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4E can be extremely rough on Dex-based strikers if they win initiative and the rest of their group rolls crap on initiative.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:20
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mastershakeman posted:I guess the question is is there a low level enemy that has a high damage alpha strike, ranged or not? Because if the highest alpha strike isn't enough to kill the weakest party member first round out of an ambush, you're all right that the dm can be ultra aggressive. For example: An average level 1 Wizard in 4e has around 24 HP and 16 AC. A Kobold Slinger is a Level 1 Artillery, a particularly squishy heavy-damage ranged attacker. It is worth 100xp, so an encounter should have at most four (4) of them. Each Kobold Slinger attacks at +8 vs AC and deals 1d6+5 damage on a hit. So 65% to hit and an average 8.5 damage. Focusing the Wizard, if every kobold hits and deals maximum damage (44), the Wizard will be knocked to -20 (8 past negative bloodied), killing them instantly. However, a single miss brings the maximum possible damage down to 33, which means it is impossible to kill the Wizard in one round. This situation also assumes that Kobolds will focus a downed opponent. Even if they do, one-rounding the wizard will only happen a fairly minimal 6% of the time. Remember, this is picking high-damage, ranged enemies, and focus-firing the squishy before they have a turn, and continuing to target them after they have dropped. I'd say it's fairly rear end in a top hat-proof.
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Feb 10, 2015 02:36
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http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/dm-support-group AND THEY WISH FOR MORE BEEs, AND THE BEES HAVE GUNS!
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Feb 10, 2015 03:01
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IT BEGINS posted:This situation also assumes that Kobolds will focus a downed opponent. Which the DM is explicitly told not to do. Page 40 of the DMG, under the heading "Monsters and Fallen Characters", says quote:Don't hit people when they're down. When a character falls unconscious, monsters turn their attention to enemies who are still up and fighting. Monsters don't usually intentionally deal damage to fallen foes. Sure, the DM is not forced not to do it, but short of WoTC sending hired goons round to your house to break your arms if you try it, I'm not sure how much clearer this could be. e: The same book on page 30 and 31 has two columns on fixing your mistakes, including what to do if an encounter is unintentionally too hard or too easy. In a shocking twist, "Lie about the results of a roll" isn't mentioned. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 03:06
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IT BEGINS posted:For example: A hard encounter consists of 5 slingers, so it's actually higher than 6% if you assume maximum damage. However, the likelihood of being hit decreases by 20% when you drop. I think the odds of 4 hits are like 20-25% or something, I'm not sure how to calculate it. The important thing is that max damage isn't particularly likely and 4 shots of the average 8.5 is not enough to kill, and nothing is large enough to drop you into negative bloodied from standing up so RAW players can't die without a wipe.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:17
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Elendil004 posted:http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/dm-support-group "What's close to kobolds? AH, kracken!" I've done that. Dear God, I've done that. I have been a terrible DM sometimes.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:32
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Really Pants posted:In 4e it's easy to temporarily remove a PC's threat with conditions like stun, blind, or immobilize, but very hard to outright kill them unless you focus every single monster on them. And even then, the other PCs will be able to punish that sort of tactic quickly. For people wondering about the comparative ruggedness of 4e PCs to tactics like "everyone focus fire on a dude", I'm in a game where Really Pants is a DM, and she not only focus fired on my character, but also ended up throwing my character off a goddamn cliff, rolling really well for damage all around. It did a total of 34 damage all around, with my character having a max HP pool of 31. Between my own survival abilities, and a healer, not only was I not brought to unconscious (reactive temporary HP saving the day), but I was only playing defensively for one round before I could resume attacking. Basically, circumstances aligned to do a tremendous amount of damage, and Really Pants rolled lucky, and my character still didn't go down in a single round. Now, if it had happened exactly like that again, I'm not sure if I could've recovered, but by then I was smart enough not to stand at the edge of a precipice.
