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Some DMs are just horrible wretches that aren't there for a communal experience, but to impose their super-cool ideas upon you. Hence NPCs that are far more important than the PCs will ever be and take a stronger role in the story than the PCs do. The players must be constantly reminded how much more powerful and cool this NPC is, and how he or she transcends the game's concepts of power level by being just that cool. 3E gods have 40 character levels and 20 god levels? Well guess what, Poochie is level 65 and has all these cool abilities. Nobody fucks with him! Listen to whatever he says! This kind of NPC popping up is red flag #1 that you should never attend the DM's games.
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Jan 2, 2014 23:40
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It can also be a sign the GM is 14; I did that when I was that age, though I also did it with the goal of one day making the PCs that awesome, which they seemed to enjoy because we were all 14.
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Jan 2, 2014 23:48
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The over-powered NPCs don't need to be right there with the party, acting towards the same goals as the party, and generally overshadowing or outright nullifying everything they do. That's just boring for the players. Don't stick them in the same room as a loving fistfight between dieties when they're level 4.
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Jan 2, 2014 23:56
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Any game where the PCs are not the most interesting people in the world I don't want to be part of. This sounds like someone who needs to read/apply some DW principles to his game.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:23
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There are the ones who get caught up in toymaking and lose track of their scope when they don't have explicit limits put on them, too... or just really gently caress up trying to make a Gandalf-like NPC/guide character. Not that I've ever done that. Ahem.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:30
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There was a guy I used to know who was constantly trying to talk me into playing in one of his campaigns. He was constantly going on about his DMPC though. "Warrior 20/Ninja 20/Wizard 20/Rogue 20, the Right Hand of Kord himself. If your characters start getting out of hand, he WILL shut it down. He has his own plane and a giant enchanted fortress tower..." It wasn't a hard decision to say No.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:48
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Was invited to a 3.5 oneshot with a former classmate. Was warned that session would be very, very meta. I play a Sorcerer along with a Barbarian and Cleric, we get a merc contract from country A to steal Thing with Vague Godlike Powers from ancient abandoned fortress before rival party from country B does. Survival checks were made, ominous stories from locals and boasts by rival party were ignored, cliffs were scaled and introductory skeletons were smashed. Then we head inside the fortress. Inside, we find a a vast set of junk used for the study of magical objects, all pointed at a plain wooden table and a pair of dice. Knowledge checks point to it being an object tied to the very fabric of reality. So we pick up the dice and roll. This immediately results in a few Goblins teleporting in. We kill the goblins, investigate for any traps that may have been sprung, we pick up the dice and roll again to see if these are really the Dice of Summon Goblins. Next roll, we fight an ogre. Then more skeletons. GM warns us again that the adventure is very, very meta. So we roll the dice elsewhere, nothing. Then we roll our own dice on the table, get skeletons again. Then our Barbarian has an idea. So with this adventure being very meta and this table governing the laws of reality, this wouldn't be a literal Random Encounter Table we're rolling on, would it? Yes it is.So the last act of the session is frantically kicking down doors and figuring out what everything does(sorry 'bout repeatedly changing your alignment and deity, Cleric) before the enemy party finds the Experience Table and becomes invincible. They find it at the same time as we do, their Wizard grabs a note, writes the number 190.000 on it, slams it down on the table and... finds out the hard way that going from 5th level to 20th doesn't result in retroactively having any high level spells prepared. So between their wizard meatwall and pack of bears led by a bear with a bear companion Druid, and a Fighter we battle over the table until the Barbarian is in a position to grab the Wizard's note and use it himself, after which they were dispatched handily.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:28
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Zereth posted:In 3.x being a god is a specific thing which has an ECL on it, basically. I forget what divine rank you get absolute power over life and death but it's like 5 or something. A god can just straight-up kill any mortal they want at that point.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:40
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It's very simple, but A*W game puts it simply. If you're a good GM, you're a fan of your characters. That's why bad GMs often are fans of themselves.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:50
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Asehujiko posted:
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Jan 3, 2014 03:40
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Asehujiko posted:
This is a pretty spectacular idea for a one shot, I have to admit.
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Jan 3, 2014 05:39
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goatface posted:I think that sufficiently powerful gods get a few flat "no" abilities. I remember reading the Immortal's Handbook, with god abilities including 'One of your ability scores is infinite', 'automatic max roll on everything you do', 'You can't ever be hurt by the same thing twice', and magic immunity. Not SR, complete immunity to magic. Also you can make the Mortiverse. It's probably not worth ever using but it's just full of wonderfully senseless bullshit. 
