gerusz @ gerusz @ttrpg.network

Posts

4

Comments

77

Joined

2 yr. ago

Ah, yes, the good old days when the level 1 wizard became useless after the first two rounds of the day.

Not really, it replaces the attack stat with the spellcasting stat, kind of like shillelagh but only for a single attack, and then stacks some radiant damage on it at higher levels (+1d6 from level 5 then cantrip leveling). It can also replace the damage type with radiant. Useful for any weapon-using caster class that doesn't get multiattack:

• Clerics would be a great target audience for this, except it's not on their spell list. sigh Magic Initiate (Druid) it is.
• It could be useful for non-hexblade warlocks too.
• It's a great damaging cantrip for bards who severely lack those.
• It's good for even a sorcerer or a wizard, it turns the light crossbow into a long-range radiant-damage cantrip.
• Arcane tricksters: could be useful depending on the build, probably pairs really well with a headband of intellect. (Edit: Or an extremely INT-focused Arcane Trickster with a 2-level wizard dip for the bladesong.)
• Eldritch knights: really useful at levels 1-4 if you're running into some monster that resists or is straight-up immune to nonmagical damage. Markedly decreases in usefulness once you get multiattack and/or a magic weapon.
• Probably good for artillerist artificers (they are not in the UA so it's unknown whether they'll get this cantrip), might be good for alchemists, OK for battlesmiths until they get multiattack, and redundant for armorers.

How I'd improve it further:

1. Make its casting time 1 attack and limit it to once per turn in the fluff. That way it stays useful for eldritch knights, bladesingers (scratch that, bladesingers can cast this in place of an attack already), valor and swords bards, and the two multiattacking artificers (less so for the armorers, but even then, it gets them a good ranged attack in a guardian suit or a good melee attack in the infiltrator).
2. Add it to the cleric spell list. They are the full casters most likely to go into melee even without the multiattack.

Yeah, he was a condescending sexist prick to the Kiyoshi warriors (initially), and while it did earn him some beatings, it didn't get him a restraining order and he even got with Suki in the end. That's high CHA alright.

A typical person not looking for the paladin, yes, they wouldn't notice that person. (Passive perception.)

Guards who are actively looking for infiltrators? They might very well do that, especially if there are multiple guards. (Rolled perception checks.)

The basic setup will be quite simple: after ruining the country's plans to set up proper anti-dragon defenses in the capital, he will land on top of the city hall and tell them that he is bored of random raids and now demands the respect and tribute that a dragon deserves. Namely, one million gold pieces and 20 of "their young" per month. First delivery expected in 15 days.

Diplomacy would be viable, if the party could somehow convince the country to give up a significant chunk of their GDP and 20 children per month. But I doubt they would do that.

After which, they will have those two weeks to cross the frozen northern wilderness (a hex crawl with 100 traversable tiles) and confront the dragon directly. There are a number of set encounters and locations on those hexes (the most notable is Clawhold, the only permanent settlement of the Tabaxi tribe who populate the north, and the 13 abandoned mountaintop fortresses that they might come back and clear out even after they take care of the dragon). The dragon himself is nesting in the far northeastern corner of this map (the party starts from the southwest, obviously) in a mountain named the Pillar of Lights.

Not a global reputation yet because he is fairly young (he is growing much faster than the average dragon due to the great nutrition he receives, namely a steady stream of adventurers from the nearby city) but he has been the bane of a small country (~the size of Luxemburg) for the last few months, and killing him is getting urgent because it's already spring but the fields are still frozen solid due to his influence on the local climate.

Though a famed dragonologist did notice that his behavior changed considerably; instead of randomly raiding villages he started targeting Skyfleet installations up north, pushing the city's Skyfleet back and getting them away from his mountain.

Well, I don't think my players are here but I'll put it in spoiler tags anyway. Those playing in a world called Yphilios, don't expand this.

You can get something like 75-76 with the appropriate buffs.

• Level 20 Rogue, expertise in Stealth, 22 DEX (Manual of Quickness of Action), nat 20 = 38
• +Pass Without Trace = 48
• +Bardic Inspiration from a similarly high-level Bard, max roll = 60
• +Weal from a Stars Druid, max roll = 66
• +Guidance from someone (maybe even the Stars Druid), max roll = 70
• +Flash of Genius from the Artificer = 75 or 76 if they also read the appropriate +2 book.

The most evil combo vs. a single enemy (or possibly a group if you can catch them in the spell radius, though you can only ensure a kill on a single one) is at a higher level, usually nicknamed the microwave oven: Sickening Radiance (plus maybe a Silvery Barbs for good measure) in the ring to be cast by the Familiar, Wall of Force or Forcecage from the caster, prep Counterspell in case the fucker wants to teleport out of the area, then sit back and cast Silvery Barbs whenever the target makes the CON save until it reaches 3 levels of exhaustion. (Then it will have disadvantage. You can still SB them if you wish.)

So yes, the Spell Storing ring can still be a problem.

(Giving it to the melee martial character loaded with Steel Wind Strike is also fun. Monks are possibly the best for it, they can rush into the middle of the enemy group with Step of the Wind and still cast the spell. Then end the turn next to the enemy wizard.)

And this is why my DM made an enormous mistake, giving my wizard (with a familiar) a ring of spell storing.

