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2020-11-20, 08:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2015
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Sure, but it's not like a cleric not bringing protection from energy is going to have their level 3 spell slots sprinting 10' a round at something that can crawl away prone at 15'. Not having the right niche spell doesn't prevent you from leveraging your spells at all, but an encounter that starts with 30 or 40' between you and enemies makes your ranger's entire flagship build defining feature that holds all of the build value for several of your levels do nothing for 3 or 4 rounds if you happened to think the boat adventure would have fights in the water when the enemy instead just jumps on to your boat.
For longstrider: See OP. Spending spell slots to do that all the time is not going to be good, and waiting until combat starts means you have to be an entire turn behind when fighting starts just to have your extremely slow octopus still need to spend actions to catch up with something merely walking away.
This would in fact be great, but in terms of mechanics, if you're stuck to RAW ala something like adventurer's league, or just how most DM's do things in my experience, making it "ride you" like you would a horse requires you to be large, since the beast of the sea is medium, and regardless of what you do to get around it, a DM can veto it by saying you don't have the proper anatomy to be ridden. The other option is to grapple and drag it, but then your speed is halved, and you might be bringing your archer into melee range just to do this janky thing.
I also see a lot of "just use the other ones", which is ironic considering the same argument could be leveled at criticisms of the PHB ranger, which has a lot of fixes in this book, by saying something like "if you want to play a nature warrior, just be a fighter with a leaf on your head".Spoiler: bad tactics
I look at the lich and smirk a bit, as I bring myself back to my feet
"What are you smiling about?" it says
"hehe, it looks like you've made... a grave mistake :D"
the bard, actively bleeding out on the ground *ba-dum-tss*
"Ha! Nice try. Telling a bad joke to try to make your opponent drop their guard. Oldest trick in the book. Trust me, I was there."
*barbarian falling, sword in hands, from the top of the castle wall directly above the lich*
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2020-11-21, 02:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Originally Posted by FoxHound438Pokemon friend code : 3067-5701-8746
Trade list can be found on my Giant League wiki page, all pokemon are kept in stock with 5 IVs, most with egg moves, some bred for Hidden Powers. Currently at 55 in stock and counting.
Padherders for my phone and my tablet!
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2020-11-21, 02:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2011
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- Waterdeep
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
I choose to believe it’s a typo and should have been 15’ or 25’
Last edited by Kane0; 2020-11-21 at 02:21 AM.
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2020-11-21, 03:00 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2019
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Why would you be doing this all of the time? The only reaon you would ever take Beast of the Sea is if you're doing underwater shenanigans, in case those shenanigans happen to depart on land unexpectantly your beast can still breathe and move on land so you're not completely screwed. You're at a disadvantage, but then again you're at a significant advantage in the water too. If you were locked into your choice I'd totally agree, but you're not so I don't see the big deal. The Beast Master gets to rock under water if it comes up, that's good, if you're trying to use a water centric creature on land regularly that isn't the stat block's problem, it's a significant tactical error on the most fundamental level.
The point of me brining up Longstrider was to highlight that you aren't completely up a certain creek during dry season. It lasts an hour and is a first level slot with no need to concentrate, if you are in the niche scneario (which is what this should be) you can patch the speed. At no point should this be losing you and turns personally or should it be costing your beast dashing for 4 rounds, combat that opens up at 35-40' leaves most melee centric builds at a disadvantage on turn 1 anyway.
Summary: It exists for the same reason Water Breathing and the amphibious option of Alter Self does, it gives you options. If you choose to lock yourself into those options, or utilise them at the wrong time then that falls on you, not the option.For D&D 5e Builds, Tips, News and more see our Youtube Channel Dork Forge
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2020-11-21, 05:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2014
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2020-11-21, 07:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
so, this is silly.
but a phantom steed is a resource that can be replenished in the middle of nowhere (including when you've just climbed out of the ocean), and if you take the ritual caster feat for wizard you'll get access to a bunch of other handy rituals, including one which conveniently will allow you to join your companion under the water without drowning.
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2020-11-21, 07:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
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- Wisconsin
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
"When you finish a long rest, you can summon a different primal beast. The new beast appears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of you, and you choose its stat block and appearance. If you already have a beast from this feature, it vanishes when the new beast appears."
So you can only summon it first thing in the morning? If you could do it anytime (once per day) then you could simply resummon when you reach the water. And hope you're not coming back out of the water the same day.
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2020-11-22, 01:28 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2017
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Yeah, I'm with Foxhound on this one, this is really bad design.
