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NameHurtBrain posted:Is it a worthy observation that their desire to make the rules universal for NPCs and PCs hurts the game? At some point in the playtest, crits were max die x2. They removed that, supposedly, due to complaints of being gibbed by kobolds. So it's just two weapon dice. Which still might roll poorly. Would it really be that complex to say, PCs are special, and get real good crits. NPCs are not special, they have to roll?
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Feb 7, 2015 04:25
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Generic Octopus posted:Fighter as a whole had much better features during playtest that can now be found in various forms on the Monk, Paladin, and Barbarian. BUt apparently, whiffing a lot was part of some people's immersion.
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Feb 7, 2015 04:27
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NameHurtBrain posted:Is it a worthy observation that their desire to make the rules universal for NPCs and PCs hurts the game? At some point in the playtest, crits were max die x2. They removed that, supposedly, due to complaints of being gibbed by kobolds. So it's just two weapon dice. Which still might roll poorly. Would it really be that complex to say, PCs are special, and get real good crits. NPCs are not special, they have to roll? I've been in a couple of discussions where I suggest a houserule to make crits 1 damage die at max value + 1 rolled damage die + flat modifiers, and people would say that that'd make crits by monsters way too powerful, and then when I would suggest that monsters can either still use 2 rolled damage dice + flat modifiers, or just doubled average damage, there were some that reacted as if it were inconceivable.
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Feb 7, 2015 04:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've been in a couple of discussions where I suggest a houserule to make crits 1 damage die at max value + 1 rolled damage die + flat modifiers, and people would say that that'd make crits by monsters way too powerful, and then when I would suggest that monsters can either still use 2 rolled damage dice + flat modifiers, or just doubled average damage, there were some that reacted as if it were inconceivable. While this reaction is not at all surprising, this is actually pretty much how it worked in one of the playtests. It was particularly elegant for PbP, because you didn't have to reroll anything.
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Feb 7, 2015 04:47
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ascendance posted:But playtest fighter never got more than one attack... you just had the escalating superiority dice. Made it much more all or nothing, but I guess you could just roll the superiority dice for some damage on a miss. That's not quite the issue. First, the early playtest versions of the Fighter we saw didn't go all the way up to level 20. Saying they didn't get more attacks is an assumption that doesn't necessarily would have been true. Second, even if it were true, accuracy is not the problem of Fighters. It's having interesting choices. A Wizard can try to Dominate a monster... and fail due to a save. Sucks for the Wizard but it's acceptable. Likewise, it's acceptable for a Fighter to just plain miss every now and then. As long as there's interesting and effective choices to be made.
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Feb 7, 2015 05:16
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I think something that really holds back the basic attack mechanics is the unwillingness to accept that it's reasonable to have a "miss" still deal partial damage under the same abstraction that allows a Fireball to deal half damage even after you've ostensibly dodged out of it. It's not unheard of to give GM advice on the scale of changing how much HP your monster actually still has on the back-end if the combat is proving to be too draggy due to misses - but if I'm cutting the boss' HP in half to account for how bad the players are rolling, letting them a small amount of damage despite a low roll is pretty much doing the exact same thing.
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Feb 7, 2015 05:24
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've been in a couple of discussions where I suggest a houserule to make crits 1 damage die at max value + 1 rolled damage die + flat modifiers, and people would say that that'd make crits by monsters way too powerful, and then when I would suggest that monsters can either still use 2 rolled damage dice + flat modifiers, or just doubled average damage, there were some that reacted as if it were inconceivable.
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Feb 7, 2015 06:00
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Was "PCs and monsters must play by exactly the same rules!" an outcome of the 3.x-as-physics-simulator thing? Because they didn't in grog touchstone 1e, where monsters had a ton of special options that players not only didn't, but never would.
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Feb 7, 2015 07:41
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I think so. It makes perfect sense for me to read a B/X monster's statblock and it just describes what the monster does, with abilities that are written specifically for that monster. Then you get to 3.5 and you have to account for what feats and skills the monster might have and I couldn't understand why. Even if we grant that a monster should have, say, Perception scores and whatnot, you don't really need to figure out how the monster has a Perception score of 15, you just know that you're giving the monster a score of 15 because that's what's challenging to the player. Maybe it's just my video game background again, but I don't feel the need to establish where the 500 HP of a boss comes from.
