DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Fantasy SKT: The Storm King's Thunder OOC thread

Actually, what I am going to do is try and get all the character sheets into DndBeyond. I know it'll be rare for us to play face-to-face (or avatar-to-avatar) but DnDBeyond characters link nicely to Roll20, ForgeVTT and Discord, if we ever want to do that again.

So ultimately - into DnDBeyond.

Cool, but doesn't this mean you've had to pay out for D&D Beyond too!? That's over 400 smackers and a monthly sub.

Once you have links though, post them here and I'll alter the forum top links.

I don’t use it for DreamLyrics only so it’s worth it. I don’t buy all the books so that’s a challenge for players that pick classes and races from books other than the player handbook.

You know what, I think we've chatted about this before!? But yes, it's a sensible reason to limit the books permitted in a campaign as WotC release gradually more.

So, Neptune and everyone, what do you make of the new "Customizing Your Origin" optional rules in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything?

These allow you to take the Ability Score Increases that you get from your race and apply them to another Ability Score to better represent your unique character.

Frex, if you had an elf that you wanted to be strong instead of dexterous, you could transfer the typical +2 DEX bonus to +2 STR. The only caveats are:

1. You can’t bring any ability score above 20,
2. If you receive 2 ASIs as part of your race, you cannot increase the same ability score twice.

Also includes rules for switching out languages and proficiencies from your racial traits.

On the one hand, it all sounds like a way for players to make more interesting characters.

On the other it makes things more complicated ... specially for a 'tired old guy' like me <vbg>

Seems to dilute the point of the races, from a tactical point of view. If any pc can increase Str (or any other stat), not just Dwarves, Half-Orcs, and Humans then why bother defining it at all? Just tell all players you get a +2 and a +1 you can put into any stat and move on.

Yeah, I'm not sure about it myself. I can go round and round with it.

Pro: If you want to play an elf two-handed fighter with a greatsword then elf might be a suboptimal choice at low level. Con: But then you might rightly say "Yes, some races are better or worse at things than others, obviously. Halfings are never going to be as strong as half-orcs."

Then again, Pro: You could have two players wanting to play elves and wanting to distinguish each other. "My elf is the strong one." "My elf is the smart one." Like you might do with two human characters. (Majere Twins anyone?) Con: But an elf fighter with +0 STR increase and 15 STR is still a better fighter than an elf wizard with a +2 INT increase and 17 STR, who is still a wizard.

Pro: Why limit a player's creativity? Con: Limitations can push you into creative decisions you wouldn't normal make.

See what I mean?

My personal taste, for D&D 5e, is to stick to the standard race Ability Score Increases. Straight off the bat, I don't think I'd have discovered Arus without them.

I can see (at least) two sides <g>

If there is no 'distinction' to a race ... what is the point of the race? It is meant to give the player some 'structure' to build their unique character upon.

On the other hand, it creates 'limitations' that will tend to 'direct' character development in certain directions based on that race.

But how is that different than class which dictates a lot of what the character can be/become?

And I agree nem. I think those things are what help you make a character that is uniquely 'yours' <g>

As a DM, I allow players to use something if I don't have to pay for it. In the new universe of VTTs and DnD Beyond I have to buy books 3 times over. Not happening. In the new games I started I'm allowing Player Handbook options and not much aside from that. Infinite options create the mess (IMO) that DnD 3.5 became. Imagine what chaos would ensue if they added a new piece to chess. Let's see you first make a standard character work.

On the other hand, the tweaks Nem mention are minor and wouldn't bother me unless the player has a problem making DnD Beyond work and wants me to do work to make it work.

We've been playing an AD&D 2nd Ed adventure recently in our ftf group and I'm playing a bog standard, classic dwarf cleric. It totally works. Having said that 2nd Ed is deeply weird and now I've finally played it I'm glad it's relegated to history.

And I like your point, MikeD. Race has little bearing on what a character can do in-game compared to their class anyway, so it's probably what easiest and least expensive for the group that counts. Let's say your group used D&D Beyond, would anyone want to pay $30 just to be able to swap their Ability Score increases? Not I!

