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ascendance posted:If I ran 4e again, I would just introduce built in math fix bonuses, limit magic items to about 3 per player, and not have magic items give bonuses - powers only. Yeah, this is pretty much the correct answer. The "inherent bonuses" thing they introduced with Dark Sun was a brilliant way to remove the "required" magic items from the game and roll that stuff into your character. Then you can give out only a few cool magic items like a sword that shoots fireballs instead of going, "OK, the party's level 17, so I'd better chuck a few +4 cloaks of protection in the dragon's treasure hoard or they'll be behind the curve on defenses". The other area of bloat is feats. I'd far rather the maximum number of feats was something like six, instead of something like eighteen. Of course, some people love the idea of poring through massive lists of character options and picking stuff that synergises, but my players generally aren't the "bone up on the game between sessions" types, so a small list of powerful options would suit them really well. ----- This kind of stuff is why I'm so butthurt that Next ended up another rehash of the Weird Wizard Show - I'd have loved to see a 4.5 with good monster maths, faster combat, better magic items, less feat bloat and other tweaks like that in it from the start, but unfortunately it was not to be.
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Dec 19, 2014 17:51
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Azran posted:I remember people complaining how 4e NPCs do not work like PCs creation-wise. It always sounded silly to me - who the hell wants to go through character creation for every single npc? I knew a guy like this. If the NPCs weren't statted and equipped the same way as the PCs, then it wasn't fair. They were firm in their belief that enemies shouldn't be able to do something unless it was possible for the players to do the same. Those trash goblins have poison arrows and pots of glue to throw? Where can I buy these things? Oh those are so expensive, how could level 0 goblins afford them? It's so unrealistic.
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Dec 19, 2014 17:56
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Elblanco posted:You guys do know that Neverwinter exists right? It's a 4e free to play mmo set in Neverwinter. It's not the most popular game on the market, but it's a solid game now and has a decent player base. And that it lacks the tools that kept Neverwinter Nights popular for over ten years after its release?
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Dec 19, 2014 18:00
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ImpactVector posted:That's kind of a tough question. Is there any particular reason you skipped 4e? Yeah, 4e was just out when I was at a broke-rear end place in my life, so I never switched up. On the other hand, Gort posted:Of course, some people love the idea of poring through massive lists of character options and picking stuff that synergises, but my players generally aren't the "bone up on the game between sessions" types, so a small list of powerful options would suit them really well. With half the people in my current group, this might be problematic. To this day, I'm still pretty sure I'm the only person there who has bothered to read the FATE SRD. I pull a lot of punches to avoid party wipes -_-
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Dec 19, 2014 18:01
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You could always just bundle powers and baked in feats into "packs", as if they were moba characters. It works wonders for my group.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:03
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Play Dungeon World.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:03
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Or 13th Age. It has (much) shorter power lists than 4E and uses abstracted distances (that in practice function like) Fate zones instead of a squared grid. (The freeform background system that takes the place of 3E/4E skills is also somewhat similar to Fate aspects.) Nancy_Noxious fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 18:10
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Azran posted:I remember people complaining how 4e NPCs do not work like PCs creation-wise. It always sounded silly to me - who the hell wants to go through character creation for every single npc? I never understood this either. The entire point (or at least 99% of the point) of NPCs is to be bowled over by PCs during combat, so why wouldn't you have a completely separate method for statting up NPCs to just what you need for combat, and with whatever numbers you need so that they'll be a challenge. ascendance posted:If I ran 4e again, I would just introduce built in math fix bonuses, limit magic items to about 3 per player, and not have magic items give bonuses - powers only. This is precisely what I'm planning to do if I ever ran 4E as well. Actually, it's a little weird to me because Next kind of comes close to this via Proficiency: 1. Scaling is compressed down to 20 levels instead of 30 2. Scaling doesn't go up by +1 every level 3. Player attack scales with monster AC precisely by level (and attribute bonus), none of that "players get half-level while monsters get full-level so you need to make up the rest with items or Inherent bonuses" 4. The DMG flat out states that players should be limited to 3 magic items that just does cool stuff because you don't need the flat static bonuses The 2 main flaws are that Proficiency does not apply to AC, and so there's a bit of scaling there that ends up skewed at the last end of the level range, and that defense mechanics turned away from the Fort/Ref/Will model, but otherwise there's a bit of "cleaned up 4E" somewhere in that pile that's just struggling to get out.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:11
