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Topic: The Dungeon and Dragons Thread

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Darknyht

3.0 and 3.5 was a major improvement over AD&D 2nd edition in regards to accessibility, but I always enjoyed it most when a PC was handling the rolls and calculations.

I owned the Saga Edition stuff but mostly played the miniatures game that used super stripped down rules before realizing I had a real world loot box problem and stopped.

I just started back with 5th edition a few years ago with friends. We always play Heroes Unlimited and Rifts before that.

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tasuki

@Darknyht I will agree to 3 and 3.5 streamlining things and making it more accessible, who remembers THAC0.

I did play a game of Rifts years ago with a group my friend met. I don't know if it was the DM, or the system but all it seemed like was one big power gaming session, which was not fun to me at all.

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Darknyht

@Tasuki We mostly played Heroes Unlimited, but we were less heroes and more anti-heroes. Call it the influence of 90's comics. When we played Rifts, we avoided the power creep that each expansion brought to the game. Instead we ran in a home-brewed world where the story was more like the Aliens franchise than anything else. The players arrived on a planet that sent out a destress signal only to find it empty and abandoned. Then they were attacked and turned into trying to escape an over powerful horde and finding a way to escape the planet.

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tyranexx

@Tasuki, @Darknyht I can certainly see why two very different versions of the same game would be so polarizing. Would it be fair to say that 3rd edition was a bit more akin to 5e, just more streamlined? In contrast, it appears that 4e went an odd route. I've heard rumblings about the latter but never looked too much into it. I do like SPRGs, so I wouldn't mind a D&D tactics variant if it was put together well. Now I'm curious to know what editions the other players in my campaign started in. Another is like me - we entered with 5e - but I think one player started in 3.5.

Funny that Pathfinder was mentioned; there was a group of us in similar majors to my own in college that wanted to put a game together, but our schedules never quite aligned for us to start.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Tasuki

@Tyranexx It's hard to say I would say if anything 5e is a watered-down version of 3rd which don't get me wro g isn't a bad thing. 5e is even more beginner friendly then 3rd. For me third had alot more options and a bit more variety. For one thing 3rd had alot more skills where 5e combined the skills. For example the Survival skill in 5e encompasses fire building, tracking, weather sense and a few other things where as 3rd Edition they were separate which makes sense to me. Just because you are good in tracking doesn't mean you can build a fire. Also 3rd Edition had alot more weapons it seems.

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Darknyht

@Tyranexx I will show my age by saying I started with D&D Basic, which covered the first 5 levels and had just fighter, cleric, rouge, wizard classes and then half classes that were dwarf, elf and halfling. We basically made impossible dungeons and rarely anyone saw level 3.

I owned AD&D 2nd Edition but mostly played it through TSR Gold Box games on C-64 and PC. Likewise, I owned 3rd edition but mostly played it through Neverwinter Nights. We played Heroes Unlimited, Rifts and Star Wars RPG. Saga Edition is my only 4th edition experience and the miniature games was more SRPG than TTRPG.

5th edition brought me back and it made things more simple. Reminds me more of D&D: Basic in that a lot if left up to imagination and DM/Group decisions. The major flaw of Palladium RPG and 3rd edition is it could take an entire session just to resolve a round of combat and there was skill checks for everything (each with its own skill specific to it).

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tasuki

@Darknyht I said the same thing about 5e to a friend a few months ago especially with the announcement of One D&D and the fact that 5e is compatible with it but you can use either or without the other one.

That's the main problem I am having with 5e even now, is that alot of things seem to be make it up as you go and the stuff they give you is so bare bones. I guess it's great for bringing in new players so they don't scared of a complex system.

It seems that alot of stuff relies on the DM making up a DC and you roll a d20 and if you beat the number the DM has you succeed. And while the advantage/disadvantage system is nice they rely on it way to much where they should be giving bonuses in a numerical value.

The biggest thing that is guilty of is crafting.

Edited on by Tasuki

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Tyranexx

@Tasuki Slight mispost up there, I meant 5e streamlined more stuff. I can understand your arguments regarding how separated the Survival skills components were in 3e vs. 5e. Though I also understand wanting to combine some pseudo similar skills. What weapons did 3e have that aren't used in later editions?

