The General D&D thread

The Essentials books are updated rulebooks. Even they've had some errata though.

edited 18th Feb '13 1:01:47 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

For the Bluff/Diplomacy feat, what if I call it "Sweet Lies" rather than "Fine Manipulation".

The way I see it, the person is testing the water very carefully and figures out whether a lie or the truth would be more effective before committing.

So, yesterday, I was in a 10ish hour Dn D session. Good times.

Only got through three encounters though.

Three encounters? Must've been busy. How much of the time was spent quoting Monty Python? My gaming groups could always measure their productivity inversely to that statistic.

This was online, using macros. The first encounter had an enemy that was immune to damage for four rounds out of the sixish (long story-if we hadn't accidentally rolled maximum damage on one attack, we woulda been able to finish it in only two and a half rounds). The second one was an enemy that

A.) Constantly healed

B.) Spawned duplicates of itself, which spawned duplicates of themselves (which each iterration having 1/4 HP) and

C.) Had 1300 HP to start and

D.) Sent us into this alternate realm of existence where we had to deal with elites one by one. That is, each PC had to face their own badguy. Of course, once a PC killed one of the elites, they could warp to another PC, so once they started dropping, they started dropping fast.

The final fight also had a damage immunity mechanism, wherein there were five elites, and the "Boss" elite was impossible to reduce below a certain HP threshold until all of his allies dropped. Unfortunately, he gained regeneration and resistance to all damage and a few other really nasty things as his allies dropped.

It's that kind of campaign.

@Tomu Okay then, how does D&D Essentials hold up past heroic tier? Should I keep my core books to use later on or should I sell them off for more splat books?

Essentials is boring as all get out past heroic tier just because there's very little in the way of options of stuff to choose. It really is just The Core of the Core.

Basically, to have a lot of options, one way or the other, you have to shell out for splatbooks. That, or get a DDI subscription.

edited 20th Feb '13 9:54:30 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Quick question before I dive into this thread.

Is this the place to discuss [1] as well as Dn D? Because I'm not sure if there's a dedicated thread for it.

Pathfinder is fine.

Alright.

Basically, I started writing a tropes character page... for the Bestiaries.

Here's what I have thus far.

That is a misuse of character pages. Character pages are for characters, not for species, races, or archetypes.

It worked for Mass Effect, it worked for Redwall, and DnD has a page for its classes.

Those are abuses. Classes, races, and archetypes are not characters. The limited cases where we allow it are in games like Team Fortress 2 or Star Wars: The Old Republic where the classes are characters for narrative purposes.

Ogtuk the Orc is a character. Orc is a race. Smaug the Dragon is a character. Dragon is a species. They are distinct concepts.

I'm cutting/trimming those articles you mentioned above.

edited 20th Feb '13 12:58:55 PM by Fighteer

x7 In that case, should I sell my core 3 books? If so, are there any splat books that can fill the gap or should I just get D&D Insider?

Keep the books you have, it's just that there's a LOT of errata on them by now. The Essentials books update a lot of stuff, but the errata is free online you know.

Uuuuuugh... But that seems like so much woooooooooork~ You know when they release 5e they should take steps to ameliorate problems like those caused by the errata and essentials. Maybe they could have the books contain a pass code that gives access to an updated PDF or printable wiki sort of thing in order to provide quick access to the latest iteration of the corresponding rulebook.

Again, if you have a DDI subscripton, you have permanent access to pretty much all 4E game materials, which include all the baked in errata.

Anyway, there IS a consolidated errata document online, for whatever that's worth.

edited 20th Feb '13 2:59:49 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Yeah but DDI costs money and I'm not sure that I'm ready to invest yet. That PDF thing was just an idea, mostly there to make the whole "errata" deal seem less like a punch to the gut. Anyway, I'll just settle for Hot FL, Rules Compendium, and maybe the DM kit if I can afford it.

So, I was told I could discuss Pathfinder here.

In any case... I found this guide to the Summoner class... but it's missing the evolutions and Summoner spells from Ultimate Magic. Could anyone tell me how good those are?

I'll edit this post with a link to those spells in a bit.

EDIT: Here we are.

edited 21st Feb '13 4:41:20 PM by Voyd211

I AM SO SORRY FOR THE DOUBLE POST but can anyone answer my question?

You can talk about Pathfinder, but I don't know how many people that frequent this threat are all too FAMILIAR with it :P

You can try the OOTS forums. They have more ppl who are knowledgeable about Pathfinder.

Alright, here's a question that copious reading of the core rulebook could not answer.

What, exactly, are Hit Dice, and how do they work with level up? How do they influence HP?

The ONLY explanation of HD is in the common terms section, and it's really vague.

Hit dice are the dice that you roll to determine how many hit points you have in the first place. For instance, a Wizard's hit die is a d4. Assuming you start with the maximum at level one, a level 6 Wizard with a +0 Constitution modifier will have 4+5d4 hit points, because she rolled a d4 every time she gained a level to see how many hit points she got. (If she had a +1 Constitution modifier, then she'd have 5+5d4+5 hp, because she got 1 hp at first level and every level thereafter. Thus, Constitution is an important stat for just about any class.)

It gets a little more complicated for monsters, who may have more or less hit dice than their effective level would indicate.