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I mean, the point of random encounters in a hexcrawl or dungeon crawl or sandbox...uh...crawl is that they aren't meant to be interesting; they exist to drain your resources.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:43
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Misandu posted:Random encounter generation like that only works when the monsters in question are borderline trivial to the PCs. You can do this just as well in 4th Edition by using say d4+2 wolf minions, or 3d6 hobgoblin minions led by a bugbear standard. I mean, to give you a Wastelands 2 example, since I'm playing that right now, I am in the complex, and I realize I've wasted too many bullets shooting up exploding pods. Which means I'm about to get butchered by a bunch of mutant bunnies. That's the kind of feeling people look for in OSR, and its not a feeling that depleted healing surges really gives.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:45
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You could always just pre-build a variety of appropriately themed yet interesting and taxing encounters, and just put those on a table instead of 2d6 kobolds and 2d4 wyverns or whatever. Why no I would not get bored enough to do this
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Sep 24, 2014 17:45
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ascendance posted:That's the kind of feeling people look for in OSR, and its not a feeling that depleted healing surges really gives. Correction: It's not a feeling that healing surges that recover after 8 hours of sleep really gives. If you only allow extended rests that take a long lazy weekend somewhere safe then people are going to be a whole lot more paranoid - being out of surges feels like being on half hit points with no clerical spells handy - and sometimes 20 miles to go before you get home.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:49
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ascendance posted:Thing is, really trivial fights in 4e are super pointless, since so much of your resources regenerate from encounter to encounter. Maybe we're just thinking of different scales or using bad examples, because when I see "3d6 hobgoblins led by a bug bear" all I see is "Wizard loses 1 3rd level spell slot." d4+2 Wolves reads as "Greatsword Fighter Charge", other characters mop up whats left. Neither of those are going to be a massive drain on party resources anyway. My point is that those fights were super pointless in 3.X as well. They ended in a round or two and healers had enough low level healing spells to cover the HP loss before resting. If they went on longer then that they were 3.X's equivalent of set piece battles and necessitated rests to recover spell slots anyway.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:53
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neonchameleon posted:Correction: It's not a feeling that healing surges that recover after 8 hours of sleep really gives. If you only allow extended rests that take a long lazy weekend somewhere safe then people are going to be a whole lot more paranoid - being out of surges feels like being on half hit points with no clerical spells handy - and sometimes 20 miles to go before you get home. Thing is, that kind of change can't be made in isolation because so much of the encounter math is balanced around having X healing surges and Y powers per day. If you suddenly say "you recover 1 healing surge per long rest" and change nothing else, you're going to cause all kinds of problems elsewhere due to these knock on effects.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:57
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Illvillainy posted:Yeah, encounter design seems like one of most fun things for the DM in 4E (and 13th Age, to a lesser extent). Whereas it sounds like a nightmare in 3.xE/PF and 5E. Encounter design in 4e, as a DM, is a delight.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:58
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Bassetking posted:Encounter design in 4e, as a DM, is a delight. It's basically all of the best parts of coming up with super cool theme terrain and scenarios for wargames. It really is the best.
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Sep 24, 2014 17:59
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neonchameleon posted:Correction: It's not a feeling that healing surges that recover after 8 hours of sleep really gives. If you only allow extended rests that take a long lazy weekend somewhere safe then people are going to be a whole lot more paranoid - being out of surges feels like being on half hit points with no clerical spells handy - and sometimes 20 miles to go before you get home. This is essentially how 13th Age "days" work.
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Sep 24, 2014 18:00
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Misandu posted:The 3.5 DMG's version of page 42 is terrible and basically suggests you make martial characters play Mother-May-I in order to anything beyond moving and attacking, and that has a massive long lasting effect on new DMs. I still maintain that "Rule 0" was hands down the worst decision and rule of 3.x, and that it fundamentally broke an entire generation of TTRPG-ers
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Sep 24, 2014 18:01
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S.J. posted:It's basically all of the best parts of coming up with super cool theme terrain and scenarios for wargames. It really is the best. I always struggle with DMing the terrain. Maybe because I've spent far more time as a player; I just expect the monsters to do all the lifting in combat, but they actually do like 10% of making fights interesting. Which is just weird, because the page count devoted to monsters vs devoted to terrain is an inverse of that proportion.
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Sep 24, 2014 18:10
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Bassetking posted:I still maintain that "Rule 0" was hands down the worst decision and rule of 3.x, and that it fundamentally broke an entire generation of TTRPG-ers Definitely, the other part was lovely encounter design rules. The system was so bad you just erred on the side of making everything super trivial for the players. This lead to the martial characters feeling powerful, because nothing was worth spending serious spells on. Eventually you drop the actual hard encounters, which get ended by the spell casters, but the martial dudes don't really notice because every other fight they've been in they ended by themselves. Sure things feel swingy, but that's just because even getting hit once can be a massive hit to your HP percentage wise. Eventually you get really good at being the DM and engaging people in every fight. Then even your random encounters start to look like the end of The Avengers where Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man (Cleric, Druid, Wizard) fly around dealing with the actual threats and Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow (Fighter, Ranger, Rogue) clear out the enemies/finish the side activities you set up to make them feel like they're contributing. This leads to people talking about how awesome your campaigns/3.X/PF are even though the stuff that was really memorable had nothing to do with the system and everything to do with you bending it to the breaking point to accommodate the insane power discrepancy between the players. It happens in this thread all the time! Look at people's favorite stories from D&D (any edition) and they almost never have anything to do with the rules.
