Fear of the Unknown
Imagine that you’re a new player. You’ve gone in for levels in wizard, and after careful study and long hours in the virtual Hogwarts you’ve figured out how your spells work. You’ve mastered the intricacies of ritual casting, written down a quick-reference for concentration check DCs, and even solved the perpetually-baffling conundrum of bonus-action casting. In short, you’ve got your little corner of the game on lock, and you’re justifiably proud of your newly acquired rules-fu. And then your martial-arts loving companion declares that he’s become a mage-slayer.
Now remember, in this imaginary scenario you’re a new player. You’ve just started down the long and winding road to system mastery. That means the vast bulk of your rules knowledge involves magic and magic accessories, which means that martial feats like Mage Slayer are right outside of your wheelhouse. Is it any wonder if the magic-users in today’s comic are mildly concerned?
Of course, Monk’s off-putting declaration of “I’m better at killing your character class” is a little beside the point. A quick google will render all mysteries transparent. But what I would caution against, and what I hope Monk understands, is that his domain of expertise is not obvious.
When we play these games for years at a time, and when we do build up our system mastery, it’s easy to forget that “the way my dude works” is far from common knowledge. When it comes time to discuss tactics, you might have to explain and re-explain the limitations of your abilities (e.g. “No, I can’t teleport everyone.” or “Yes, I do get an extra attack with spell strike.”). I’m thinking in particular of an Exalted 2e one-shot I played years ago. My dude was based on the idea of re-entering stealth mid-combat, and I had to explain and re-explain to my ST that it was indeed a thing within the rules. Dude wasn’t a bad ST or anything. He just didn’t have that particular sub-system already stuffed within his noggin.
It’s easy to think that GMs or other players “ought” to know this stuff. It’s just basic game mechanics! How can you play if you don’t know combat 101? But it’s important to be a generous gamer, and I’m not just talking about buying a round for bar patrons. You’re the expert on your own dude. You’re the one who researched all the intricacies of your chosen build. If it takes a minute for the other folks at the table to grok your powers and abilities, take the time to go over your shtick. The road to system mastery isn’t short, but it’s a lot more fun when we get there together.
Question of the day then! What is a complicated mechanic that you had to teach to the rest of your table? Why were they having trouble getting it, and did you all agree on the final ruling? Shout out with your kung-fu confusions and magical mechanical mixups down in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure hall will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
If there is an odd subsystem, I’m eventually going to build a character based around it. That’s just how I end up, intentionally or subconsciously. The most recent one that, once I explained it, I was banned from was the Goetic Demon system in Mage: The Awakening 2E.
Goetic demons are these little things you can use the Mind Arcanum to find. Most exist as manifestations of archetypes in the Universal Subconscious, effectively. But when you go to a particular person’s dreamscape, you interact with the goetic demons of their mind, aspects of their personality given actual character. By manipulating these entities, you can actually alter someone’s personality. For example, going into an addict’s fever dream and mystically slaying the manifestation of his addiction means that he will be rid of the psychological symptoms of addiction in his life going forward. After reading this, I was intrigued, and wrote a mage specifically built around playing with this concept. Mage came up in conversation a few weeks later and I was banned from playing it and the Mind Arcanum. Admittedly, my example of “But I could actually empower his demon of alcoholism to kill the demon of his faith” was probably not the best sales pitch.
As for getting it, it’s very esoteric. Mage 2E is super into its own Esoteric play-gnostic navel gazing, and uses a lot of Proper Nouns and vocabulary. Given my group has kind of a distaste for mage brought on by another player playing one in a non-mage game, it’s not likely my character will ever see the light of day.
Insofar as this month’s new character poll on the Patreon is titled “World of Dimness,” there may be a Proper Noun joke in this comic’s future.
And then you Proper Verb his Proper Noun until The Proper Noun is complete. Then make a Humanity roll.
We were laughing about this a few months back. “Poisson” is the French for “fish”, and “Gift” is German for “poison”.
So… our ancestors thought German poison was preferable to French fish?
Or the Germans knew exactly what they were giving the French for secret Santa.
“But it is delicious pickled herring, mein friend. Try some!” >_>
Fish distribution: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution
I’ve always preferred purify food and drink, to detect poison. Purify not only removes poison (allowing you to avoid poisoned for, while still getting delicious snacks), but also serves the added bonus of not having to worry about expiring dates! Sure, purify food and drink won’t tell you that someone’s trying to kill you, but why spoil the surprise? Plus, it’s always fun to watch the DM’s plans crumble if they’ve made a murder mystery that revolved around someone getting poisoned, and the player’s don’t even know that they’ve fooled the plan.
