Does D&D 5e have something similar to 3.5's Alter Self where you can disguise yourself as a medium or small humanoid? I want to disguise a dragonborn barbarian as a kobold.
[QUOTE=Rents;49320950]Does D&D 5e have something similar to 3.5's Alter Self where you can disguise yourself as a medium or small humanoid? I want to disguise a dragonborn barbarian as a kobold.[/QUOTE]
it does have alter self yeah
[QUOTE=Rents;49320950]Does D&D 5e have something similar to 3.5's Alter Self where you can disguise yourself as a medium or small humanoid? I want to disguise a dragonborn barbarian as a kobold.[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately no, unless someone else casts Reduce on you (and even then only for 1 minute), because Alter Self only works with other races of the same size as you.
[QUOTE=Glent;49321182]Unfortunately no, unless someone else casts Reduce on you (and even then only for 1 minute), because Alter Self only works with other races of the same size as you.[/QUOTE]
Lame, guess I'll have to bug my GM to bend the rules for it
[QUOTE=Rents;49321218]Lame, guess I'll have to bug my GM to bend the rules for it[/QUOTE]
You could just be an [I]abnormally large[/I] kobold!
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;49321540]You could just be an [I]abnormally large[/I] kobold![/QUOTE]
Well, 5th edition kobolds are already a lot larger than they used to be, so maybe he's just a 6th edition kobold!
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;49321540]You could just be an [I]abnormally large[/I] kobold![/QUOTE]
Dragonborn are already kobolds on steroids that don't like mining
Troglodytes are fantasy Lizard manlets
My fighter apparently makes balancing fights difficult for our GM. Everyone else is a glass cannon that dies when you sneeze on them, while mine is a hamfisting tanky tank that ignores anything suitable for the rest.
I recommended he try using more casters to debuff and shit. Gives our wizard more time to counterspell and have great magic duels too. Now I'm starting to regret my decision as he's talking excitedly of the magic combos he's come up with, but at the same time i'd rather cry and suffer with three debuffs constantly than run a train on the zombie dungeon without any effort.
How do you balance such lopsided parties, really?
[QUOTE=elowin;49321564]Well, 5th edition kobolds are already a lot larger than they used to be, so maybe he's just a 6th edition kobold![/QUOTE]
[t]http://imgur.com/T2ccERD.jpg[/t][t]http://imgur.com/1FRjLOr.jpg[/t]
[b]see how I got RIPPED in [i]one and a half editions [/i] with these one weird trick... Wizards hate him!!![/b]
[QUOTE='[Green];49321668']My fighter apparently makes balancing fights difficult for our GM. Everyone else is a glass cannon that dies when you sneeze on them, while mine is a hamfisting tanky tank that ignores anything suitable for the rest.
I recommended he try using more casters to debuff and shit. Gives our wizard more time to counterspell and have great magic duels too. Now I'm starting to regret my decision as he's talking excitedly of the magic combos he's come up with, but at the same time i'd rather cry and suffer with three debuffs constantly than run a train on the zombie dungeon without any effort.
How do you balance such lopsided parties, really?[/QUOTE]
[url=http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/baleful-polymorph]Guaranteed to balance any party.[/url]
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;49320218]DnD 5e is very, very simple to learn! It set out to make the rules as freeform and simplistic as possible so that you can have a totally streamlined game where you get to focus on the shit that actually matters, rather than spending half the game flipping through rulebooks and making endless rolls. 3.5e, in particular, was noted for having a very deep/complex rule system (from what I've heard) that could really bog down play. Not the case with the new edition, though! I am a first-time DM running a group of 6 first time players, and by the end of the first session they all had a pretty good grasp of how the game was played.
The core rules are available online in a free pamphlet (I believe), though they're pretty stripped down. Just a few races and character classes, and the general combat rules. It's enough to try out a few games and get a good feel for the game, though! After that, you could try picking up the starter kit ($14 on Amazon), which could last you for months of play. Albeit, from what I understand, it's also pretty limited. If you want to break away from bottled adventures and premade characters and start crafting your own worlds and adventures, and really get in-depth with character creation and magics, then you can easily get by with nothing more than the Player's Handbook, which is available for, like, ~$25 on Amazon. And a handful of dice! The Monster Manual will give you a lot more variety in baddies if the PHB monsters are starting to get tiresome, and the Dungeon Master Guide has a ton of invaluable advice on how to run a game, but neither is strictly necessary.
