clerics are pretty fun. I'd play one but i think i might go utility wizard or bard for more group resources

One thing to take into account is that 5e is less cleric dependent than a lot of previous systems for healing (except 4e, which has a lot of self heal abilities). Bards, druids, and clerics all get healing word, which is really the clutch heal spell (since it is a bonus action). There is also already a paladin which can heal in a pinch. But, a cleric is the only one who can bring people back to life at a pretty low level. Paladins can cast revivify and raise dead, but not until like 9th and 17th level, for a straight paladin.

I am leaning toward warforged barbarian. I am thinking about the Zealot subclass which really benefits from someone playing a cleric because spells like revivify and raise dead don't use up consumable spell components to bring the Zealot back to life.

Revivify (3rd lvl spell) costs 300gp (diamond) and must be cast within 1 min of death.

Raise Dead (5th lvl spell) costs 500gp (diamond) must be cast within 10 days

Side note, Gentle Repose (2nd level spell) pauses the amount of time being considered 'dead' and lasts for 10 days. This spell is castable by a wizard or cleric.

Point is, I would play this character in a very reckless way as long as we had a lvl 5 cleric and someone was carrying a Gentle Repose spell in their back pocket. Or maybe Seth would rule that a warforg doesn't 'decompose' after death, or does so more slowly...

I can attest to monks being fun. They tend to want to make good use of their crazy mobility. Clerics don't have to be heal-bots and can lay down some consistent smack and good utility.

The nice thing about wizards over bards is that wizards can cast any ritual they have in their spellbook. Bards can only cast ritual spells they know, which is very limited. Clerics also have ritual spells, but they have to have the spell prepared, which is not terrible since they can switch after a long rest.

In reply to Ratt (msg # 138):

Allan's post made me realize that it might be possible to script a bunch of the tedious parts of this. Rolling, keeping HP, etc., could all be done with a script and the RSS feed if it is possible (and I think it is) to post/edit a post programmatically.....

I think I am going to go with barb/ftr warforged. Any idea what y'all are doing?

Re: script

It is always question of efficiency vs flexibility. I can see setting something up, then manufacturing actions in order to have it be covered by what is written. But a I also didn't quite understand everything you said, so...

One somewhat easy innovation, I think, would be to create the macro/link business that I have seen you do in early questland and post it in a separate thread, making a post for initiative, which can be edited for each fight, and so forth. Again, I am not sure what you had in mind.

There was a couple times Allan and I played by IM and I used a dice app on my phone that worked well because I set up a bunch of common rolls and it was easy to tap (and shows a graphic of rolling dice that bump into each other and stuff).

It sounded like Allan make excel sheet rolls, which sounds like something Seth would do. There are also initiate tracking apps, but I would think that a spreadsheet works well. You can have a bunch of line items like "Adam melee attack" which has the calculation in the cell next to it which you refresh.

That being said, everyone is a the master of their own character and there is always the chance of specific changes that characters can apply, like the ability to re-roll which they may want to do on the fly, unless they want to set up rules for when to invoke such abilities.

My gut feeling is that dice rolling on forum is a pain to be distributed, especially when there is already so much burden on the DM.

Though it lends to players gaming the system sometimes, I prefer when we know AC and HP so we can know when we hit and if things die, so we can have greater in-turn control, so there aren't things like, "Oh, well if that first hit kills the guy then I would move to another guy and use my bonus action to hit someone else as per the Great Weapon Master feat." It also makes it a lot easier on the DM's turn which is a lot of book keeping.

That's my 2cp.

rolled stats (had to roll twice because first set was a bust)

12
14
11
17
10
12

Starting level?

In reply to Ratt (msg # 142):

I have confirmed that I can submit things to RPOL from a script. If we had a syntax that we used (and I had GM access), I could, I think:

a) Resolve attacks and skill checks and publish the results as a private message to the parties that are supposed to know
b) Create and maintain a battle grid
c) Keep track of rounds on things like spells

It seems to me that this would make the forum a lot less onerous. Though, as I think about it, the long pole is still getting people to reply in a timely fashion.

I think Matt may have just offered to take over as DM.  I think I am in favor.

I thought it sounded like a co-dm thing.

