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ianvincible posted:That's assuming there haven't been centuries of necromancers roaming around the countryside raising everyone as skeletons. A small hamlet doesn't have a town cemetery, they just have a town grave, since whoever they bury is always raised as a skeleton before the next guy dies. <Shimmering dissolve> Subtitle: "5 years from now" Scene: An internet forum. That guy: "D&D has always been about collecting skeletons for your army". Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 11:31
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Boing posted:The thief that steals someone's name or their memories or the concept of forgiveness sounds like an awesome concept. Where can I play that game? Sounds like a Dungeon World compendium class/custom move to me.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:32
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thespaceinvader posted:4e, there's an Epic Destiny (Master Their, I think) which among other things, gives you a passive stealth stat so if your stealth modifier beats their perception modifier (easy enough in most cases), they cannot see you unless you choose to let them; and which at higher levels (26 or 30) lets you steal anything from any creature you reduce to 0 HP. Anything you can think of. I knew there was an epic destiny somewhere explicitly about that concept (i.e. you can steal anything) and have literally been looking for it for the last ten minutes and can't find it. I remember showing it to someone else once because I thought the idea was so cool!
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Aug 12, 2014 11:37
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Thief of Legend is the name, I think.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:40
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It's Thief of LegendThief of Legend posted:Steal Back the Soul (24th level): You can steal anything; even death holds no end to your thievery. You can steal sighs from lovestruck maidens and ambition from warlords, and you have stolen your soul from the forces that claim it when you die—for safekeeping, of course. As you begin to slip beyond the mortal realm, you return what you have stolen so few notice it was ever gone.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:40
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Boing posted:The thief that steals someone's name or their memories or the concept of forgiveness sounds like an awesome concept. Where can I play that game? So, to answer your question, the previous edition of D&D.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:42
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(rolls Wis Save vs entering rage, fails) Seriously? SERIOUSLY? We're wasting 10-15 pages arguing about the skeleton army bullshit? Folks, this is some high level bullshit going on here. This is finding a very small crack, and desperately taking screwdrivers, chisels, and freaking Steam Powered jackahmmers to it in an attempt to justify some folks position in the latest grognard edition war idiocy. So a mid teens level necromancer will be able to summon 100+ skeletons, and possibly take out an adult blue dragon. Hoop-de-freakin-doo. At mid teens level, a dragon might be the least of the things a necromancer should be dealing with. I mean, come on, at mid teens level, a Necromancer should be well on his way to becoming a Lich, seeking the ultimate knowledge of undeath. Instead of making mere skeletons (something any plebe newbie necromancer can do), they should be looking to make greater creatures.. Convince that dragon to become a Dracolich! Besides, the only way that the trick should work most than once is if things exist in your gaming world solely to be agents for your players to go there and kill things. Dragons are known shape changers... could that haughty noble in the tavern be the local dragon in disguise, keeping an eye on things to make sure their territory is properly pacified, that no one's planning to know, come and kill them. And any world-shaking political group (for example, Forgotten Realms: Cormyr, Harpers, Zhentarim, Red Wizards) are going to keep a close eye on any person powerful enough to do such a thing, and work to aid (or hinder) their quests, because it might actually gently caress THEIR plans up. So yes, in a set piece battle in a world of tactical miniatures that might as well be "Random poo poo Warhammer, only in D&D", Necromancer plus skeleton army can possibly happen. With any degree of DM that's not a drooling idiot or yes-man for the party, this is just the fapping of edition warriors.
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Aug 12, 2014 11:59
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I'm gonna post this every time it comes up, I don't need an army to break the game, I need 20 skeletons to replace the fighter in every meaningful sense if the use, thats 4 spells / day to have a better fighter Edit: Seriously getting tired of every argument about this being unreasonable imagines the extreme 100 skeleton solution here, the game is unbalanced without taking it to the maxim
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Aug 12, 2014 12:05
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SirFozzie posted:At mid teens level, a dragon might be the least of the things a necromancer should be dealing with. I mean, come on, at mid teens level, a Necromancer should be well on his way to becoming a Lich, seeking the ultimate knowledge of undeath. Instead of making mere skeletons (something any plebe newbie necromancer can do), they should be looking to make greater creatures.. Convince that dragon to become a Dracolich! And the Fighter should be well on his way to hitting things slightly harder with a sword.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:07
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gently caress you Dave, your character is bad and stupid and of course there aren't skeletons and the dragon doesn't fall for that and the Red Wizards Of gently caress Off send an assassin to gank you for being OP. Get out. Good, now we can get on with the real game where nobody would be so silly. Sucks to be Dave, but gently caress that guy for building a legal character. He probably only did it to be an edition warrior. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 12:10
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More like "Sorry Dave, your plan doesn't work as stated because you know, you're not the only creature in the world with a functioning sense of neurons and a sense of self preservation". and Fighters not only hit things more often and for more damage with a sword, but they too have greater rewards: Champions become the Conans of the setting, inspiring new generation of dreaming plowboys to die messily... er.. to become heroes... passing down their fighting styles to new generations. BattleMasters become warlords and generals, directing the fate of armies and nations. Eldritch Knights become living proof that one can both wield steel and magic.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:19
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SirFozzie posted:and Fighters not only hit things more often and for more damage with a sword, but they too have greater rewards: What pages are the rules for these things on?
