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  1. - Top - End - #91
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Daemon

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Keltest View Post
    The attempts to justify it within the setting, even as a unique thing, are one of the major contributing factors to my last campaign falling apart. Its one of those things that kind of doesnt hold up to close scrutiny unless you specifically build around it. In this case, the question was "how can they have robots, but no other magictech?"
    This is not a thing. Warforged are by lore basically animated trees wrapped in metal armor. For all the clockwork affectation players like to drape on them (which does fit in almost every setting as readily as a gelatinous cube), a Prestige Class from 3.5 makes it clear: They’re plants. And even more simply could be animated armors with souls.

    You’re welcome to your opinion though, groundless and limited as it may be.

  2. - Top - End - #92
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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Amnestic View Post
    You've not gone into great deal on the setting but I'd still wager they can fit into most things other than the most low magic settings.

    Back onto the Strixhaven stuff and the wider question of setting-specific things in general, I definitely view the dragonmarked races on a different 'level' of permissability to the ravnica backgrounds. I look at Mark of Detection half-elf vs. normal half-elf and could realistically still see picking normal half-elf even as a spellcaster. Ditto for V.human vs. dragonmarked humans, or halflings vs. dragonmarked halflings.

    Not always, no, they're not "weaker", but they've not obsoleted all other racial variants either by any stretch (or indeed other races).
    Seeing the new Lineage/heritage rules and the ability to freely place your stat ups, I think raw power wise, Dragonmark races do stand at the front of the line for power. However, you’re generally talking about a fractional percentages in performance when comparing 1 optimized PC vs another.

  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Daemon

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Amdy_vill View Post
    personally, I loved the idea but I needed massive work both in the base mechanics and in the presented subclasses. I am sure we will see this idea pop up in third-party content.
    I was really looking forward to it.

  4. - Top - End - #94
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by BerzerkerUnit View Post
    This is not a thing. Warforged are by lore basically animated trees wrapped in metal armor. For all the clockwork affectation players like to drape on them (which does fit in almost every setting as readily as a gelatinous cube), a Prestige Class from 3.5 makes it clear: They’re plants. And even more simply could be animated armors with souls.

    You’re welcome to your opinion though, groundless and limited as it may be.
    They're plants in only the most pedantic and cynical sense. The Warforged clearly evokes Artificial Lifeform tropes only seen in post-Industrial Revolution media like Star Trek, Frankenstein, Bicentennial Man, etc.. Which is a trope that only existed meaningfully after the Industrial Revolution for a reason. They also don't behave like plants, or plant people for that matter, except in aesthetics. They do not need to eat, drink, or BREATHE. They do not need to take in nitrogen or phosphorus. They don't reproduce like plants. They don't even grow over time. If you go back to 3E/4E rules, they implanted metal objects and even machines into their body with no special adaptation like Fleshcrafting.

    They're frickin' robots.

    Look, the wood aesthetic was there as an artifact of 3.0E rules where being a construct gave waaaaay too many advantages for an ECL +0 character. So they had to come up with an excuse nerf to explain why THESE robots aren't immune to poison, disease, mind control, death effects, etc.. If 3.0E had designed its inheritance rules correctly, I guarantee you Warforged would be all-metal, since other than justifying the creation of the 'Living Construct' archetype they don't use the 'wood' part of their body in any meaningful roleplaying or gameplay sense.

  5. - Top - End - #95

    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Ralanr View Post
    The only way you get to really have fun with feats is if you're rolling well for stats imo. Too many players (including me) want to get at least an 18 in their main stat, and/or a 16 in their secondary stat. If you're using standard array, this means you hold off until your first feat until level 8 (or 6 for fighters).
    IMO delaying feats so long is usually a mistake. Your first couple of feats usually have more impact than stats would, although of course it depends on what you choose and how you use them.

    I roll for stats but even when I roll absolutely garbage stats (like 3d6 in order, and all stats 9 or below) I still look first at feats, and in fact in those cases I look even harder at feats than usual because I'm NEVER going to bring Int 9 up to Int 20, so I might as well focus on something else like being the Mobile, Moderately Armored, someday-Tough hobgoblin wizard who makes do with a spell DC of "only" 11 by focusing on save-for-half and no-save offensive spells plus party-helping spells like Rope Trick, Magic Circle, Stone Shape, Conjure Minor Elementals, and Polymorph.
    Last edited by MaxWilson; 2021-07-22 at 11:35 PM.

  6. - Top - End - #96
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    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Kuulvheysoon View Post
    See, my issue here is that you're comparing apples to oranges instead of like with like. Diviner wizards to the TCoE sorcerors? Power creep needs context. You're saying "overall, the power level hasn't truly changed", which I can agree with. There's some bonkers stuff in the PHB, always has been. I'm not denying that.

