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Jack the Lad
Jan 20, 2009

Feed the Pubs

Mike Mearls loves lolrandom monkeycheese wackiness, though.

I believe he played a dwarven rapper in one of the 5e livestreams.

Also, in the feats article he tells us:

quote:

in my current campaign I’m playing Kel Kendeen, a chaotic neutral wizard dedicated to chaos and anarchy. I took the Lucky feat, which gives me the ability to roll an additional d20 when making an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, and choose which result to use. It’s extremely useful for getting out of tight spots, such as when I’m saddled with disadvantage or really need to make a roll. In portraying Kel, the Lucky feat fits him like a glove. As an adept of chaos, he constantly puts himself into dangerous positions—such as wearing a crown of ultimate evil or demanding an audience with the tyrannical overlord of a city—only to have things bounce his way. Fortune favors a fool, at least in Kel’s case.

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petrol blue
Feb 9, 2013

sugar and spice
and
ethanol slammers
Mike Mearls.

Playing a rapper.

I think I became more white just from reading that.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

petrol blue posted:

Mike Mearls.

Playing a rapper.

I think I became more white just from reading that.

It was loving hideous. It was the teh evolz campaign (infiltrating the gith queen's lair or whatever) and he took a break from wallchat and wis checks to play a PC. Everyone else was at least vaguely serious, and along comes good old Mikey ruining the mood and generally being a douchebag playing the dwarven rapper (fighter class IIRC) in the steel tophat, generally making at twat of himself. Can anyone remember the name of the character, it was MC something or other I think.

I think, of anyone I've seen on youtube playing RPGs, Mike Mearls is probably the one I'd least like to have run a game, or play on the same table as me.

Littlefinger
Oct 13, 2012
Killzalot, I poo poo you not. :rimshot:

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Littlefinger posted:

Killzalot, I poo poo you not. :rimshot:

Thaaaat was it. *shudder*

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

neonchameleon posted:

Nice picture! On the other hand mind if I double check why someone in the red and yellow area has disadvantage to hit yellow?

zachol posted:

Should the green zone be extended further to the right or something?
I guess the picture would be clearer with the text that accompanies it. Basically: If you are non-diagonally adjacent to a piece of Low Cover, it provides cover in a half-plane. If you are diagonally adjacent, it gives you cover in a quarter-plane. If you are adjacent to multiple blocks, you get cover from all of them.

Does that make sense with the picture? Let me know because if we're going to change the picture we'd better do it soon. (PM me if you don't want to clutter the thread with non-5e talk)

Sade posted:

This art is cool. Where can I read more about this project? "Shut up and wait for the preview mats" is a valid answer.
CountBlanc's post has all the stuff that's up right now. The playtest version is out of date compared to the preview stuff I'll be putting up soon, but the preview stuff won't have character creation rules - just pregens. Your best bet is to wait for the preview material, and then if you want to see the classes and roles, look at the playtest pdf. They've been re-balanced, but not massively changed.

PleasingFungus
Oct 10, 2012
idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off

Jimbozig posted:

I guess the picture would be clearer with the text that accompanies it. Basically: If you are non-diagonally adjacent to a piece of Low Cover, it provides cover in a half-plane. If you are diagonally adjacent, it gives you cover in a quarter-plane. If you are adjacent to multiple blocks, you get cover from all of them.

Does that make sense with the picture? Let me know because if we're going to change the picture we'd better do it soon. (PM me if you don't want to clutter the thread with non-5e talk)

The weird thing for me is that the section that's in cover from yellow, green, & red is just marked with yellow/red. Not sure how you'd visually clarify that without it being a mess, though.

zachol
Feb 13, 2009

Once per turn, you can Tribute 1 WATER monster you control (except this card) to Special Summon 1 WATER monster from your hand. The monster Special Summoned by this effect is destroyed if "Raging Eria" is removed from your side of the field.
Dammit, I totally got mixed up. I meant should it extend to the left? It seems like it goes off towards the right (indefinitely?), but on the left side the yellow I think covers it up.

e:

PleasingFungus posted:

The weird thing for me is that the section that's in cover from yellow, green, & red is just marked with yellow/red. Not sure how you'd visually clarify that without it being a mess, though.

