DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Hall of Fame - Latest Top 10 completed games LMP: Lost Mines of Phandelver OOC thread

I hadn't looked at the Basic Rules PDF for a =long= time <g> And I would expect the PHB to be at least as 'clear' as the free PDF <chuckle>



I don't disagree, as I said. It was the fact that it =is= such a big change and that it wasn't all that 'explicit' in the PHB that had me 'confused' <g>

Oh, and btw, using the Optional "Feats" rule allows you to select a Feat for your pc instead of taking the 2 bonus Statistic points, if you choose to (i.e. you can still take the 2 points if you want to).

One of the Feats is called "Alertness" and it gives you (among other things)a +5 to your Initiative.

Yeah, I remember seeing that feat ... now that you mention it <g>

The Alterness Feat gives:
1) +5 to Initiative
2) You can never be surprised
3) Hidden foes do not get Advantage when attacking you from cover

I am playing a higher level variation of Kallista in the new Horde of the Dragon Queen Game WoTC released at Gencon (actually Neptune and I are "tag-team" DM'ing it, alternating every chapter and playing each other's pc when we are not running) and I just made 4th level. It was a really close call for me whether to take Alertness or to take the 2 points and bump my Charisma stat up to 18.

Since a Warlock's spellcasting is based on Cha, and bumping that up to 18 gives me:

1) +1 to my attack roll
2) +1 to damage on my main attack
3) +1 to my spell DC for foes to save against
4) Various Skills improve by +1

I ended up choosing the Stat bump. But it was really close.

Yeah, that is another change - they have made stats a lot more important than they have been in the past <g>

I have Ryssa's (cleric) proficient skills set as Insight and Medicine. In Ed. 5, however, I don't see much advantage to being proficient in medicine except for possibility being better able to diagnose a particular type disease.

Do you think I'd be better off having her proficiencies set for Insight and Perception rather than Medicine?

I would go with Perception and Medicine for a Cleric. Medicine is a great Skill, especially for low level pcs. You get to add your Proficiency Bonus to the roll and it is the only way (other than a spell or lay-on-hands) to stop someone from making Death Saves without using a Healer's Kit.

If you have used your 2 Healing spells for the day and someone drops to zero and start failing Death Saves you will be very happy to be able to prevent them from dying so they can recover some hit points during a short rest.

I like that alertness!

You just have to balance that against the advantage of not taking the 2 extra points to put to your stats.

Choices, choices..

Okay, thanks for the advice.

A continuation about tactics from the "N" game.

I questioned Karok's (Nivek) cleric healing of himself while Kriv (AJ) was making death saves. Nivek's rational explanation was that if he was dead, the party was doomed. In the conversation there were other tactics questioned, like Chandan (nemarsde) splitting from the party. I also brought up focus-fire as a common standard tactic.

The discussion interests me but it's tangential to the game. So it moves here.

In 4e there was a whole book dedicated to strategy (Players Strategy Guide) where these types of tactics are discussed in great detail. We're now playing 5e so lots of those 4e specific tactics don't apply, but some do.

There's a whole page on common mistakes like this one:


What are some other tactics you employ? How do you think they'll work in 5e?

An example: Lingo, in Z's game, is using 1/2 his move to come out from full cover, fire an arrow and uses the balance of his move to get back behind cover. That's something he couldn't do in 4e.

As to tactics that still apply ...

1.) "Split the party and Die" still applies <wink>
2.) Keep the cleric alive at all costs is still valid.
3.) Party Balance is still important.
4.) Over extending =can= be a useful tactic, but it can be dangerous too. I miss my 3rd ed Dervish. Talk about a character that ignored 'the line', he was everywhere swatting things all along the way <chuckle>

At GenCon a year and a half ago, Zeim and I participated in the "Championship" tournament with some of our other friends. We were far ahead in 1st place after the first half which was basically all puzzles. In the second half, which was all pure melee, we made a tactical error, extending and separating from the cleric who was slow. The DM focused fire on the cleric, knocking him out first and thereby preventing him from healing the party. We lost.

One item Nep left out was we were encouraged to run ahead as fast as we could because we had to get to specific spots on the map quickly to use certain items to prevent an evil god from returning. But he's right that the Cleric, who was slower, was left behind and when enemies appeared suddenly, and unexpectedly, from behind us the Cleric was suddenly on the front line by himself.

Didn't turn out well for us.

It also didn't help that you decided to not to roll above a 5 for three or four rounds either!

Nice to hear that I am not the only one to have crappy rolls at GenCon <chuckle>

Yeah. In v4 any spell/effect that caused the "Daze" condition was sometimes critically important. We were fighting a demi-god who had multiple actions every turn that were all bad for us. My pc had an "At-Will" spell that caused "Daze", which would have limited the enemy to a single action. I rolled a 5 or lower for at least 4 or 5 consecutive turns.

Mike,
But you were a DM. It's good when DMs roll crappy at GenCon LOL

Yeah, but it often continued when I was playing <sigh>

Yeah, I had AJ and Silk putting a serious hex on my dice when I was running at that GypsyCon recently.

Almost as bad as having Gypsy sat next to me using her warlock powers!

(Whistles innocently.)

This came up in the "Z" game, and since we've been talking about healing recently I thought perhaps everyone might benefit:

Note that every one of you has a rated Skill in Medicine. You do not need to be Proficient in it to use it. I understand the normal thing to do in a situation where there's a dying pc or npc is to let the Cleric cast a healing spell, but there is no penalty for failing in an attempt to use Medicine. A success stabilizes the subject and no more Death Saves are needed, although they are still unconscious. If you have a Healer's Kit, you can automatically stabilize a dying person without needing to make a Medicine Skill check with one use of the kit, which comes with 10 uses. However because of the way this all works the Healer's Kit should really be an emergency back-up for when everyone fails a Medicine Skill check.

Reason I am re-enforcing this is in my game two pcs just effectively said they couldn't do anything to help a dying NPC so went to do something else. Both of those pcs have the ability to save this dying person's life and just walked past him and let him continue to die. If that's in your pc's personality, no problem. But I didn't want it to be due to misunderstanding of how Healing works.

I was waiting for Ryssa's turn - so the way you're saying, if the dying PC is not stabilized by her turn, she should try a Medicine skill check first instead of using her Healer's Kit?

Yes. Medicine Skill does the same thing as the Healer's Kit, it just requires a successful Skill Check whereas the Healer's Kit works automatically. You should save the Healer's Kit for those times when everyone fails a Medicine Skill check.

Obviously it doesn't bring them back to consciousness. You'd need to use a Healing Spell for that or take a Rest.

Rule says that once a person is stabilized they only have to make more Death Saves if they take more damage. Otherwise, if they are not healed, and don't use a Healing Die, they regain 1hp (i.e. become conscious) after 1d4 hours of rest.