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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Oh, don't get me wrong, "using the flat of the blade" happens mostly in roleplaying games and/or fantasy novel training montages. That doesn't make it utterly ridiculous, however. My RPG history is kind of rusty, but I seem to recall the first place "nonlethal" or "subdual" damage being mentioned was in the context, in AD&D 2e, of non-evil PCs fighting non-evil dragons--you could deal "subdual" damage to a dragon so it would know you could have killed it and therefore respect you. Or something. I guess making friends with a dragon is a lot like a Marvel Team-Up. But yeah, not the most realistic of game concepts.
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Apr 3, 2012 20:52
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some loving LIAR posted:My RPG history is kind of rusty, but I seem to recall the first place "nonlethal" or "subdual" damage being mentioned was in the context, in AD&D 2e, of non-evil PCs fighting non-evil dragons--you could deal "subdual" damage to a dragon so it would know you could have killed it and therefore respect you. Or something. I guess making friends with a dragon is a lot like a Marvel Team-Up. It does appear before that -- the same concept (flat of the blade, spells and missiles can't be used) is in the 1981 revision of D&D Basic. I don't have the 1977 version (or any older versions) to see how far back it goes.
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Apr 3, 2012 22:03
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Eh, if I've had to I've always thought of nonlethal damage as the bit in the fight where you stick a sword through a guy's coat, missing his body and stapling him to the wall. The kind of game I'm running, I want the players not to have to choose between fighting at 100% efficiency and not being murderous dicks, so I'm entirely happy for D&D4e nonlethal damage to be as combat-effective as lethal damage.
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Apr 3, 2012 23:57
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Whybird posted:Eh, if I've had to I've always thought of nonlethal damage as the bit in the fight where you stick a sword through a guy's coat, missing his body and stapling him to the wall. The kind of game I'm running, I want the players not to have to choose between fighting at 100% efficiency and not being murderous dicks, so I'm entirely happy for D&D4e nonlethal damage to be as combat-effective as lethal damage. Non-lethal damage is one of those times when being realistic isn't all that important. Besting someone in combat and forcing them to surrender is a pretty widespread trope in heroic fantasy and other settings, it's fine to allow players to do that. It's a little more ambiguous if it's an enemy incapable of surrender, like an unintelligent animal or monster. Like, I probably wouldn't allow a player to knock a bear unconscious with non-lethal damage, I would force him to use nets or traps if he wanted to capture it. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Apr 4, 2012 |
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Apr 4, 2012 00:28
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I have a question about how people run inventory management, and I hope this is the right thread to ask. I am in the process of planning a Shadowrun 4 game for this summer, and while walking my players through character generation, I began to worry about our ability to organize the metric ton of gear they are buying. At my suggestion, some players are purchasing and setting up multiple safe-houses and equipment caches, as criminals who do black-operations for a living are wont to do. My plan to keep track of it all, and avoid "Gordon-Freeman" levels of equipment carrying silliness, is to get a box of letter envelopes, and label them with various locations they will be using. Then, I am going to buy a shitload of 3x5 inch index cards, and for each piece of equipment, write important stats on the back, and the name and maybe a terrible sharpie doodle of the item on the front. The Pros are that my players will have a visual representation (other than a mind-bogglingly long list) of what equipment they have available, what they are actually carrying (of course I brought that Grenade Launcher to the 5-star restaurant), and where they need to go if they need some specific gear they already own. It enables me to easily give them equipment without using the phrase "write *Item* in your inventory", which often gets missed or forgotten in the chaos that is a tabletop RPG. I could use it to keep track of ammunition expenditure as well, one card with check-boxes per magazine. I can also use it to keep track of the hacker's program usage, and the drone rigger can have envelopes for his vehicles and cards for the drones. I'm not sure how much bookkeeping they will be able to handle. This group is mostly used to playing Pathfinder, White Wolf, and Paranoia games. This seems simple in my head. Is it practical for actual play?
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Apr 6, 2012 03:06
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That's a pretty cool idea. The only thing I could think of would be trying to see if there's some sort of eletronic way to do what you're doing. e: That is, to either print off a list of cards or full electronic management.
