complicated to really represent as a D&D build". However, Aragorn as Strider from the Fellowship of the Ring has always been the basic inspiration for the D&D Ranger.

[Dienekes]

Now it's been awhile since I've read good old LotR, but I don't remember Aragorn doing anything remotely magical enough to be a Paladin. Now, he might have multiclassed Fighter a bit, though.

[Doug Lampert]

Originally Posted by Hylas

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.

Historically the common solution was to break or cut the coins into peices.
The Spanish Gold Real was routinely reduced to 8ths (and traded one for one with the early US$, hence the dollar is worth 8 bits and a quarter is 2 bits).

The English silver penny cut into four peices (called farthings).

Found currency will be trading at metal value minus a discount for appraisal, current currency will be trading at a premium over metal price.

Since found currency should already be at a discount cutting it in two is effectively cost free.

Or you can give the richest man in town ONE gold coin, and he runs a talley stick for your total expenditures (talley sticks and markers were fairly common in cash poor communities). You will of course be robbed on the exchange rate, but that's normal and probably happens to all out-of-towners.

[Gwendol]

2 thumbs up for the 5e sorcerer: finally making them manifest their magical nature by introducing mana points. The bloodline stuff looks fun, but really, with only one to "choose" from it's neither here nor there.
The fighter however is shortshafted. I'm definitely making fighting styles optional since picking whatever feats you want at every odd level seems to be the only way to make the class interesting. TWF seems like the weaker option (again), especially in light of many monsters getting multiattack...
That said, a TWF fighter-rogue could get interesting.

[noparlpf]

Originally Posted by Dienekes

Now it's been awhile since I've read good old LotR, but I don't remember Aragorn doing anything remotely magical enough to be a Paladin. Now, he might have multiclassed Fighter a bit, though.

Why bother? Ranger is better.

[Loki_42]

Originally Posted by Gwendol

The fighter however is shortshafted. I'm definitely making fighting styles optional since picking whatever feats you want at every odd level seems to be the only way to make the class interesting.

Wait, what? To make the fighter interesting you want to throw more feats at it and make varied choices in combat optional? I'm not following you at all.

[Dienekes]

Originally Posted by noparlpf

Why bother? Ranger is better.

Two level dip my friends.

[Yora]

Originally Posted by Dienekes

Now it's been awhile since I've read good old LotR, but I don't remember Aragorn doing anything remotely magical enough to be a Paladin. Now, he might have multiclassed Fighter a bit, though.

He knows the medicine for Wraith-Poison. That could be called healing hands, which could be another name for Lay on Hands. Which is a paladin ability. That doesn't do anything like he does when making the medicine.

Originally Posted by lesser_minion

Pretty sure the correct answer is just "too complicated to really represent as a D&D build". However, Aragorn as Strider from the Fellowship of the Ring has always been the basic inspiration for the D&D Ranger.

How is it too complicated?

He has a sword and a bow, can read trails and knows some medicine.

[Starbuck_II]

Originally Posted by noparlpf

Yeah. Aragorn's line was generally superior to ordinary humans, but by the time they got all the way down to him he was basically a slightly above-average human..

Dude, he was 76 years young when he met Frodo. He aged like a D&D 1/2 Elf (they showed how young he looked at 76 in the movie). He also lives till 200 years old.

[lesser_minion]

Originally Posted by Yora

How is it too complicated?

He has a sword and a bow, can read trails and knows some medicine.

OK, not too complicated. My point is that you wouldn't be able to build him very accurately.

[Yora]

No. Fighter or Ranger who has a sword and a bow and invested in Survival and Healing skills. What aspect of him is not covered?

[Zeful]

Originally Posted by Dienekes

Out of curiosity, what differing manifestations? And how would they be different if we called them bloodlines or not.

Because it wouldn't be something that's tied to the character through the class, it's tied to the class through the spells.

Remember the psion's differing bonus spells he got from discipline? Same thing only that select sorcerer spells change based on how his power manifested in his youth; you do remember that bit of fluff from the sorcerer class entry right?

More importantly it doesn't have burden of backstory or setting to explain why by choosing not to explain why. Unlike heritage.

[lesser_minion]

Originally Posted by Yora

No. Fighter or Ranger who has a sword and a bow and invested in Survival and Healing skills. What aspect of him is not covered?

