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Getting straight-up better isn't actually boring, it's just familiar. Insofar as HP damage is at all real and meaningful in the game world, +1 to HP damage makes a difference to the narrative.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:21
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Ferrinus posted:I want a D&D where you play "lands" except instead of Island and Mountain they're stuff like Mana and Stamina and you need to tap 1 Mana, 1 Stamina, and 1 power point of any "color" to execute an Eldritch Slash or whatever. I agree, an adaptation of Vlaada Chvatil's Mage Knight board game to an RPG would own.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:22
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Ferrinus posted:Power Points in 4e's third PHB were a horrible disappointment here. Doesn't 13th Age do something like this. Where powers can be used only when escalation did is at our above a certain amount. It's a simpler implementation but it's mechanically similar in that as the battle goes on your access to powers increases
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Jul 25, 2014 21:42
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Surprised no one has mentioned Thornwatch. http://thornwatch.com/ Still in development, and headed up by a guy who thought that doing the design doc in photoshop was the best idea, but it's a Dominion-style deckbuilding rpg.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:02
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A bonus to damage I guess makes sense, and if that's what a "+1 sword" comes to mean that would be neat, I'm just irritated at the assumption that it also needs to be +1 to hit.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:05
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Asymmetrikon posted:I agree, an adaptation of Vlaada Chvatil's Mage Knight board game to an RPG would own. Been thinking that for a while. I'd love an RPG where your character was basically just a deck (or a couple of decks) of cards, and you play out scenes by drawing a hand and seeing what happens.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:07
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You guys, Project Dark already does this. Check it out it's good.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:20
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Ferrinus posted:Getting straight-up better isn't actually boring, it's just familiar. Insofar as HP damage is at all real and meaningful in the game world, +1 to HP damage makes a difference to the narrative. Yeah, the more I play the more I think like, magic items should be limited and important and the system should reflect this. Having the weight of the narrative on it in addition to whatever it does numerically is a thing. Handling what bonuses you need to unfuck the games math as narrative feats or whatever is preferable to having to head to Harolds House of Magic poo poo every few months to retool. Also you are a good drawer, ferrinus.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:51
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Ferrinus posted:So that magic swords are better than regular swords. They're bad because they're boring and add nothing to gameplay beyond another +1 bonus to track. It's unexciting, it skews the math towards requiring them at X amounts at Y levels instead of anything that feels remotely organic, and they relegate your character's advancement to better gear rather than the character being better. Plus you have to really dig to find meaning in them. Over a large enough amount of rolls a +1 better is better, hooray? That's not something the player is going to care about tracking 99% of the time.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:55
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Damage bonuses seem neat, though, particularly if they're larger than +1 and there's already an expectation that damage will inflate a whole lot as you level up. Also I'm the sort of idiot who loves throwing down a fistful of dice, so having them be +1d6s would be neat. Magic weapons deal +1d6, especially powerful ones +2d6 or +3d6. Standard weapon damage is already 2d6 for powerful 2h weapons or 1d6 for 1h weapons. 5d6 seems like a fine effective cap.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:01
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Another problem with damage bonuses is psychological - if I have to choose between the thing that will give me a slight bonus 100% of the time (a +1 to hit and damage, which affects a hell of a lot of atomic actions in the system) and something with a bigger, more flavorful effect that I can't guarantee will come into play, I'm gonna choose the constant thing.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:08
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You could express it both in terms of additional dice and in tricks like rolling an extra W (not that they have those) and taking the highest dice, like Advantage. You could have a magic sword which grants Advantage whenever you attack, or which grants Advantage even if you've cancelled one out with Disadvantage. All of these are more interesting in simple terms of rolling than adding a +1 bonus to X and Y and have a much greater impact in play without skewing the game's limited math progression to a breaking point. It's like how the old weapon master dice worked; you had to choose between doing something interesting, OR doing more damage. And doing more damage was always better. The mere presence of the option to do more damage skewed the entire system to the point where every other option was inferior. A +3 sword will always be the best option in a sea of +2 swords with interesting stuff on them. The +X system is exactly the same deal, writ large.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:10
