Comments on: Ways You Can Help Your Players

By: Formas de ajudar seus jogadores | TRAMPOLIM RPG

Formas de ajudar seus jogadores | TRAMPOLIM RPG — Mon, 17 May 2010 12:10:41 +0000

[...] original: Ways you can help your players Postado em: 22 de março de 2010 Autor: NewbieDM Site: Newbie [...]

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:22:37 +0000

Hey all…I used Bluff as a standard action in a game this weekend, and it was AWESOME. My Goliath gladiator was immobilized out of range from a monster with no ranged attack. I got in the bluff and made my save, and next round hit and killed the bad guy, just barely making it thanks the to the combat advantage. Just Sayin’.

By: Dan Burnett

Dan Burnett — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 21:21:31 +0000

I thought the same thing as Francis about the Bluff check- seems like a silly waste of a standard action. However, houseruling it to a minor or move action would be silly as well. I was thinking about house ruling it to whenever you spend an action point, you can bluff as a minor action. Treat it like some sort of free feat to give the players.

By: Manny

Manny — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:18:40 +0000

As a player, I have to agree with Francis. The risk/reward in using some of the skills as they put it in the player’s handbook is not worth using in combat. Using bluff as a standard action is garbage compared to just getting one of your companions to flank the creature. If your party is set up right, heal is also useless. Our party now has a pally tank and w/ his LOHs and the clerics heals, we are pretty set. The battle has to go really awry if you have to use heal checks. And in the almost 2 yrs, we have been playing, we have used intimidate maybe twice. I think its b/c we like to kill all evildoers. And as for the crappy rituals and magic items, lets just say for rituals, i thing phantom steed is the only one we have used and if the magic item doesnt have a property, our party tends to forget they even exist.

By: Francis D

Francis D — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:43:00 +0000

I missed the case of Heal at DC15 often being better than Heal at DC10 in cases where someone is in negative hit points (one just stabilises, the other brings them back into the fight). This is fundamentally different because it does not cost an additional standard action – instead it’s taking a risk with your standard action to bring an entire extra ally (and preferably therefore a full round action) into play. But Heal at DC15 doesn’t provide ‘Just one more healing surge’. It means that someone else can access the surge they could have done themselves by spending a standard action.

If the battle’s dragging on, then trying an intimidate check and failing will make it drag on even more because a failed intimidate does nothing.

As for your other case on intimidate, sure you can make a house rule to make intimidate more useful. When I’m DMing I can make a house rule to make bouncing around on a pogo stick while singing Monty Python songs worthwhile. But in both cases it’s only a sensible choice because of the house rule.

By: DM Samuel

DM Samuel — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:29:11 +0000

Francis, I see what you are saying, but I disagree a little about the benefits of Intimidate and Heal, which you dismiss as bad moves.

Here is how I look at it – I can make a house-rule that states that the players can’t pull punches and just knock the creature unconscious just by saying so. Right now our deal is that they can declare that they will not do lethal damage to a creature so that they can interrogate it later. I can make intimidate extremely useful by replacing the current way they do things with a requirement that they intimidate the creature in order to interrogate it – otherwise they must kill it completely.

As a DM, I have thrown in lots of creatures that “know things” that the PCs could try and find out – this situation is perfect for utilizing that rule.

Plus, if the battle is just dragging on, and they can stop it by making an intimidate check (even if it’s a long shot) it is a better option for the party, so they might as well try.

As far as the heal check thing… there haven’t been very many, but there have been a few battles where one or two particular players really needed ‘just one more’ healing surge to make it through a tough battle and they were wishing the cleric or warlord had a little more juice. The heal check would work well in that situation too.

In my opinion, these are all good options that enhance teamwork and role-playing.

But I do agree with you about these being DM dependent – I happen to like when my players bring fresh ideas and ways of doing things to the table, so I applaud these additions to my game – if your DM isn’t that way, then yeah, best to forget using ‘not just powers.’

By: Asmor

Asmor — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:10:49 +0000

I recall using heal in combat back at the first game day. Indeed, I think it IS very good for emergency situations. It’s not merely giving someone else your standard action as Francis suggests, but by triggering someone else’s second wind it allows you to get an unconscious ally back into the combat! And at only a DC 15, it’s kind of a no-brainer not to try.

Intimidate and Bluff I agree absolutely with, though. Intimidate is too difficult given that the enemy always gets a +10 bonus, and bluffing as a standard action is just silly.

By: Francis D

Francis D — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 01:17:59 +0000

I was pointed here by my DM – and am going to make a more generalised version of the response I made to him.

Intimidate grants the target a +10 bonus to their will (for being hostile) before being eliminated. If you are a charisma based class with trained intimidate, this means you will be rolling Charisma -5 vs Will. Say you’re 6th level with a +2 implement and Expertise. You’re at -8 to hit as against a normal implement attack. If you need a default 11 to hit (a bit above average), you now would get an average of five hits for every successful intimidate check – and given that the effect of those hits helps everyone else take the bad guy down, this isn’t a good option. And that’s a very solid default case. (If you’re e.g. a Drow Feylock with Beguiling Tongue as a utility then Intimidate becomes a really good option. But it’s the realm of specialised builds).

Bluff: A standard action for a possible +2 to hit? This is already looking bad. Then we factor in the insight check of the target, so you’re normally getting it only 66% or so of the time. This is looking like an even worse option than intimidate. At least if Intimidate succeeds you’ve done something useful. Probably.

Heal Skill: Heal by Second Wind was effectively a DC15 check to give one of your standard actions to someone else. I know a striker hitting is better than a leader hitting. But not normally twice as good even with the risk of failure. This is seldom a strong choice.

Not just using powers? Very DM dependent. And if the DM isn’t cluing it or rewarding it it’s a bad idea.

By: drow

drow — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:30:19 +0000

i know we LIKE to think that the last half of combat is a tense battle of attrition, a complex war of at-wills. but honestly, once the encounter powers are long gone and the PCs are still whacking down the dragon 10hp at a time, i’m all for anything to end things quickly. if the PCs aren’t going to make the intimidate check, the monster may as well make an appeal for mercy itself.

By: newbiedm

newbiedm — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:08:23 +0000

@thuderforge – I would never allow that to happen in my game, remember as a DM you can decide what goes or not.

A possible solution to that is to houserule that you can only intimidate enemies within 5 levels of you, so a 14th lvl pc could never get to Vecna.

Plus, a DM that’s having a 14th lvl pc fight Vecna deserves to have his players get creative on him and do this sort of crap.