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I think techniques is a good name for it- implies the learned mastery the feel of the class is generally going for. I've got to say I really like the idea of letting fighters have one free archetype(or an extra free one if every ones getting one). I hate to ask- but does the spell slinger wizard seem as utterly terrible an idea generally to people as it is to me? 4 forbidden schools and no zero level spells to become a shittier range combatant than any martial class and siphon money down an infinite drain? I mostly ask because a player in my game insisted on being it after being informed there weren't guns in the world, I finally caved and let him do it just to watch him be literally non-game affecting except a few knowledge skills for multiple sessions in a row.
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Dec 31, 2011 18:52
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nevermind! that's amazingly bad
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Dec 31, 2011 19:05
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For all their phenomenal power, wizards have some hilariously bad archetypes. I think the scrollmaster might be even worse when it comes to setting fire to piles of money. It may even be worse than the 3e soulknife, since its garbage weapon deteriorates after a few hits and costs money to replace.
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Dec 31, 2011 19:43
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2011 21:36
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Honestly? If anything that's kind of a weak fix. It's a weaker Legacy Weapon, a bunch of immunities, Travel Devotion per-encounter (admittedly very useful), Samurai abilities, reskinned Evasion, and some sweet gear options...that penalize swashbucklery fighters. Could use a little more spice I think, but it is a start at least. I wouldn't take it, but mostly it'd be because it has an alarming lack of 'cool stuff' - that is, ACTIVE abilities, instead of passive boosts. If you look at a Warblade, it does 90% of all the listed with the right maneuver and feat picks, but also gets to do quad-damage strikes, stunlock enemies, hit for eight times the damage of a basic attack, do touch attacks, attack many extra times in a round, go "I AM FIGHTER, HEAR ME ROAR" and shake off status effects like they ain't no thang, and so on. This, I think, is what a Fighter desperately needs: not passive boosts, but active abilities that you can imagine yourself styling on a BBEG with. It needs options, badly.
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Dec 31, 2011 21:52
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Dec 31, 2011 22:02
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Being a power-gaming designer is never a problem. If anything, it should be a necessity, or at least something that must be kept in mind. If you're designing for flavor you might as well not design and just write the fluff down. Why create useless options when it's so easy to make good ones, right? PS: Really interested in seeing those talents. If they're anything like what a SAGA Edition Soldier got for Star Wars, that could definitely make the fighter competitive.
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Dec 31, 2011 22:47
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Rolling an inquisitor for this game, and confused about the way their cantrips work. It says I can only cast 1 1st level spell per day, but I also know 4 level 0 spells while I'm a level 1 inquisitor. I can't find anywhere that it says I can't cast unlimited level 0 spells, but if I chose to cast a level 0 spell, would it count as my level 1? SRD for Inquisitor: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor
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Dec 31, 2011 23:18
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Thelonious Funk posted:Rolling an inquisitor for this game, and confused about the way their cantrips work. It says I can only cast 1 1st level spell per day, but I also know 4 level 0 spells while I'm a level 1 inquisitor. I can't find anywhere that it says I can't cast unlimited level 0 spells, but if I chose to cast a level 0 spell, would it count as my level 1? Divine cantrips are called orisons: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor#TOC-Orisons You can cast your known Orisons as many times as you like, they consume no resources, except maybe a material component from your spell component pouch.
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Dec 31, 2011 23:20
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grah posted:Divine cantrips are called orisons: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/inquisitor#TOC-Orisons You're awesome, thank you.