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deadly_pudding posted:With half the people in my current group, this might be problematic. To this day, I'm still pretty sure I'm the only person there who has bothered to read the FATE SRD. I pull a lot of punches to avoid party wipes -_- goatface posted:Play Dungeon World. If you still must play a D&D, 5e could work. But only if you're prepared for a 3e-level of work as DM to offset spellcasters trivializing things and the wonky CR system. Nancy_Noxious posted:Or 13th Age.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:13
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Okay, I think that's enough advice for me to figure something out. I might grab that Dungeon World Bundle of Holding for now and see what happens.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:16
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Azran posted:I remember people complaining how 4e NPCs do not work like PCs creation-wise. It always sounded silly to me - who the hell wants to go through character creation for every single npc? I had this frustrating argument with a friend just last night. He seems to think 'everything should follow the same rules'. When pressed for a reason why, the defense is always 'just because'. Mostly I think it's an unwillingness to change - 3.x did it this way, why would we change to something IT BEGINS fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 18:22
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Azran posted:I remember people complaining how 4e NPCs do not work like PCs creation-wise. It always sounded silly to me - who the hell wants to go through character creation for every single npc? Insane grognards, generally. The people for whom the game system IS the world (sometimes to the extent that the characters know about turns and AC, seriously), and for whom it therefore makes no sense that one human should be built any different from another human.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:34
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IT BEGINS posted:I had this frustrating argument with a friend just last night. He seems to think 'everything should follow the same rules'. When pressed for a reason why, the defense is always 'just because'. Mostly I think it's an unwillingness to change - 3.x did it this way, why would we change to something Was he a DM who actually had to use said rules, or was he happy for someone else to do all the tedious NPC generation?
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Dec 19, 2014 18:45
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I had a dm once who refused to use xp budgets or enforced character roles in his game. So enemies would fall from the roof whenever he realized the encounter was too hard or they would kill each other if it was too easy.
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Dec 19, 2014 18:50
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IT BEGINS posted:I had this frustrating argument with a friend just last night. He seems to think 'everything should follow the same rules'. When pressed for a reason why, the defense is always 'just because'. Mostly I think it's an unwillingness to change - 3.x did it this way, why would we change to something To some people, roleplaying is all about some reality physics-simulator. If one guy can do Thing X because of Ability Z, then everybody who should be able to do Thing X does so because of Ability Z. If a guy can just use Thing X out of the blue for no other reason than the DM saying so then causality broke down and it feels fake and made up. Problem being, of course, that in an RPG everything is literally fake and made up by definition. But I suppose for some people it helps if they can pretend otherwise for a moment? I must admit I don't quite understand it.
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Dec 19, 2014 19:09
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I think the word you're all looking for is "verisimilitude" 
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Dec 19, 2014 19:29
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IT BEGINS posted:I had this frustrating argument with a friend just last night. He seems to think 'everything should follow the same rules'. When pressed for a reason why, the defense is always 'just because'. Mostly I think it's an unwillingness to change - 3.x did it this way, why would we change to something I used to be really concerned about being able to model stuff to exacting specifications in rules for whatever game I was playing, but at some point I concluded that I'd rather have bitchin setpiece battles actually pan out that way, and not just have the PCs leverage their full might to critically wound the Big Bad in the first round.
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Dec 19, 2014 19:33
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Sage Genesis posted:Problem being, of course, that in an RPG everything is literally fake and made up by definition. But I suppose for some people it helps if they can pretend otherwise for a moment? I must admit I don't quite understand it. There seems to be a bigger push in TRPGs for games to be "real-real" (internally consistent?) than in CRPGs. I mean, I was shocked to learn that "Fighters can't do that thing because it's not physically possible" was an actual argument in D&D because I had grown up with games where "Warriors" could charge, disarm, push, stun, bash, rage-out, etc. and it was entirely natural, and yet here we are.
