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Trast posted:I picked up the Fell's Five collections and they are great. Also I'm seconding Rat Queens it's in the same spirit and very entertaining. Demon Knights was pretty fun too so of course DC shitcanned it. I need to dig up the panels of Vandal Savage joyously looking forward to the opportunity at beating up dinosaurs and eating them after thousands of years
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Feb 26, 2015 00:44
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My 5e group just sent me some messages about how they're concerned about how combat devolves into rocket-tag. It's pretty true in our game that whoever goes first typically steam rolls the opposition. Luckily the players have come out on top more often than not, but they're starting to see the effects of what I've been talking to them about now that we're in the middle levels (9) and the damage numers are nuts. So, I have my own ideas about how to fix the "rocket tag" problem, but I'd like to hear from you guys who are much better at this than I am. You helped me out a lot with monster design too and I love this thread for it.
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Feb 26, 2015 01:11
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An Elf lies slumped over the pristine bar in a high end hotel, discovered by staff arriving next morning. The bartender who would have closed up is missing. Investigation by the party will discover the strong scent of alcohol and cherry on the Elf but no glassware or residue on the surfaces. Questioning the staff will reveal that the Elf was a regular, an eccentric kook with a penchant for muddled cherry cocktails only their bar could provide. He was well known for a boon granted to his bloodline ages since, that while they undertook no arms, they would not suffer violent deaths. It seems that to bypass this, his Gin Pit was spiked. The day staff don't know where the bartender is, or who would have cleaned up, they never see the night cleaners. When pressed the Hotel owners will reveal how they manage to turn such an impressive profit: secret doors open to reveal skeletal cleaning staff. Checking the waste dump in the skeleton stores reveals the body of the bartender, cleaned from the floor by the boney automata. The body pierced by spikes in the back. Manticore spikes. Everyone knows that the only manticore in this town is held at the combination penal facility/zoo. If questioned, he admits to being relieved of his spikes daily by his jailers, all part of his punishment and to stop him flinging them at annoying children out of reflex. He says he would know if another manticore was around, it makes something change in the air, a vibration in the ever-shifting shape of the world, there hasn't been in years. If the party want more information, they should question his jailers. The manticore's keepers are Orcs. When they see people coming they realise the game is up and barricade themselves into the House of the Venomous. They will pelt the players with their hoarded manticore spikes, bottles of various venoms milked from the lizards and spiders inside, and their supply of tranquilliser bolts. When the barricades are breached and melee begins, they fight with long knives covered in the filth of a dozen beasts. When the keepers are dead, their possessions reveal that they owed the elf huge sums of money for gambling debts. The elf was using his immunity from violence to act as a loan shark, on even high-risk low-lifes. His family, are not pleased and pay the party a lot of money to hush the whole thing up. goatface fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 01:15
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Red Hood posted:My 5e group just sent me some messages about how they're concerned about how combat devolves into rocket-tag. Are you using monsters straight from the Monster Manual? According to the monster design guidelines in the DMG, virtually all of those heavily favor offense over defense. It's strange but the monsters were made glass cannons on purpose for some unfathomable reason. You may need to juryrig the stats a bit, increasing their effective defense by a level or two and decreasing their offense likewise. That would make them tougher and a little less deadly, which should reduce the rocket tag feeling. But I'll admit that I haven't ever tried this myself so I can't guarantee this works.
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Feb 26, 2015 01:47
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goatface posted:An Elf lies slumped over the pristine bar in a high end hotel, discovered by staff arriving next morning. The bartender who would have closed up is missing. Okay, now I'm willing to entertain the thought of goldmining the thread.
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Feb 26, 2015 02:33
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Sage Genesis posted:Are you using monsters straight from the Monster Manual? According to the monster design guidelines in the DMG, virtually all of those heavily favor offense over defense. It's strange but the monsters were made glass cannons on purpose for some unfathomable reason. Yeah, this was something I've been working on on a session by session basis; tweaking stats until I find a balance. I guess there's something to this "tummy feels" school of design!  What I'm worried about is the MM1 4e issue of HP pinatas. My buddy is taking over DM'ing for 4 sessions or so, to give me a break, but, this is something I have to address eventually. (Also, gently caress my players for refusing to start over at level 1 when we're adding two new players. One has never played D&D or an RPG or anything before, and another is new to 5e.)
