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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, I'll agree there, it's not necessarily a lot more work. The utilities I've found online, last I tried to deal with grids online(A Star Wars Saga game, so that may account for some of the bad taste it left in my mouth, admittedly), just felt clunky and really added to everyone's combat fatigue in having to deal with them. Assuming I had a gorgeous, ideal utility for it that maybe even handled some of the game rules, I'd be up for it, but not with the buggy trash I've had to deal with so far. Then again, after the initial poor impression, I haven't really looked for anything, so it's entirely plausible that something's out there and I've simply not experienced it. Here's the simplest way to handle maps and minis for PbP play. 1). Make a map with a grid on it. Use paint, GIMP, whatever. Steal images from wherever and put lines over it. Just abstract poo poo like you're using a whiteboard and markers, however it goes. 2). Make some tokens, i.e. separate little image chits for the players and monsters. The good news is once you make'em for the players you never have to make theirs again. Monsters just come from, again, wherever. 3). Put the map and the tokens in a publicly editable Google Drive page, give your players the link. They are then perfectly free to move their tokens as well as any of the monster tokens on the map as necessary and all the changes are automatically saved for anyone else who visits the page. If the players have, at least, the enemies' basic defense values so they know what they're rolling against this means that players can move, attack, and resolve all their poo poo in a single post instead of having to tell you "I move to square Q-23 and attack monster X with ability Y" and have you do all the heavy lifting.
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Feb 26, 2015 21:08
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Why not just use percentage dice instead of a d20 and then multiply your max damage by the percentage you rolled (rounded down). Your max damage with X weapon is 10/hit. You roll a 56%, you do 5 damage (or six if you're a generous DM).
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Feb 26, 2015 21:43
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Rabble posted:Why not just use percentage dice instead of a d20 and then multiply your max damage by the percentage you rolled (rounded down). You're gonna need a calculator or a ton of math experience for damage numbers that aren't a nice round multiple of 10.
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Feb 26, 2015 21:46
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Rabble posted:Why not just use percentage dice instead of a d20 and then multiply your max damage by the percentage you rolled (rounded down). Heck, you can even keep using d20s.
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Feb 26, 2015 21:56
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It boggles my mind talking to friends who love 3.5 and 5e complaining about how 4e requires a grid and minis, or is too "combat mechanics heavy." I can understand if they want more light combat in the P&P, but they are insane suggesting that 3.5 or 5e are the correct alternative to fix that.
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Feb 26, 2015 21:58
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Kai Tave posted:Here's the simplest way to handle maps and minis for PbP play. Oh, here's the complexity, then, I don't do PbP play, I do weekly sessions over IRC, which means I need something easy to work with in real-time. If I actually did PbP I'd never resolve any fights round-by-round, because holy poo poo, my experience with PbP as a dumb teenager roleplaying on message boards with Ye Olde 2e D&D tells me that's an easy way to pass an entire week's worth of posts on gutting two orcs.
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Feb 26, 2015 22:08
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mango sentinel posted:It boggles my mind talking to friends who love 3.5 and 5e complaining about how 4e requires a grid and minis, or is too "combat mechanics heavy." I can understand if they want more light combat in the P&P, but they are insane suggesting that 3.5 or 5e are the correct alternative to fix that. At the risk of causing a huge lovely flamewar a lot of this strikes me as the same received wisdom that tells people that when you play Monopoly you get all the money in the center whenever you pass Free Parking. It's not that 3.X or Next are any easier to do gridless than 4E was, but over the years so many people have houseruled the grid away from 3.X (which Next is very similar to in a number of respects) that now it's "common knowledge" that one is totally easy to play gridless while the other is locked to the map in a way that completely prevents people from engaging with the theater of the mind. Point out that 3.X is built around using a map and miniatures and has plenty of rules for things like Threatening Reach, AoO's, determining area of effect, 5-foot steps, etc. and the invariable response is "well our group never had a problem with it," which is almost certainly because their group never actually thought about it too hard and was just handwaving the hell out of things without consideration.