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Dec 19, 2014 19:53
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Gort posted:Was he a DM who actually had to use said rules, or was he happy for someone else to do all the tedious NPC generation? He's mostly the kind of DM that doesn't really realize the only reason his campaigns are any good is that we have a great group that can make any campaign good. He tends to use enemies straight from the book except when it fails horribly and he has to bump HP by 100hp or have half the goblins run away for no apparent reason. I find it most interesting that many of the people that argue for having all this 'fiddly poo poo' don't actually use it. I've had several DMs that claim to love 3.5 because of how LEGO-esque it is, only to constantly use stock monsters and stick solely to single-classed Core-only characters.
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Dec 19, 2014 20:08
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IT BEGINS posted:I find it most interesting that many of the people that argue for having all this 'fiddly poo poo' don't actually use it. I've had several DMs that claim to love 3.5 because of how LEGO-esque it is, only to constantly use stock monsters and stick solely to single-classed Core-only characters. Like I was discussing earlier, I think a not-insignificant number of people just like knowing that the game they play is full of complex moving parts and options even if they never actually use them. Maybe they feel like they're getting more bang for their buck, that more options is an inherent sign of quality, maybe they like knowing they could dig deeper into things if they ever wanted to, who knows.
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Dec 19, 2014 20:17
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Sage Genesis posted:To some people, roleplaying is all about some reality physics-simulator. If one guy can do Thing X because of Ability Z, then everybody who should be able to do Thing X does so because of Ability Z. If a guy can just use Thing X out of the blue for no other reason than the DM saying so then causality broke down and it feels fake and made up. I think that internally consistent narrative is important, though. In fact, I think just about everybody would agree that it's important. If I encounter a goblin war party that throws jars of glue at the party, I would expect to be able to use that glue to solve a puzzle later on. The trick is that the story being internally consistent needn't mean that the rules have to be internally consistent. So long as the abstraction you use to model the goblins doesn't somehow invalidate natural conclusions about the narrative, you're golden. That's what grogs miss about verisimilitude; they prattle on and on about the power of the DM and yet they want the rules to be the source of the consistency. The DM is perfectly capable of handshaking between a rules abstraction and a PC-focused action, whether it be a bottle of magic glue found on an enemy, a special power hereto unknown belonging to a Lich or why an enemy Blackguard has damage resistance to model his toughness instead of a high AC. Verisimilitude is the appearance of an internally consistent reality. You don't actually have to create a universe complete with its own always-mechanically-sensible physics system. EDIT: I also think a certain amount of this has to do with how much you're willing to abstract the mechanics to get at the narrative. Take the example of the Blackguard. As the DM I've chosen to set his AC to a sensible, slightly-higher-than-average level, but given him Resist (all) 5 with Vulnerability (Holy) 10. This creates a tough NPC who can shrug off damage and has a vulnerability to Holy without the frustration of constantly missing. One group of players looks at this and says, "okay, this guy is tough", which is the intention. "Is tough" is all that the mechanics are trying to communicate and how precisely that is abstracted ought not to matter. Another group of players looks at this and says, "Plate mail should confer an AC of 22. That means we'll almost never hit but that's the way plate mail works and I'm appalled that I hit on an 11." Mendrian fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 20:18
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Kai Tave posted:Like I was discussing earlier, I think a not-insignificant number of people just like knowing that the game they play is full of complex moving parts and options even if they never actually use them. Maybe they feel like they're getting more bang for their buck, that more options is an inherent sign of quality, maybe they like knowing they could dig deeper into things if they ever wanted to, who knows. "Oh yeah? Can your smartphone screencast to seven HD devices simultaneously? Huh, didn't think so."
