|
CaptainPsyko posted:I love that the same people who bitch about what a kitchen sink setting Forgotten Realms is fall all over themselves for Eberron though. It's a new, high tech sink with cool new gadgets and accessories.
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 22:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 15:44 |
|
|
CaptainPsyko posted:I love that the same people who bitch about what a kitchen sink setting Forgotten Realms is fall all over themselves for Eberron though. I think its probably because the Eberron sink is one of those fancy efficient kitchen sinks they use in five star restaurants whereas the FR sink has been rusting away in the basement of a derelict apartment building in hell's kitchen clogged with the refuse of the dozen hobos that reside near it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 19, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
To add another point I think one of the reasons Eberron is lauded is that it can carry all the standard trappings of DnD fantasy worlds without seeming to strain to fit anything. If you go down the checklist of races and classes and monsters and items you can find them all on Eberron or readily find places to fit them in, but at the same time Eberron is deft enough to make it seem natural. It's a kitchen sink setting designed in such a way as to distract from the kitchen sink setting. Also it has Halflings riding Dinosaurs and Magic robots and Magitek Trains purely for the purpose of having exciting traintop battles therefore it's better.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
CaptainPsyko posted:I love that the same people who bitch about what a kitchen sink setting Forgotten Realms is fall all over themselves for Eberron though. Eh, it's really "hold Elminster's towel" and "fight some drow via half-baked leftovers from Salvatore novels" that people are sick of. I guarantee you that something cool like fantasy pulp espionage in the Moonsea won't get poopoo'd because one of the books the GM got his ideas from has a "FORGOTTEN REALMS" stamp on it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 00:44
|
|
|
Omnicrom posted:To add another point I think one of the reasons Eberron is lauded is that it can carry all the standard trappings of DnD fantasy worlds without seeming to strain to fit anything. If you go down the checklist of races and classes and monsters and items you can find them all on Eberron or readily find places to fit them in, but at the same time Eberron is deft enough to make it seem natural. It's a kitchen sink setting designed in such a way as to distract from the kitchen sink setting. Also it has Halflings riding Dinosaurs and Magic robots and Magitek Trains purely for the purpose of having exciting traintop battles therefore it's better.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 01:01
|
|
|
CaptainPsyko posted:I love that the same people who bitch about what a kitchen sink setting Forgotten Realms is fall all over themselves for Eberron though. I've seen literally nobody ever do that so
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 01:04
|
|
|
MadScientistWorking posted:Are you familiar with Gamergate and what happened with The Escapist? I'd forgotten The Escapist and Autarch were so closely linked  Edit: Although that means I can now name one game developer (who actually develops games) who's on the gators' side. Rather than all the named spokespeople with a history being people like Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Jack Thompson. Edit2: Actually it's about ethics in game journalism. Once again we find the Gators are against it - with The Escapist recommending Adventurer, Conqueror, King. neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Nov 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 01:54
|
|
|
Lightning Lord posted:Eh, it's really "hold Elminster's towel" and "fight some drow via half-baked leftovers from Salvatore novels" that people are sick of. I guarantee you that something cool like fantasy pulp espionage in the Moonsea won't get poopoo'd because one of the books the GM got his ideas from has a "FORGOTTEN REALMS" stamp on it. As someone whose only exposure to FR has been the first three Drizzt books (which I'm still enjoying) and several hours messing with NWN I have nothing against the setting, it just seems boring. I like the adventures the characters are having but the actual setting is so blandly Fantasy Settingish that there's nothing really to recommend it over random home brew setting X. I mean I think the Underdark started as a FR thing but (in 4E at least) it had become a default for the world.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 04:26
|
|
|
e: Nevermind, probably not worth it.
ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Nov 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 04:32
|
|
|
Ryoshi posted:As someone whose only exposure to FR has been the first three Drizzt books (which I'm still enjoying) and several hours messing with NWN I have nothing against the setting, it just seems boring. I like the adventures the characters are having but the actual setting is so blandly Fantasy Settingish that there's nothing really to recommend it over random home brew setting X. The Underdark goes back to Gygax's Drow series of modules. The Realms just expanded and refined the concept, especially after Drizzt came along and drow became the new hotness instead of just tiresome antagonists.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 06:00
|
|
|
FMguru posted:That was the actual design remit for Eberron - it was the winner of a contest to design a world where every single thing in three 3.x core books could be found and would have a place. Oh I'm well aware of that. What I was saying is that unless you knew that fact or were meaningfully looking at Eberron from that direction you could well forgot or not even realize that Eberron had that deliberate design.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 06:06
|
|
|
MadScientistWorking posted:If you have issues with the 5E consultant issue you certainly don't want to buy ACKs. poo poo, I'd actually completely forgotten about ACKS's connection with the Escapist, and in light of the Escapist's recent "coverage" of Gamergate I can't with a good conscience recommend that anyone actually support them. Anyway, with regards to Eberron and Forgotten Realms: Forgotten Realms is the setting through which I first discovered D&D (through the Baldur's Gate games and Bob Salvatore's novels), but Eberron was the setting that I first fell in love with. I only got into D&D during 3e, and up until the release of Eberron all the settings that existed for 3e were Greyhawk (which never received all that much support in terms of setting material so I could never get into it) and Forgotten Realms (which had almost twenty years worth of history and metaplot to digest at that point, so even though it was a familiar setting it wasn't all that easy to get into). I can only speak for myself, but I think for a lot of people in my "generation" of players who got into D&D during 3e Eberron was sort of like our Planescape: an interesting and atypical setting that turned the assumptions of D&D into something beyond faux-medieval Europe with elves. Also, while I do have a soft spot for Forgotten Realms because of all the setting material and novels I consumed at some point or another, I have to say that Eberron is a much more game-friendly setting. One of Eberron's biggest selling points was the fact that they set an arbitrary start date for the campaign and then had no world-changing metaplot. Because Forgotten Realms exists beyond the tabletop game, you can bet your rear end that a couple of years of novels will actually advance the metaplot of the setting to such an extent that eventually you and your group will actually be playing in the "wrong" Forgotten Realms. Also contributing to Eberron's game-friendliness is the fact that it doesn't have quite as big a cast of bigass important NPCs that are secretly doing all the important poo poo behind the scenes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 09:24
|
|
|
Even better, Eberron nicely aligns with the 4e approach that player characters are unusual and special, and the world isn't full of level 20-30 mages. A greater variety of campaigns are supported more robustly - you want to do politics, a hard boiled detective story, a fantasy western, a gothic horror, a venture into the unknown jungle to play fantasy Indiana Jones? Eberron had you covered for all of that!
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 10:46
|
|
|
Ryoshi posted:As someone whose only exposure to FR has been the first three Drizzt books (which I'm still enjoying) and several hours messing with NWN I have nothing against the setting, it just seems boring. I like the adventures the characters are having but the actual setting is so blandly Fantasy Settingish that there's nothing really to recommend it over random home brew setting X. Essentially, the Forgotten Realms are a published version of Ed Greenwood's random home brew setting X. That's the thing they do. TheAwfulWaffle fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Nov 20, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2014 16:06
|
|
|
Blamestorm posted:Even better, Eberron nicely aligns with the 4e approach that player characters are unusual and special, and the world isn't full of level 20-30 mages. A greater variety of campaigns are supported more robustly - you want to do politics, a hard boiled detective story, a fantasy western, a gothic horror, a venture into the unknown jungle to play fantasy Indiana Jones? Eberron had you covered for all of that! I like the way that Eberron handles magic and levels. Sure you have all these magicians around, but a lot of them are working-class magewrights who only know spells which help their occupation. Or belong to one of the Dragonmarked Houses and have a tattoo mark which allows them to cast a single spell a few times per day. So the PC mages are like Shadowrun mages: they have magic, but more importantly they're competent enough to go out and risk life and limb in adventures where the day-job mages will get creamed.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 00:27
