The art that Free League does for Symbaroum and Third Horizon fully sold me on the products. Its so evocative and gets across the way the games want you to feel so well.
art is everything. mork borg was an art project disguised as an rpg, and that alone allowed it to win all sorts of awards and create a huge cult following, with several variants of the game for different genres of settings.
Free League does art better than anybody, Martin Grip's art on Symbaroum and Johan Egerkranz's art in both Vaesen and Dragon Bane both pulled me into those games immediately.
Talking of art that exemplifies D&D, at least for me, is the old Larry Elmore piece I think from the old AD&D days, of the proud party standing around the green Dragon wyrmling that they'd killed and the small box of treasure at their feet. It just shows the comradery, and pleasure of overcoming a foe.
@@beavschannel5217 original is called "Dragonslayers and proud of it", but quick search I can't find the version with adult in it ... might be hidden in background or added for a book cover/Dragon magazine only; I'm sure I remember it
A piece of art that sticks in my memory that defines an RPG for me is the Tim Bradstreet art for Vampire the Masquerade for the early editions from the 90s. So incredibly evocative.
Love the Wylie Beckert alternate art cover! She is quickly becoming a favorite Magic the Gathering artist for me, and her alternate art Tasha's Cauldron of Everything cover is A++
Rolling within a range makes me think of Apocalypse Keys by Rae Nedjadi, published by Evil Hat. You play a Hellboy style monster, trying to prevent the apocalypse but you might lose control of your powers and inadvertently bring it closer. On a 2d6 roll, 7 or less is a Miss, 8-10 is a Perfect Hit, 11+ is a Disastrous Success with complications or costs.
With the near-end discussion of specific range ability-checks, I agree with the initial example of overdoing the pillar removal. However, if a character knows that they need to finesse a check, a really high skill roll would reflect their greater capacity to achieve the task, as per normal.
Art is one of the key factors I take into account when buying a book, especially in deciding whether to buy a physical book or a PDF, or whether to back a Kickstarter. Maybe the main factor I consider.
I was at a convention and I bought the Zweihander starter set because of the art. I mean I had played it once before and I liked it but it was mostly because of the art on the coverbox.
As a person who has evolved far longer arms (but is still quite capable of drinking the coffee), I love being able to push up the sleeves on my hoodies. And despite not being a marsupial like our wonderful Antipodean hosts, I like me a kanga pocket.
The thing that gets me about wotc monster design is that its not JUST boring AF. Its also not streamlined at all!! It adds ZERO immersion to my game if the multiattack includes a beak and a claw attack rather than two identical attacks. Either make the attacks do cool unique things, or just simplify to a generic basic attack imo.
The thing a lot of people don't know about the Forgotten Realms world map is that up to a dozen countries on that world map used to be independent campaign settings. Back in the TSR days of the game, they trapped themselves in the same trap the modern video games industry has trapped itself in. TSR released dozens of campaign settings that fractured the D&D fanbase into smaller and smaller splinter groups. The same way AAA games punlishers have been releasing dozens of time sink live services that don't have actual gameplay value but still demand that hundreds of millions of players are spending at least 8 hours everyday playing them. Both were unsustainable. AAA video game publishing is a dumpster fire, and TSR bankrupted itself trying to sell novelty dice, 20 different clones of medieval Europe, 6 different versions of "the mysterious orient," and a couple good settings like Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape. What happened to the medieval Europe settings? They ring the inland sea between Cormyr and Thay. What happened to the "orient" knockoffs and hate crimes? They got slotted in south of Calimshan and all around Thay. If you started the game in 3e and picked up the Forgotten Realms campaign guide, you would later be surprised by all the familiar names if you ever looked at a list of 2e or AD&D settings released by TSR. So the fact that 5e is literally having the Forgotten Realms gobble up Greyhawk isn't surprising.
I think Greyhawk is going to be mentioned in the DMG as a way to build a campaign setting and I don't think it is going to be heard from again. I mean its not like 5e even supports the Forgotten Realms at this point. They probably need to just come out with a new setting and call it a day.