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Feb 10, 2015 04:21
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AlphaDog posted:e: The same book on page 30 and 31 has two columns on fixing your mistakes, including what to do if an encounter is unintentionally too hard or too easy. In a shocking twist, "Lie about the results of a roll" isn't mentioned. 4E DMG posted:It can be hard to judge ahead of time just how tough an encounter is. Throwing a 13th-level monster at a 9th-level party is often fine, but if the creature has regeneration that negates all the damage the characters do to it, they will be hard pressed to survive that fight. There's also this great little tidbit: quote:The best way to avoid hard feelings connected to character death is to be fair and to make sure the players know you’re being fair. rolling dice in front of them helps that perception. The players know that you’re not cheating in the monsters’ favor, or singling out a single character for punishment. To be fair though, it also says this: quote:Rolling Dice: establish some basic expectations about how players roll dice. Rolling “in full view of everyone” is a good starting point. If you see players roll their attacks or damage and scoop the dice up before anyone else can see, you might nudge that player to be a little less cagey. Man, what is James Wyatt up to these days?
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Feb 10, 2015 04:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:There's also this great little tidbit: Writing cool transgender characters into Magic the Gathering Lore (Alesha Who Smiles At Death) and getting hated by grogs for it.
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Feb 10, 2015 04:45
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Laphroaig posted:Writing cool transgender characters into Magic the Gathering Lore (Alesha Who Smiles At Death) and getting hated by grogs for it. That was him?!  what a guy!
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Feb 10, 2015 04:48
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I played 5E for the first time at a con this weekend, the GM was running Ghost Tower of Inverness. I enjoyed it, in terms of mechanics and system it wasn't amazing but it wasn't terrible either. I definitely liked the at-will cantrips as a wizard. The GM said that he likes 5E because while it has it's problems, it's way easier to convert older material, both 1E and BX/BECMI than 3.x or 4E. Anyone agree, disagree?Laphroaig posted:Writing cool transgender characters into Magic the Gathering Lore (Alesha Who Smiles At Death) and getting hated by grogs for it. One great thing about Alesha is that her card is good. One of the last bits of inclusion (Guardians of Meletis, which depicted a statue of two kings of the Greek-styled setting Theros who were lovers) was mediocre. The fact that Alesha is going to be played is icing on top of the delicious diverse cake.
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Feb 10, 2015 05:14
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Lunatic Sledge posted:This is kind of a wacky thing to say when your subjective experience is in the minority, as far as the argument goes. Like, nobody else in the thread debating with you seems to be pro-fudging; it's just you and your's, and you're now arguing that everyone else's subjective experiences don't matter, only your's. Your's is the real one, our's is "pointless." You have seen Sasquatch, and are telling us the number of Sasquatches that we or anyone else hasn't seen is irrelevant. I'm saying it's irrelevant because I'm not trying to make my own subjective opinions about what makes a good/fun RPG some sort of objective fact. The fact a system is basically designed with the fact in mind that the DM/GM will sometimes fudge things or changes things for the sake of everyone having a good time does not make it a bad system on its own. There's a bunch of valid criticisms of the system, but the fact that the rulebook tells the DM/GM to occasionally overrule the rule book, and that those situations sometimes come up, is not one. If you're finding you're "fudging" literally every roll or something yeah thats pretty poo poo, but I don't think anyone has actually suggested 5th ed makes them do this. The only point I'm making is that it's unfair to say "System requires DM to occasionally intervene therefore the system is poo poo", because I've played a lot of systems that I've enjoyed and they do this. Lunatic Sledge posted:Plenty of books cite doing things outside the rules or making up new rules to keep it fresh, yes. Never in my life have I seen a book say "sometimes the DM has to roll one thing and tell the players something totally different, it is absolutely necessary." I don't think Rule Zero is "sometimes the DM has to ignore a rule or lie about a dice turnover or the campaign ends." As I mentioned it's in it's own separate box telling players that the GM can overrule the rule book in the 40k RPGs and the D&D rulebooks state it too. The same thing for all the other game systems I've listed earlier on. If you haven't played them that's cool, just like apprently there's all these people playing roleplaying games that need no GM intervention what so ever. Lunatic Sledge posted:It's cool that you're doubling down on this, though, and now it's not just a sidenote in some of the books but a common theme. That's very brave of you in the face of all this adversity. Like, I see where you're coming from. In highschool, when I only