Khrux

A flash of light streaks toward a creature of your choice within range. Make a ranged spell attack against the target. On a hit, the target takes 4d6 radiant damage, and the next attack roll made against this target before the end of your next turn has advantage, thanks to the mystical dim light glittering on the target until then.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something and the phrasing isn’t perfect but I’d say the combination of saying that the advantage is caused by the light and the advantage lasting to the end of your next turn would mean that the light also lasts until the end of your next turn?

I agree completely that it’s inconsequential, one issue with the arguement about creative characters is that people often blend being unique with being compelling. A compelling character is where it’s inconsequential what choices you make.

That said, I think players who aren’t aware of the tropes PC’s often fall into may end up playing “the straight man” to the group, who is comparatively very plain. Players who have played for longer may feel that this is similar to PCs they’ve seen before. But even then, it doesn’t really matter as this PC trope shines in contrast to the rest of the party and that rarely changes.

Unrelated but I wanna say how proud I was of my Baldurs Gate3 character. I felt that your TAV in that game was quite plain and generic no matter what you chose, so played as a human fighter called John Baldurgate who was the most generic character possible and had a blast.

Studded leather, 20 Dex and Int, then something like haste is definitely possible.

Honestly I feel it was way more exciting in concept than execution anyway. Hell, I think it would make a fantastic TTRPG setting, since it’s strongest in premise and has strong ludo-narrative cohesion falling between a narrative game and a wargame.

Season 1 is also great because it did a great job having the kids be basically doing ET, the teens doing a camp horror and the parents doing a cold war conspiracy thriller.

Every season since of course needs to alter the group compositions, so we rarely get this again, although the elements are still there, they’re now shaken up enough that the show is often more focused on riffing on its own formula then emulating the media that inspired it. And that’s fine, it should probably be a good thing that it’s not in the shadow of it’s inspirations, but man do I miss that specific vibe.

It’s a shame that knowing average monster hitpoints is generally metagaming and there is no ranger option or similar to show you this.

It would be cool to follow a fireball. If you know the enemy you’re fighting has about 32 hitpoints for example, such as the thug, and a band of them got hit by a fireball for 30 damage, sleep is a perfect spell. But getting this combo off in game always feels a little metagamey in a way that just makes it ineffective.

I’d say the Rage beyond Death feature of the zealot is pretty major to how they’re played. A level 14 barb may have 150 hitpoints or more, plus their resistances, but people play the zealot in high level games for this feature.

The idea of getting to fight to 0 hitpoints, then keep fighting until you die and then still not relenting until the fight ends is rad. Hell I’d say that their level 3 and level 6 features, while cool, were designed after their level 14 feature and designed to let you get as much out of that final feature as possible.

I’m only talking from watching PF2e actual plays and playing a lot of 5e but I’d say PF2e combats would run 1.2x longer under the same conditions as a 5e game.

I’d say DM style is easily the biggest influence, I’ve played in games where a one hour combat is the significant boss battle of a campaign, but rules for 6 rounds, and I’ve played in games where a 6 hour battle may be normal, potentially with as few as 4 rounds passing (the latter one absolutely does kill me though, I think my character in that game has actually developed to avoid a fight because I dont want the faff). I’d say DM style can influence a combat length by 3x or more.

Similarly an understanding of general efficiency in combat from the players too can half a combat length pretty easily.

I wouldn’t worry about it extending the game length, any extra time is pretty negligible compared to steps you can take to stop the time of combat unraveling.

Idk if anyone else follows the rule of thumb of “let the party pull the same trick 3 times before you make it backfire”.

In a story, it would fail on the third try, in a game, it would never fail. I find 4th time doesn’t leave many people dissatisfied but also doesn’t let every encounter be trivialised.

Bust out your fireball empowered cultists responsibly.

2-3 years of pumping shit video games is 2-3 years that they aren’t fucking with the core product, which is the only part I don’t want ruined. The can make bad games, bad merch, bad brand tie-ins or anything else for all I care as long as they don’t harm the game.