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Dec 31, 2011 23:22
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Jan 1, 2012 08:31
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50 Foot Ant posted:But, like I said, I'm a power gamer. If power gaming means "intentionally interacting with and using the game rules to their fullest effect and advantage" and you are not a power gamer then you likely have a lovely understanding of both a)the rules, and more importantly b)how the players interact with those rules, such that you should not be designing any game content anywhere. And to boot, "power gaming" is more in the spirit of the original game than intentionally playing a lovely character for ~RP~ reasons. Basic D&D was all about "how do I survive this horrible deathtrap dungeon full of awful monsters when I'm just a poo poo farmer who farms poo poo and might have a 10% chance to hide in shadows or whatever?" If/when you hit level 2, you had better believe you powergamed the poo poo out of that, your one and only chance, to see that your character had any chance of living to level 3, because the whole game was seriously "live long enough to level up, then do it again" the game. You used every plus and every ability the DM would allow because you needed it to not die at the first ogre you ever saw. "Power gamer" only became a slur when games moved away from the classic deathtrap dungeouns and low-power assumptions into situations where your first level character wasn't expected to die two or three times and getting to 10th level was a thing that normal characters could do. To a Basic player, the idea that you wouldn't want a powerful character is really, really strange. In fact, IIRC, the whole "power gamer" deal started in big with White Wolf, not d20, since there was a large faction of WW players who were into it for the story and the metaplot and the social manipulation -while- there was a whole other group into it for the crazy vampire superpowers like Celerity and being total "badasses" like in The Matrix. The first accused the second of "power gaming" and from there the term spread across the industry. Nowadays I tell people that "yes, I am a powergamer. I will tear out the entrails of your game system and examine them like a Roman prophet and whatever I see there I will play along." I will "game" the "power" of the group and try to fit it. Since I know how to be the most powerful, I also know how to be less than the most powerful. I could be a dick. I could try to 'win' at D&D. I could make other players feel useless and downtrodden. But I will never do that, because I play games for fun. You just might have to trust me, that I'm in it all for the fun.
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Jan 1, 2012 13:49
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J. Alfred Prufrock posted:"Power gamer" only became a slur when games moved away from the classic deathtrap dungeouns and low-power assumptions into situations where your first level character wasn't expected to die two or three times and getting to 10th level was a thing that normal characters could do. To a Basic player, the idea that you wouldn't want a powerful character is really, really strange. "Power gamer" was a slur earlier than that but it meant something different. I remember it being used for things like players who insisted on bringing their existing character (with levels and loot) into every game and who therefore had much more powerful characters than people who would occasionally roll up a new character or who just hadn't been around as long. In particular, if you demanded on keeping Grognard the Almighty around after everyone else in the party had been wiped, you were being a power gamer and an rear end in a top hat. Basically, "power gamer" as a slur back then didn't mean someone who was trying to be as powerful as possible, but rather someone who had succeeded to a degree that it became a problem for other players or the DM. You're right that the fact of trying wasn't seen as an inherently bad thing, but a PC getting too powerful was. There's a question in an early Sage Advice about "how do I kill off a level 34 magic-user with 86 magic items that he got running under an inexperienced DM", with the answer being "tell him his character joins city council and no longer has time to adventure so he has to reroll, and in the worst case blow up your campaign world and start a new one". It really is a different sort of mentality.
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Jan 1, 2012 18:00
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It is weird that the definition of "power gamer" has changed from "gamer who is powerful" to "gamer who takes many steps to be powerful". The big implied shift in meaning, of course, is from unskilled to skilled, where in earlier games a "power gamer" was actually poo poo at the game because he just: got lucky; got a terrible DM; or lied about one or both of the first two. Nowadays when someone says "power gamer" what they really mean is "dude who makes powerful characters following the exact same rules as everyone else" or, if you prefer, "dude who doesn't make lovely characters on purpose because roleplaying." Back in death-trap-dungeon-fantasy-Vietnam-edition, if you intentionally made a useless character you were laughed off the table until you rerolled because goddammit we have a half-dozen worthless NPCs we don't need another one. On the other hand, if you were good at setting up and playing your PC then everyone else wanted to party with you since clearly you knew what you were doing and would actually benefit any team that brought you along. Now, I've never actually IRL seen somebody create a totally gimped and worthless PC that just drags the party down, despite how important the internet seems to think that the ability to do so is ("If I can't build a crippled old man with no skills and no talents then your system prevent roleplaying!) But thanks to the wonders of the internet, I know that these people exist and have to spend valuable brain-space pondering just what sort of illness/disorder it takes to want your 'friends' to constantly play out care-taker fantasies to the exclusion of all others. Do you also RP out changing their Depends? Mashing up their peas and carrots? The liberal application of baby powder? You know, I don't actually want to know. Just, if you do, you're awful. That's far enough into it for me, thanks.