@Darknyht Wow. Been at the game for awhile then! That makes you a veteran IMO. Seems like D&D has been multimedia for longer than I thought lol. I quite like 5e, it's been easy for me to ease into as a newer player. Though I doubt the older editions would've scared me off...at least if I'd learned how to play them these days (I'm just over the 30 hump). Not sure how that would've went when I was younger.

Edited on by Tyranexx

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Tasuki

@Tyranexx Well some that come to mind is the Double Bladed Orc Ax, repeating crossbows, b astard swords. They are a few others but I don't remember right now. I can agree that yeah they made it alot more new player friend and as I said I kind see what they are doing but some of their vagueness just annoys me.

I also miss skill ranks which made me feel like your character was improving in skills where as 5e really doesn't feel like you improve in skills.

Edited on by Tasuki

RetiredPush Square Moderator and all around retro gamer.

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Darknyht

@Tasuki Xander’s Guide to Everything somewhat gave rules to have tools give bonuses, but I get what you are saying. You have more control over progression in 3rd and 3.5 as you could sink your advancement entirely into a few skills. However it also took away from the expert classes (rouges, bards) that used skills as their specialty. I believe that is what OneD&D is trying to address with background changes to give you the ability to have a scholarly fighter if you want.

@Tyranexx I grew up with an Intellivision and Odyssey 2 in the house before getting a C-64 and then a NES. The two AD&D games on Intellivision was my first exposure to the franchise. The older systems showed their war gaming roots and story seemed to take the backseat to battles when we played. But that is what pre-teen boys who grew up watching Conan do I guess.

The D&D system has always been a little creaky at the beginning (when you are squishy) and the end (when you are smacking gods and dragons around). These days we tend to start our campaigns at level 3 and most end by level 12 as that seems to be a sweet spot for the system. That lets players get their sub-class and start learning it before level 5 hits with the bigger abilities (extra attacks, higher tier spells, etc). I do think they hit a sweet spot with move, action, bonus action, reaction over the past methods. Again OneD&D from what they show seems to be working on the progression to make sure you gain something interesting each level.

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tyranexx

@Tasuki ...Okay, they need to reintroduce that axe. I would LOVE to try out a barbarian or other axe wielding class that could use that lol. Same with the b sword, though that instantly brings Final Fantasy to mind. XD

As for skill ranks...I can see both positives and negatives to that system. Skills do seem a bit vague, and the difficulty of something depends on the DM, any applicable rules, stats, and RNG at the end of the day.

@Darknyht Quite a historical gaming repertoire you've listed. The oldest system I've touched was an Atari 2600, and that was only the casing. It no longer worked and was gutted to house a Raspberry Pi and ROMs for the system. I generally prefer to play games with a plot or story elements, though good mechanics and compelling gameplay rank high in my book too.

I admittedly don't know what level everyone started at in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign I'm in. I entered with a premade human ranger at level 7. Originally subclassed as a Beast Master, but I switched to a Drake Warden after Fizban's Treasury of Dragons released. I managed to tame a guard drake early on, so the change made perfect sense. I need to look more into the upcoming One D&D. I do like some of the mechanics on paper but haven't done a deep dive into the material yet.

Feel free to read through earlier parts of the thread for some of my group's exploits. We're currently on break due to the holiday shuffle.

Edited on by Tyranexx

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Darknyht

@Tyranexx If I get some time later this week, I will try to look back through it. Since we started playing again, we played through some of the Yawning Portal stuff, I ran a slightly modified Essentials Kit and we are playing Curse of Strahd right now.

If we go another round, I will probably home-brew a campaign. Right now I know the first act will center around the captured heroes escaping a prison they will be in and having to survive the trek through harsh wilderness to return to their homeland (and to discover what happened after they lost the war that led to their capture).

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tyranexx

@Darknyht It's all worth a read IMO, but I'll warn you that I can get quite descriptive sometimes. XD How is your current campaign going? Your previous post reads that you may be the DM. How large is your group, and what's the makeup?