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Dec 19, 2014 20:19
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goatface posted:I knew a guy like this. If the NPCs weren't statted and equipped the same way as the PCs, then it wasn't fair. They were firm in their belief that enemies shouldn't be able to do something unless it was possible for the players to do the same. Well,I can kinda understand being disappointed if you can't take equipment that they have. The core of the game is killing things and taking their stuff, after all. From a 'pretty mechanics' point of view, it feels a little less artificial to know that your level 1 wizard is effectively the same as all the other level 1 wizards out there, but it's usually not worth the GM effort. I think there are definitely circumstances where you've got an archnemesis or a rival or something, where them being on 'even ground' with the player characters from a mechanics standpoint would definitely make them seem more 'real' than their faceless minions, but that's still possible. Basically the same thing as playing a JRPG and noticing some NPCS have unique portraits and character designs, while the rest of them kinda are boring and detail-free. Any GM worth his salt in 3e fudged NPC stats anyway. After all, who gives a gently caress about what the fifteenth barbarian's bonus to knowledge: kittens is, or what first level spells Warrick the Wargsoul War Wizard Warden learned eight levels ago? I remember seeing a bunch of people developing autoscaling 3e classes purely to be disposable NPCS.
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Dec 19, 2014 20:54
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Tunicate posted:Well,I can kinda understand being disappointed if you can't take equipment that they have. The core of the game is killing things and taking their stuff, after all. Yeah, my 3e trick of choice was "What weird trick can I have this boss NPC do sometime in the fight to piss off all my PCs?" Sometimes it's a single really irritating spell, sometimes it's going Barbarian Rage when the party kills one of his pets, sometimes it's an ability that that monster or character archetype shouldn't normally have. I was a fan of the "bag of HP with an attack and defense stat, plus one hosed up thing" school of NPC design.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:08
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Makes sense, yeah. I was statting up casters by just printing out the text of three or four spells. Maybe do something weird like a metamagic. Track HP until it looks like he should be dying based on how the combat is feeling, then have him pull out the best spell to go out in a flashy way.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:20
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Are there organized play events for Next? If yes, how well do they work? My idea of an organized play event is that you have to play the game RAW (or an event specific RAW) because it's supposed to be plug and play across multiple / tables. But what happens the first time someone asks about surprise rules?
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Dec 19, 2014 21:23
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That's the surprise!
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Dec 19, 2014 21:44
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Adventurer's League will have rulings, not rules, so that your local Adventurer's League will be unique! It will be YOUR D&D, not the D&D some corporate guy at "Wi$$ard$ of the Coa$t" is trying to sell you. Also theatre of the mind
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Dec 19, 2014 22:20
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Tunicate posted:Well,I can kinda understand being disappointed if you can't take equipment that they have. The core of the game is killing things and taking their stuff, after all. I agree with the first part. It's a bit lame when you can't take their stuff. If it would cause problems for the PCs to take their opponents' stuff, then there are various ways of dealing with it that don't involve saying "you can't do that". The second part? I dunno, I like the idea that the PCs are big unique heroes a lot more than the idea that they're much the same as lots of other people. Also, you've got the problem that no version of D&D has ever really been made with PvP in mind, so you probably want to build your boss NPCs more like monsters to make the fights work out well.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:53
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AlphaDog posted:I agree with the first part. It's a bit lame when you can't take their stuff. If it would cause problems for the PCs to take their opponents' stuff, then there are various ways of dealing with it that don't involve saying "you can't do that".
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Dec 19, 2014 23:02
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It was less that, more of the system mastery/metagamey "He can only do that if he has this exact combination of really specific and expensive items and feats so he can't have..." and "They shouldn't be able to do [cutscene move that sets up the battlefield and introduces the enemies] because..." with a lot of "Why can't my spells do the same things his do?" The same guy was also apparently allergic to refluffing. If it wasn't exactly as the book described, you were cheating as far as he was concerned. I only managed two sessions with him. edit - He was a nice enough chap to talk to normally though, did very nice character drawings. Had a bit of a fixation with VtM larping, travelled all over the place for it. goatface fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 23:04
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goatface posted:It was less that, more of the system mastery/metagamey "He can only do that if he has this exact combination of really specific and expensive items and feats so he can't have..." and "They shouldn't be able to do [cutscene move that sets up the battlefield and introduces the enemies] because..." with a lot of "Why can't my spells do the same things his do?" Yeah, it's the dark secret a lot of 3e grogs (because let's not forget, only 3e ever did this) won't admit to. "Verisimilitude" actually ends up meaning "metagaming." Their sense of realism comes from nothing that happens in-play and is linked only to them reading the book. The perfect, most verisimilitude-filled game, is the one they never play. Actually playing the game can only ruin what they've read.