Why must you crumble all my poorly-laid plans?
It gets worse. With purify food and drink plus a steady supply of rotten or otherwise ‘gone bad’ food nobody wants (like say from a farm or a restaurant, or a mass poisoning banquet), you can turn a profit by buying garbage foods cheaply and turning it into normal, edible food which you can then sell. Or open a soup counter and feed the poor.
Effectively, it lets you be the Ned the pie maker from ‘Pushing Daisies’ (who ‘revives’ rotten strawberries to make them fresh and makes pies with them).
Purify Food and Water does not improve flavor. If it is rotting, it still taste like rotting food.
D&D: “Try my food, they say I’m a magician in the kitchen” 🙂
(Does not work on magical food. Poison the magical food)
Pathfinder: “Would sir like to try the Elixir cocktail?”
(doesn’t work on magical potions. Poison a non useful potion)
You can ‘poison’ magical potions with curses, as they already have ‘cursed’ versions of themselves AKA potions of poison. They use the curse detection rules to identify they’re spoiled into something deadly instead of what they appear to be.
https://www.aonprd.com/MagicCursedDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Potion%20of%20Poison
We often have trouble with the Xanathar’s supplement. It’s very rare that we’re able to remember the rules for such subclasses, and so their are many, many stories to tell about them. Some ended with a character death due to a mistake, others end in the DM making an incorrect ruling on an ability. One particular case occurred when a player was running a hexblade warlock during a level 20 one-shot, when we were facing some very powerful enemies. The hex blade was getting hit a lot, but only barely. Eventually, as he was getting low, he said, “Argh! I wish I had shield!”. And I pointed out that actually, he did have shield, and four spell slots; he could have been casting it this entire fight, but I had assumed he had wanted more damage output. Alas, by then, he had spent all his spells on damage. We returned to fighting while I browsed through Xanathar’s, and realised that the hex blade had a very powerful ability, where once per round, if they had a hexed target, they had a 50% chance of turning one of the hexed targets attacks against you into a straight miss. Alas, by that point our warlock was on his last legs, and fell soon thereafter.
We didn’t learn our lesson, and continued to mess up that sourcebook’s rules. Eventually, someone just went and bought a physical copy, so we could reference it much faster.
Is there a best version of the 5e SRD? I seem to flit between half a dozen of the silly things.
In fairness, Shield is on their spell list but they do not automatically know it. If they hadn’t chosen it as one of their known spells (which isn’t unreasonable as spending a 5th level spell slot on Shield would be painful) then maybe they were just regretting a decision already made.
I wanted to play a psion once in 3.5, but the DM banned it because he didn’t understand the system, and was worried it could be overpowered, and wouldn’t be able to adjudicate a rules question. He was careful with what non-core material he let in, so I understood. I offered to try and explain, but he told me that he had tried learning it, but just couldn’t get it, and me trying to explain would probably confuse him more. So alas, I never got to dip into the strange and fascinating world of the mind, for mere words cannot properly express such power.
Just take it anyway. Then you can beam knowledge directly into his head.
This reminds me of my DM who ruled that psionic abilities were totally unrelated to magic and thus no counter that works against magic worked against psionic powers and psions became the most overpowered characters in the entire setting due to the rarity of countermeasures. They were basically as dangerous as wizards and had none of their usual weaknesses.
If a psion freely spamming teleports into a dimensional-locked antimagic field doesn’t sound like a load of bullshit to you, I don’t know what does.
similar to this, I had a GM one time that ruled “half transparency.” Magic was half effective against Psionics and vice versa. This lead to the insanity of rolling against half Spell Resistance and all sorts of fun.
This also lead to the “Will Save DC 32 or take…320 Untyped Telepathic Damage” and the “Clumsy stick”. Good times. If you tell your players to be loaded to kill dragons and give them 14 levels, do not be surprised when they show up loaded for dragons.
I had a small incident like this yesterday. I built a level 5 Hexblade Warlock with great weapon master and the party and I were testing out our builds via some mock battles between characters. I managed to get two great weapon master attacks off on someone and almost took him out of the fight in one round, total of 47 damage with the potential for more since I forgot to apply hex on the second attack.