[/QUOTE]
THIS SO MUCH. Yes! Thats why I never could get into D&D back when I first started learning and opted out to make my own simple version. I might check out 5 then if it made it better. Thanks
[editline]15th December 2015[/editline]
Would any one be up to playing a game of D&D maybe teach me a little bit. I understand the game so I'm not super noob but I would like to learn more professionally how to play.
[QUOTE=Rents;49316697]Laminated graph paper, dry wipe markers and whatever's on hand for tokens worked for me. Although it requires some improvisation and imagination when you end up with bottle tops for kobolds.[/QUOTE]
Use candies for enemies. Cheap, easy to color code different enemies, and that way when a player scores a kill, they get a little treat.
[QUOTE=GamerKiwi;49323820]Use candies for enemies. Cheap, easy to color code different enemies, and that way when a player scores a kill, they get a little treat.[/QUOTE]
A.. treat? Do you make them eat the candle when they beat the enemy? Provides an incentive to think of non-combat solutions to problems, at least.
[QUOTE=Chronische;49324125]A.. treat? Do you make them eat the candle when they beat the enemy? Provides an incentive to think of non-combat solutions to problems, at least.[/QUOTE]
oh bad reading where hath thou gone
[QUOTE=elowin;49324203]oh bad reading where hath thou gone[/QUOTE]
The way of the smartness system.
:snip:
[QUOTE=GamerKiwi;49323820]Use candies for enemies. Cheap, easy to color code different enemies, and that way when a player scores a kill, they get a little treat.[/QUOTE]
And if they're fighting gelatinous cubes, use Turkish Delights! It's the sweetest trap for the party.
My second night as a DM went much, much smoother. I spent all week leading up to it running test combat scenarios to make sure I got better at keeping track of whose turn it was, what abilities each person had, stuff like that. When it came right down to it, I was able to breeze through the DM-side of combat. This time, it was only the players slowing things down. Of course, they'll get faster too as they get more familiar with their characters and the rules. I plan to start implementing time limits on their turns once they have had a bit more practice in order to make sure they're spending the time between turns watching, listening, and planning, so that when it comes time to act they already have a good idea of what they want to do.
My Demon the Descent campaign has become a mockery of its former self. What was originally meant to challenge the players perception of themselves and a bit of mild existential horror has become a prolonged South Park episode.The God Machine is using Angels to influence the minds of the most receptive audience it can find over the Internet into creating a new state of persecution and fear.
The Demons just fended off a mob of Tumblr SJWs who were packing nail-bombs and Angels are following a trail of Triggering posts to its Epicentre, which is the Private Investigator player shitposting on /pol/.
What the fuck.
So, I've come by VOTOMS: The Roleplaying Game handbook, and I gotta say - it's actually looking pretty good system for tie-in. But wikipedia says that there is apparently a DBZ version, so I know what I gotta track down.
[QUOTE=Rents;49321744][t]http://imgur.com/T2ccERD.jpg[/t][t]http://imgur.com/1FRjLOr.jpg[/t]
[b]see how I got RIPPED in [i]one and a half editions [/i] with these one weird trick... Wizards hate him!!![/b][/QUOTE]
kobolds will never not look like this to me
[t]http://img05.deviantart.net/2f35/i/2008/128/a/0/kobold_design_by_maddiwhoskis.jpg[/t]
[QUOTE=GastricTank;49332505]kobolds will never not look like this to me
[t]http://img05.deviantart.net/2f35/i/2008/128/a/0/kobold_design_by_maddiwhoskis.jpg[/t][/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f38/keyescannon/kobolds.jpg[/IMG]
Far better!