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Asymmetrikon posted:Another problem with damage bonuses is psychological - if I have to choose between the thing that will give me a slight bonus 100% of the time (a +1 to hit and damage, which affects a hell of a lot of atomic actions in the system) and something with a bigger, more flavorful effect that I can't guarantee will come into play, I'm gonna choose the constant thing. The optimiser in me chooses the +1. The dirty funhaver wishes I didn't feel I had to. If they'd actually done what they could have done, and made interesting magic items without boring plusses, I wouldn't have to worry.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:24
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As much as I hate to be Mearls right now, houseruling in inherent magic item bonuses would be the work of minutes. I'd certainly do it were I to run Next. I'd also print out all the spells onto playing cards with the spell level and class on the back.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:35
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Gort posted:As much as I hate to be Mearls right now, houseruling in inherent magic item bonuses would be the work of minutes. I'd certainly do it were I to run Next. I'd also print out all the spells onto playing cards with the spell level and class on the back. Inherent bonuses won't be nearly as useful without a robust mathematical framework backing character progression and monster design.
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Jul 26, 2014 00:26
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Winson_Paine posted:Yeah, the more I play the more I think like, magic items should be limited and important and the system should reflect this. Having the weight of the narrative on it in addition to whatever it does numerically is a thing. Handling what bonuses you need to unfuck the games math as narrative feats or whatever is preferable to having to head to Harolds House of Magic poo poo every few months to retool. Kind of surprised anyone else thinks so though. For anyone that didnt know, this is another thing FR was extremely good at way back when. Long-rear end writeups on magical weapons to help either 1) really give the weight of history to the thing when someone found it, or (better IMO) 2) give some prototype/templates as to how to create interesting items that had multiple effects, history, and some kind of theme that made some sense as to why it was created to begin with. (Of course there was terrible poo poo too... but it was a departure from "+1/+4 vs bats. Why? Because.")
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Jul 26, 2014 02:19
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yeah it's sorta weird how magic classes get better at magic as they level, because it's The Thing They Do, whereas being martial means getting better at martialling via Finding Magic Items (if the DM feels like it). I'm sure it has everything to do with nerd power dynamics or something.
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Jul 26, 2014 03:20
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thespaceinvader posted:The optimiser in me chooses the +1. The dirty funhaver wishes I didn't feel I had to. Not knowing anything about 5e's magic item templates, I'd like to note that crits now give you doubled [w] dice counts but leave all the static bonuses alone. So for the crit-fishing attack-spam Champion Fighter something that adds d6's might be far superior to even a reasonable pile of +whatevers after the roll. I'm assuming of course that they're dodging 4e's magic weapon crit effects for more natural and thematic blah blah blah text for the far-off DMG.
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Jul 26, 2014 03:40
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Here's the problem, though; as a class niche, 'has a magic sword' is pretty lame compared to 'tears trolls' arms off with bare hands'
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Jul 26, 2014 05:36
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"Has a magic sword" could be a cool class niche...4E's Hexblade flirts with this though it's somewhat underdeveloped by being an Essentialized sub-class...but it's the kind of thing you really need to commit some quality design to instead of going "take Fighter, add +X gear, done." Like, this even plays into that whole "farmboy to legendary hero" schtick so many old-school players say they love. "Young, bright-eyed youth with a yearning for adventure and an heirloom magic sword" could absolutely make for a fun class or sub-class or whatever if you did it right. You start with a magic weapon, pick some abilities for it, and as you level up your magic weapon unlocks new stuff. Maybe it's the kind of sword that has the spirit of a slain hero kicking around inside it and it teaches you all sorts of crazy martial exploits and tactics, maybe it's a totally kickass enchanted blade that lets you toss around fire and lightning and lets you be more of a fightwizard, whatever, forge that narrative. And then once you're in the upper levels you've got your legendary hero with his/her legendary magical weapon that's the kind you get told about in the lovely grey-box text of D&D modules or whatever. I would totally play that class. If it was, y'know, good.
