Multiclassing because it's fun even if it doesn't work that well will always have a place in my heart. I'm currently playing a barely-functional monk/druid. I think I can get him to work, but right now his tiger wildshape is more of the paper variety

I suppose I'm lucky enough to have enough friends into ttrpgs to build a group of players open to the system I like. I lost some who *were* emotionally invested in D&D, but frankly they were the least fun ones to play with (min-max munchkins and rules lawyers undercut by an unfamiliar system), so I'm not too upset about it. Plus I've been empowered with many more options for creative play, and blessed with players *interested* in creative play.

> I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn't actually explain what that actually does mechanically. Chapter 8, "Between Adventures," "Downtime," "Crafting." Page 187 in the 2014 version of the Player's Handbook. It tells you exactly how long it takes and how much it costs to create items using artisans' tools. I concede that it's pretty generic, but it does explain what you can do, mechanically, with your proficiency in artisans' tools. (If the 2024 version of the Player's Handbook removed this guidance then I'm not sure what to say, except that I don't personally consider that version to be "5e.") Xanathar's Guide to Everything also has an extensive section in Chapter 2, beginning on page 78, that does a great job fleshing out each type of tool proficiency and providing novel ways to use them.

Ahh, an Elder Scrolls protagonist

I ran a campaign that lasted several years and everyone went to 20. Technically past 20, though we never did any of the epic stuff. It was 3.5 though

Your fighter is gonna be very disappointed when they find out which level they get action surge at

For war gaming, which system do you personally prefer, if you don’t mind my asking? I’m looking to molest some people with *something fresh* and pathfinder doesn’t always work out. I used to ask people on Reddit, but I’d rather not use that site again.

I'm not gonna pretend that I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of what's available, but my limited experience with Mythras 6E has been very positive and I really like how Lancer plays. Mythras has Runequest as its high fantasy counterpart, so if you want a D&D-ish experience that's probably where to look. I've not played Runequest though, I had been doing a worldbuilding project and grabbed Mythras as something that looked suitable for there being no magic involved. Lancer comes with a really cool setting, but it's obviously way off in a different direction to D&D and the like. It does at least have the benefit of outstanding art to get people interested, and it's very good at making players feel cool even at low levels

I've never touched anything beyond level 20. I thought that's what the epic stuff was? Are there regular class features and such published for those levels too, or were you homebrewing by then?

>I concede that it's pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement That's my point. A couple paragraphs on one page, and an addendum in another book to *consider* giving the player advantage and maybe an "added benefit", again left entirely up to the DM. The Xanathar's content is nice, if again a bit vague, assuming your DM uses it. But that's still buried in an appendant text. And that's just one example. Called shots are another good example. Anything outside the narrow scope of the written rules is left up to the DM. That's not fundamentally problematic in a ttrpg, the game master always has the final say anyway, but it's lazy game design, and it's only getting worse with each release. I said elsewhere that I quit D&D after buying the 5e Spelljammer set, which dumped all mechanical decisions onto individual DM decision. I don't buy rulebooks to get permission to run my game how I want. I buy rulebooks for playtested rules.

Lancer seems interesting but terrifyingly involved between the fresh setting, combat that feels like two legendary monsters fighting, and the host of new adjectives I’ll have to incorporate into my vocabulary. I’d only heard about it once before, from a zee bashew video, and it seems far more fleshed out than what I expected. Mythras significantly cuts down on one of those, so I’ll probably try that one out. Multiple degrees of success and more gradation between the cost of actions seems pretty neat as well. Thank you for the recommendations! I’ll almost certainly need to chew on them for a while to really understand them, but I adore both setting and the mechanics behind them!

I will admit to being biased towards Lancer because I was already a big fan of one of the author's other work beforehand. Tom Bloom (ne Parkinson-Morgan) writes and illustrates [Kill Six Billion Demons](https://killsixbilliondemons.com/). I promise I do genuinely like the mechanics though. If you do decide to take a look at Lancer, there's a really powerful thing that makes it a lot simpler: [COMP/CON](https://compcon.app/#/). It manages character creation, initiative, tracking values in combat etc just like all the non-store parts of D&D Beyond, but it's a _lot_ smoother to use If you get a go at Mythras, have fun! I will have to quietly envy you because I don't a group to play it with

Shit, I thought this is an anti-marxist meme then I read the community. It's good to see lemmy gaining popularity. :'D

Unfortunately the DMG says that if a character somehow acquires the same feature more than once, only one counts.