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Apr 6, 2012 03:44
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P.S. STILL COMPLETELY DEVOID OF MERIT
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I have a small question about party setup. I'm getting back into DMing 4e after some Dark Heresy, and we've had our character and world building session. We've got four players so far, and the problem is they're all adamant they don't want to play a Leader. Right now, they've written a Knight, a Druid, an Assassin and a Barbarian. What can I do in this situation? Make a silent DMPC that just follows as a suboptimal healbot? Try and pressure someone into playing a healer? Go full steam ahead without a healer, but softball all encounters? I'm at a bit of a loss. 
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Apr 6, 2012 07:37
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I'd run a regular encounter first to see how they do in practice. If that gives them trouble, consider making future encounters easier or giving out more potions, and maybe some potion bandoliers to make potion use more efficient. A companion character can be helpful too, and you can give them control over it, but controlling an additional character can easily slow things down a lot, and I'd try running without a Leader first. e: vvv good point, if none of them wants to play a Leader probably none of them will want to run a Leader companion either and you'd be stuck with it on top of everything else you have to do. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Apr 6, 2012 |
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Apr 6, 2012 08:11
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Did they say why none of them wanted to be a Leader?
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Apr 6, 2012 09:03
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Yoshimo posted:Did they say why none of them wanted to be a Leader? The most coherent response on that front that I got was from the Knight, who said he didn't want to be a "healbot", the others all didn't give a reason beyond "Don't wanna!"
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Apr 6, 2012 09:16
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I've run plenty of 4e games with no Leaders. You'll be fine. Didn't even have to pull punches on encounters. They'll probably grab a multiclass Leader or some of the healing-ish skill powers shortly after the first few sessions, though.
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Apr 6, 2012 09:20
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In my D&D game on here, the party "healbot" is a Dwarven religious zealot who twats things regularly and consistently with a giant hammer that's probably bigger than he is. I wouldn't like to rank the characters by damage output but he sure as hell isn't "Oh well, not healing this turn, guess I'll try hitting someone with my staff. Oh, a hit, that's 4 damage." I take it you've done a bit of 4e before, so I guess I'm preaching to the choir, but maybe you just need to show them being a Leader isn't about sacrificing your own fun so someone else can have some. It's about hitting things - really hard - while shouting at your fellows to stop slacking. edit - DMPCs are a pain in the arse to run.
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Apr 6, 2012 09:26
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WAR FOOT posted:I have a small question about party setup. I'd run without a leader unless it became clear they were going to die without one and still had no interest in switching. Then I'd make a companion character with a 1/enc heal and maybe start replacing some item parcels with healing potions. Alternately, wait until the assassin's player realizes just how badly assassins suck (it shouldn't take long!), and point him toward a strength-based cleric, a valorous bard, any kind of warlord, a polearm ardent... there's no shortage of ways to be a badass melee character as a leader, and any of those four will probably easily outdamage an assassin.
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Apr 6, 2012 13:21
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Just remind them that their treasure will be going to potions instead of gear. Most classes have some sort of healing powers they can take, or as was sugggested, someone might multiclass cleric or such.
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Apr 6, 2012 14:46
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Two of the players in my campaign are leaders - Warlord and Paladin - and they spend a lot more time in the thick of combat than they do using Inspiring Word or similar. Nothing stopping anyone playing a leader oriented more towards leading from the front than healing.
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Apr 6, 2012 18:02
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I know clerics especially can heal people by smashing a hammer into a baddie's face. 4E did a very good job making Leaders more than healing classes. Paladins are incredibly tough, too, and a lot of fun to play. There are also classes like Bard that are more about positioning and effects rather than healing, but it sounds like they'd actually prefer a damaging class.