This, yeah.

neonchameleon
Nov 14, 2012



Jimbozig posted:

I guess the picture would be clearer with the text that accompanies it. Basically: If you are non-diagonally adjacent to a piece of Low Cover, it provides cover in a half-plane. If you are diagonally adjacent, it gives you cover in a quarter-plane. If you are adjacent to multiple blocks, you get cover from all of them.

Does that make sense with the picture? Let me know because if we're going to change the picture we'd better do it soon. (PM me if you don't want to clutter the thread with non-5e talk)

It makes sense. It just feels wrong; from just looking at that board it looks to me as if the guy in the top left between the text is in an absolutely perfect position to shoot yellow right between the shoulderblades. Yellow alien having cover from Samus Aran in the centre looks to me as if it makes perfect sense. But there really isn't any cover from upper left.

(On a very minor art criticism level, I'd prefer to swap the colours or patterns around a little so you don't have yellow getting greener as it goes under a red background).

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

neonchameleon posted:

It makes sense. It just feels wrong; from just looking at that board it looks to me as if the guy in the top left between the text is in an absolutely perfect position to shoot yellow right between the shoulderblades. Yellow alien having cover from Samus Aran in the centre looks to me as if it makes perfect sense. But there really isn't any cover from upper left.

(On a very minor art criticism level, I'd prefer to swap the colours or patterns around a little so you don't have yellow getting greener as it goes under a red background).

Well yellow is popping out to take action right now. If he was pressed up against the corner between the box and the woodpile sort of like the green guy, I think you'd agree that the guy up top has no good shot.

Next question: would it feel totally wrong if I changed it so that red doesn't have cover at all? Giving diagonally adjacent guys cover in a quarter-plane works fine here, but when I extrapolate to what happens with Full Cover (i.e. walls and stuff) then it makes things more complicated. We either end up dealing with things like eighth-planes and three-eighth-planes or else we get inconsistencies. So the choices are:

a) red gets no cover. Sucker.
b) things get complicated.
c) things stay pretty simple but get inconsistent.

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting

Kai Tave posted:

Of course back before 3E "the decision to play a Drow" for whatever reason was seen as the purview of filthy munchkin swine powergamers looking to be like Drizzt
This wasnt really a thing. The most powerful aspect of being a Drow was 2e-style magic resistance, which was not available to PCs. The main barrier was how tiresome it was for the DM and other players to repeatedly go through the "everyone is soooo scared of you" schtick.

Kai Tave posted:

meanwhile AD&D2E had tons of dumb "Complete" books full of kits and fiddly stuff that you had to sift through to find the diamonds amidst the dogshit and you can't tell me with a straight face that all that stuff was "roleplaying not rollplaying,"
Those kits were 90% flavor with a few stand-out exceptions. (Like the infamous Elven Archer.)

Your stance on them makes it seem like you never used them. There was no "fiddly" anything. The kit was laid out. You picked one.

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

moths posted:

If they'd released Essentials before the PHBs, 4e as a whole would have been much better received.

For a while, I used to be a staunch defender of 3.5e. But then I started reading these forums (back in the day when I used to lurk all the time) and I decided to stop being an rear end. If so many people were intelligently defending 4e and touting its ease of use... Maybe I should give it a try.

So I opened up my mind, did what people recommended, and I ended up really liking 4e. It's by far and away my favorite version of the game because it actually feels kind of modern, comparatively speaking.

Somebody mentioned it earlier, but I think because it was so up front about its mechanics (and making attempts to be mechanically sound), that really got me to start paying attention to other RPG systems' mechanics and to actually go out and try to play these systems.

Overall, in this respect I think 4e did a lot to increase my appreciation of the hobby and the work that goes into it because it decided to be transparent about how it worked. 4e will always have a place in my bookshelf and a place at the table because it helped me to realize that one size doesn't fit all with RPGs, and instead I should play systems that are awesome at what they do. 4e is awesome at combat and making everybody feel like a fantasy hero by allowing everyone to contribute in a meaningful way - it was also really upfront about empowering players and making you feel like a badass.

