I don't see the point of having a rock, paper, scissors subsystem in D&D like that. Either they're all roughly equal, in which case there's no point choosing, or they're not, but players would likely never know that until they played a lot.
You'd inflate the number of magic weapons a warrior character needs in order to feel like they're working with a full toolkit. You'd have encounters that swing more wildly in difficulty just based on which type of damage the monsters can deal, which would hurt the CR system even more. And all for what, exactly? The boon of someone saying, "I switch from one weapon to another"?
Indeed. There was something similar in 3rd Edition: a fighter needed a magic weapon for fighting most monsters, an Adamantine weapon for fighting golems, a silver weapon for fighting lycanthropes and devils, a cold iron weapon for fighting fey and demons, a wooden weapon for fighting monsters with rusting attacks, some other stupid made up material for fighting the campaign-specific monsters... It honestly wasn't fun, just annoying.
I don't see the point of having a rock, paper, scissors subsystem in D&D like that. Either they're all roughly equal, in which case there's no point choosing, or they're not, but players would likely never know that until they played a lot.
You'd inflate the number of magic weapons a warrior character needs in order to feel like they're working with a full toolkit. You'd have encounters that swing more wildly in difficulty just based on which type of damage the monsters can deal, which would hurt the CR system even more. And all for what, exactly? The boon of someone saying, "I switch from one weapon to another"?
Indeed. There was something similar in 3rd Edition: a fighter needed a magic weapon for fighting most monsters, an Adamantine weapon for fighting golems, a silver weapon for fighting lycanthropes and devils, a cold iron weapon for fighting fey and demons, a wooden weapon for fighting monsters with rusting attacks, some other stupid made up material for fighting the campaign-specific monsters... It honestly wasn't fun, just annoying.
My view is a bit different, to fight such creatures you may need to do something different then normal. Now how such "encounters" and or "linked encounters" go about doing so is very important. If every encounter requires a different weapon, special material and or unusual combat tactic it can cause issues with your group, especially if there is no reason for it besides the GM trying to make things more difficult for the players. Note: a lot (IMHO) of games and players now do not deal with a common situation in books and movies which is "having to retreat and find a way to deal with the creature" vs it is there and we should be able to defeat it based on our PC's.
So quite simply how things are enacted or not is very important and vastly dependent on game style (my scale is often actors on one end and similationist on the other with a offset axis with other things).
Indeed. There was something similar in 3rd Edition: a fighter needed a magic weapon for fighting most monsters, an Adamantine weapon for fighting golems, a silver weapon for fighting lycanthropes and devils, a cold iron weapon for fighting fey and demons, a wooden weapon for fighting monsters with rusting attacks, some other stupid made up material for fighting the campaign-specific monsters... It honestly wasn't fun, just annoying.
There is a tradition for "you run into weird monster X and it's unbeatable until you figure out its weak point", but that's really better as a one-time thing than an 'and now you need to carry around this special tool for the rest of the campaign in case another one pops up'.
You can still kill a monster if you're effectively swinging with a -2 weapon. It just feels stupid. And rubs in the fact that the casters don't have to negotiate with the DM to get the tools they need -- they get new spells every level.
You can still kill a monster if you're effectively swinging with a -2 weapon. It just feels stupid. And rubs in the fact that the casters don't have to negotiate with the DM to get the tools they need -- they get new spells every level.
Well, that's just failing at the type of situation I'm talking about.
Plenty of stories have what I call 'puzzle monsters' -- a creature that can only be defeated by first figuring out how its powers work, then coming up with a specific countermeasure to whatever is making it unbeatable. A classic example of this is the hydra: it was unbeatable until someone figured out burning the stumps.
AD&D had a fair number of monsters designed as puzzles (a particularly obnoxious example is the demilich), but the problem with having 'standard' puzzle monsters is that it's too likely that one of the players will have read the monster manual or encountered the monster in a previous campaign, and then it's no longer a puzzle, it's just a monster you have to do something annoying to beat.
the problem with having 'standard' puzzle monsters is that it's too likely that one of the players will have read the monster manual or encountered the monster in a previous campaign, and then it's no longer a puzzle, it's just a monster you have to do something annoying to beat.
That's what was going through my head as I read your post. Puzzle monsters sound cool, but I imagine they get old very quickly. It's not like you can easily just pretend you don't know either - it kind of feels stupid. At least to me. It's quite different to roleplaying my character not knowing what that thief is up to.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It gets really annoying when you have an extremely common and well-known puzzle monster like the troll, which anyone who actually lives in a world where trolls are a threat should know needs to be killed with fire so it doesn't regrow, only for the GM to accuse you of metagaming when your dwarf ranger with Favored Enemy: Giants dumps a flask of lantern oil on it.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It gets really annoying when you have an extremely common and well-known puzzle monster like the troll, which anyone who actually lives in a world where trolls are a threat should know needs to be killed with fire so it doesn't regrow, only for the GM to accuse you of metagaming when your dwarf ranger with Favored Enemy: Giants dumps a flask of lantern oil on it.
