Wizards and other full caster classes, if I recall, gain their first 8th level slots at 15
so that's *just* high enough to start playing with the big toys
-
Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
- The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
- Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
Dungeons and/or Dragons
- Thread starter Paul le Fou
- Start date
so that's *just* high enough to start playing with the big toys
Yeah, I think I might just do my original idea and stick with the Bladesinger. There are some sick spells up there, like Tenser's Transformation, which should be amazing in combination with Bladesinger (It's a little bit redundant, but also has some bonuses that undeniably kick butt). Steel Wind Strike isn't technically reliant on any melee power, it's a pure spell, but it's still definitely in flavor (also very good). Et cetera.
Yeah, we just started doing that with the campaign I DM too - my girlfriend has been wanting to DM, and sometimes I need a break or just have a shit day, so now we have a secondary set of characters that she gets to practice DMing with. It's technically a series of one-shot adventures we'll be stringing together rather than a full secondary campaign, but the characters will be consistent. That's the one where I rolled a Bugbear monk, Way of the Ascendant Dragon. We're doing Sunless Citadel out of the Tales from the Yawning Portal book to start off, and it's already started tying into two of our characters' backstories in a big way, which is a bonus.
Bladesinger looks fine to me, power-wise? Still a full wizard, after all. Attack + Cast a Cantrip is nice, Int bonus to Con Saves is good, trading low level spell slots for HP is honestly great at high level.
I mean like Shield + innate +5 AC is going to make you absurdly hard to hit, and all your 2nd and 3rd level spell slots are worth another 80ish HP?
And if that doesn’t work or once you’re out of bladesongs you’re still a god damn level 15 wizard.
I mean like Shield + innate +5 AC is going to make you absurdly hard to hit, and all your 2nd and 3rd level spell slots are worth another 80ish HP?
And if that doesn’t work or once you’re out of bladesongs you’re still a god damn level 15 wizard.
Purple
(She/Her)
My Starfinder experience is Significant. Random things of note:
- Stat increases work so much better where basically everything rises a ton except 2 dump stats.
- Classes feel, and frankly are, very weak compared to Pathfinder but equipment gets really rad, so it balances out generally.
- Combat tends to be all ranged and is easy to get same-y so set piece weirdness really helps.
- Ship combat/customization blows and you should just not bother honestly.
- If you're doing APs, err on the side of really chatty NPCs because they're much shorter and more straightforward all around.
- 5' step is a move action and that will trip you up a ton.
- Mentally brace yourself for actually shockingly great rogues.
- Stamina is a really good mechanic and you should keep in mind that mystics heal HP but envoys heal stamina.
- Stat increases work so much better where basically everything rises a ton except 2 dump stats.
- Classes feel, and frankly are, very weak compared to Pathfinder but equipment gets really rad, so it balances out generally.
- Combat tends to be all ranged and is easy to get same-y so set piece weirdness really helps.
- Ship combat/customization blows and you should just not bother honestly.
- If you're doing APs, err on the side of really chatty NPCs because they're much shorter and more straightforward all around.
- 5' step is a move action and that will trip you up a ton.
- Mentally brace yourself for actually shockingly great rogues.
- Stamina is a really good mechanic and you should keep in mind that mystics heal HP but envoys heal stamina.
Esp if you go the frostcheese route (winter touched/lasting frost + frost weapon) which an old player friend did. And frost cheese would even if your Dex mod is +1 which frees up points for other ways to build up as well as boosting your Fort or Will Def. Like points into Con to get extra HP/Surges and also Str to qualify for Hide armor.
Not to mention at lv3 you can use a basic attack with a minor action after a daily power for lots of stabby action.
Add in a Torq of power preservation and you can use Bladesong a second time once a day, or more if someone can recharge that. Or just carry a bunch of lower level Torqs as Bladesong also gives you a +2 to defenses. Cunning stalker feat and Armor of Dark Deed also gives you permanent CA and +2 Def.
Yet somehow this character is classified as a controller...
Thank you!
I often hear negative thoughts regarding the ship building and combat in this game. But I really like the idea of it, so I'm gonna do my best to see if I can make it more dynamic and fun for the players. The Starship Operations Manual seems to have some good thoughts on how to do that.
I just need to come up with a long list of backstory stuff for my character now. Three epic feats they did, a phobia, and some other basic stuff. Phew...
I get that some people come up with a character and build class and levels around it, but I almost always start with a mechanical idea (certain subclass/build/etc.) and build a character around it. Sometimes that's pretty easy! Sometimes...less so. Right now I'm a Satyr bladesinger, and my barebones backstory is I was one of Dionysus's personal guard (I pulled my name from an epic poem about Dionysus going to war with India??) but I haven't been able to build up much from there. (Or know if I need to find a different god to substitute for Dionysus, what with his being from the Greek pantheon and all...)