Quite a few things. For a start, how does this let him take back control over Saruman's Palantir? And shouldn't he be able to use both the sword and the bow well instead of being OK in one and crap with the other?

[TheOOB]

Rereading the playtest document, I have a few opinions on the sorcerer. First I have no problem with the idea of heritages giving the sorcerer new and unique powers, not so long as, when the base book is put out, they put in something like the "arcane" bloodline which is more broad. I don't like the ambiguous roleplay changes they come into effect as your Willpower is spent.

As for the Willpower system, I don't inherently have a problem with it. It's obviously based off of the wizards spell progression, even though sorcerers get new spells one level later, which I can life with. The wizard still remains a much better caster. Sure the sorcerer can use more high level spells per day at the cost of losing their low level spells, but that's the balance. I'm not terribly fond of new passive abilities being gained when you spend willpower, that seems too complex for a class that should be more simple to play than the wizard.(So I get a +2 bonus on my melee attacks, but only when I have spent 3 willpower today. So I get a small numerical bonus, only when I keep track of something I wouldn't normally pay attention to). I think those abilities would work better as sorcerer powers that last a certain duration when activated.

As for the draconic heritage itself, it seems a little powerful, but I'm not waving the OP flag yet. First, wizard doesn't have their, for lack of a better term, path system yet(which they will), so we can't compare the two. Proficiency in all armor and a d8 hit die means a dragon sorcerer will likely be tougher than some clerics, which considering that arcane spells are better than divine spells is a little worrisome. The powers also seem a little strong. The only reason a sorcerer will ever be balanced with a wizard is by having less spells known, and the dragon powers are strong. Dragon strength is a decent first level spells, and dragon scales is actually really good. I think the powers need to be turned down, either turned into utility based abilities, or just made a little weaker than spells. They are a little something extra, not the core focus of the class.

[Doug Lampert]

Originally Posted by lesser_minion

Quite a few things. For a start, how does this let him take back control over Saruman's Palantir? And shouldn't he be able to use both the sword and the bow well instead of being OK in one and crap with the other?

Palantir: He rolled a 20 on a will save. All we really know about it from the books is that it was a contest of will of some sort and that Aragorn THOUGHT being the actual owner would help. The ownership part could be wrong, the will save to avoid being influenced and your visions controled by Sauron anyone can make 5% of the time. Hence Ranger Aragorn is good.

Aragorn in the books never uses a bow. So how can his ability with a bow not match any and every D&D class? Null information doesn't contradict anything and I must have missed the rule in D&D that REQUIRES a fighter or ranger to carry a bow.

Neither of these offers any contradition to the offered build. (Fighter or Ranger with a few skill points.)

DougL

[Icewraith]

I imagine resisting the control of the main Osgilliath Palan'tir involves a will save or some sort of mental ability check (or the old scrying skill).

We do know Aragorn's got decent CHA, between the ladies falling all over him and armies being willing to march into the jaws of Mordor around him. A dip into paladin for some +saves makes a bit more sense.

Even if he doesn't have a mount at the moment, why wouldn't some Pally levels make sense for Aragorn? He rode with the Riders of Rohan under a different name and guise. The only thing that really doesn't fit is he seems to have command undead, or his Relic sword grants it to him.

Granted what it also might be is elves in this setting all gain timeless body and just rack up the mental stat boosts, and elven descendants gain +6 to stats across the board (except perhaps str).

[Draz74]

As far as the Lord of the Rings stuff goes ... well, the real answer is "D&D mechanics don't simulate LotR well regardless of edition," but the even-more-relevant-to-this-discussion answer is "LotR doesn't describe things with enough mechanical detail for us to be able to pin down."

For example, the process of re-controlling the palantir. Was it a spell? a Will Save? DM fiat based on his heritage? The books certainly don't settle the issue. They just give the "fluff." And any of the mechanical concepts above could be "re-fluffed" to match what's in the book.

This is further complicated by magic in general being subtle in Middle-Earth. How often did Gandalf use magic? We really have no idea. There are a handful of times when it's obvious, but he could have been using very subtle spells all the time without it ever coming up in the text. Was the rope from the elves magical (Rope of Climbing), or just masterwork silk rope? Sam asks that question, and the elves themselves state that the question is faulty, as Middle-Earth's magic is so subtle that they're not sure where the borderline between "magic" and "non-magic" is.

