V.A.L.U.E. Season 5 - PREPLANNING - Part 2

[AGmilky]

@katnyx

. Also, because it takes downtime days (though whether it should be 5, 7, or 10 I guess is a different question) some of the effects granted by bastion orders that expire after a certain time are not relevant, either.

But that’s the thing: If we said it doesn’t take time to travel there (at least not “Downtime Days”) then a big chunk of the facilities would still be useful. As it is, it feels like 75% of the facilities are not usable. And you would use your dowtime days for activities that say “The work takes 7 days” (= 10 Downtime days), but you would still have the “perk” for the next adventure. I feel that is closer to how Bastions were intended to be used: You return there between adventures or during breaks of adventures, spend some time crafting/researching etc and then start your next adventure from there and can take advantage of your perk for first 7 days of the adventure.

So the V.A.L.U.E. equivalent of this would be: between one-shots you are in your bastion and can spend your downtime days for stuff there and have the benefit for the next one-shot.

During adventures, Bastions remain inaccessible (unless the DM explicitly wants to do something involving them)

None of the perks are balance breaking afaik, it is mostly some temp HP, some temp proficiency in a skill, some minor spell cast on you etc

Membership in the cult of the dragon is a prerequisite. I would argue that seeing as this is obtained through an adventure rather than character creation, it’s not relevant for VALUE.

This is from the Google Docs. Just wanted to say that if we allow Faerûn backgrounds, which I earlier strongly advocated for, then you could pick the “Dragon Cultist” (or “Harper”, for the Harper hideout) background and fulfill the requirement. In general I would allow setting specific facilities, as long as the requirement/gain is usable in the V.A.L.U.E. framework (e.g. Harper hideout requires Harper background and gives Deception, Investigation, or Performance proficiency for one adventure)

And since new stuff only comes out like maybe once a quarter, I think it’s not a lot of work to just vet the handful of new backgrounds or facilities for compatibility.

@katnyx

Combining bastions into a single structure is an option RAW, but according to the DMG this does not change how bastion turns are taken (or how big a bastion can be), it simply means that instead of two cramped bastions on neighboring properties you have two cramped bastions on the same property (connected by a door) where both facilities are usable by both people (assuming two players or characters are sharing a bastion). I think it makes sense not to deviate from this.

But then I really don’t get why we asked whether to have one Bastion per player or per character. To me that question suggested that yes, multiple characters can use one Bastion together (as in, share facilities).

I think the reason why RAW limits “combining efforts” for Bastions is because multiple players would get much more time/gold they could pool together and “speedrun” the Bastion progression.

However this isn’t the case here, since it is still ONE player per bastion, who still can only play so many adventures per week. Having 100 characters or having only 5 would not change how much downtime days or gold you can earn per week via adventure rewards.

On the other side, since some facilities need an artificer, a certain background or a spellcaster, it could motivate ppl to try out different characters and level them so they could help them add new more restricted facilites to their bastions.

I see there are very different views on what Bastions should be haha Maybe we will need more polls on that

[katnyx]

I’m pre-coffee so might have misread things but I will forget to reply so I’ll try anyway xD

So players can share facilities- just not the results of an order someone else gave.

I personally am not interested in implementing bastions as something that will require pages of clarifications. I just want to have a legal way for my Pc to go home between an adventure and do stuff.

I disagree with the “…. Most bastions are not usable ….” Thing. You can build all the facilities. Just some of them have an effect that you can’t use. Like taking a flying species in T1.

Combining bastions can have many reasons, but my guess is that it’s easier for DMs if all the PCs live together so the party isn’t split.

I also think it’s not so much about game-breaking stuff but maintaining balance between people who have a bastion and people who don’t. It’s an optional rule. Your benefit from a bastion should not be so big that you feel a disadvantage if you don’t have one.

@AGmilky

If we said it doesn’t take time to travel there (at least not “Downtime Days”) then a big chunk of the facilities would still be useful. As it is, it feels like 75% of the facilities are not usable. And you would use your dowtime days for activities that say “The work takes 7 days” (= 10 Downtime days), but you would still have the “perk” for the next adventure. I feel that is closer to how Bastions were intended to be used: You return there between adventures or during breaks of adventures, spend some time crafting/researching etc and then start your next adventure from there and can take advantage of your perk for first 7 days of the adventure.

But not taking time to go there also goes against RAW. In the dmg the DM decides how often bastion turns can happen. Deciding how many days it takes to get there and get back is the equivalent of having a frequency that is the same for all players across all one-shot tables.

I think allowing or disallowing stuff isn’t something we should be doing continuously as this will generate so many rules even if they are optional. Instead we need a baseline that will stay clear for the foreseeable future and allow players (and DMs) to make informed decisions on their bastions.

