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Ritorix some of your opinions are truly mind-boggling. Edit: Wait, I think I misunderstood you. Are you saying that the main mode of D&D is usually participationism because it is a badly designed, opaque game? That the most rational method for playing such a game would be to only fully expose one of the players (the DM) to its true problems? DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 04:13
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Do we have much more info on Forgotten Realms updates going into 5E? The only detail that sticks out to me is that the Cult of the Dragon no longer believe that dead dragons will one day rule the world and instead they want Tiamat to something something, but there's gotta be more than just that right?
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Jul 20, 2014 04:22
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Grim posted:Do we have much more info on Forgotten Realms updates going into 5E? The only detail that sticks out to me is that the Cult of the Dragon no longer believe that dead dragons will one day rule the world and instead they want Tiamat to something something, but there's gotta be more than just that right? Tiamat is the only thing I think they've mentioned so far, which is kinda lame since 4e had the entire cosmology shift and spell plague and all this other huge stuff occurring. Besides that the only other thing I can think of is the fact that forgotten realms is now their "core" setting instead of greyhawk
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Jul 20, 2014 05:50
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LFK posted:Oh, I figured out monsters. Well, I figured out monsters in the way that monsters would be figured out for 4e, but this is clearly not how Mearls and co are doing it. I think number of hit dice is actually arbitrary and they are aiming for a target HP level per CR. I'm still having trouble figuring out how save DCs work for effects not caused by spells though. I may throw my hands up and just slap a 13 on all of them.
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Jul 20, 2014 06:00
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DalaranJ posted:Are you saying that the main mode of D&D is usually participationism because it is a badly designed, opaque game? That the most rational method for playing such a game would be to only fully expose one of the players (the DM) to its true problems? You have unlocked the deep, dark secret of D&D.  Did you get a 5e Starter? Look how they handle the situation in the first page of Lost Mines. It's a product targeted at people who probably don't know what they are getting into, and it lays out the DM situation pretty honestly.
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Jul 20, 2014 06:17
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ritorix posted:You have unlocked the deep, dark secret of D&D. It's a pretty interesting read. And generally I'd say I agree with ritorix. The best games I've had are ones where I'm pretty certain the DM was fudging some things both for and against us in order to deliver a more dramatic play session. When one assumes and adversarial DM then a "miracle save" is dicking over the players and their legitimate use of a codified exploit. But if one assumes a DM whose goal is to deliver fun dramatic story opportunity, then perhaps that's not letting the wizard solve all the issues all the time. I'm not going to pretend that's easy, and it means listening to what players are (and aren't) telling you about what they like in their games, but if a failed polymorph means a rough fight where the players overcome a challenge and succeed vs. another night where Tim Fixes The Problem. Well Tim stole the show last week.