I think that's what's so upsetting about 5e for me (and several others). D&D had a chance to keep pushing forward and in my mind, continue being relevant in the RPG scene. Instead, it's decided to rely on year 2000-era design. Maybe there's a sound marketing reason for it having to do with Paizo, but at the point they're releasing 5e, Paizo's already eaten their lunch/had their milkshake. Instead of fighting over a space that no one else has set the agenda for, they're going right into territory they've already ceded the initiative to and competing over... Well, nothing. It's hard to outsell a competitor who's virtually giving their product away for free.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is this - thanks, 4e. The day will come soon when I sell off all of my old 3e and 3.5e books, but I'll always keep you around whenever I want to throw together a high-fantasy beatdown with my friends, complete with high drama and world-changing events. I'll have to shelve you temporarily when I want to do paranormal investigation or I when I want to create a collaborative story with a group of people, but you won't be collecting dust for long. And 5e - you're not really for me anymore because I kind of left you behind when I left 3.5e behind. I'm sure I'll still play you at some point so I can render a more accurate judgment of you, but I don't expect I'll be buying your books anytime soon, regardless of what internet blowhards say.

eth0.n
Jun 1, 2012

Jimbozig posted:

Next question: would it feel totally wrong if I changed it so that red doesn't have cover at all? Giving diagonally adjacent guys cover in a quarter-plane works fine here, but when I extrapolate to what happens with Full Cover (i.e. walls and stuff) then it makes things more complicated. We either end up dealing with things like eighth-planes and three-eighth-planes or else we get inconsistencies. So the choices are:

a) red gets no cover. Sucker.
b) things get complicated.
c) things stay pretty simple but get inconsistent.

I'm not sure what the inconsistency you're referring to is. Can you give an example?

Red having no cover at all from anything would be rather counter-intuitive.

PleasingFungus
Oct 10, 2012
idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off
honestly I'd say "diagonal cover isn't a thing" is pretty reasonable, straightforward, and easy to remember. also makes it much easier to keep track of the angles involved.

(this is completely off-topic but, well, pretty much no one will give a poo poo)

Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.
^^^^^ Yeah, this. It looks a little silly, but it's just causing issues down the line.


eth0.n posted:

I'm not sure what the inconsistency you're referring to is. Can you give an example?

Red having no cover at all from anything would be rather counter-intuitive.

http://imgur.com/YLBAJH8
This is what would ideally happen if red got no cover (he does get some cover but you have to draw lines to determine it.)

Here's how the inconsistency works:

1. If you are diagonally adjacent to a single block of full cover, then enemies on a diagonal line can't shoot you. (same as how being adjacent means that you get one column or row blocked)
2. Look at Green in the sketch I just linked. Green gets a quarter-plane blocked off.
3. If we delete the cover to the north of green, suddenly people to the west of Green can shoot him.

This is nonsense since his cover to the west has not changed.

To resolve this inconsistency, we would have to make the region blocked by Green's the wedge-shape between the northwest diagonal and the north column. (This is what I mean by saying we would need eighth-planes)

eth0.n
Jun 1, 2012

Jimbozig posted:

This is what would ideally happen if red got no cover (he does get some cover but you have to draw lines to determine it.)

Here's how the inconsistency works:

1. If you are diagonally adjacent to a single block of full cover, then enemies on a diagonal line can't shoot you. (same as how being adjacent means that you get one column or row blocked)
2. Look at Green in the sketch I just linked. Green gets a quarter-plane blocked off.
3. If we delete the cover to the north of green, suddenly people to the west of Green can shoot him.

This is nonsense since his cover to the west has not changed.

To resolve this inconsistency, we would have to make the region blocked by Green's the wedge-shape between the northwest diagonal and the north column. (This is what I mean by saying we would need eighth-planes)

Eh, calling it eighth-planes is overthinking it. Technically, a your rows and columns of full cover are infinitesimal fractions of a plane. But that's not how players are going to think about it.

If you define the edges of full cover (the row/column/diagonal), that the areas between those boundaries are also full cover is obvious.