LOL When you run a dragon adventure and use MCDM books (before they were on D&D beyond- where your players went to read up on all the dragon stats) and they get mad that the MCDM dragons do things differently than they had built their characters for and now get mad at the DM for cheating and using NOT OFFICIAL RULES. Oh how they shut up when it is on dnd beyond LOL
Greyhawk is the "grimdark" sword and sorcery fantasy, which is totally and vastly incompatible with superhero 2014/2024 5e games that exist today and we all know it. They totally should have gone back to Eberron as the default setting. Yes I want more Eberron books, but it also is the right move thematically.
In my experience the most frequent and impactful problem with CR in the MM in practice IS that creatures don't have enough HP and don't hit hard enough. For example one of the worst offenders in the Mummy Lord, look at the equivalent entry in Level Up Advanced 5E's Monstrous Menagerie and ToV's Monster Vault and the biggest change is HP and how hard they hit. Their abilities are just variants on each other. If anything both alternative version reduce their ability to counter player abilities. As lazy as stat inflation might seem it's a granular dial and at some biting point it produce the desired difficulty. And HP and damage independently have a fairly linear and predictable impact (though defence and accuracy need some tweaking but they are less hilariously wrong in the MM). In my experience most monsters intended as a solo boss won't survive two rounds as written but do have interesting abilities already. Primarily what they need is to make it to three rounds while putting players a little more on the back foot, and adjusting just HP and damage often gets there.
The biggest problem with D&D is the adventuring day and the fact you are supposed to have 8 encounters per day. I think CR works itself out better if you are having those 8 encounters. Every encounter you skip is an when you need to start increasing damage and HP. That and WotC just lets certain classes take 8 actions in one round, and that really does a number on the HP of monsters.
The source of "8 encounters" is p.84 of the DMG and the intent wasn't to set a floor but a cap when read in context. And there's really a lot wrong with that section so I'd take any advice from it with a pinch of salt. It was never by design that multiple encounters per day was needed to make combat work. I suspect it is counter to most DMs actual experience, it's definitely the opposite to mine. Lots of encounters don't reliably generate interesting tactical choices. And if you get your encounter design right regularly running one encounter a day is fine. In fact overall I find it's easier to craft one encounter that will be tactically interesting than prep 6-8 and hope. The equivalent 6-8 is not that much on a dungeon crawl. But for a campaign that isn't primarily crawling, long term it will destroy pacing. But even when I am running a lot of encounters I find bumping damage and HP for the spotlight encounters is an improvement. I don't believe 5E D&D does require a high encounter/day mode of play to function, but it clearly is not intended as the only way the game works.
@@wewerepirates1116 I agree with you but the game and CR importantly works with 6-8 encounters. It's when you don't have 6-8 encounters that CR becomes less helpful and you have to do more work to balance encounters yourself because the game and CR is taking those 6-8 encounters into consideration. I've never ran or played in a game that has gone above 4 encounters per day. But CR is much better if you actually follow the 6-8 encounters per day. Idk if there is a good fix since dungeon crawls need lots of encounters and for the rest of us, we seldom do. But that's irrelevant until the new edition ten years from now comes out and they hopefully revisit the number of encounters that are expected.
6-8 encounters a day is not the expected number, or a design principle of CR or character balance. It was just something the person who wrote that chapter of the DMG came up with as an upper limit of encounters per day. It has nothing to do with the fundamental problem with CR in the 2014 MM, which that the actual difficulty of monsters is wildly inconsistent of their CR.
@@wewerepirates1116 It is 100% the expected number. I"m not saying having that many encounters suddenly fixes CR, but it does do a better job of making it more usable.
55:15 I was watching a Bill Skarsgard vampire show on Netflix (forget the name) the standard violence didn’t make me squeamish. It was the woman who cut her leg while shaving that really got me though. Maybe it’s more relatable?