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Feb 7, 2015 07:48
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Payndz posted:Was "PCs and monsters must play by exactly the same rules!" an outcome of the 3.x-as-physics-simulator thing? Because they didn't in grog touchstone 1e, where monsters had a ton of special options that players not only didn't, but never would. Yes, and in fact D&D 3e was the only edition ever to do it. The thing to remember is that 1e may be the "grog touchstone," but 3e more or less usurped it and became "TRUE D&D." If at almost any point AD&D and 3e conflict, 3e is considered the true-ist D&D. The only time it's different is when those filthy munchkins are involved and it empowers players, such as buying magical weapons or using point buy. Recent thing I find hilarious: seeing people complain that barbarians are too strong and wizards are too weak, because Concentration is literally working as intended, and they can no longer fly around invisible and end every encounter on their own. You brought in the 3e crowd, the gently caress you think you were gonna get?
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Feb 7, 2015 10:54
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Some of us thought 4E was a throwback to the good old days of 1E. No rules as physics, monsters being a tight little ball of HP/AC/specific abilities, concentration on combat and adventuring, sharply limited multiclassing, characters you could put together in 5 minutes and go, not having to treat advancement like a game of Minesweeper, and so on. And yet, it went down in grog history as the MMO Tabletop WoW for babbys.
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Feb 7, 2015 11:00
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I'm not sure I'd go with 4e characters taking 5 minutes to put together. I mean, you probably could make a character in that time if someone had a gun to your head, but it would certainly be significantly harder to do than if you had to make a 1e character. Which is weird, 'cause it doesn't take long to make a WoW character.
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Feb 7, 2015 11:09
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Gort posted:I'm not sure I'd go with 4e characters taking 5 minutes to put together. I mean, you probably could make a character in that time if someone had a gun to your head, but it would certainly be significantly harder to do than if you had to make a 1e character. Takes less than 5 minutes to make a 4e level 1 core rules character if you're using the character builder. I guess if you've never used it before it might take you a little longer, but you'd have to be trying to make a bad character, and you're guaranteed to make a legal character. Yes, it takes longer if you use the builder with every single option ever released for the whole lifespan of the game, but I guarantee you that would be a lot harder in AD&D. Speaking of character builders...
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Feb 7, 2015 11:34
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Yeah, I could definitely make a level 1 character in 5 minutes, and a lot fo that time would be waiting for the CB to load. Did I read a couple of pages back that Wizards C&D'd a 3rd party 5e character builder when they've yet to actually release one of their own? When will they learn?
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Feb 7, 2015 12:41
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The longest, most tedious part of making a L1 character in 4e is definitely picking out your Feat. Powers are all limited by class, and in any case where equipment matters (Do I want to two-hander or dual-wield? Do I want a light weapon?) you know from stage one what pseudo-phallic object your dude swings. But then there's that loving Feat. "Here, pick a part of your character that uses up a permanent, extremely limited resource. Do this before ever taking that character to the table." And while some Feats are just poorly-disguised math fixes ("anything" Expertise) others presented character-defining options (Pacifist Healer), So of course 5e pretended to dodge this peril. while still keeping Feats as build-defining options. I mean, Mike Mearls couldn't be expected to actually DO anything new, right?
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Feb 7, 2015 13:12
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Is letting people liberally retrain feats (in any edition) a house rule that was ever tried? I mean, if you're going to go full WoW comparison anyway, might as well go for the gold.
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Feb 7, 2015 14:23
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Living Forgotten Realms chargen rules allowed you to retrain anything other than class (up to and including subclasses like Knight/Slayer/OFighter), race and real name once per level. It works quite nicely both in terms of 'they released some new hotness I want to try out without starting fresh' and 'I hosed up' - it was gameable (you could completely change your stats, for instance, both to go from odd to even starting stats level by level and maximise bonuses, and to change, say, from a STR to a WIS cleric) but it was realistically going to happen anyway in organised play - no-one is going to know from con to con whether you've done it, so why not give it as much blessing as you can? It worked pretty well.
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Feb 7, 2015 14:46
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So I made an advice thread for people who want Next advice and don't want to sift through the Next megathread for it.
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Feb 7, 2015 14:56
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ProfessorCirno posted:Yes, and in fact D&D 3e was the only edition ever to do it. Really? 2e didn't? I could've sworn monsters used the same crit effects in 2e as characters (including double/triple damage on severe crits). Heck, I lost a character recently to that happening.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:06
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He's talking about PCs and monsters being built by all the same rules, not crits specifically.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:09
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goatface posted:He's talking about PCs and monsters being built by all the same rules, not crits specifically. As someone who ran 3.PF games, this was the worst thing in the system. Like, absolutely the worst. I understand the design intent but when you've got so many fiddly bits on a character you really want simplified and concise monsters. Doing something like this only really works when your system is simpler than 3.PF. I don't think I ever actually fully built monsters (or even most NPCs) beyond 'This is what they need to be able to be used in combat.'