The Land beast has a 40 ft speed and 40 ft climb, and a charge, so they can move 20 ft, hit and deal and extra 1d6 damage with a chance of prone. That means is can deal 1d8+1d6+2+PB every turn is can move.
The Sea beast has a 60 ft swim, 5 ft move, can breath underwater and has a 1d6+2+PB attack with grapple, action to escape.
So, if an enemy is 20 ft away on land... the land beast moves up and hits them and does let's say average of 13 damage, and knocks them prone. The sea beast... dashes for two turns, and attacks on the 3rd turn. It will never catch the enemy on land if that enemy moves even a little bit.
Sea beast is utterly useless on land. But what about the reverse?
The enemy is 20 ft away in water. The land beast swims up to 20 ft, hits for an average of 13 damage, and knocks them prone (if that applies in water) They would not have disadvantage on the attack most likely, because I do not believe that those rules apply to natural attacks, only to weapon attacks. The Sea beast swims up, hits for 8.5 damage and grapples. Granted, is the swimming enemy is more than 20 ft away, then the land beast will need to take extra turns, but we set both distances the same, and increasing the sea enemy distance means making the sea beast even more useless on land.
So, let us look at a few other scenarios.
We are on a boat, enemies attack. If the enemies climb up the boat, the Sea beast is on land. If we put the beast in the water... it is by itself against the entire enemy force.
Let us say we start fighting in the water, but need to climb back up the boat? The Sea beast literally has to dash to climb 5ft up the side of the boat. Meaning in a decent sized vessel that is say 10 ft from sea to deck, requires two turns of dashing for the Sea beast to climb back onto the deck.
Go underwater in a lake, and find a cave? Sea beast becomes useless the moment you hit the ground inside the cave, which is probably where most of the action is happening.
The only time it is useful is if the party is underwater, fighting at a medium distance, for the entire day or adventure. And even then, the Land Beast is doing decent underwater. With a casting of longstrider it can move 25 ft underwater per turn. More than most of your party members, and it hits harder.
So.. yeah, the Sea beast is worthless as written. My solution? Give it a land speed of 20 ft. Just like some of the gators, frogs, and lizards in the book. Then it is superior in the water, but not entirely useless outside of it.
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2020-11-22, 05:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2019
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Anything that doesn't have a swim speed gets disadvantage on melee weapon attacks, so that would apply to the Beast of the Land as well.
Then there's the whole it not being able to breathe under water thing...
The Beast of the Sea is not useless when used in it's appropriate environment, underwater sections (and even whole adventures) are a thing, this is just an option for those occasions and not really intended to be used otherwise by the looks of it.
Though if pepole actually have a problem with this then just ask to drop the swim speed down a little and bump up the land speed accordingly...For D&D 5e Builds, Tips, News and more see our Youtube Channel Dork Forge
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2020-11-22, 05:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
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2020-11-22, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2014
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- Somewhere eh?
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2020-11-22, 07:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
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2020-11-22, 08:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2019
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2020-11-22, 08:54 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2015
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
A big difference though is that the spells that support land creatures in water are a lot better than the spells that support the beast of the sea on land - Longstrider is pretty cheap to use once in a while, but most of your campaign is probably boots on some kind of ground, so you'd have to spend a lot of your daily resources on this just to keep up with travel pace. "get a horse" doesn't always work, because once again, a DM can just veto this on the basis of not having the right anatomy. On the other hand, water breathing is a spell on the ranger's own list that lasts 24 hours, benefits the entire party, and is a ritual if the wizard or cleric takes it. Not having a swim speed can be hampering to the beast of land, but having an attack at disadvantage is probably better on average than not having an attack at all because you're too far away.
I would like to have it be like 20/40 or something, and I would certainly allow it if I were DMing, but I wish it was just in the book that way so I don't have to argue with "no homebrew ever" DM's for me to play this. "just rule it differently" doesn't work when I want to actually play a class myself.Spoiler: bad tactics
I look at the lich and smirk a bit, as I bring myself back to my feet
"What are you smiling about?" it says
"hehe, it looks like you've made... a grave mistake :D"
the bard, actively bleeding out on the ground *ba-dum-tss*
"Ha! Nice try. Telling a bad joke to try to make your opponent drop their guard. Oldest trick in the book. Trust me, I was there."
*barbarian falling, sword in hands, from the top of the castle wall directly above the lich*
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2020-11-23, 02:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2019
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
I never suggested (and wouldn't) getting a horse to solve an animal speed issue.
Water Breathing allows you to be underwater for a significant period of time, it does nothing else to help you with the various hindrances of being submerged. There's an aside that there's a two level gap between getting to chose a beast and a fullcaster being able to choose that spell and 6 level gap for the Ranger.
