General gaming chatter

[maxbeedo]

Bought several things on the PSN sale, but most of it was Yakuza 3-6 for $10 each.  Currently about 75% of the way through 3.  As usual, pretty good story and characters, random mix of good/bad minigames, flawed combat.  Once that's done I may start The Last Remnant Remastered to get away from Yakuza for a bit.

[Sssith]

I bought A Way Out.  Looking forward to playing it with a friend.  Seems pretty hysterical.

[Pixie]

The opening sequence to Baldur's Gate 3 is the greatest thing ever. Holy shit.

[Sssith]

Stop it.  lol

I really want to get the game, but I have a ton on tap and this is early release.  But holy cow am I tempted to get the game and play the early parts.

[maxbeedo]

Having played a LOT of 5E D&D, I would probably feel a little limited by their class/spell options, so I'm also waiting for the finished product.  I am looking forward to seeing how they handle failure states across the game, since D&D is often just as much about interesting failures as successes, and especially so in 5E where the math is fairly bounded and you're unlikely to ever be guaranteed to succeed on a die roll.  One thing the tabletop version doesn't always handle perfectly (but can be worked through with the DM) are "knowledge" checks.  Do you know something?  Make a roll.  If you fail, nope, even if that knowledge was vital for a quest or an interesting bit of lore that would've increased your appreciation of the world.  It'll be interesting to see if they make some rolls automatic based on race, class, chosen proficiencies or whatever, just to keep things moving.

[Pixie]

I've been playing D&D since 1978. 5e since it came out (currently playing 2 campaigns and DM'ing one, so 3 sessions/week).

BG3 is a *very* good translation of the rules to PCRPG format.

And the knowledge checks are awesomely done so far. Very seamless. The info you get can vary based on how well you rolled behind the scenes on Arcana, Religion, History, whatever.

Tons of dialog choices that depend on class, race, background, etc as well.

It's super early access. Only Act 1 is done. Only 6 classes available right now (fighter, ranger, rogue, cleric, warlock, wizard). 6 more coming. Race choices are human, half elf, elf, drow (separate from elf), tiefling, halfling, dwarf, and githyanki. At least 2 subraces for each one except humans and githyanki. No gnomes, half-orcs, or dragonborn yet.

Fairly buggy.

Don't get the game now just to play BG3. Get the game now if you want to be a part of making it awesome later. You will be restarting often. There will be changes. There will be save wipes. And so on.

[Pixie]

Also, it's gorgeous as fuck. Holy crap.

And the character models are amazing. All the faces are based on scans of real people, so they're all interesting and realistic. Here's my half-elf cleric in the character creator, for instance.

Here's a badass githyanki NPC.

[Sssith]

I was thinking of starting a githyanki.  Being mostly evil (I generally have a horrible time at doing this in RPGs) and an undying hatred of Flayers.  As I said...dying to play this.

[maxbeedo]

Do they let you pick where your racial stat bonuses go?  Like instead of a Wood Elf getting +2 DEX and +1 WIS you can pick like +2 CHA and +1 CON instead.  That's a new rule that'll be official next month in 5E when Tasha's Cauldron of Everything comes out.  I would guess not as they'll probably try to keep it simple for newer players.

The Illithid macguffin would probably be awesome to me if I hadn't already run a campaign lately with a ton of them plus Githyanki/Githzerai across several planes, along with planning to run the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist -> Dungeon of the Made Mage combo soon which also includes them.  Perhaps I've taken a little too much psychic damage.

[Pixie]

I was thinking of starting a githyanki.  Being mostly evil (I generally have a horrible time at doing this in RPGs) and an undying hatred of Flayers.  As I said...dying to play this.

Well you're in luck. The game is currently geared toward being evil. The 5 companions they have available so far are all fairly shady folk. I won't be specific because spoilers.

[Pixie]

Do they let you pick where your racial stat bonuses go?  Like instead of a Wood Elf getting +2 DEX and +1 WIS you can pick like +2 CHA and +1 CON instead.  That's a new rule that'll be official next month in 5E when Tasha's Cauldron of Everything comes out.  I would guess not as they'll probably try to keep it simple for newer players.

No, BG3 uses current core rules. And Tasha's won't be "official" exactly. I mean it will but it won't. It's optional and, like, you could only use it in Adventurer League if you're willing to lose out on using anything from XtGE or SCAG or whatever, which could be a rough trade-off.

Build is 27-point-buy, with the racial modifiers from PHB (or Mordenkainen's, in the case of Githyanki).

[Pixie]

Messing around tonight, made a drow ranger before I remembered that Drizzt ruined drow rangers forever, so I ditched her.

[maxbeedo]

The ability score swap is already AL legal, with or without Tasha's. https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/AL_PGv_10_2.pdf (Appendix 1)

SCAG was completely removed from Adventurer's League for Season 10, it's no longer legal, although some of it has been confirmed to be reprinted in Tasha's (new version of the Bladesinger for example).  Thankfully though Race is no longer a limit for the +1 rule, although they removed some options from Volo's and Mordenkainen's.  They annoyingly gave Tritons 2 buffs in the recent errata to have Darkvision and Cold Resistance but then removed them as an option for this season, I guess because they'd be "too strong" (after being basically unplayed).  So the +1 rule really just applies to choosing between Xanathar's and Tasha's, which might end up being kinda even, depending on the spells.

Can you imagine being a Drow Ranger trying to deal with all the Drizzt references?  Oof.  Granted, could be fun to roleplay.  Normally calm, explode into a rage when someone mentions Drizzt. 

[Pixie]

The ability score swap is already AL legal, with or without Tasha's. https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/AL_PGv_10_2.pdf (Appendix 1)

SCAG was completely removed from Adventurer's League for Season 10, it's no longer legal, although some of it has been confirmed to be reprinted in Tasha's (new version of the Bladesinger for example).  Thankfully though Race is no longer a limit for the +1 rule, although they removed some options from Volo's and Mordenkainen's.  They annoyingly gave Tritons 2 buffs in the recent errata to have Darkvision and Cold Resistance but then removed them as an option for this season, I guess because they'd be "too strong" (after being basically unplayed).  So the +1 rule really just applies to choosing between Xanathar's and Tasha's, which might end up being kinda even, depending on the spells.

Can you imagine being a Drow Ranger trying to deal with all the Drizzt references?  Oof.  Granted, could be fun to roleplay.  Normally calm, explode into a rage when someone mentions Drizzt. 

My understanding (I don't play AL) is that the stuff in that pdf is specific to that one campaign only and if playing in regular AL, you still have to go by PHB +1. But I could be misinformed. I kinda hate AL. lol

[maxbeedo]

Generally speaking the AL rules apply to everyone playing AL, regardless of campaign, if you create a new character in that season, but whatever rules previous characters were created under do matter (you usually get to keep options that were removed that you were already using). I haven't played a ton of AL myself, especially given, well, everything about this year, just a few charity events and cross-table "Epics" (which were pretty cool) a while ago. My groups don't use it, but I keep tabs on it because sometimes it gives clues on their future plans.  Our general rule, and what I hear most from other DMs, is "if it's printed in an official book, it's legal".  Granted, we've done our fair share of Unearthed Arcana testing too, so even that varies by campaign.  We ran two full campaigns with the Mystic, which sadly will never get printed (although it did need a lot of changes).  I played through all of Ghosts of Saltmarsh using the UA Artillerist Artificer, and that got changed a ton when it was finally printed, although it didn't get nerfed as badly as the poor Alchemist.

What campaigns are you running now?