played 3.5 and D20 Cthulhu, I fudged dice all the time and thought it was perfectly normal. No book taught me that, though, and no book encouraged it; I did it as a natural response to bullshit player deaths from an unhinged system, and I can't imagine trying to argue that it the DM's Guide totes told me to lie about dice results to the players. I stopped fudging dice the second I picked up, uh, anything else, and deaths started feeling earned/deserved/avoidable. At that point, you're cheating your players out of part of their experience by holding their hand and pretending the bad poo poo never happened. You can still tell a good story from bad poo poo happening. Again, I'm not sure how you would handle any of the games where the PCs have their own preset DCs, or the DCs are static, and the DM has no dice to fudge at all. Well it's not brave because it's true, the fact there's more than one of you saying that it hasn't been your experience means nothing. I mean for one you all play DnD (presumably) which states it in it's rulebooks that the DM can and should overule the rules when necessary, and no that doesn't mean "to keep it fresh". It means if a player says "I want to take an intimidation check using strength because I'm huge and muscular and want to physically intimidate the guy" if you think that's appropriate you can go "Yeah gently caress it, take a Intimidate (Strength) check" which is basically totally made up. I'm not saying all this poo poo to try and win internet points or something, I'm saying it because it's my opinion. The fact that 5 of you disagree doesn't change that, as no-one has presented any counter arguments that have changed my mind. What I'm saying is that I'm not opposed to the GM/DM in an RPG balancing out the RNG factor a little where appropriate. Sometimes this means cutting the party a break, other times it means not giving them any slack at all because they've been bloody lucky so far. No there's not a rulebook that this follows, it's just a judgement thing. If you or anyone else prefers systems where you don't roll dice, or that the DM doesn't ever need to fudge stuff, change or bend rules or anything like that, then that's fine, but DnD isn't that game nor is any other RPG that I've played. You can suggest whatever you want, but I've never argued once that there shouldn't be risk of failure in any of the games and it's disingenuous for you to suggest I have. I even said several posts ago I "killed" a player in pretty much the first session of a game I ever ran because thats what happened. They played their character well, the NPC got a crit, and they "died". Not like getting knocked out in DnD, in a system where dying means something poo poo happens to you. What I'm saying is that sometimes it's fine for the DM/GM to put their finger on the scales a bit to tip the balance one way or another as I see it as a fundamental part of the DM/GM's role to make sure the story is fun and progresses, regardless of the rules. This doesn't mean doing it every dice roll, just where bad luck or sutbborn players or a GM/DM mistake or whatever is going to derail the story.
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Feb 10, 2015 05:15
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Several editions of D&D have rules for how to do things not covered by the rules. BECMI's is so robust that homeboy made an entire OSR game out of it. It wouldn't take much effort to put in a similar rule to cover things not anticipated by the game instead of the no effort solution of "ask your DM."
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Feb 10, 2015 05:23
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Funny that 5e doesn't really let you safely play well-known in-universe parties. Good luck replicating the Companions of the Hall without making Bruenor a cleric or something.
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Feb 10, 2015 05:36
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Kitchner posted:The only point I'm making is that it's unfair to say "System requires DM to occasionally intervene therefore the system is poo poo", because I've played a lot of systems that I've enjoyed and they do this. The problem people have with this is that you have attributed "system requires DM to fudge numbers and ignore rules" to all roleplaying games, which is not true. Then you said Kitchner posted:If you enjoy playing a game where the DM doesn't need to change anything, and they can basically play a tabletop game against the players with the full intention to "win" the combat (presumably by killing the party, which I don't class as a win personally) then go for it. This system in't designed like that though, it's specifically designed for the DM to change some things, fudge some more things, and make stuff up on the fly if needed. If you don't like that then fine, play a different game which can be played DM vs the Players or whatever which apparently many of you do. Which even if it's true doesn't sound like a good design goal. I mean, I can get behind the idea of "part of the DM's role is to smooth out system failures", but I can't understand how anyone could actually think that the system was designed to sometimes fail, and that this is not only intentional, but a good idea. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 05:38
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For the record, as a player, the fact that the DM was free to throw my character off a cliff without wrecking the game was a pretty good feeling.