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Apr 6, 2012 19:26
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I've finally managed to wrangle together a group of five people for a semi regular game of D&D 4e and everything is going great except for the game length. I'm following the prescribed encounter building methods in the DMG, and I even cut about 25-50% HP off of many monsters just to keep the game moving. With some monsters having ludicrously high HP, one battle with 3 or 4 enemies may take up to an hour. I have a feeling though, that my players know what I'm doing and feel like they're playing on easy mode. I understand this is a common complaint in 4e, and it's supposed to be addressed in the next version, but I wanted to ask if anyone has any tips and tricks for speeding up combat. Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, we're having fun with 4e, but the combat is so drat long. Can anyone recommend any other RPGs that are similar and a session with 5-6 people can be played in 2 hours? MustangCharlie fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Apr 8, 2012 |
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Apr 8, 2012 18:15
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Depends on how you're playing and this suggestion works well with MapTool or a dry-erase board. If you wanna speed up combat, you can try dropping the tile combat and go for something more nebulous and looks more like a football playbook, O for players with a little letter over 'em, other symbols for different types of monsters. You can keep a grid for distances but the way we played was always more arbitrary. It's much faster but it's also very loose about grid and distance rules (i.e., they're essentially non-existent, but you have an idea of how large a sphere or an AoE is supposed to be based on the density of symbols in play).
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Apr 8, 2012 19:46
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Okay, I'm thinking of starting up my own D&D4E game online, I have an idea to start it but... not sure where to go from there. It'd probably be enough to take up the first couple of sessions, but... how far in advance should I plan poo poo? And will I need to mess with ports to get Gametable to work.
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Apr 8, 2012 21:45
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MustangCharlie posted:I've finally managed to wrangle together a group of five people for a semi regular game of D&D 4e and everything is going great except for the game length. I'm following the prescribed encounter building methods in the DMG, and I even cut about 25-50% HP off of many monsters just to keep the game moving. With some monsters having ludicrously high HP, one battle with 3 or 4 enemies may take up to an hour. I have a feeling though, that my players know what I'm doing and feel like they're playing on easy mode. I understand this is a common complaint in 4e, and it's supposed to be addressed in the next version, but I wanted to ask if anyone has any tips and tricks for speeding up combat. Finding other games that are "similar" to 4e is tough. The tactical nature of 4e combat is one of the things that makes encounters go on so long - I don't know of any game with the tactical depth of 4e that has fast encounters. So what parts of 4e do you want to keep? Similar in setting and tone? Similar in rules structure?
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Apr 8, 2012 22:23
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So in the D&D 4e game I'm running, there's a race of creatures that come from a different plane that were brought over against their will and enslaved by the Big Bad. Since discovering their enslavement, the party's been sparing whoever they can, but killing as necessary (which is most of them, since their enslavement is magic in nature and very hard to break). One of my players is really weak in combat though, and I was thinking of giving her a bit of loot in the form of an enchanted bow (or enchanted arrows) that can temporarily or permanently banish creatures to their home plane. How would this work best, mechanically speaking? I was thinking maybe no penalty on temporary banishment (save ends, if combat ends while creature is banished, the banishment is permanent), or maybe a -2/3/4/? penalty for a permanent banish. Thoughts?
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Apr 8, 2012 22:53
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Banish (save ends), first failed save, banished (save ends at -2), second failed save, banished (permanently) sounds plausible - maybe as an encounter power, or at-will standard action. Where banished means 'removed from play'. But in your position, I'd be looking at the PC and trying to figure a way to make the character more effective within the rules, rather than house-ruling. E: a penalty to hit in order to do it is a bad plan, though - penalties to hit are nasty, and she'd rarely be better off banishing than she would just... shooting for damage. What does the character look like?
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Apr 8, 2012 22:57
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Here's her character sheet:code:
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Apr 8, 2012 23:38
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Welp, halfling hunters suck, but if you're stuck with them, Halfling Shortbow Hunter is a must-have feat to pick the DPR back up. Her feats are pretty poor. She doesn't have Aspect of the Pouncing Lynx, which is the only must-have stance. A non-Half-Elf Hunter should be starting with a preracial 18 DEX (14 WIS), for accuracy and AC and init, particularly given that you can't get a Superior Crossbow on a small character... There's a lot of reasons why this doesn't work so well. Suggestions: Bump the DEX, she should be starting with a 20. Swap the stances out - the best ones at first are Pouncing Lynx, which she should ALWAYS be in outside of combat, and Dancing Serpent, which becomes the go-to in-combat. Swap the U2 for either Stalker's Mist or Invigorating Stride. Feats: Halfling Shortbow Hunter, Superior Will, Weapon Focus. But ideally, switch races. Crossbows are just SO much better for Hunters. Anything that gets DEX and WIS (and is Medium sized) is gonna be fine through Heroic, Half-Elves are about the only way to be viable and not just dull as piss after that. The magic bow is a fine idea, but unfortunately, she's picked a severely suboptimal race, then not optimised it very well, so it's no surprise the character's limited in its effectiveness.
