Quote from: Marleycat;543182To remain in the spirit of the game and the spell it should only target animate objects/creatures. If you want something with more variety/triggers use a higher level spell.

See my previous post s, but down that route lie feats called 'Sand in its eyes' that distract a target creature for one round but don't need sand or the creature to have eyes.

if it always hits whatever you aim at it makes sense but you have a very tough at will power.

If Magic Missile always rolled to hit then the whole issue goes away and the spell makes 'sense', and isn't too powerful.


Oh as an aside can we avoid the argument that we are arguing over the reality of a 'spell' which by its nature is ficticious and unrealistic so can be whatever the designer decides.
For me internal logic really can be applied to spells and dragons and magic teleport portals. It's easy to say I can summon a bolt of energy. It's easy to say this bolt of energy will hit whatever I look at so it never misses. It's harder to say, but only if I look at a creature, if I look at a glass of wine, or a mirror, or a chair or a statue of a creature it stops working.

DM: It's a Treasure Chest
Player: I Magic Missile it
DM: Nothing happens
DM: It's another Treasure Chest
Player: I Magic Missile it
DM: bolts of arcane light fly from your fingers
Player: I found the Mimic, go me

DM: You come across an enemy fort defended by many sentinels
Player: I Magic Missile one
DM: Nothing happens
Player: Ah, the old alamo trick, eh

Then of course you start worrying about how interacts with illusions and all that shit. If you start Rules Lawyering, so will your players.

Quote from: jadrax;543188DM: It's a Treasure Chest
Player: I Magic Missile it
DM: Nothing happens
DM: It's another Treasure Chest
Player: I Magic Missile it
DM: bolts of arcane light fly from your fingers
Player: I found the Mimic, go me

DM: You come across an enemy fort defended by many sentinels
Player: I Magic Missile one
DM: Nothing happens
Player: Ah, the old alamo trick, eh

Then of course you start worrying about how interacts with illusions and all that shit. If you start Rules Lawyering, so will your players.

Absolutely sir.  KISS is the answer.

Quote from: jibbajibba;543184Exactly.

Either you can summon a bolt of energy that always hits it's intended target or you can't.

Is it a Game Engine or a Physics Engine.

Well, obviously, as-written, you can summon a bolt of energy that always hits its intended animate target.  

WotC has had difficulty deciding what it wants for some time now.

Feedback list for DnD #5

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PG 2: Advantages and Disadvantages: one of my players found the extraneous dice rolling to be a waste. The player stated a preference to having either a modifier or a target number. I find the Advantages and Disadvantages die to be a good way to keep the game going.  

Pg 7: Perception: Spotting a hidden object: One of my players felt that the detail of activity required was excessive, they then spent the entirety of the evening thrashing all the furniture, and trappings in the game just to make certain that nothing was hidden in any of it. Simply allowing a general search and perception test could have alleviated this issue.

Pg 9: Combat Sequence: Surprise: The surprise rule allows a GM to arbitrarily determine surprise. The rules as written force the players to be surprised for the full length of the combat as initiative is rolled only one time and it is before step 3. Step 1 determine surprise if surprised -20 to initiative, step 2 is roll initiative with a -20 modifier. Step 3 perform the combat for a full round. Then repeat step 3. Never are the players allowed to improve their initiative.

Pg 13: Resting: Long Rest: this rule is broken, if a character is wounded down to 1 hit point there is no reason, other than the use of magic, that character should heal up to their full hit points after only 8 hours of rest. This rule reinforces the mentality of rush in and try to kill everything because there is no penalty for doing so.

Love) The basic core rule is this, you tell the GM what you wish to do, the DM then tells you what you need to roll to achieve the result you want.

The GM is not there to shaft you at the first opportunity. So far there are "A lot" less rules and more decision making and judgment calls for the GM combined with less dice rolling. To me this makes for a free flowing game wherein rules lawyer-ing and arguments are at a minimum.

There is a noted lack of Harried rules or even sugestions.

Is it just me, or are we having an influx of new posters?

Quote from: B.T.;543296Is it just me, or are we having an influx of new posters?

Like cockroaches, lurkers are coming out of the woodwork! :eek:

Quote from: jadrax;543171I love 5th edition, its like we can have every 4 decade long debate all on one thread. ;o)

Yeah, 'cause a mistake in one adventure completely invalidates the rule as written.