My wizard: Fireball!

Enemy wizard: Hahahah counterspell!

Nick the owl: Hoot hoot ho-hoot hoot! (Translation: counter-counterspell up your cloaca you absolute son of a cuckoo!)

Enemy wizard: Well, OK. Still, I made my saving throw!

My wizard: Hm... care to try again? (Silvery barbs.)

Enemy wizard: Uh... explodes

Being able to take two reactions or concentrate on two spells is a tiny bit gamebreaking.

There's also an amulet somewhere earlier that gives you a few free castings per day.

Anyone who has played any of the Divinity games knows that Speak with Animals is a must-have. Pet Pal was also the best perk in DoS / DoS 2.

Hm...

1. One Decanter of Endless Water
2. Two items that you can attack to this decanter
3. Two castings of Magic Mouth on these items:
   1. Condition: "(The decanter is uncorked and thrown, then gets within 1 foot of a creature other than who has thrown it OR six seconds after someone says 'Geyser') AND nobody has said 'Frixfraxfrux' in the last six seconds". What to say: "Geyser".
   2. Condition: "Six seconds after someone says 'Geyser' AND nobody has said 'Frixfraxfrux' in the last six seconds." What to say: "Geyser".
4. Resilient Sphere in a Ring of Spell Storing given to the familiar.

Tell the Familiar to ready an action: cast Resilient Sphere on a given enemy just as the decanter is within 1 foot of them. Then uncork the decanter and throw it at the enemy.

When the Decanter is within 1 foot of the enemy, your familiar casts Resilient Sphere to encase the enemy, and MM1 activates, saying Geyser. The decanter starts producing 30 gallons per round because MM1's activation activates MM2, and MM2's activation activates MM1 again. And so on.

I'll switch to metric because I like units that actually make a modicum of sense. Let's say a medium creature is at most 8 feet tall, that's 2.4 m, the enclosing sphere has a radius of 1.2 m. The decanter produces 30 gallons per round, that's 113 liters. The enclosing sphere's volume is 7.23 m^3 which is 7230 liters. A bipedal medium creature that tall is likely going to weigh around 150 kilos, if it's a humanoid then its density is roughly equal to water's so that's 150 liters of the sphere occupied by the creature. This leaves us 7088 liters to fill which is unfortunately much more than what the decanter can fill in 1 minute. In fact, it would take around 6 minutes to fill the sphere.

Bummer.

Maybe you can tie together 10 decanters?

(Though TBF a bit of alchemy could likely create a CO-producing bomb. Doing that with the familiar-spell-storing-ring trick could work, enclosing the enemy in a sphere of lethal gas for 1 minute. But even that is an awful lot of prep for suffocating someone when you could use the same spell slot to summon an azer and hug the enemy to death or 4 magma mephits and roast them in their armor.)

I'll have to put it in series of comments. Lemmy doesn't seem to have a comment length counter but it has a comment length limit. Even then, this is the TL;DR version of the full document.

Dates are given as BAR meaning Before Auberentian Reckoning, the time in the game currently is 1622 AR.

You're right, though they still have to make the save first. I recommend pairing it with a Ring of Evasion in that case. Though both the ring and the shield master feat use your reaction so even that is less than ideal.

I have a 10-page summary of the rise and fall of the Third Civilization, starting from the Soul War ~500 000 years ago, then the Age of the Giant Kings, the Curse of Forgetting, the antique era, the Age of Conquest, the Dark Age, the Empire of the Diamond Vault, the Arcane Age and the Ascendancy Period, and finally the Collapse.

The game takes place in the Fourth Civilization, 10 000 years after the Collapse.

Shield master doesn't work against fireballs, it only works against single-target spells.

As for tieflings... well, a wizard with the elemental adept feat can just ignore fire resistance (and ensures that the minimum damage on the fireball is bumped to 16). Or a Scribes wizard can just have Spirit Shroud in their spellbook, cast necroball, and be done with it. Or a sorcerer with transmuted spell can use another elemental type too, though for them it costs SPs.

World Tree barbarian looks neat.

The brawler fighter has one glaring oversight: it has no way to apply magic damage while using its class features. They promise to include magic items in the DMG that will allow them to do so (probably gauntlets, rings, etc...) but as it is, the class is essentially useless beyond level 5. Unless you find a magic beer bottle or something.

Warlocks are still gimped. While having Agonizing Blast and Eldritch Spear apply to any cantrip is a great change (edit: though there is a huge oversight still which makes Eldritch Blast still the optimal and obvious choice, namely that Agonizing Blast lets you add the charisma modifier to each damage roll, and at the cantrip improvement levels EB gains new damage rolls instead of extra damage dice like, say, fire bolt), they still lost their short rest spell recovery. If they could use the Magical Cunning PB/LR instead of 1/LR, that might be fair but as it is, a level 20 warlock has effectively 6 spell slots. And they can't even claim that it was to get rid of the short rest because the wizard's Arcane Recovery (which at level 20 can restore effectively the same amount and level of spell slots as the warlock's Magical Cunning, btw.) is still tied to it. (Also, while there are many Eldritch Invocations that give warlocks a free utility spell, the wizard's level 18 feature effectively gives them two of these for free, and they get to select any spell.)

"I've run Call of Cthulhu with less ghastly-sounding monsters"