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Jan 2, 2012 13:16
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J. Alfred Prufrock posted:The big implied shift in meaning, of course, is from unskilled to skilled, where in earlier games a "power gamer" was actually poo poo at the game because he just: got lucky; got a terrible DM; or lied about one or both of the first two. Nowadays when someone says "power gamer" what they really mean is "dude who makes powerful characters following the exact same rules as everyone else" or, if you prefer, "dude who doesn't make lovely characters on purpose because roleplaying." An old-style power gamer could be proficien, too - the classic example is the guy who knows enough about every monster in the Monster Manual that he sees a TPK coming, casts Invisibility to let everyone else die, takes their stuff and refuses to give it to their new characters. The key part is that you're using your power to be a dick. J. Alfred Prufrock posted:Now, I've never actually IRL seen somebody create a totally gimped and worthless PC that just drags the party down, despite how important the internet seems to think that the ability to do so is ("If I can't build a crippled old man with no skills and no talents then your system prevent roleplaying!) The version I've seen in actual play is generally less overt than that and takes the form of "well I'm not a MUNCHKIN, some of us don't NEED to MIN-MAX everything", after which he insists on playing a monk with Skill Focus: Concentrate to reflect his mastery of meditation, then after a couple of sessions throws a tantrum and calls someone else a powergamer because they rolled a fighter with Power Attack and can actually do something instead of nothing. The complaint seems to be more "why can't I be a huge badass when I chose things that don't make me a badass", which is valid on the monk end (since the game assures you that a monk will be a badass although it is lying) but not so much on the Skill Focus: Concentration. I guess the core of it is that they want to be a badass no matter what decisions they make, with no good or bad decisions. Benly fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Jan 2, 2012 |
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Jan 2, 2012 14:02
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J. Alfred Prufrock posted:It is weird that the definition of "power gamer" has changed from "gamer who is powerful" to "gamer who takes many steps to be powerful". A guy in my IRL party's most recent 3.5 character was a 5th level swashbuckler with 10 strength, 16 dexterity, and 10 intelligence. Also he complained that the half-orc barbarian someone else was playing was overpowered because he was doing 1d12+10 (plus varying amounts of power attack) and that was more than damage than a 12th level paladin he had played in a different group.
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Jan 2, 2012 16:03
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Thing is, ideally speaking, in a perfect RPG there wouldn't be that problem. The monk WOULD be rather badass in of itself, player traps would be few and far between, and the class itself would have useful advice on how to make it (assuming for a class based game).
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Jan 2, 2012 16:39
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I once rolled an intentionally-useless character. To be fair, it was for Tomb of Horrors and the goal was "get some laughs before dying horribly" (I succeeded).
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Jan 2, 2012 19:48
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Piell posted:A guy in my IRL party's most recent 3.5 character was a 5th level swashbuckler with 10 strength, 16 dexterity, and 10 intelligence. Also he complained that the half-orc barbarian someone else was playing was overpowered because he was doing 1d12+10 (plus varying amounts of power attack) and that was more than damage than a 12th level paladin he had played in a different group. Well, theres also legitimate uses of the term, like a group with generally adequate combat ability, and then somebody turns up and starts binding a dozen demons for minions and generally running a one man show over the others. But thats more the player being an rear end in a top hat than anything to do with technique. Some fault lies with large traps and loopholes which someone attempting to create a legitimate character could encounter though. Generally, the more meaningful variation within a system, the greater the number of bad interactions possible. These I would mostly give a pass on the writers(because trying to keep ever expanding material stable in power is a hell of a trick without ruling out interactions entirely). Bad from the start things like the Monk seem to be stuff that'd have been caught by the playtest though.
