The Best 5e Challenge Rating - The Lazy RPG Talk Show

[@moshtradamus92]

Just want to thank you for these videos, Mike. As someone who is struggling with depression, my day immediately brightens when I see a new Talk Show episode 🙂

[@khpa3665]

Thank-you for answering my question on failure. "Don't get caught flat-footed" is the heart of it, I think. A basic point, and it's useful to hear it articulated so simply.

[@sewinlove_co]

My players know that I use A5E on my side of the table and that they can use any 5E source they want (with potential changes, if necessary). So far, they are all perfectly happy to use the 2014 5E books plus a few supplements. I doubt they will update; they have already said that if they want something different, they will try A5E or Tales of the Valiant. I think it's wonderful that we have so many choices!

[@thegreatkamikaze]

As someone who paints and prints minis, I have to agree you will never have enough 😂 But I tend to reskin or plan to have monsters for the minis I have. My table has the running bit where any time I paint something specifically for the game, they always bypass the encounter, so there is that wisdom in saving your money when it comes to minis.

[@im2ez4u2nv]

totally agree with your comments around the modularity of 5e... and love the IT / object oriented API reference.

[@Patrick_McCarty]

I ran Camp Firefield from Where Evil Lives. Can confirm MCDM hobgoblins are dope and play off of each other super well.

[@abelsampaio389]

I remember really starting to respect CR3 when using redcaps as minions to a fey witch (Narnia much) on my campaign. PCs were 12th level and still those redcaps were biting their ankles. They were just strong enough so that they couldn't be ignored or so easily dispatched but I could always add a couple more to spice up a combat. About speak with dead: savvy murderers in my campaigns frequently break their victim's jaw to avoid them being targeted with speak with dead.

[@Kuriso2]

Your interface metaphor hit me hard since I have started this week working at API integration, which is all about that

[@yochaigal]

It is surreal hearing you talk about my RPG lol, your work was hugely influential to me! Also, I wish the PoD books could be saddle stitch but DTRPG/Lulu wouldn't let me do it.

[@SlyFlourish]

Wow!! It’s so cool that you’re familiar with my work! I just talked about how your open sourcing the character builder for Cairn and how awesome that is.

[@yochaigal]

@@SlyFlourish Oh yeah it was the TotM combat for 5e thing you posted years ago. And other free things after that!

[@danielphillips9710]

Thanks for asking and picking up the feeling bad after a big battle question. I've definitely felt this before and 3 things you said rang true. 1. I'd used a few MCDM monsters who's cool things never happened due to dice rolls, 2. I could have just cheated, used advantage etc. especially in round 1, 3. I could have talked up how awesome the PCs were and enjoyed that more. Great show, cheers

[@74gould]

I could definitely relate to the question about the DM feeling disappointed that his players wiped out the bad guys so easily, even though they had lots of fun… a couple years ago I ran an Underdark campaign and my big, epic, final, climactic battle, which I had planned out for a long time and thought it was gonna be a really huge difficult challenge, ended up being a cakewalk for my players… They seemed to have fun, but I felt really down afterward, like I had disappointed them by not making it more challenging… I think it all boils down to us DMs being way too hard on ourselves. Most the time, players don’t really care that much about the story or challenges, they just wanna have fun… But us DMs always make mountains out of molehills, always seek perfection, when in fact “fun” is way more important. :)

[@gvanbooven]

100% agree on how getting into the weeds on dynamic lighting in a VTT can become a problem. Like any bell/whistle that doesn't add meaning to the story, it is superfluous. Same can be said for physical terrain and minis.

[@blorpymcnornor2415]

Yea I went through a miniatures phase during the 3.5 days and had the same problem you were describing. They were just never enough. After that switched to chess pieces or whatever’s around and never been happier.

[@filkearney]

33:12 - 100% agree! 5e is the most powerful TTRPG game engine because it is so API-friendly on both sides of the screen.

[@nathanaelthomas9243]

Thanks for the video! As always, I found it informative and thought provoking.

[@patrickwest5516]

Excellent video! Thank you.

[@davidrempel4862]

(wrt Fly,. speak with dead) Oh my god yes! Thank you! So tired of people complaining about how things break the game without thinking about how the world has evolved to handle it since this stuff is common enough! Same with the "realism" crowd...dude...gods are real, monsters are real, magic is real, the only thing in common with the "real" world and the fantasy worlds is that for whatever reason great apes still evolved to become dominant, but with more variety....(and that doesn't have to be true), and the design aesthetics are a romanticized middle ages.... Or the everyone automatically gets debilitating trauma because bad stuff that never happens here happens there...the list goes on. :P you CAN have those things if you want, but don't try to justify it with examples from our world...

[@keeperoflenneth]

several days late on this- but yeah i do exactly, that to vary up my monsters. Pull from MCDM, a patreon i love Conflux Creatures, and A5E, or when i really need something custom i use tools like FoF to structure something quickly on the fly. I will swap out "who's" monster i use in various things because I have several veteran (vanilla 5e) players, and they always appreciate not having to "play dumb" on monsters, and genuinely getting to be surprised and challenged.