Daetrin
Mar 21, 2013

PleasingFungus posted:

honestly I'd say "diagonal cover isn't a thing" is pretty reasonable, straightforward, and easy to remember. also makes it much easier to keep track of the angles involved.

(this is completely off-topic but, well, pretty much no one will give a poo poo)

Clearly, you need to change to hex grids.

LFK
Jan 5, 2013

thespaceinvader posted:

gently caress, when they previewed that table I just felt like it was the worst possible aspects of the design of every past edition rolled into one giant d%. Lolrandom monkeycheese wackiness, check. Randomly screwing the party, check. One player randomly getting massive buffs or penalties, check. DM-fiat-dependent options, check. Randomly adding monsters to the battlefield under the DM's control, making encounters next to impossible to balance, check. Mixtures of virtually meaningless flavour not necessarily applicable to all characters (dragonborn don't have hair, nor do warforged...) and very impactful mechanics, check. And it has a 1/20 chance to happen EVERY TIME YOU CAST A loving SPELL.
I like, in particular, that there's the constant repetition of "your DM might make you roll..."

Mr Beens
Dec 2, 2006

Jimbozig posted:

^^^^^ Yeah, this. It looks a little silly, but it's just causing issues down the line.


http://imgur.com/YLBAJH8
This is what would ideally happen if red got no cover (he does get some cover but you have to draw lines to determine it.)

Here's how the inconsistency works:

1. If you are diagonally adjacent to a single block of full cover, then enemies on a diagonal line can't shoot you. (same as how being adjacent means that you get one column or row blocked)
2. Look at Green in the sketch I just linked. Green gets a quarter-plane blocked off.
3. If we delete the cover to the north of green, suddenly people to the west of Green can shoot him.

This is nonsense since his cover to the west has not changed.

To resolve this inconsistency, we would have to make the region blocked by Green's the wedge-shape between the northwest diagonal and the north column. (This is what I mean by saying we would need eighth-planes)

As cool as the art is, things would be a lot clearer if it was directly overhead instead of a 3/4 perspective.
It's also odd to me that some of the green zone do not get disadvantage against yellow?

Daetrin
Mar 21, 2013

LFK posted:

I like, in particular, that there's the constant repetition of "your DM might make you roll..."

Yeah, which makes the entire wild magic table DM-may-I.

Rosalind
Apr 30, 2013

When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.

Let's make a class that's entirely based on the idea of randomness in dice rolls and then make it so that the DM can ignore those dice rolls whenever they want.

By my count 10 of the wild magic surges are zany bullshit that won't really have a mechanical impact except in rare circumstances and 10 more that might actually cause harm to you or the party. So with your 5% of wild magic surge, you have a 40% chance of zany bullshit or hurting yourself.

Wild Mage: 3% chance of our signature class feature actually helping on any particular roll, if the DM allows it.

treeboy
Nov 13, 2004

James T. Kirk was a great man, but that was another life.

Daetrin posted:

Yeah, which makes the entire wild magic table DM-may-I.

I kinda get the DM arbitration in the normal activation of Wild Surge. It's a bit dickish but at least it's not *every* cast (unless your DM is a super dick).

But letting the DM decide when you can use your Wild Surge to regen Tides of Chaos? That's dumb. At the very least you should be able to intentionally activate it in order to regain Tides.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

It seems like the idea is to create tension with the DM. Like he wants you to roll because it might gently caress you over, but he doesn't want you to regen tides. I'm not sure that's good but I think that's how it's meant to play with incentives.

Daetrin
Mar 21, 2013

treeboy posted:

I kinda get the DM arbitration in the normal activation of Wild Surge. It's a bit dickish but at least it's not *every* cast (unless your DM is a super dick).

But letting the DM decide when you can use your Wild Surge to regen Tides of Chaos? That's dumb. At the very least you should be able to intentionally activate it in order to regain Tides.

I can understand it too; it's been pointed out how basically terrible the wild surge table is (ignoring the issues of narrative control).

But if it's bad enough that they want to give the GM explicit permission over a fundamental class feature...why design it that way in the first place?