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Aug 12, 2014 12:23
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SirFozzie posted:Besides, the only way that the trick should work most than once is if things exist in your gaming world solely to be agents for your players to go there and kill things. Dragons are known shape changers... could that haughty noble in the tavern be the local dragon in disguise, keeping an eye on things to make sure their territory is properly pacified, that no one's planning to know, come and kill them.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:23
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Ok. How does any of that translate to the fighter player actually getting to do stuff at the table?
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Aug 12, 2014 12:24
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SirFozzie posted:and Fighters not only hit things more often and for more damage with a sword, but they too have greater rewards: Is this supposed to be sarcasm? Because none of those things are mechanics, which is what the necromancer carting around his own gang of unthinking yes men is. What you listed is fluff that DMs aren't obligated to bestow upon the fighter at all. Similar to them not being mechanics, they aren't meaningful bits of power. Which the wizard has. In spades. If the wizard doesn't tool around with his skeleton buddies, he has other poo poo to do with all of his magic and spells while the fighter is stuck being champion/battle master/eldritch knight.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:26
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Bongo Bill posted:What pages are the rules for these things on? It's called imagination. Look into it. Is there rules for turning a dragon into a dracolich? No? So, according to you, can't do that either right? Cuz god only know that 320 pages should have everything that every player ever wanted to do. And K Prime: I'd say the rules for the fighter, while still simple, allow the fighter player to get stuff done at the table (the BattleMaster might as well be the Commander Reskin, for example..)
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Aug 12, 2014 12:29
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"If we ignore the mechanics, it's a fun game for everyone".
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Aug 12, 2014 12:31
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"Everything mechanical forever. No imagination, because there's no rules for Imagination"
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Aug 12, 2014 12:31
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I remember back in 3e, the Harm spell reduced any creature to D4 HP. You had to succeed at a touch attack to do it, but there was no save allowed, and dragons had touch ACs of like, 6. People argued that it was fine because "no dragon would be dumb enough to ever get into melee range". The arguments against the skeleton army seem to be on a similar level. If a power requires specific GM intervention to prevent it being effectively used or it breaks the game (every dragon hears about Mr Skeleton Army beforehand and designs his lair specifically to allow him to take on the skeleton army, any character using the power is hunted down and killed, every plot has to include a way to prevent a pitched battle with the skeleton army) then it is a bad power that needs to be rewritten. There should be a middle ground between "GM prevents player's schtick from ever working because reasons" and "Player's schtick trivialises the game". This is called "balance".