Opinion Haver fucked around with this message at 08:27 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 08:21
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"Uh, Alex, pass the dice bag... No, the big dice bag. You guys might want to take a smoke break."
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Jan 3, 2014 12:03
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Would someone mind summarising what all that means? The part of my brain that was able to read 3.x statblocks seems to have atrophied.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:48
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Splicer posted:Would someone mind summarising what all that means? The part of my brain that was able to read 3.x statblocks seems to have atrophied. It's a godlike hyper-sapient black hole that can reproduce and whose gravity well overpowers the sum total of the repulsive force of dark energy across the entirety of the universe. But only when it feels like it. Punting fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 14:52
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You know some DM out there is using that as his unkillable railroader DMPC. And it also chooses to take the form of an 8-year old catgirl.
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Jan 3, 2014 15:02
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Zereth posted:In 3.x being a god is a specific thing which has an ECL on it, basically. The caveat is that most DMs don't play to a given NPC's full capacity, because they don't want to murder the party. If you wanted to be totally straight about kobolds, for example, a cavern complex full of kobolds would have actually no real treasure in it- you should liquidate the value of all that treasure and turn it into additional traps, because that's what they would do. Assuming the party made it through the vicious gauntlet of traps in the the dungeon's primary chokepoint, they would walk into a room where like 20 kobolds have Readied their actions to poke whoever enters the room with spears of various lengths, and probably have one more trap on that entrance square for good measure. An individual ogre is only like CR 3, and he's not very smart. That said, he's likely capable of one-shotting almost anybody in a third-level party, has nothing preventing him from using ranged weapons except for stereotypes, and god help you if the DM swapped in Improved Grapple for funsies. Or Cleave. It's the same with Gods. Sure, a god might have "only like 400 hit points", but if the GM is using the full wealth of resources and abilities that such a character actually has access to, there's no way the party would ever even probably make it to that god's plane of existence. The god would already know about their plan, and assessing that they have even a sliver of hope of facing him in combat, would assign his functionally infinite followers and reality itself to the task of stopping the party.
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Jan 3, 2014 15:39
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Splicer posted:Would someone mind summarising what all that means? The part of my brain that was able to read 3.x statblocks seems to have atrophied. "gently caress you."
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Jan 3, 2014 16:19
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deadly_pudding posted:The caveat is that most DMs don't play to a given NPC's full capacity, because they don't want to murder the party. If you wanted to be totally straight about kobolds, for example, a cavern complex full of kobolds would have actually no real treasure in it- you should liquidate the value of all that treasure and turn it into additional traps, because that's what they would do. Assuming the party made it through the vicious gauntlet of traps in the the dungeon's primary chokepoint, they would walk into a room where like 20 kobolds have Readied their actions to poke whoever enters the room with spears of various lengths, and probably have one more trap on that entrance square for good measure Man, those traps are treasure. That 10' deep hole with some branches over it is worth 1800 gp!
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Jan 3, 2014 16:29
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Can't you steal/recover it if you're a rogue who roll well enough on disarming traps?
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Jan 3, 2014 16:55
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Rockopolis posted:Can't you steal/recover it if you're a rogue who roll well enough on disarming traps? You need to be at least multiclassed as a 6th level contractor if you want to move it out of the dungeon though. Rolling well to disarm and recovering it simply transfers ownership rights but doesn't move it. Edit: Wait, if a deed to a house contains a clause that is damaging to you can roll to disarm that trap? If so do I gain ownership of only that clause or the paper or what?