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Feb 26, 2015 02:44
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Red Hood posted:
Frankly, I gotta side with them. Level 1 D&D Next is awful.
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Feb 26, 2015 02:51
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Red Hood posted:Yeah, this was something I've been working on on a session by session basis; tweaking stats until I find a balance. I guess there's something to this "tummy feels" school of design! Why do you want them to start over at level 1? Why not just bump up the newbies to level 5 or whatever?
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Feb 26, 2015 02:53
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Solid Jake posted:Frankly, I gotta side with them. Level 1 D&D Next is awful. By all accounts even among people who actually like playing Next, it's one of those "just start everyone at level 3" games, not very coincidentally like 3.X was.
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Feb 26, 2015 02:56
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The rocket tag thing was something that 3rd Edition also struggled with, and one attempt to fix it way back then was to just give the monsters a guaranteed rank in the initiative order, which then reflects in 5th Edition having Legendary Actions and Lair Actions: there are things the monster can do at initiative count 30 no matter what, and the monster is also able to shrug off the first x number of save-or-die/save-or-suck spells no matter what. Another approach that comes to mind (and one that I attempted to create) would be to structure monster HP such that it should be able to absorb so many blows without turning into 4E-MM1 slogs, but the somewhat unstructured way in which spells are handed out damage (and damage equivalence, as in save-or-suck spells) makes this difficult. I had to base my assumptions off of a Fighter's basic weapon attacks, but there's just too many spells to say that "enough HP for 4 hits before being killed" won't let the full casters cause rocket tag regardless. It's an interesting problem, and one that I don't think has an easy or straightforward solution. One thing you might want to experiment with is the idea that success in a combat encounter isn't always going to be about about killing all of the monsters: if the players have to trigger some gimmick or accomplish some objective, that effectively "wastes" their advantage on the initiative order, or doesn't award them a clear win just because the monsters just need mopping up by the end of round 1.
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Feb 26, 2015 03:11
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goatface posted:An Elf lies slumped over the pristine bar in a high end hotel, discovered by staff arriving next morning. The bartender who would have closed up is missing. Thank you.
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Feb 26, 2015 03:36
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I can kind of understand why they went with "glass cannons," because there's nothing that makes a battle more of a tiresome slog than wasting round after round just chipping away at seemingly unending mountains of HP. It's dull from a game perspective, it's dull from a description perspective, the players feel like their attacks aren't really accomplishing much. Obviously it wasn't the best solution, but I can kind of see why someone might, at least, favour it over the opposite.
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Feb 26, 2015 03:46
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PurpleXVI posted:I can kind of understand why they went with "glass cannons," because there's nothing that makes a battle more of a tiresome slog than wasting round after round just chipping away at seemingly unending mountains of HP. It's dull from a game perspective, it's dull from a description perspective, the players feel like their attacks aren't really accomplishing much. Obviously it wasn't the best solution, but I can kind of see why someone might, at least, favour it over the opposite. The thing is, chipping away at HP can get a bit rote, but the fact that it is governed by random chance is even more 
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Feb 26, 2015 03:52
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The problem sorta boils down to the idea that you need a multitude of fights every "day." 5e is far worse then 4e with 5e's "your standard adventuring day has like 8 fights" but 4e (and 13A) is still built around the idea tht you're having 4 or more fights each time you sit down to play. It's really not a surprise that the same people who were angry at 4e for making fights too long "because we have a bunch of trash fights against just kobolds, and we can't do that!" are the same people who refer to fights as "the thing you do fast, then get back to the fun." Like, D&D treats fighting things as if it were doing your loving taxes. MAN NONE OF US LIKE IT, BUT WE GOTTA DO IT!
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Feb 26, 2015 04:44
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theironjef posted:
This is exactly why I find the prospect of seeking a group of strangers online for gaming to be abhorrent.
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Feb 26, 2015 05:22
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P.d0t posted:The thing is, chipping away at HP can get a bit rote, but the fact that it is governed by random chance is even more I'm confused, or maybe just really inexperienced with RPGs. Every RPG that I can think of relies on dice rolls in combat to determine if you hit or not. What's wrong with this? I can totally imagine games without dice rolling where attacks just hit, but it seems like a totally different style of game.