This is definitely getting off topic, but I sort of feel like the troll should be written up as something like
Regeneration: while this trait is active, the troll recovers 10 hp at the start of each of its turns.
Unkillable: while this trait is active, the troll cannot die, though it can be rendered unconscious.
Achilles Heel: each troll has a special weakness, such as a damage type or a special hit location that must be struck. When this happens, its Regeneration and Unkillable traits are deactivated until the end of its next turn. The DM should provide a means of discerning what that weakness is; alternately, a DC 15 Nature check will generally identify a weakness.
The problem with damage reduction like that is that then the monsters have to have enough damage to actually harm you - and you them. If you have chainmail and shield (AC 18) that has 30 points of reduction then an ancient green dragon could claw or bite you all day long and barely do you any damage ( claw 22/32HP avg/max damage, bite 19/28 HP) and how are you going to hurt a bugbear in similar armour if the best you can do is a +3 halberd doing 12+5+3= 20 damage on an individual hit?
common puzzle monsters are not a problem - it’s not metagaming to know the vulnerabilities, attacks and typical defenses of famous monster types in a world full of stories about “great hero’s” fighting them.
common puzzle monsters are not a problem - it’s not metagaming to know the vulnerabilities, attacks and typical defenses of famous monster types in a world full of stories about “great hero’s” fighting them.
They aren't puzzles if everyone already knows the solution.
common puzzle monsters are not a problem - it’s not metagaming to know the vulnerabilities, attacks and typical defenses of famous monster types in a world full of stories about “great hero’s” fighting them.
They aren't puzzles if everyone already knows the solution.
You're fighting three trolls and the party only has one casting of Burning Hands as it's only means of dealing fire or acid damage.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It's true what they say: D&D players really are constantly ready to debate the Troll Metagame Question at the drop of a hat. ;P
You'd have to do a lot in order to make armor both distinct AND interesting. "Resistant to one of the three types of weapon damage" doesn't cut it. (Ha!) We're talking about a pretty significant rework of the system now. Doesn't seem worthwhile to me.
Players are not their PC's and PC's are not the players. And GM's can mess a lot of stuff up or make it better.
Armor damage reduction: Can a a useful idea if it is written correctly but it does not work in every game system.
Yes, there are a ot of ways you COULD do armor. However to make it back compatible with 5e most of those ways get dropped out. We saw one version of damage reduction in 4e, we saw weapon vs armor in THACO and I doubt the vast majority want to go back to either one. To take the present system and add reduction without having to redo all the monsters would mean reduction values between 1. And 10 perhaps with magic armors adding their pluses. I could maybe see padded/leather with DR 1, studded leather DR 2 etc then at the end plate DR 10 but you wuld still have to redo every monster based on the type and quality of their armor to stay balanced. Then given the DR combats should be longer changing the way resources get used etc.
Yes, there are a ot of ways you COULD do armor. However to make it back compatible with 5e most of those ways get dropped out. We saw one version of damage reduction in 4e.
Damage reduction in 4e was perfectly simple (and actually just like 3e), it just meant you couldn't easily balance multiple attacks against single attacks.
Players are not their PC's and PC's are not the players. And GM's can mess a lot of stuff up or make it better.
Armor damage reduction: Can a a useful idea if it is written correctly but it does not work in every game system.
Yes, there are a ot of ways you COULD do armor. However to make it back compatible with 5e most of those ways get dropped out. We saw one version of damage reduction in 4e, we saw weapon vs armor in THACO and I doubt the vast majority want to go back to either one. To take the present system and add reduction without having to redo all the monsters would mean reduction values between 1. And 10 perhaps with magic armors adding their pluses. I could maybe see padded/leather with DR 1, studded leather DR 2 etc then at the end plate DR 10 but you wuld still have to redo every monster based on the type and quality of their armor to stay balanced. Then given the DR combats should be longer changing the way resources get used etc.
Yes. So what you are describing to be is limitations on your starting point to achieve an result. If you want to contain full backwards compatibility with 5e you have very limited options and often means "the same" or the same with different words.
So in general keep it the same or make some changes (some may think they are drastic), note if you go the 3 armor types I think you will lose a lot of players and GM's.
I played very little of 4e as I quickly saw it was not for me (others have had different experiences and I am glad there are games for every playstyle), it seemed to be written for a computer game and then ported to paper and in general I do not think I would have an issue with a 30-60 hour video game using 4e rules if the graphics, story, game railroads were adept at keeping the rules in the background.