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Jul 26, 2014 06:51
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Jack the Lad posted:Here's the problem, though; as a class niche, 'has a magic sword' is pretty lame compared to 'tears trolls' arms off with bare hands' fine then, just have the class niche be 'is a magic sword' - problem solved
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Jul 26, 2014 06:55
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In an ideal world, a game requiring that an actual magic weapon must be a PC, played by an individual player, would produce a compelling narrative and many opportunities for fun roleplaying.
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Jul 26, 2014 06:59
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zachol posted:In an ideal world, a game requiring that an actual magic weapon must be a PC, played by an individual player, would produce a compelling narrative and many opportunities for fun roleplaying. Hmm. None of that sounds like something in the design document. Lemme check my notes.
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Jul 26, 2014 08:32
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I think some stuff from 5e could be extrapolated into an interesting, lite game, if it weren't for the fact that they're trying so hard to be 3.5 again. Like, adding proficiency to stuff and advantage/disadvantage is probably enough to build a mechanical core around. Damnit, now I need to make this game.
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Jul 26, 2014 08:57
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cbirdsong posted:Inherent bonuses won't be nearly as useful without a robust mathematical framework backing character progression and monster design. It might be reasonably easy to come up with formulae for things like monster HP and AC once we know what an optimised martial character looks like. The magic side of the game would still be its own special clusterfuck, of course.
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Jul 26, 2014 14:07
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P.d0t posted:yeah it's sorta weird how magic classes get better at magic as they level, because it's The Thing They Do, whereas being martial means getting better at martialling via Finding Magic Items (if the DM feels like it). To be fair, originally it was "gets better at casting spells it doesn't have" along with "gets better at swinging a sword it may not get" until 3e allowed wizards to both buy spells and gain them automatically as they leveled up. Magic spells were meant to be treasure just as much as magic swords were. And then 3e changed a bunch of poo poo and everyone just sorta accepted it as the norm.
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Jul 26, 2014 14:50
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Kai Tave posted:"Has a magic sword" could be a cool class niche...4E's Hexblade flirts with this though it's somewhat underdeveloped by being an Essentialized sub-class...but it's the kind of thing you really need to commit some quality design to instead of going "take Fighter, add +X gear, done." This is literally the entire shtick of one of the classes in the delightfully bonkers Spellbound Kingdoms. I believe it's even literally called The Chosen One and hilariously leans into all the Mary Sue specialest snowflake cliches. SK is definitely one of those "post-D&D" games like Earthdawn and Dungeon World, that realizes that actually playing D&D like you wanted to when you were twelve instead of constantly fighting against Fantasy loving Vietnam and/or caster supremacy requires chucking so many rusty forty-year-old mechanics that you may as well just use another system entirely.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:02
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Huh. So is Spellbound Kingdoms any good? The FAQ talks a good game about tactical fighting without needing a grid and magic that doesn't break the game etc. and it's on sale on Drivethru right now but this is literally the first time I've ever heard of it.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:14
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Kai Tave posted:Huh. So is Spellbound Kingdoms any good? The FAQ talks a good game about tactical fighting without needing a grid and magic that doesn't break the game etc. and it's on sale on Drivethru right now but this is literally the first time I've ever heard of it. quote:There's no initiative. Everyone goes at once. If you can guess what your opponent is going to throw at you - a Haymaker, say, or a Trip - then you can choose your own maneuver to counter that. You're aided in your guessing because each fighting style is different in how one attack sets up the next. Knowing what style your opponent is using is quite important. Not only does an opponent's style betray his possible attacks and counters, but it also allows you to change your own style, if you know more than one. Sounds kinda neat. Though of course so does 5e.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:39