A word in favor of stat inflation in monster redesign: the abilities that a monster has are core to the fantasy of that monster. If you're fighting a lich, it should be using ancient, powerful, and arcane magic. If you're fighting a vampire, it should be summoning wolves, turning into a bat, and possessing the strength of a dozen men in its grip. If you're fighting an owlbear, it should be beaking you and giving you overly enthusiastic hugs. Increasing HP, damage dealt, and other statistical measures to correct enemy balance is a lot better than giving them new abilities and suddenly trying to figure out why giving Strahd laser vision just made the players roll their own eyes. (On the other hand, if the owlbear can breathe fire, then that can just be chalked up to the wizard who build it throwing in a little hellhound DNA.) Regarding art...I don't _want_ to say that art influences my purchasing decisions and that the content can stand on its own, but no, art totally does influence my purchasing decisions. Art is what catches my eye and gets me to look at the thing in the first place, enhances my experience while consuming the content (see, eg. the Stephen Fabian artwork throughout the Arkham House edition of Basil Copper's _The House of the Wolf_ ) and what Dael was saying about the way font, layout, and other non-pretty-picture art works as well; I have in the past rebought books I already own because a different edition had better art or font or paper quality and just made the reading experience more enjoyable. And on a different art-is-important question, if I see AI art is involved, I turn around and walk away; there was at least one Kickstarter I was really interested in but noped out of because they used AI artwork.
#1 Red Box cover 83, #2 2024 collectors Cover, #3 2014 PHB Cover. #4 2nd edition DM cover, #5 1e PHB cover then eveyrhting else and the 3rd edition 3.5 covers DEAD last lol
You can tell you guys haven't actually followed the UA cycle for 24PHB. The goal is to make CR work by adjusting the monsters to fit their CR, and that every monster has been touched during their internal playtest, this is because they want all adventures to be backwards compatible so when it mentions a monster or gives x amount of Xp it fits with the CR of those monster within same with the spells. Now regarding cool abilities or combos the best indicator is their newer monster releases as part of their newer adventures which have been getting more intricate and have combos built in, granted this is only for some creatures but we can only hope and wait since the monster book is the last -_-. I really wished that we got the monster book before the DMs book as honestly that seems like a better order of things.
@8:00 Strongheart and Elcorn are action figures I have seen recently on the shelf at my FLGS. I know these are re-runs of the previous action figures back in the 80's when the cartoon was on, and I'm not sure if Strongheart actually showed up on the cartoon once. Comment on the main cover art - looks too impressionistic. I like the art to be more defined and clear. Also, the arm positioning on the dragon is... confusing. Actually, the whole body of the dragon is weird - people look at that dragon body and accuse it of AI authorship - just like the old hands and feet problem (but I'm pretty sure they fixed that by now, right?).
Everyone except the elf, is Valor's Call from WIld Beyond the Witchlight (which were action figures/from D&D's past). Which I think means WotC really thought these characters were bigger than they actually are as no one has a clue who they are. Like I didn't and I have the Miniatures over on my shelf.
I have a big problem with the passive skills. Like when Dael says that a character with a high passive insight gets info before the perception check "remember the big bad you shouldn't perceive", basically taking the decision out of the PCs hands, intervening as the all-knowing DM and saying "don't". It feels to me all passive skills are bad design, except perhaps the passive perception vs enemies trying to ambush.
Passive perception exists so you don't have to keep asking your DM, what do I see? Even when you aren't actively paying attention, you can notice things. I think the biggest problem with insight, is too many people turn it into a lie detector, which it really isn't. Like if a NPC believes something to be true, they will come off as though it is true.
@bradleyhurley6755 I don't really agree with your first statement depending on how it's implemented. I want the players to actively interact with the environment and explain what they want to do, instead of letting them get free information before they do anything. Possibly if an enemy is badly hiding in a new room, the passive perception might spot them out, but otherwise I'd want the players to interact before any hidden info is told
@@Falruk I get that, but I as a player would immediately ask if someone is hiding in every room of that is something that typically happens. So there would never really be any interaction on my part.
Giving players information that their characters would know doesn't impede their agency as players, it merely allows them to actually play their characters instead of just playing themselves in the dungeon. How much information to give them and whether to tie it to a passive stat or not is always going to be a choice for the individual DM to make. Passive stats are a tool which can increase verisimilitude. But a lot of this is going to come down to the philosophy of your particular table. Some tables gamify it more than others and always seek to challenge the players, not the characters. Others want to create a strong narrative for roleplay and focus more on the characters. Which style isn't important. What's important is that all the players, (DM included) are on the same page.