It took a little bit of explanation that I built the character around being a frontline fighter whose pact weapon turns her into a huge priority target as opposed to my squishy utility caster friends. Also that I was giving up accuracy in exchange for a +10 on the damage rolls, which isn’t always going to be the best option depending on what monsters we have to face.
They didn’t know about great weapon master? Do you guys not use feats that often? From my experience that one is pretty popular.
I think it was more a combination of me rolling well on the attack rolls and the damage before the plus ten.
She destroys people in one on one fights, but the rest of the group has pretty crazy gimmicks (ala a bard who can boost her AC to 26 or 27) and much better AoE capabilities.
But the group is pretty okay with feats. One of the more common house rules is that you can take one at level 1 regardless of race. I love my hammer either way.
Seems fair. When the damage spikes like crazy, “How the hell are you doing that?” is a fair question.
Hexblade doesn’t work with Great Weapon Master.
Every weapon with the Heavy property is 2-handed.
If you take pact of the blade, it removes that limitation, allowing you to use heavy weapons.
It does work if you go pact of the blade, which allows you to tag any weapon as your hex weapon.
Magus would learn Detect Poisson.
And so would Cam.
I think Magus picked up that spell for exactly that reason. Catgirl gonna cat.
Starship Combat is a little unusual in Starfinder.
It takes a little bit to have it see its like a ship fight from the top down of star trek, or some board games, with everyone playing their parts. It takes a little to get used to, but clicks.
The other is playing wizard in 5e, folks like and love sorcerer, but wizard is work that throws folks off. From utility, spell choice, everything in what you approach it under.
No two wizards are remotely alike, especially if you take a UA options like Theurge. (Cleric/Wizard) And the fact you have to do a lot of calculations, math, and other matters of having to understand what your party can and cant do. And what mosnters can do to them and you as well. (And wizards use this knowledge more than most, outside some clerics. Gods bless’em.)
Because you have a very unique and niche role, that, in the right place and time lets lets you steamroll encounters unexpectedly.
It is not easy. But it is rewarding.
I just wish I could convey the work I do for my party. The gm certainly notes it on those really really deadly fights I almost feel are there because he expects me to have figured out the answer when they start.
But they, just want to hit things, or do spell damage.
Starship combat is silly in my group. We play Starfinder once every 3 weeks, which is infrequent enough that we basically have to relearn starship combat from scratch every time it comes up. It always clicks in the end, but by that time the session is already half over.
As someone who likes to play the party’s tactician in addition to my class I have a responsibility to understand all their abilities so I can plan around them.
When I played a Paladin the first 5 times I used Divine Sense the DM needed it explained. For a little bit in the middle she thought it was an always-on passive sense. “Your Paladin sense begins tingling.” Eventually she took the time to read the feature for herself so there was no confusion.
“Wallopin’ warhammers; my Paladin sense is tingling!” I feel there’s a lack of spidey-sense lines over Devotion Paladin.
The pun works better as “Arcane and arcane accessories” since it rhymes with “Propane”. I do wanna make a Hobgoblin (All my Goblinoids have southern accents) Evocation Wizard who I roleplay as Hank Hill. “That’s a clean burnin’ Fireball I tell you hwat!”
Hank Hill Hobgoblin? I’d allow it, but I’d definitely prefer him in a one-shot, lol.
Grappling and suffocation. Using my first pugilist/rogue character, is figure I make the most of my superb grappling abilities and choke people to death. Thing is, as it turns out most people barely understand grappling despite how simplified it is for 5e (too many GM’s think I need to use my action to maintain my grapple) and even fewer know the difference between holding your breath and choking (hint: it’s very hard to hold your breath when someone suddenly garrote you from the shadows).
Of course when I explain these rules, they get the knee-Herk reaction of realizing I’m really good at killing humanoid enemies via sneak attack choking, and so they now make a plethora of immediate HB rules to completely invalidate my abilities I’ve actually taken the time to learn and study. Suddenly half of my gimmick is gone and now spellcasters can use their verbal component even if they can’t breath because a choked grunting noise is their verbals.
And then they would later complain why all my martial characters are just dudes who hit harder than ones who try to do anything more unique.
Didn’t have my glasses on the first time I read this. Thought you had a “pugilist/tongue” character. Assumed you were a grippli. I now want to build a grippli strangler.
