When it all comes down to a single roll.
When it all comes down to a single roll.
This comic is part of an ongoing story that might make more sense with full context.
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Please be advised that if you use the connect app, it doesn't always correctly parse links to lemmy posts. If they're not working for you, you can follow the whole plotline on my site. (These comics are in reverse chronological order, so start at the end and work backwards.)
I guess if you throw an egregious amount of magical power at a problem it DOES solve it!
I populated the bar here with characters from my other campaigns, and some other comics - most of these have a high resolution vtt token associated with them - so here are those faces :)
One of them is not like the others... Looking at you bucket helmet
Oh, let me take that off:
Leave bucket helmet alone!
Oh, if you imagine Konsi would pick a less "pop diva" style outfit, and a more "opera singer" style outfit - there's a long-skirt version.
Okay that's amazing, I love it
Per our GM - this is the moment Razira realized she wasn't straight after all, but bisexual.
Up until this performance she'd been operating on "I like this girl and want to hang out".
The bi flag on the cup is an lovely detail.
Was your GM paying attention to the events shown in the previous few strips in this series? Like, I know the people around you can sometimes know before you do, but Razira sure was flirting heavy for someone who didn't know she was doing it.
So... when you design a system to use "bounded accuracy" it can fall apart completely if you include a large number of stacking buffs.
WotC's original idea was that the way you'd "buff" someone for a check would be to give advantage on it, and the options for "flat bonuses" (or die-roll bonuses) would be extremely limited... but in hindsight, if you have the right classes and a lot of prepwork, you can force a ~30 roll on nearly any check you care about.
The biggest culprit is, as everyone knows, Pass Without Trace, but don's sleep on the Artificer ability Flash of Genius - it's incredibly impactful.
I understand WOTC's idea to simplify by making Advantage the primary way to modify rolls, but it runs into a wall pretty quickly: only one effect can help at a time. Therefore you've still got things like Guidance and Bardic Inspiration providing numerical bonuses and the issue WOTC was trying to solve is only mitigated. And occasionally you get things like the above with an easier 30.
On the other hand, our level 12 Bard has +13 to most of his CHA-based skills (+5CHA, 4 Prof, expertise) so rolling 20-25 with just a flat D20 is more common than not. Which means unless the people he's persuading are heroically resistant to charm, he's probably getting his way within reason. Not having level-based scaling really amplifies players into super-human.
I feel what it's really "missing" is the bonus "typing" from previous editions - where you couldn't "stack" bonuses of the same type - so you might have access to a lot of buff spells that give you a flat bonus, but you can't stack them if they're the same general kind of thing...
The reason they moved away from typing all the bonuses (and keywording everything) was "simplicity" - and that does make some sense, but "bounded accuracy" has a built in assumption that you can't stack lots of bonuses...
There's some ways you can house-rule to try and adjust this... but they're pretty significant system changes, so... is it worth doing, or is it better to focus on scenario design to avoid this mattering so much...
I feel it's WotC's intention not to keep stacking bonusses. All the plusses and minusses in earlier editions could really turn a fantasy game into a mathematical slug-fest, and without the stacking bonus that doesn't happen all that much.
But it does fall flat rather quickly for me, as well.
You say "fall apart". I say "players choosing options and using the buffs to be awesome and thats the point of the game".
You can get something like 75-76 with the appropriate buffs.
- Level 20 Rogue, expertise in Stealth, 22 DEX (Manual of Quickness of Action), nat 20 = 38
- +Pass Without Trace = 48
- +Bardic Inspiration from a similarly high-level Bard, max roll = 60
- +Weal from a Stars Druid, max roll = 66
- +Guidance from someone (maybe even the Stars Druid), max roll = 70
- +Flash of Genius from the Artificer = 75 or 76 if they also read the appropriate +2 book.
My wild magic barbarian would like to add another 3 from bolstering magic.
Bi pride? Bi pride! ♥️💜💙
Oath of the Bisexual.
"A hole is a hole."
- D&D Third Edition
This entire storyline is adorable.
This comic is literally the reason I continue using Lemmy. 100% the best content on the platform
Recreating that one scene from Shrek 2
Still the only movie to do Holding Out For a Hero justice.
In my mind, she's singing something like "Meadows of Heaven" by Nightwish.
Other candidates include:
- Never Ending Story by Within Temptation
- Master of the Wind by Van Canto
- Cheshire Kitten by S J Tucker
- Neeko’s theme from League of Legends
Oh man, I just looked it up. It's beautiful!