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Sep 24, 2014 18:22
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P.d0t posted:I always struggle with DMing the terrain. Maybe because I've spent far more time as a player; I just expect the monsters to do all the lifting in combat, but they actually do like 10% of making fights interesting. Which is just weird, because the page count devoted to monsters vs devoted to terrain is an inverse of that proportion. I always wished there were a few more traps described as well - the ones in the first DMG seemed to require the players to walk into them to set them off. I'd have liked to see a few more that could be an entire encounter on their own, as well.
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Sep 24, 2014 18:48
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Gort posted:I always wished there were a few more traps described as well - the ones in the first DMG seemed to require the players to walk into them to set them off. I'd have liked to see a few more that could be an entire encounter on their own, as well. A gauntlet room full of desperate kobolds flinging every trick in the book at you to stop you from reaching their boss would be amazing for building tension or even serve as the climax of the adventure in its own right.
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Sep 24, 2014 19:04
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Did I miss something, or does Eldritch Knight not have much in the way of offensive buffs? I only had the basic PDF when making my character, just wanted to punch dudes hard so I grabbed a 2h and the spec that lets me reroll 1's on the damage roll. Wanted to go into Eldritch for some cool buffs to make me hit harder, or just generally be a physical badass but there doesn't seem to be much in that regard 
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Sep 24, 2014 20:32
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Sab669 posted:Did I miss something, or does Eldritch Knight not have much in the way of offensive buffs? They focus on Abjuration which is more defensive buffs. Palidins focus more on offensive buffs.
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Sep 24, 2014 20:36
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neonchameleon posted:Correction: It's not a feeling that healing surges that recover after 8 hours of sleep really gives. If you only allow extended rests that take a long lazy weekend somewhere safe then people are going to be a whole lot more paranoid - being out of surges feels like being on half hit points with no clerical spells handy - and sometimes 20 miles to go before you get home. Thing is, you can get this feel by... saying you can only take an extended rest in town. Then, the day has to be planned around not just finishing the dungeon, but getting bac to town as well, and the players can husband their resources accordingly. I've had plenty of 4e games, playing only in LFR even, where the party were eking away their last dailies and surges in the final fight and it felt properly tense. It's down to good planning and good DMing, as much as it's down to the system.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:37
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thespaceinvader posted:Thing is, you can get this feel by... saying you can only take an extended rest in town. Yeah. Not to toot my own horn, but if you think that a properly balanced, knife's edge life or death fight can't exist in 4e, read this. I pushed my players to breaking and they fought back and won through their own skill: it was fantastic.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:42
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I think most boss fights in 4e end up like that, actually. It's a little too consistent. I like 5e's approach to natural healing, it seems halfway between how 3e was and how 4e was. You can spend your hit dice during a short rest to roll to regain hp, and then during a long rest you regain some or all of your hit dice to spend again.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:47
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How is it too consistent that the game gives you the most desirable and exciting outcome when it is properly managed? It's almost like they designed it to do that or something!
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Sep 24, 2014 22:50
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greatn posted:I think most boss fights in 4e end up like that, actually. It's a little too consistent. Thing is, for me, healing is something that happens between sessions, usually. The players go home at the end of the evening, the characters get a rest, and you reset next session. It's just too confusing otherwise, to remember what happened last time. And healing is... as quick or as slow as you narrate it to be. Want like-a-crawl oldschool healing? The narration looks like 'you rest for three weeks before continuing'. Want lightning-quick 4e healing? 'You rest overnight before continuing'. Want speed-of-plot healing? 'The magic glade restores you in seconds as if you'd taken a long rest, get all your resources back'. Long rests are, to my mind, mechanical things (reset for next session) that take as long in world as you want them to.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:56
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You know how every summer blockbuster now ends in the same set piece of a city being destroyed in a giant battle between the hero and some invading force? That's all theoretically exciting but after Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Dark, Avengers, Tranformers 1-4, and countless others its a little boring and predictable. 4e to me was the same way. Really exciting the first few times but super predictable and tired by the time you've had a dozen boss combats.
