Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
Yep, totally concur here. And to respond to the person who said I was calling Gorman a bad actor, that's not what I'm doing at all. I just think it's more than coincidence that Gorman claims that the rule is poorly written and and requires "mental gymnastics" to understand the intent. And simultaneously argues that he should get the +1 bump to WIS, and still use the feat using his 20 CHA, because it would one would be an "idiot" not to.
He is not the only one, as I stated before. I also think the way the rule as written is broken (so obviously not intended, to me), but when I asked on the discord I got an argument from Ratatoskr that mirrored Gorman's. If the stat didn't increase, then the stat was not a stat increased by the feat.
And they even went so far as to say that was RAI as well...
Unfortunately I don't even know what Discord you are referring to. Probably a (semi)official one? In any case, you did write all of this already but it got ignored. Probably more than a coincidence as well...?
You are not telling me I'm a bad actor. But time and again, I've seen implied that I would be discussing this out of bad faith. Because I had been stopped from using the feat however I preferred.
It wasn't anything written here that did that. The original post matter has been solved. It's dead and buried. I came here because I wanted to understand if there was an official ruling, during my "plan ahead" phase (which I was accused of not doing, multiple times). There was not one. I talked with the DM (which doesn't even read these forums nor cares about them). We reached a conclusion, I announced that here as well.
Everything else is pure discussion, for the sake of it. Because I like RPGs, I like rules systems and I like discussing them. And yet, once again, I read "it's more than a coincidence". It's not a coincidence at all. I approached this subject because I found the rule counter-intuitive and I am discussing that rule. And if we want to discuss "more than coincidences", why is it that you are now accusing me of stating something I have never written here?
What I did write, and I stand behind 100% was:
A CHA 20, WIS 15 leader opting to inspire their allies through Wisdom is an idiot.
Note that I am talking about a character, not a player. A player does what the rules allow/tell him to do. He has not a real choice.
A character? A character, in any realistic scenario would rally their troops at the best of their capabilities. A character with CHA 20 has got incredible charisma and would never in their right mind think of rallying their troops with a wise speech about whatever.
Five pages later you write as if I accused players to be idiots or something. Which I did not, in any way. If this isn't in bad faith, I'd gladly accept your excuses, sir.
You keep saying this, because you keep viewing it through the lens of a 4th-level character having to make that choice
If a 16th-level bard takes the feat to get an extra little boost to their WIS saves and because they don't have anything better to use the ASI on -- which is a situation more likely to come up than yours, frankly -- the difference between 21 temp HP and 18 (or whatever) is negligible, and not worth as much as the saving throw boost. Even a 12th-level character making that choice is looking at 17 temp HP vs. 14, and I'd say the saving throw boost is more important in that case too
Having to choose between the two stats is not a flaw. It's not an oversight. It's by design. So sorry you can't have your cake and eat it too
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It is a flaw, it likely is an oversight as if it was by design it was a horrifically bad design decision.
I agree with AntonSirius. I'll give you proof in the RAW that it is neither a flaw nor an oversight. The feat description says "Increase your Wisdom or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20" The clause after the comma, "to a maximum of 20" covers the situation if the score is already 20. Since the feat only increases the score by 1, then saying to maximum of 20 isn't necessary (unless of course the writer wants to cover the case where it's already 20). You'd be right if the RAW only said "Increase your Wisdom or Charisma score by 1" and then just left it that. The inclusion of "to a maximum of 20" shows clear design intent in that, first the player needs to choose which stat they want to associate this feat with and then second, what to do that stat is already 20. The folks that say it's an "idiot[ic]" rule or it's a design flaw are well....folks, as AntonSirius said, that want to have their cake and eat it too.
I see this kind of stuff happen all the time. Sometimes it's just academic discussion, but when the original poster gets disagreement and just keeps vigorously debating about their losing case, then it becomes obvious what's going on. Player A has had a disagreement with their DM over a rule interpretation. So Player A comes on here, makes the original post, and tries to find consensus with their opinion. If they get a majority who agree (and by the way, there has not been a majority on this topic) then they go back their DM and say "look all these folks on the forums who (presumably) know the rules very well agree with me...therefore you should consider letting me have my cake and eat it too.
Explain why it's "horrifically bad design" to ask players to choose between two things, and decide for themselves which is more important
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Nah. It may be a decision you disagree with, but that's a long way from "horrifically bad".
First of all, feats are designed under the assumption of point buy/standard array. Characters are expected to take feats core to their conception early, before their stats max out. Even if you are rolling, you only hit a problem with feat bumps early on if you rolled an 18 and decided to max out the stat, instead of going for breadth.