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Jul 20, 2014 06:30
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ritorix posted:Well I suppose I'll just fundamentally disagree with you two on the nature of the GM in an RPG and sources of player agency. What you're describing is a bad game, not a bad gm. It's not the GM's fault, or the players if a particular rendition of this goofy idea blows up a group's faces (or burns them out). It's not a measure of quality, or commitment, or even hard work- people can work their asses off GMing, or playing, and still not have poo poo to show for it, or even end up making things worse! System is supposed to help with all that poo poo. It's supposed to help people communicate over what they want, and even struggle over the game- but in a constructive, fun way. If instead, the GM just has to hand wave all of that poo poo well, yeah there are a thousand unsourced internet experts saying that it works for the Pro GMs, but i'd put my self against any GM on the planet and i'm telling you system still matters. quote:That anecdote about a villain's close call and hostage shenanigans is both cool and could have come from literally any edition, with or without a grid. I'm not suggesting 4e combat is perfect, far from it. When the grand chronicle of my campaign is compiled, there's gonna be quite a few tales of sub-par solo battles, for instance. And it's not as if I don't do cutscenes and crazy poo poo, of course I do. But it's a real way for players and GM to collaborate. quote:When it comes to 5e, the default assumption of the rules is combat as a conversation. The things a player can do in a fight are well-defined, and with a competent GM the greatest threat to 'player agency' is the roll of dice. You're not talking about a conversation. You're talking, at best, about an appeal, or even worse, an argument. You guys are taking one element of GMing and forcing it to manage everything, because you don't want to admit that design plays a vital role, as well. But what you're talking about is not a resource you can just lean on over and over again. You do that, you lose something vital and unique. I get what you're reffing, and what the 5e rules are reffing. That myth of what this is. The Grand Puppeteer. The God of their own world. The! Dungeon! Master! It's very gratifying for a GM to think of oneself as this all creating force that moves the scenery around and runs everything for the group. It's also bullshit. A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 06:45
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treeboy posted:It's a pretty interesting read. And generally I'd say I agree with ritorix. The best games I've had are ones where I'm pretty certain the DM was fudging some things both for and against us in order to deliver a more dramatic play session. When one assumes and adversarial DM then a "miracle save" is dicking over the players and their legitimate use of a codified exploit. But if one assumes a DM whose goal is to deliver fun dramatic story opportunity, then perhaps that's not letting the wizard solve all the issues all the time. Again though, a better game means that the GM doesn't have to always be ready to fudge poo poo in order to make the game fun and exciting, a game should be able to deliver that without fudging. If the only metric for a good game is "can be fun with the right GM pulling the strings" then every game is a great game and 5E is still pointless because you could say the exact same things about 3.X/Pathfinder and those already existed. tl;dr if you have to arbitrarily decide whether Tim steals the show or not the problem isn't Tim, the problem is the game you're playing sucks.
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Jul 20, 2014 06:52
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treeboy posted:When one assumes and adversarial DM then a "miracle save" is dicking over the players and their legitimate use of a codified exploit. But if one assumes a DM whose goal is to deliver fun dramatic story opportunity, then perhaps that's not letting the wizard solve all the issues all the time. quote:if one assumes a DM whose goal is to deliver fun dramatic story opportunity, then perhaps that's not letting the wizard solve all the issues all the time This is exactly what I've been saying, except that it's not the DM's job - it's the system's job. And the system at the moment is exactly Tim Fixes the Problem. The mechanics lead directly to that kind of gameplay. Because once again, Wizards can do literally anything and Fighters can do an extremely limited number of weak, realism-constrained gimmicks. Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jul 20, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 07:12
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DalaranJ posted:I think number of hit dice is actually arbitrary and they are aiming for a target HP level per CR. The target HP largely conforms with this line, though. For save DCs basically just give everything a 13, 15, or 17 depending on how hard you want it to be. Looking at their monsters a lot of them are just basically made up based on "feels." I'm curious to see their "build your own monster" guidelines because it's kinda a mess. Honestly after spending so many hours staring at their monsters I just want to throw any of Mearls' monster math and build your own based on numbers back-solved from expected PC abilities. You know, how it should have been done.
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Jul 20, 2014 08:09
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I Honestly don't see how they are a mess. Stuff like the Ogre has a high hp but low ac and nothing to strengthen it other then hitting hard. While the CR 2 nothic gets more then one attack and the gaze along with decent AC, hp and saves.
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Jul 20, 2014 10:44
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MonsterEnvy posted:I Honestly don't see how they are a mess. Stuff like the Ogre has a high hp but low ac and nothing to strengthen it other then hitting hard. You see an ogre! Roll initiative! You are dead.
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Jul 20, 2014 12:34
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I haven't played a Human thief in a long long time, and not having night vision to see in the dungeon was a rude awakening. The 1st encounter in the 1st cave hits you over the head with it. What's the way around that problem, where most monsters and dungeon dwelling humanoids can see in the dark? Apart from asking the wizard to do it 
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Jul 20, 2014 14:17
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Doubtless there's a magic item you can get that gives you night-vision.
