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obeyasia posted:I think by "projects" he means government subsidized housing and or the "ghetto". Not so thinly veiled classist or racism.
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Jan 19, 2015 15:32
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obeyasia posted:I think by "projects" he means government subsidized housing and or the "ghetto". Not so thinly veiled classist or racism.
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Jan 19, 2015 15:52
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Hey, while we're talking about horrible AD&D clones, I recently stumbled upon the Hackmaster basic rules and while groggy as gently caress in its own way the game actually seems kind of fun. I do have some rules-based trouble because of ambiguous wording so I thought this thread if any would be the right place to ask. So, in melee the enemy rolls a d20+modifiers to attack and the defender rolls d20-4+modifiers. That much I get. Now, the way shields factor into this is kind of ambiguous: It says that shields negate the -4 modifier to the defense roll and I can see that, because even the smallest shield adds +4 to your defense roll. But the way I'm reading it is that shields not only negate the -4 but also add their defense modifier, which would mean that a character using a small shield would, in fact, be rolling d20+4+other modifiers. This seems kind of overkill, but because of the sort of ambiguous wording I'm not sure which way is right. Help?
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Jan 19, 2015 16:24
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ascendance posted:We want a source, or a blog post.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:36
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Castles and Crusades still had a completely mundane Fighter and that just turned me off instantly, despite really being quite like an OSR recast with d20 mechanics.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:43
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MadScientistWorking posted:Actually if I remember correctly it was an abandoned building that they were cleaning out and he pretty much equated the homeless in the building with D&D monsters. Oh man, I remember that. Didn't the guy also get upset when people understandably had a problem with this?
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Jan 19, 2015 16:44
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MadScientistWorking posted:Go look in the trouble tickets for RPG.net though I find it really amusing that you're skeptical given that its a pretty mild claim for the RPG industry.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:46
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ascendance posted:No, man, I just want to repost the original quote to another forum I'm on.
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Jan 19, 2015 16:59
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obeyasia posted:I think by "projects" he means government subsidized housing and or the "ghetto". Not so thinly veiled classist or racism. She, but yes. @ascendance: lol. mad one of your icons turned out to be poo poo?
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Jan 19, 2015 17:05
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Arivia posted:She, but yes.
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Jan 19, 2015 17:08
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Ratpick posted:Hey, while we're talking about horrible AD&D clones, I recently stumbled upon the Hackmaster basic rules and while groggy as gently caress in its own way the game actually seems kind of fun. I do have some rules-based trouble because of ambiguous wording so I thought this thread if any would be the right place to ask. Looking at the section on shields, nothing says it negates the -4 modifier to the defense roll. It just says what modifier it adds to the defense roll. So, I think it's just a straight addition to the defense roll. In other words, with a small shield, your defense roll would be 1d20 + modifiers, not 1d20 + 4 + modifiers. I'm basing this on Hackmaster Basic.
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Jan 19, 2015 18:12
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Covok posted:Looking at the section on shields, nothing says it negates the -4 modifier to the defense roll. It just says what modifier it adds to the defense roll. So, I think it's just a straight addition to the defense roll. In other words, with a small shield, your defense roll would be 1d20 + modifiers, not 1d20 + 4 + modifiers. I'm basing this on Hackmaster Basic. Yeah, I'm thinking that's the way to do it, but the section in the combat chapter about shields says this: quote:When defending against a typical attack, an unshielded defender rolls a d20p-4 and adds his Defense Bonus (any Wisdom, Dexterity or additional defense modifiers), compar- ing the result against the attacker’s d20p plus Attack Bonus. Using a shield, however, eliminates the “-4” penalty and improves the defender’s roll to d20p plus Defense Bonus (as noted above and including the shield’s own defense bonus). I tried searching on Kenzer's website for an answer to this, but thus far it's yielding nothing. Searching elsewhere on the internet has also yielded contradictory results.
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Jan 19, 2015 18:29
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Ratpick posted:I tried searching on Kenzer's website for an answer to this, but thus far it's yielding nothing. Searching elsewhere on the internet has also yielded contradictory results. ...isn't the entire point of Hackmaster to have rules that might be interpreted in multiple ways to the players' varying advantage?