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Kai Tave posted:Huh. So is Spellbound Kingdoms any good? The FAQ talks a good game about tactical fighting without needing a grid and magic that doesn't break the game etc. and it's on sale on Drivethru right now but this is literally the first time I've ever heard of it. This is probably a job for the chat thread (or Fatal & Friends), but the short answer is: I don't know. I've played it twice and I still don't know. It's not easily describable and I'm not sure if it really hangs together in the long term but I've definitely had fun and it is genuinely innovative and has so much strangeness all through it that I could just spend all day rattling off examples (like, the equipment list includes a glass eye with a cricket in it and severed, petrified heads as a melee weapon). It has somewhat crunchy combat coupled with more story-gamey influence on social and non-combat challenges (like, a mini-chapter for chase scenes). Which sometimes converge in strange ways, like every character having a motivation that will bring them back from HP death as long as they still believe in their cause-- so you have to break someone's will before actually killing them (which led to a moment in a friend's game where an ogre rose back up shouting I CAN'T DIE HERE--- THERE ARE STILL SO MANY CHILDREN LEFT TO EAT). The biggest thing is that fighting styles and combat casting are basically handled as flowcharts you move through during combat; like, imagine you start at the space marked "regular slash", then on the next turn it branches off into either "knockdown blow" or "look for opening", and each of those has its own branches, with stronger options generally deeper in the tree, and some fight-nodes move you back to the start after use (or sometimes knock someone back to *theirs*). And every fighting style and school of magic has their own unique combat-map. Monsters do too! There's a "tentacle-combat" one that is basically for mind flayers, where if they can knock you down and grapple you they can start reading your mind, or just start gnawing on it. And thanks to the spell mishap table PC casters may well grow tentacles themselves. I would 100% recommend at least looking at Spellbound Kingdoms. It is definitely not just another fantasy heartbreaker, and while it's definitely no Tenra Bansho Zero in terms of "somehow this crazy game actually has rules that aren't a pain in the rear end", it's nowhere near a clearly unplayable pile like Synnibar either. Parkreiner fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jul 26, 2014 |
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Jul 26, 2014 16:41
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^^^Cool, thanks.Jack the Lad posted:Sounds kinda neat. Though of course so does 5e. Yeah, it sounds like it could be neat, but the whole "guess what move your opponent's going to do next so you can counter it" sounds like it could also get pretty insufferable if you're expected to memorize lists of fighting styles in order to be a good fighter. Or if combat boils down to "figure out the most powerful style with the most powerful set of moves, spam those nonstop."
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Jul 26, 2014 16:43
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S.J. posted:fine then, just have the class niche be 'is a magic sword' - problem solved I've seen this played, actually. The pc was a sentient sword who was dominating a npc shepherd that found the sword. The npc was the one who got all the experience though and when he got disarmed everything went real bad
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Jul 26, 2014 16:44
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Kai Tave posted:^^^Cool, thanks. Having actually played the system a few times it is neat, the way combat works is that each fighting style (martial or magic) is a tree or web you traverse only able to move to a point on the 2d tree directly horizontal or vertical with you, thus the powerful moves are locked behind a specific sequence of moves (and send you back to the start usually). The fact they are visual trees mean you can have a copy of each tree for who you are fighting so you can keep a rough idea of what they are doing. My favourite part is that you are functionally Immortal (can still be taken out of scenes but not dead or trapped without recourse) while you still have things you fight for in the world (think intimacies you have for things or people) making emotions powerful and having death or loss be an arc for both PC's and villains (if the gm deems them worth having such defences/ the book says having NPCs have this immunity being for major long running antagonists). If people want to hear more I could do some wrote ups from the copy I have for the chat thread or fatal and friends.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:55
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mastershakeman posted:I've seen this played, actually. The pc was a sentient sword who was dominating a npc shepherd that found the sword. The npc was the one who got all the experience though and when he got disarmed everything went real bad Clearly you would/should physically fuse to your host's body. Stormgale posted:Having actually played the system a few times it is neat, the way combat works is that each fighting style (martial or magic) is a tree or web you traverse only able to move to a point on the 2d tree directly horizontal or vertical with you, thus the powerful moves are locked behind a specific sequence of moves (and send you back to the start usually). The fact they are visual trees mean you can have a copy of each tree for who you are fighting so you can keep a rough idea of what they are doing. I'd love to see a writeup. It actually sounds really cool.