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Aug 12, 2014 12:32
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SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. Unlike your examples, the rules do allow the wizard to do things that basically turn the game into The Wizard & Friends Show Starring Wizard, unless the DM takes steps to prevent them. Other classes do not have rules granting them that kind of narrative influence. The differing levels of support is the problem. This problem is a problem with the rules. We are criticizing the rules, not the experience of play. The fact that bad rules can be ignored is not the same as those rules being good. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 12:33
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SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. And using my imagination my 20 skeletons can revolutionise the economy of a small farm community, acting as free messengers, labourers (this works both ways) AND AGAIN (because apparently everyone arguing this is loving blind) I don't need 100 skeletons or 50 or 40, I need 4 spells worth, 20 of them, to make a better: Damage dealer and Defender (They can literally bodyblock for me) than the fighter
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Aug 12, 2014 12:39
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You know the only reason Raise Dead as a spell is a problem is that they need a way for NPC evil things to be able to raise armies of undead to be FOES FOR THE PCs, but as it is magic and a spell, the players must also be able to use it.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:39
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SirFozzie posted:"Everything mechanical forever. No imagination, because there's no rules for Imagination" So disregard whichever rules don't work for you and write extra ones in where you needed them and make up stuff that works outside the rules in the book and play a fun RPG with likeminded people. I mean, that's great. Once you get it working you should share or even publish it. Just don't try to use that experience as a basis for arguing that the rules in the D&D book are fine.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:41
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Let me grog in entirely the opposite manner. Casters deal with forces beyond their ken, petitioning gods, causality or a fickle infernal fiend to affect the universe. By this logic they should be mere hedge wizards, pawns of a chaotic magic flow where they are a flea stranded on a sinking buoy on stormy waters. All the time they have to spend 'refining' their craft leaves them socially crippled, physically frail and by the time they gain the basics where magic doesn't blow up in their faces, old and decrepit. A practically conflict free life leads to a person who cannot deal with conflict at all. Nothing compared to the tried and true power of steel, cunning and sinew. No one ever sang songs or told stories of the one time a wizard made a spell.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:41
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SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. All the while complaining about entitled unimaginative players wanting to have some mechanical support for these amazing feats of superhuman mundaneness in that oh-so-limited 320 pagecount, while conveniently ignoring that almost half of those pages are explicit narrative-monopolising bits for casters to fuel their weird wizard show with. D&D truly causes brain damage. Littlefinger fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 12:41
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SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. The things you listed for the fighter are completely dependent on the GM saying "Yes, John, you may have a castle/hold/army/whatever." The wizard has everything he needs in his spell list, without playing the GM-may-I game. It's not a matter of imagination, it's a matter of what a given class has access to explicitly relative to the others.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:42
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SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. Eat poo poo. If this was freeform, you'd have a point, but no. This is a game with rules, and if the rules don't serve the game in making it fun or interesting*, then the rules are poo poo. Stop defending bad game design because you're too dumb to do otherwise. *For the Fighter, or for anyone who the rules poo poo on. The rules bending over backwards to cater to one specific type/archetype of character means everyone else may as well not exist.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:45
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Piell posted:Thief of Legend Woah, WOAH! What's this DM Fiat BULLSHIT? Not in my perfectly designed mechanically balanced and DM fiat free 4e! On a more serious though similar note, I find it funny that for the most part "Crazy Awesome Heroic" stuff that people are describing for their Fight Men are generally just different iterations of "attack more/faster/harder" or "jump higher/further" and the explicitly awesome intangible abilities like ^^^ that one operate purely off the much maligned DM Fiat. D&D doesn't have a fighter problem, or rather not much of one. It's 90% lack of proper scope for wizards, and 10% fighter needing a little buffing. I would even argue that you could keep 100% of the wizard spells, but they should've really added drawbacks to the various schools ala 2e specializations. edit: for instance, take necromancy. If it flat out denied access to two other schools...say evocation and conjuration, you'd have a much more interesting and less universally capable caster. treeboy fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 13:14
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Why don't higher CR monsters have flat damage reduction in 5e? Hell let fighters have that too, and in addition let them break damage reduction. You'd solve instantly the issue of a horde of weak damage dealers one-shotting a boss or fighter, and would integrate fighters into a boss killing tactic.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:15
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treeboy posted:D&D doesn't have a fighter problem, or rather not much of one. It's 90% lack of proper scope for wizards, and 10% fighter needing a little buffing. I would even argue that you could keep 100% of the wizard spells, but they should've really added drawbacks to the various schools ala 2e specializations. Totes, the scope of the D&D wizard's power is way too big compared to the fighter's. One of the frustrations I have with 5e though is that the fighter they decided to publish is heavily nerfed compared to what they had in playtest. So someone looked at the fighter and said "Nah, that's too good." and slapped it down.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:22
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The Real Foogla posted:Why don't higher CR monsters have flat damage reduction in 5e? Hell let fighters have that too, and in addition let them break damage reduction. You'd solve instantly the issue of a horde of weak damage dealers one-shotting a boss or fighter, and would integrate fighters into a boss killing tactic. Usually this ends up punishing characters who make lots of low damage attacks per round more than anyone else. Which, in D&D, is traditionally archers and two-weapon fighting rogues and warriors. If you fix the ~skeleton problem~ (it's funny to refer to it this way idk) this way you also run the risk of singlehandedly ruining entire martial concepts or classes, while Wizards can simply shift focus to huge damage individual spells or seek ways to bypass the DR issue. And that is, I think, a fantastic example of the issue with Wizards.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:28
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fixing Animate Dead takes one little addition of Duration: Concentration, up to 24hrs
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Aug 12, 2014 13:31
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treeboy posted:edit: for instance, take necromancy. If it flat out denied access to two other schools...say evocation and conjuration, you'd have a much more interesting and less universally capable caster. Lots of people have put forward similar ideas in this thread and in its previous versions. 2e style specialisation probably doesn't go far enough, but it's definitely a good starting point. Maybe "Pick one school to specialise in and one to be forbidden from. Pick two you can cast spells up to level 4, and two you can cast spells up to level 2" would be good. Maybe this is the sort of thing that a properly run playtest could have focussed on.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:33
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treeboy posted:Woah, WOAH! What's this DM Fiat BULLSHIT? Not in my perfectly designed mechanically balanced and DM fiat free 4e! You jumped on that really fast dude. You have a serious fighter problem I think. And its not a GM may I. You declare youre stealing the thing you want and BAM you stole it, no roll ot GM whatevers needed, and its up to the GM to determine the mechanical/story effects, just like if you stole a king's crown of mass domination or pretty much any highly important thing. No one is saying fiat is the devil, sometimes its plain needed when things get a bit obtuse, but requiring it in the basic rules that define gameplay and classes is plain bullshit.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:34
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SirFozzie posted:It's called imagination. Look into it. Why should I play this edition of D&D then? They are selling rules. I can do imagination just fine, and so can the people I play with. But why spend tens of dollars on a book of rules, if I can just "look into" imagination?