Quote from: jadrax;543188DM: It's a Treasure Chest
Player: I Magic Missile it
DM: Nothing happens
DM: It's another Treasure Chest
Player: I Magic Missile it
DM: bolts of arcane light fly from your fingers
Player: I found the Mimic, go me

DM: You come across an enemy fort defended by many sentinels
Player: I Magic Missile one
DM: Nothing happens
Player: Ah, the old alamo trick, eh

We certainly wouldn't want players to start using spells creatively. That might lead to fun, or something like it.

:rolleyes:

Personally, if I was refereeing a 1e campaign, I'd be glad to see the players use their characters' spells this way, or to locate piercers among stalactites, or to suss out a trapper or lurker above.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;543373Yeah, 'cause a mistake in one adventure completely invalidates the rule as written.


We certainly wouldn't want players to start using spells creatively. That might lead to fun, or something like it.

:rolleyes:

Personally, if I was refereeing a 1e campaign, I'd be glad to see the players use their characters' spells this way, or to locate piercers among stalactites, or to suss out a trapper or lurker above.

We can't have that for your transgression expect the game police at your door shortly.

Quote from: B.T.;543296Is it just me, or are we having an influx of new posters?

Don't know about other folks, but I just found this page a week or so ago.

Quote from: Drucifer;543382Don't know about other folks, but I just found this page a week or so ago.

I prefer Posters to Lurkers, so pay no nevermind.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;543373We certainly wouldn't want players to start using spells creatively.

Personally, if I was refereeing a 1e campaign, I'd be glad to see the players use their characters' spells this way, or to locate piercers among stalactites, or to suss out a trapper or lurker above.

That is not really me improvising, that is me making a passive-aggressive protest that the reality of the game is shit.

Improvising with spells, to me, is when I go 'oh I have a spell that allows me to stick something to something else, with ice!' and use it to do so. When I then get told that it only sticks moving creatures or it can be used to stick flying creatures to thin-fucking-air for no fucking reason that 'its magic' is when i can taste the bile at the back of my throat.

Quote from: Drucifer;543219Pg 7: Perception: Spotting a hidden object: One of my players felt that the detail of activity required was excessive, they then spent the entirety of the evening thrashing all the furniture, and trappings in the game just to make certain that nothing was hidden in any of it. Simply allowing a general search and perception test could have alleviated this issue.

This is provided for explicitly. See page 7 of the DM packet.

QuotePg 9: Combat Sequence: Surprise: The surprise rule allows a GM to arbitrarily determine surprise. The rules as written force the players to be surprised for the full length of the combat as initiative is rolled only one time and it is before step 3. Step 1 determine surprise if surprised -20 to initiative, step 2 is roll initiative with a -20 modifier. Step 3 perform the combat for a full round. Then repeat step 3. Never are the players allowed to improve their initiative.

Improving initiative is irrelevant. Combat is cyclical. The only thing surprise does is make it really, really likely that the surprisers will act first.

Introducing infinities is always bad. It always lets all logic implode.

I remember all the shennanigans players tried to pull off with the eldritch blasts from that variant class in 3.5! That stuff just does not work.

Quote from: Drucifer;543219PG 2: Advantages and Disadvantages: one of my players found the extraneous dice rolling to be a waste. The player stated a preference to having either a modifier or a target number. I find the Advantages and Disadvantages die to be a good way to keep the game going.

Advantages can be worth up to a +5 bonus depending on their initial chance of success. For example two rolls at 11+ (50%) will mean there only a 25% chance of failure a reduction of 25% (or +5 in terms of a d20) due to chance of failure.

It also scales so if you need a 6+ better to hit you only have a 6.25% chance of a failure  While that still a bonus of roughly a +4 nearly +5 (19.75% reduction in failure) the big difference is that with a two dice system there ALWAYS a chance of failure, and with disadvantages there always a chance of success. With a straight modifiers you can have situations with auto success and auto failure.

To compute the odds of success just multiple the chance of FAILURE together. For Disadvantage you need to multiply the chance of SUCCESS (lower of two rolls) to see the impact in odds. Divide by 5 to see the d20 bonus (or minus). In fact you could keep a little chart showing the modifier based on the chance to hit remembering the max is +/-5 from roughly 9+ to 13+ and use for large numbers of NPCs.