And Aragorn definitely does some stuff in that fuzzy, poorly-defined magical/mundane area. Even if you're sure that his Heal checks with athelas on Frodo's shoulder were entirely mundane (and I always thought they had a magical component to them, even before I played D&D), the implications that some magic was involved become much stronger in the Houses of Healing. And even aside from healing abilities, his ability to hide in the shadows even while being observed sounds pretty magical at some point.

So, I do think that Aragorn is part of the reason that Gygax gave 1e Rangers some minor magical abilities, which carried over to 2e-3e. (4e is Drizzt, though, like Kurald said.) Although I think Gwydion is a better iconic low-level Ranger than Aragorn.

As a final note ... I don't think LotR ever states that Aragorn is "crap" with a bow. I've always imagined he was a pretty good archer, although obviously not compared to Legolas.

EDIT: To get back on topic just a little bit ... anyone taken the new Survey that got emailed out this morning? What's it about?

[Gwendol]

Originally Posted by Loki_42

Wait, what? To make the fighter interesting you want to throw more feats at it and make varied choices in combat optional? I'm not following you at all.

Right now the system for the fighters lets them pick a fighting style every odd level, each which gives access to maneuvers. Also, you get to pick a speciality, which gives feats. My point is that for fighters I'm prepared to allow them to pick and choose maneuvers as they wish, (three at every odd level, as it were) rather than having to get a package with partly useless maneuvers. For all classes I'd just scrap the specialities and allow characters to pick any feat they are qualified for at every odd level.

[Dienekes]

Originally Posted by Zeful

Because it wouldn't be something that's tied to the character through the class, it's tied to the class through the spells.

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Remember the psion's differing bonus spells he got from discipline? Same thing only that select sorcerer spells change based on how his power manifested in his youth; you do remember that bit of fluff from the sorcerer class entry right?

Honestly, I rarely read fluff. I prefer to just make my own. But if the sorcerers spell lists change and become limited based on which bloodline he picks I'm all for it, and would suggest placing something very similar for a wizard and all other magic users. I believe Seerow said it best: The Generalist who has the perfect spell for every situation needs to die in a fire.

More importantly it doesn't have burden of backstory or setting to explain why by choosing not to explain why. Unlike heritage.

Unlike the Thieves Cant thing, which is a bit harder to refluff, I really don't see how I can't do that with Bloodlines.

Just going with the dragon blooded one
My character was linked to a dragon spirit at birth. My character was cursed to turn into a monster that is slowly taking affect. My character is a dragon trapped in a humans body and is trying to break free. Or if you're lazy, my character is magical and it's magic is giving it the abilities to hit harder and resist some damage and cast a cone of fire. It's really not that hard.

[TopCheese]

First: LoTR was a horrid movie and borring book, of course I'm a scientist by trade and nature so it isn't like it was written for my type of people.

The greatest thing to come from it was the DM of the Rings webcomic. Greeeeeat webcomic :D

5th ed Sorcerer: Holy crap is this OP?? I showed my DM my high elf fighter acolyte and he thought he was OP with minor magic spells... I showed him the sorcerer and told me sorry for branding my fighter as op.

Warlock: Needs work but they will get it right.

[TheOOB]

Originally Posted by Gwendol

Right now the system for the fighters lets them pick a fighting style every odd level, each which gives access to maneuvers. Also, you get to pick a speciality, which gives feats. My point is that for fighters I'm prepared to allow them to pick and choose maneuvers as they wish, (three at every odd level, as it were) rather than having to get a package with partly useless maneuvers. For all classes I'd just scrap the specialities and allow characters to pick any feat they are qualified for at every odd level.

If you listen to the podcasts, they've said that you will be able to pick whatever feats and combat maneuvers you want, the specialties and fighting styles are just there to help people make choices, and serve as a stopgap during the playtest.

[Dienekes]

Originally Posted by TopCheese

First: LoTR was a horrid movie and borring book, of course I'm a scientist by trade and nature so it isn't like it was written for my type of people.