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Jul 20, 2014 14:43
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Comstar posted:I haven't played a Human thief in a long long time, and not having night vision to see in the dungeon was a rude awakening. The 1st encounter in the 1st cave hits you over the head with it. What's the way around that problem, where most monsters and dungeon dwelling humanoids can see in the dark? Apart from asking the wizard to do it It's the age old problem of dungeon crawling in any system at low levels. You need light, so there is no way to sneak. Even if you have a character in the party that can see somewhat in the dark, the rest of the party still needs light. Crack out the lanterns and suck it up 
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Jul 20, 2014 15:45
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ritorix posted:You have unlocked the deep, dark secret of D&D. It seems pretty good advice if you are running a game that is well designed. What do you feel that Be Consistent and Be Fair mean in the context of this particular system?
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Jul 20, 2014 17:16
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DalaranJ posted:It seems pretty good advice if you are running a game that is well designed. Be Fair seems pretty obvious: don't give your buddy all the magic items or let the chatty player take all the face time. Good advice anywhere. Be Consistent: I don't really agree with how they described it. GMs should have a consistent style for how they handle situations, sure. But if you find out that you ruled something wrong that error should be corrected or at least not repeated later. Errors will inevitably be made by a first time GM running Lost Mines, they should learn from that and improve. I've joined groups that ran the rules wrong for so long they thought they were doing it right.
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Jul 20, 2014 17:58
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ritorix posted:Be Fair seems pretty obvious: don't give your buddy all the magic items or let the chatty player take all the face time. Good advice anywhere. This is all quite right. What I was expecting and got was an omission from what I would have said. Thank you, Ritorix, I think I now understand why I will never be a good DM for Next.
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Jul 20, 2014 18:44
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treeboy posted:Tiamat is the only thing I think they've mentioned so far, which is kinda lame since 4e had the entire cosmology shift and spell plague and all this other huge stuff occurring. Besides that the only other thing I can think of is the fact that forgotten realms is now their "core" setting instead of greyhawk There's a giant RSE called the Sundering going on right now. MiBG and LoCS tie into it and there is a five novel series about it. The details aren't clear yet, but basically Ao is rewriting the Tablets of Fate and the gods are getting into shenanigans with their chosen.
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Jul 20, 2014 19:19
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MonsterEnvy posted:I Honestly don't see how they are a mess. Stuff like the Ogre has a high hp but low ac and nothing to strengthen it other then hitting hard. While the CR 2 nothic gets more then one attack and the gaze along with decent AC, hp and saves. The nothic and the ogre do the same expected damage, except the nothic has better defences and range. Compare the ghoul, bugbear, and giant spider and see if you can figure out the pattern behind their stats. A Grick only has 27 HP. The owlbear and the ogre fill the same narrative role, but the owlbear has significantly better defences and double the expected damage output of the ogre despite being only 1 CR higher. There's rough trends, for sure, but there's no real equivalency. The trade off in one area doesn't necessarily have a commensurate trade off in another, and core stats in particular are assigned based on "if this monster were a real living thing, what would its stats be?"
