Humor, jokes, memes about TTRPGs
I'm curious as to how quickly BG3 rule changes will start making their way into tabletop house rules and 3rd party supplements.
My guess is pretty quickly, if my own group is any worthwhile measurement.
Yeah. Larian made some really good changes to D&D, then they added crit fails to skill checks
then they added crit fails to skill checks
Do you know how many times that has pissed me off? Especially on my rogue where even a 1 would have opened the damn lock.
DC 10. You roll a natural 1, it modifies to 15. CRITICAL FAILURE
I feel like it's a bit ridiculous. A professional with expertise doing the worst they possibly can shouldn't be the same as any random untrained person doing the worst they can.
That is why they ditched critical failures and success in tabletop D&D.
My guess is they kept it in bg3 so there would be a chance of failure on everything including the DC 2 rolls, but to be honest I don't think that chance of failure really adds anything to the game.
Yeah, as DM I've always house ruled that it didn't make sense for a character to fail at the thing they're the best at.
Though I have been known to interpret a natural 1 as a crazy external force - like an earthquake - and have them reroll at -10.
Makes it even more fun when they succeed anyway.
Are those actually "crit" fails or just auto fails?
Never bothered to check if a nat one fail is any different than a nat two fail
Just auto fail. A rogue lock picking a DC10 door still has a 1/20 chance of failing the check. That's the difference.
What changes have they made? I’d love to know as I’m always game to allow homebrew etc at my table (so long as I’ve read the material, everyone agrees, and we roll with it from the start of a campaign).
Off the top of my head:
Changes fall into two categories:
Under 1:
Under 2:
Numerous weapons and items have systems attached to them that create or consumes various "charges" to add additional effects
As an example, weapons and items with the "spark" ability builds Lightning Charges in the wielder when certain criteria are fulfilled.
If 5 Lightning Charges are built up, the next instance of damage done with an attack role inflicts an additional 1d8 Lightning Damage.
Bonus action shove is so good, it lets you try shoving people off of edges or into environmental hazards instead of just whacking turn after turn. Also great for spellcasters and ranged attackers, but you need to roll for it so it's not too overpowered. Bonus action potion drinking is also really nice.
Thank you so much for this. These sounds like really reasonable tweaks and additions that I’d love to run a game with them!
I love this changes and I really going to struggle to back to martial in 5e without them.
No more I swing my sword end turn.
Instead I use my Lacerate skill and hit with my sword. Then I use my bonus action to shove.
People on the same turn sharing initiative can go at the same time. Drinking a potion is a bonus action. Those are the ones I've incorporated.
It makes much sense and avoids action spamming I’ve seen at tables that let a potion be used for free. I know Crawford intended potions to be an action since they’re “bottled spells” but it results in players never using them in fights. Also less squishy PCs makes for far for entertaining encounter design (read that as additional peril haha).
There are quite a few, but a simple one that I've put into my own house rules is giving all Clerics proficiency with flails and morningstars.
I love this. I can’t remember the last time a player used one of those two.
Flails are just objectively worse than warhammers. Same damage die, but lacking the Versatile trait. I've played with giving flails some other sort of secondary ability but never found something that works.
Morningstars are functionally the same as warpicks, and both lack the Versatile trait. I've settled on changing the morningstar's damage to 2d4 split between 1d4 bludgeoning and 1d4 piercing to set it apart.
meanwhile in legally distinct dragon game: Hmm yes I will dip fighter for access to a lv 4 reaction strike on every single character i make.
Also in legally distinct dragon game: Watch in amazement as I use my staff/dagger/rapier as a shield!
Back in my day we got an extra attack at 6th, 11th, and 16th level, and each one was at a cumulative -5 penalty, AND WE LIKED IT!
TBF the only class that gets more than one extra attack is the fighter.
Now of course it would make sense to sum up the levels you have in classes that get multiattack, and if you have >=5, you get an extra attack. But since attack progression is far less regular than spell slot progression, getting something approaching regularity beyond that would be difficult.
Now if OneD&D wanted to boost martials and introduce some sort of a multiattack scaling across multiclassing, here is how that could work:
The table:
| Warrior Level | Normal attack | Special attack | Signature Attack |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1 | - | - |
| 3 | 2 | - | - |
| 6 | 1 | 1 | - |
| 9 | 2 | 1 | - |
| 12 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 15 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 18 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
So:
Of course this could be refined a bit further, e.g., instead of a generic "special attack" they could pick power attack (must be a strength-based attack), precise strike (must be a dexterity-based melee attack), or pinpoint shot (must be a dexterity-based ranged attack) and they could swap this one on level-ups too. But I think this should be a start.
Not going to lie, I'm already taking notes. I like that in general, if you make the right choices, it's easy to make even wizards feel a lot less squishy, which would make me feel a lot more comfortable not pulling punches in my game. One of my favorite changes so far is the wild shape recharge on short rest for druids.
It's gotten me thinking about how to fix some other broken classes again, like making Ranger not fucking suck, and fixing the MADness of Barbarian. Fight me IRL, having the Barb's unarmored defense dependent on dex instead of strength is dumb as hell when the barbarian is clearly a STR/CON class, that would be like having the Monk's unarmored defense being dependent on Constitution. "So, what, Barbarians should just deflect attacks by flexing extra hard?" Yes.
Didn't druid already get wildshape on a short rest? I do agree that barbarian Unarmored Defense is a bit lackluster though.
I get what they were thinking. Monk gets to add Wisdom because their awareness let's them dodge, so it should be roughly equivalent to let a barbarian add Constitution because their natural durability makes them harder to hurt. Dexterity being one of the main Ability Scores for monks throws this out the window though
Ummm... Barbarian Unarmored Defense is based off Con, not Dex. They just didn't take away the default Dex bonus to AC that every class in the game gets. They shrug off damage by having a high Con. Barbarians are pretty good as it is, if you let them completely dump Dex and give AC from Str, they would be broken AF... 18 AC at level 1 with a shield under point buy system, and immediate jump to 20 AC at level 4, with no reduction in damage output at all. Possible to be 20 AC at level 1 literally completely naked (no shield) with rolled stats, and 18 isn't even entirely unlikely...
I usually offer players with multiple instances of extra attack a +1 to their to hit, and Im considering offering +1 crit range as well. This is a real sticking point to me in 5e, the lack of viable build variety.
Fractional BAB wins again. I like D&D 5 just fine but for stuff like multi-classing and creating really complex builds D&D 3.5 is the superior system.