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Jan 19, 2015 19:09
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MadScientistWorking posted:Go look in the trouble tickets for RPG.net though I find it really amusing that you're skeptical given that its a pretty mild claim for the RPG industry. It's actually pretty normal and acceptable to want to see proof that someone said something awful before repeating it though? Even in the clusterfuck that is the RPG industry.
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Jan 19, 2015 19:12
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Glazius posted:...isn't the entire point of Hackmaster to have rules that might be interpreted in multiple ways to the players' varying advantage? Yeah, good point. I just came to Hackmaster Basic with the assumption that the game is more clearly written than its predecessor. Now I've read from multiple sources that not only do shields negate the -4 penalty to defense rolls you also get to add the defense bonus from the shield on top of that, which makes shields doubly awesome in the game. I guess it's kind of offset by the fact that the very act of having a shield will make most attacks hit your shield, which can still potentially damage you and at worst destroy your shield. Anyway, thanks for the help, I might have to give this game a shot at some point. Baroque mechanics aside it seems pretty fun.
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Jan 19, 2015 19:21
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Looking at that snippet, it definitely seems your right. The fact Shields have HP and can be broken is the balancing force for this, I suppose.
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Jan 19, 2015 19:25
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That seems to be based off a bunch of OSR houserules about shields (or just bucklers) working as ablative armor instead of as passive AC bonuses.
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Jan 19, 2015 19:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:That seems to be based off a bunch of OSR houserules about shields (or just bucklers) working as ablative armor instead of as passive AC bonuses.
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Jan 19, 2015 19:46
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TheSpookyDanger posted:It's actually pretty normal and acceptable to want to see proof that someone said something awful before repeating it though? Even in the clusterfuck that is the RPG industry. Edit: It was definitely the latter: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?727490-Wednesday-morning-dungeon-crawl-for-real gently caress those guys. ascendance fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 19:50
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Here's a question: in the context of BECMI's roll-under mechanic for skill checks, what's the highest circumstantial bonus and penalty you've ever handed out?
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Jan 20, 2015 18:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:That seems to be based off a bunch of OSR houserules about shields (or just bucklers) working as ablative armor instead of as passive AC bonuses. It's also a rule in Old School Hack, one of my favorite not-D&Ds. Shields come in two varieties, light and heavy, and yet can both be used to reduce a single attack's damage to one. A light shield breaks immediately after used, a heavy shield becomes damaged after use and if used again before repairing will break. I like these kinds of rules, because there's just something very  about shields splintering from the force of attacks. Gives the shields a very visceral quality beyond just bumping AC.
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Jan 20, 2015 19:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:Here's a question: in the context of BECMI's roll-under mechanic for skill checks, what's the highest circumstantial bonus and penalty you've ever handed out? -4/+4. For really hard and trivial stuff.
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Jan 20, 2015 20:04
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-4 to +4 as well when I used them, but I use an increasing amount of dice for difficulty because it is really easy to compare the number of dice with what a person who used those dice for character generation would do. I do an array for stats, so it ends up almost being like amber diceless where everyone has one type of challenge they just win at unless they are attempting something beyond human limits. The rule is from the red box, it didn't make it into the RC.
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Jan 20, 2015 21:06
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Babylon Astronaut posted:-4 to +4 as well when I used them, but I use an increasing amount of dice for difficulty because it is really easy to compare the number of dice with what a person who used those dice for character generation would do. I do an array for stats, so it ends up almost being like amber diceless where everyone has one type of challenge they just win at unless they are attempting something beyond human limits. What do you mean by an increasing number of dice? Do you roll it as 3d6 to get under Ability and bump it up to 4 or 5d6 for increased difficulty?
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Jan 21, 2015 01:02
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Yup. It's one of the long lost variant rules.
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Jan 21, 2015 02:08
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Usually I find myself using this for strength checks. A character must roll #d6 under their ability score. Based on the fact that 12 is an average ability score for ordinary people, the probability of success for each difficulty is: 2d6: 97% Near Certain 3d6: 62% Likely 4d6: 24% Possible 5d6: 6% Unlikely 6d6: 1% Remote 7d6: 0% Near Zero I often set the difficulty based on how I would describe the chances of success. For example, there is a remote chance that a character can lift or tip over a solid 10 ft by 10ft stone block. However, a heroicly strong fighting man of 18 str would have a 21% chance of success. If it is a group effort I give them +1 for each helping person in addition to the person making the check.