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Aug 12, 2014 13:34
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treeboy posted:Woah, WOAH! What's this DM Fiat BULLSHIT? Not in my perfectly designed mechanically balanced and DM fiat free 4e! If you read closer, the mechanical effects are determined with the DM. The actual act is player-side narrative power, which was what's been "returned" to the DM in 5e. My thief can still steal a child's sense of wonder and imagination. It's up to the DM what happens to the kid from a rules perspective.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:53
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The really critical thing is that, by the rules, if you want to play Odysseus or Sinbad, you're better off playing a wizard or cleric with a sword than a martial class, because the mechanics for gaining knowledge or being knowledgeable are almost completely tied up with the caster classes. It's possible to balance stopping time against a schlubby fighter that doesn't act at the human peak, but you can't balance "has access to spells that can meet any noncombat challenge" with "is good with running, and first aid, and maybe yelling at people" in any way that's fun.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:55
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Effectronica posted:The really critical thing is that, by the rules, if you want to play Odysseus or Sinbad, you're better off playing a wizard or cleric with a sword than a martial class, because the mechanics for gaining knowledge or being knowledgeable are almost completely tied up with the caster classes. It's possible to balance stopping time against a schlubby fighter that doesn't act at the human peak, but you can't balance "has access to spells that can meet any noncombat challenge" with "is good with running, and first aid, and maybe yelling at people" in any way that's fun. Yet somebody is guaranteed to inform you that this is badwrongfun, and you are now playing a wizard wrong.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:58
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SirFozzie posted:"Everything mechanical forever. No imagination, because there's no rules for Imagination" Save your energy for gencon, Fozzie! Don't do this to your health!
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Aug 12, 2014 14:00
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Rigged Death Trap posted:You jumped on that really fast dude. I almost exclusively play martial characters actually. I generally don't care for casters, I find them pretty boring and too squishy for my liking, though in one of the Next playtests I ran a Mad-Professor-esque wizard who was convinced his party was actually a group of graduate students assisting him in his research of magical mud, it was a little wacky, but fun. Regardless, people were still citing a bunch of heroic epics that consisted of Fight Men attacking more/faster/harder/longer/further, or intangible abilities that operate, mechanically, purely at the DM's whim. Actually bringing Fighter in line with casters (which again, largely isn't the problem, it's the reverse of the problem, wizards should be brought down) would be just giving Fighters Wizard spells, but with a sword. i.e. "I cut so hard i tear reality and can pass between planes" or "I defy the laws of gravity through sheer grit" Effectronica posted:The really critical thing is that, by the rules, if you want to play Odysseus or Sinbad, you're better off playing a wizard or cleric with a sword than a martial class, because the mechanics for gaining knowledge or being knowledgeable are almost completely tied up with the caster classes. It's possible to balance stopping time against a schlubby fighter that doesn't act at the human peak, but you can't balance "has access to spells that can meet any noncombat challenge" with "is good with running, and first aid, and maybe yelling at people" in any way that's fun. with skills and languages often tied to background vs class, this is not nearly the issue it was in 3.x for any class. If you're simply referring to characters going around dominating NPCs constantly to solve problems, that has its own consequences. edit: for instance there's nothing stopping you from taking the "Sage" background as a Fighter and being a master researcher, able to recall or locate any knowledge you need. Or even having an entire adventure based around some knowledge quest you're on. treeboy fucked around with this message at 14:08 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 12, 2014 14:04
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