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Jul 26, 2014 16:58
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ProfessorCirno posted:To be fair, originally it was "gets better at casting spells it doesn't have" along with "gets better at swinging a sword it may not get" until 3e allowed wizards to both buy spells and gain them automatically as they leveled up. Magic spells were meant to be treasure just as much as magic swords were. And then 3e changed a bunch of poo poo and everyone just sorta accepted it as the norm. Yeah, a lot of the restrictions to keep wizards in check were chunked in 3E. Even actually casting the spell was a bit of work before 3E because if you took 1 point of damage, the spell got disrupted. Then 3E introduced the concentration skill, so as long as you kept dumping skill points into it, you could throw out time stops and polymorphs even if a dragon just clawed away half your torso.
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Jul 26, 2014 21:18
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Heck, you don't even need concentration most of the time. In old editions, you had to announce your spell at the start of the round, and if you got attacked before your turn, you lost it. In 3.x, most spells take up only a single action; you don't have to declare them ahead of time, so the only way the enemy can even try to interrupt you is to ready an action (or use an opportunity attack if you forgot to 5-foot-step out of their range before casting). Basically, starting with 3e, wizards stopped being artillery. Come to think of it, I wonder how the 'everyone announces what they're doing at the same time, then the DM referees how it all shakes out' system would work in Next.
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Jul 26, 2014 21:46
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Tendales posted:Heck, you don't even need concentration most of the time. In old editions, you had to announce your spell at the start of the round, and if you got attacked before your turn, you lost it. In 3.x, most spells take up only a single action; you don't have to declare them ahead of time, so the only way the enemy can even try to interrupt you is to ready an action (or use an opportunity attack if you forgot to 5-foot-step out of their range before casting). Basically, starting with 3e, wizards stopped being artillery. Yeah, that's true. 2E was really wonky with all its different optional initiatives, though, and it led a lot of people to use a simple individual initiative system that ended up looking a lot like what would come in 3E.
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Jul 26, 2014 22:23
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My current initiative system is: 1) Roll for who goes first in the first round. 2) First PC picks who goes next. 3) Next PC picks who goes next. 4) Last PC becomes first PC next round. 5) Other folks go whenever the DM likes, responding to PC actions in a charitable and interesting way. I plan on using it for virtually every game from now on. That and the 4e action economy, which is just tops.
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Jul 26, 2014 22:38
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It may just be my players, but I'm actually losing patience with the modern initiative system of 'do all your discrete actions on your turn, then watch like a hawk for your chance to take reactions.' I think that it tends to encourage players to tune out when it's not their turn, they miss all the reactions they're supposed to be watching for, and then they need to have the entire situation redescribed when their turn comes around again. I'd kind of like to see the old 'everyone huddle together, make a plan, fighter goes left, rogue runs deep, wizard hangs back, ready, BREAK' come back and be refined. If it's never specifically your turn, then it's also never NOT your turn and you can't just zone out.
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Jul 26, 2014 22:56
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I kind of like where games have "everyone declares their actions, and then initiative is rolled to determine order." So if you're casting a spell, you declare that, in response an NPC tries to interrupt you, and then it's a question of whether you beat their initiative that turn or not. Although then there'd have to be some way to figure out order of declarations. Maybe step 1 is "everyone declares whether they're casting a spell or not," step 2 is "everyone declares ranged attacks," and then step 3 is "everyone declares melee attacks," allowing spellcasting and ranged interruptions.
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Jul 26, 2014 23:00
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