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Jul 20, 2014 20:37
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treeboy posted:It's a pretty interesting read. And generally I'd say I agree with ritorix. The best games I've had are ones where I'm pretty certain the DM was fudging some things both for and against us in order to deliver a more dramatic play session. When one assumes and adversarial DM then a "miracle save" is dicking over the players and their legitimate use of a codified exploit. But if one assumes a DM whose goal is to deliver fun dramatic story opportunity, then perhaps that's not letting the wizard solve all the issues all the time. The other aspect of this is that the wizard is broken and can do everything on purpose. With the expectation that the wizard uses the broken exploits when they are being an assistant GM to provide the GM with an alley-oop that they can then dunk to make the encounter awesome or get a badly out of control encounter back under control. Party got in over their head and the GM is getting overwhelmed with keep the ride on the rails? Time for the wizard to go all "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!". Party saved, adventure continues, GM didn't have to explain away why the 50 foot tall demon lord of fire and shadow and his army of orcs the players somehow managed to all aggro didn't TPK them and eat their souls. With Gandalf being decent enough to remove himself entirely from the next few scenes to keep from being a spotlight hog. Which wizards can actually do pretty well in play: I used a lot of spells in that last encounter. My wizard need to rest, you but guys can go follow up on the next 1 or 2 plot points and solve them Of course, the really dumb part of the design is that why does the spell caster get all the GM-Rescue buttons? A berserker rescues the encounter and is then 'tired' for example. Or how do you stop the max-power spell caster autism mafia from solving every loving problem and force GM vs Player showdown on turn one of every encounter where the GM has to invent ways to keep screwing the wizard because the wizard has autism and can't understand the concept of playing ball on spotlight sharing. 4E tried to take a different approach to the underlying issue by making it VERY hard for the GM to mathematically push the ride off the rails, and allowing players to defeat encounters they are screwing up at the cost of using a disproportional number of healing surges and daily powers. Allowing them to win a fight that kicked their rear end without the need for GM intervention to stop a TPK, and places the party into a: "we have no healing surges or daily powers left, we have to make a roleplaying decision if our characters would keep on and risk a TPK or retreat". Problem was the math to make that work created fights that were a god awful grind if the players were not super quick about taking their turns. Also, the spell caster autism mafia had their entire game stolen from them and replaced with nothing but a post-it that said: 'stop it you autistic fucks'. So now we have 5E. We know how it works and doesn't work. It didn't do anything new, because doing something new would be addressing issues that a spell caster autism mafia is never going to accept. It is like the F-35 of roleplaying games. It is a design by committee product that claims to do every role
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Jul 20, 2014 21:13
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LFK posted:The nothic and the ogre do the same expected damage, except the nothic has better defences and range. Orge and Nothic. Ogre has more hp then Nothic does a bit more damage with it's attacks and has a better to chance to hit. I would rank them around the same level of difficulty to fight. Bugbear great for hard hitting ambushes. Spider good for slowing down enemies with their webs and taking out creatures with poison and such while taking advantage of their around the room mobility. Ghouls can paralyze which is a deadly condition. All of their hp is pretty close. Gricks deals quite a bit of damage their ac is not average but they resist all non magical damage. Making them good for fighting people with no magic weapons Owlbear and Orge. The Owlbear is stronger then the Orge that is why it is CR 3 and not CR 2. CR 3 means that level 2s should not fight it with out a large risk of death. I don't see a problem here and this line "if this monster were a real living thing, what would its stats be?" I don't see whats wrong with this as well.
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Jul 20, 2014 23:40
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MonsterEnvy posted:I don't see a problem here and this line "if this monster were a real living thing, what would its stats be?" I don't see whats wrong with this as well. Because D&D is a game, and building things in the framework of a game has to be, by far, the most important consideration. There will never be magic, or dragons, or owlbears, so sitting around bullshitting about what they could like, totally do in real life and using that as justification for how they act in the game world is bad and lazy design.
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Jul 21, 2014 00:04
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Comstar posted:I haven't played a Human thief in a long long time, and not having night vision to see in the dungeon was a rude awakening. The 1st encounter in the 1st cave hits you over the head with it. What's the way around that problem, where most monsters and dungeon dwelling humanoids can see in the dark? Apart from asking the wizard to do it It was one of the more hilarious "features" of 3.x - rogues can't attack someone in a dark alley, because they're just as blinded. Pathfinder later added a feat or something, which meant you still couldn't do it unless you took a specific choice for it that locked you out of other options.