[AGmilky]

@katnyx

So players can share facilities- just not the results of an order someone else gave.

Great, thanks for clearing that up, were on the same page here, no disagreement

@katnyx

I disagree with the "… Most bastions are not usable …

Facilities*, but sorry, I should’ve been more precise: What I meant was “not useful regarding perks for a V.A.L.U.E. adventure”

@katnyx

I just want to have a legal way for my Pc to go home between an adventure and do stuff.

I think that’s a very good point you bring up:

Why do we want Bastions? We only know ppl voted for them to be implemented, but not why. We also know ppl want more things to do with Downtime Days, but not whether they want to do this for actual benefits of their characters or for role-play reasons mostly.

Your approach is totally understandable and your suggestions for Bastions have been in line with that. There’s no need for pages of special rules if for the most part Bastions are gonna be private thing disconnected from adventures and not having a lot of influence if any on them. I agree.

The thing is, if you’re on my side of the coin and want Bastions to (also) give tangible/usable perks for the next adventure, because that would encourage people to use the system even if they don’t care that much about the fantasy of building a bastion, then ofc you’re faced with the reality that the bastion system is simply not made for a one-shot open table system like ours. There’s no bastion turns per DM, there’s no actual acted out downtime between adventures etc.

So then the solution is to adapt the rules insofar as to make as many of the facilities as possible work within our framework. And yes that means more text sadly

Now my approach might be the clear minority here, and we’ll see if there’s any indication in the upcoming discussions here or a potential vote, but I do believe that it is a viable option, if desired.

[katnyx]

I don’t know if you’re in the minority, to be honest I was surprised to see so many people in favor of bastions xD but it’s true that the why is a bit harder to see/understand.

For me the allure of bastions was that currently, when I have more magic items than I can carry, in my imagination my characters dig a hole in the ground and draw a treasure map, dump the stuff there, and pick it up when they want to swap stuff (oh, no, now I will spend my workday making this into a fun treasure hunt adventure). By having bastions in a separate Bastionverse or Bastionplane, it’s a nice house instead of a hole in the ground and I have rules about how to get there That makes my heart beat faster. And my treasure will be protected by hirelings if I lose the treasure map and someone comes looking! Which gives me peace of mind for my characters.

[katnyx]

@Darthbinks

• do we allow Faerûn-Faction backgrounds & feats [from Faerûn] ?
• do we allow Dragonmark backgrounds & feats [from Eberron] ?
• do we allow Dark Gift backgrounds & feats [from Ravenloft] ?

or do we only allow them when a DM states that they are running e.g. an Eberron game → which will turn those into Homebrew stuff taht would only apply to that DM’s table

I am pretty sure an upcoming setting book (likely Dark Sun) will also have setting spec. features (incl. backgrounds, feats, and bastions)

been thinking about this a bit and I see no reason to restrict backgrounds.

The story of the background differs, but the effects are the same across the base (ability score, proficiency, origin feat).

The biggest concern is that players would have access to things that a DM may not have access to, but that’s not really a change from the current rules - and neither is the propriety of those things for a specific adventure.

So if a DM doesn’t want something like that in their game, they can specify, and if a player takes a setting specific thing, they need to know that potentially it may not be relevant (just as like if I take a sailor background in 2014 now but the adventure takes place in a desert).

I would phrase this more of an "please note that the mechanical aspect of your feat (origin feat, ability score, …) will always carry over, but the story aspect (e.g. harper membership if the game world has no harpers) may not. discuss with your dm to clarify.

[Darthbinks]

thought about this topic too yesterday and my conclusion is kinda the same

just was pondering about this because some of the backgrounds give feats that you can only get through those backgrounds, who are quite setting specific
that’s why I brought this up

and on top of that, that is how we handled it in the past

[Darthbinks]

Bastion Downtime Activites (Pre-Draft)

Build Bastion Facility

• Downtime Cost: 0 Downtime Days
• GP Cost: 500 GP (Cramped), 1000 GP (Roomy), or 3000 GP (Vast)

You can build one Bastion Facility. This Facility could be used by all your characters as long as they fulfill the level requirement of that Facility.

If a Facility requires you to have a Membership or Reknown with a certain faction, you can ignore this requirement but you can only build ONE such Facility. Your hirelings & recruits in the Bastion stay there unless a DM specifically allows you let them help in the adventure. That even applies to Bastions that can travel.

Note that we do not use Bastion Events unless a DM specifically tells you that they might.

Demolish Bastion Facility

• Downtime Cost: 0 Downtime Days

You destroy one Facility of your Bastion. You do not gain any spend GP back.
(This is useful since you can have only ONE Facility that requires Membership or Reknown, should you change your mind later.)

