JCC [OOTS]You suck, Monty

960 Collision testing

Panel 4, he's talking about a Trapper? Or Luker Above?

 

Probably a Lurker Above, perennial favorite of ***hole DMs everywhere.

 

I still love this comic dearly.

 

5E Tarrasque preview

Less HP, less armor class, smaller stats, "Challenge 30" vs 3.0 CL 20.

 

Isn't that a good thing? It's indicative of less systemic power creep.

 

Oh I think it's a very good thing, hopefully they stick to the line they draw with it. I'll say this too, the entire organization of the stat page looks great. I don't know how many times I have gone to look for the basics of AC and HP and the Ability Scores and they sometimes took a few moments to locate. 3.5 stats were a mess to look at. The first time I saw the Elminster stat page I almost gagged. It was interesting to be sure, but good christ what a mess. It was enough for me in AD&D to see Wiz-26.

 

It's enough XP to jump someone from 1st to 14th level all in one go... >.>

 

I wonder if this means the likes of Hulk, Thor, and other marvel Class 100 folks would have approx 30 STR. That's quite the cap. In fact Captain America in 3.5 would have had either a 25 or 26. It says "hundreds of tons" in bodyweight but that is not needed nor was it anything over 100 tons of weight in previous editions.

 

And it's still -- if the following elements of the game have been retained -- fatally vulnerable to anyone who has a scroll of Fly and a bow which fires even a +1 arrow. The lower AC and no obvious mode to regenerate its hitpoints makes it crucially easier to kill now since it still has no way to hurt anyone who has a way to stay 30 feet or more above it in the air. For someone who has more than three spells to cast in a single day and high DC spells that hit Int saves, it's even easier given it can only hit the "No" button to spells three times in a whole day. I think the 3.5 Tarrasque could be taken out with a single level 4 character correctly equipped. I doubt this one'll be much tougher.

I'd not disagree with you that Elminster's stat page was horrible, but in part I'd suggest because it was an abysmal build for 3.5. I'd assuming part of the grotesquery was retaining bits and pieces of earlier editions to try and keep it semi-consistent with previous editions and previous novels. I mean, why the Christ would Elminster ever take a rogue level? Or a fighter level? On the other hand, those stats were built before 3.0 and 3.5 had been fully mined by players to create the Lego-brick behemoths we all know and love. As it is I've seen plenty of builds with no more class variation in them than Wizard 20 which could utterly wipe the floor with Elminster as built in the campaign sourcebook.

 

It's partly a character thing update. He's been alive for something like 1,000 years. A little sword training, some thief training, it's not out of the question. I would also say that any wizard can at some point find themselves without magic and a level in a couple of classes might help them enough to get out of a bind.

 

If a DM has so little system mastery or hatred for the wizard that he has no way of controlling the player other than removing all access to spells, it's likely a situation and/or a CR rating where a level in fighter and four levels in rogue aren't going to save him

I mean, by a similar token, has anyone ever played with a DM so priggish he's actually used Disjunction against the party's full load of magic items? I mean it's just not done.

 

Ready?

 

I didn't want to turn this into the official 5e thread or anything, but the thread I started in the games forum is dead and we have nothing better to do during these times between updates.

So here is a 5E Player's Handbook review

 

So I have the Player's Handbook. What the rules do is streamline and they do make sense. There are no saving throw rolls, you use ability scores. You may attempt anything using your ability score modifier(if any) and a D20. Levels1-5 at +2 if you picked that skill, levels 15-20 are +6. Every few levels you may choose to increase one ability score by +2 or two ability scores by +1 each OR take a feat. Feats are not as widespread and there are not chains of them to get to an awesome result.

The strength stat is weird. See the Tarasque above? STR30? It can lift 7200 pound unless the Monster Manual shows more size categories and there is no modifier for damage to go with it. I suppose it harken back to original D&D where 25 was the max no matter the god or creature or whatever.

There is tons of Forgotten Realms within. What's funny is that even in the older editions where Greyhawk was default there was not specific Greyhawk info. In this there are sidebars discussing Artemis Entreri for example.

It looks like Prestige Classes will be replaced by Archetypes but I have no hint that there will be further Archetypes other than what is shown.

 

Oh, FYI, when I was younger and dealing with kids younger than I who kept wanting to run one on one battles with sets of magic items, I'd create mages with Wild Magic-based Wirefire spells mimicing an impenetrable shield in a sphere causing a vacuum, Greater Contingency and other protections, an ioun stone preventing the need for food/drink/air and then a Mordenkainen's Disjunction while touching the shield (preventing the shield from lowering) which... usually settled much of the match right there.

 

I like the term "Wirefire".

 

Clearly it's supposed to be "Wildfire" which was (no pun intended) wildly overpowered back in the day.

 

I recall Spellfire in FR, but not Wildfire.

 

There's a Wildfire spell in AD&D - which I suspect is the edition dp was using, since half the stuff in that post is from that edition Basically it was a high-end spell for Wild Mages, allowed them to use Wild Magic to just cast any old spell they chose from about 8th level down.

Under 3.5 Forgotten Realms the rough equivalent is Greater Anyspell, which basically just makes the cleric even more indomitable, since it's a cleric-only spell, specifically Cleric of Mystra, and allows you to cast any mage spell of 6th level or under out of your domain slot.

 

Yup, that would be it. It could also be used to generate ridiculous constructs, iirc.

 

A little blast from the past

And if you don't own the dvd's, shame on you.

 

961 Hearing is believing

Or not. He should have sent Haley. The last line is kinda dumb.

 

It reads a bit like a Pearls Before Swine pun, but without as much effort.

 

Just think how many times he's seen himself naked