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Feb 7, 2015 16:30
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Friend of a friend put together a dark sun book: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Pb99H6nzr0TnVWM3ljWjV6cjA/view Some interesting things, and some not so interesting things I think in there.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:31
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The worst piece of 3.x monster design is monsters with at will short duration fiddly bonus buffs.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:46
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Elendil004 posted:Friend of a friend put together a dark sun book: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7Pb99H6nzr0TnVWM3ljWjV6cjA/view Why the hell would you allow divine characters if you're only giving them a 16 to 35% chance of their spells working? You're already giving them a 100% chance of everything else working like Channel Divinity or a paladin's smite and auras. Mul has a random floating +2 to nothing, Half-Giant has a +3 to strength because gently caress racial guidelines. I think the rare races are a bit much (especially since 4e linked the Dragonborn to the Dray). Wasteland Mutant takes all the fun of Gamma World and then ruins it by slapping on actual racial penalties.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:59
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Here's another Dark Sun conversion I stumbled upon about a month ago: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4jZ_-uYQxf8NktuTHp4RTNGOHc/view?usp=sharing . Elendil's post reminded me of it. Not being very familiar with the setting beyond broad, apocalyptic, low-magic strokes, the most I can say about this one is that the formatting looks good.
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Feb 7, 2015 17:27
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Honestly the big problem you'll get is that Dark Sun is really big on psionics, which 5e doesn't have yet.
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Feb 7, 2015 17:41
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mastershakeman posted:Really? 2e didn't? I could've sworn monsters used the same crit effects in 2e as characters (including double/triple damage on severe crits). Heck, I lost a character recently to that happening. Crits were only an optional rule in 2E -- you either got double damage on a 20, or got to make a second attack on a 20, or you got nothing and liked it, depending on which option the DM preferred. The Combat & Tactics book had more extensive and fiddly rules for crits but I can't be arsed to look them up right now.
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Feb 7, 2015 18:15
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Selachian posted:Crits were only an optional rule in 2E -- you either got double damage on a 20, or got to make a second attack on a 20, or you got nothing and liked it, depending on which option the DM preferred. The Combat & Tactics book had more extensive and fiddly rules for crits but I can't be arsed to look them up right now. Yeah, I've always played with the c&t fiddly rules. My rogue/warrior got destroyed by a minotaur when it rolled double damage, which you can't save against. Took off something like 3/4s of my hp in one hit. That being said, good point about 'building' rules. I like having everything with the same combat mechanics (i.e. if enemies can overbear you, you can overbear them, etc etc) but I can see why having to build every npc from scratch being annoying.
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Feb 7, 2015 19:05
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Selachian posted:Crits were only an optional rule in 2E -- you either got double damage on a 20, or got to make a second attack on a 20, or you got nothing and liked it, depending on which option the DM preferred. The Combat & Tactics book had more extensive and fiddly rules for crits but I can't be arsed to look them up right now. also 2nd monsters never used the optional books or rules although building a lich with tome of magic would have been amusing
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Feb 7, 2015 19:32
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Building npcs same as monsters is time consuming and useless. I DM'd 3.5. First time, so I made sure to do everything right. I was statting up an enemy general, who'd have no point other than to be the 'boss' of an encounter. Skill Time! He was a rogue. Skills don't excessive make a difference in 3.5 combat outside concentration and tumble and a few others like bluff feinting. Yet here I was going down the list. He has Knowledge: History. Because the PCs are clearly going capture him and force him to play Ye Olde Jeopardy. UMD, but he has no wands to use and it wasn't the style of fight I was creating. Ditto for feats. Once I gave him what was needed for the encounter, I ended up having to just add a bunch of toughness and save boosters. More fiddly bits. Ironically this creates the problems of the enemies having much better saves than players again. Spells? If the party is Level 15 and the boss has come down to using Magic Missile and Ray of Frost, something is seriously wrong. Really, all they need is saves, HP, AC, prob some stats for just in case. A list of abilities they'll attack with with some limit. The only time I *should* of went all the way with stats was when it was an NPC or major villain. I had a exposition fairy follow them - he was a total coward, but he was smart. His combat turns would be rolling a knowledge check and giving a tip if he succeeded. He still had combat stats: sometimes I'd have him attack because the players shoved a crossbow at him. He was pathetic, but he had an enduring role so it was worth the time to fully stat him. Villain of the Week #54: No. You're here to put a fight then die. No Profession: Baker for you. NameHurtBrain fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 20:36
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I've almost exclusively DMed for our group and we just switched over to 5th edition. We've only played maybe a dozen or two dozen times so I'd consider myself a little fresh but still have a good feeling for DMing. Regarding the rocket tagging and npcs gibbing players with crits: is it really that bad to fudge rolls behind the screen? If it was the difference between lying to a player about a roll and having them survive and have fun or following The Rules (TM) and having them die and not have fun, I'd chose the fun option ever time. Is this super frowned upon or something? Obviously you want to ensure the the players feel danger and risk but making people have a bad time just to make sure that the rules are exactly followed 100% of the time without fail seems autistic as hell.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:27
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Oh, no, most GMs do that sometimes. It's just annoying when a game is designed to require it to come up too often, you know?