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Jul 21, 2014 00:28
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S.J. posted:Because D&D is a game, and building things in the framework of a game has to be, by far, the most important consideration. There will never be magic, or dragons, or owlbears, so sitting around bullshitting about what they could like, totally do in real life and using that as justification for how they act in the game world is bad and lazy design. That's something I fundamentally disagree with then. Challenge means they should be around the same threat level. It does not matter how they what they are built like so long as the CR fits them. I also don't agree that just because they took effort on how the monsters feel that they don't fit in the framework they are not mutually exclusive. Lastly some crazy guy in the future will probably fuse an owl and a bear together for some reason.
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Jul 21, 2014 00:57
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So I take it Magic Missile no longer auto-hits in this version since the description says nothing about it (although it starts at three bolts)? We started the Mines Starter Set over Roll20 and had a short session where we played to Cragmaw using the packed in characters. It felt like I was playing the D&D I remember, up to and including the Wizard stepping forward and using a Cone area Spell to take out 80% of the field in the opening turn of the final battle and the Cleric following it up with a spell of their own to finish knocking Klarg on his rear end while we all played mop-up (I was playing the Defense oriented Fighter). I enjoy the base rules of the system, I like the Hit Dice healing since it keeps things moving, but honestly if they are going to base so much around Short Rests they need to finally bite the bullet (again) and change everything that requires a rest of some kind to be Short Rest charged. The Wizard ran out of the spells on the first fight and wanted to rest but we pushed on a bit more since we knew he had Ray of Frost to fall back on. We eventually took a rest before entering the cave so the Cleric and Wizard could spell up while the rest of us were fine. I like how Sneak Attack works now and I like what they did with the Rogue so far. Fighters felt like playing a Fighter out of 3.x but with Second Wind which was nice. I like how Two-weapon Fighting works now. I was looking at what the pre-gen Cleric gets later on and I like the idea behind the healing buffs they get. A baby step in the right direction with passive healing, but considering you need to give up the crazy good Turn Undead to do it really stinks. Just rename the Cleric to Friar and make them healing with holy utility and give the Paladin more cool stuff already. For a game trying its damnedest to crawl back to the 80's, the section on gender was surprising. Overall impressions so far are the rules are nice but need some cleaning up in areas, and for being 2014 I think they need to throw a better bone to Martial in general. It still blows my mind that I am saying this in 2014 after playing 4th Edition but here we are. I wish I had more to say but I can't get mad at games anymore.
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Jul 21, 2014 01:01
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MonsterEnvy posted:Orge and Nothic. Ogre has more hp then Nothic does a bit more damage with it's attacks and has a better to chance to hit. I would rank them around the same level of difficulty to fight. What's the formula? You're falling into the same trap as the people who wrote this poo poo, just sort of eyeballing it and going "yeah, that sounds okay" when boiled down to a rough description, but look at the actual numbers and tell me what the pattern is. I mean, for gently caress's sake, your owlbear/ogre comparison is "it's better, that's why it's a higher CR"? That's like the poster child of dartboard-design. Below are all the stats of the Starter monsters. What makes something CR5? 
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Jul 21, 2014 01:10
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LFK posted:You missed the point entirely. Who gives a poo poo about about a formula. Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about a formula. The Chart there is pretty much higher CR means more hp and or damage. And yes the Owlbear is stronger because it is stronger it has a higher CR it's simple. We don't have a cr 5 monster so there is not way to tell. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 21, 2014 01:19
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MonsterEnvy posted:I also don't agree that just because they took effort on how the monsters feel that they don't fit in the framework they are not mutually exclusive. That's not what I was talking about. No one is saying that owlbears shouldn't have beak attacks because gently caress, man, it has a beak - go ahead. But that's not what happens in D&D design. In D&D design stats, threat levels, abilities, damage, and everything else are often given numbers that aren't based on anything other than some guys spitballing ideas about 'how it would totally work in real life'. The issue isn't that flavor or even ideas for a design come from theme or feel, the issue is that the math is coming from there (ie, nowhere), and those are two totally different considerations.