This is also such a niche negative, you're only going to choose this beast if you're going to be dealing with underwater (or at the very least in water) section that's more than just a single obstacle. So sure, you could get caught on land and at a disadvantage, but you had a huge advantage for the bulk of that section (and do have tools to mitigate the speed issue). If this was a case of the flying creature, not the sea, then I'd understand this more as it's a more universal choice, but the combination of when you'll choose the beast with the even lower amount of time it could be a downside just don't seem significant enough to me.
On the topic of disadvantage on attacks for the land underwater, it's a pretty significant nerf and the movement speed is still so low that the beast could easily lose at least one turn before attacking, whilst being on that creature's home turf.For D&D 5e Builds, Tips, News and more see our Youtube Channel Dork Forge
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2020-11-23, 02:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Could cast Fly on it?
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2020-11-23, 02:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2016
- Location
- The Old West
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Could this problem have been addressed adequately by letting you choose when you summon a Beast of the Land if it gets either a Climb speed or Amphibiousness + Swim Speed? Would that have made it too good compared to Beast of the Air? Or would Swimming Land Beast be considered superior to Climbing Land Beast?
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Spoiler: Build Contests
E6 Iron Chef XVI Shared First Place: Black Wing
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2020-11-23, 04:08 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2017
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
giant axolotl mini :D (from reaper miniatures)
When I first read the top post, I was like.. why would a water compagnion work anywhere else except for underwater. It is a specific tool with for a specific situation (underwater campaigns).
But people have made good points that a lot of campaigns are amphibious.. on a boat, in a marsh etc, you want to move in both places..
I think I would rule that the land beast either has a 20ft climb OR swim speed. And if it has a swim speed the penalties of attacking underwater don't apply. The CON modifier # minutes to hold your breath are generous already, so I would just keep that.Last edited by Mork; 2020-11-23 at 04:08 AM.
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2020-11-23, 10:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2017
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
I thought the disadvantage applied only to weapons, but even if it is all attacks, that is the same thing the rest of the party is dealing with.
As for not breathing underwater, while true, the Beast can hold its breath for 3 minutes and 2 rounds of combat (going off memory) and since most combats barely last ten rounds, it is unlikely to be an issue for short periods of time.
And yes, you might have a whole adventure underwater... but I've certainly never seen it. The longest underwater I've ever seen was a single combat. And half the time the party either stayed out of the water or used Control Water to create dry land anyways. In 99% of all cases, the Beast of the Sea is never going to be used.
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I was wondering if a fly speed would count for how fast you could swim. Not sure how that gets ruled RAW
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2020-11-23, 10:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2019
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
The disadvantage applies to melee weapon attacks, which should include all melee attacks that aren't spell attacks. The other PCs will be subjected to it, unless they switch to a weapon that doesn't suffer from the disadvantage (basically piercing weapons). Though more party members being at disadvantage isn't better... It just means the beast isn't the only one at disadvantage.
Movement speed wise, I believe when something refers to movement it defaults to ground movement, as swim, climb and fly speeds are always explicitly labeled as such.
As for holding you breath yes, if you're ever under water for a single combat then holding your breath isn't going to be an issue for anyone that has a Con of +1 and above. Those are not the situations that you switch to a sea beast for.
I think it's okay and assumed that a sea beast will be used the least, it's a niche that adds versatility to the Beast master, not the de facto choice, that's the land beast and always will be.For D&D 5e Builds, Tips, News and more see our Youtube Channel Dork Forge
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2020-11-23, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2013
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- Somewhere
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
See, that's what you get for playing with formless blob of stats instead of an actual (well, imaginary, but you know what I mean) animal.
It's Eberron, not ebberon.
It's not high magic, it's wide magic.
And it's definitely not steampunk. The only time steam gets involved is when the fire and water elementals break loose.
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2020-11-23, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2016
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
I’m not sure what problem there is with a “land” speed of 5ft? What kind of “aquatic” creature do you want to hangout with on land?
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2020-11-23, 12:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2020
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
Have people considered that both players and characters can do the things that are not the most tactically optimal?
Like has noone here ever had a player that made a choice based entirely off thematics instead of strength? If I wanna play Steve Irwin the Beastmaster, picking Beast of the Land and just saying 'well the crocodile is just a bad swimmer' feels... wrong.
I'm not saying that the Beast of the Sea should be just as good on land as the BotL, but it should still have viability on land, but just not it's full potential. Like... the BotL has in water.
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2020-11-23, 01:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2019
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
People keep wanting this, but I can't think of a single animal that would actually fit as a justification for this.