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Jan 2, 2012 20:17
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:I once rolled an intentionally-useless character. To be fair, it was for Tomb of Horrors and the goal was "get some laughs before dying horribly" (I succeeded).
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Jan 2, 2012 20:27
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veekie posted:Well, theres also legitimate uses of the term, like a group with generally adequate combat ability, and then somebody turns up and starts binding a dozen demons for minions and generally running a one man show over the others. But thats more the player being an rear end in a top hat than anything to do with technique. That's the only way I've seen the term used, myself; someone that uses system mastery to steal spotlight from the other characters and dominate a game. I don't think I've ever seen it used to mean generally "someone that is really good with a system" like J. Alfred Prufrock described.
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Jan 2, 2012 20:27
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MadScientistWorking posted:Isn't Tomb of Horrors a module that was designed to be solved using nothing but your wits and creatively bizarre thinking. I think it's more "If you haven't read the DM guide to this, you'll be dead in a few minutes"
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Jan 2, 2012 21:22
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MadScientistWorking posted:Isn't Tomb of Horrors a module that was designed to be solved using nothing but your wits and creatively bizarre thinking. About half that and half "search every square" with a dash of "if you don't have the right spell prepped for this room, welp, everyone's dead."
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Jan 2, 2012 22:37
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Benly posted:About half that and half "search every square" with a dash of "if you don't have the right spell prepped for this room, welp, everyone's dead." More like, if you didn't cast the right spell, for the right room, at the right time, everyone's dead. Having the spell doesn't matter if theres not a hint what the spell is for.
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Jan 2, 2012 23:23
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veekie posted:More like, if you didn't cast the right spell, for the right room, at the right time, everyone's dead. Having the spell doesn't matter if theres not a hint what the spell is for. Also true. I vaguely recall there being one room where if you don't Disintegrate the big obvious thing, everyone dies, and another where if you Disintegrate the big obvious thing, everyone dies.
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Jan 2, 2012 23:31
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Benly posted:Also true. I vaguely recall there being one room where if you don't Disintegrate the big obvious thing, everyone dies, and another where if you Disintegrate the big obvious thing, everyone dies. If I recall correctly, not sure if spoilers are needed but I'm doing them anyways, when you get to the room with the treasure, touching it instantly kills you or something stupid.
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Jan 2, 2012 23:50
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Thelonious Funk posted:If I recall correctly, not sure if spoilers are needed but I'm doing them anyways, when you get to the room with the treasure, touching it instantly kills you or something stupid. There is more than one room where this is at least partially accurate.
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Jan 2, 2012 23:56
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Benly posted:There is more than one room where this is at least partially accurate. Wasn't it run as a PbP here? I wonder if they finished.
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Jan 3, 2012 00:51
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Thelonious Funk posted:Wasn't it run as a PbP here? I wonder if they finished. I don't now, but when I was younger I used to try running the ToH at cons. Point of advice: don't try to run the ToH. It's just really not worth it. There are plenty of great modules out there, but the ToH is not really one of them despite its "classic" reputation.
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Jan 3, 2012 01:48
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Thelonious Funk posted:Wasn't it run as a PbP here? I wonder if they finished. I remember two attempts here, but both games died before the group got more than one room past the first hallway. Benly posted:I don't now, but when I was younger I used to try running the ToH at cons. Return to the Tomb of Horrors, though, was kind of an interesting module if I remember right (and if you skipped the parts that involved actually running ToH itself). In part because it brought in an actual story beyond "here's a deathtrap filled with treasure, go try and get it".
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Jan 3, 2012 04:53
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Idran posted:Return to the Tomb of Horrors, though, was kind of an interesting module if I remember right (and if you skipped the parts that involved actually running ToH itself). In part because it brought in an actual story beyond "here's a deathtrap filled with treasure, go try and get it". This was pretty hilarious if I recall correctly--if only by virtue of being front-loaded with what is essentially a cakewalk where players go 'Ha, what's so bad about all that?' and then you fight the demilich.