There's published stuff for after 20. We didn't use any of it, because the campaign was winding down. It all came to a nice ending, so wrapping up was more a matter of mutual storytelling than any dice rolls or challenges.

I thought it was about programming and was wondering why the words only half seemed to mean something.

I agree 100% with your sentiment about the quality and depth of supplemental books having sharply dropped off! I don't know exactly where the turning point was for me... sometime around Tasha's Cauldron and its variant rules for racial traits, maybe... but I definitely lost interest in anything new that they put out. I saw how thin Spelljammer and Fizban's Treasury were, and thought... "that's it?!" If you don't mind indulging me, could you elaborate on what you like better about GURPS? I tried to get into it, but was quickly put off by its extreme granularity. Character creation boiled down to (and I'm paraphrasing), > You can be literally anyone or anything!!! ...as long as you meet the budget for points. However, this is a setting-agnostic system, so make sure you check in with your game master to see if your concept is actually allowed in their game. Also the primary attributes, skills, and point values of various traits could all be quite different than the default presented here because, again, they might not make sense for the setting of your game. So maybe your game master should hold your hand through character creation. But anyways, here's a three-mile-long list of things you can spend your points on, go nuts! The foreword also said something along the lines of, "here's the most important rules, you can ignore the rest of this book and still play GURPS just fine" ...but that sounds like the same thing you're complaining about with D&D? That it leaves SO MUCH up to the game master to decide. In D&D 5e, personally I appreciated having only the basic rules in the PHB. I felt that combat was complex enough without having called shots, flanking, speed factor, and lingering injuries presented as ***the default.*** But when we were ready to increase the complexity, we were quite glad to have all of those additional rules written up in the DMG in a modular format. Likewise, when 95% of the game is focused on combat, social interaction, and exploring dungeon-like environments, I don't see any need for the basic rules to include a fine-tuned granular system for downtime activities. "You can create 5gp worth of any item per day using the appropriate set of tools, given that you are proficient, and it costs you half that much in raw materials." Boom, that's super simple and it gets the job done for the majority of players who are interested in crafting during their downtime in between the actual adventures. For those hardcore outliers who desire a more fleshed-out set of rules for tools, Xanathar's includes DC's for a range of tasks to do with each tool, a list of specific components that are included in each kind of tool kit, and at least three examples per tool for how you can apply it in conjunction with a skill OR use the tool in a special way. It's a lot more detailed than just "consider giving the player advantage and maybe an added benefit IDK." I know you're frustrated that it's buried in a supplemental text rather than the core rulebook, but I don't know. Should the PHB also have the specific rules for large-scale army battles? Maritime navigation? How to play dragon chess? There's only so much you can fit into the basic rulebook...

Hide pit in Sovngarde

Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely going to read up on it after mythras. It will just take me so much longer to get the feeling for how to tell the story of benevolent armored core ostensibly set in Macross. And even longer to adapt the lexicon that it deserves. Like, I can currently describe thundering annihilation and cleaving the landscape in only so many ways. The mechanics are simple in comparison to avoiding repetitive verbiage. This is prime brisket. Mythras won’t require months for me to fully immerse myself, which is why I’m checking it first. It’s just much less involved and I need something to fall back on in case “the thing I’ve been super excited to show you guys” doesn’t fly.

I knew a wizard that had traded his soul for favors so many times he was effectively immortal. He never went adventuring any more, just oversaw research in our flying screened tower. Since old age was the only feasible way he was going to die, which would cause a war between all the outer planes over ownership of his soul, no one would cause his death. He was 218 when I met him, and he was over 5000 years old, and a demigod of secrets, when I met him again, because of a mixup we had while inventing portal magic. We ended up 5000 years in the past and I went back to the present, but he stayed behind.