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Feb 10, 2015 06:21
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AlphaDog posted:Which even if it's true doesn't sound like a good design goal. I mean, I can get behind the idea of "part of the DM's role is to smooth out system failures", but I can't understand how anyone could actually think that the system was designed to sometimes fail, and that this is not only intentional, but a good idea.
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Feb 10, 2015 06:47
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Lightning Lord posted:The GM said that he likes 5E because while it has it's problems, it's way easier to convert older material, both 1E and BX/BECMI than 3.x or 4E. Anyone agree, disagree? For better or worse, 5E's monster construction is assigning HP/hit dice, attack bonus, damage and abilities and you're mostly done. And then skill checks, traps and such just operate on a much smaller DC scale. So yeah, it should be faster to port over older content if you're comfortable with winging it. It might not be systematic but it is faster.
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Feb 10, 2015 06:48
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Babylon Astronaut posted:That's almost verbatim the Zac S position: the rules are intentionally bad so that players are encouraged to solve problems in ways the rules don't cover. He is a consultant after all.  OK then gradenko_2000 posted:So yeah, it should be faster to port over older content if you're comfortable with winging it. It might not be systematic but it is faster. I'm not actually sure about this one, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong. For example, AD&D and BECMI both tend to be heavier on the number of monsters appearing than later versions, so straight up porting the encounters across looks like a bad idea on the face of it. My memory is stuff like 8 orcs or 14 zombies being common encounters in level 1-2 AD&D modules, and that doesn't seem like a good idea to use. It seems like what you'd want to do is look at the original module you're porting, see "35 kobolds", interpret that as "a hard encounter with kobolds" and then use Next's guidelines for an encounter with kobolds, so I'm not sure it's any easier or faster than doing the same thing in 4e or 3.5. Porting non-module (or noncombat) stuff might be easier for Next, but I'm not convinced. Maybe if you're straight up porting monsters that aren't in Next yet it would be easier than with 4e? Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 07:04
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IT BEGINS posted:Funny that 5e doesn't really let you safely play well-known in-universe parties. Good luck replicating the Companions of the Hall without making Bruenor a cleric or something. To be fair, that was also the case during 1E when Salvatore introduced them. And these days, Cattie is like a cleric/wizard. But really, one of my favorite little D&D ironies is that the only edition that really supported playing a party like the Companions was also the edition during which 80% of them were dead.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:08
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AlphaDog posted:I'm not actually sure about this one, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong. From my very limited experience playing retro-D&D style games, the reason for this is that morale was a bigger factor in those fights. Maybe not for zombies and the like but the idea was that not every monster would necessarily stay and fight to the death.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:18
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Kai Tave posted:From my very limited experience playing retro-D&D style games, the reason for this is that morale was a bigger factor in those fights. Maybe not for zombies and the like but the idea was that not every monster would necessarily stay and fight to the death. Yeah. I'd say morale is a pretty big deal in BECMI and becomes less prominent (perhaps through being harder to use) in AD&D, and then again in 2nd ed. Something that didn't have to make morale checks in BECMI was either a super elite thing or else incapable of thoughts of self-preservation through being mindless or charmed or whatever. Even if you use the morale/intimidation stuff in 4e, the fights in those old modules are still way bigger than you want them to be. It seems like they would be in Next too, but like I said I'm happy to be shown I'm wrong. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 07:21
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I will admit there is one very attractive use of "the DM's call" in 4E and that's "when it's become obvious that the fight is over in the PCs' favor save the mopping up, it's okay to simply declare combat over and narrate the ending." To be honest this applies to pretty much every RPG ever, there comes a point where it's clear that okay, the PCs are going to win but combat is still technically ongoing because there's 1.5 kobolds still standing and hey, ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN, but no, you know what's going to happen and it's fine to put a fork in it early, at that point it's just busywork. And yeah, it's contextual. If things are really life-or-death, if it's the ultimate climax with the Dark Lord Steve, if you're playing a harsh unforgiving game where every healing surge is more precious than air, go ahead and run it to the bitter end, but it's still an option I wish more games would frankly present rather than tacitly insisting that you must deplete every single hitpoint every single time.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:29