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Jan 21, 2015 06:03
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To make it more granular you could throw in something like 5e's advantage: 3d6 roll under is the standard, increased difficulty translates to disadvantage dice (like, 4d6 drop the lowest) and really advantageous circumstances grant you advantage dice (so you could potentially be rolling 4d6 drop the highest or even 5d6 and picking just the 3 lowest dice). This keeps the range of possible results in the 3-18 range of potential ability scores. However, one of the strange effects of this would be that a character with an ability score of 18 would never fail at anything. I guess you could just roll multiple d20s and drop the highest/lowest depending on the circumstances.
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Jan 21, 2015 09:59
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Ratpick posted:However, one of the strange effects of this would be that a character with an ability score of 18 would never fail at anything. Yeah this is the one that I really keep chewing over for B/X's roll-under mechanic. Even with a d20 you're still looking at a 90% chance of pulling anything off, which is why I asked about how much of a penalty has anyone else ever imposed. I suppose an 18 would be pretty rare though if you're just going by standard stat rolling rules, or even using "modern" methods like from AD&D
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Jan 21, 2015 10:02
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A Strange Aeon posted:I found these really cool 2nd Edition Random Encounter decks that I didn't even know existed at a game store in Michigan when I was visiting my in-laws over the holidays. They're an official TSR product from the early 90s, and each set has hundreds of these index cards with encounters on them. I wonder if they'll offer these for sale some day through Dndclassics. Onebookshelf (the company that actually runs the backend of DnDclassics) also has a site that sells print-on-demand (and pdf's of) card games and such, so some day they could offer these print-on-demand. Of course I would imagine they'd probably have to get to the point of offering print-on-demand options for the pdf's they're already selling before they moved on to print-on-demand cards... Still there are a lot of cool things they could do in the future with their old materials. DrOct fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 15:40
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An 18 ability score is literally the peak of human ability. I think people are spoiled by newer games requiring godlike stats to do anything right, where a 30 in an ability merely makes you an olympic athlete.
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Jan 21, 2015 15:55
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Babylon Astronaut posted:An 18 ability score is literally the peak of human ability. I think people are spoiled by newer games requiring godlike stats to do anything right, where a 30 in an ability merely makes you an olympic athlete. "BRO! Youve got a 36 Strength too?! High five!" - every fighter in the world ... issue. Stats didnt do much to describe characters when there was an expectation that every similar class more or less maxed out the exact same way.
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Jan 21, 2015 16:17
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Gasperkun posted:I am really grooving right now on Into the Odd. The free version is here. You can get the pay for version by checking this link out and doing what it says. It's at press right now, I think. I pre-ordered it when it went up. I know it's been a while since this was posted but I just wanted to mention how awesome this particular game looks. The way they handled magic as 'Arcanum' magical items instead of spells was interesting and it made me start thinking a bit about the way spells are traditionally handled in D&D. After some thought the whole arrangement of spell level divisions just seems incredibly arbitrary. It's easy to grasp damage spells scaling up - that's just a simple math thing of having to deal more damage as the enemies HD increases, but the way non-damaging effects are handled is a bit odd to me. Take Invisibility - a level 2 spells whose duration is based on level. What is the design logic behind allowing a character to turn invisible at level 3 that would make it incredibly unbalanced to let them do so at level 1? Either Invisibility is alway's kosher or it isn't - putting it at a later spell level just acts as a timer for the caster to have to suck at low levels before he's allowed to become game breaking at later levels. Has anyone ever tried to do a project where they create a level-less spell list? I like the idea of spells still getting better over time since most of them have effects based on your caster level (duration of effect, amount of damage/healing done, number of targets, etc.), but pruning the list down to a number of basic magical effects and removing any particular spell or combination of spells whose existence would invalidate the actions of other characters. If such a thing doesn't exist I'd like to give it a try myself and would be interested if anyone had suggestions for how to go about doing it - especially any spells that remove some of the fun-factor from the game. If invisibility is broken, for example, then instead of making it an ability that only a single class has access to it could be attached to a universal magic item or potion (invisibility cloak? vanishing cream?). I still want to leave the wizard with cool stuff that is all their own, but break it down to a simpler framework (universal spell slots instead of varying ones defined by spell level) & have their effects be scaled by the caster level.
