Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
It's kind of a hard thing to fix from what I'm seeing. Sometimes his CC fails and other times it's OP. What do you think he could do better?
That's easy, introduce a single monster at a higher CR that has advantage on Charisma or Wisdom saves.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
We have a Bard who made his character a crowd control machine and he trivializes combat sometimes. It ends up taking us an hour or two to resolve a big battle that we had no chance of losing.
That means you have a bad DM.
It's kind of a hard thing to fix from what I'm seeing. Sometimes his CC fails and other times it's OP. What do you think he could do better?
That's easy, introduce a single monster at a higher CR that has advantage on Charisma or Wisdom saves.
This guy happens to be the only person attempting to min/max his character so the rest of us are pretty underpowered, myself most of all right now. We've fought things that have advantage on CHA + WIS and it's still just chance. Hypnotic Pattern is pretty damn strong.
He could add in creatures with immunity to charm but I just don't think specifically trying to counter certain spells in the party is necessarily the right way to go either. It's like taking a spell away from him. Not really a solution for the rest of the campaign.
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On a side note, this is a pretty hilarious post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/8r0z4u/how_edgy_is_your_resident_edgelord/
"I was reading char resumes for a game I was going to run. Came across one, his character duel weilded katanas which were made from his parents spines, because he had killed his parents while possessed by a darkness demon. The demon was now his slave though as he overwhelmed it with his own inner darkness which was greater than any fiend of the hells. Also he had a demon eye and a devil wing.
Rejected faster than you can teleport behind me and say “nothing personnel kid.”
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
Hypnotic Pattern is pretty damn strong.
I can't count the number of monsters immune to charm.....
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
He could add in creatures with immunity to charm but I just don't think specifically trying to counter certain spells in the party is necessarily the right way to go either. It's like taking a spell away from him. Not really a solution for the rest of the campaign.
This is the right way to do it. It will force the player to think on their feet and use tools in their arsenal that they haven't touched yet because one of them was so effective. It can lead to dramatic tension and make battles more rewarding.
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
He could add in creatures with immunity to charm but I just don't think specifically trying to counter certain spells in the party is necessarily the right way to go either. It's like taking a spell away from him. Not really a solution for the rest of the campaign.
This is not correct. The DMs job is to challenge the players. Every single campaign will have some player come to the fore with some skill or ability that is overwhelming.
A good DM will counter it so that the payer has to use other tools and not just rely on their one trick pony.
That doens't mean taking it away. It means thinking for yourself. A DM that cannot think for theirself and change something about the encounters to handle something as simple as a 3rd level illusion needs to hang it up.
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Bards have access to a lot of crowd control. He has fear, hideous laughter, crown of madness, sleep, etc. Luckily sleep doesn't scale well and crown of madness/hypnotic pattern are charms but yeah. If you have to counter hypnotic pattern with all charm immune creatures then that seems like a balance problem.
Hypnotic pattern doesn't have any saves past the first wisdom saving throw. That's 10 turns of CC. Yeah, the enemies allies can wake them up for an action but that is still a tax that a lot of the time can leave them both next to each other or waste two turns of movement and taking attacks of opportunity which can be a strategy in itself. We have been fighting some low intelligence creatures too and they likely wouldn't even realize that from an RP perspective
It just seems to me that the spell itself has balance problems and immunity is your only option to balance it?
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
It just seems to me that the spell itself has balance problems and immunity is your only option to balance it?
Nope it also needs materials to cast "Glowing incense/crystal vial of glowing material" this is supposed to be fairly expensive and rare outside of a big city unless the Bard can craft it themselves.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
It just seems to me that the spell itself has balance problems and immunity is your only option to balance it?
Nope it also needs materials to cast "Glowing incense/crystal vial of glowing material" this is supposed to be fairly expensive and rare outside of a big city unless the Bard can craft it themselves.
Yeah, my DM and each player are keeping track of that stuff. Perhaps we've been given too much access to gold.
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Creatures also need to be able to see the pattern, if they are anywhere with in the 30 foot bubble and have something blocking their view, even partially, then it has no effect.
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I would also house rule this potentially so they get a disadvantaged wisdom save each round.