@@MannonMartin I don't think ignoring passive scores accomplishes either goal. Cause on one hand you need a list of questions to ask the DM as soon as you walk into the room. On the other hand if the DM uses passive scores you can focus more on RP without worrying about stepping on a trap because you forgot to check the list of things you are supposed to ask as soon as you step into a room. This might be a me thing where I would literally have a list of things to ask as soon as I step into a room, such as, is there anyone hiding?
It's too late to the party but... Treating new CR as an Optional Rule could be the way to solve for this because the power gamers have already figured out how to completely wreck any encounter a DM throws at them by maximizing their build and could use a "now we make fights harder" adjustment, whereas people who are playing for the story aren't really looking for fights to be longer and harder, they're just there to create a tension beat between theatre kid times. With D&D trying to appease both groups, allowing the DM to use broken original CR or (let's face it) differently broken New CR would have been a way to keep the peace between these two player types so long as they're not in the same party. (I built an encounter calculator that would actually attempt to calculate an encounter CR against the Party level including things like allies and special abilities and yes--CR is *so broken* lol)
CR doesn't really work. I mean If my rune knight fighter and a gloomstalker ranger were both in a campaign, the DM would quit. Even worse if we make synergies and get a wizard to cast haste. But on days we miss, suddenly the power level of the entire game changes.
Monsters are being adjusted to better fit the CR they already have. The CR it-self isn't changing, they are just bringing the monsters more in line with it, which should actually make them fit better for DM's using old or new encounter building guidelines. Granted, those guidelines are just that. They aren't really rules a DM has to follow and never have been so CR has functionally always been optional in that way. The DM can use monsters however they like, though. Will the new monsters be perfectly described by their CR? No. That's literally impossible. There are too many variables that will make monsters more or less powerful vs different parties in different situations, ect. But it's a general tool to help DM's get in the ballpark how strong a monster is, and the new monsters should be an improvement, if an incremental one, over the old ones.
Classes matter too much. Gloomstalker and Rune Knight at 13th level can each pump out like 150 damage on round one each. While everyone else is hoping to get 40 damage that round. The number of encounters matter a lot. CR is a lot better with 6-8 encounters than 1-4 encounters per day. I think the most important thing to look at is the HP a monster has and the dmg output of the monster, and how many encounters you are going to have and factor in debuffs and compare that to the parties HP/Dmg/Debuffs. CR simply isn't capable of doing that.
2:04 I don't feel like art is important for me to be interested in a game, BUT I do feel like art is shorthand for quality of a game. Like, if someone doesn't bother putting nice art on their game, I don't feel like they will have put much effort into the game design either. That may or may not be true, but I feel like art won't make me say, oh yes, I have to buy this, but it will Make me say, oh no, I will not buy this.
You're a bunch of sellouts. I bought books from you guys because you WEREN'T associated with WotC. You lost a potential lifelong customer because of your short sighted greed.
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The art that Free League does for Symbaroum and Third Horizon fully sold me on the products. Its so evocative and gets across the way the games want you to feel so well.
Their advertisement videos for Blade Runner mesmerized me, I failed my saving throw, and I was compelled to buy it.
The art Free League does for each of their games is the gold standard for rpgs IMO.
art is everything. mork borg was an art project disguised as an rpg, and that alone allowed it to win all sorts of awards and create a huge cult following, with several variants of the game for different genres of settings.
Free League does art better than anybody, Martin Grip's art on Symbaroum and Johan Egerkranz's art in both Vaesen and Dragon Bane both pulled me into those games immediately.
Yes Dragonbane art is the best! I knew I would be getting that game from the first time I saw the mallard rogue.
Talking of art that exemplifies D&D, at least for me, is the old Larry Elmore piece I think from the old AD&D days, of the proud party standing around the green Dragon wyrmling that they'd killed and the small box of treasure at their feet. It just shows the comradery, and pleasure of overcoming a foe.
and the wide angle version of same ... with a wide eyed adult green dragon just having seen part from behind bushes 😂
@@andrewburgess9578 oh yeah, I think I remember that. I think I'll need to track it down and have it as my PC wallpaper for a bit.
