Blog (A5E) Level Up: Works In Progress

Here’s a quick glance at some of the nearly completed parts of the Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition core rulebook! Awesome layout by Frank Michienzi. Art from Claudio Pozas and Shen Fei. Writing from a diverse team of awesome D&D experts.

 

[Horwath]

How would this critical success/failures trigger on skills/tools?

Only on 20 or 1 rolls?

would it be better if they were on +/-5 or +/-10 check result, depending on DC, so characters skill comes really into play?

 

[ART!]

This reminds me of similar skill result tables from Rolemaster, which was literally one of my favorite things there, so I'm pretty keen on this!

 

[AllOlive]

Critical successes and critical failures are fun if they happen occastionally, but can break the game if they happen too often. If one or the other happens a combined 10% of the time (20 or 1), that's actually quite a lot — and it completely ignores the relevant skill modifier.

One reasonably simple way to do it is: when you roll a 20 or a 1, you roll an additional die, whose size depends on the DC of the task (for instance: DC9-12=d6; DC13-16=d8; DC17-20=d10; DC21-24=d12; DC25+=d20. That is to say: half the DC, rounded up to the next valid die size). If you roll under your modifier after a nat 20, that's a crit success. If you roll at or over your modifier after a nat 1, that's a crit failure. Of course if the die size is less than your modifier (that is, if you use the die sizes as suggested above, if the DC is less than or equal to twice your modifier), that means a 20 is an auto-crit and a 1 is never a crit; this task is easy for you and you can't fail that badly.

(You could maybe modify the size of the die for the extra roll based on expertise dice, but that's probably overkill. If you want to incorporate expertise dice into the chances of critical successes, it's probably better to use them to decide when you roll this "crit check die", not how you roll it.)

If you used this rule for critical fumbles (but not critical hits) with weapon attacks, I think a reasonable base die size would be d8. That way a level-1 character would probably be making critical fumbles half as often as critical hits; by level 5, that would probably be down to one fourth as often; and by level 9, it would probably never happen, unless you used a weapon you weren't proficient with. It would be easy to house-rule this down to d6 if you wanted it to be an issue that pretty much disappears after tier 1, except for non-proficient weapon use.

 

[Morrus]

 

[tetrasodium]

That really caught my eye & when paired with the Herald's aura of overcoming raises a lot of interesting questions about if the various leveled spells will be tuned to the assumption that A:resist nonmagical bludgeoning piercing & slashing bar being present or B: to the assumption that players find a way to bypass it.

If B & any +1 weapon bypasses resist to nonmagical bps I wonder if there will be some way to extend the badly asymmetrical shedding of weighted clothing the power limiter a +1 weapon to martials grants over to casters with spell tags or something.

 

[Faolyn]

If B & any +1 weapon bypasses resist to nonmagical bps I wonder if there will be some way to extend the badly asymmetrical shedding of weighted clothing the power limiter a +1 weapon to martials grants over to casters with spell tags or something.

I'm not sure I get this. Could you explain using in-game terminology?

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm not sure I get this. Could you explain using in-game terminology?

I'm not sure where I lost you so I'll try the scattergun approach

• A: "resistant to nonmagical bludgeoning piercing & slashing damage" is used extensively on creatures and it doesn't matter if that is just right over or underused.
• B: energy damage is fire/cold/acid/etc & monsters with one or more energy resist as well as one or more energy immune in their statblock are common, it doesn't matter if this is just right over or underused.
• C: There is probably some ballark estimate method for determining for how high the bar should be for a class or ability & maybe a vague guesstimate for if something (ability, magic item, spell whatever) is too much or too little.
• D: With all of that out spells need to be pegged towards some ballpark of how good a spell should be using whatever method wotc uses for C. That even applies to the "intentionally overtuned" ones or they wouldn't be able to say "yea we managed to overtune that one". This also applies to nondamage spells like buffs, debuffs, battlefiled control spells etc.
• E: In anime/manga/etc it's not uncommon for a character to reveal that they have bee secretly holding back much of of their strength with some kind of power limiter & this frequently comes in the form of weighted clothes like this & this
• F: There is no guidance from wotc for balancing caster players against martial ones if you don't give out magic weapons & they take great pains to show that such a situation should rarely happen
  