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Jan 23, 2015 07:12
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Bob Quixote posted:Has anyone ever tried to do a project where they create a level-less spell list? I like the idea of spells still getting better over time since most of them have effects based on your caster level (duration of effect, amount of damage/healing done, number of targets, etc.), but pruning the list down to a number of basic magical effects and removing any particular spell or combination of spells whose existence would invalidate the actions of other characters. If such a thing doesn't exist I'd like to give it a try myself and would be interested if anyone had suggestions for how to go about doing it - especially any spells that remove some of the fun-factor from the game. What I have seen instead was an attempt in one of Monte Cook's 3.5 books to change spell levels to match character levels: if you were a level 5 Wizard, you could cast level 1-5 spells. I think a level-less system might fall prey to the problem of the 5E Battle Master where you pick the 4 most valuable Maneuvers right off the bat, and then by the time you're level 20 you're only taking 'what's left' because you already have all of the power spells. There's an argument to be made for gating because it prevents you from taking Wish (or the likes) at level 1 What I've been trying to do instead is create a spell list that more closely resembles video game Mages: mostly direct damage spells, limited crowd control and personal survivability, far less universalist/cross-class utility/ability - I think it'd fit for old-school dungeon crawls since so much of the game revolves around combat anyway.
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Jan 24, 2015 06:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:What I have seen instead was an attempt in one of Monte Cook's 3.5 books to change spell levels to match character levels: if you were a level 5 Wizard, you could cast level 1-5 spells. I think a level-less system might fall prey to the problem of the 5E Battle Master where you pick the 4 most valuable Maneuvers right off the bat, and then by the time you're level 20 you're only taking 'what's left' because you already have all of the power spells. You're out of your damned mind. OD&D is only half about combat, the other half is about overcoming dungeon obstacles and mysteries. Magic users only have three damage spells: Magic Missile, Fireball, Lightning Bolt; and those spells perfectly fit any situation the magic user might run into; direct damage, AOE, or limited AOE. Magic Users are all about dozens and dozens of situational utility magic.
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Jan 24, 2015 06:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:What I have seen instead was an attempt in one of Monte Cook's 3.5 books to change spell levels to match character levels: if you were a level 5 Wizard, you could cast level 1-5 spells. I think a level-less system might fall prey to the problem of the 5E Battle Master where you pick the 4 most valuable Maneuvers right off the bat, and then by the time you're level 20 you're only taking 'what's left' because you already have all of the power spells. See my thought was "Why should Wish even be a thing that can be done in the first place?" I would want to find a way to create a list of spells that are useable from character level 1 which improve over time either in terms of damage dealt (or HP healed), duration of effect or which gains certain improvements when the caster hits a certain Threshold level. Like, the example I originally gave was Invisibility. What is it about invisibility that makes it acceptable for a 3rd level character to cast, but not a first level character? Is there a fundamental change in the game between those two experience levels that suddenly makes it more mechanically balanced to allow that or was it just put there because they needed to fill a slot in the spells by level list? If Invisibility is unbalanced why allow it to be used at all? If it's not unbalanced then why not allow its use from the very start and just let a higher character level increase the duration of the effect? The Old-school Wizard seems to be based around this idea of "paying your dues" where it's accepted that you are going to spend many sessions sucking and trying desperately not to die, but in the end you'll be awarded by becoming like unto a living god while the other characters abilities have stagnated beyond having better HP and Saves. I think it would be cool to find a healthy middle ground where you don't necessarily suck at low levels but at the same time you don't completely overshadow everyone else at high levels. I think the trick would be to just find the completely broken or unsalvagable spells and prune them out, and then just adjust the remaining spells to be appropriate at level 1 and then scale up with the caster. No more tracking spell slots by spell level - just a number of generic spell slots that can be assigned to anything with the power of the casting based on the characters level. CountingWizard posted:You're out of your damned mind. OD&D is only half about combat, the other half is about overcoming dungeon obstacles and mysteries. Magic users only have three damage spells: Magic Missile, Fireball, Lightning Bolt; and those spells perfectly fit any situation the magic user might run into; direct damage, AOE, or limited AOE. Magic Users are all about dozens and dozens of situational utility magic. I don't think it would be too unbalancing to allow access to versions of utility spells at low levels either since the MU's low number of spell slots would mean that a situation couldn't be abused too much for advantage (especially if you go with the '3 starting spells') rule.