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Jan 3, 2012 15:32
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I had a DM who loved to run Tomb of Horrors once per campaign in 2e, it was a genuinely terrible experience. Some highlights: 1. The first hallway ends in a portal and a carved demon mouth. The portal has little crystals around it that when you touch them, they change color. You have to key in a correct sequence for it to take you to an elevator room, other combinations do fun things like teleport you to the entrance of the dungeon naked and your gear is now in the final chamber or change your sex, or both. I do not believe there are any clues as to the correct color combination. Once you get frustrated with this mechanic and try to crawl in the demon's mouth, it lets you get deep enough in that no one can see you and then you get sucked up by a Sphere of Annihilation. 2. A room with three treasure chests, each of them is a trap. One has a Minor Death spring out and attack whoever opened it. It always hits for 2d4 damage, has a good chunk of xp, and if anyone tries to help, another Minor Death spawns attacking them. The color and type of each chest is largely irrelevant, another is filled with snakes and the last is an arrow trap. 3. At one point you find a crown and a rod that is silver at one and and gold at the other. If you put on the crown and touch it with the correct end, a secret door opens. If you touch it with the wrong end, you die. There are no clues as to which is the correct tip. 4. At one point you fight a gimp lich and when you slay him the entire dungeon starts shaking and rocks start falling. You can grab one item and then flee, after which the dungeon is completely blocked. It's an illusion, he's not the real lich and the items you took are cursed or nonmagical. 5. The real lich's door is in a nondescript wall with a small circle in it. You have a key that fit it from earlier, but if you put it in and turn, it does nothing. You literally have to tell the DM that you turn it twice or it looks like a false lead. 6. The lich itself is devastating, once per round it picks someone and sucks their soul into a gem in it's skull, instantly killing them. It can be slain by going to the Ethereal Plane and casting shatter on it 3 times, but it always acts in it's surprise round and always chooses the party's magic user to eat first. Sounds fun, right?
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Jan 3, 2012 15:57
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2012 17:27
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...surely anyone who runs ToH changes the details each time, right?
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Jan 3, 2012 18:22
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Thelonious Funk posted:Wasn't it run as a PbP here? I wonder if they finished. Bobbin Threadbare is starting a Skype/Gametable ToH LP after finishing the Troika Temple of Elemental Evil toward the end of this thread.
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Jan 3, 2012 20:33
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50 Foot Ant posted:I believe it was published to be a deathtrap. Something along the lines of Gygax saying: "This is a death trap built by an ancient and cruel foe. Nobody makes it through this." He ran it at a couple of GenCons (The version he wrote, not the one for publication, just different enough that if you tried to use player knowledge from the module you were screwed. If nothing else, White Plume Mountain postdates it. Tomb of Horrors was module S1, White Plume Mountain was S2. S3, Expedition to the BArrier Peaks, I guess you could call a straight dungeon crawl, though the gimmick that it's a sci-fi spaceship kind of twists the "straight" part of it. And I don't know much about S4, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, but I think there was more to it than just a crawl.
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Jan 3, 2012 21:54
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2012 22:46
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White Plume Mountain also had, IIRC, some really  weapons, Blackrazor and Wave & Whelm. The former was a serious monster of a weapon with a ton of enchantments, so a character who went through White Plume Mountain and survived came out decked out in gear that could kill a god. That makes it better than ToH by default, where you got dick-all for the effort.
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Jan 3, 2012 23:01
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Nostalgia4ColdWar fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Jan 4, 2012 00:42
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White Plume Mountain, as I recall, also had a kickin' anti-gravity logjam at one point. It really was pretty drat good for an early D&D adventure (compare it to Against the Giants, which is Boring and Stupid as Hell, or the Isle of Dread, which managed to make King Kong Island into a leaden jungle-crawl).
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Jan 4, 2012 00:47
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