That was something I was actually thinking to try with in pathfinder. Long story short, most people don’t think I can do an unarmed strike with the grippli’s 10-foot long tongue because RAW, an unarmed strike does not include my tongue and the grippli tongue ability specifically does not call out unarmed strikes being something you can do with it.
You definitely CAN use a Brawler archetype called the Constructed Pugilist to grapple people from 40 feet away with your grappling hook arm. Or grappling hook LEG!
Do you remember this guy Limbo?:
https:// warframe.fandom. com/wiki/Limbo
He is a so easy to use that his principal game mechanic got its very own page:
https:// warframe.fandom. com/wiki/Rift_Plane
That is a whole page describing the mechanics and interactions that only one warframe can do. From movement to abilities, from attack to drop pick-up and hacking. It’s easy to think of each of the 38 warframe as individual classes. Some are simple and straight forward, Excalibur is about swinging his huge sword and Vauban is about traps and grenades. Others like Limbo need to be know by their player to be useful and by the other player to know why they can’t kill banished enemies.
Now thing is, Warframe is a computer game putting things in the chat can take vital time away. In a tabletop you can simply explain things to the people with time. Yet the result will be the same and they would screw things up. If you play with the same group for a while they will get enough experience with one another to know things. Lucky for me, in my group they already know the kind of things like to play. So i end up explaining more the lore and inner workings of the setting than my pc mechanics. And lucky for me i love the sound of my voice bringing pearls of wisdom 🙂
EDIT: i broke the links because this would be the third time i try to post this very comment. Apparently part of the HBoH don’t like Warframe. Not all we can get good taste 😛
That’s just lack of game mastery on the part of other Tenno. It’s just a dodge-roll to get out of the Rift. That’s the very reason i feel that Warframe doesn’t use a “normal” experience system and instead gives you Mastery rank based on how many different weapons, Frames, and stuff you’ve used. It is designed to ensure exposure to game mechanics.
Now, I do wish the filter applied for being in the Rift was a little more obvious. When there are fifty different particle effects on the screen, it can be hard to realize that all my colors are very slightly muted.
It isn’t just a dodge-roll to get out of the Rift. It just that, but not all the people know it. And even if you watch a video about Limbo the best experience is to use it. Only that way you can really know not only how to use it but also how to fight alongside one.
What you said about the mastery system is really true now i think about it. The more you use and experience, the more you advance. Just today i put lots of weapons in research on the clan so i can advance more and finally can use some prime weapons i got since some time ago 🙂
You should start a blog. As a fellow pedant, I assure you it’s awesome.
I prefer the term filibuster, please, thank you.
Also i don’t like the idea of the blog. About what i should write about? The settings i have made? They are not the big thing. Also with my Russian accent any form of audio of mine is out of question 🙁
Hmm, I don’t really have an answer for today’s question. I tend to either be in the position of having the same experience (be it a lot or “we all JUST read this book”) as the rest of the group or am coming in knowing someone is so new to a game that nobody would reasonably assume they know any particular thing.
What I do encounter frequently in pbp is that despite having all the time you could need to do so, other players very often just don’t know what you can even do. Once you’re actually doing a thing (and using the proper name for it) they’re more likely to, but I’ve played so many games where even five fights in most of the players seem to have no clue how to do proper battle tactics because they’re fundamentally unaware of what options other people have available.
Every time you remind me of Pbp, I become guilty that I haven’t restarted my Crimson Throne game yet.
BTW, How do you handle grid and positioning in pbp? Seems to me like that would be a tough thing for tactically minded players to deal with.
Screenshots of the ‘board state’? Or making combat function akin to a final fantasy battle as far as positions go?
I use a google spreadsheet. Share it so everyone can edit. A lot of use of the border tool and filling in colors to show where stuff is. Depending on cell size either character names or just a letter or two to represent who is who.
Lately I’ve got a key on the left hand side with a bunch of colors and what they mean regarding terrain and below that letters and who/what that means.
Why not just use Roll20? Or is it a pain to keep it running for days at a time?
That’s an option. But then there tends to be pressure to be doing the game in a way other than pbp. And that’s kinda not the point.
Also that’s actually more work unless you’re already super familiar with Roll20 and have a bunch of tokens and map bits already worked out to work with.
Though yes, I imagine it would be a pointless waste of your computer’s resources to just have Roll20 open all day long while you only use it a few minutes each day or something.
I’m in a Pathfinder group going through Curse of the Crimson Throne (we’re only on book two, so no spoilers!). I just realized my Warpriest could be using his fervor to cast spells on himself like Bull’s Strength as a swift action and thus kicking considerably more ass.