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Jan 24, 2015 08:16
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I liked the "wizards can cast any spell from the start but they scale up with level" idea so much I've already stolen it for my next retroclone (a development of TAAC). Since it only has three "levels", equivalent to roughly 2, 6 and 10, the actual scaling is pretty straightforward. I'm also giving the caster classes stronger roles. All have (unique) utility stuff, but clerics mostly buff, elves are controllers with lots of AOEs, and wizards go back to the OD&D artillery role with blasty spells. The game as a whole's meant for short one-shot play with hopefully two-minute chargen (and disposable characters - if one dies, the replacement arrives as soon as you've filled in a new sheet), so the limited options shouldn't be an issue.
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Jan 24, 2015 08:43
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If you treat Wish as a general "do a bit of anything" spell, of course you can have it at low level - people have been calling Prestidigitation "Least Wish" for years. You would still have to draw up guidelines and limitations, especially on the high level version, but it does scale.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:34
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I started a project years ago where wizards could pick: 1) specific types of powers, or 2) increase the power of one they knew, or 3) increase the flexibility of one that they knew ... on leveling, but I never finished it and its been years. So maybe at level one someone says "I want to make fire". Then they add the ability to make it at a distance, then increase its intensity (damage), then make it bigger (fireball time), then control its shape (selective fireball), etc... Or they want to have invisibility - so at first they can make themselves unseen by one person that they can keep LoS on. Then they can make it work on several people, then they change it so that they can make themselves visible but different (alter self/ illusion), then they can do this at a distance (freely moving illusion), then they add in sound and temperature), etc... That was the rough idea anyway. The direction the powers take was supposed to be flexible as long as it made some sense with what it was being built on, and they were willing to spend slots/points on adding to it. Never completed, and never really put to test in a real game.
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Jan 24, 2015 10:42
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I could see it being done by making each spell have a different effect depending on which level slot you use to prepare it. Hypothetical example: prepare generic fire spell in a 1st-level slot, you can shoot a tiny-rear end fireball that does little damage. 2nd level slot, you get a slightly bigger explosion and a bit more damage. 3rd level it's basically like a fireball. Higher than that, it's motherfucking Armageddon. Also, now that I think about it, in a different vein I'd actually like to see a system where spell level matches up to character level. There's some spells (like sleep) that are way too powerful at first level but already more limited in use at 3rd level, so making it into a second level spell (which you'd gain between 1st and 3rd character level) would make sense. Ratpick fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Jan 24, 2015 |
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Jan 24, 2015 10:47
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Payndz posted:I liked the "wizards can cast any spell from the start but they scale up with level" idea so much I've already stolen it for my next retroclone (a development of TAAC). Since it only has three "levels", equivalent to roughly 2, 6 and 10, the actual scaling is pretty straightforward. I'd love to see what you come up with for that! My own project started out as some simple house-rules but it sort of snowballed into me wanting to make my own quasi-retroclone game as well (which also has the level cap at 10). I'm currently digging around through various lists of spells to try to see what can be eliminated, combined/condensed & scaled. chrisoya posted:If you treat Wish as a general "do a bit of anything" spell, of course you can have it at low level - people have been calling Prestidigitation "Least Wish" for years. You would still have to draw up guidelines and limitations, especially on the high level version, but it does scale. I always liked the idea from Pathfinder of having at-will cantrips since it allows the Wizard to be more wizard-y if he's able to throw around Presdidigitations, Mage Hands & other minor effects all the time while still having a limited number of "serious" spells.
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Jan 24, 2015 15:50
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