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Feb 26, 2015 06:10
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Ederick posted:I'm confused, or maybe just really inexperienced with RPGs. Every RPG that I can think of relies on dice rolls in combat to determine if you hit or not. What's wrong with this? I can totally imagine games without dice rolling where attacks just hit, but it seems like a totally different style of game. Well you can have that same attack roll be used for lots and lots of different things. Special events that happen, cool tricks that are pulled off, plot advancements/shift/changes all as part of that same dice roll mechanic.
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Feb 26, 2015 06:24
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Ederick posted:I'm confused, or maybe just really inexperienced with RPGs. Every RPG that I can think of relies on dice rolls in combat to determine if you hit or not. What's wrong with this? I can totally imagine games without dice rolling where attacks just hit, but it seems like a totally different style of game. Yeah but really, the PCs should have ways to get, oh I dunno, Advantage without it being "because a magician cast a spell."
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Feb 26, 2015 07:24
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ProfessorCirno posted:The problem sorta boils down to the idea that you need a multitude of fights every "day." 5e is far worse then 4e with 5e's "your standard adventuring day has like 8 fights" but 4e (and 13A) is still built around the idea tht you're having 4 or more fights each time you sit down to play. It's really not a surprise that the same people who were angry at 4e for making fights too long "because we have a bunch of trash fights against just kobolds, and we can't do that!" are the same people who refer to fights as "the thing you do fast, then get back to the fun." I have seen a grand total of maybe 2 RPGs where I legitimately enjoy being in combat for reasons of the mechanics, though.
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Feb 26, 2015 07:34
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Ederick posted:I'm confused, or maybe just really inexperienced with RPGs. Every RPG that I can think of relies on dice rolls in combat to determine if you hit or not. What's wrong with this? I can totally imagine games without dice rolling where attacks just hit, but it seems like a totally different style of game. There was some edition where a lot of attacks did damage if you missed, to help with the chipping away and to reflect that your character is competent and accurate, but sometimes just doesn't hit as hard or effectively, but it's been lost to the mists of history.
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Feb 26, 2015 07:35
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Gizmoduck_5000 posted:This is exactly why I find the prospect of seeking a group of strangers online for gaming to be abhorrent. Do you mean like for PbPs or face-to-face gaming? Because with face-to-face gaming unless you're cultivating a gaming group out of friends you've known for years already, there's no real difference between rustling up a group from people online or, say, from the local gaming store. My last tabletop gaming group was one that started off with me having a meetup with some folks who posted to RPGnet and happened to be in the Portland area. I didn't know them from Adam at the time so my first meetup with them wasn't "hey let's play some D&D," it was "hey, let's go grab a beer and shoot the poo poo" and from there I got to know them and found out they weren't huge lovely creeps that liked talking about sorcerous abortions and halfling rape. Honestly, "get to know someone outside of elfgaming first" is the way to go no matter where you're recruiting from, even if they aren't a creep maybe you just don't like'em, it happens. If you mean PbPs or IRC play, well, same rules apply, though how well you can ever really know someone on the internet is a matter for debate...but if they're wondering if an AoE can hit a fetus and keep loving bringing it up without a hint of shame, well, there's your answer right there. I mean, I wouldn't play with a group of total strangers (as in I don't know any of these people at all) whether it was online or off. I find convention games where you show up to play an RPG with a table of total strangers to be kind of weird and think that the various Living X games (Living Forgotten Realms, Pathfinder Society) sound like the shittiest possible combination of gaming with strangers, terrible premade adventures, and petty, small-stakes nerd politics imaginable and I can't imagine willingly ever deciding "yeah, this is how I want to spend my evening."
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Feb 26, 2015 07:40
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So does anyone else notice that Barbarians have a serious MAD problem? I noticed this before, but I sort of just now came to the full realization of how bad it is.
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Feb 26, 2015 08:06
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Dump strength, rely on Advantage on your melee attacks, and get a set of Gauntlets of Ogre Power or Belt of Giant Strength as quickly as possible.
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Feb 26, 2015 08:28
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Ederick posted:I'm confused, or maybe just really inexperienced with RPGs. Every RPG that I can think of relies on dice rolls in combat to determine if you hit or not. What's wrong with this? I can totally imagine games without dice rolling where attacks just hit, but it seems like a totally different style of game. The way I read it is that you already have a dice roll to determine whether you hit or not, you don't necessarily need another dice roll to determine how much damage you deal, especially since you've still got activated abilities and critical hits and passive abilities to further introduce variance into combat. The ratio of damage versus HP is partly due to enforce a given length of combat so that things can happen, and variance within that ratio produces drama by subverting expectations, but at some point as a designer you might want to take a step back and think about just how many moving parts you actually need.
