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[scriver]

I like rolling dice!

[MrRoboto75]

I like rolling dice!

casts fireball

[Persus13]

I only have a problem with Guidance when people spam cast it every minute.

Precisely, but the nature of the spell means that you're either doing exactly that or you're specifically handicapping yourself for the sake of "not being annoying". And that can be a tricky balance to strike for some players, either leaving it as a dead cantrip just taking up a slot, or overusing it and slowing the game down. I'd rather either have some sort of mechanical limitation that makes it a bit more sane and takes that responsibility off the players, or just exclude it entirely and have them take a different cantrip with other uses instead.

I'm talking about people trying to get the 1d4 on initiative. I'm actually fine with people using it whenever someone's making an ability check because its a team game. If you feel like you or the folks using it are doing it too much, not taking it is perfectly fine! But most people I've played have been reasonable about knowing when they can reasonably use the cantrip to help someone else's roll. And its not all that different from people asking if they can work together with another person to give them advantage.

Portent you effectively don't need to roll, but you still replace the die roll. Another scenario where that could matter is the creature making the roll doesn't always know portent got used, so they use something to give themselves advantage.

The Lucky disadvantage thing isn't a Crawford ruling, its how Lucky is worded, Crawford just acknowledged that that wording allows that.

Well sure, that's kinda the whole thing though. You don't effectively need to roll the dice, so why would you? Your rolling the dice has no say on whether or not an ingame creature is aware of your premonitions, and as far as meta knowledge goes you have to declare Portent usage before a roll is made anyway. I'm thinking it's just some odd language use from Crawford, but I really don't understand why he seems to be saying you should have to roll dice that have already been invalidated.

As for ruling versus not-ruling, I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean... I found a couple places where he seems to specifically state that that's how the feat is supposed to function (and then an earlier one that directly contradicts the other statements) rather than just a potential interpretation, so I'm unsure what constitutes a ruling in that sense and what doesn't.

You don't need to roll the dice, but because the wording of the ability is it replaces the roll, that implies a roll still gets made. The vast majority of the time you don't need to roll, but its still part of the order of operations of resolving stuff. Also, you realize you can use a portent on another creature's roll right? So you can replace a roll being made by someone else, not just you, and there's nothing in the game requiring you to tell that creature or player that you used portent. You could have two cards and pick one before each roll if you really wanted to.

My point on rulings is that you can just read the actual text of the rules and draw your own conclusion instead of searching for tweets, and in this case, Lucky calls out that you choose which d20 to use, which overrides the regular adv/disadv rules. There is nowhere in the 5e rules that says tweets are an official rules source and Crawford would literally be the first person to tell you that. His tweets are either 1. The thinking behind a particular rule. 2. How he interprets that rule or 3. How he runs his own D&D game. Which certainly can be useful, but isn't required for any table, or any theory crafting.

I like rolling dice!

casts fireball

Make sure you upcast it so you can roll even more dice!

[Kagus]

I'm talking about people trying to get the 1d4 on initiative. I'm actually fine with people using it whenever someone's making an ability check because its a team game. If you feel like you or the folks using it are doing it too much, not taking it is perfectly fine! But most people I've played have been reasonable about knowing when they can reasonably use the cantrip to help someone else's roll. And its not all that different from people asking if they can work together with another person to give them advantage.

Yes, not taking it is perfectly fine. What I'm interested in are suggestions for fixes that allow the cantrip to still be part of the game, but without bogging everything down.

And I'm happy that your experiences have been with people who provided reasonable usage of the cantrip. Mine have not. It starts off with interjecting every time an ability check is made, every single time a check is made, and then trails off into never speaking of it again when they notice just how much of the spotlight it ends up taking.

And the Help action is honestly similarly abusable, but it at least is vague enough that extra conditions can easily be applied to it, such as requiring the helper to make a related skill check or to at the very least describe how they intend to give advantage to the other person. Guidance is much more cut and dried in its base state.

I played part of a game where the players had "discovered" both Guidance and the Help action, and there were no restrictions or conditions placed upon either's usage by the DM. Every single ability check from that point on consisted of a pattern like:

Player 1: "I ask the kobold about its masters"

Player 2: "I cast Guidance!"

Player 3: "I help!"


Which not only added a lot of padding to every action, it also slammed headfirst into whatever flow a scene might have been having.

And since rolling with advantage +1d4 is such a large bonus (easily making a mockery of any sort of proficiency or expertise the characters might have had, what with this being a low-level game), making any roll without those readily available boosts was seen as almost an insult, resulting in obsessive usage and ruffled feathers whenever someone forgot.

I'm all for having the players work together as a team, but they need to be able to do so without slowing things down and forcing them to pipe up and interrupt a dialog with extra gamespeak every time. Even just letting it be a standing theme where all rolls are done with advantage +1d4 whenever the characters are near each other is preferable, but carries with it its own issues.