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Jan 3, 2014 17:10
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Adventurers are hired to go exterminate a tribe of kobolds so the nearby kingdom can begin gentrifying their warren.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:11
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Splicer posted:Would someone mind summarising what all that means? The part of my brain that was able to read 3.x statblocks seems to have atrophied. I'm not sure if "Servitor of Wrath" has ever taken a physics class, but if he has I'm pretty sure his instructor would like to punch him, repeatedly, right now. He has 627 Septendecillion health. A fly speed of 2.71 light years meaning that he is 14.33 million times faster than light itself. He occupies a space that is 67 times the size of the observable universe, which basically means he is so large, that for light to reach from one end of him to the other would take 67 times longer than the universe has existed. Anyone that can see him within 55 lengths of the observable universe (You know, if they weren't already inside him) have to make a DC gently caress you will save or become fascinated for 2d6 rounds. His slam attack (That it is mathematically impossible for him to miss with) deals 9x10187 centillion centillion centillion centillion damage, the damage he adds from his strength isn't even enough to be mathematically significant. This damage cannot be healed except by a limited wish spell, which heals 1 damage. Anyone he kills can only be ressurected or True ressurected, and they still lose levels from this because he killed them so hard you don't even know. His divine aura is so large it basically just encompasses all of reality. It's 88,000 times the size of the observable universe. His Gravitic aura is so ludicrously large it made wolfram alpha stop working. The way it's worded means that anyone inside the radius will just die after 10 rounds because their maximum hit points have been reduced to zero. If that's not fast enough once per day he can just flat out kill 222 Quintillion times the population of earth. If they make their fortitude save they die anyway because they take more damage than anyone has ever had hit points. He can heal himself to full 3 times per day, the fourth time he dies everyone within his reach (208 times the size of the observable universe) needs to make a dc gently caress you save or get sucked into the black hole that is the mortiverse and die. Oh and he's also consciously suspending gravity within himself, if he ever stops doing that, everything in a radius too large for wolfram alpha to even think about calculating gets sucked into him (including all breathable gasses), creatures that impact him take damage equal to his slam. He is also a Time Lord.
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Jan 3, 2014 17:16
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As a standard action at will, the Mortiverse may generate 52,818,775,000,000,000,000,000,000,000d10 spawn statistically equivalent to itself, only the spawn lack the ability to generate other spawn. 
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Jan 3, 2014 17:22
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I bet this guy just made all that stuff up. After all, who's going to do the working out to the 20th zero on their end to check it?
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Jan 3, 2014 17:24
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Zereth posted:As a standard action at will, the Mortiverse may generate 52,818,775,000,000,000,000,000,000,000d10 spawn statistically equivalent to itself, only the spawn lack the ability to generate other spawn. I knew I forgot to mention something. "Yeah just hang on a second I'm just going to spontaneously generate multiple billion times my own mass." Note he doesn't state where they spawn, since there wouldn't be enough space anywhere for them to go. Jack the Lad posted:I bet this guy just made all that stuff up. 
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Jan 3, 2014 17:33
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Kurieg posted:I knew I forgot to mention something. "Yeah just hang on a second I'm just going to spontaneously generate multiple billion times my own mass." Isn't the astral plane or whatever supposed to be infinite? I suppose if you really wanted to put this thing somewhere it could be, say, way out in the Ethereal Plane (you know, 10^zillion universe-lengths away).
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Jan 3, 2014 17:45
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Rockopolis posted:Can't you steal/recover it if you're a rogue who roll well enough on disarming traps? How do you steal a nonportable hole?
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Jan 3, 2014 17:54
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Phy posted:How do you steal a nonportable hole? Ingenuity.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:08
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Phy posted:How do you steal a nonportable hole? You just dig around the hole and then pick it up, duh.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:16
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Kurieg posted:Well, I took our friend the Mortiverse through Wolfram Alpha. He is also omnidimensional, as well as undimensional.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:16
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What the hell is a "Mortiverse" anyway? Some kind of death universe?
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Jan 3, 2014 18:36
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Veyrall posted:What the hell is a "Mortiverse" anyway? Some kind of death universe? Its the universe home to these two being of unimaginable cleaning power.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:38
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Kurieg posted:Anyone that can see him within 55 lengths of the observable universe (You know, if they weren't already inside him) have to make a DC gently caress you will save or become fascinated for 2d6 rounds.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:46
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I'm pretty sure Superman and Aztek punched that thing to death in the end of Morrison's JLA run.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:47
