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Edit: Been a while, mistook the wrong stat block for another.

As a very low xp 5E DM (about 2 years) I just want to say two things about 5E:

1. It's made a lot of players very happy, and it's very suitable for first time players. The encounter difficulty isn't that bad and it's really suited to parties with proper levels being able to demolish anything of a like Difficulty rating.

2. It's made a lot of DM's very sad, because it's practically impossible to balance the encounters based around the sheer threat range of certain classes. Lets say I have a group of 5 level 3 adventurers. Forget their classes, the sheer number of things I have to account for to even make an encounter last more than one round is staggering. I usually end up having to break the game, and throw in DM God actions. "Oh, the monster had a potion of full heal!".

That's the thing. We play the game to have fun. But it's a very thin line between killing the entire party, or making them bored with weak encounters. It wasn't this hard in 3rd for me as a DM. I wish I could make the Mindflayer a fun encounter as a battle, but it always results in one thing, either the melee class killed in on the first turn, or the magic user class locked it down somehow, and then the party kills it.

Errr, I gotta ask how that's different from previous editions. At least 5e doesn't have "save or die" mechanics which could tpk on the first turn.

 Melissia wrote:
Errr, I gotta ask how that's different from previous editions. At least 5e doesn't have "save or die" mechanics which could tpk on the first turn.

Good old "Rocks fall" can still be there if needed, however

 Melissia wrote:
Errr, I gotta ask how that's different from previous editions. At least 5e doesn't have "save or die" mechanics which could tpk on the first turn.

In 3rd it felt like the parties were not as powerful as they are today. Hell, in 1st if the Wizard looked a puddle funny he could slip and die from the fall damage. Things felt a lot more, I dunno, dangerous, in the past. Now the parties are much more able to survive what would have been a TPK before. Cure light wounds, looking at you!!!

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In 3rd it felt like the parties were not as powerful as they are today.

Third edition was basically the epitome of munchkining and abusing rules for power. It was easy to break and find super powerful builds.

 Melissia wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In 3rd it felt like the parties were not as powerful as they are today.

Third edition was basically the epitome of munchkining and abusing rules for power. It was easy to break and find super powerful builds.

I find there are some pretty broken RAW spells in 5E that could use some errata.

Control Water: Until the spell ends, you control any freestanding water inside an area you choose that is a cube up to 100 feet on a side. You can choose from any of the following Effects when you cast this spell. As an action on Your Turn, you can repeat the same effect or choose a different one. This can get very broken in a hurry.

So lets say you are in ship combat. You "part the water" causing the opponent to drop 100', do 10d6 damage, and you then release the waters, resulting in roughly 172800x2 cubic inches of water coming down ontop of you. This results in bludgeoning damage. How much? Well that much water weighs 6242lbs, do 2d6 per 100lbs, or 125d6 damage, on each side. So 250d6 damage bludgeoning. Then the monster/target has to make it back to the surface. But it can't because it's dead.

And now Fezzik is crying because his Leviathan fight which he spent hours crafting, working on, building, painting the terrain, the model, etc...is over. On the first cast of the battle. Because the Leviathan took 780ish damage.

They wouldn't take full fall damage, since 100' in 6 seconds is more time than it would take gravity to pull them down that height. So the water is being pulled away below the speed of gravity, which means whatever is in the trench is going to just kind of sail down the rising water to the bottom.

Also, the description of the spell does not say the water crashes down:

The water then slowly fills in the trench over the course of the next round until the normal water level is restored.

This could instead be the water flowing back in from the bottom, rather than crashing down on the top. This would mean no damage would be dealt as rather than the water coming down on top of the Leviathan like a wave it flows down the sides of the trench and raises the Leviathan up as it refills the space.

Boom, problem solved, no killing everything in the sea for you.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:


So lets say you are in ship combat. You "part the water" causing the opponent to drop 100', do 10d6 damage, and you then release the waters, resulting in roughly 172800x2 cubic inches of water coming down ontop of you. This results in bludgeoning damage. How much? Well that much water weighs 6242lbs, do 2d6 per 100lbs, or 125d6 damage, on each side. So 250d6 damage bludgeoning. Then the monster/target has to make it back to the surface. But it can't because it's dead.
.