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Feb 8, 2015 03:33
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Ettin posted:So I made an advice thread for people who want Next advice and don't want to sift through the Next megathread for it. Thank you. There is already some helpful stuff being posted in there.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:34
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Bazanga posted:I've almost exclusively DMed for our group and we just switched over to 5th edition. We've only played maybe a dozen or two dozen times so I'd consider myself a little fresh but still have a good feeling for DMing. Regarding the rocket tagging and npcs gibbing players with crits: is it really that bad to fudge rolls behind the screen? There really are DMs who kill their players and make people have a bad time, just for the sake of following the rules 100%. They gloat about it. They post manifestos about how it's the only real way to play. That's who 5th edition was made for.
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Feb 8, 2015 03:41
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Night10194 posted:Oh, no, most GMs do that sometimes. It's just annoying when a game is designed to require it to come up too often, you know? Really Pants posted:There really are DMs who kill their players and make people have a bad time, just for the sake of following the rules 100%. They gloat about it. They post manifestos about how it's the only real way to play. That's who 5th edition was made for. 
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Feb 8, 2015 04:21
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There's always the germ of a good idea buried in every example of lovely GMing. Like, man these zombies are fighting really intelligently for mindless undead...someone must be controlling them! And bam, there's your plot hook as you hunt down the evil necromancer calling the shots. But no, it's probably nothing that cool.
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Feb 8, 2015 04:36
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That's what I was thinking but I was trying not to metagame it. But nope, just turned out they were regular zombies. He also pulled the same Navy Seal tactics with Goblins and Kobolds. Every single one of his NPCs was special forces trained and aware of every single movement on the battlefield, at all times. Also they knew to target our healer specifically in combat and if he wasn't visible they would maneuver their way towards him. Dude played his D&D sessions like a PVP game.
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Feb 8, 2015 04:51
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Bazanga posted:That's what I was thinking but I was trying not to metagame it. But nope, just turned out they were regular zombies. He also pulled the same Navy Seal tactics with Goblins and Kobolds. Every single one of his NPCs was special forces trained and aware of every single movement on the battlefield, at all times. Also they knew to target our healer specifically in combat and if he wasn't visible they would maneuver their way towards him. Dude played his D&D sessions like a PVP game. This is basically the sort of thing that 4E's Defender role was designed to handle. The irony is that thanks to the suite of tools available to a well-rounded 4E party your GM can play hardball if they want to and all it does is provide the players with a reasonable challenge to overcome.
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Feb 8, 2015 06:24
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Bazanga posted:Dude played his D&D sessions like a PVP game. That's my ideal scenario for combat in an RPG. I feel like I should be able to build an adventure and then not pull punches and adjust math and ignore damage and whatever while it's being played, as long as I've played by the rules. "The Rules", in this case, shouldn't let me field mindless horde zombies and then play them as if they're an elite counter-infiltration unit. Like, I'm not asking for a sign saying "do not do this", I just feel like good rules would make the best way to use mindless horde zombies be "they move towards you and attack". Like, that's the ideal situation. It's never been something D&D has actually managed, but this version's intentionally a step away from it.
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Feb 8, 2015 06:26
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It would be cool if there were hard rules for what tactics monsters could perform, based on their intelligence stat perhaps. Zombies should not be retreating, and they shouldn't flank unless they get lucky and just happen to be in the right positions for "move towards nearest enemy, attack" to cause them to flank. This should be expected by the monster designer and as a result they could be a bit tougher than their level/CR would otherwise indicate. Meanwhile a genius-level monster would have no restrictions on what it can do (and could even ignore rules that might affect human-level intelligences, like having to take morale checks), but is a little weaker than its level or CR would otherwise indicate to make up for it.
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Feb 8, 2015 11:35
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