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Thread: Ozodrin (5E Conversion, PEACH)

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    Default Re: Ozodrin (5E Conversion, PEACH)

    Oh, absolutely go ahead with that! Not being previously familiar with it is a plus. Among other things, you caught some major update failures with Far Reaching / Parallel Processing mentioning renamed/removed alterations. Err, I mean failures from recent revisions to the 5e version - the change log is now two posts long because it hit max capacity over the years. I'm also reminded that a different trait should be moved to the first spot PDF, Eye's kind of weird.

    @Magical effect: A term anti-magical-effect abilities use but not a term abilities use to describe themselves. It's almost exclusive to the Eye trait, and is due to forming alterations being stated as being mundane in the Manifest Form description. I have considered dropping the magical effect stuff, as it should be obvious those effects are magical, but would likely need to tweak some wordings to better emphasis the possibility of an alteration-granted ability being magical. Which.. I probably will do, yeah. Honestly, having the forming of alterations be non-magical is much less important in 5e than it was in 3e.


    Responses:
    Trait Archetype: I think if anyone wants to add more traits they should do it as an alternate class feature that swaps places with a preexisting trait. I'll think about the suggested restriction rewording, that section is currently rather verbose on top of everything else.

    Eye Trait:
    Base Alteration: Low light vision is pretty weak, yes. 360' vision doesn't mean much mechanically but could be useful RP-wise. Darkvision.. at level 6 an Ozodrin gets access to all the base alterations so they'd auto-get darkvision and I'm not sure about that. I do think this is the weakest base trait, outside of groups that utilize the 360'.

    Spoiler: Tier I Advanced Alterations
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    Listening Eyes: I had this be 10 minutes for what I imagine is the reason why detect magic requires an action to see auras: So the table only has to keep this ability in mind when the player is actively using it. It's a strange effect. Unless the PC really wants it up 24/7, in which case they're liable to remember it themselves, giving it a duration prevents it staying on and burdening the DM when the player isn't even thinking about it. That said, maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here.

    Heightened Senses: Although 5E usually lists maximum ranges, it does not do so for See Invisibility, which has infinite range and is where the effect is being taken from.

    Splintering Glare: Hrm. I'll look more into the attack roll wordings. The other alterations just use the weapon rules, so this is an eye-specific issue. It is true that the word non-lethal isn't used anywhere in the knock-out description.. but on the other hand I'm concerned that "attempt to knock out" will confuse players (and DMs) that aren't familiar with the knockout rule. I was actually in a game two days ago where I noted we should aim to knock out a target and people were confused until I specified non-lethal. EDIT: I suppose the main issue here is that Non-lethal is no longer a game term, but it is by far the better understood English-language term IME. Referring to non-lethal and then explaining what that choice means leaves no room for confusion. I'm not sure any current D&D effect uses "attempt to knock out" or mentions the knock-out rule outside of the rule itself.

    Disorienting Glare: It is true they normally don't do so and there is no need for reminder text. This is a case where I felt like a wanted to make *very* sure the player and their DM remembers that rule. EDIT: Eh, I think I'll remove it though, it's pretty obvious since it says "next".

    Efficient Pathways[1]: Should be as a reaction, yeah. On the AC.. a quick search for players confused about barkskin suggests the reminder text might be worth keeping.

    Spoiler: Tier II Advanced Alterations
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    Eldritch Sensitivity: Hrm. Might need to go back over the wording for the first section if it's that unclear. As for the second ability, it's already using the "any visible creature.." wording from detect magic? Maybe I should remove the and/or, it's just to note that they can tell the difference between nonmagical, magical, alive, not alive, and all combinations of that. The lack of school of magic was an intentional drop, since they're not spellcasters.

    Consuming Glare: There's a TI Orifice alteration that can be triggered off of food consumption, the specific wording is due to that. The current wording is.. verbose and I'm not thrilled about it but changing it would be tricky.

