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[Mephansteras]

I am now looking at guides of how to DM, because I want to try being a DM at some point.

Hell, I may make my own D&D game on these forums. I don't know. Apparently, I gotta spend some time familiarizing myself with the rules, first.

I recommend running some practice battles. Start off simple. Maybe just have a few 1st level warriors duke it out, or fight a few goblins. You don't need anyone else, you just need to run through the motions to get a hang for how it works.

Once you get the real basics down (moving, attacking, attacks of opportunity, etc) you can start using higher level characters, spells, powerful monsters, and the like.

Once you can run a battle with 10th level characters against some decent enemies (maybe just have the party fight duplicates of itself), then you should be functional enough to run a game. There is still a lot to concern yourself with, but combat is by far the most rules intensive bit and the part that generally takes up the bulk of your time. (Depending on how much your group RPs, at least)

[sambojin]

Just on the "what could be slightly broken as a character build" question, here's one that caught my eye. Not so much a full build, just potentially annoying to have in a core rule-book.

Human Cleric of the Lightbringer. With arcane dabbler as a feat (mage hand, prestigigation for dabbler, lance of faith and cure minor wounds as cleric cantrips.)

Highish stats for a lvl 1 (even off the standard array), mage hand to ensure "light" interaction/item/adventure problems aren't yours, multiple use cantrip for the hell of it, cure minor wounds as a "you DON'T die now" skill for the party, and lance of faith for a 50' attack. Pick your spells, they're just gravy. Healy and assists or problem causes look to be top picks.

A 50 foot attack that does 2d6 radiant (not many things resist/immune to radiant, usually the opposite), reaction-fire to anything that even tries to hit you, a 2d6 for opportunity attacks and it scales at the same time, quite nicely, to keep it at about warrior level +melee damage. At which point you'll also have a proper spell repetoire to back it up with.

You could try a high elf if you don't want attribute spam (maybe picking Ray of Frost for your bonus cantrip, and maybe energy substitution instead of arcane dabbler if your DM tends to run resistant/immune/weakness style monsters), or try and go for a reach weapon for the extra opportunity attacks. At lvl 9 you can also get the spear/reach based thing that gives you op.attacks as they enter your reach.

It's not horribly OP, but it does stand out like dog's balls. I'd chuck on Thug as a background and go all inquisitional on them. Kick in door, intimidate, know that if they swing they get a face full of lance-o'-faith. Then another straight afterwards. Minor crimes or major death. Good times rewarded. Plus, unless you really want them to, no one has to die. Cure minor wounds, lance'o'faith, cure minor wounds, ask questions, lance'o'faith. Repeat

[sambojin]

Another silly/funny thing I noticed. Potentially exponential gold growth off healing potions. I know that no DM would allow it, but I've played in campaigns where you're meant to say what you did in the week of the lead-up to your character being in the adventure.

"So what did you do?"

"Well, I've got this feat that lets me make healing potions for 25 gold, and since charisma is my highest stat, I can sell them for more than 25 gold. So I made shit loads of healing potions. And sold them."

"How many did you make?"

"Hold on, I'll do the maths. I now have 3200 gold and 45 health potions. Fuck adventuring."

[sambojin]

A triple-post-combo!!???!?!! No, I don't say that proudly. And yes, I am aware of the poor spelling in the previous posts. Prestigigiditiaigitaion. Damn phone..........

Anyway, I also can't help but think of the roleplaying opportunities in those boring times where everyone else is just mucking around to say "I soil your suit."
Next turn:
"A small puff of wind, similar to a queef, comes from between the legs of Liera Willowborn, high priestess of generalized goodness."
Next turn:
"Your ration tastes like poo. Sorry about that."

The best spell in the game is one that can annoy and humiliate indefinitely.

[Mephansteras]

The best spells in the game have always been the ones that had their best uses outside of combat.

[Neonivek]

Well, I've got this feat that lets me make healing potions for 25 gold, and since charisma is my highest stat, I can sell them for more than 25 gold.

25 gold potions? This must be 4E where potions are a lot less useful.

Anyhow did you remember to half the price of the healing potions.

[sambojin]

Nope, this is DnD Next. Usually they're 50g, but there's a healing feat that lets you make them for 25g (along with antitoxins and healers kits). You should be able to sell them for more than that with a decent charisma (or maybe by being a member of a guild).

Another strange thing that caught my eye is the commercialisation of dragon skinning. Fair enough, it's one of the the better armours in the game, But I hope its not too common.

I guess there's a reason that dragons are rare these days. The armour industry killed off 478 million of the poor bloody things, just so we could have some stylish leather armour with matching boots.

Mine are red, and green for that christmas cheer.

[Neonivek]

The funny thing is Sambojin is that you can artifically make it.

Inspite of the fact that you COULD get adamantine from the underdark the vast majority of Adamantine equipment was magically created by transmuting ordinary metal (and lot of gold with it) into it.

So you could just turn ordinary leather into dragon leather so long as you are willing to pay.

Remember Dungeons and Dragons is a universe where the Cosmos itself sets the prices of goods.

You should be able to sell them for more than that with a decent charisma

Honestly I always understood the "Half-price" and "Quarter price" rules were for balance... but I always found them incredibly silly especially in a "ROLE"playing game.