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:I like the way that Eberron handles magic and levels. Sure you have all these magicians around, but a lot of them are working-class magewrights who only know spells which help their occupation. Or belong to one of the Dragonmarked Houses and have a tattoo mark which allows them to cast a single spell a few times per day. I like the symmetry this creates where PC magic users are to magewrights what PC fighters are to town guards and mercenaries, or what PC rouges are to your average cut purse or bandit.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 03:02
|
|
|
Vorpal Cat posted:I like the symmetry this creates where PC magic users are to magewrights what PC fighters are to town guards and mercenaries, or what PC rouges are to your average cut purse or bandit. The stupid thing is that this somehow isn't one of the game's core assumptions.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 03:12
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:The stupid thing is that this somehow isn't one of the game's core assumptions. Well, in 3rd Edition there was also the Adept NPC Class, who were meant to be fledgling spellcasters and village wise folk. However, due to how useful even utility spells are they and magewrights ended up outranking some of the shittier PC classes such as the Fighter and Samurai (Tiers 5 and 6, the worst of the worst). As to 4th Edition (I don't own the core books so I'm guessing), there should be a Ritualist feat that anybody can take. Both mechanics are different, but they can more than adequately represent wage mages. In some old Eberron-related news, Keith Baker's trying to drum up support on RPGnet, EN World, and elsewhere to see how much support there is for Eberron, and said that he's trying to get WotC to support the line in the future. If they do (and I don't see why they wouldn't unless they don't care about the 3.X market), I'd be interested in hearing how they implement the idea for 5E. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Nov 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 03:26
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Well, in 3rd Edition there was also the Adept NPC Class, who were meant to be fledgling spellcasters and village wise folk. However, due to how useful even utility spells are they and magewrights ended up outranking some of the shittier PC classes such as the Fighter and Samurai (Tiers 5 and 6, the worst of the worst). To be fair, some classes were in tier 5 and 6 not because they were terrible, but just because they were supremely inflexible. Fighters, for instance, could build to be uberchargers that shat out something like over one thousand damage to an enemy in a single round, or could do some neat area denial stuff, but you had to build your entire character around one thing and once you achieved it, you couldn't rework your character to do something else. Contrast this to Clerics and Druids who had something like 1-3 required feats and after those feats were taken, additional feats really didn't matter too much. That meant you could more or less rework your entire character just by selecting different spells each day, and since Clerics and Druids have access to all spells on their class list...
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 03:51
|
|
|
OK, so here's a pretty minor thing that manages to bug me. In the DMG there's rules for traps. And they give advice for how much damage a trap should do based on the party's level and where the trap sits on the nuisance-death spectrum. So far so good. But trap damage is always measured in d10's. It goes from 1d10 up to 24d10. Now the latter is a stupidly large number to roll but my real issue is this: falling damage in 5e is expressed in d6's. So if I want a nuisance pit trap for a 1st level party I can either go with 1d6 falling damage (which isn't enough by their guidelines) or upgrade to 2d6 falling damage (which is too much by their guidelines). I know it's trivial to work around and I don't expect this to ever trouble me in practical terms but from an aesthetics point of view I can't understand why they would use one die type for one hazard and another die type for another hazard, especially given that the two often go hand in hand. Why the gently caress not build one single chart for all hazards that range from traps, to falling, to rockslides, to lava geysers, etc.?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 03:53
|
|
|
Sage Genesis posted:Why the gently caress not build one single chart for all hazards that range from traps, to falling, to rockslides, to lava geysers, etc.? As we've seen for other unified mechanics, this would then feel dry and/or bland, because all traps and hazards would be exactly the same. 
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 04:27
|
|
|
Sage Genesis posted:OK, so here's a pretty minor thing that manages to bug me. Just have your pit trap do d10s because it has spikes in the bottom or whatever?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 10:05
|
|
|
Just do away with the pit trap entirely and have the large square hole in the floor that looks to be empty actually be full of gelatinous cube.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 10:33
|
|
|
Another DMG preview, this time for poisons:  (there was another preview yesterday for traps but for some reason the website that posted it, posted the second page as a 100 dpi thumbnail making it completely unreadable, and that was the one with the actual stats so I skipped it)
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 19:38
|
|
|
I don't think I've ever used the poisons list in a DMG after AD&D with its "Type A, Type B..." descriptions. Is it usual to phrase the effect as "...become poisoned for 4 hours, the poisoned creature is blinded"? It seems like a really unnatural way to say "when poisoned by <poison name>, the victim is <status> for <time>". Is the point to try to make it clear that you're both poisoned and blinded and can be fixed by something that fixes either of those?