You don't need to roll the dice, but because the wording of the ability is it replaces the roll, that implies a roll still gets made. The vast majority of the time you don't need to roll, but its still part of the order of operations of resolving stuff. Also, you realize you can use a portent on another creature's roll right? So you can replace a roll being made by someone else, not just you, and there's nothing in the game requiring you to tell that creature or player that you used portent. You could have two cards and pick one before each roll if you really wanted to.

Okay. I feel like we're talking past each other again. I'm not asking about how Portent works. I'm not confused about the conventional or normal usage of Portent. What I'm confused about is the tweet from the lead rules designer of 5e where he appears to state that the intention of the rule is to still roll the dice even though their result gets overridden.

And yes, I am absolutely aware of Portent being usable on other creatures. That's both how I normally tend to use it, and also entirely not the point. Portent must be announced before a roll, which means that A) The DM controlling the creature you're using it on is aware that you're using it, or B) The player you're using it on is aware that you're using it. Meta, everybody knows. The only way they wouldn't is if you're doing some sort of distanced PvP thing with separate tables and an intermediary DM connecting them or something. Which means that the only way "not knowing about Portent" is going to come into play is if the controller willfully ignores it for the sake of them not knowing about it in-character, in which case rolling the overridden dice anyway makes no difference.

My point on rulings is that you can just read the actual text of the rules and draw your own conclusion instead of searching for tweets, and in this case, Lucky calls out that you choose which d20 to use, which overrides the regular adv/disadv rules. There is nowhere in the 5e rules that says tweets are an official rules source and Crawford would literally be the first person to tell you that. His tweets are either 1. The thinking behind a particular rule. 2. How he interprets that rule or 3. How he runs his own D&D game. Which certainly can be useful, but isn't required for any table, or any theory crafting.

Again. I am not confused as to whether or not a DM can change or tweak the rules as fitting. It says so explicitly in the book, and even if it didn't it would still be valid.

However, in order to have any semblance of a game play out with a group, there needs to be some form of communal understanding and agreement between the players as to what the rules are. This generally means reading the book to establish a baseline, variations from which can be summarized and listed by the DM. The alternative to having that pre-established agreed-upon baseline is to have the DM list the entirety of their table's rules before a game. Which, I'm sure you would agree, would be unnecessarily clunky and confusing.

As such, when the book that we establish that baseline on is unclear in its wording or does not appear to account for particular edge cases, then a common first step is to ask the lead designer about

1. The thinking behind a particular rule

so that we can have a better understanding and interpretation of that baseline, which may then be modified or exchanged as necessary.

And when that

1. The thinking behind a particular rule

or

2. How he interprets that rule

appears to make no sense or contradicts other such explanations, then it doesn't serve to clarify the issue so much as just muddle it even more.

That is what I am getting at here. I feel that the rules as written in the book are insufficient or unclear on points, and I am unsatisfied and irked by the lead designer's explanation of what those rules were intended to mean, which draws into question the sanity of the rest of the rules. That's it. I don't feel incapacitated or irrevocably blocked from playing DnD because the book is weird. I don't feel like I can't play at all ever because the lead rules designer is frequently vague or has bizarre interpretations of his own rules.

What I feel is annoyance, because I am attempting to learn and establish that baseline and in so doing I learn the parts of it that are dumb and do not want to be learned.

Almost all the games I've played in have had deviations from the base ruleset. That's fine. Great, even. But that works because they are exactly that, "deviations". They don't claim to be the exact same as the other tables. They don't claim to be strictly how it's written in the book. They assert that they make changes here, here, and here. Awesome. Now we're all on a level playing field.

Or we would be, if "just the book" meant the same thing for everyone. Which it doesn't. And as such, you get a group of people together who think they're playing the same game, but are doing and expecting very different things from that table. And that's why official rulings exist, to minimize the level of confusion that pops up when people think they're referring to the same thing.

I like rolling dice!

casts fireball

Nah fam, Scorching Ray . Had a dumbass level 20 build concept that would roll up to something like 32d20, 64d6 in one turn. Using Fireball in that same setup wouldn't involve nearly as many dice, and you wouldn't even be the one rolling half of them!

[Egan_BW]

You have to admit there's a joy in, as a player, staring someone in the eye and saying "roll a dexterity saving throw".

[MrRoboto75]

So the movie Karate Cop has this random scene that involves a seedy, post apocalypse dive bar called "Jackass Junction", and that's totally going into the next Gamma World game I'm never going to play.

[Persus13]

Okay. I feel like we're talking past each other again. I'm not asking about how Portent works. I'm not confused about the conventional or normal usage of Portent. What I'm confused about is the tweet from the lead rules designer of 5e where he appears to state that the intention of the rule is to still roll the dice even though their result gets overridden.