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Feb 26, 2015 09:04
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kingcom posted:Well you can have that same attack roll be used for lots and lots of different things. Special events that happen, cool tricks that are pulled off, plot advancements/shift/changes all as part of that same dice roll mechanic.
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Feb 26, 2015 09:07
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Payndz posted:Not sure how that would go down with the "b-b-but you can't damage on a miss!" crowd I would just ignore that completely. It's absolutely ridiculous that you can save for half damage against a Fireball but completely avoid any sort of damage from a sword attack as much as half the time.
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Feb 26, 2015 09:11
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You could just excise rolling to attack completely, and tie any activated abilities on the amount of damage dealt instead of a binary hit/miss result. It makes little sense to roll twice when you already know you'll be doing some damage.
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Feb 26, 2015 09:33
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Kai Tave posted:I find convention games where you show up to play an RPG with a table of total strangers to be kind of weird Convention game one-offs own, you should try them out - they have in general been really positive for me. Where else do you get to, all in one weekend, play a game about the Library of Babel, a Princess Bride pastiche minilarp, a 70s californian UFO Cult game, 3:16, WW1 trenches horror, and some Laundry Files?
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Feb 26, 2015 09:47
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I can understand why con games are a thing at least to some degree...if you want to get a hands-on demo of a game you've never played before but been kind of curious about, well, you're in luck. But I've heard so many horror stories about lovely con games brought down by either A). bad players, B). bad GMs, or C). some combination of both that it really seems like you're rolling the dice on whether you're going to get a real awesome rad funtime adventure or a catpiss tale, and so I'm not entirely convinced that it's worth seeking that experience out as opposed to simply asking the game group you know is decent "hey, can we try this game, I heard it's pretty sweet?" Organized play, though, I cannot even remotely see the point of. Yes, in a hobby whose primary selling points include crafting a personal gaming experience between you and some good friends, let's go gaming with a bunch of complete strangers while a GM runs lovely canned adventures full of restrictions on what you can and can't do unless maybe you jump through enough hoops to collect the requisite number of Good Boy points.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:00
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Con games are the place to go if you want to play new and interesting games/settings with mutants, weirdos, and angry teenagers. As far as organized play, I have never seen the appeal of Really Organized Play where we all have to abide by strict character creation rules and other poo poo that shouldn't matter. I don't have a thirst to upload session reports to a database, either. But my current group of people are those that I found in D&D Encounters and we all get along quite well playing anything.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:06
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I will never understand people who go to cons to play loving D&D, no matter what edition.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:09
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Organized play is nice for folks to travel, move around a lot, or otherwise have a schedule that makes a steady weekly game unfeasible. There's a clear set of instructions on what you bring, house rules are minimized, and you won't need to make a new character just because you spent the last two months in Siberia or whatever. A well designed organized play system would also dovetail with con games to allow people to transition seamlessly between them and encourage player retention.ProfessorCirno posted:I will never understand people who go to cons to play loving D&D, no matter what edition. Free dice!