A little bit of physics is a bad thing. Water weighs one metric ton per square meter. This means you should be outright flattened every time a wave hits you.
Water flows though.

Alternately: you part the water, the opponents ship slides down to the bottom, you reverse, the ship rises to the top. No damage.
The truth is somewhere between the two scenarios, and the DM can decide where.

A few things.

1: Why is a Kraken, a gargantuan (minimum 20ft x 20ft board presence on a map but likely larger; Krakens are larger than the largest gigantic squid ever recorded, easily) deep sea creature, in a 100 foot shallow to begin with? That would really put them out of their depth, quite literally. But on the flipside, if they're not in a shallow, as a DM, I'd have the Kraken make an athletics check (its skill would be +7 with advantage in this situation due to being a natural swimmer) to either halve or negate the fall damage by reacting to dive to minimize damage, depending on the level of the PCs and how much they really need to do this level of damage to survive.

Regardless, the Kraken wouldn't normally be at the surface of the water anyway, at least not at first. The Kraken has 30 foot range with its tentacles and is aiming to destroy your boat to cripple your ability to fight back (it has the Siege Monster ability and does double damage to structures, and yes, it's quite intelligent enough to realize this-- more intelligent than most wizards in fact, at 22 intelligence!), reducing the damage to 7d10, or around 40 damage on average, 70 at most, and if halved, 20 damage on average, 35 at most. A Kraken has 472 hp, so you're doing about a tenth of its hp with this move if you succeed, not a bad turn all things be told-- although given that you just put the Kraken at 100 feet away from you (plus change), the Kraken can just retreat and then attack later in ambush and grab your boat to prevent you from doing this again (I remind you, the Kraken is intelligent; not doing this is like having a dragon fight you without using its wings and breath!).

2: Bear in mind this line: "The water then slowly fills in the trench over the course of the next round until the normal water level is restored."

In other words, the Part Water use of Control Water actually is deliberately a lot slower than what you described, and it's worded in a way that makes it clear they imagined it to be filling in harmlessly (at least insofar as you risk drowning but won't be crushed). No, this doesn't make sense by science. It's not science. It's magic. You'd have to use the Flood effect to have it happen immediately, and Flood has no description of being able to damage creatures or objects-- in fact, a Huge sized ship only has a 25% chance of capsizing as a result of the flood spell! So all you'd manage to do by doing the Flood effect immediately is inconvenience the Kraken. Which fair enough, is probably useful. Maybe could use it to disperse its ink cloud or something. But the actual flood, nor Part Water, wouldn't do any damage, particularly not to a Kraken. Furthermore, the Flood action only sends a 20 foot wave out, not a 100 foot wave.

3: The Part Water or Flood effect would actually very likely capsize your ship in the process or cause it to sink, because the Kraken would be attacking from under your ship. Even if you argued somehow the spell wouldn't have done so, a creature like a Kraken would have been gripping and attacking your ship from the start, so attempting to do this to the kraken would also do it to your ship. Down you go! I hope you can swim. The Kraken can.


Please, sir. I am a veteran DnD player and an accomplished DM. I've seen far worse attempts to powergame than this

[ edit: for some reason my head had it as you meaning the Kraken... if you meant the actual creature, the Leviathan, that's going to be even harder to kill this way, as it can use Control Water as a Legendary Action, itself-- meaning it can cast the spell outside of its turn order. The Kraken would actually be an easier fight this way, the Leviathan is going to wreck your GAK if that's the only gimmick you have! In fact, the Leviathan is 300-500 feet long, so it's actually bigger than the area of effect of your spell! ]

 Melissia wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In 3rd it felt like the parties were not as powerful as they are today.

Third edition was basically the epitome of munchkining and abusing rules for power. It was easy to break and find super powerful builds.

Even some of the earlier spells could break encounters.. Just an average grease spell can ruin some monsters.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In 3rd it felt like the parties were not as powerful as they are today.

Third edition was basically the epitome of munchkining and abusing rules for power. It was easy to break and find super powerful builds.