I suspect the optional rule is more appealling to organised play where GMs see a lot of characters and get bored of the same tropes. "Please not another wood elf ranger! How about a half-orc ranger for a change!?"

I like going against type, but I'm happy working within the rules for it.

On this subject, I saw one argument for the optional rule was that it prevents players from choosing the race that's optimal for their class, power-gaming in essence.

I'm definitely a power gamer so I can say that this optional rule doesn't prevent min-maxing. For example, it makes mountain dwarves very desirable since they have a +2 Str and +2 Con that you can swap to other abilities. So mountain dwarf gives you more bang for your buck.

Choosing the Race that is optimal for my class and power gaming is my primary goal when setting up a new pc so anything that reduces that I am against.

I'm with you. My point is that the optional rule doesn't prevent power gaming though, so if that's a GM's motive for using it they might be disappointed.

I mean, this is D&D we're talking about; the whole point is to literally level up your character. Imho power gaming is core to the experience and that's totally fine.

If I was a GM my main motive for using the optional rule would be to encourage unusual race/class combinations, but I don't play enough D&D to be bored of the usual race/class combinations yet.

It seems to me that the GM should be the one that 'sets the standard'.

If he is looking for a 'no holds bared' 'over the top' game, then let the players for crazy <g>

If he wants a 'character driven' game ... that is fine too ... as long as everyone is on the same page <g>

And so on.

True, good advice, MikeD. Always set expectations with the whole group before you start.

Trust me ... I learned the =hard= way <wink>

As a DM I balance everything.

Trying to optimize your PC only leads me to make the encounters all the more difficult. Make your PC stronger and you face tougher foes. In the end, to properly run a game it must be challenging without being impossible. A problem arises when the PCs are not close to equal in power. The DM is forced to make encounters either a cakewalk for the optimized or deadly for the mundane character.

That's another excellent point, Neptune, and another one often overlooked by GMs.

Only the GM has an overview of all the character builds in the group. So the Zeims and Nems might be building carefully optimised characters, whereas others will start out with back story, develop from there but generally stick to the story when they build.

Unless the system is particularly well-balanced, you can end up with a party of mixed power levels and that will cause player and GM angst the longer they play.

Palladium's Rifts is probably the worst I've seen for this. "I'm playing a humble, self-taught scholar who studies Golden Age artefacts and has 95 hit points." "That's nice, I'm playing an ancient dragon necromancer with magical tattoos and 23,000 hit points."

That's not an exaggeration. As a GM you have to let players know what power level your game will be and ensure all builds reach the bar.

FFG's Star Wars and D&D 3rd Ed allowed you to build pretty poorly optimised characters too.

D&D 5th Ed's excellent for balance though. Even if you choose a suboptimal race/class combo it'll iron out as you level up.

The only slightly shoddy classes are standard ranger and monk.

Even the standard ranger and the monk can work. In our FTF game where Zeim and I took characters to 20th level, both were represented and neither player ever complained about their PC's abilities.

Absolutely. I enjoyed Chandan too and he was a five elements monk, regarded as the weakest of the subclasses. But as cool a character as he was, he wasn't nearly as powerful and useful a party-member as a conqueror paladin.

That's one of the reasons I changed at the end of LMP. I didn't feel like he was contributing nearly as much as a different class would.

To my mind, it shouldn't purely be an optimisation of base stats. There needs to be an optimisation of personality, of interaction, of a character's given schtick. Getting the most out of skills and backgrounds not merely as things your character does well but as windows into their personality and outlook.

FWIW ... I prefer to do my character background and the like first ... especially if I have some of the game's background to help me <g>

In D&D I always decide what I want to play before I decide who I want to play.

But there are a lot of systems without classes and then I'll simply decide who I want to play first.

I developed a method for this when I had to create an early Victorian character in Cortex Plus.

I even wrote it up so I'd remember.

I'm with Nem on this one. I often find, if I'm creating a character, that the one I created makes no sense for the game that I'm playing. I use the early chapters to develop my character's personality. However, D&D does have a baseline for the character from the get-go. I find that the D&D background with the personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws combined with the background are more than enough to get started with.