D&D Movie

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
I have low expectations, but this suggests it will probably at least be watchable.

Do love the monsters, except the chonky red dragon. Points for making them "not heroes", but somehow I think they will actually be fairly heroic. Maybe it will do well and we will get a grittier, greyer spinoff in a streaming series.

Also points for referencing crazy PC plans, which have obvious comedic/cinematic potential if they actually go that way. Action comedy makes sense for a lot of D&D games.

EDIT: Jumping into a gelatinous cube to avoid a displacer beast is also a pretty D&D thing to do.
 
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The Heretic

Should be playing D&D instead
Hopefully it's better than that D&D movie that came out 20+ years ago. The bar is low, it can't be that hard.
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Clearly going for a Thor: Ragnarok style and mood. The tielfing/demon gal will be all the rage...because, super-powers. I think Hasbro needs this, 5e is waning based on the shelf-space it witnessed last week in Barnes & Noble. It was down to one shelf and eclipsed significantly by Stranger Things books.

Manga books were in greater number than all of scifi and other graphic novels combined.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
Clearly going for a Thor: Ragnarok style and mood. The tielfing/demon gal will be all the rage...because, super-powers.
I'm thinking more Guardians of the Galaxy.

The tiefling's "superpower" is the shape change ability that druids have always had. Using 5e rules and assuming she is in the top bracket in terms of how that power works, the party would have to be at least 8th level.
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
PHB 1e said:
The size of creature form assumed can vary from as small as a bullfrog, bluejay, or bat to as large as a large snake, an eagle, or a black bear (about double the weight of the druid).
The owlbear would be outside the ability of a 1e druid. Also, I think it's considered a magical creature and would fall into the category of reptile, bird or mammal. Perhaps there was some power creep in 5e (o_O). Whatever.

I don't know what she's doing with the passwall magic either, but I do know this: kids loved Elsa in Frozen because she had the ice powers and pretty much ignored the (powerless) antagonist Ana. So much so that Disney shifted the focus of the second movie mostly to Elsa and it did rather sucketh.

This did also get me thinking that race-based powers are probably a universally bad move unless handled extremely deftly.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
The owlbear would be outside the ability of a 1e druid. Also, I think it's considered a magical creature and would fall into the category of reptile, bird or mammal. Perhaps there was some power creep in 5e (o_O). Whatever.

I don't know what she's doing with the passwall magic either, but I do know this: kids loved Elsa in Frozen because she had the ice powers and pretty much ignored the (powerless) antagonist Ana. So much so that Disney shifted the focus of the second movie mostly to Elsa and it did rather sucketh.

This did also get me thinking that race-based powers are probably a universally bad move unless handled extremely deftly.
As I understand it, the owlbear is also outside of the capability of a 1e druid, which maxes out with a CR 1 form at level 8; IIRC an owlbear is CR 3? I think it was an excuse to get an iconic monster on screen without killing it, 'cause lots of people think owlbears are cute. Although using 5e rules I believe it would be trivial to give CR 1 stats to a "young" or "junior" owlbear.

EDIT: As for power creep, a 1e cheetah would probably translate to CR 1 in 5e. So would a dire wolf, a black bear, a wild boar, a wolverine, or a constrictor snake, all of which would be legal shapes for a 1e druid.

Race-based powers appear in 4e where (except for one core ability) they are a replacement for class-based powers (that is, you can take them instead of, not in addition to). By and large they are flavorful additions, without upsetting the power curve.

So elves, for instance, automatically get a power at first level that improves their accuracy (and replaces the blanket bonus with longswords and bows they get in 1e). At second level, they can take a power associated with their class, or can take a racial power that gives them an additional accuracy boost. At 6th level, they can take a power associated with their class, or they can take a power that helps them to not leave tracks. So you could be an elf fighter who is all about being a fighter, or an elf fighter who is all about being an elf.
 