Even some of the earlier spells could break encounters.. Just an average grease spell can ruin some monsters.

Yeeeeah, I loved 3 so much. It really felt like you were fighting against the DM. They had to come up with some really interesting stuff to check your group.

Or they could make you roll everything random and not munchkin anything. I have always been lucky with ability score rolls so there have been times where I have been forced in to stat buying.....

New trailer up:





Looks like those dragon riders are trying to destroy that lil pool with the Danger Tadpoles?

There was also some gameplay footage as well.

Gameplay looks legit.

Looking forward to this, though it looks very much like the recent Divinity games.

It looks incredible but I have neither a PC powerful enough or the time to play it. Sad times.

 nels1031 wrote:
New trailer up:





Looks like those dragon riders are trying to destroy that lil pool with the Danger Tadpoles?

Must admit enjoyed that alot - Big Dragon fan.......

The Mindflayer spelljammer ship looked awesome as well.

The cinematics were really impressive.


The gameplay not so much:

Given how many misclicks (to the point of accidentally attacking party members) the DEV made, that UI is terrible.

They went hard on D&D5's standard, move and bonus actions, but you can attack with shoves and throws in addition for free (and outright killed things with thrown boots). What? Either use the game mechanics strictly or don't. But don't mix and match.

The encounters are... weird. Despite taking advantage of perfect meta knowledge and knowing exactly how to handle every encounter, the fights were basically complicated puzzle fights that still ended in coinflips that slaughtered half the party. That really didn't feel like D&D

So... having tadpoles eating your brain over the course of a week to transform you into a mindflayer...gives you magic jumping powers. OK, you aren't paralyzed in agony as it slowly chews your grey matter, losing more and more of your ability to function so there can be a game, but the resulting creature doesn't have magic jumping powers, so... why, though?

Voss wrote:
The cinematics were really impressive.


The gameplay not so much:

Given how many misclicks (to the point of accidentally attacking party members) the DEV made, that UI is terrible.

They went hard on D&D5's standard, move and bonus actions, but you can attack with shoves and throws in addition for free (and outright killed things with thrown boots). What? Either use the game mechanics strictly or don't. But don't mix and match.

The encounters are... weird. Despite taking advantage of perfect meta knowledge and knowing exactly how to handle every encounter, the fights were basically complicated puzzle fights that still ended in coinflips that slaughtered half the party. That really didn't feel like D&D

So... having tadpoles eating your brain over the course of a week to transform you into a mindflayer...gives you magic jumping powers. OK, you aren't paralyzed in agony as it slowly chews your grey matter, losing more and more of your ability to function so there can be a game, but the resulting creature doesn't have magic jumping powers, so... why, though?

Good points, the most effective weapons seemed to be "feature" elements - ie thrown boots - doing the same or more damage as the bow! Bizare -also don't recall Mage Hand being that powerful before?

It's basically the same interface as Original Sin 2 has. I think some of the miss-clicking might be because he's playing standing up at a desk which is a bit too low for comfort so he's not got his mouse-hand in the natural relaxed position its likely used too. Which is likely throwing off some of his coordination. Some might also be because he's on live display and trying to present and talk and stand and everything all at once.


It's got an open beta coming up so hopefully that will allow for a lot of bug fixing, polishing and tuning things to suit what the market is after.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Good points, the most effective weapons seemed to be "feature" elements - ie thrown boots - doing the same or more damage as the bow! Bizare -also don't recall Mage Hand being that powerful before?

Correct. Mage hand explicitly can't do _any_ of the things it does in the demo. It has a short list of things it can do (pick up objects <10 lbs., get stuff out of open containers, open unlocked doors, or pour out a vial). It absolutely can't attack, activate magic items, or carry more than 10 pounds. Its a cantrip, so its intentionally limited- small bonuses, basic damage, lights and the like.

Unseen servant (a 1st level spell) can't even do several of the things shown.

The throwing and shoving is more the domain of telekinesis (5th level spell).