    Framing Glare: The target doesn't go anywhere - they can do whatever they want during their turn, but at the end of it they go back to where they were when you used the ability. Like you saved their position and then forcefully reloaded the save at the end of their next turn. It triggers at the end of their turn, not the beginning. It's like a delayed teleport aimed at wherever the target currently is. I will probably use the "reduce damage to 0" wording though, that's quite a bit cleaner than the convoluted current situation where they only take damage if they try to resist even if it's flavorful. It should specify a sight requirement, yeah.

    Murmuring Glare: I specify it does nothing on a success as I've gotten the impression that many tables would argue over whether or not the target creature becomes aware of the effect on a success and this ability is unreliable enough even if it succeeds that it would be safe to let it work in social situations (unlike suggestion). It does "nothing" is meant to mean it does literally nothing instead of alerting the creature as to what happened. This is another case of reminder text the ability shouldn't need but might still be useful. There are other ways this could be conveyed, granted, including ones that would be more to the point.

    Spoiler: Tier III Advanced Alterations
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    Nous Sight: Will tweak blindsight wording. As for the last part, it also effect wisdom (Perception) checks and was written that way mostly to explain that hiding is still possible. Whether stealth works vs blindsight is rather unclear in the rules IIRC and a passive ability that auto-negates stealth would be extremely powerful in a PCs hands. It should say Stealth instead of hide though. Granted, just noting the disadvantage on Stealth/Deception would imply it isn't automatic so that is an option. I'll think about that part.

    Encroaching Gaze: Might change that, yeah. EDIT: Changed it to "If you do not share a language with the creature you can still communicate using simple concepts, emotions, and images." Which is also slightly less text as well! Being able to speak with animals and weird otherworldly creatures that don't speak anything is intentional. One of those is more on-theme than the other, but animals is definitely going to come up more often.

    Parallel Pathways: Dissolving became splintering, need to fix that, thanks. I am iffy on not specifying more directly what Search action counts for & why it matters.

    Far Reaching Gaze: Yeah, that's an update failure, good catch.

    Spoiler: Tier VI Advanced Alterations
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    Unbound Reception: Lucky rolls an additional die, it is not a reroll on any site listing it I've seen (Did it get errate'd somewhere, I'm doing another search but that doesn't seem to be the case..?). That exact question is one many ask about Lucky, which is less clear in its wording than UR. Lucky says "You choose which of the d20s", which according to Sage Advice means Lucky turns disadvantage into best of three as per RAW. I had hoped to avoid this issue (and the absurd disadvantage -> super advantage case) by noting that you can choose to use it instead of what you would "normally" use. If you have disadvantage, you would normally use the lower die of the two you rolled. So you can use the UR die or the lower die. If the wording is still unclear I'm open to suggestions but I spent a fair amount of time reading about reroll feats and Lucky specifically for this one.

    Decentralized Perception: Hrm, could tweak this a bit. As long as I keep the box example whatever wording I go with should be fine, so may as well make it less wordy.

    Delving Sight: I used otherwise because.. it made sense in a previous version of that ability >.>. Yeah, it should be on a failure.

    Rejecting Glare: Will add sight restriction. I forget why I used the halving wording (RG's been unchanged for years), that change seems like it'd be clearer.


    Limited Use Features - It varies in 5e as well, the current wording was expanded from the Action Surge wording. I'll consider it, although I prefer the multi-take wording to specifying X per Y additional FP as I think multi-taking is more quickly grasped. Also, there are some alterations that can only be taken one additional time. I think that's down to 3 cases though, I've been trying to reduce the number of X per rest abilities in general as of late.

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    In other news, moved Unearthly Power to lvl 5, added the new version of Worldly Guise to lvl 3.

    EDIT: I'm editing in more commentary regarding what I changed for the stuff I mentioned I'd look into later as I go over the more complicated changes that involve more than just a quick typo fixing.
    Last edited by Magikeeper; 2021-01-26 at 02:20 PM.