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squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
As I understand it, the owlbear is also outside of the capability of a 1e druid, which maxes out with a CR 1 form at level 8;
No CR's in 1e. Max weight equal to a black bear. reptile, bird or mammal.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
No CR's in 1e. Max weight equal to a black bear. reptile, bird or mammal.
Thanks, squeen, I had no idea that CR was not used in 1e. *sarcasm*

I mean that all those 1e creatures I listed are more or less equivalent in power, in comparison to a 1e fighter of a given level, as a 5e CR1 creature in comparison to a 5e fighter of that same level. They present the same level of threat.

All those creatures are "legal" to choose by any reading of the entry, being birds, reptiles or mammals no larger than a black bear. Animals in that group ranging from an average XP of 106 (for a cheetah), to an XP value of 212 (for a leopard) all translate to being CR 1 in 5e.

Now, if we include animals like a jaguar, which averages slightly smaller than a black bear but averages 300 XP in 1e, on account of having more hit dice and more special attacks/defences, that is equivalent to a CR 2 creature in 5e. So if you were looking only at that power, the 1e druid is actually more powerful than the 5e druid.

How do I know this? I spent years crafting a 1e to 4e conversion table, based on the XP on 1e monsters, the level of 4e monsters, and how dangerous those monsters were to characters of a given level. I did something similar with 3e to 4e and 5e to 4e, so I can make conversions from one edition to another.

And this might have all been conjecture, expect that it has turned out that my tables ended up having a pretty decent shot at predicting the actual level or CR assignments of monsters in the later editions (ironically excepting 4e, which has a different philosophy of monster power). So, for instance, if I was converting a 1e gnoll worth 46 XP to 3e I would give it a CR of 1, and if I was converting it to 5e I would make it a CR 1/2 monster. And in fact, the 3e version of a gnoll is a CR 1 monster, and the 5e version of a gnoll is a CR 1/2 monster. Plus when I run a converted monster it performs pretty much like I would have predicted, and when I convert a module the appropriate level ranges end up being comparable to the original.
 

Beoric

8, 8, I forget what is for
So it's your feeling there has been no PC power creep over the editions?
I think power creep happens inside an edition, like the way UA increased ability scores and introduced weapon specialization. Although 4e actually went the other direction.

I think what happens between editions is different, it has more to do with encounter guidelines. I don't know about 2e, but 3e saw a significant watering down in the guidelines for monster placement.

For instance, Schedule C will throw 7-12 orcs at a party on the first level of a dungeon; given the large party sizes at that time, that is probably a bit more than one orc per party member most of the time. Individually orcs are about the same power level in 1e and 3e, but in 3.5e an encounter with 2 orcs against a party of 4 first level PCs is described as "challenging", and DMG guidelines suggest that 50% of encounters should be in this range, while only 20% should be harder than this.

I seem to recall that this was based on market research regarding player preferences, and it looks like these sorts of guidelines haver remained consistent through 4e and 5e, and I expect they will be followed in the inevitable 6e. So if you want to convert a later edition module to a Classic/OSR style, one thing you should think about doing is increasing the number of opponents for many encounters.

EDIT: I do think PCs get more bells and whistles in later editions, but that doesn't increase their power level relative to monsters. Rather, what you see is things like wizards getting some spells that they can cast at will, but which are effectively the same as throwing darts in terms of how dangerous they are; really it is just a change in flavour. Or druids getting shape changing powers at a lower level, but with greater restrictions on the types of creatures they can change into, so that it doesn't really make a difference in combat; really it just turns a spellcaster into a melee combatant of the same (or lower) level.
 
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I do believe that wild-shaping into an owlbear is technically impossible in 5e, because an owlbear is classified as a "monstrosity" and not a "beast." You could do it with a polymorph spell, but not with a druid's wild shape power.

But who cares it's a movie and turning into an owlbear is cooler than turning into a regular bear

This trailer defied my expectations by actually looking really good. The conversation at the end about making plans sounds like something that you might overhear at my table.
 
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