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 21:27
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:I don't think I've ever used the poisons list in a DMG after AD&D with its "Type A, Type B..." descriptions. Yeah it's this basically, you have both the poisoned condition and the blinded condition. I don't know why they don't do something like bold or capitalise actual important game terms, to make it clearer. Harthacnut fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Nov 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 23:42
|
|
|
Also loving ARGH 'truth juice, make a DC whatever CON save. Cannot knowingly tell a lie.' Couldn't just leave it there, could you, fuckers? No. Had to add on 'as if under the effect of $Wizard'. gently caress right off and let cool things be cool on their own loving merits without making them like spells you unimaginative Bigby's Gaping Arseholes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 21, 2014 23:55
|
|
|
So why in the bloody blue blazes have they not yet figured out that poisons with set DCs are poo poo? Just give certain classes abilities that let them use poisons, and then set those DCs to something reasonable that scales with the character. After all, it's not that much of a stretch to have a character get better at brewing/sourcing/applying poisons such that they become more potent over time. Every time I see poisons in this game I just see such a missed opportunity because precisely nobody gives a poo poo about there being fifteen different kinds of poisons of mild annoyance that very quickly fall out of being useful. Even worse, because of the whole saving throw mechanic, it's not like poisons are even a guaranteed kill like they are in the fiction that the sorts of stories are based off of!
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:17
|
|
|
Dirk the Average posted:So why in the bloody blue blazes have they not yet figured out that poisons with set DCs are poo poo? Supposedly "bounded accuracy" will make anything with a set DC more relevant to potential failure than, say, a set DC in 3E or 4E where a result of 30 might be merely average for a high-level character, but otherwise I agree with you. They already have a mechanic for classes to come up with dynamically increasing saving throw DCs [8 + proficiency + primary attribute modifier].
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:20
|
|
|
I never really thought much about making a poison based d&d character and now I understand why. My subconscious must've been trying to spare me the pain
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:23
|
|
|
For some reason, every edition of D&D has looked down on poisons as something only evil characters use, except for the odd spell with a poison effect.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:40
|
|
|
You already know why. AD&D did it that way.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:45
|
|
|
Positoxins were hilarious. Poison is evil, poison that is called something else is good. Ok, so they apparently were called ravages. That's descriptive.. Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Nov 22, 2014 |
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:50
|
|
|
The 3.5 Book of Exalted Deeds had ravages, which were poisons that only hurt evil people so they were perfectly fine to use. I mean, using Terinav root to drain 1d6/2d6 dexterity from an evil creature is evil, but using Golden Ice to drain 1d6/2d6 dexterity from an evil creature is perfectly good.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
So dosing an evil person with a powder that makes them impossibly horny, but not able to get off is good. That sounds like a plot from Buffy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 04:58
|
|
|
Rannos22 posted:I never really thought much about making a poison based d&d character and now I understand why. My subconscious must've been trying to spare me the pain It's never a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 06:33
|
|
|
I've always found poisons and diseases to be so underwhelming in games. On the slim chance that a character actually succumbs to one, they are so easy to treat it's a wonder they even bother including them.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 06:52
|
|
|
kannonfodder posted:I've always found poisons and diseases to be so underwhelming in games. On the slim chance that a character actually succumbs to one, they are so easy to treat it's a wonder they even bother including them. ProfessorCirno posted:You already know why. I remember back in high school playing an old computer RPG called Star Trail where just walking from town to town was generally more lethal than the actual combat because for some reason the designers had decided to include a random disease system. The game was not about diseases and there was, for the most part, nothing to do regarding swamp rot or whatever aside from sub-Oregon Trail level level 'rest and eat until it goes away' but I'm sure that whoever created the systems for PCs contracting the various ailments would tell you it was very realistic. That kind of stuff appeals to a certain type of gamer and I would be happy if we had a patron saint to come and drive them into the sea.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 09:46
|
|
|
kannonfodder posted:I've always found poisons and diseases to be so underwhelming in games. On the slim chance that a character actually succumbs to one, they are so easy to treat it's a wonder they even bother including them. I made a drow rogue in 4e based around poison damage (if not actual poisons) v  v
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 10:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 15:44 |
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:I made a drow rogue in 4e based around poison damage (if not actual poisons) v I had a friend that could, and did, poison rocks to death, thanks to the Assassin (IIRC) having a feat that let you ignore poison immunity.
|
|
#
?
Nov 22, 2014 10:39
|
|