Something that my group wasn’t sure on is the Sneak Attack rules (we have a flow chart to handle the grapple rules). Is it something that only applies once per round or turn, or is it something that applies at any point that the conditions for a sneak attack are met? My DM kindly ruled that it only happened once per round, otherwise we would have been slaughtered by all of the fucking rogues we’ve run into.
I’m guessing that you’re coming over from 5e…? That’s a system with a once per turn (as opposed to once per round) setup, meaning that 5e rogues can sneak attack once on their turns and again on any number of other turns in the round (assuming they somehow have enough reaction to make that happen).
In Pathfinder, sneak attack does indeed happen every time the conditions are met. In other words, if you’re flanked by rogues with multiple attacks, you need to stop being flanked ASAP.
That is correct, though the rest of the group including the DM have little more experience with Pathfinder than I do and they had started out with 3.5, though I think it has been a couple years since they’ve had a proper dedicated Pathfinder campaign.
It just feels broken as hell in the early to middle levels if rogues can literally get a sneak attack on every attack they’ve got. Add in the overwhelming amount of skills that they get and it just feels pointless to be anything other than a rogue or a pure caster.
Amusingly, rogue is actually considered to be one of the worst classes in Pathfinder. Especially if you don’t use the unchained version.
You can’t always sneak attack. It can be difficult sometimes to meet the conditions, and some enemies are just straight up immune to it.
Rogues are also relatively squishy, and their lower BAB means they get fewer attacks and less likeliness to hit. Additionally, they don’t get any attack bonuses from their class, and even unchained rogues can only reduce enemy AC if they already managed to hit a sneak attack.
If you’ve got something like a fighter or barbarian then you’ll have a fair bunch more HP, your attack bonuses are higher, and you get more attacks sooner. Fighters are also drowning in feats, they get weapon training for even more bonuses to attack and damage, and can get some very cool abilities from advanced weapon training. Meanwhile, barbarians get to rage for even more attack, damage and HP, as well as getting all those amazing rage powers.
And then there’s all those classes that can do basically everything the rogue can do, but better. Like the vivisectionist alchemist, which gets just as much sneak attack as the rogue and has the same BAB and HP as the rogue, but can also buff itself with extracts and mutagen. And the alchemist’s reliance on intelligence means they probably have plenty of skill points too.
Similarly, if you’re going for a skill monkey, you’re probably way better off with a bard. They get plenty of skill points too, but they also get a ton of other bonuses to skills, not to mention spells which are often just straight up better than skills. And on top of that they can boost the entire party during combat.
The difference in BAB is the big thing. The bounded accuracy in 5e means that you’re going to hit consistently. In Pathfinder, the difference in BAB progression and monsters’ AC as they increase in CR means that rogues have A LOT of trouble hitting with their iterative attacks. The standard practice with rogues is to go two weapon fighting for the maximum chance at explosive turns (six attacks! six chances to sneak attack!). However, the reality is that your squishy defensive stats mean you’re just as likely to exploded by the enemy’s full attack as you are to explode them in turn, especially when 2/3 of your attacks are going to miss anyway.
I always say “A level 5+ Monk is the Mage BBEG’s natural predator”. Once Stunning Strike comes online, the BBEG better have a high Con save and Legendary Resistances, otherwise they’ll be a joke.
I like the subtle character detail of the coconut and silver goblet for Eldritch Knight Fighter and Necromancy Wizard respectively.
I played “Dark Queen of Krynn” on my computer and had to figure out how THAC0 works, does that count?
What kind of headache medicine did you use?
We cautioned the guy against playing a mounted knight in Pathfinder 1e. We warned him of what was to come, and then tried to help him along when he insisted on it. Then we (I was the veteran player and helping the semi-experienced GM) tried to play a bit loose with the rules as written to make his character work better. That helped.
It was sorry of a situation where the guy didn’t know his own stuff, rather than the other way around.
My own solution to the cavalier player in my group is similar: play a bit loose. Mounted combat is a damned mess. The best thing IMO is to call the close ones in the player’s favor and let the d20 sort the hindmost.
Booming blade. Boooooooming bloody blade.
“No it does not take the extra damage if it attacks you! This is DnD, so “move” means “transpose oneself at least 5 ft”! So if I’ve BB’d a guy and run off you don’t for the love of all gods close in on him before his turn!”