I'd be down for a co-DM arrangement.

im leaning toward monk, but you coyuld talk me into playing a wiz. If i go monk im thinking feral tiefling, tabaxi, or kenku. im toying with the idea of wood elf too since they get all the right proficiency bonuses and a faster speed but it seems a little too vanilla i guess.

ferel tieflings get the dex bonus and if seth gives the green light could go winged

kenku gets the bonuses but cant talk and no dark vision (really seams better for a rogue)

tabaxi gets dex bonus and bursts of speed. i would ask for a house rule to up the unarmed attack since you seem to either loose a class benefit or race benefit since both give a 1d4. maybe up to 1d6 or a +1 for martial arts with claws. maybe im trying to power build too much

if matt dm's seth could pick up a character and we would have a group of 4 but maybe that would give seth an unfair advantage since he has read the campaign.

anyway i rolled stats for a character

17
15
14
9
9
7

Re: Tabaxi

Sometimes abilities overlap. The benefit is that it gives you is an unarmed slashing option. Also the climbing is part of the claw benefit, which is crazy good, especially with the double speed option. Monk speed-increases apply to all movement modes as well. At level 2 you could go 40'x2 plus step of the wind and move... 80 + 80 + 80 = 240' in one round, unless I am mistaken. Or Climb 30 + 30 + 30 = 120, which is also crazy.

Similar to the Tabaxi is the shifter race in the Eberron book I shared. The subraces Swiftstride and Wildhunt go well with monk. The Shifting feature of the Swiftstride is pretty great if you want to play cat and mouse, plus the increase to speed.

With a wood elf you can hide as per mask of the wild and zip can hide behind the elf, which is silly. Wood elves have all the right bonuses, plus the increased speed. Also, getting longbow proficiency is nothing to sneeze at.

Human variant is not a bad option either. You can take the Mobile feat which gives +10' to speed, ignore difficult terrain with Dash (which may overlap with step of the wind, but saves you valuable ki), and you don't provoke opportunity attacks from creatures you make melee attacks against (you don't need to land the hit). Kind of neat, but not sure it is better than taking one of those other races. Also get another skill & language and with those two odd ability score rolls, two +1's work just fine. (18, 16, 14 in Dex, Wis, Con).

Feral tiefling is not something I have looked at much. I am opposed to a tiefling or kenku monk for want of variety, even though that is a different game.

If nobody bites on the cleric, I might go warforged cleric. I am having trouble pulling together a build that fulfills my original vision with the warforged barb.

Yeah, I want to go cleric. Also, I am a poopy head.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:10, Fri 05 Oct 2018.

Not what I'm pitching. The forum still is too slow, so patience runs thin with making plans like I prefer to. From the DM chair, I would feel a lot of pressure to post quickly to keep the game feeling like people can take their time to make a decision and deliberate, and I can't actually commit to that. I only check here on occasion to see if Joe will ever comment on the other game that is running where it is clearly his turn.

I do think, however, as a programming challenge, developing some utility for doing the bookkeeping on the forum sounds fun. I think it might be hard and stretch my scripting skills...Maybe I'll just try to implement a dice roller to see how useful it is.

Ok, I have been thinking a lot about stats. Chiefly because I am frustrated by the fact that if you want to boost your prime ability score, it makes certain races less viable.

I don't know if I mentioned the new pathfinder system and the way they do stats. Basically, they start with like 10's across the board, then you add bonuses for race, class, background, and freebee (I think). Every step has one or two stats bonuses that are set and an allocatable bonus, but you cannot double bump at any given step. So, at the end, the most you can get is 18 of you bump the same stat at every phase (all bonuses come in +2's), and the other bonuses tend to get smattered around.

Here is how I would apply that to 5e. Start out with some standard array, like 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 8.

Then, for race, it is defined by whatever the bonuses already are, but if a race has a +2 to a stat, they instead get a +1 to that ability and a floating +1, but you cannot get more than +1 to any stat for race (or during any other step). It would look like this:

Dwarf +1 con, +1 any (other)
 Hill +1 wis
 Mountain +1 str, +1 any

Elf +1 Dex, +1 any
 High +1 Int
 Wood +1 Wis
 Drow +1 Cha

Halfling +1 Dex, +1 any
 Lightfoot +1 cha
 Stout +1 con

Human +1 all
 Variant +1 any, +1 any

Dragonborn +1 str, +1 any, +1 cha

Gnome +1 int, +1 any
 Forest +1 dex
 Rock +1 con

Half elf +1 cha, +1 any, +1 any, +1 any

Half orc +1 str, +1 any, +1 con

Tiefling +1 int, +1 cha, +1 any



Then, you get a bonus for class based on Primary ability:

Barbarian +1 str

Bard +1 cha

Cleric +1 wis

Druid +1 wis

Fighter +1 str or +1 dex

Monk +1 dex and +1 wis

Paladin +1 str and +1 cha

Ranger +1 dex and +1 wis

Rogue +1 dex

Sorcerer +1 cha

Warlock +1 cha

Wizard +1 int




Then, finally, you get a +1 to the two stats that relate to the skill proficiences you get for a given background:

Acolyte: +1 int or +1 wis, +1 any

Charlatan: +1 cha or +1 dex, +1 any

Criminal: +1 cha or +1 dex, +1 any

Entertainer: +1 dex or +1 cha, +1 any

Folk Hero: +1 wis, +1 any

Guild Artisan: +1 wis or +1 cha, +1 any

Hermit: +1 int or +1 wis, +1 any

Noble: +1 wis or +1 int, +1 any

Outlander: +1 str or +1 wis, +1 any

Sage: +1 int, +1 any

Sailor: +1 str or +1 wis, +1 any

Soldier: +1 str or +1 cha, +1 any

Urchin: +1 dex, +1 any


So, the most you can get to any stat is +3 for Race, Class, and Background, and because both race and background all get an "any" bonus, you can always get a +3 to your primary ability, of you want. Some races are still more flexible, and it makes for a world with more halfling wizards, or elven barbarians. If you choose a race with a set stat in the primary ability, you are rewarded with flexibility and because certain ones are still set, you still get races that are naturally good at certain stuff.

As far as the Monk, Paladin, Ranger incongruity, I went with exactly what the book said were primary abilities. Also, those classes are all what are referred to as MAD (multiple ability dependent), and I see no issue with have multiple bonuses for that reason (and others, which I won't get into).

If I were apply all this to the current character generation activities, I would propose an array like this:

15
13
11
10
10
9

Mostly because we can both easily get to 18, and 19 really, so the 15 in the array gets you up to 18 and then it drops down by 2's, has a couple 10's for averageness and features a lot of attractive odd numbers to tempt spreading stats around. You can end up with an overall +7 when adding all modifiers together after race, class, and background adjustments, and up to one with an 18. You can squeak out an overall of +8 with like an half-elf ranger. Comparing overall bonus is not a perfect science. to get that overall +7, all your stats end up even (in most cases, vanilla human always wins the overall stat game), which makes future increase more difficult and makes certain feats less attractive. Also, the magnitude of the bonus for each ability matters.

For reference, with the normal system, the stats I rolled get me to about an overall +9 with most races, or +10 with half-elf.

Adam can go anywhere from an overall +5 to a +8 (with vanilla human because of so many odd stats).

The standard array (15,14,13,12,10,8) from the book gets you to about +6 with most races, or +7 with half-elf, maximum of 17 in one stat.

I gave Matt GM access.  If you figure out how to make things easier with scripting that would be cool.  Otherwise I'm guessing you should be able to see any inline private messages without having to add your name.

Cool.



Hee hee hee hee hee.

Am I going to have to keep a folder of screenshots of my posts? Also, I am a poopy head.

I'm thinking I'll probably stick with the one character for now since our party will be 5 strong. Less posting for me.

This message was left by a script

In reply to Matt (msg # 158):

Booya! This one was not.

So, from practical "can scripting rpol be my full time job" point of view, I agree with you. However, that minor consideration aside, I disagree with a lot of that. It should be possible for a script to do the following:

1) Draw a grid (DRAWME: 20 x 20)
2) Populate that grid with "tokens": (PLACEME: A5)
3) Move tokens: (MOVEME: A5, A7)
4) Roll: (ROLLME: 1d20+5)

1, 2, and 3 all are roughly the same script. #4 is fairly independent.

If character sheets were up to date and in a uniform layout, we could add:

- HP tracking
- Skill checks
- Attack resolution
- Status/condition tracking

Etc.

And I think you could invoke it just by asking for it in the post, and I think the information could be distributed to only the DM, to the whole party, or to select memebers without too much effort.

At the point where I have this, everything is just parsing an altering text from here out.

Slicin' up eyeballs,
Ah ha ha ho!

This message was left by me.