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Dec 19, 2014 23:17
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I don't get the "everything by the same exact rules" attitude. I mean, I sorta get it as a design conceit, but I don't understand why you'd want D&D to work like that. I have never played with, or even heard of, anyone (even in 3.x, the "all the same rules" edition) that would hear the plot setup "The evil wizard is casting a massive spell that summons an army of demons. You have to stop it before the dark of the moon next month, or it will be the end of the woooooooooorld!" and immediately starts bitching because there's no spell in the rulebook that takes a month to cast and summons an army of demons at the dark of the moon and ends the world and gently caress you this is so unrealistic. What I mean is, I sort of understand why people like the idea of the evil wizard you fight being built on the same rules as a PC wizard, but I don't think those people have actually thought the concept all the way through to end. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Dec 19, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2014 23:28
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How do I get to run NEXT organized play? I've always wanted to get into encounters, but I have no idea what kind of store and what I need to do to make it happen.
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Dec 19, 2014 23:34
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AlphaDog posted:What I mean is, I sort of understand why people like the idea of the evil wizard you fight being built on the same rules as a PC wizard, but I don't think those people have actually thought the concept all the way through to end. "What, are ya fuckin' surprised?" ProfessorCirno posted:Yeah, it's the dark secret a lot of 3e grogs (because let's not forget, only 3e ever did this) won't admit to. "Verisimilitude" actually ends up meaning "metagaming." Their sense of realism comes from nothing that happens in-play and is linked only to them reading the book. It's this.
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Dec 20, 2014 00:15
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AlphaDog posted:I don't get the "everything by the same exact rules" attitude. I mean, I sorta get it as a design conceit, but I don't understand why you'd want D&D to work like that. B-but what if I want an army of demons
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Dec 20, 2014 00:31
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Tunicate posted:B-but what if I want an army of demons Have they seen what happens to bad guys around here?
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Dec 20, 2014 00:38
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Tunicate posted:B-but what if I want an army of demons Take the Leadership feat. 
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Dec 20, 2014 00:52
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Gerdalti posted:I probably am being anecdotely obtuse in this situation too. I tend to read, and research, and read more, and dig into mechanics. This sort of thing, despite very limited experience with this system, is sort of my wheel house. I'm late to the party, but you seem to be greatly overestimating the cognitive abilities of nerds. Popular media greatly inflated the notion of the "smart nerd", but the overall section of people the descriptor gets tossed on probably don't even manage to hit that on an average. Not every nerd is a math nerd, and reading comprehension can often by straight up abysmal.
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Dec 20, 2014 02:49
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Obligatum VII posted:I'm late to the party, but you seem to be greatly overestimating the cognitive abilities of nerds. Popular media greatly inflated the notion of the "smart nerd", but the overall section of people the descriptor gets tossed on probably don't even manage to hit that on an average. Not every nerd is a math nerd, and reading comprehension can often by straight up abysmal. Most grogs were nerds who ultimately couldn't hack it in actual nerd industries. Of course, they uniformly believe that they are the super smart nerd who knows everything about math, science, and history. It's why they love convoluted mechanics - it lets them flaunt how incredibly smart and witty and intelligent they are, even when the mechanics aren't even hard, they're just dumb. Take how much pride people had - and still loving have - in THAC0. "It kept the unwanted DUMB players out of the hobby!" No, you dumbfuck, it's not that they couldn't understand it, it's that they didn't give enough of a poo poo to bother!
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Dec 20, 2014 03:00
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