(Sorry if any of this was discussed before; I've been busy IRL as of late and mostly keep the forums to replies only)

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Darknyht

@Tyranexx The current campaign goes well, we just finished a session tonight. I am not the DM currently, as me and a friend take turns running campaigns. Originally it was four of us (including DM) that grew up together, but one of us wasn't able to commit to the schedule. So a friend's son has stepped in to fill in the party.

Currently we are a level 5 party consisting of a Battle Smith Artificer (Me), a Circle of the Land Druid, and a Battle Master Fighter. We finally are starting to make some progress in Curse of Strahd, succeeding tonight on finally clearing the first card of our fortune telling. I apologize for the lack of hard details, but I am trying hard to not give away spoilers to the campaign. We have also cleared my character's personal hook (confronting his childhood fears) to the campaign, and are near to the personal challenge for the Fighter's quest (finding a cure for his lycanthropic curse).

My character is being played slightly differently than an Artificer in that he uses runes, rituals and enchantments to fuel his spells (typically etched into his infused gear) instead of magical devices as described in the book. He uses a rune-etched spear infused with energy drawn from the Shadowfell so that it fades into shadow when it hits it's target (or misses) to reappear in his hand; and wears infused Scale Mail armor and fights alongside a ritually summoned construct. It originally looked like a dog, but recently has taken on a more steampunk inspired golem structure with oversized hands (think The Big O, but human sized).

While the equipment isn't quite campaign accurate (we play using Foundry VTT and only use DND Beyond to facilitate level ups), you can look at the character sheet for my character here: https://ddb.ac/characters/78671938/kpkn8b

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tasuki

@Tyranexx Manged to play last night. The group finished up the festival last night and are partaking in the final ceremonies basically feasting and drinking!!. The final events that they did was an arm wrestling contest which the PCs had alot of fun, our fighter actually lost to his sister, our Cleric. He kept getting bad rolls against her.

In the end they had alot of fun but like all good times it will be coming to and end and the real adventure will begin.

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Tyranexx

@Darknyht Your group is one less than my regular group (DM included). Sounds like a decent party makeup too. The artificer is another character class I'd like to try at some point; they look quite fun. I'm curious: what is/are your character's childhood fear(s)? And does the party know how the fighter was afflicted with lycanthropy?

Many thanka for linking your D&D Beyond character sheet for some background. I quite like your time modifications to your artificer and think that would make for a different and fun style of play. Our campaign is kind of old school and is played with paper, marker boards, status markers, mini figures, etc. Though considering one player has forgotten their character sheet more than once, it would probably be beneficial to move to a digital format or keep the sheets stored in a single spot.

Besides my Human Ranger, we also have a Half Elf Bard, Dragonborn Sorcerer with a crocodile companion (I call it ninja croc; the rolls for it are usually decent), and a Kobold Warlock who was originally a servant under contract to the same player's now-dead Oath breaker Tiefling Paladin. Who is still pulling some strings on a different plane lol. She unfortunately died during our last major fight. No nearby characters to easily help out either.

@Tasuki Sounds like a festival done right! Plenty of eating, drinking, and general merriment. The arm wrestling does indeed sound like a riot. Where might the group be off to next?

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Darknyht

@Tyranexx I tend to use Xander's Guide to Everything's "This Is Your Life" rules when creating my characters to give them some backstory and to get an idea of who they are. So my character ended up with a few difficult things in his past. The biggest was that as an orphan he was sent to a local orphanage ran by three old women, who turned out to be a Night Hag, a Green Hag and an Annis Hag. Quickly my character realized there was something wrong with the orphanage. While he was able to escape the terrible orphanage, his friends did not. So he has issues with Hags. Part of him is still corrupted by the darkness of their influence, and part of him remembers the horror of what they did to those in their care.

Our party was put into a situation where he had to face those fears and initially he failed personally and the party was failing in their efforts against Strahd. We reached a point where he thought the rest of the party had died, and fled into the woods.

The story picked up two weeks later with a wandering hermit speaking wisdom to him and him being reunited with the other surviving character (we have lost a fighter, paladin, thief and sorcerer in our journey). Forming a new party with the druid, we were sent back to deal with the very thing he feared. However, I rolled better on saving throws and we overcame the problem. Doing that help put Cid on a new path forward.