It would make sense if half priced magic goods were just the perfect price so that getting buyer is never difficult... yet the game actually never even attempts to highlight a way for you to sell it for anything but half because that would inbalance the game (In fact! it goes as far as to say that reinchantment still costs half the price of the original object)

Once again the Cosmos enforced the monetary price.

Also no, you shouldn't be able to sell them for more then 25 gold because NO ONE will buy it for more then 25 gold because only NPCs can sell things full price.

[Mephansteras]

Heh. If anyone tried that trick with me I'd do some rolls to quickly mock up the available supplies as well as the current demand for healing potions.

Which would probably play out something like this:

Player: I'm going to make 100 healing potions! And then use my high Charisma to sell them for a huge profit. I should have 2,500 gold pieces now!

Me: Well, it turns out that the supplies needed for healing potions are a bit rare. Your supplier can only get you enough to make *rolls* 41 potions. You make those, which costs you 1025 gold pieces (which needs to be paid up front). Due to current demand you manage to sell *rolls* 13 of them, putting you at a net loss of 375 GP and a surplus of 28 healing potions.

Not a bad use of time, if you need that many healing potions, but easy enough to keep from being broken.

[Neonivek]

It is actually pretty hard to sell anything mostly because if you check how much an ordinary person earns you will see that the vast majority of NPCs have to save for months just to afford something.

Here let me take a level 5 common with a +1 bonus and maximum ranks of profession trying to get 50 gold and having ABSOLUTELY NO EXPENSES! (Also checking it over I see they actually made it MUCH better in 3.5 then in others)

So now a level 5 commoner would be considered exceptional and has a +8 with a +1 so a +9 and takes 10 getting 19 which I half and he gets 9 gold a week

To afford one potion you need to work for 6 weeks or 1 and a half months.

Now of course we can then add expenses. A peasant needs 3 meals a day and will eat a poor meal costing 2sp. So 3 means of 2sp each is 6sp a day and a week is 42 or 4.2 gold.

So on just adding food to that an exceptional peasant makes 4.8 gold a week assuming he has no one to take care of. Which brings the time to 11 weeks or 2 months and 3 weeks.

As you can tell, not many can afford potions and most families have one incase of an emergency if any.

There is a reason why Churches will sometimes offer healing to the poor for free and will charge donations to everyone else (something most DMs ignore for convenience and because they forget how much money churches tend to make)

[sambojin]

Damn, my schemes of a potion-making slave-farm of exponential wealth growth foiled! Again!

The big standouts are the cantrips though. Sort of in a good way though. Never again will your mage or cleric be left useless early in their adventuring career by a lack of magic. Everyone can get something equivilent to a 3.5ed warlock blast if they want. Other than the roll-to-hit, it looks like they'll be the fallback spells for most of your adventurer's career.

While bows have a longer ranger and have a few feats associated with them, the cantrips do a similar job to them for less micromanagement. Ray of Frost looks sweet actually. The other, more adventure'y ones look good too. I'm not sure if it will work easily in the whole concept of world creation and believable societies, but it should be fun for the game.

Other things that are very noticeable are the extreme amounts of healing available. Hit dice healing, have-a-sleep full-heals, healing spells being 50 foot range instead of touch range, a healing cantrip, no-exp loss healing potion creation, all make things far easier on an adventuring group. There are rules listed to make resting a little less powerful, but the other things seem pretty OP in their current form.

I guess there's an option for not having a cleric in your party. But the trouble is that the cleric=win, or more precisely, cleric=not lose ever. Everyone should be able to scrape out of any encounter with 3hp, as long as the cleric is still standing, no matter how low the party's resources were. I shudder to think what a party of clerics could stand up to.

"I am Mo'schlock, priest of the Zerg-rush god Deathspam, and me and my brethren will take down this dragon as level one adventurers. Eventually........."

((no need to debate the seriousness of this one, I'm just mucking around. But a group of four smart-arse clerics may need a "Large rock falls from the ceiling" experience if they get too cocky with cure minor wounds zerg-rushing of extremely out of depth encounters.))

[RedWarrior0]

I for one think it's a tax on non-registered salesfolk. Everyone still pays full price, more or less, it's just that protectionism forces you to pay a buttload of taxes. Also, as mandatory scam insurance for non-registered vendors.

[Org]

I do not quite like what I see from DnD Next.
I think the Martial Classes need some cool high-level maneuvers.
Where are the eye gougings? Where are the hamstrings. I want to be able to have my fighter give out conditions dammit.

[sambojin]

"Feat: Improved Disable.

You may spend one of your martial attack dice by vigourously kicking a creature so hard in the nuts that they literally cough them out their mouth or other appropriate orifice. If the creature has no obvious genitalia, you kick them in another inappropriate place so hard that something pops out of something.

The creature falls prone, whimpers slightly but is otherwise silenced. It suffers strangulation damage for the next 1d4 rounds of 1d6 hp, and if it survives is still essentially disabled for the next 10 minutes. The creature will now bear a life-long grudge against you."

Something like that? Maybe not as specific.......

[Gunner-Chan]

First off, which D&D version is best (I'm asking for opinions here.)

This is an amazingly subjective question and it mainly depends more on what you're looking for than what anyone else will try to say. 3.5 and 4th are both good systems but they behave pretty differently.

And you can get the SRD for 3.5 and that's usable on it's own if you really didn't mind some of the flavor being stripped out. But it doesn't contain advancement or character generation rules.