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PeterWeller posted:To be fair, that was also the case during 1E when Salvatore introduced them. And these days, Cattie is like a cleric/wizard. But really, one of my favorite little D&D ironies is that the only edition that really supported playing a party like the Companions was also the edition during which 80% of them were dead. They're a party of 6 characters, each aligning to one ability score and class so Fighter(Str), Rogue(Dex), Wizard(Int), Cleric(Wis) but then they go Ranger(Con) and Marshal(Cha). And they were so great and awesome at working together an entire organization has sprouted up devoted to emulating them as closely as possible. The requirements for the Mythic Exemplar prestige class based around the organazation is open ended enough that a Bard can fill a Marshal's requirements but they don't get any spellcasting progression and most of the class features are "Well, if you were a Marshal this would be great, but you're not." And the Ranger abilities are all about being able to track people over long distances, and nothing else. And if you weren't lucky enough to pick one of the chosen few classes you can still be a Squire of Legend, whose class features are devoted to making the people who made the correct class choice better. The whole thing has this faint stink of "you're doing it wrong" party composition. Why on earth would you be a Sorcerer when you could be a noble wizard like KTOLMAGNE THE SKY-SEER!?
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Feb 10, 2015 07:38
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wait, wait, is anyone actually saying that fudging numbers is the only indicator of a systems worth? I'm pretty sure only you've mentioned that kitchner, and that everyone else has just continued to use it as an example of how tighter rules can help a DM not have to put in extra work to try to figure out how to not pull punches and upset people by invalidating the dice rolls. Your arguments also seem to be relying on your own opinions and anecdotal evidence, so it seems weird to call other people out for that as well.
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Feb 10, 2015 07:40
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AlphaDog posted:I'm not actually sure about this one, although I'd be happy to be proven wrong. I guess? It depends on what the person considers work or is difficult as far as porting over content goes. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but let's try porting over the Giant Crab Spider from B/X: quote:AC 7, 2 HD, 1 bite attack dealing 1-8 damage and poison, 1-4 number appearing, Saves as Fighter 1 If I was to port this to 4th Edition: quote:Level 1 monster And then you get to the surprise attack ability: it's supposed to be a 33% chance to spot the spiders, but against which character do you calibrate the 33% to be against? Intuitively, less than half the time means it's Hard, so we can use the DMG page 42 guide assign a Perception DC of 15 for a Hard level 1-3 challenge. And then you get to the poison: do you still make it a straight-up save-or-die, or do you calibrate the damage to kill a character within 2.5 rounds on average? Which character do you calibrate the damage against? Do you make it into a "save ends" effect? The original isn't clear if you can make a saving throw against the poison every turn that it hasn't killed you yet. Intuitively, we can again use the page 42 guide to assign it a damage expression. A Fighter will have something like 28-29 HP at level 1, so an effect that can kill him in 2.5 turns should deal about 11 damage. The High Normal Damage Expression for level 1-3 is 2d6+3, and that averages out to 10 damage, so I think that fits, and it's going to be a "save ends" effect If I was to try this in 5th Edition: quote:CR 1/4 monster (to make it roughly equivalent to a level 1 4E monster) For the surprise attack, we could just go with a "Hard" DC 15 Perception check. For the poison, I don't really have anything to go on for the damage expression short of trying to crib something from an existing monster. The DMG does suggest a save DC of 13 for a CR 1/4 monster, and then it's going to be a CON save since it's poison. I guess we could use the Spell Damage table from the Create a Spell section on page 284 - that suggests 1d10 damage for a cantrip, which averages to 5.5, which could very well kill a level 1 character in 2 rounds if they don't make their saves, especially if we still have the poison deal half damage on a failed save. So yeah, a DC 13 effect that deals 1d10 damage on a failed CON save and half on a successful save, with save every round. Ok, I don't know if there was a point in all of that, but it was slightly faster to do in 5th because I had to eyeball it a lot more. Of course, that might also mean it's not as balanced, but there you go.