The greatest thing to come from it was the DM of the Rings webcomic. Greeeeeat webcomic :D

And I'm a mathematician. And my friends (trying to become anyway) a scientist. We both like LotR. I have no idea why you're implying the false dichotomy that certain types of people cannot like LotR. It is escapist fiction that defined a genre. You may not like it, which is fine, but your reasoning as to why is flawed.

[Gwendol]

Yeah, I don't (and won't) listen to podcasts. Good to know they got that right.

I really like the ability to mix in arcane and/or divine magic with any class/character by the use of a feat. It's very neat.

[JoeMac307]

Could anyone explain to me how Rapid Shot, the Level 1 Feat from the Archer Specialty, and Two-Weapon Fighting, the Level 1 Feat from the Dual Wielder Specialty, are not complete wastes of a feat?

Why would I ever want to make two attacks in one round, where allthe damage of each attack is halved (which I assume includes damage from ability bonuses)?

That is just silly.

Take the pre-gen human fighter as an example. He has the Rapid Shot feat, a +7 to hit with his Longbow, and can do 1d8 piercing damage with the Longbow. (I thought it should be 1d8+4 damage, since his Dex bonus of +4 should apply to the damage inflicted by the longbow, but maybe I misinterpretted that somehow).

Let's say he is fighting a monster or group of monsters with AC 18, so he needs to roll an 11 or better on a d20 to successfully hit them (i.e. 50/50 chance). If he hits an enemy, he can do 1 to 8 points of damage, for an average of 4.5 damage on a successful hit. Since he hits half the time, his average damage per round works out to 2.25. (If you also consider that a natural 20 automatically does max damage, this increases to 2.425)

Now let's say he decides to use Rapid Shot. He still has the same chance to hit with each attack (50/50), but each attack only does half damage. I couldn't find any guidance on whether damage rounds up or rounds down when halved, but let's assume it rounds up. Now if he hits an enemy, he has an equal chance to do 1, 2, 3 or 4 points of damage, for an average of 2.5 damage on a successful hit. He hits half of his shots, and gets two shots a rounds, so that comes out to an average damage per round of 2.5. (If you consider that a natural 20 automatically does max damage, this increases to 2.65).

So, this great and powerful feat increases your damage per round by 0.25 (or only 0.225 if you factor in critical hits) when you have a 50/50 chance to hit a monster and you are using a weapon that does 1d8 damage, assuming damage is rounded up when halved. (Otherwise, the average damage per round would actually be decreased, if you rounded down). Any additional damage from your ability score is irrelevant to the differences between average damage per round, since you still divide that in half as well, and it works out to a wash when comparing how much damage per round increases or decreases when using Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting.

That is a pretty underwhelming advantage to use up a Feat on, IMHO.

The only other benefit is that your chance of doing no damage at all is greatly reduced; however, is tempered mightily by the fact that your chance of doing high damage is reduced even more.

In the same example above, if you use Rapid Shot, since you only miss half the time, the chances of you missing both shots in one round is only 25%, so you have a 75% chance of doing some damage each round, whereas if you don't use Rapid Shot, you only have a 50% chance of doing some damage each round.

However, without Rapid Shot, you have a 10.625% chance of doing 8 points of damage (5% chance of rolling a natural 20, plus 5.625% chance of rolling between an 11 and 19 on your attack roll and an 8 on your damage roll); but with Rapid Shot, you only have a 2.641% chance of doing 8 points of damage, since you have to hit and roll a 7 or 8 on the d8 damage roll (if you are rounding halved damage up) or roll a critical hit on both attacks that round.

I guess if you are fighting a bunch of kobolds or something that you know have only 4 hit points, then Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting could be quite useful, since it will greatly increase the rate at which you kill these one hit wonders. Otherwise, if you are fighting anything with any decent amount of hit points, these two feats just make it much, much likelier that you will continuously inflict mediocre amounts of damage against them each round, but won't really help you kill them all that quicker. (In the example above, incorporating critical hits on natural 20s and dealing straight 1d8 damage with no bonuses, a monster with 25 hit points and AC 18 would take an average of 10.3 rounds to kill without Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting and 9.4 rounds to kill using Rapid Shot / Two-Weapon Fighting. Not that impressive).