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Daetrin posted:

I can understand it too; it's been pointed out how basically terrible the wild surge table is (ignoring the issues of narrative control).

But if it's bad enough that they want to give the GM explicit permission over a fundamental class feature...why design it that way in the first place?

Well I dont see a problem here with Next's consistency. This is a culmination of all the 'DM fiat' answers that Mearls has been throwing around, except its now literally in the rules.

Littlefinger
Oct 13, 2012

Daetrin posted:

But if it's bad enough that they want to give the GM explicit permission over a fundamental class feature...why design it that way in the first place?
Design? You mean lift it from 2e wholesale, realise it was utter poo poo, but not willing to backtrack and redo it either, because that sounds too much like woooork?

Ratoslov
Feb 15, 2012

Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Anyone have a good idea for a mechanic for a Wild Mage that isn't complete poo poo?

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting

Ratoslov posted:

Anyone have a good idea for a mechanic for a Wild Mage that isn't complete poo poo?
To make it "wild" the more layers of unpredictable the better.

Have an "area" roll that determines how stable magic is every day and/or location change. This influences:

% chance of an unintended surge per cast (modified by spell level and caster level, mitigated or aggravated by caster intention) Skill (leveled) casters have a better chance to purposefully surge. If you cant stand the DM having any say-so then start the system at 1% per cast and see where you end up/ adjust.

Add in triggers that work with your playstyle. Maybe stress (surprise?) destablizes the mage. Maybe the presence of certain creatures/magic/plants/minerals/whatever stablizes/destablizes the mage. Etc.

The only way to get a never-ending set of effects is to count on a DM to be creative, probably using a pre-generated list as idea-guidelines. I know some people are offended by "DM agency" though. (Which is stupid.)

I just made that up on the fly right now as I typed, so :shrug:

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Lift the psyker mishap tables from 40k tabletops, change third to beneficial, a third neutral, and a third detrimental.

Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 08:39 on Aug 2, 2014

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry

Ratoslov posted:

Anyone have a good idea for a mechanic for a Wild Mage that isn't complete poo poo?

You can always cast spells, regardless of whether or not you have slots available. Keep a running total of your chaos level - how many spell levels you use in this way. Casting a 3rd and a 1st-level spell without using a slot is 4 levels of chaos.

However, if you cast a spell with an empty slot, you have to make a concentration check DC 3 * your current chaos level.

Whenever you fail a concentration check, ca-razy stuff happens, which shades worse as you fail the check by larger numbers.

Your chaos level clears when you finish a long rest.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
I think the fundamental sticking point is that characters based around randomness or unpredictability (beyond the basic level stuff like to-hit rolls or whatever) are really, really hard to do. It may be one of those things like crafting systems where the idea of it is always going to be better than any actual mechanical execution. Most "Wild whatever" characters seem to boil down to a random list of effects you roll when you gently caress up, and of those lists people usually only remember a few standout examples and the rest are just white noise. Everybody remembers that in the Warhammer 40K RPGs your psyker can accidentally summon a demon into himself but nobody remembers virtually anything else on the random list of bad poo poo.

Benjamin Baugh, the guy who wrote Monsters and Other Childish Things, once spitballed an idea for random magic over on RPGnet using the One Roll Engine where the waste dice from your roll (that is, the dice you rolled that couldn't be matched into a set) would manifest as a variety of chaotic and not-very-controllable side-effects that nonetheless wouldn't interfere with the spell you were actually trying to cast (the effectiveness of which was determined by the matched sets you rolled) and you could ameliorate side-effects by reducing the power of the spell you're trying to cast so it's a bit of a tradeoff (but even then the side-effects were largely non-harmful, nothing to the degree of imposing penalties or loving over the other players).

There's still a degree of "roll on the random chart" to be had there but it's got some things to recommend it, namely that the random rolling is automatically handled in the same roll as casting a spell, the spellcaster has a choice of whether to keep things controlled but less potent or throwing caution to the wind and risking things getting nuts (which, when you think about it, should be the primary decision any sort of Wild Mage character ought to be making), and the proposed random effects weren't supposed to be the kind of thing that interferes with someone else's character and makes the Wild Mage a party pariah.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Ratoslov posted:

Anyone have a good idea for a mechanic for a Wild Mage that isn't complete poo poo?