    What I am saying is that within each class, the average power level for each subclass has been rising with the number of books. There's a few stinkers, like the Oath of Glory, but it's still a trend.
    I'm not sure I can agree with that. While Chronurgist does exist as an outlier, for the most part Wizard Subclasses have remained at about the same level, if not somewhat declined from the strongest PHB options. Vengeance paladin is still probably the strongest paladin. No post-PHB druid has at any level been anything like as insanely overpowered as moon druid is from levels 2 to 4. Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster are still on the stronger end of fighter and rogue subclasses respectively - there are admittedly slightly stronger options for each, but nothing that blows those two out of the water. Bearbarian is still competitive with Zealot.

    Tasha's clerics are a mess and I absolutely won't defend them, but I also don't see them as part of a wider trend, especially from a book that also included relative duds like alchemist, jojomonk, and glorydin.

    I only see an upward trend in subclasses of classes that were already generally understood to have problems. I'd certainly have preferred the designers to just /fix/ those classes via errata, bringing up all their sub-par subclasses with them, but WotC made a design decision that the confusion cost of having multiple versions of the same content running around the ruleset wasn't worth the benefits of fixing even obvious, admitted problems. I disagree with that decision, but it's the game we're playing in now. And given that starting point, I personally have no problem with subclasses that fix the problems in the core class design going forward even if it leaves phb subclasses behind. Pretending otherwise doesn't stop already lackluster PHB options from being lackluster, it would just be following up accidentally bad design with /deliberately/ bad design.

    There's no point complaining about Tashas sorcerers eclipsing PHB sorcerers when PHB wizards did so from day one. That's not comparing apples to oranges. Player options are player options. They're all apples.

  7. - Top - End - #97
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    LudicSavant's Avatar

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    Quote Originally Posted by ProsecutorGodot
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  8. - Top - End - #98
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Has anyone ever seen in an actual game someone use the Ravnica guild backgrounds in a non-Ravnica game?
    I could easily see fitting a warforged (or most other setting specific races) into a typical D&D fantasy world with a bit of DM collaboration - for one example:
    ancient long forgotten wizard's laboratory aka a nice intro dungeon, a metallic man with zero memory wakes up in a tube when one of the traps/automated defenses of the lab triggers a magical power surge, boom you've got a one-of-a-kind PC walking about, discovering who they are. Loads of backstory plot hooks to be used there, it's great.
    Much later on, players could even investigate the animating magic, take some time to recreate the spell that allows such creation. Should be 5th level or higher to match Awaken.

    But using the Ravnica Guild background requires the game world to have the Ravnica guild in it, and the way most of them are structured it'd be difficult to have one guild without the others. The guilds that would work on their own in other settings are also represented by other backgrounds, like Dimir agent is really just a type of spy.
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  9. - Top - End - #99
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    RedWizardGuy

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Anecdotally, my group hasn't touched the Ravnica backgrounds. Not so much that we ban them, just that we haven't used them. Maybe if we played a Ravnica game...but I don't think we will.

  10. - Top - End - #100
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    BlueKnightGuy

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    I haven't seen anyone try to use the Ravnica backgrounds outside of Ravnica either. Though I'll admit, I didn't play much 5e between 2017 and 2021.
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    For some reason this feels really fitting; I got a mental image of a bunch of psions setting up a LAN party.

  11. - Top - End - #101
    Bugbear in the Playground
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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    I have my beef with the Ravnica backgrounds (they give almost nothing to martials in a setting where there's plenty of reason to play a martial) but I feel like the minmaxing doomsayers are only looking at online forum postings.

    I do think the loss of these subclasses is a bit sad - yes the UA was out of wack but I don't mind the concept. Maybe it's one of those things that would work best outside of the DnD system. I like the idea of an all mage party having magic boarding school adventures, and the party having players from the same major but with different mechanical classes behind them.

    I'm curious what the feats will be. Maybe I'm being overly dour but I expect the bardic elemental college to just get Elemental Adept with an extra flavor bullet point, the math college to get one of the Tasha telekinesis feats with an extra flavor bullet point, etc.
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  12. - Top - End - #102
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    BardGirl

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Deathtongue View Post
    They're plants in only the most pedantic and cynical sense. The Warforged clearly evokes Artificial Lifeform tropes only seen in post-Industrial Revolution media like Star Trek, Frankenstein, Bicentennial Man, etc.. Which is a trope that only existed meaningfully after the Industrial Revolution for a reason.