Spend Time at Your Bastion

• Downtime Cost: 10 Downtime Days

If your Bastion grants benefits from resting there, your character gains those benefits for their next adventure, as long as that character fulfills the level requirements of the Facilities, that give such benefits.

In addition you can give one Bastion Order. Should the Bastion Order have requirements or have a cost associated with it, you must fulfuill these requirements and pay the cost. You can only use Bastion Orders if your character fulfills the Level requirement of that Facility.
Baston Orders can NEVER result in you gaining permanent magic items. Charms, potions, and scrolls are fine though.

[Darthbinks]

• “Brewing”. (Pre-Draft)

Your character may brew one potion depending on their tier (see the list below) for 5 Downtime Days each. This does not cost your character any gp. Be aware that these potions still count towards your character’s consumable magic item limit.

• Tier 1-4: any Common potion such as a potion of healing (2d4+2 HP)
• Tier 2-4: any Uncommon potion such as a potion of greater healing (4d4+4 HP)
• Tier 3-4: any Rare potion such as a potion of superior healing (8d4+8 HP)
• Tier 4: any Very Rare potion such as a potion of supreme healing (10d4+20 HP)

• “Poison”. (Pre-Draft)

Your character may buy one poison for 5 Downtime Days each. Your character has to pay the associated gp cost. Poisons that do not have a listed GP prize cannot be obtained with this downtime activity.

[Istariel]

Do we have any kind of summary of the current state of season 5 rules so far?

[Darthbinks]

not yet - after the upcoming voting (starting next Monday-ish)

[AGmilky]

Here’s the result of the first vote

VALUE New Season Votes Results - Part 1

VALUE Votes Results - Part 1 Note that on a tie, current rules will be kept and suggested new / additional rules would not be implemented. 1. Which ruleset should we use? [results1] We will use 5.5 (2024) rules in the next V.A.L.U.E. season. 2. Ability scores of player characters should be generated [results2] by using rules as written point-buy (like on D&D Beyond) 3. If the decision is made to use 5…

That gives you an idea of the boundaries.

[Istariel]

Thank you

Regarding one of those results, if somebody could explain…

Only 5.5 material will be allowed note that on a tie, current rules will be kept and suggested new / additional rules would not be implemented

I’m a little confused by that, since there is no case of “do we or don’t we allow old content” in regular 5E, at least to my understanding. Unless it is interpreted as “do we or don’t we allow 4E and older content”. Or is it more like a “only material from current edition allowed” considered to be the status quo? Cause then it would make sense, while still a bit confusing though.

Big sadge for the old species being lost rip my beloved summer eladrin. Hope they gonna release a new mordenkainen soon. Also rerelease of the genie warlock fingers crossed that one doesn’t work properly even when old content is allowed.

[AGmilky]

Since all 5e stuff can technically be used in 5.5e (albeit with various amounts of adjustments needed), we needed to make a decision as to whether we allow the 5e stuff or not.

While I cannot tell you why most DMs voted to not allow the old stuff, it deffo makes life much easier for us.

A lot of the 5e/5.5e compatibility is easily achieved in a home campaign where you have a handful of fixed players and can decide on a case-to-case basis how you wanna implement it, but could have become quite the nightmare when trying to generalize for open table one-shots with random people

While old non-reprinted spells and non-reprinted species are mostly compatible “as is”, old subclasses and old backgrounds is where the nightmare begins.

Things like old warlock subclasses not having “spells prepared via subclass”, old cleric subclasses that give heavy armor proficiency, when now every Cleric can choose to get it, and many other features that don’t interact well with new systems

And old (custom) backgrounds would have essentially bypassed the new “Background = origin feat + skill proficiencies + 3 ability scores to choose from” system, as the official compatibility rule for those is “just pick whatever you want”

So yeah, I will miss some of the old spells and species, but more and more will get reprinted over time.

[Istariel]

I do get both sides of the argument.

My confusion didn’t stem from the result. I just couldn’t quite make sense of how a tie was interpreted in this scenario.

[AGmilky]

Oh. My bad.

Well, I’d interpret it as that so far we only allowed the newest edition content, and now the question was whether to also allow older edition content and there was a tie so the status quo “only newest edition content” remains.

But I see where you’re coming from.

[Darthbinks]

@Istariel

TL;DR a tie makes the path of the least additional work win

longer version:

If there is a tie on a question, and one result would require us draft on additional rules text, then the additional rules text will not be included.

So, since this part. topic was about including 5.0 material in a 5.5 ruleset, and this would have required us to draft (and vote) on how to implement this, in a tie this additional draft will not be made.

As AGmilky pointed out, “how to implement 5.0 material” would have been quite an extensive task, because the devil is in the details.

(there was also a consensus in the last DM meeting to keep our VALUE Houserules short if possible)

[Istariel]

I see thx