I get breaking some rules in the transition from PnP to video game, but it needs to have some rhyme or reason (usually something to do with the necessity of the format change- this often hits illusion and divination spells fairly hard, for example), not simply because it was a cool thing in their own game.
I also noticed that the rogue couldn't seem to do sneak attacks at range (either when undetected, or when an ally was adjacent to the target). That's a huge nerf to the class, and the 5e version of the rogue is really reliant on pulling off sneak attacks every round to contribute to the fight.

Post all the hype and turn based is bad/turn based is good shilling from paid media, the only thing I can now say about this game is that it is well marketed.
I will pass for now and wait for real reviewers. But my hopes are reasonably high.

It's BG3 even if they'd not marketed it the name along would have marketed itself pretty well.

 Overread wrote:
It's BG3 even if they'd not marketed it the name along would have marketed itself pretty well.

I dunno. I saw a lot of pushback after the PAX coverage, to the point that the Wrath of the Righteous kickstarter (a followup to Kingmaker, using Pathfinder, by Owlcat Studios) saw a bump in the middle of its 'funding plateau.'

Unrelated story, unrelated edition, unrelated... everything really. The Dev in the video even mentioned the city shown isn't Baldur's Gate, its somewhere else, and the crash site is 200 miles to the east. (Which to me suggests that, like the original game, the city is going to be fairly irrelevant to most of the game- something you don't have access to at all until several chapters in)

I honestly think the D&D brand would have carried them just as far without giving people the wrong impression to get offended by. Some of this is the sheer age of the originals. Its been 20 years. The original fans wanted a proper sequel (based on some planned material lurking around for BG3: The Black Hound, dating to the days when Black Isle died), and the younger Divinity fans largely don't care- its a very different game in many respects.

Voss wrote:

Unrelated story, unrelated edition, unrelated... everything really. The Dev in the video even mentioned the city shown isn't Baldur's Gate, its somewhere else, and the crash site is 200 miles to the east. (Which to me suggests that, like the original game, the city is going to be fairly irrelevant to most of the game- something you don't have access to at all until several chapters in)

Not really that big of a deal, considering the city of Baldur's Gate made no appearance in the second game.

That's true, it was Amn. A fact I think people often easily forget.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Voss wrote:

Unrelated story, unrelated edition, unrelated... everything really. The Dev in the video even mentioned the city shown isn't Baldur's Gate, its somewhere else, and the crash site is 200 miles to the east. (Which to me suggests that, like the original game, the city is going to be fairly irrelevant to most of the game- something you don't have access to at all until several chapters in)

Not really that big of a deal, considering the city of Baldur's Gate made no appearance in the second game.

/Shrug/ Something that doesn't matter for a sequel with the same story and carrying over the protagonist and supporting characters. And truthfully, Baldur's Gate wasn't even important in the original, the main quest takes you in and out of there pretty quick if you focus on it.

It matters more in a cynically marketed 'third game,' that doesn't do any of that. Or carry over the feel or structure. There are two decades of expectations for what 'BG3' was going to be like. I'll grant that doesn't matter to Larian's core audience, and rightly so. But that begs the question of who this is for. From the UI, it looks and feels like a Divinity sequel. From the Wizard's tie ins, its linked to the Descent to Avernus adventure module, and a lot of major differences between 5e and 2e. For the Baldur's Gate community they've....scrawled 'gather your party' under the logo as a subtitle. That's pretty cheap.

I'll be honest, I just see a bunch of pointless whining that doesn't actually impact whether or not the game is good on its own merits right now.

Like how Andromeda at launch was objectively bad with or without the connection to the mass effect franchise.

See that's funny, because I see people expressing entirely valid reasons they think the game will not be good on its own merits plus some additional complaints that it lays claim to a legacy it doesn't really make any effort to earn, and when I played ME:Andromeda I found it to be superior to the two numbered sequels to the original(and only really good) ME game and most of the complaints to be ludicrously overblown nitpickery.

 Yodhrin wrote:
when I played ME:Andromeda I found it to be superior to the two numbered sequels

I couldn't tell you how good it was, I was too busy falling through the floor or having important story missions be unable to be finished because of how buggy and unfinished it was.