@@beavschannel5217 original is called "Dragonslayers and proud of it", but quick search I can't find the version with adult in it ... might be hidden in background or added for a book cover/Dragon magazine only; I'm sure I remember it
Notice how the dragon in the alt cover twists into the shape of a D&D lol
A piece of art that sticks in my memory that defines an RPG for me is the Tim Bradstreet art for Vampire the Masquerade for the early editions from the 90s. So incredibly evocative.
3.5 has my favorite layout and art
@52:00 Ben's idea of too high a success roll having consequences - definitely going to use that
Love the smell of Ghostfire in the morning
I want the Dragonbane book for myself *solely* because of the Johan Egerkrans’ art! It’s so pretty 🤩
Love the Wylie Beckert alternate art cover! She is quickly becoming a favorite Magic the Gathering artist for me, and her alternate art Tasha's Cauldron of Everything cover is A++
5e book read at the Seattle center sounds Devine.
2014-15 was a good time ❤
Rolling within a range makes me think of Apocalypse Keys by Rae Nedjadi, published by Evil Hat. You play a Hellboy style monster, trying to prevent the apocalypse but you might lose control of your powers and inadvertently bring it closer. On a 2d6 roll, 7 or less is a Miss, 8-10 is a Perfect Hit, 11+ is a Disastrous Success with complications or costs.
Style sells. Mork Borg has just an insane layout and style.
Ben you better watch out bad mouthing Xmen that's fighting words
With the near-end discussion of specific range ability-checks, I agree with the initial example of overdoing the pillar removal. However, if a character knows that they need to finesse a check, a really high skill roll would reflect their greater capacity to achieve the task, as per normal.
Art is one of the key factors I take into account when buying a book, especially in deciding whether to buy a physical book or a PDF, or whether to back a Kickstarter. Maybe the main factor I consider.
I was at a convention and I bought the Zweihander starter set because of the art. I mean I had played it once before and I liked it but it was mostly because of the art on the coverbox.
Wasn’t the PHB cover an anamorphic image meant for a DM screen that got chopped down? And that’s why it looks off?
"It just drips off the tongue" instead of rolls off the tongue at the last instant of the ooze talk was a sensational double entendre from James.
The Tumblr post man, in MY Podcast? It's more likely than you'd think!
As a person who has evolved far longer arms (but is still quite capable of drinking the coffee), I love being able to push up the sleeves on my hoodies. And despite not being a marsupial like our wonderful Antipodean hosts, I like me a kanga pocket.
Ben, you just *know* I'm going to break out a pack of cards for "Blackjack rolls" next time we're at a high stakes / high tension roll...
The thing that gets me about wotc monster design is that its not JUST boring AF. Its also not streamlined at all!! It adds ZERO immersion to my game if the multiattack includes a beak and a claw attack rather than two identical attacks.
Either make the attacks do cool unique things, or just simplify to a generic basic attack imo.
The thing a lot of people don't know about the Forgotten Realms world map is that up to a dozen countries on that world map used to be independent campaign settings.
Back in the TSR days of the game, they trapped themselves in the same trap the modern video games industry has trapped itself in. TSR released dozens of campaign settings that fractured the D&D fanbase into smaller and smaller splinter groups. The same way AAA games punlishers have been releasing dozens of time sink live services that don't have actual gameplay value but still demand that hundreds of millions of players are spending at least 8 hours everyday playing them. Both were unsustainable. AAA video game publishing is a dumpster fire, and TSR bankrupted itself trying to sell novelty dice, 20 different clones of medieval Europe, 6 different versions of "the mysterious orient," and a couple good settings like Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Planescape.
What happened to the medieval Europe settings? They ring the inland sea between Cormyr and Thay.
What happened to the "orient" knockoffs and hate crimes? They got slotted in south of Calimshan and all around Thay.
If you started the game in 3e and picked up the Forgotten Realms campaign guide, you would later be surprised by all the familiar names if you ever looked at a list of 2e or AD&D settings released by TSR.
So the fact that 5e is literally having the Forgotten Realms gobble up Greyhawk isn't surprising.
I think Greyhawk is going to be mentioned in the DMG as a way to build a campaign setting and I don't think it is going to be heard from again. I mean its not like 5e even supports the Forgotten Realms at this point. They probably need to just come out with a new setting and call it a day.