  Spoiler: like so

  

When a fighter rogue or whatever gets a magic weapon like a +1 they pretty much treat the large number of creatures with A as no longer being resistant to them if they just shed their power limiter by equipping that magic weapon. Doing this results in Any and all creatures that were resistant to the nonmagical b/p/s being applied now no longer being resistant to the bludgeoning piercing or slashing damage t would otherwise have taken half damage from simply because it's "magical" so the method used in Dis out of wack.

The asymmetrical part doesn't matter if the buff/debuff/control/etc spells were too good before the power limiter was removed from the martial & now too weak with the magic weapon ignoring all of those monsters that were resistant before equipping that weapon. What matters is that there is no guidance or easy way to apply a similar power limiter removal to casters for a gm who believes that the nondamage spells(or any other grouping of spells) were pegged to a bar that assumed martials were expected to be wielding nonmagic weapons & doing half damage when those spells are being cast.

If in a5e the majority of damage spells are not considered magical fire/cold/acid/etc but casters have a way to shed the resistance to nonmagic fire/cold/etc of similar triviality as equipping a +1 weapon then it suggests that nondamage spells should also have a similarly huge step up or already be tuned to the assumption that resistant to nonmagical X is shed equally fast by both casters & martials. The spell tags could be an easy way of doing this like by having focus items with +N [control & buff] & the spells themselves having some kind of upcast type mechanic built in if using such a focus

For the record I don't care if casters and martials do the same damage or not, but a character focused on the nondamage stuff should be contributing a reasonably similar value & the nondamage buff/debuff/battlefield control spells seem to be pegged down around the assumption that martials will be doing half damage even though wotc takes pains to ensure those martials are not generally dealing half damage.
edit: the herald thing was an aura round level 10 that made it so thenearby allies make are treated as of they are magical

 

[Faolyn]

I'm not sure where I lost you so I'll try the scattergun approach

I'm going to be brutally honest with you: your lack of punctuation and frequent use of non-game terminology (even with helpful links to explain it) often makes it difficult to follow what you say.

• A: "resistant to nonmagical bludgeoning piercing & slashing damage" is used extensively on creatures and it doesn't matter if that is just right over or underused.
• B: energy damage is fire/cold/acid/etc & monsters with one or more energy resist as well as one or more energy immune in their statblock are common, it doesn't matter if this is just right over or underused.

I have heard it repeatedly said that, back in Basic/1e, it was said you only got into combat when you failed every other method. Perhaps the issue is less with these resistances and more with the game for failing to provide other options for killing or stopping foes.

Example: lycanthropes. I'm working on fixing up my list of templates (as I mentioned elsewhere) and in this list, re-included the idea of allergens--wolvesbane and the like. So even if there are no magical or silvered weapons in the party, a normal weapon could be used to deliver that sort of toxin to help defeat a werebeast.

• C: There is probably some ballark estimate method for determining for how high the bar should be for a class or ability & maybe a vague guesstimate for if something (ability, magic item, spell whatever) is too much or too little.
• D: With all of that out spells need to be pegged towards some ballpark of how good a spell should be using whatever method wotc uses for C. That even applies to the "intentionally overtuned" ones or they wouldn't be able to say "yea we managed to overtune that one". This also applies to nondamage spells like buffs, debuffs, battlefiled control spells etc.

Agreed on both of these. Although the DMG has some very vague guidelines for making spells (and those overtuned spells are there for rather dumb reasons, IMO).