Next, you assume the design goal is to let people make their characters as effective as possible. I strongly suspect that the goal of the feat redesign is to encourage greater diversity in character creation. The stat bumps make feats more competitive in people's minds with straight stat boosts -- it allows them to take feats that fit their character without feeling like they're making bad choices just for flavor, which feels bad. If somebody takes a feat and chooses a different stat from their primary because that's maxed out, that's not a bad thing if your goal is diversity.
Finally, you're assuming that it matters that much. Unless you tanked your wisdom, the difference between the two choices add up to probably a couple of temp HP. Character level dominates. And if you have tanked your wisdom, that +1 stat bump that you throw away by picking charisma doesn't matter. It was wasted anyway.
And again with the personal remarks. No matter how long I try to explain that this has long left my personal, specific case, it always gets back to this. I have to say that this is starting to feel close to a personal attack.
But to your point, no, I'm not seeing it through any lens at all. I find it hard to believe that you really are debating my statement in good faith. I'm not talking in game terms, I am talking about a person, a real person, who's charismatic as hell. If he was trying to inspire troops, he would not go for a wise talk. Not because of rules reasons, because that's the way life works. If you want to tell me that this doesn't matter, fine. We see things differently as far as role playing is concerned.
Three things to comment here, and I'm kinda tired of rolling with the punches.
1) If you had the decency of reading what people actually write here, you would see that I tried to settle the discussion with "the rule could have been better written". But no, it's so perfect that to demonstrate its perfection you have to resort to interpreting what a comma means in the context of an attribute having been increased or not. A 20 that remains a 20 has been increased because comma. Ok. Whatever floats your boat, really.
2) I don't know if your reading comprehension is *so* bad but no, I have not written about an idiotic rule. Never in the whole discussion. I was making a clear example of a *character*, a very charismatic character, that would never go for a wise speech in front of his troops. Because it would make no sense.
3) I have already stated, times and again, that the matter has been settled at my table. How many times do I have to repeat it? I can't speak as to your qualities, but I ensure you that the miserable behavior you describe doesn't even remotely speak about my character. I don't need a "majority" of three people on an internet forum to have a discussion with my DM. I don't need my DM to agree with me to enjoy the game (something I have explicitly written, but by now it's clear you read and understand only what you want). I like discussing rules because it's a subject I like discussing. If this is so hard for you to understand, please, absolutely I beg you, ignore my posts from now on.
The thing is D&D is not a perfect simulation. In realty, that Charisma would be leverage, but so would their Wisdom. Mechanically, this could take the form of averaging the attributes, adding them together, taking the lowest, or taking the highest. D&D does the last option in a manner that simplifies the rules and helps most players. It assumes that you are increasing the most important attribute for your character and thus bases the effect on that attribute.
Your situation is an edge case and it's fine that the system handles it less than ideally in favor of the guardrails that help newer players.
In your case, you are talking Level +5 versus Level +2 temporary hit points. At level 4, that's 9 versus 6. It is a tiny difference. If it was renewable within combat, it could become significant. It is not. Either take the +5 and lose out on the attribute increase or use the lesser attribute. It's fine either way. If you want to increase your Wisdom to 16+ anyway, this may be a good choice and would reduce the difference.
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
My apologies if you interpreted the "you" there as being, well, you. It was intended to be a general "you" directed at all players. I could have phrased it better -- I'll blame the cold meds
Well, first off, you absolutely were talking in game terms, because you cited this hypothetic person's stats. I quoted the line above
But to keep it in real life terms, nothing's stopping that person from giving a charismatic talk instead of a wise talk... except their insistence that they should also become wiser at the same time they learn how to give that inspiring speech
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
That's ok. Thank you.
I... Ok, I was talking in game terms translating them to real life (with all the limits this entails, I get it). But I was trying to describe a real life situation. A real charismatic person, giving a speech to their troops. They would lean on their charisma for the speech, surely not opting for a wise one (examples of both have been given by others during the course of the discussion).
That hypothetical person would be an idiot, they would sound so strange to their troops, looking at each other asking "what's happened to the captain?". It sorta makes me smile, thinking about it. I say it again: I absolutely understand a wise person using their wisdom to inspire their troops. That was not my point.
The second part of my quote, here, is where this veers extremely in the game rules direction. I get that, but it was not my point. I was trying to exemplify why I felt it was a bad idea to have the rule designed that way. If it was something like "Increase your Charisma by 1, to a max of 20. Bolster your allies' performance by granting them Temporary Hit Points equal to your character level plus the Charisma modifier" I wouldn't have pretty much anything to object to its writing. In its current form I think it is confusing, and that it could be written better.