The problem with damage reduction like that is that then the monsters have to have enough damage to actually harm you - and you them. If you have chainmail and shield (AC 18) that has 30 points of reduction then an ancient green dragon could claw or bite you all day long and barely do you any damage ( claw 22/32HP avg/max damage, bite 19/28 HP) and how are you going to hurt a bugbear in similar armour if the best you can do is a +3 halberd doing 12+5+3= 20 damage on an individual hit?
common puzzle monsters are not a problem - it’s not metagaming to know the vulnerabilities, attacks and typical defenses of famous monster types in a world full of stories about “great hero’s” fighting them.
Add all the damage together in that round from all opponents who hit. Work together.
And the dragon would fight you smarter than to land and bite/claw/claw attack. They would fly by and breath weapon you. Then pick up your tin can fanny up and drop you from a thousand feet high and away. Then repeat as needed. Each time taking you farther and farther from the rest of the party. The next day or so do the same to the rest of the party killing one character at a time.
The problem with damage reduction like that is that then the monsters have to have enough damage to actually harm you - and you them. If you have chainmail and shield (AC 18) that has 30 points of reduction then an ancient green dragon could claw or bite you all day long and barely do you any damage ( claw 22/32HP avg/max damage, bite 19/28 HP) and how are you going to hurt a bugbear in similar armour if the best you can do is a +3 halberd doing 12+5+3= 20 damage on an individual hit?
common puzzle monsters are not a problem - it’s not metagaming to know the vulnerabilities, attacks and typical defenses of famous monster types in a world full of stories about “great hero’s” fighting them.
Add all the damage together in that round from all opponents who hit. Work together.
Wizards of the Coast tried doing that in 3.0 edition with elemental resistances. Even the game designers admitted that they didn't like the extra bookkeeping it added and for 3.5 it was changed to applying to each attack or effect that dealt that type of damage (which was how most people were already playing it anyway).
And the dragon would fight you smarter than to land and bite/claw/claw attack. They would fly by and breath weapon you. Then pick up your tin can fanny up and drop you from a thousand feet high and away. Then repeat as needed. Each time taking you farther and farther from the rest of the party. The next day or so do the same to the rest of the party killing one character at a time.
You know why that's not a common dragon tactic already?
Because it's not remotely fun to play in a game where monsters behave like that. It is, in fact, anti-fun. The players tend to start thinking things like "well, I'd be having more fun if I'd stayed home and watched anime instead of wasting my precious free time getting stomped in D&D by a GM who throws boss monsters at the party that use tactics the party is completely unable to counter in any way." And then the GM is left wondering why they can never keep a group together for longer than two sessions.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Indeed. There was something similar in 3rd Edition: a fighter needed a magic weapon for fighting most monsters, an Adamantine weapon for fighting golems, a silver weapon for fighting lycanthropes and devils, a cold iron weapon for fighting fey and demons, a wooden weapon for fighting monsters with rusting attacks, some other stupid made up material for fighting the campaign-specific monsters... It honestly wasn't fun, just annoying.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
My view is a bit different, to fight such creatures you may need to do something different then normal. Now how such "encounters" and or "linked encounters" go about doing so is very important. If every encounter requires a different weapon, special material and or unusual combat tactic it can cause issues with your group, especially if there is no reason for it besides the GM trying to make things more difficult for the players. Note: a lot (IMHO) of games and players now do not deal with a common situation in books and movies which is "having to retreat and find a way to deal with the creature" vs it is there and we should be able to defeat it based on our PC's.
So quite simply how things are enacted or not is very important and vastly dependent on game style (my scale is often actors on one end and similationist on the other with a offset axis with other things).
There is a tradition for "you run into weird monster X and it's unbeatable until you figure out its weak point", but that's really better as a one-time thing than an 'and now you need to carry around this special tool for the rest of the campaign in case another one pops up'.
You can still kill a monster if you're effectively swinging with a -2 weapon. It just feels stupid. And rubs in the fact that the casters don't have to negotiate with the DM to get the tools they need -- they get new spells every level.
No, I'm very much not sold.
Well, that's just failing at the type of situation I'm talking about.
Plenty of stories have what I call 'puzzle monsters' -- a creature that can only be defeated by first figuring out how its powers work, then coming up with a specific countermeasure to whatever is making it unbeatable. A classic example of this is the hydra: it was unbeatable until someone figured out burning the stumps.
AD&D had a fair number of monsters designed as puzzles (a particularly obnoxious example is the demilich), but the problem with having 'standard' puzzle monsters is that it's too likely that one of the players will have read the monster manual or encountered the monster in a previous campaign, and then it's no longer a puzzle, it's just a monster you have to do something annoying to beat.
