How Do I Even...?

Honestly, most fights with Monster Manual creatures don't last past 3 or 4 rounds as it is, so breaking the math of the game isn't that big a deal in my opinion.

I'd like to see the escalation die used in different ways. So, for example, maybe there is a 'summon Beelzebub counter' in a fight, and it starts at zero. If at least 1 evil cultist is chants the dark ritual in this round of combat, it goes up by 1 at the end of the round. Beelzebub is summoned when the counter gets to 4. But, there are bone devils between you and the chanters that you can't ignore either. And for good measure, the chanters are actually mind-controlled children so fireballing them is off the table. Maybe you land a silence spell and stave it off for a couple rounds but then the wizard loses concentration and the chanting comes back up and the die keeps going up.

I think when that die is at 3, the game would be super tense and fun. But, you'd have to allow for the possibility of actually allowing Beelzebub to come into our world. It's a difficult thing to balance - you want the players to be able to succeed, but there should be a reasonable chance of failure or there is no tension.

I guess you could lower the stakes. Perhaps Beelzebub isn't summoned, but a gateway to hell is opened somewhere in the world. Or you could like in Season 4 of Angel where the big bad that got summoned turned out to bring about world peace and perfect happiness, or at least the illusion of it.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic :)

I was going to say, "You can still use the luck point" but I went back and read the Lucky feat, and it  says, "You can choose to spend one of your luck points after you roll the die, but before the outcome is determined."

Because of the nature of PbP though, sometimes it's a good idea to be flexible with these rules. Is this one of those cases? I'm feeling like "no, it's not", but what do you guys think? What are some of those cases?

For this first encounter against the kalding I would like to try the mob combat rules as suggested by Len and also Dramasailor over on the Discord chat. I'm reading Page 250 of the DMG and also this article... and I don't get it LOL! I mean, I get the concept, but I don't follow the calculations, and I don't understand how to use the Sly Flourish calculator.

I'm rereading it now. Gonna need your help wrapping my head around this one!

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Okay, I get that. Doesn't feel very intuitive to me. Totally reliant on a table. But okay.

Now how about a PC attacking the mob? I suppose I go with treating the mob like a swarm. A single mass of hit points that you whittle down.

Obviously this deprives the baddies of tactics a little bit. You no longer have one guy disarming the PC, then knocking the PC prone and then two other guys laying the smackdown from flanking positions. But I think for the kalding, who Makisig describes as relying on overwhelming numbers rather than martial prowess, this'll do.

The link to the table didn't work but I'm assuming you're talking about the "handling mobs; mob attacks" table? It is definitely THAC0-y in its complexity. Here's the math behind it:

Say 30 pirates with +3 to hit and avg damage of 4 attack Elspa (AC 18) and Rygnar (AC 15). Fifteen attack Elspa; they need to roll a 15 (18-3=15) or higher to hit, which happens 30% of the time (or ~ 1 in 3 times) you roll a d20. So about 30% or 5 pirates will hit (0.3 x 15 = 5), doing 5x4=20 damage before resistances. I see the actual chart says 1 in every 4 hit; I'm assuming that's because they bundled the 15 with the 16. In general the table seems to skew in favour of the players.

The other 15 attack Rygnar. They need to roll 12 (15-3=12) or higher to hit, so about 45% will hit (or about half). So Rygnar gets hit by about 7 pirates (0.45 x 15 ~= 7) for 7x4= 28 damage before resistances.

The table basically replaces the need to do the multiplication and division, you can just look up how many monsters you need to get 1 hit and count from there how many hits you get. It deprives baddies from tactics, yes, but not from bad ass description and cool naration!

I thought I posted this yesterday:
May sneak a post piecemeal though, we'll see. :-)

Reading through Len's post again, I now realize what should've been glaringly obvious from the beginning: There's no rolling. Assuming you send the same number of baddies at the hero every round, the hero will take a fixed amount of damage per round for that encounter. That amount will change as the hero takes baddies out, reducing their numbers.

Well, duh! I can be so slow sometimes! XD

Gee, I gotta be honest, I didn't even think about the spellcasting stat for those tattoos. I didn't even take those spells from a single class spell list. I just picked what I thought might be fun but not OP. So can you guys critique them as a whole or individually?
Here's the relevant DMG text that I didn't bother to consult until now. Would it be game-breaking to just say "all tattoo effects use +5 spellcasting ability modifier"? Was it a bad idea to mess with the action economy and hand-wave concentration?
Thanks in advance, guys!

*bump*

We could roll with it and see if it works. That's how we homebrew!

I can tell that some of these are far more powerful than others. Specifically the one that grants Heroism, which is basically an extra 50 hit points if you give us the equivalent of a +5 spellcasting modifier.

It looks like I misunderstand Heroism. I didn't think the THP would accumulate!

It won't accumulate, but it wouldn't be odd of someone like Baracus to burn through all of that HP each round, thus allowing it to total an additional 50 hit points (though 5 max at a time)

Ah that makes sense. I didn't think of that. Thanks for the feedback! Can you suggest a good alternative that delivers the same flavor but isn't so OP? I should've stuck with my original idea of only granting cantrip level effects.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, honestly. Game balance is over-rated! :P

But if you do want to balance it more, there are a couple ways to do it.

1. Lower the power of the outliers (+3 spellcasting mod lowers the HP gained, for example.

OR

2. Increase the power/usability of the weaker ones. Grant more uses of the cantrip abilities, allow them to be used as a reaction or bonus action, etc.

They already are bonus action. I'm reluctant to add daily uses. The intent behind the tattoos is a low-impact buff. All the tikbalang have loads of them. Short of restricting these to cantrips, I think setting a lower spellcasting bonus would be the next best option.

Thoughts?

Sure. +3 seems reasonable.

I think +3 is a good compromise :)

It's fine, I can pick another one. Wind: Longstrider seems fun. Knight Rider turbo boost. Post edited.