Now behind the scenes, I was starting to struggle with the character as I couldn't quite figure out how to make him work for me. This was my second attempt at a Battle Smith, and initially I was struggling to find he role within the party. I was forced into a healer role as the other party members at the time were a fighter and a thief, but I was built around being a ranged attacker. So I was looking for a way to switch into a better fit for the party (Druid or Cleric), but thankfully the Sorcerer character bit the dust and he was willing to go Druid to balance things out better. The almost TPK gave me a narrative reason to retool and succeeding the mission is letting me start moving back along the original vision I had for the character (think a mix of Van Helsing and someone that uses rituals, runes and enchantments to cast spells).

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tyranexx

@Darknyht I really like that background involving the hags. I'm not versed with how they work in D&D, but I suspect it isn't far off from their mythological equivalents. I'll check later when I'm in a better spot to web search lol (posting on mobile). Must be a rough campaign if your group has lost that many party members. We've had some character losses/turnover, though some of that was intentional by one player who has a...unique play style lol.

We did have a near TPK in a side Grim Hollow campaign another group member runs when our main DM needs a break. My character was the only one never downed, but she was a low level rogue and didn't have much utility at the time. Thankfully some forward thinking by other group members avoided any actual deaths.

Edited on by Tyranexx

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

Darknyht

@Tyranexx Best way to describe green hags is to think Grimm Fairytales. Snow White and Hansel and Grettel. Annis hags are the secret corrupters that I picture somewhat like the villain jn “Needful Things” (the book, not the movie). Dusk Hags are nightmare fuel in that they invade dreams, so think Freddy Krueger. They are villains that you don’t want to have direct confrontation, but when three are together they can cast some nasty magic for their CR rating.

As for the party deaths, Curse of Strahd is a tough campaign setting, and we are playing with some harsh homebrew rules. Hitting 0 HP doesn’t mean death saving throws for us. Instead we roll off a chart to see where the injury happens and how severe it is.

The first death was an instant kill blow to the head from a hidden orc. The second death was a player that foolishly ran into a pack of wolves after we had our gear stolen. So his entrails were torn out. The third death was a character betrayal, and we honestly don’t know if he died (that was the player that bowed out of playing). Fourth and fifth death was limbs severed and bleeding out.

But even without those rules, the some of the enemies don’t have compassion and think nothing of attacking downed players. We started the campaign by making two characters, a primary and a backup, for that reason.

So did the rouge did you play the rouge surviving? I would imagine seeing all your friends die could lead to issues like survivors guilt which can be some fun RP’ing.

Darknyht

Nintendo Network ID: DarKnyht

Tasuki

Well the curse of life has hit my D&D group. Found out last night that one of my players is going in for open heart surgery at the end of the month. The doctors are saying recovery time is about a month in half to two. Which means, I am going to half to put my current campaign on hold.

Of course a person's health is more important then a game but I feel.bad for the other players as their were just starting to really get into the characters and such. I did have a few ideas on what I could do.

1) Just continue the adventure were on and maybe have the character of the player who is going in for surgery get called away or something. If I do that I will probably have to do that for his wife's character as well. The problem with this option is I don't want the other characters to out level those two players. Two it will change the group dynamic losing a front line fighter and a healer, and three parts of this adventure revolve around our healer.

2) Hopefully we can complete the current chapter of this adventure, and kinda like the first option I can have something happen to the two other characters, and have the rest of the group get pulled into an aide quest of sort. Again though I don't want the rest of the group to out level the two characters. This one however I would be able to adjust the side quest to the new group dynamic.

3) Have my players make new characters maybe for a shorter quicker campaign that will only be a few months long. Like maybe putting together a few one shots together. The only problem with this is I don't think my group will go for this as their characters only just got to level 3 and now they are making new ones.

4) Someone else in our group DMs and starts a campaign or one shot that they want to do.

Then of course there's the final option of just put the whole thing on hiatus for a few months.

Not an easy decision to make, but obviously I will be discussing some options with the group this week.

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