That's what was going through my head as I read your post. Puzzle monsters sound cool, but I imagine they get old very quickly. It's not like you can easily just pretend you don't know either - it kind of feels stupid. At least to me. It's quite different to roleplaying my character not knowing what that thief is up to.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It gets really annoying when you have an extremely common and well-known puzzle monster like the troll, which anyone who actually lives in a world where trolls are a threat should know needs to be killed with fire so it doesn't regrow, only for the GM to accuse you of metagaming when your dwarf ranger with Favored Enemy: Giants dumps a flask of lantern oil on it.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I used to love the puzzle monsters.
I am all for an armor and shield change. Not just in name
Light : No stealth penalty, absorbs 10 hp damage each combat round. Small shield +1 to AC.
Medium : Stealth penalty, Dex penalty -1, absorbs 20 hp damage each round. Medium shield +2 to AC.
Heavy : Stealth penalty, Dex penalty -2, absorbs 30 hp damage each round. Large shield +3 to AC.
Exact numbers are debatable.
This is definitely getting off topic, but I sort of feel like the troll should be written up as something like
The problem with damage reduction like that is that then the monsters have to have enough damage to actually harm you - and you them. If you have chainmail and shield (AC 18) that has 30 points of reduction then an ancient green dragon could claw or bite you all day long and barely do you any damage ( claw 22/32HP avg/max damage, bite 19/28 HP) and how are you going to hurt a bugbear in similar armour if the best you can do is a +3 halberd doing 12+5+3= 20 damage on an individual hit?
common puzzle monsters are not a problem - it’s not metagaming to know the vulnerabilities, attacks and typical defenses of famous monster types in a world full of stories about “great hero’s” fighting them.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
They aren't puzzles if everyone already knows the solution.
You're fighting three trolls and the party only has one casting of Burning Hands as it's only means of dealing fire or acid damage.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Players are not their PC's and PC's are not the players. And GM's can mess a lot of stuff up or make it better.
Armor damage reduction: Can a a useful idea if it is written correctly but it does not work in every game system.
It's true what they say: D&D players really are constantly ready to debate the Troll Metagame Question at the drop of a hat. ;P
You'd have to do a lot in order to make armor both distinct AND interesting. "Resistant to one of the three types of weapon damage" doesn't cut it. (Ha!) We're talking about a pretty significant rework of the system now. Doesn't seem worthwhile to me.
Yes, there are a ot of ways you COULD do armor. However to make it back compatible with 5e most of those ways get dropped out. We saw one version of damage reduction in 4e, we saw weapon vs armor in THACO and I doubt the vast majority want to go back to either one. To take the present system and add reduction without having to redo all the monsters would mean reduction values between 1. And 10 perhaps with magic armors adding their pluses. I could maybe see padded/leather with DR 1, studded leather DR 2 etc then at the end plate DR 10 but you wuld still have to redo every monster based on the type and quality of their armor to stay balanced. Then given the DR combats should be longer changing the way resources get used etc.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Damage reduction in 4e was perfectly simple (and actually just like 3e), it just meant you couldn't easily balance multiple attacks against single attacks.
Yes. So what you are describing to be is limitations on your starting point to achieve an result. If you want to contain full backwards compatibility with 5e you have very limited options and often means "the same" or the same with different words.
So in general keep it the same or make some changes (some may think they are drastic), note if you go the 3 armor types I think you will lose a lot of players and GM's.
I played very little of 4e as I quickly saw it was not for me (others have had different experiences and I am glad there are games for every playstyle), it seemed to be written for a computer game and then ported to paper and in general I do not think I would have an issue with a 30-60 hour video game using 4e rules if the graphics, story, game railroads were adept at keeping the rules in the background.
Add all the damage together in that round from all opponents who hit. Work together.
And the dragon would fight you smarter than to land and bite/claw/claw attack. They would fly by and breath weapon you. Then pick up your tin can fanny up and drop you from a thousand feet high and away. Then repeat as needed. Each time taking you farther and farther from the rest of the party. The next day or so do the same to the rest of the party killing one character at a time.
Wizards of the Coast tried doing that in 3.0 edition with elemental resistances. Even the game designers admitted that they didn't like the extra bookkeeping it added and for 3.5 it was changed to applying to each attack or effect that dealt that type of damage (which was how most people were already playing it anyway).
You know why that's not a common dragon tactic already?
Because it's not remotely fun to play in a game where monsters behave like that. It is, in fact, anti-fun. The players tend to start thinking things like "well, I'd be having more fun if I'd stayed home and watched anime instead of wasting my precious free time getting stomped in D&D by a GM who throws boss monsters at the party that use tactics the party is completely unable to counter in any way." And then the GM is left wondering why they can never keep a group together for longer than two sessions.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I never said to separate each type of damage. You are though.
And what 10 levels of characters can not deliver 30 points of damage in a round combined ?