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Jul 21, 2014 01:26
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MonsterEnvy posted:Who gives a poo poo about about a formula. Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about a formula. Me and every DM I've known who likes building good balanced encounters give a lot of shits about the formula. It was one of the super great things about 4e, and one of the terrible terrible things about 3.x.
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Jul 21, 2014 01:44
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I started DMing with 4e, and it was super nice that you could pretty much just go by the budgets and monster creation guidelines and then try to murder the party as hard as you could and it would be a fair fight.
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Jul 21, 2014 01:49
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MonsterEnvy posted:Who gives a poo poo about about a formula. Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about a formula. People who make monsters?
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Jul 21, 2014 01:53
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MonsterEnvy posted:That's something I fundamentally disagree with then. Challenge means they should be around the same threat level. It does not matter how they what they are built like so long as the CR fits them. Here is the problem, barring massive amounts of testing (and I mean massive) examining what each monster can do? How the gently caress does that number mean anything if you arent systematically building the monsters? (e.g. where each of their traits is derived) How do you compare in CR an ogre whose biggest combat tactic is run up to a dude and smack vs a caster with the plethora of possible options that brings
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Jul 21, 2014 02:20
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MonsterEnvy posted:Who gives a poo poo about about a formula. Pretty much no one will give a poo poo about a formula. quote:The Chart there is pretty much higher CR means more hp and or damage. quote:And yes the Owlbear is stronger because it is stronger it has a higher CR it's simple.
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Jul 21, 2014 02:30
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Grim posted:Do we have much more info on Forgotten Realms updates going into 5E? The only detail that sticks out to me is that the Cult of the Dragon no longer believe that dead dragons will one day rule the world and instead they want Tiamat to something something, but there's gotta be more than just that right? Oh my god that's an incredibly stupid and bad change. The Cult of the Dragon has never had anything to do with the Church of Tiamat, it's all Sammaster's crazed prophecies. That was the entire point of why they were dangerous. I guess Kobold Press couldn't even be bothered to read ONE 3rd Edition book, let alone anything good.
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Jul 21, 2014 02:32
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Arivia posted:Oh my god that's an incredibly stupid and bad change. The Cult of the Dragon has never had anything to do with the Church of Tiamat, it's all Sammaster's crazed prophecies. That was the entire point of why they were dangerous. I guess Kobold Press couldn't even be bothered to read ONE 3rd Edition book, let alone anything good. Now they're just the low-to-mid level mooks for campaigns involving tiamat, instead of being a more interesting group that were trying to uplift-yet-enslave ancient dragons.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:13
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Remember that Sammaster was destroyed well over a century ago in continuity, so it's not like his crazy rear end has any influence over them anymore.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:19
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PeterWeller posted:Remember that Sammaster was destroyed well over a century ago in continuity, so it's not like his crazy rear end has any influence over them anymore. Come on, he has a ton of writings, teachings, et cetera around. That's like saying Hitler's Mein Kampf isn't influential today. Also A Catastrophe the annoying thing is that groups for that already existed! gently caress around with Chessenta! There's the entire Church of Tiamat! What's left of the Morueme clan? on and on and on and on and gently caress.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:28
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MonsterEnvy posted:Who gives a poo poo about about a formula. Have you ever GMed for 3e/PF? Because a big part of why I stopped running it came from the fact that, because CR was meaningless, I had to reverse-engineer every monster and encounter in order to know if any given creature was going to challenge and/or wipe the PCs. Knowing that the exact same less-than-useless CR system is in place for 5e is a big part of why I'll never run that edition either.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:44
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Arivia posted:Come on, he has a ton of writings, teachings, et cetera around. That's like saying Hitler's Mein Kampf isn't influential today. Nah, man. It's really not like that at all. He wasn't exactly a well-known public figure and his teachings weren't that widespread outside the Cult which was largely destroyed when he was. It totally makes sense for the new bosses to use the Cult for new ends. That's what happened with the Zhents. That said, I agree that they should have tied this new Tiamat stuff into Chessenta instead.
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Jul 21, 2014 03:58
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