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Apr 9, 2012 00:06
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thespaceinvader posted:The magic bow is a fine idea, but unfortunately, she's picked a severely suboptimal race, then not optimised it very well, so it's no surprise the character's limited in its effectiveness. You realise some people like to roleplay a certain character because it's the type of character THEY want to play, not the min-maxer super-optimal type of character? Sorry but everything about your post annoyed me. "Halfling hunter?? THOSE feats?? LOL WHAT A NOOB!" Did Son of Thunderbeast ever say she wasn't having fun playing her character? No. He just wanted to give her a little boost in combat.
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Apr 9, 2012 00:29
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Yeah, the race and whatnot are mostly due to roleplay considerations for the world we're playing in (basically historical mid-15th century earth, D&D-ified with magic etc.). Her character's from whatever the Philippine Islands were called back then, and the area's where the halfling/gnome/etc. races come from hahahaha EDIT: some of the mechanical insights are very useful though, thanks. I'll go over her character with her maybe before tonight's session and see if she wants to make any changes. Son of Thunderbeast fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Apr 9, 2012 |
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Apr 9, 2012 01:46
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Robzor McFabulous posted:You realise some people like to roleplay a certain character because it's the type of character THEY want to play, not the min-maxer super-optimal type of character? If you're talking purely about combat mechanics and you're asking for help making a character more combat effective you should expect people to talk about stats and "min-maxer super-optimal" type comments like "you can't get a Superior Crossbow on a small character" or having a 20 in a stat. Everything about *your* post annoyed me, the post about the mechanical weaknesses of the hunter was informative and helpful and worked towards the goal of the guy asking for help.
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Apr 9, 2012 02:25
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Robzor McFabulous posted:You realise some people like to roleplay a certain character because it's the type of character THEY want to play, not the min-maxer super-optimal type of character? I invoke Ferrinus I thought everyone in TGD knew better than this by now. You can roleplay the character you want and not have poo poo combat stats.
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Apr 9, 2012 03:01
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What if you want to play a halfling hunter? No, the real answer is to introduce one houserule: being a small character does not limit what weapon you can use. Then she can take a superior crossbow and if she wants to do that other optimization stuff she can.
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Apr 9, 2012 04:38
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Robzor McFabulous posted:You realise some people like to roleplay a certain character because it's the type of character THEY want to play, not the min-maxer super-optimal type of character? Goddamn this post is retarded. The character you want to play is completely divorced from the numbers you roll to play them, it isn't a "good character, bad roleplay; good roleplay, bad character" dichotomy
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Apr 9, 2012 10:29
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Jimbozig posted:What if you want to play a halfling hunter? There's nothing wrong with playing any race/class combination. quote:the real answer is to introduce one houserule: being a small character does not limit what weapon you can use. Then she can take a superior crossbow and if she wants to do that other optimization stuff she can. Everyone should be doing this anyway
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Apr 9, 2012 10:31
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Or just reskin some other race as a halfling -- one that isn't Small.
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Apr 9, 2012 15:42
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Or, give her a magical weapon, that banishes whoever, and that she can use, and then give it the stats of a different weapon, that she couldn't normally use! Call everything by different names all the time. Reskin strength as charisma and dexterity as wisdom just because you can
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Apr 9, 2012 15:49
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I'm going to be doing a 4th edition campaign for some friends of mine who haven't played D&D before. The campaign is going to have homebrewed races which are mostly based off of the races from the Players Handbook with some switching around, and a custom setting. I haven't run a campaign before but I've played in tons, and coupled with what I've picked up in this thread, I think I've got a good idea on how to run it. Since the setting is pretty loosely defined right now (I have descriptions of the various countries available to the players. The descriptions contain general terrain info, the races in them and major cities, along with some problems in the citeis, but nothing super specific), so I'm probably going to tell my players to come up with a backstory and if they want to throw stuff in that I haven't covered, then they've generally got the go ahead. Is this a good idea, or should I define more of the setting for them? Also, is D&D Insider still worth it to subscribe to?