I’m not particularly clued into the industry but I’m not shocked. From what I’ve seen, Cynthia Williams believed the most profitable direction for D&D was to monetise game game at a very granular level like microtransactions, as we saw in the OGL debacle, plus her focus on the VTT was likely going to manifest in a similar way.

I’d say the explosive success of Baldur’s Gate and the surge in WotC talking to practically all games companies possible, it’s clear they’ve set their sights on a hopeful path to continued revenue growth that does not offend any fans.

My assumption is that Cynthia simply centered her leadership on a path that is no longer the direction the company has deviated from.

Tome of beasts also has a little more bite than standard 5e, I think they’ve called their design 5e with teeth before, one of those books is also now available on D&DBeyond too if that’s to the person’s liking.

All that content is under various OGL / CC licenses too so it’s available on open5e.com

Thank you, I’ve realised that my approach seems a little different from other here, where I try to pick an RPG for an idea that’s forming in my head, based on the genre and tone, settling on an RPG that’s 80% there but people love the ruleset, then I chop and change it to get close enough to 100%.

This is probably detrimental in a few ways too, as some games like Lancer are unchangable until I’m familiar enough to peel apart the interwoven mechanics and lore, and I’m not going to touch it because I almost never run official settings and adventures, particularly in longform games.

I will shout out both Alice is Missing and For the Queen, which both get worse when they get altered, because their strength comes from their simplicity and then probably ridiculous amount of playtesting.

Any gumshoe game, probably something shorter than Nights Black Agents: The Dracula Dossier. If I set it in my own setting, I’d like to use Bubblegumshoe to do my own telling of “Tomorrow When the War Began” basically what happens if on the summer camping trip after your last school year, your country is invaded. I can’t quite tell how good Gumshoe is for homebrew settings however.

My other want is to run a worldbuilding game such as the quiet year, for the queen or microscope, hacked to set up a concise and thematic noir mystery inspired by fiction like Disco Elysium, The City and the City or The Nice Guys, with a rich and vibrant world that the players are invested in as they built it. I’m tempted to hack the bladerunner RPG by Freeleague for the actual police procedural afterwards.

“Wrong community”, meanwhile every GM who reads this immediately thinks “Same”.

At the higher budget level, where basically the products can afford plenty of art, I basically never see games using the 5e engine? Perhaps I’m wrong here but beyond the splintering of many of the companies that previously made 5e content like Darrington Press, MCDM, Cubicle 7 and Kobold Press, I don’t think I’ve seen any non-amareur RPGs based on 5e on the horizon.

I do see a lot of powered by the apocalypse game, and within that a few forged in the dark games, but powered by the apocalypse is so varied anyway that I don’t see it as an issue. I also see Freeleague using the same engine for their games but that’s a specific company using their engine.

Meanwhile on the surface, the lich that crushed them with the rock has subsumed their corpses into their army and is going to invade the hells.

From level 5-7, I could see myself throwing a dozen CR 1/2 hobgoblins at a party looks a.

At level 9, a CR 5 boss, a pair of CR 2 lieutenants and 8 CR 1/2 minions would also be a fun fight. I’m pulling both these numbers from page 68 of Forge of Foes, a great 3rd party suppliment.

If I suspected the PC was itching to use fireball, I’d give them a killer use for it soon after they hit level 5, such as the aforementioned 8 wide, 4 deep phalanx of hobgoblins that could be incinerated in a single blast from this. If you’re not familiar with lightning rods, if the idea of specific things to make the PCs feel cool, undead for the cleric to turn, mundane archers for the mink to deflect, or dense, weak enemies for the sorcerer to fireball. The mother of all lightning rods is the one you set up soon after they get the ability to show how it shines.

Also if you use the minion rules such as those created by MCDM, then at basically any level, those mooks will be instantly killed by this effect, it’s great empowerment for the player and if it’s budgeted for in your encounter creation, not fun spoiling.

Conjure animals may be mechanically powerful but it’s impact on pacing and round time may as well deal psychic damage directly to the table.

You’ll run into the same power with every spell that limits creatures movement, and I’d say for a 4th level spell, that movement limitation is about right.