LOL When you run a dragon adventure and use MCDM books (before they were on D&D beyond- where your players went to read up on all the dragon stats) and they get mad that the MCDM dragons do things differently than they had built their characters for and now get mad at the DM for cheating and using NOT OFFICIAL RULES. Oh how they shut up when it is on dnd beyond LOL
Love Zac's character in the Deerstalker Pictures' shorts.
THAT'S where I know him from! Thank you!
The style of the game SPIRE was inspirational and pulled me into their world and did influence me to purchase and run the game.
I'm one of those people that said Ben should have talked to Dael about beholders.
Greyhawk is the "grimdark" sword and sorcery fantasy, which is totally and vastly incompatible with superhero 2014/2024 5e games that exist today and we all know it. They totally should have gone back to Eberron as the default setting.
Yes I want more Eberron books, but it also is the right move thematically.
Yep, The Draconomicon is the best D&D Book ever published
Congruence/congruent was the word y'all were looking for 😅
In my experience the most frequent and impactful problem with CR in the MM in practice IS that creatures don't have enough HP and don't hit hard enough. For example one of the worst offenders in the Mummy Lord, look at the equivalent entry in Level Up Advanced 5E's Monstrous Menagerie and ToV's Monster Vault and the biggest change is HP and how hard they hit. Their abilities are just variants on each other. If anything both alternative version reduce their ability to counter player abilities.
As lazy as stat inflation might seem it's a granular dial and at some biting point it produce the desired difficulty. And HP and damage independently have a fairly linear and predictable impact (though defence and accuracy need some tweaking but they are less hilariously wrong in the MM). In my experience most monsters intended as a solo boss won't survive two rounds as written but do have interesting abilities already. Primarily what they need is to make it to three rounds while putting players a little more on the back foot, and adjusting just HP and damage often gets there.
The biggest problem with D&D is the adventuring day and the fact you are supposed to have 8 encounters per day. I think CR works itself out better if you are having those 8 encounters. Every encounter you skip is an when you need to start increasing damage and HP. That and WotC just lets certain classes take 8 actions in one round, and that really does a number on the HP of monsters.
The source of "8 encounters" is p.84 of the DMG and the intent wasn't to set a floor but a cap when read in context. And there's really a lot wrong with that section so I'd take any advice from it with a pinch of salt. It was never by design that multiple encounters per day was needed to make combat work. I suspect it is counter to most DMs actual experience, it's definitely the opposite to mine. Lots of encounters don't reliably generate interesting tactical choices. And if you get your encounter design right regularly running one encounter a day is fine. In fact overall I find it's easier to craft one encounter that will be tactically interesting than prep 6-8 and hope.
The equivalent 6-8 is not that much on a dungeon crawl. But for a campaign that isn't primarily crawling, long term it will destroy pacing. But even when I am running a lot of encounters I find bumping damage and HP for the spotlight encounters is an improvement. I don't believe 5E D&D does require a high encounter/day mode of play to function, but it clearly is not intended as the only way the game works.
@@wewerepirates1116 I agree with you but the game and CR importantly works with 6-8 encounters. It's when you don't have 6-8 encounters that CR becomes less helpful and you have to do more work to balance encounters yourself because the game and CR is taking those 6-8 encounters into consideration. I've never ran or played in a game that has gone above 4 encounters per day. But CR is much better if you actually follow the 6-8 encounters per day. Idk if there is a good fix since dungeon crawls need lots of encounters and for the rest of us, we seldom do. But that's irrelevant until the new edition ten years from now comes out and they hopefully revisit the number of encounters that are expected.
6-8 encounters a day is not the expected number, or a design principle of CR or character balance. It was just something the person who wrote that chapter of the DMG came up with as an upper limit of encounters per day. It has nothing to do with the fundamental problem with CR in the 2014 MM, which that the actual difficulty of monsters is wildly inconsistent of their CR.
@@wewerepirates1116 It is 100% the expected number. I"m not saying having that many encounters suddenly fixes CR, but it does do a better job of making it more usable.
