Luzifer's right hand Posted January 3 Author Share Posted January 3 (edited) I just reached act 3 in my evil 4 pure monks honour mode run. Ridiculously overpowered to be honest. Unlike my first 2 bard 1 monk 1 cleric honour mode run I'm giving bosses the time to use their legendary actions. Some are surprisingly nasty but I had no deaths except for the Gauntlet of Shar. After trying the other two subclasses on two of the characters I respeced everyone to Way of the Open Hand. Just punching everything into dust. The best build for monk actually involves 3 levels of thief for an extra bonus action but I have not bothered with that because I wanted the poison/disease immunity from level 10. At level 11 enemies don't agro until you attack for the first time after a long rest. That is usually not talked about but really funny when the enemy has no other targets. Spoiler The monks in the prism did not know what hit them. Just constant stuns and ki ressonance blasts at this point. I actually got at taste of my own medicine at the Gauntlet of Shar because my cloned party was fucking nasty and I got stunlocked for two rounds. Edited January 3 by Luzifer's right hand Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 8 hours ago, Kalbear said: Without mods you can't. It's point assignment only. Why was this decision made? Rolling for stats is such a base part of the D&D experience... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poobah Posted January 3 Share Posted January 3 1 hour ago, IlyaP said: Why was this decision made? Rolling for stats is such a base part of the D&D experience... I would guess because it's impossible to balance, and unfun to boot. I feel like most (all?) D&D PC games have used point buy; with random rolls a lot of people will have a very suboptimal experience. Plenty of people will end up absolute complete shit-tier garbage characters and likely end up just making a new file or whatever, and plenty more would end up with even more intensely overpowered characters than it is already quite possible to build in BG3 with point-buy. I'm extremely glad that the optimal experience doesn't involve save-scumming until I end up with a character with 18 in multiple stats. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 (edited) 1 hour ago, IlyaP said: Why was this decision made? Rolling for stats is such a base part of the D&D experience... Not really. I think point-buy has been the assumed default in tabletop D&D for at least a decade. I remember when we rolled for stats back in 2E we ended up doing 4d6, re-roll lowest die and all 1s, take top 3. We also allowed one 2 for 1 (i.e. if you really wanted to put one stat up another point, you had to reduce another stat by 2). That led to at least one 18 in a stat and usually several others at 14-16 and the lowest stat would be maybe 8-10. I think by today's D&D standards that would be considered OP, although the bonuses for 2E were pretty shit in compared to 3E and 5E. Fighters in particular had it rough, even if you rolled an 18 you'd then need to roll the percentile die to determine base damage output (rolling an 18 and then rolling a 01 was particularly grating, but I did roll the fabled natural 18/00 twice). For video games, you could roll for your stats in Eye of the Beholder and its two sequels, and I think Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 allowed for a variety of methods, including rolling like a maniac (and there's an autoroller mod which allows you set the target total score - say 100 - and it just rolls until it hits it and you divide between the six stats as you will). Edited January 4 by Werthead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Not Appearing Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 (edited) I've never played D&D but I used to love rolling for stats in MUDs ... as long as I could keep re-rolling until I was happy. Rolling for a game now sounds tedious. Not sure how it works in D&D but, if I only got one roll, it would discourage my participation. I imagine there's probably a lot of people like me who prefer to customize / optimize builds. Point buy likely appeals to a far bigger group of potential players. Edited January 4 by Ser Not Appearing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 2 hours ago, IlyaP said: Why was this decision made? Rolling for stats is such a base part of the D&D experience... Nowadays it really isn't - the most common is point buy or base stat assignment. Rolling is pretty optional and rare. It definitely isn't what the streamers do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arakasi Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 I never liked rolling either in parties for real games. Just breeds resentment or jealousy between players who got good/bad rolls. For a comp game that matters less ofc but I can see why the source material (d20 stat systems) went away from it and off the video games are going to follow suit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 21 minutes ago, Kalbear said: Nowadays it really isn't - the most common is point buy or base stat assignment. Rolling is pretty optional and rare. It definitely isn't what the streamers do. What's the correlation with streamers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 1 hour ago, Werthead said: For video games, you could roll for your stats in Eye of the Beholder and its two sequels, and I think Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 allowed for a variety of methods, including rolling like a maniac (and there's an autoroller mod which allows you set the target total score - say 100 - and it just rolls until it hits it and you divide between the six stats as you will). This was definitely a thing I did in BG 1/2. Particularly as I felt like 2E was brutal towards spellcasters and rangers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 (edited) 10 minutes ago, IlyaP said: This was definitely a thing I did in BG 1/2. Particularly as I felt like 2E was brutal