As for the first point, this is where my already stated "background" with point buy systems such as GURPS and Hero shows. I find it harder to accept some things because, to me, they instinctively sound some alarms. The notion of "if you have a maxed stat you lose out, thus diminishing the value of your choice" most definitely comes from that background. Which one can obviously not share or disagree with. So I'm saying this just for clarification of my point of view.
As to the second point, while it's true that it's not renewable during combat, the fact that it can be used for every Short Rest makes the difference less marginal but yeah, I mean, the math is clear, we are not talking about a huge difference (especially at higher levels).
We're simplifying this and abstracting it almost beyond recognition and probably threatening to go off topic at the same time, but I'd still disagree with the general idea that the person is an "idiot"
People -- even very smart people -- do "sub-optimal" things all the time. Life isn't a game, and can't be optimized. Someone leaning on their wisdom to give a speech instead of their charisma, even if
a podcasteran outside observer might decide they have a '20 Charisma' but only a '15 Wisdom', doesn't make them an idiot. It just makes them humanActive characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I think this would require a finite quantification of the term "idiot". Which surely would get us seriously offtopic. I'm happy with "suboptimal", I'd be happy with "counterintuitive choice", "not wise course of action" or whatever way you want to put this. To me, all of these end up representing a behavior that, in the long run, makes little sense. Because it would be repeated over and over, not happen just once (which would be more understandable from a "it's human" point of view). Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum, after all :-)
I mean, I've played Hero, Shadowrun (personal favorite), Rolemaster (my first game), many editions of D&D, Pathfinder (1e & 2e), Hackmaster, Pendragon, maybe a Call of Cthuhu, Paranoia, Traveler (pre-Mongoose), Deadlands, Mausritter, Mouse Guard, some games I don't know the name of, and several others. We have, I think, 3 or 4 bookcases full of RPGs (Many unplayed). I am familiar with different design options from the oversimplified to the incredibly complex.
There are so many potential paths and they affect what you can do in the system as well as how accessible the system is to players. From my experience with multiple systems, I feel that the implementation of this feat is an intentional choice driven by the audience 5.x is targeting. It works as intended. It is clear. There are issues with edge cases, but D&D never pretends to cover edge cases. There are many cases where the rules are 75% to 90% there and you have to figure the rest out because it is not a classless system, the book was already big enough, and they wanted to keep the game accessible.
I love Traveler's Ship design with exponents, but other players are turned off by too much addition and math. I picked up Mekton Zeta Plus in order to build custom gear for Bubblegum Crisis. I loved the charts in Rolemaster. I am not really the typical D&D target audience member. I am included in the D&D Venn diagram because I don't need the crunch of those other systems, but D&D casts a broader net that pulls in more casual players.
This is why the system is the way it is, nudging you along certain paths without being too overt. Inspiring Leader, and similar feats, has you use the attribute you chose to improve as a carrot to focus on your most important attribute(s). This is a trend across multiple feats that does two things: It sets a pattern of similar feats working the same way that makes the game easier to learn; and it establishes a trend of behavior that indicates that this design is intentional.
I'm sorry that your DM is not house ruling that the feat works with the attribute of your choice. That is their decision and it's fine. It's RAW so that is the expected result. Now you have to choose whether you want the +1 Wisdom for Level +2 Temporary Hit Points, +0 Charisma for Level +5 Temporary Hit Points, or a different feat (Chef give a similar benefit).
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
Wait. It seems that some of these arguments are coming from the reading of the feat that makes it impossible to leverage a 20 CHA for the speech. Unless I am seriously misjudging Gorman's reading as the same as my own... the problem isn't that one much choose WIS if they want both the stat bump and the temp HP, it's that one must choose WIS to get any benefit from the feat at all (THIS is the point of contention with how the feat is worded).
I don't see that being a valid take.
The feat is clearly talking about the attribute you selected to increase. There is nothing preventing you from increasing the attribute if you are at or above the limit, it will just prevent the final attribute from being higher.
How to add Tooltips.
My houserulings.
It might be a point of contention for people who want to argue about whether the wording could be better, but I can't imagine it's an issue in any actual game
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Well, that's all it was for me...
Emphasis mine above... just to say that, as sabin76, it's been two or three pages that I've been trying to say just that. I've even stated in what order of preference I would rule about it, were I the DM. And "in order to take the feat you need to actually raise the score of one of the two attributes and then use that for Bolstering allies" was dead last, IIRC.
But, as sabin76 has already pointed out, RAW, at least for some people, state just that. So when AntonSirius says "I can't imagine it's an issue in any actual game", we sort of already have evidence to the contrary. And I'd hate to play at a table where the DM would rule "rules state that you need to use the modifier of an ability you increased, so your maxed stat cannot apply".
(also, thank you for getting the discussion back on civilized tracks, I really appreciate it)