I've started working on a homebrew campaign for PF or 5e, and boy, I'm only writing out the first town that the players will meet one another in and I'm about twenty pages deep in writing up the various characters that the PCs might encounter, giving them brief personalities, wants, fears and how they function in the town. As well as the various factions that operate within and outside of it.
It's really making me appreciate how much effort a DM puts in to even a small town. I'll be house-sitting over Christmas nd so I'm going to have a lot of free time, and as daunting as just this first town is, I'm incredibly excited to see where it goes.
I just need to get it in to my head that the players share some of the responsibility of making this stuff come to life. The paranoid blacksmith's failed attempts at starting a forge elsewhere in the region and the scars she bears, or the simple minded and gentile inkeep's attempts at making friends aren't going to matter at all if the PCs are disinterested in one another and don't make an effort to get involved. But at the same time, I feel like not writing up a couple of paragraphs for every NPC might come back to bite me in the ass, even though I know not everybody is an interesting person, not everybody has a history of note and not everybody is going to be in a ten minute conversation with the PCs.
All you REALLY need is a general personality for each NPC, perhaps a goal and driving motivation, as well as some flaws. Long backstories will generally get wasted, and burn you out.
I generally write 3-4 lines of fluff for NPCs, and either leave it in their roll20 journal page(for people I'll say the PCs have heard about) or in the GM Notes section of the same.
The degree to which that fluff is true, though, is questionable. I've got one NPC who's journal page says (DON'T READ THIS YOU SHITS)[sp]she has a pet bird. But she doesn't; she IS the bird.[/sp] There's another one whose page states [sp]she hears the words of a powerful demon that she acts as a proxy for. In reality, she's bullshitting 90% of it based on what the cult wants to hear, in order to buy herself time to find an escape.[/sp] They haven't met either of these yet, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed none of them click those spoilers.
Meanwhile, someone they've got the journal page for has something along the lines of "Lots of people theorize this chick was chosen by the god of thresholds, doors, or something else. Nobody can agree on what, but all theories involve travel."
I'm not even sure if my players have looked at any of the NPC journal pages yet, without me clicking the "Show To Players" button for them, tbh.
Also, writing this post, I realized I've got a lot of women in this game's NPC roster. I think it's because I tried to keep the total man-to-woman ratio somewhat even, with the PCs(all guys) taken into account.
And as a practical matter, it's much easier to just figure stuff out for the limited number of characters the PC's actually care about, or at least make up rough bits on the fly so that you can expand upon it later when you actually need it
and really, most of the time they won't even notice or especially care. Like, the only time I gave out anything approaching a full backstory for an NPC in one of my games recently was basically a 'congrats you won' entry on the closest thing the game had to a final boss, and I don't think anyone especially complained, or even really noticed
In find that I have trouble remembering the important parts of my NPCs on the fly. I had this character concept for a Goblin Warlord who was supposed to be surprisingly Intelligent and well-spoken as I was drafting him up. By the time the players got to him however, I blanked out on everything I had planned for him and the dialog turned out to basically be, "Me strong and big. I am no scared!"
I was hitting myself over that, haha. I guess I should have spent less time practicing combat order and more time piecing together my story. Oh well! Lesson learned! Next time will be better.
[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;49333660]In find that I have trouble remembering the important parts of my NPCs on the fly. I had this character concept for a Goblin Warlord who was supposed to be surprisingly Intelligent and well-spoken as I was drafting him up. By the time the players got to him however, I blanked out on everything I had planned for him and the dialog turned out to basically be, "Me strong and big. I am no scared!"
I was hitting myself over that, haha. I guess I should have spent less time practicing combat order and more time piecing together my story. Oh well! Lesson learned! Next time will be better.[/QUOTE]
heh
the same thing happened to me when i was running a pf campaign for my friends
the hobgoblin pirate commander ended up just being a normal pirate, even though i wanted to have them set up building up a navy big enough to take back their homes from some racists >.>
their favorite npc ended up being a navy private(whom i had nothing planned for but to die) that was sent out with them to attack the pirates
A useful sheet of paper to have is one with two columns of names, male and female. When you ned an npc, pick one. Write who they are next to it, any significant description, and anything else relevant to them
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