I get that some people come up with a character and build class and levels around it, but I almost always start with a mechanical idea (certain subclass/build/etc.) and build a character around it. Sometimes that's pretty easy! Sometimes...less so. Right now I'm a Satyr bladesinger, and my barebones backstory is I was one of Dionysus's personal guard (I pulled my name from an epic poem about Dionysus going to war with India??) but I haven't been able to build up much from there. (Or know if I need to find a different god to substitute for Dionysus, what with his being from the Greek pantheon and all...)
I'm playing 5e; you appear to be talking about a completely different game. (Well, no, you appear to be talking about 4e, but that might as well be a completely different game anyway.)
Last edited:
Purple
(She/Her)
I should really find the time to sit down with the SOM and see what it does. The core rules ship stuff though, yeesh. I've seen it speculated that they were an outright act of sabotage by a particularly bad apple at the company, and that fully tracks with a sizable amount of available data.
It's not that they aren't playable at least. It is VERY easy to design a ship where you can just practically one-shot everything, and the actual mechanics seem really complex but after a round or two it's just going around the table and everyone rolling a skill check every round.
The problem is that there's just nothing there once you decode what you're doing, and it's inherently always going to just be this speed bump between real adventures that's worth skipping just to avoid all the bookkeeping.
I cast Power Weed: Chill at 420th level
Very proud of my players @Dr. Nerd , @Bulgakov , @JBear , and @Lokii for defeating Baba Lysaga in Curse of Strahd, well below the levels that the module intends for players to visit Berez. If anyone's played this adventure before, you know Berez is a common TPK site. I tried to warn them off of going into the marsh, but they were determined to do it. I didn't pull any punches, and the group (with a little help from Ezmerelda) managed to defeat the witch and her hut through a combination of good strategic choices and a bit of luck.
The real MVP of this gaming group is our DM, who puts up with our 15-minute bad joke digressions and endless needling of his NPCs as if that's how we're supposed to play the game.
nosimpleway
(he/him)
Having finished school and figuring I can branch out into doing things that are actually fun sometimes, I thought "Hey, maybe I'll write another D&D game or something."
lol nah
might try to play in one though
lol nah
might try to play in one though
Frankly I'd be disappointed if the players weren't endlessly needling the NPCs. That's what they're there for!
It.... it is, though
Unrelated but I'm undecuded, which character do I play for the campaign where my girlfriend introduces her friends to D&D? We're starting at level 1.
Artificer (subclass undecided)
Druid - Circle of Stars
Wizard - Fart Evoker
Artificer (subclass undecided)
Druid - Circle of Stars
Wizard - Fart Evoker
How many other players will be in the campaign? I think you might want to wait and decide after you see what classes they pick.
Also, dare I even ask what a Fart Evoker is?
That's what I did, and we're playing tonight so it's time to choose! But I don't knooooow!
Also a fart evoker is an evoker wizard whose spell list, is, well,
farts.
Bless you for appreciating my creative genius, a rare thing among the philistines that surround me
But how would you fuel such spells? I think it would require some kind of magical fruit...
In the end I went with the Artificer. So far we're just level 1 so I'm just a weak caster with some tools, but that should start changing soon. (One of the few times I'm alright playing from level 1 anymore is with a class I've never played as and only rarely played alongside). Right now I'm undecided between whether to eventually go with Artillerist or Armorer. This is a very once-in-a-while campaign, though (I think once a month) so I'm not particularly worried about it yet.
Honestly, Armorer normally seems kinda like, yeah OK you get to play Iron Man, I get it, whatever. Except I'm a Warforged, so any and all of my armor is already integrated into my body anyway, and tinkering around with various gadgets that attach to or pop out of my body and such seems like a cool idea that suits the race that I want to focus on for this character. That said, I'd do the same with artillerist too, flavoring my cannon as a module I mount on my shoulder that I can also detach and let scurry around on legs, and all my spells and non-subclass features to boot. I guess in the end it's do I want to go slightly more casty or slightly more fighty. Thinking about our party makeup, I'll probably end up focusing on casting, so artillerist seems more likely right now. But again, I won't have to make that call for like, 2-3 months.
Honestly, Armorer normally seems kinda like, yeah OK you get to play Iron Man, I get it, whatever. Except I'm a Warforged, so any and all of my armor is already integrated into my body anyway, and tinkering around with various gadgets that attach to or pop out of my body and such seems like a cool idea that suits the race that I want to focus on for this character. That said, I'd do the same with artillerist too, flavoring my cannon as a module I mount on my shoulder that I can also detach and let scurry around on legs, and all my spells and non-subclass features to boot. I guess in the end it's do I want to go slightly more casty or slightly more fighty. Thinking about our party makeup, I'll probably end up focusing on casting, so artillerist seems more likely right now. But again, I won't have to make that call for like, 2-3 months.