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Feb 26, 2015 10:11
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Kai Tave posted:I can understand why con games are a thing at least to some degree...if you want to get a hands-on demo of a game you've never played before but been kind of curious about, well, you're in luck. Con games are also big on weirdo system-light things that you're not going to find a rulebook for - nobody's written a game for running Five Go Mad In Dorset but I got to play that! I think you can get a pretty good idea of whether a con's going to be good by looking at game blurbs though. If there are 24 sessions of identical Pathfinder, sure, but you want something like this: http://kapcon.org.nz/?q=games24 I hear Big Bad Con is great for this kind of game too in SF.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:12
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This is actually an interesting discussion: how would you guys go about getting rid of attack rolls? Attacks automatically deal damage minus armor, make all effects beyond just dealing damage reliant on saving throws? You'd obviously need to bump hit point values on both the player and monster side and calibrate them to get the appropriate assumed length for an encounter. Still needs something for dicey maneuvers because otherwise combat just turns to a war of attrition where you hope to roll high for damage so as to take out the enemy before they take you out. Advantage and disadvantage would also translate easily into this system: roll damage twice and pick the higher/lower result. I remember Into the Odd did some neat things with something to this effect: attacks automatically deal damage, you recover all hit points after combat, but any damage in excess of your hit point value goes into your stats, and ability scores refresh at a slower rate. What this means is that hit points are a per-fight resource, but engaging in more combats over a period of time still taxes your overall character resources. This is mostly just rambling on my part, but my current rules-light D&D heartbreaker currently has a system where damage is Attack roll versus Defense roll and the difference between the two is the damage you deal, if you roll a match you still hit (activating any effects that might take place on a hit but not dealing damage) and I'm just wondering if I could adjust my system so that you can always expect to deal damage while still keeping the combat tactical and interesting.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:31
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isndl posted:Organized play is nice for folks to travel, move around a lot, or otherwise have a schedule that makes a steady weekly game unfeasible. There's a clear set of instructions on what you bring, house rules are minimized, and you won't need to make a new character just because you spent the last two months in Siberia or whatever. A well designed organized play system would also dovetail with con games to allow people to transition seamlessly between them and encourage player retention. Y'know, people talk about PbP like it's the poor man's substitute for real gaming, but if what you describe was my situation and my choice was PbPs of some sort or nothing but organized play games then I'd choose the PbPs, or if not that then no gaming at all, over bouncing from joyless premade adventure to joyless premade adventure.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:34
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Ratpick posted:This is actually an interesting discussion: how would you guys go about getting rid of attack rolls? Attacks automatically deal damage minus armor, make all effects beyond just dealing damage reliant on saving throws? I was rather thinking of getting rid of damage rolls, instead. If I set the average damage of an attack to 3, then I can set the HP of a monster to 12, and then rely on partial-damage-on-a-miss, crits, abilities that do more than average damage and circumstantial to-hit bonuses to generate variance. It'd also be significantly faster to process, and from a houseruling perspective you barely need to change a thing. I agree with you though that Into the Odd does some very interesting things with combat and task resolution mechanics.
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Feb 26, 2015 12:05
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Ratpick posted:This is actually an interesting discussion: how would you guys go about getting rid of attack rolls? Attacks automatically deal damage minus armor, make all effects beyond just dealing damage reliant on saving throws? I think the problem with this idea is that it would make combat even more of a "let's chip away at him until he falls over"-chore. Without any sort of random element, combat is a lot more deterministic, there's a lot less risk, a lot less danger. While it does speed things up, the less things you roll during combat, the less purpose there is to combat. If everything was just static values, you could basically sit down at the start of the fight, look over all the sheets, and go: "Okay, you start fighting the ogre, you all take... twenty HP worth of damage, distribute it among yourselves, you win the fight and pick up fifty gold pieces and the ogre's club." At the very least, if you applied it to D&D as-is. If you went all-static, or almost all-static, you would need a fuckload more tactical options/maneuvers, for all classes, to provide the unpredictable, non-deterministic element. Maybe even shift the random part over to something that's not "traditionally" random, like enemy behavior or something.
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Feb 26, 2015 12:51
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Just get rid of basic attacks altogether. They aren't interesting, nobody likes them and they don't add anything to gameplay. If you want interesting combat it helps a lot to have mobility and movement be an important part of it, so fully embracing the battle grid is a good step toward making fighting things actually fun. That's basically 4E though, isn't it?
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Feb 26, 2015 12:53
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Boing posted:That's basically 4E though, isn't it? That's increasingly where a lot of "how do we fix this?" circles back to.
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Feb 26, 2015 12:55
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Boing posted:Just get rid of basic attacks altogether. They aren't interesting, nobody likes them and they don't add anything to gameplay. If you want interesting combat it helps a lot to have mobility and movement be an important part of it, so fully embracing the battle grid is a good step toward making fighting things actually fun. That's basically 4E though, isn't it? The problem with the battle grid is that it also adds more work to every fight, and when gaming online it's a pain in the rear end to mess around with yet another program. Battle grids and boards are great when gaming in person, but over the internet I hate them. I'm absolutely on board with either removing basic attacks or making them a very distant backup to actually using skills, though. Take some hints from Guild Wars or Divinity: Original Sin's Warrior/Rogue/Marksman/Ranger/Man-At-Arms skills, and tell verisimilitude to go get hosed for a while.
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Feb 26, 2015 12:55
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