[@qua36]

I might give a VTT a try soon, seeing as I recently played with a group where a few of the players a from farther away. I am still hesitant, because I fear that a lot of energy that one can project face to face will get lost, and distractions are way more likely. Well, never hurt's to try, I guess! Time to watch your Owlbear vide again. And thanks for the new search engine, works great! Happy to be a patreon, some of the best money i spent on the hobby so far.

[@alexandredesrochers1957]

Nice show. Thanks

[@oscargarciahinde4247]

It's funny i thought of the same API idea the other day haha

[@okiandrew]

I tend to use dice as my minis. I would prefer a more elegant solution but I don't have the option. Also I have a ton of dice, and they have a built in number and color system for tracking different monsters.

[@SlyFlourish]

Dice are fine!

[@ZeKiwiOfTheNorth]

So so so true about maps. I used to play with dynamic lighting, and it was sometimes tricky for me to set up, and often too much for the browsers of my players. In the last game i was a player, the GM frequently spent hours making wholly custom maps with lighting that were only used once, or we'd go a different route, and a lot of the time they would be difficult to navigate AND show places we would want to access (stairs to the second floor balcony) but he didn't have a map for, and so didn't want us to go. Now that I'm GMing again, i try to focus my game around the maps i can find. Sometimes i use fog of war, but mostly i will keep any room the PCs haven't entered free of tokens, adding them in as a surprise when needed.

[@Agforceofnature]

I wish I could agree with you regarding 5e being a malleable system because it’s the main barrier for me. The 13th age escalation die would cause issues wouldn’t it? 13th age PCs and monsters are built with that escalation die in mind. I don’t see playing a Horizon Zero Dawn game or an Into the Badlands game being easy to just spin up without a lot of work to the system ahead of time.

[@jonnyglatt]

Cairn 2e looks really great! I think sometimes folks aren't aware how much the original Cairn was (lovingly + respectfully) inspired by Chris McDowall's @bastionland "Into the Odd" (and Ben Milton's @QuestingBeast Knave). Electric Bastionland (the more setting-enhanced version of Into the Odd is a work of art, and the (prequel?) Mythic Bastionland just finished funding on Kickstarter and also looks really good.

[@brianfroeschner6644]

The whole thing where the world's challenges change as you level is one the weird things about d&d. If the party is smart enough to avoid a dragon at all costs, or just flex at a low level group of goblins and allow them to fail their morale check and run or surrender is mechanically sound and should be supported. Why should every every encounter be an equivalent challenge?

[@paulbigbee]

Subsystems DO require an interface or they become a parallel game (a separate program to continue the analogy). Games that have clear interfaces between character abilities with some kind of benefit and loss is what makes RPG implementations like Forbidden Lands superior to Hasbro 5E. The former completes the central promise of the D&D fantasy, leaving aside how light or deep (crunchy) the subsystem is at the table. What would Traveller be like if it had a quarter page of treatment (DMG pg. 242) on travel?

[@dukejaywalker5858]

If the party dies and the BBEG wins, instead of resurrecting the PCs a century later, you could have the players roll up new characters, descendants of the original PCs' relatives, and start a new campaign on a quest for vengeance.

[@flange_pickle]

You can circumvent miniatures/maps and just play the greatest way there is, theatre of the mind.

[@viktordjambov1437]

Hey Mike and audience, does anybody have any tips for me to look for places where I could look for this kind of dnd adventure book jobs out there? I'm not too sure what keywords I should use for job roles, and even with ai chatbots, I can't seem to find people looking for writers like me

[@deejaytee]

I would love to get into Level Up 5e monsters but they REALLY need to publish to Roll20.

[@tomyoung9834]

I use their monsters in my 5e game and really like them, they just seem cooler than the standard versions!

[@moritzhackl2575]

Honestly not surprised to hear people having negative experiences with Flee Mortals. No shade to your vamps but so many of those statblocks are a mess, and really not interesting enough to warrant re-reading the abilities again and again to understand what they are supposed to do. That and the ubiquitous "save ends at end of turn" which is such a nonsensical abbreviation in a book full of unnecessarily huge statblocks. I really regret getting this instead of Level up Advanced 5e, I wanted a well playtested book but I really don't know what all those testers they apparently had were thinking.

[@tuomasronnberg5244]

The second point about flight is flawed. There are many flying animals on Earth, but none have evolved ranged attacks to defend against them.

[@CecilQuetzalcoatl]

Frogs and some lizards with their long tongues can grab flying bugs and some birds out of the air. Heck even humans use bows and nets and dozens of other ranged weapons to hunt flying animals.

[@yunusahmed2940]

Wights suck against Level 10 let alone 15

[@archersfriend5900]

Undead suck in 5e across the board.

[@JunMiyazaki]

Good luck not giving a +1 or +2 plate / shield to an armorer artificer :D

[@sylvaincousineau5073]

Stealing the otyugh armed with sling shot idea .

[@Antdevamp]

BTW, images of covers showing a single PC are strictly a joke. The adventuring group is real, single play is starting, but is only a rare variant that -might- pick up in perhaps 15 years? It's hard to take solo adventurers seriously, I can barely tolerate 5E's cover, it's shit.

[@jacktough]

Superior quality product as always 🤌🤌