• E: In anime/manga/etc it's not uncommon for a character to reveal that they have bee secretly holding back much of of their strength with some kind of power limiter & this frequently comes in the form of weighted clothes like this & this

As I briefly talked about in another thread (the one about adding a thing to the game, re: the Bloodied condition), there's a difference between a scripted story and an RPG. In a story, you can control exactly what everyone can or can't do and, in the case of some of the "power limiters" mentioned in the link, make stuff up later on to explain sudden enormous leaps in strength. And you want to hold off on showing the best of your character's abilities until it's dramatically appropriate.

In an RPG, you not only can't control what the players can do in a particular battle (unless you're a jerk of a GM), but it doesn't make sense for an NPC to try to minimize damage to themselves by hauling out the big guns early. Every round you spend not showing your final form is a round you risk getting offed by a player who's spent a lot of time looking over their character sheet and thinking up the best combos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYysLFru7u8

• F: There is no guidance from wotc for balancing caster players against martial ones if you don't give out magic weapons & they take great pains to show that such a situation should rarely happen

To be fair, there never was. It's just that there's a lot more casters now than there were in Ye Olden Days, and casters now advance at the same rate as martials, instead of slower.

Also to be fair, many (non-AL) GMS put magic items out because they seem cool or fit the adventure. In my last adventure, I gave my 6th-level PCs a legendary and a rare magic item (iron flask, bowl of commanding water elementals) because, well, they were storming a wizard's tower, and the fact that the wizard did a lot of summoning and enslaving of elementals was key to the plot.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'm going to be brutally honest with you: your lack of punctuation and frequent use of non-game terminology (even with helpful links to explain it) often makes it difficult to follow what you say.


I have heard it repeatedly said that, back in Basic/1e, it was said you only got into combat when you failed every other method. Perhaps the issue is less with these resistances and more with the game for failing to provide other options for killing or stopping foes.

Example: lycanthropes. I'm working on fixing up my list of templates (as I mentioned elsewhere) and in this list, re-included the idea of allergens--wolvesbane and the like. So even if there are no magical or silvered weapons in the party, a normal weapon could be used to deliver that sort of toxin to help defeat a werebeast.


Agreed on both of these. Although the DMG has some very vague guidelines for making spells (and those overtuned spells are there for rather dumb reasons, IMO).


As I briefly talked about in another thread (the one about adding a thing to the game, re: the Bloodied condition), there's a difference between a scripted story and an RPG. In a story, you can control exactly what everyone can or can't do and, in the case of some of the "power limiters" mentioned in the link, make stuff up later on to explain sudden enormous leaps in strength. And you want to hold off on showing the best of your character's abilities until it's dramatically appropriate.

In an RPG, you not only can't control what the players can do in a particular battle (unless you're a jerk of a GM), but it doesn't make sense for an NPC to try to minimize damage to themselves by hauling out the big guns early. Every round you spend not showing your final form is a round you risk getting offed by a player who's spent a lot of time looking over their character sheet and thinking up the best combos.

To be fair, there never was. It's just that there's a lot more casters now than there were in Ye Olden Days, and casters now advance at the same rate as martials, instead of slower.

Also to be fair, many (non-AL) GMS put magic items out because they seem cool or fit the adventure. In my last adventure, I gave my 6th-level PCs a legendary and a rare magic item (iron flask, bowl of commanding water elementals) because, well, they were storming a wizard's tower, and the fact that the wizard did a lot of summoning and enslaving of elementals was key to the plot.

the AL stuff is included along with all of the other stuff because it shows how strong the pattern wotc has with magic weapons not being rare even while pegging so many spells & so much monster design around some what if no magic weapons were available. The player switching from their cursed nonmagical weapon to a magical weapon is no different from removing a limiter like the weighted clothes or calling engineering & telling him to realign the dilythium crystals & warp core or whatever. The important part is that it's a massive jump well beyond +5% to hit & +1 damage for martials while no equivalent exists for casters & characters focused on nondamage aspects of combat with abilities largely tuned towards the no magic weapon martial.

 

[Garthanos]

Beautiful stuff guys