55:15 I was watching a Bill Skarsgard vampire show on Netflix (forget the name) the standard violence didn’t make me squeamish. It was the woman who cut her leg while shaving that really got me though. Maybe it’s more relatable?
Hemlock grove
A word in favor of stat inflation in monster redesign: the abilities that a monster has are core to the fantasy of that monster. If you're fighting a lich, it should be using ancient, powerful, and arcane magic. If you're fighting a vampire, it should be summoning wolves, turning into a bat, and possessing the strength of a dozen men in its grip. If you're fighting an owlbear, it should be beaking you and giving you overly enthusiastic hugs. Increasing HP, damage dealt, and other statistical measures to correct enemy balance is a lot better than giving them new abilities and suddenly trying to figure out why giving Strahd laser vision just made the players roll their own eyes. (On the other hand, if the owlbear can breathe fire, then that can just be chalked up to the wizard who build it throwing in a little hellhound DNA.)
Regarding art...I don't _want_ to say that art influences my purchasing decisions and that the content can stand on its own, but no, art totally does influence my purchasing decisions. Art is what catches my eye and gets me to look at the thing in the first place, enhances my experience while consuming the content (see, eg. the Stephen Fabian artwork throughout the Arkham House edition of Basil Copper's _The House of the Wolf_ ) and what Dael was saying about the way font, layout, and other non-pretty-picture art works as well; I have in the past rebought books I already own because a different edition had better art or font or paper quality and just made the reading experience more enjoyable. And on a different art-is-important question, if I see AI art is involved, I turn around and walk away; there was at least one Kickstarter I was really interested in but noped out of because they used AI artwork.
#1 Red Box cover 83, #2 2024 collectors Cover, #3 2014 PHB Cover. #4 2nd edition DM cover, #5 1e PHB cover then eveyrhting else and the 3rd edition 3.5 covers DEAD last lol
Anyone wanna talk about how the dragon doesn't have wings?
All that Glitters, isn't Gold! 🤔
You can tell you guys haven't actually followed the UA cycle for 24PHB. The goal is to make CR work by adjusting the monsters to fit their CR, and that every monster has been touched during their internal playtest, this is because they want all adventures to be backwards compatible so when it mentions a monster or gives x amount of Xp it fits with the CR of those monster within same with the spells. Now regarding cool abilities or combos the best indicator is their newer monster releases as part of their newer adventures which have been getting more intricate and have combos built in, granted this is only for some creatures but we can only hope and wait since the monster book is the last -_-. I really wished that we got the monster book before the DMs book as honestly that seems like a better order of things.
@8:00 Strongheart and Elcorn are action figures I have seen recently on the shelf at my FLGS. I know these are re-runs of the previous action figures back in the 80's when the cartoon was on, and I'm not sure if Strongheart actually showed up on the cartoon once.
Comment on the main cover art - looks too impressionistic. I like the art to be more defined and clear. Also, the arm positioning on the dragon is... confusing. Actually, the whole body of the dragon is weird - people look at that dragon body and accuse it of AI authorship - just like the old hands and feet problem (but I'm pretty sure they fixed that by now, right?).
Everyone except the elf, is Valor's Call from WIld Beyond the Witchlight (which were action figures/from D&D's past). Which I think means WotC really thought these characters were bigger than they actually are as no one has a clue who they are. Like I didn't and I have the Miniatures over on my shelf.
It's that DND Shorts guy!
NUMBER 1 PODCAST
Dante doing *work* again. lol
I have a big problem with the passive skills. Like when Dael says that a character with a high passive insight gets info before the perception check "remember the big bad you shouldn't perceive", basically taking the decision out of the PCs hands, intervening as the all-knowing DM and saying "don't". It feels to me all passive skills are bad design, except perhaps the passive perception vs enemies trying to ambush.
Passive perception exists so you don't have to keep asking your DM, what do I see? Even when you aren't actively paying attention, you can notice things. I think the biggest problem with insight, is too many people turn it into a lie detector, which it really isn't. Like if a NPC believes something to be true, they will come off as though it is true.