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Barudak posted:You need to be at least multiclassed as a 6th level contractor if you want to move it out of the dungeon though. Rolling well to disarm and recovering it simply transfers ownership rights but doesn't move it. Sorry. You're going to need an 8th level bureaucrat for that. See, since you didn't fill out a request and attend the public hearing about moving the hole, technically you stole it - you possess no ownership rights whatsoever to the hole and such an action will force the state to bring you up on charges on behalf of the hole's owner (whether or not it is the state). Once you fill out the proper paperwork and have the public hearing, then you can file a request for proposal in order to open up the bidding process to contractors at large for them to physically move the hole out of the dungeon within a specific time frame. Contractors will be selected based upon the lowest bid, whether it is minority-owned, women-owned, or any other variety of factors. Now this only covers moving the hole. If you want to place the hole somewhere, then you'll have to go through the necessary bureaucratic procedures to place the hole elsewhere.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:53
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The last campaign I ran had the unfortunate fate of turning total clown shoes before it even began. It was going to be a sequel to the game we had run the previous year. I have a homebrew setting, and I've been incorporating all of our campaigns into the world, which has made for some really fun callbacks for the party when they find references to their old characters, and can visit old cities and the like. So, the new campagin would be set in a region they had heard about in the previous game, an urban nation known for its magical univeristy currently occupied by the neighboring theocracy. The party were going to be a crew of thieves. The party seemed really on board when I pitched "Ocean's 11 meets D&D," at least one of our guys had just read Mistborn too and thought it would be cool. (I had not read it then, but won't pretend I didn't take the blurb on the back and say "Yeah, that sounds neat!") Then one of the players, W, decided he would be a Fetchling. A what? An emo kid that can turn incorporeal and walk through walls. This was dumb, and didn't fit the world, but I'm going to be accomodating, I'd already informed the party that the hesists would have significant magical defenses, including but not limited to making incorporeal infiltration as risky or moreso than more traditional methods. He still wants to go ahead with the idea, I would soon learn his definition of a good character is "Could probably beat up Goku." L, then decides she doesn't want to be in a heist game. She wants to be more heroic. That's fine. I'd proposed multiple ideas for possible campaigns. So the next idea on the list is "Big Game Hunters," think Monster Hunter or Shadows of the Collosus. This is when the table looses their minds. And then a lunatic newbie. W proposes a new character, a Minotaur barbarian. Cool, that works well. I provide him with some ideas on where Minotaur would fit into the setting. L wants to be a Vanara, a monkey person. Um... Y'know what, I'm letting the party do a much less "hard scrabble" game than usual already and I like Journey to the West. Here's some notes. T, the newbie, announces that he will be playing a Chaotic-Good Half-drow (!), blood-bending magus (?!), with a half-cat girl (srs?!) with fire magic. And at this point I’m aware that the game has just jumped the rails and start okaying everything. Which is good, because W and L both decide, independently of each other, that they would also be half-dragons. Now, it’s been established in setting that dragons are sort of demigods and not only that they can’t bump uglies with mortals, but would never stoop to such an act – because being a dragon means something. But, popular opinion suggests that I should be accommodating to the party. Afterall, I can’t be seen as railroading them. So we jump ship from my homebrew world back to the Pathfinder default setting where all of these monstrosities are allegedly drawn from. The newbie never comes to a single session, so I never get a sense of what insanity he was playing, but the two half-dragons proceed to completely wreck the campaign. I find out a couple sessions in the W has been using a 3.0 Monster manual for his minotaur and half-dragon stats rather than the ones on the PFSRD and is now eight levels higher than the rest of the party. The game ended with his being coated in cursed blood and using an eldritch artifact to become a silent, staticy, walking abomination that would forevermore travel the lands and a grim bloody reaper on dragon wing and bull hoof. I have to admit. It was completely !@#$ing metal.
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Jan 3, 2014 19:54
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LuiCypher posted:Sorry. You're going to need an 8th level bureaucrat for that. See, since you didn't fill out a request and attend the public hearing about moving the hole, technically you stole it - you possess no ownership rights whatsoever to the hole and such an action will force the state to bring you up on charges on behalf of the hole's owner (whether or not it is the state). Once you fill out the proper paperwork and have the public hearing, then you can file a request for proposal in order to open up the bidding process to contractors at large for them to physically move the hole out of the dungeon within a specific time frame. No, no, no, no, you've got it all wrong. You let the rogue steal the hole, then you announce that he now owns the hole, but cannot move it. Two weeks later, the rogue is served with court papers, from someone that fell in his hole and injured themselves, and must now defend himself in court as he is the rightful owner of the hole.
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Jan 3, 2014 20:03
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Captain Bravo posted:No, no, no, no, you've got it all wrong. You let the rogue steal the hole, then you announce that he now owns the hole, but cannot move it. I keep telling you all that you should never primary rogue. The base adventuring party should be one of each; Bureaucrat, Lawyer, Accountant, and Engineer with multi-classing into things like rogue or wizard for some of the abilities they get. With a Lawyer/Bureaucrat hybrid you can easily pull strings with the judge to have the case dismissed and be your own legal representation thus saving you plenty of money to have your Accountant/Rogue hybrid party member embezzle it so your Engineer/Wizard can build you a house with golden toilets.
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Jan 3, 2014 20:05
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Dungeons & Depositions.
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Jan 3, 2014 20:12
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