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Feb 10, 2015 08:05
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AlphaDog posted:The problem people have with this is that you have attributed "system requires DM to fudge numbers and ignore rules" to all roleplaying games, which is not true. People said they've played ones where it doesn't work like this. I said that's fair enough but the all the ones I've played, including DnD, do have this. Since I don't think any of those systems are poo poo because of that fact, I think it's unfair to label a system poo poo because the DM/GM is given the power to do what they want because the rules can't cover every scenario and "having fun" is more important than playing RAW. AlphaDog posted:Which even if it's true doesn't sound like a good design goal. I mean, I can get behind the idea of "part of the DM's role is to smooth out system failures", but I can't understand how anyone could actually think that the system was designed to sometimes fail, and that this is not only intentional, but a good idea. Apart from I don't see it as a design failure that in a system that relies on random rolls that sometimes people get loving unlucky with their roles to the point where it hampers the flow of the story or any other number of things. I'm not just talking about the DM going "Well unarmed strikes should also be light weapons so you can two weapon fight with them because it's dumb that they arent" are poo poo like that, but intervening in a number of ways where the system might be working fine but for whatever reason the story needs a nudge. I don't know why people seem determined to make poo poo up that I've said, but I've never even said that I think this is a design goal that makes it the best RPG on the world or anything like that, I've said you're saying a system is poo poo for including in it something the system is designed to do. Which is like criticising it for the lack of laser guns and space ships. All the RPGs I've played I've enjoyed. Are there specific things wrong with them? Yes. Do I think any of them are poo poo? No. Did the various DMs I've played with, or when I was DMing, alter every dice roll, reduce damage from 30 to 2 or do any other bullshit example you guys came up with? No. All I'm saying is that the rules weren't written with your group and their playstyle in mind, and they weren't written with every scenario you and your party will ever come across in mind. In the RPGs I've played they specifically empower the DM/GM to override the rules if whatever is currently happening in your game isn't fun. This could be due to rules, dice rolls, anything. This isn't designing a system to fail, it's just one take on how to make sure you're never sitting there going "Yeah well I'd love to let you do that but the rules say no, despite it being awesome and cool and totally in character" or "Sorry dudes but you all died on the first session as you all rolled terribly and I rolled amazing. I'm glad I won that fight though". If you want to play a game that has no dice rolls or is perfectly balanced for what is essentially competitive play or any of this other stuff, which you all insist exists, then why don't you play those instead? That's a serious question. If this game is so fundamentally flawed because the designers give a ton of power to the DM and wrote the rules knowing the DM should change them if they don't like them, why are you still running DnD games etc? Kitchner fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 14:51
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Kitchner posted:Apart from I don't see it as a design failure that in a system that relies on random rolls that sometimes people get loving unlucky with their roles to the point where it hampers the flow of the story or any other number of things. E: For reals just think of how that plays out applied to any other kind of design. 'My blender works fine except for once in a while I get unlucky and instead of a smoothie I get shanked in the dick but don't worry it's just as good as other blenders I just regularly dodge blades moving at high-velocity towards my crotch.' is that good fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 15:00
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Kitchner posted:Since I don't think any of those systems are poo poo because of that fact, I think it's unfair to label a system poo poo because the DM/GM is given the power to do what they want because the rules can't cover every scenario and "having fun" is more important than playing RAW. Do you ACTUALLY believe there are TTRPGs where the DMs don't have the power to do what they want, or are you just intellectually dishonest?
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Feb 10, 2015 15:28
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Like are you actually over here going, "These days, if you houserule dungeon world, you get arrested and thrown in jail" or did you just say that to try and win an argument by pretending to think that.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:31
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Like is the reason you believe 5E doesn't have any serious issues because you actually think there are rule police going house to house making sure that DMs are playing RAW for every other TTRPG in existence, or did you just give that impression, because the alternative was saying, quote:Since I don't think any of those systems are poo poo because of that fact, I think it's unfair to label a system poo poo because the RAW are kind of bad.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:33
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Like are you currently hiding a FATE group in your attic from the RAWstapo, or did you just say that you couldn't do what you wanted in FATE because the alternative would be admitting that a combat-focused RPG that requires a DM to actively police the core mechanic and hide that from the players just to avoid ending the game is actually not a positive thing?