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Apr 9, 2012 17:49
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It depends on what you want to get out of it. It's not as good a deal as it was, but you still get access to the Compendium, which has just about all the monsters from various books and modules, and you get the online character builder which may or may not suck now (I use the offline one with the awesome CBLoader mod updated by goons) The Compendium is extremely valuable for me because I can load monsters and then import them into MapTool's Rumble framework, which dramatically cuts down on prep time. The online builder is less useful to me because I still have the offline one from early on, but I'd rather have the online tool than nothing at all. It really helps tweaking a character and filtering what your options are without flipping through a bazillion books (that you had to spend big money on) though you miss out on some fluff and artwork. All in all it's still worth it, to me. As for your players, I've personally had the best success with collaborative storytelling - sequentially asking players for details about the city with leading questions like what they're famous for and who leads its and what type of government and famous people there, then drilling down to smaller details that their PCs would know, and finishing up with the PCs themselves and why they're all friends/working together/interested in their welfare. It makes for a strong party bond and it makes the world feel "real" because they already know a lot of the background information since they helped create it. They can even have their characters created already and place important details during world creation. That said, I would limit a lot of this activity to a single largish city to keep the story contained at first since this is your first time running a campaign and it's with new players.
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Apr 9, 2012 18:28
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MustangCharlie posted:Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, we're having fun with 4e, but the combat is so drat long. Can anyone recommend any other RPGs that are similar and a session with 5-6 people can be played in 2 hours? I mean, when you factor in a half hour of bullshitting and socializing at the start, you barely have time for most board games for that number of players.
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Apr 9, 2012 19:23
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So I've recently had my first ever tabletop RP experience in playing a simplified homebrew version of OD&D. The first big quest of the campaign is just wrapping up and I suspect the GM might like to take a break before starting on another adventure, so I'd like to see if I can run my own game with the same group. I was wondering if anyone could give a few recommendations: -Which system? I'd like to run something modern or sci-fi, with fairly simple rules given my own lack of experience. I've heard good things about FATE, FUDGE, Unknown Armies, and Call of Cthulhu. -I'm guessing it's probably best to run a scenario made by someone who knows what they're doing, since making up a whole scenario from nothing would probably be hard as poo poo to balance properly with no practical knowledge of the system. Is there some site that collects one-shot modules from a variety of systems and rates them in some way? Or does it just depend on the system? Any particular recommendations? -What's the best way to introduce players to a new system? Luigi's Discount Porn Bin fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 01:20
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I'm running a Pathfinder campaign and my players (a ranger, monk and fighter) are heading into the ruins of a town. I was originally going to put more "normal" monsters into it, but my players have gotten all excited about the undead and started buying holy water to "overcome undead damage resistance". They're currently level 2, and I don't want to disappoint them. Can I get some ideas for undead monsters that they'll have to use holy water on?
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Apr 12, 2012 09:16
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Nanja Monja posted:I'm running a Pathfinder campaign and my players (a ranger, monk and fighter) are heading into the ruins of a town. I was originally going to put more "normal" monsters into it, but my players have gotten all excited about the undead and started buying holy water to "overcome undead damage resistance". They're currently level 2, and I don't want to disappoint them. Can I get some ideas for undead monsters that they'll have to use holy water on? If you can get access to it, take a look at The Godsmouth Heresy module. It is designed for level 1 characters, but it would be effortless to beef up the monsters a little, and it is packed full of assorted undead creatures. Various zombies, a handful of skeletons (including one that regenerates itself after it dies) and a few other fun creatures.
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Apr 12, 2012 09:50
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I have been working on setting up a play by post Rifts game for my friends but as I have been thinking about the logistics of actually running a game, a problem presented itself. As anyone who has played Rifts knows, combat can take a really freaking long time and due to the nature of a play by post game, I can only imagine that running though even a small combat scene will take even longer than in person. I was wondering if any of you play by post GMs out there could offer some tips to speed up combat scenes in Rifts or in play by post games in general. I saw that the Play by Post Rules Supplement suggested that I, as the GM, should do all of the rolling, but I would like to allow my players to roll their own actions if at all possible. I have no fear of them cheating or anything, but if the consensus is that I should do all of the rolling to speed up the game, then that's what I'll do. Thanks for your advice.
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Apr 12, 2012 21:36
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