  13. - Top - End - #103
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    LudicSavant's Avatar

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Deathtongue View Post
    The Warforged clearly evokes Artificial Lifeform tropes only seen in post-Industrial Revolution media like Star Trek, Frankenstein, Bicentennial Man, etc.
    People have been telling stories of automata for thousands of years, across many cultures.
    Last edited by LudicSavant; 2021-07-23 at 04:19 PM.

  14. - Top - End - #104
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    Kane0's Avatar

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant View Post
    People have been telling stories of automata for thousands of years, across many cultures.
    Case in point the origins of the term 'Golem'
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  15. - Top - End - #105
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    HalflingWizardGirl

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant View Post
    People have been telling stories of automata for thousands of years, across many cultures.
    While definitely true, as far as I know pre-industrial stories of automata did not have them be mass-produced for the purpose of open warfare, instead being either unique creations, products of literal divine handiwork, or both. Meanwhile, robot armies are a common sci-fi trope.

  16. - Top - End - #106
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    Kane0's Avatar

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Well yeah, mass produced anything wasnt a thing until mass production was.
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  17. - Top - End - #107
    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Kane0 View Post
    Well yeah, mass produced anything wasnt a thing until mass production was.
    But mass production also happened much earlier than alot of people realize.

    Also, I'm treading into real life, so I'll just tread myself back out.

  18. - Top - End - #108
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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by loki_ragnarock View Post
    But mass production also happened much earlier than alot of people realize.

    Also, I'm treading into real life, so I'll just tread myself back out.
    Farmers, mass producing crops for 13,000 years.
    Brewers, mass producing beer for 13,000 plus a few years, which is why farmers started planting crops - to brew more beer!

    This isn't just me yakking, this is based on research at Stanford.
    I think that Natufian means "dwarf" in ancient Assyrian, but I may be mistake.
    ‘Oldest record of man-made alcohol’

    Evidence suggests that thousands of years ago, the Natufian people, a group of hunter-gatherers in the eastern Mediterranean, were quite the beer connoisseurs.

    Liu and her research team analyzed residues from 13,000-year-old stone mortars found in the Raqefet Cave, a Natufian graveyard site located near what is now Haifa, Israel, and discovered evidence of an extensive beer-brewing operation.

    “This accounts for the oldest record of man-made alcohol in the world,” Liu said.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2021-07-23 at 07:24 PM.
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  19. - Top - End - #109
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    DruidGuy

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by Kane0 View Post
    Well yeah, mass produced anything wasnt a thing until mass production was.
    Things were mass produced pre-industrial revolution and some of the hallmarks of mass production didn't arise until well after the industrial revolution.
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    LudicSavant's Avatar

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by loki_ragnarock View Post
    But mass production also happened much earlier than alot of people realize.

    Also, I'm treading into real life, so I'll just tread myself back out.
    An awful lot of things happened earlier than a lot of people realize, TBH. For example, there are ancient Roman-era creations that are basically animatronics.

    Quote Originally Posted by P. G. Macer View Post
    While definitely true, as far as I know pre-industrial stories of automata did not have them be mass-produced for the purpose of open warfare, instead being either unique creations, products of literal divine handiwork, or both.
    There are stories from cultures like ancient India about armies of automatons.

    You can find numerous examples of ancient stories of robots on the Wikipedia page for the history of robotics. And that's really just a small introductory sampling.

    People have been telling all kinds of stories about robots for a long, long time. Ancient philosophers would even argue about stuff like, say, the idea that the development of automata would end human slavery ((IIRC Aristotle talks about it, for instance)).
    Last edited by LudicSavant; 2021-07-23 at 07:54 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by ProsecutorGodot
    If statistics are the concern for game balance I can't think of a more worthwhile person for you to discuss it with, LudicSavant has provided this forum some of the single most useful tools in probability calculations and is a consistent source of sanity checking for this sort of thing.
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  21. - Top - End - #111
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    HalflingWizardGirl

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    Default Re: Strixhaven Subclasses Scrapped

    Quote Originally Posted by LudicSavant View Post
    An awful lot of things happened earlier than a lot of people realize, TBH. For example, there are ancient Roman-era creations that are basically animatronics.



    There are stories from cultures like ancient India about armies of automatons.

    You can find numerous examples of ancient stories of robots on the Wikipedia page for the history of robotics. And that's really just a small introductory sampling.

    People have been telling all kinds of stories about robots for a long, long time. Ancient philosophers would even argue about stuff like, say, the idea that the development of automata would end human slavery ((IIRC Aristotle talks about it, for instance)).
    I stand corrected. Thank you for that information!

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