When you roll a wild surge, you roll on a smaller table that just determines whether you take some generic penalty, suffer nothing in particular, or regain one or more spell slots/sorcery points/whatever as per the existing metamagical options on the 1-100 chart.

Then, you select a sorcerer spell at random from the levels you're capable of casting, select a target for that spell at random from all available targets, and have that spell go off as though you'd cast it. Maybe you roll 1d4 per 5 sorcerer levels to determine what level spell slot it's considered to be fueled by, or you pull that information from the initial roll, or something.

90s Cringe Rock
Nov 29, 2006
:gay:

thespaceinvader posted:

Yes they are. My Gnomes all wear power armour though. Warforged reskinned.

Garl Glittergold. Glitter Boy. Think about it.

Rigged Death Trap
Feb 13, 2012

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

You could have a 'chaos meter' that tracks how much chaotic stuff/energy you have built up as a side effect from just spell casting, getting more means higher chance of mishap but access to better chaos venting powers/spells.

Kind of like an overheat mechanic.

Or scrap the mage idea and make a wild healer. heal/buff/control allies/enemies to build up chaos and unleash to damage/debuff.

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Ratoslov posted:

Anyone have a good idea for a mechanic for a Wild Mage that isn't complete poo poo?

Basically, the way 4e did it, plus a bit. 4e had a small additional effect on a nat 1 or a nat 20 - the 1 was a little push to all adjacent creatures, the 20 was... something, can't remember offhand - plus powers which had different effects and damage types depending on what you rolled on the attack and damage dice.

I'd thing maybe a d10 table of low-impact Bad Stuff that could happen if you roll a nat 1 and a small table of low-impact extra good stuff on a nat 20? Or maybe same table for each you get an extra level of chaos each time *thing* happens, and that increases the die size that you're rolling so you get more high values, and high values are good for you, so if you do wild and chaotic things (I dunno, provoking OAs, casting into melee etc etc) fortune favours you more.

Also, I really liked the at-will that shot a magic bolt that bounced to another target if you rolled even. It was great fun. I'd've liked that to happen with some area spells as well - maybe on damage dice. it could combine nicely with an exploding dice system - roll damage dice, and for each die that rolls max, ingnore the total, but the burst gets 1 square 5 feet bigger and roll the die again, or whatever, can choose to stop in exchange for rerolling any remainin maxed dice and taking the damage yourself. Chance for big impact, but you can control for it if you're worried about it. I'd like a set of effects like that for all the spells, which you could choose to spend points to use or something.

And, you know, no lolrandom bullshit, no making your cast spells at random that will gently caress up your back line (:v:) no crazy-good buffs (regen 5 for a minute in a game with low HP and low healing, say). Things that are on the theme of 'random chaos, fortune favours the bold, your magic is unpredictable' without being 'lol a balor appears you all die'...

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

thespaceinvader posted:

Basically, the way 4e did it, plus a bit. 4e had a small additional effect on a nat 1 or a nat 20 - the 1 was a little push to all adjacent creatures, the 20 was... something, can't remember offhand - plus powers which had different effects and damage types depending on what you rolled on the attack and damage dice.

If we're talking from a strict d20/D&D implementation the 4E chaos sorcerer had one of the best approaches but it's down to the fact that 4E classes, including all the various spellcasters, had their own class-specific set of powers and abilities. It's totally easy to make a wild mage that isn't dumb if you can ensure that the wild mage gets "Wild Mage only" spells that all have their own individual random effects, but because in 5E all spellcasters draw off the same list of spells you can't have that, so you've got to awkwardly shove the randomness into it elsewhere.