@bradleyhurley6755 I don't really agree with your first statement depending on how it's implemented. I want the players to actively interact with the environment and explain what they want to do, instead of letting them get free information before they do anything. Possibly if an enemy is badly hiding in a new room, the passive perception might spot them out, but otherwise I'd want the players to interact before any hidden info is told
@@Falruk I get that, but I as a player would immediately ask if someone is hiding in every room of that is something that typically happens. So there would never really be any interaction on my part.
Giving players information that their characters would know doesn't impede their agency as players, it merely allows them to actually play their characters instead of just playing themselves in the dungeon. How much information to give them and whether to tie it to a passive stat or not is always going to be a choice for the individual DM to make. Passive stats are a tool which can increase verisimilitude. But a lot of this is going to come down to the philosophy of your particular table. Some tables gamify it more than others and always seek to challenge the players, not the characters. Others want to create a strong narrative for roleplay and focus more on the characters. Which style isn't important. What's important is that all the players, (DM included) are on the same page.
@@MannonMartin I don't think ignoring passive scores accomplishes either goal. Cause on one hand you need a list of questions to ask the DM as soon as you walk into the room. On the other hand if the DM uses passive scores you can focus more on RP without worrying about stepping on a trap because you forgot to check the list of things you are supposed to ask as soon as you step into a room.
This might be a me thing where I would literally have a list of things to ask as soon as I step into a room, such as, is there anyone hiding?
MOnsters are being adjsuted to better represent their challenge rating
It's too late to the party but... Treating new CR as an Optional Rule could be the way to solve for this because the power gamers have already figured out how to completely wreck any encounter a DM throws at them by maximizing their build and could use a "now we make fights harder" adjustment, whereas people who are playing for the story aren't really looking for fights to be longer and harder, they're just there to create a tension beat between theatre kid times. With D&D trying to appease both groups, allowing the DM to use broken original CR or (let's face it) differently broken New CR would have been a way to keep the peace between these two player types so long as they're not in the same party.
(I built an encounter calculator that would actually attempt to calculate an encounter CR against the Party level including things like allies and special abilities and yes--CR is *so broken* lol)
It's not surprising since CR doesn't account for multiclassing and feats
CR doesn't really work. I mean If my rune knight fighter and a gloomstalker ranger were both in a campaign, the DM would quit. Even worse if we make synergies and get a wizard to cast haste. But on days we miss, suddenly the power level of the entire game changes.
Monsters are being adjusted to better fit the CR they already have. The CR it-self isn't changing, they are just bringing the monsters more in line with it, which should actually make them fit better for DM's using old or new encounter building guidelines. Granted, those guidelines are just that. They aren't really rules a DM has to follow and never have been so CR has functionally always been optional in that way. The DM can use monsters however they like, though.
Will the new monsters be perfectly described by their CR? No. That's literally impossible. There are too many variables that will make monsters more or less powerful vs different parties in different situations, ect. But it's a general tool to help DM's get in the ballpark how strong a monster is, and the new monsters should be an improvement, if an incremental one, over the old ones.
Classes matter too much. Gloomstalker and Rune Knight at 13th level can each pump out like 150 damage on round one each. While everyone else is hoping to get 40 damage that round.
The number of encounters matter a lot. CR is a lot better with 6-8 encounters than 1-4 encounters per day.
I think the most important thing to look at is the HP a monster has and the dmg output of the monster, and how many encounters you are going to have and factor in debuffs and compare that to the parties HP/Dmg/Debuffs. CR simply isn't capable of doing that.
2:04 I don't feel like art is important for me to be interested in a game, BUT I do feel like art is shorthand for quality of a game. Like, if someone doesn't bother putting nice art on their game, I don't feel like they will have put much effort into the game design either. That may or may not be true, but I feel like art won't make me say, oh yes, I have to buy this, but it will Make me say, oh no, I will not buy this.
Good
That gold dragons anatomy is all over the place
Congruent
How can you be a D&D commentator and not know about Greyhawk?
I think the skin color of the elf is throwing everyone off, because if you google her you will only find pale white versions.
The superhero thing so early is terrible
So CR is still busted and isnt really useful
Sad. We ran out of real guest panelists and had to go with a snarky pita...
You're a bunch of sellouts. I bought books from you guys because you WEREN'T associated with WotC. You lost a potential lifelong customer because of your short sighted greed.