towards spellcasters and rangers. BG spellcasters had limited utility at low level, so the trick was to load them with missile weapons to provide supporting fire when they'd exhausted their two Level 1 spells or whatever it was. Of course, at Level 20 they were basically demigods. Being able to camp at will and never have to worry about supplies was a godsend in BG1 and 2. Edited January 4 by Werthead IlyaP 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 1 hour ago, IlyaP said: What's the correlation with streamers? D&D is significantly more popular thanks to a number of groups who live stream their playthroughs. The most popular being Critical Role, who spawned a d&d expansion based on their game world and the Amazon series the legend of vox machina. A whole lot of folks have their only rpg experience based on that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Not Appearing Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 37 minutes ago, Kalbear said: D&D is significantly more popular thanks to a number of groups who live stream their playthroughs. The most popular being Critical Role, who spawned a d&d expansion based on their game world and the Amazon series the legend of vox machina. A whole lot of folks have their only rpg experience based on that. I've actually started multiple of these (though never finished) and it's my only D&D experience. Kalbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Underfoot Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 I'm actually pretty sure the Critical Role cast rolls their character stats. I think they have shared some videos doing so, at least for some one shots. They also roll for hit points on leveling up, but Matt (the DM) let's them reroll 1s. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 Yup. The sales figures for 5E have been pretty impressive, but they're only comparable to 1E back in the 1980s. They're above 2E/3E and way, way above 4E, but it's not the absolute giga-explosion of popularity that people seem to be assuming is the case. BG3 has currently sold around four times as many copies as the core 5E rulebook, the PHB, and that's in five months versus ten years. The only way to square that is that enormous numbers of people are watching the streamers and playing BG3 who have a less than 0 interest in playing tabletop. Kalbear 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poobah Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 I think BG3 has, both thanks to its quality and highly memetic / thirsty nature, made its way far out of just those interested in D&D and well in to the mainstream. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalbear Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 44 minutes ago, Poobah said: I think BG3 has, both thanks to its quality and highly memetic / thirsty nature, made its way far out of just those interested in D&D and well in to the mainstream. It's also a CRPG, and there's a whole lot of gamers who have no interest in tabletop either. Getting all the accolades helped a lot. As my wife said this morning she was interested in finally getting to play something that used real D&D rules, but the primary reason she bought it was because she heard how awesome and fun it was and all the crazy options that you could do in it. Given that there are plenty of other D&D rules-based games out there that's probably more accurate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whiskeyjack Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 (edited) On 1/2/2024 at 3:29 PM, grozeng said: I was leaning towards Ranger as a Beastmaster or Paladin with the vengeance subclass for the first time. I agree, in the old versions it was easier to be a fighter the first time to learn how to play and then be a magic user. Vengeance Paladin is a great class. Recommend getting Savage Attacker as a feat at either level 4 or 8. Here's the description - Quote When making melee weapon attacks, you roll your damage dice twice and use the highest result. It works really well on a paladin, because it triggers on every dice roll connected to a weapon attack - so for a paladin, that's not just your normal weapon damage roll, but also your smite damage roll (and any other additional rolls you tack on through other items). I've got Karlach setup this way, and she hits like a truck. Edited January 5 by Whiskeyjack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted January 9 Share Posted January 9 Upon reaching Act 3 the other day, I started experiencing a truly weird set of bugs. One in particular keeps occurring during dialogue engagements, and involves...tearing? A...bar? I don't even know what word would be appropriate to describe the bug, so here's a screenshot, which involves a conversation with Gauntlet Edwynna. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted January 9 Share Posted January 9 21 minutes ago, IlyaP said: Upon reaching Act 3 the other day, I started experiencing a truly weird set of bugs. One in particular keeps occurring during dialogue engagements, and involves...tearing? A...bar? I don't even know what word would be appropriate to describe the bug, so here's a screenshot, which involves a conversation with Gauntlet Edwynna. Yep, got this one, too. I think for the same character. It may happen with one or two other characters, but luckily it didn't with any of the major characters for important conversations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IlyaP Posted January 9 Share Posted January 9 17 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said: Yep, got this one, too. I think for the same character. It may happen with one or two other characters, but luckily it didn't with any of the major characters for important conversations. Are there any other bugs that I can expect to encounter? I've heard, uh, not great things about Act 3. Mainly that it's very buggy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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