I think that might be the key, really...baseline D&D magic isn't random, it's absolutely fixed in effect and application right down to the exact cubic volume of your fireballs. There's nothing interesting to work with.

isndl
May 2, 2012
I WON A CONTEST IN TG AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS CUSTOM TITLE
1. Wild Mage player declares "I am wild-casting a X level spell".
2. Player rolls a number of dice based on the level of the spell. A cantrip might be 1d4, a first level spell might be 1d4 + 1d6, etc.
3. Player consults the tables arcane to determine what spell is being cast. More dice maybe means cross-referencing! Luckily high level spell slots are limited.
4. Player chooses how the spell is targeted.
5. Spell is cast.

Basic premise is that players choose when poo poo happens, which will generally be either when they're desperate, or bored. Locking spell effects behind dice count prevents 'lolrandom Balor wipes the first level party' issues. Letting the player decide targeting after the spell is selected is another means of preventing a party wipe because of random effects, and allows a small element of player agency even when they lost their gamble. More dice for high level spell slots should theoretically allow finer control over what is cast from a design perspective (since more dice means more normalized results).

High level Wild Mages might be able to modify one or more dice, or deliberately let the spell fizzle if they dislike the result. Surge actions that let them occasionally throw extra dice into the pool. As an ability, replace specific lines in the table with new spells (given DM approval).

Hard part would be making the table(s) that is reasonably well balanced. One monolithic table doesn't seem appropriate, but you don't want too much minutiae either.

MartianAgitator
Apr 30, 2003

Damn Earth! Damn her!
So about Feats/AS Increases and retraining:

Say I start with my STR and CON high, to be as effective as possible starting out, then raise them with ASI's at level ups until they're maxed. Then I want to take feats to give me more options but I realize they all give STR/CON bonuses and I've maxed those, meaning I'm basically taking half-strength feats. Is there retraining? Or I am already perma-hosed because what kind of ignorant, girlfriend-having jock loving raises STR, goddamn it.

Ugh. The more I think about the problems of this game the more I feel it IS fine: it's a piece of poo poo and might appeal to people who don't know or care about that. That's it. If you're poking holes in it, that's on you. You're the one trying to milk the bull. The drooling retarded, mangy, inbred bull.




I saw a video of Chris Perkins, a WotC employee, DMing a 4th Ed. game for the writers of Robot Chicken. Cool, creative guys. One of them says, "Hey, can I melt this door of ice using this power called 'Darkflame Blast'?" And the DM says, "Well, let me see the power card for it. Uh, it says it targets one creature. A door isn't a creature. Sorry."

This was a Wizards employee trying to show off the coolness of the game for advertising and hype. And he just didn't understand the first thing about DMing. It's the one rule of improv EVERYONE knows: always say "Yes, and..." He was so pedantic he couldn't allow a legitimate, unique response. He ran from the actually creative.

I wonder if this isn't the same problem that comics may have. The fans are in charge; the inmates are running the asylum. In D&D's case it seems like the shitheels are the ones holding on to their Wizards employment, gatekeeping new blood from entering the brand like Doritobeards loudly making GBS threads on the Avengers movie at the front of the game store. I live in Seattle; any goons wanna come with me, storm the D&D office, and kick out anyone who doesn't get Dungeon World?

thespaceinvader
Mar 30, 2011

The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

MartianAgitator posted:

This was a Wizards employee trying to show off the coolness of the game for advertising and hype. And he just didn't understand the first thing about DMing. It's the one rule of improv EVERYONE knows: always say "Yes, and..." He was so pedantic he couldn't allow a legitimate, unique response. He ran from the actually creative.


And this is double-dumb, because the DMG and the rules compendium SPECIFICALLY SAY the DM can allow this kind of thing - because every power, including basic attacks, target creatures, so by that logic you couldn't hit an object with an axe, either.

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OtspIII
Sep 22, 2002

MartianAgitator posted:

Say I start with my STR and CON high, to be as effective as possible starting out, then raise them with ASI's at level ups until they're maxed. Then I want to take feats to give me more options but I realize they all give STR/CON bonuses and I've maxed those, meaning I'm basically taking half-strength feats. Is there retraining? Or I am already perma-hosed because what kind of ignorant, girlfriend-having jock loving raises STR, goddamn it.

Pretty sure if I ever run this game that I'm going to houserule that any time a feat tries to raise a stat over its cap you can just apply the bonus to any other stat instead.

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