And yes, I am absolutely aware of Portent being usable on other creatures. That's both how I normally tend to use it, and also entirely not the point. Portent must be announced before a roll, which means that A) The DM controlling the creature you're using it on is aware that you're using it, or B) The player you're using it on is aware that you're using it. Meta, everybody knows. The only way they wouldn't is if you're doing some sort of distanced PvP thing with separate tables and an intermediary DM connecting them or something. Which means that the only way "not knowing about Portent" is going to come into play is if the controller willfully ignores it for the sake of them not knowing about it in-character, in which case rolling the overridden dice anyway makes no difference.

The dev's tweet is explaining the order of operations that things happen. Rolling the dice is still part of the order of operations. Why does this matter? Because the original response was asking about advantage/disadvantage, which happens when the roll is made, and the dev was explaining that Portent comes into play after that. At no point in that tweet is the developer saying you have to actually roll the dice, they are just explaining the order of operations of how the ability works in a hypothetical scenario to better explain their point.

There are plenty of occasions where there's an order of operations in game that you may skip over in actual play because its not a concern. For instance attack rolls have an order of operations where you make the attack roll then go and roll damage. There's plenty of times at the table where people roll the d20 and the damage dice at the same time to speed up play, but for the purposes of the rules, you roll the attack, then resolve damage.

And there's plenty of easy ways to hide intent until after a roll is revealed, you can use cards and flip it over to show what you picked. Either way, the DM or players can still choose to spend resources on a die roll even if they know it has a portent because they think its in character or cool for that creature or character to do so. But if the roll isn't made in the order of operations, spending resources on the roll isn't mechanically possible, which is pretty important for a lot of abilities as they rely on a d20 roll being made, like Portent itself.

[Grim Portent]

Got an idea in my head for a introduction to a game involving kobolds (the traditional gnome-like ones, not the small lizard people) stealing a farmer's chickens and the PCs being village youths paid a few silver to stay up late and keep watch.

There's rustling in the chicken coop, some confused 'bwerks' from the hens, and if the PCs pop their heads in to look there's a terrified kobold thief with a monobrow so bushy it could be used to polish shoes who panics briefly and then tries to pretend he's a chicken.

I also imagine a kobold bolting while holding a chicken above it's head and making various whooping noises.

[Cthulhu]

So the movie Karate Cop has this random scene that involves a seedy, post apocalypse dive bar called "Jackass Junction", and that's totally going into the next Gamma World game I'm never going to play.

Will the bartender be david carradine?

[scriver]

Happened on this map-making program on reddit just now. Haven't tried it yet but it seems cool.

[heydude6]

Got an idea in my head for a introduction to a game involving kobolds (the traditional gnome-like ones, not the small lizard people) stealing a farmer's chickens and the PCs being village youths paid a few silver to stay up late and keep watch.

There's rustling in the chicken coop, some confused 'bwerks' from the hens, and if the PCs pop their heads in to look there's a terrified kobold thief with a monobrow so bushy it could be used to polish shoes who panics briefly and then tries to pretend he's a chicken.

I also imagine a kobold bolting while holding a chicken above it's head and making various whooping noises.

That’s honestly brilliant. It’s so hard to make satisfying adventures at level 1, especially when your players insist that their characters are as badass as Geralt even though they shouldn’t have even been in a real fight yet.

[Iduno]

So the movie Karate Cop has this random scene that involves a seedy, post apocalypse dive bar called "Jackass Junction", and that's totally going into the next Gamma World game I'm never going to play.

Will the bartender be david carradine?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/ropeTrick.htm

[Kagus]

Um.  So... These Tasha's subclasses bring up some... Curious questions. Multiclassing questions.


If I'm reading all these things correctly, and we're using Crawford's intended calculations for Magic Missile, one could potentially (with a horrific 5-way multiclass split)... Gimme a second...

1d4+1, +1d8, +11, x21...

So, between 294 and 504 damage in one turn, no save or attack roll (requires one extra action as setup from a previous turn, but it's okay because it lasts for an hour at a time without concentration and can follow us around where we go).


To one target, and it's fire damage soooo... Yeah 

[Criptfeind]

I've really only briefly skimmed Tasha's Cauldron, so no surprise if I missed it. What combo allows that?

[Iduno]

Possibly. Although most games are a LOT lower-level. For sheer "can kill someone much higher-level" effect, the 3.x edition Launch Item (a level 1 version of the cantrip) Can put any object 400 + 40 * level feet away in any direction, with a limit that it weight 10 lbs or less. That puts it into the category of objects that weigh at least 1 lb, where the falling damage was 1D6 for 70 feet, plus d6 per 10 feet after that. The cantrip version had a reduced range and the best I saw was 8 silver for a gargantuan crossbow bolt (4d6 damage), or better with eschew materials feat.

Or the 1st transmuter power (5e) that allows you to turn anything into anything else, including water into purple worm poison. That requires someone be able to coat the team's weapons, but +46 damage per hit is nothing to sneeze at.