This also is a concentration spell, meaning the Bard can't do anything else while casting this and as soon as he is done the creatures wake up.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
This also is a concentration spell, meaning the Bard can't do anything else while casting this and as soon as he is done the creatures wake up.
You can only not cast other concentration spells I thought
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
This also is a concentration spell, meaning the Bard can't do anything else while casting this and as soon as he is done the creatures wake up.
You can only not cast other concentration spells I thought
Yep you're right. My mistake.
Casting another spell that requires concentration. You lose concentration on a spell if you cast another spell that requires concentration. You can’t concentrate on two spells at once.
Taking damage. Whenever you take damage while you are concentrating on a spell, you must make a Constitution saving throw to maintain your concentration. The DC equals 10 or half the damage you take, whichever number is higher. If you take damage from multiple sources, such as an arrow and a dragon’s breath, you make a separate saving throw for each source of damage.
Being incapacitated or killed. You lose concentration on a spell if you are incapacitated or if you die. -
@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
Creatures also need to be able to see the pattern, if they are anywhere with in the 30 foot bubble and have something blocking their view, even partially, then it has no effect.
See that is part of the issue I have with D&D on Roll20 as well. People pick the exact 5 ft. cube for the center of their spell to maximize the effect with as little detriment as possible. I brought up that to my DM as this kind of marksmanship type of play really ruins some of the detrimental parts of the game. Michael Jordan didn't hit every three pointer so why can my wizard hit his fireball exactly, every time? Seems to me that you should have degrees of accuracy. Example: If you roll a 20 it's a perfect shot, if you roll a 1 it shouldn't just miss, it should veer off somewhere randomly. Roll to see if it hits an ally. Stuff like that.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
It just seems to me that the spell itself has balance problems and immunity is your only option to balance it?
Nope it also needs materials to cast "Glowing incense/crystal vial of glowing material" this is supposed to be fairly expensive and rare outside of a big city unless the Bard can craft it themselves.
Is this contained within a components pouch? I think it is. That makes getting the ingredients incredibly easy as components pouches are available to bards.
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@dustinb3403 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
I've never actually played any pen n paper games...
I guess I should probably give it a try but I feel that making an investment to purchase a book etc would be wasted.
I can honestly say I enjoy D&D more than pretty much any game I've ever played. Including video games. The group you play with is really important. I've known every person in my group for 1.5 decades and we play a lot of games together.
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@wirestyle22 said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
Creatures also need to be able to see the pattern, if they are anywhere with in the 30 foot bubble and have something blocking their view, even partially, then it has no effect.
See that is part of the issue I have with D&D on Roll20 as well. People pick the exact 5 ft. cube for the center of their spell to maximize the effect with as little detriment as possible. I brought up that to my DM as this kind of marksmanship type of play really ruins some of the detrimental parts of the game. Michael Jordan didn't hit every three pointer so why can my wizard hit his fireball exactly, every time? Seems to me that you should have degrees of accuracy. Example: If you roll a 20 it's a perfect shot, if you roll a 1 it shouldn't just miss, it should veer off somewhere randomly. Roll to see if it hits an ally. Stuff like that.
Uh WTF? You cast your spell to take effect where you can see. done.
Seriously, the issue here is you people don't know how to handle magic.
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@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
Creatures also need to be able to see the pattern, if they are anywhere with in the 30 foot bubble and have something blocking their view, even partially, then it has no effect.
Correct and it is an instant thing. Also ANY damage breaks it. Suddenly your people are out of it.. Throw rocks at them. Cast a low damage AoE spell and intentionally hit your allies.
Not to mention, the DM should use it on the party also.
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@jaredbusch said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
@coliver said in Pen and Paper RPGs - What's your favorite?:
Creatures also need to be able to see the pattern, if they are anywhere with in the 30 foot bubble and have something blocking their view, even partially, then it has no effect.
Correct and it is an instant thing. Also ANY damage breaks it. Suddenly your people are out of it.. Throw rocks at them. Cast a low damage AoE spell and intentionally hit your allies.
Not to mention, the DM should use it on the party also.
It does say "Any Creature" so that should include player characters.