Crocodiles aren't amphibious in the D&D sense, they hold their breath and so aren't applicable.
The beast of the sea appears to be based on an Octopus/Giant Octopus middle ground (swim speed of a Giant, land speed of regular, medium instead of small or large). Both of those creatures have abyssmal land speeds, they're Ocotpi, why would they have a competent land speed?
The best argument I can see for this is the frog/Giant frog, they're amphibious and have a more useable swim speed. Problem is their swim speed and land speed are equal, so you'd likely end up with a beast that's mediocre at both at that rate.
There doesn't seem to be any precedent for an amphibious creature that has a high swim speed but competent land speed and it doesn't even make sense for there to be one...For D&D 5e Builds, Tips, News and more see our Youtube Channel Dork Forge
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2020-11-23, 02:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2017
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
I'm honestly confused why so many people seem set on comparing sea and lan beast on the assumption that you'll still be having most of your adventuring day on land. If that's the assumption you're running under, why take the sea beast at all. If you're in an underwater campaign, sea beast compares quite well to land beast on land. It's intended for certain situations. I don't see that it needs to be competitive outside its niche. Giving it a fly speed would be odd, wouldn't it. But the arguments don't seem to compare how bad a land beast is a hitting a creature flying several feet up compared to a beast of the air.
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2020-11-23, 02:24 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
This is pretty much where I land. They included a fish option -- for fishy situations. Not sure how this is a problem. In previous versions of the game, there might be entire prestige classes dedicated to living underwater and riding sharks, or AD&D or BECMI race choices where breathing air took a spell. This thing takes one night's sleep to change out, which is honestly pretty minimal a price (again, in previous versions one would need at least that much time to change out spell load-outs to prepare for an underwater foray, if not hunting down an Apparatus of Kwalish or similar).
That said, What I do think is missing is a better option for the amphibious/semi-aquatic adventure. This is an issue with the slow rollout of supplements/lack of product for this edition -- perfectly reasonable options are seen as a problem because they aren't something else (that is needed or wanted). In days past, alongside this book with the three basic types, there would be a Dragon magazine article with a bunch of specialty options like amphibious and glider and digger and maybe even splitting the fliers into slower-but-rugged, ultrafast, and maneuverable or similar.
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2020-11-23, 09:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2015
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
as per my original post, giant crab.
Once again, ironic to make this argument when we had to complain for how many years that rangers getting bonuses to tracking and roughing through the wilderness are dead features in campaigns that don't feature tracking and roughing through the wilderness before they fixed that, in this very book. Once again, saying "just use the beast of the land" is the same as saying "just play a fighter", but the question remains, why does the ranger have to be comparatively useless outside of those situations? And they changed a whole pile of ranger features for this, and rangers weren't even so bad at being fighters compared to how useless beast of the sea is when an enemy is merely 15 feet away from the water.Last edited by Foxhound438; 2020-11-23 at 09:40 PM.
Spoiler: bad tactics
I look at the lich and smirk a bit, as I bring myself back to my feet
"What are you smiling about?" it says
"hehe, it looks like you've made... a grave mistake :D"
the bard, actively bleeding out on the ground *ba-dum-tss*
"Ha! Nice try. Telling a bad joke to try to make your opponent drop their guard. Oldest trick in the book. Trust me, I was there."
*barbarian falling, sword in hands, from the top of the castle wall directly above the lich*
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2020-11-23, 09:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2006
- Location
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2020-11-24, 01:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2005
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- 61.2° N, 149.9° W
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Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
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2020-11-24, 01:43 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2019
Re: Beast of the Sea: Totally Unusable
A giant crab has speed parity, 30/30 at which point it makes a pretty lousy water specialist creature as a lot/most of the time specialist creatures will have their specialst speed be higher than the PC average of 30ft. If you want someting that can act in land and water at the drop of a hat, then just pick and deal with a Giant Crab, the stock BM rules allow for that. It's going to be worse in almost every conceivable way, but it won't have that crippling land speed you appear to be looking for in a water option right?
I'm also curious, is this the only example? If that's the case your expectations are based on an exception whereas the beast blocks seem to be trying to generically represent the average abilities of each environment's creatures.
If there is any chance whatsovever that you will be fighting on land any time soon just don't pick the Beast of the Sea, you don't like that ("just play a Fighter!") but at the same time you're taking a specialist creature out of its specialist environment and complaining about its performance (which coincidentally does not map with the Fighter/Ranger comparison you make).For D&D 5e Builds, Tips, News and more see our Youtube Channel Dork Forge
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