The Artillerist cannon is really neat. Protector lets your whole party punch above their weight, and the Flame Thrower is a really dependable source of damage. And since they only use bonus actions to fire, you can use your actions to do all sorts of fun things. I didn’t appreciate how flexible it makes you until I tried it out.
Yeah, seeing I could do all that with my bonus action made me sit up and go "whoa." The more I think about it the more I'm leaning toward that.
Anyone looking for a character idea? Here's one free* to use:
*but only for non-commercial uses
(The character does not have to be male but does need to be able to wield a staff.)
*but only for non-commercial uses
I ran one of my all time best sessions last night. The party has been on a floating island, helping the mages who live there against invading Dwarves. The Dwarves had freed a bunch of Aberrations that had been imprisoned in crystals, so there have have been a bunch of battles against Aberrations, Dwarves, and both. I used this phenomenal map from Dyson Logos.
At the start of the session the party interrogated a Dwarf and found out that they had gotten to the island in a mechanical Roc (they all assumed it was a mechanical Rock & were very confused for a while). They decided to seek out the head mage to let him know & ask for advice. At this point they on the lookout for Aberrations & giving them wide berth. They made their way onto the small island tethered to the right side (using flight, expand/reduce, gaseous form, levitation boots, and a very high acrobatics roll, respectively), and navigated a field of explosive runes to get to the tower. The head mage was able to use a spell to view different parts of the island in his crystal globe, and he eventually spotted a huge robot bird on the underside of the island (I could see the gears spinning when they realized it was a Roc). They asked for help in fighting it, so he gave them a carpet of flying. They had also retrieved some crystals that let people port back to the big cluster of crystals near the center of the island as an action.
The final battle was incredible. They were able to surprise the Roc & deal a lot of damage up front, but those things are hearty. They hit like a truck, too. A few Dwarves climbed out of it early on & used spiderclimb to provide some ranged support. The party really only focused on the Roc though. Early on it kept hitting people with it’s beak but missing with talons, so it wasn’t until later on that they realized that move auto-grapples. Near the end of combat it grabbed the Druid, knocking her unconscious in the process. She immediately failed a death save. So, if they killed the Roc she would have gone down with it. The Ranger made a wild dive for her and succeeded on a contested check, plunging them both into freefall. He used a healing potion on her then teleported back to the crystal. The Warlock attacked again & came up just short of killing it. But, right at the end of his turn he remembered to use Fury of the Small which was enough to destroy it. They were able to regroup & dislodge the Dwarves, dropping them to their doom.
Part of why I liked this session was because sky combat is just really fun. But, there was also a lot of trickery, clever use of spells, smart decision making, teamwork, heroic acts, and decisions based on their characters personalities. Everything just came together really well. They all hit level 8, and I think we have a few more big adventures before the campaign ends. I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next.
At the start of the session the party interrogated a Dwarf and found out that they had gotten to the island in a mechanical Roc (they all assumed it was a mechanical Rock & were very confused for a while). They decided to seek out the head mage to let him know & ask for advice. At this point they on the lookout for Aberrations & giving them wide berth. They made their way onto the small island tethered to the right side (using flight, expand/reduce, gaseous form, levitation boots, and a very high acrobatics roll, respectively), and navigated a field of explosive runes to get to the tower. The head mage was able to use a spell to view different parts of the island in his crystal globe, and he eventually spotted a huge robot bird on the underside of the island (I could see the gears spinning when they realized it was a Roc). They asked for help in fighting it, so he gave them a carpet of flying. They had also retrieved some crystals that let people port back to the big cluster of crystals near the center of the island as an action.
The final battle was incredible. They were able to surprise the Roc & deal a lot of damage up front, but those things are hearty. They hit like a truck, too. A few Dwarves climbed out of it early on & used spiderclimb to provide some ranged support. The party really only focused on the Roc though. Early on it kept hitting people with it’s beak but missing with talons, so it wasn’t until later on that they realized that move auto-grapples. Near the end of combat it grabbed the Druid, knocking her unconscious in the process. She immediately failed a death save. So, if they killed the Roc she would have gone down with it. The Ranger made a wild dive for her and succeeded on a contested check, plunging them both into freefall. He used a healing potion on her then teleported back to the crystal. The Warlock attacked again & came up just short of killing it. But, right at the end of his turn he remembered to use Fury of the Small which was enough to destroy it. They were able to regroup & dislodge the Dwarves, dropping them to their doom.
Part of why I liked this session was because sky combat is just really fun. But, there was also a lot of trickery, clever use of spells, smart decision making, teamwork, heroic acts, and decisions based on their characters personalities. Everything just came together really well. They all hit level 8, and I think we have a few more big adventures before the campaign ends. I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens next.