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Feb 10, 2015 15:37
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Kitchner posted:Which is like criticising it for the lack of laser guns and space ships.  And rules for cowboys and atomic mutants right there in the DMG too!
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Feb 10, 2015 15:38
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I know we all love typing giant posts that are basically impossible to properly respond to, so let's just focus on this:Kitchner posted:Apart from I don't see it as a design failure that in a system that relies on random rolls that sometimes people get loving unlucky with their roles to the point where it hampers the flow of the story or any other number of things. RPG system are sets of rules that allow you to create a narrative and play with the details based on random rolls. How is it not a design failure if these random rolls can completely break the narrative? Like, it's literally the core part of these games.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:41
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IT BEGINS posted:I know we all love typing giant posts that are basically impossible to properly respond to, so let's just focus on this: I can't even get that far. If random rolls loving up the story isn't a problem then why is fudging rolls a thing. You just spent the last two pages on an Ode To Fudging Rolls but now it's totally unnecessary because if you get a TPK off a bad crit, who cares? It's an RPG that's supposed to happen!
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Feb 10, 2015 15:44
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Kitchner posted:If you want to play a game that has no dice rolls or is perfectly balanced for what is essentially competitive play or any of this other stuff, which you all insist exists, then why don't you play those instead? That's a serious question. If this game is so fundamentally flawed because the designers give a ton of power to the DM and wrote the rules knowing the DM should change them if they don't like them, why are you still running DnD games etc? We like this game. We like the setting. For all it's flaws, we enjoy what it offers. So when it fails to live up to our expectations, and in this case what a previous edition had already accomplished, we get frustrated because it's undoing progress. We still like it and we still enjoy it, but most of us don't let that stop criticism from helping us figure out what can be improved.
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Feb 10, 2015 15:44
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Marks and controllers were a good thing in 4e because it allowed the players to affect the flow of battle and actually interact with and respond to the DM in a way more interesting than dealing damage. This kept combat interesting for the players and the dungeon master. Even 3.5 had some mark/taunting mechanics in some of the classes that came out later in the line. It's just that most of them were extremely mechanically flawed to the point where just attacking and hoping that the DM stuck to the narrative contrivance of attacking the tank was still a better option.
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Feb 10, 2015 16:34
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30.5 Days posted:Like are you actually over here going, "These days, if you houserule dungeon world, you get arrested and thrown in jail" or did you just say that to try and win an argument by pretending to think that. Yeah well done again for deciding not to bother to read what I've written to just make up some random bullshit instead. I'm looking forward to you claiming "Hey man it was a JOKE" or hyperbole or whatever it was again. I can use my monopoly board as a frisbee if I want. The difference is the DnD and other RPGs I mentioned literally say in the rules "Remember the DM can overrule any and all of this whenever they want" whereas monopoly doesn't suggest in the rulebook that if you wish you can also use it as a frisbee. One is a conscious design decision, the other is just living in a country where you can use your products however you like. So unless you're actually going to bring up anything sensible, I'd probably advise you to refrain from any more jokes or hyperbole.
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Feb 10, 2015 17:43
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Kitchner posted:I can use my monopoly board as a frisbee if I want. The difference is the DnD and other RPGs I mentioned literally say in the rules "Remember the DM can overrule any and all of this whenever they want" whereas monopoly doesn't suggest in the rulebook that if you wish you can also use it as a frisbee. Being told that you should feel free to alter the rules if you want to doesn't mean that the DM should feel pressured (or in some cases forced)to have to fix problems with the rules. I'm pretty sure those are two different things!
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Feb 10, 2015 17:54
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Kitchner posted:I've said you're saying a system is poo poo for including in it something the system is designed to do. Then you're completely misunderstanding what everyone here is saying. No one is saying Next is poo poo because the DMG says 'but really you can throw poo poo out'. They're saying it's poo poo because the stuff that is covered by the rules breaks down, often badly. If I warn you before I poo poo on your pizza, will that make it taste better?
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Feb 10, 2015 17:58
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