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Sep 24, 2014 22:57
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Except that that analogy has no relation whatsoever to the way that 4e balances combat math. Like, at all.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:00
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Not knowing whether your healing resources will actually help you recover is only exciting in the same way as walking past a coffee table in a dark room.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:02
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Arivia posted:How is it too consistent that the game gives you the most desirable and exciting outcome when it is properly managed? It's almost like they designed it to do that or something! Well, see, if you make your system out of slapdashed components that 99% of the time give you disappointing results, then that 1% of the time when the stars align and you actually get some kind of accidentally awesome result feels that much more special! (an actual real life argument for 3.5 I have heard in person because working at an FLGS is hilarious sometimes)
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Sep 24, 2014 23:06
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Really Pants posted:Not knowing whether your healing resources will actually help you recover is only exciting in the same way as walking past a coffee table in a dark room. Your healing resources are fairly consistent in 5th, you should be able to gauge whether or not its wise to kick open the next door or pick a fight with the guards, and when to run away.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:09
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greatn posted:You know how every summer blockbuster now ends in the same set piece of a city being destroyed in a giant battle between the hero and some invading force? That's all theoretically exciting but after Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Dark, Avengers, Tranformers 1-4, and countless others its a little boring and predictable. You know how every Dogme 95 film restricts itself to location shooting and sound, color film without optical filters, and removing action or genre? That's all theoretically interesting but after Fuckland, Open Hearts, and Gypo, its a little boring and predictable. greatn posted:Your healing resources are fairly consistent in 5th, you should be able to gauge whether or not its wise to kick open the next door or pick a fight with the guards, and when to run away. Sounds dull.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:11
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greatn posted:Your healing resources are fairly consistent in 5th, you should be able to gauge whether or not its wise to kick open the next door or pick a fight with the guards, and when to run away. oh man let me tell you about all the fun times I've had deciding whether or not to quit halfway through the adventure e: or right after the first fight if you're lower than 6th level or so Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 23:13
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You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. You've never enjoyed a combat where you ended up retreating, regrouping, and coming back later?
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Sep 24, 2014 23:22
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greatn posted:You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. Your opinion of us is very hurtful, particular as you have described, on this very page, the ability of the DM to consistently create an amazing boss fight as a negative of a game system. e: this thread needs some better grogs in it. This one is a  little too consistent if you catch my meaning.
ocrumsprug fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 23:30
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greatn posted:You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. Sure I have. Just not when I need to convince my group that it would be nice to spend three days getting all my HP back; so that when we try that fight again, I'm not instantly killed. Whiny Power Gamer = "I am aware that should I try this again, in anything that approaches the pace of the story, I will die. Guess it's just my time to suck it up and die. And since the group already has a cleric, and a wizard, and a warlock, and a bard... I'm the Fighter. Again. Jimmmmm." Do you remember Jimmmmm the fighter? Jimmmm the fighter is a cautionary tale that expressly deliniates why "Well maybe you get healthy, and maybe you don't. The Wizard has all his spells back, so suck it the gently caress up, Ablative Meat." is a horrid gameplay principal.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:32
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What kind of enemies would allow an inferior foe to get away, take a week to heal up, and come back to kill them? You're ruining my immersion here.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:39
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greatn posted:You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. Are you secretly Spoony? Because you sound exactly like him telling all new players to get hosed and the old ways were better 
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Sep 24, 2014 23:40
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greatn posted:You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. You sound like your mother smothered you in the cradle.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:41
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greatn posted:You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. You really love just shoving words into people's mouths, don't you? On topic: I really enjoyed that 4e integrated healing surges as a resource. I liked the subtle differences between how classes healed, like how paladins tended to heal others via their own surges, while clerics would heal using the subject's surges. I didn't mind that it was super-consistent, since different players ran out at different rates, and it was really subject to our (thankfully good) DM's whims. Never ran into the issue of 'we're down to 2 surges, bossfight time' boredom.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:43
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Really Pants posted:What kind of enemies would allow an inferior foe to get away, take a week to heal up, and come back to kill them? You're ruining my immersion here. In fifth you can heal most of your HP in one short rest, or if you already did that, one long rest.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:45
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greatn posted:You sound like a bunch of whiny power gamers who impeach the gm if you don't win every fight, and get sad if your character isn't the strongest, or even if he is the strongest but there is a theoretically stronger character. I think a problem here is that D&D has evolved from "dying [like a bitch]/[in epic fashion to save your allies]" isn't a desirable outcome, because a) it takes longer than 2 minutes to make a new character, and/because; b) poo poo like BONDS_FLAWS_IDEALS encourage the players to maintain some sort of party continuity so that the characters can grow/change/emerge. So of course people run home and take a rest when they're in danger of dying through lack of resources, duh. greatn posted:In fifth you can heal most of your HP in one short rest Unless you roll a 1. 
P.d0t fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 23:45
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You don't run home, you spike the doors and set a rotating watch. Its like you've never played an RPG, Jesus Christ.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:49
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greatn posted:In fifth you can heal most of your HP in one short rest, or if you already did that, one long rest. Okay, so what kind of enemies will wait an hour or a day for people to come back and kill them? You have a chance to heal during rests, since it's all rolled. And as you level up, you get more dice to roll, which means the bell curve for your possible results gets taller, which means healing only gets shittier as you go.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:50
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greatn posted:You don't run home, you spike the doors and set a rotating watch. Its like you've never played an RPG, Jesus Christ. Why don't we skip that part and just have the fun part where me and my friends actually get to engage in life or death heroic combat against the dragon?
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Sep 24, 2014 23:52
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