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Feb 26, 2015 22:11
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Kai Tave posted:At the risk of causing a huge lovely flamewar a lot of this strikes me as the same received wisdom that tells people that when you play Monopoly you get all the money in the center whenever you pass Free Parking. It's not that 3.X or Next are any easier to do gridless than 4E was, but over the years so many people have houseruled the grid away from 3.X (which Next is very similar to in a number of respects) that now it's "common knowledge" that one is totally easy to play gridless while the other is locked to the map in a way that completely prevents people from engaging with the theater of the mind. Point out that 3.X is built around using a map and miniatures and has plenty of rules for things like Threatening Reach, AoO's, determining area of effect, 5-foot steps, etc. and the invariable response is "well our group never had a problem with it," which is almost certainly because their group never actually thought about it too hard and was just handwaving the hell out of things without consideration. If I extend this reasoning I can say that 4e actually forced you to consider the rules that groups might have previously ignored simply due to every class now having abilities that required you to understand those rules. I disliked 4e because it made every class essentially into a spell caster (with "skills" instead of "spells"). Sometimes I wanted to play a big dumb brute that base attacked their way through an encounter, but even the barbarian had a list of abilities that you had to work with. I feel like 5e is a simplification of 3.5 (in a good way) and that 4e would have been received a lot better by consumers if it was called something else.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:06
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Rabble posted:
You are what's wrong with D&D.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:10
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mango sentinel posted:It boggles my mind talking to friends who love 3.5 and 5e complaining about how 4e requires a grid and minis, or is too "combat mechanics heavy." I can understand if they want more light combat in the P&P, but they are insane suggesting that 3.5 or 5e are the correct alternative to fix that. It's just standard edition war bullshit. In 2001, people complained about how 3.0 required a grid and minis and was too combat focused. In 2006, people complained that 3.5 required a grid and minis and was too combat focused. As soon as 4E was released, people started complaining that it required a grid and minis and was too combat focused. There is no thought behind it at all. PurpleXVI posted:Oh, here's the complexity, then, I don't do PbP play, I do weekly sessions over IRC, which means I need something easy to work with in real-time. If I actually did PbP I'd never resolve any fights round-by-round, because holy poo poo, my experience with PbP as a dumb teenager roleplaying on message boards with Ye Olde 2e D&D tells me that's an easy way to pass an entire week's worth of posts on gutting two orcs. Roll20.net is free, browser-based, and absurdly easy to use. I seriously recommend it for anybody that plays online.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:11
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Can we please not have an edition war.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:11
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gradenko_2000 posted:To steer this back towards Next, the reason why we want to eliminate attack rolls is so that we eliminate the boring, nothing-happens miss result. However, part of the reason why misses are so boring in the first place is because there's often very little a player can do about it. See, removing to-hit rolls and just using damage rolls removes one bit of randomness that I personally feel is unnecessary. I see the to-hit roll as unnecessary because D&D's combat system is already so abstract that having to check whether a blow connects and how hard it connects separately feels a bit off, especially since a hit in D&D can mean so many different things and damage can also be interpreted in very different ways due to the abstract nature of hit points. Admittedly removing the to-hit roll makes the game somewhat more predictable, but that I actually feel is a good thing in the long run: removing the extra bit of randomness that is to-hit rolls makes it easier to gauge how many turns characters will potentially take to defeat their opponents, as well as as how much damage they can expect to take in that time. Once you have your fair encounter where, all things considered, the PCs should come on top you can easily make it a bit unfair: the sort of encounter where the PCs can expect to pull trough provided they play smartly. I don't mean this in the adversial GMing "Earn your fun!" kind of way, just in the sense that because tactical squad-based combat is the meat and bones of D&D, so I think it should play out like a tactical puzzle where the players need to figure out the best course of action to succeed. However, for combat to work as a tactical puzzle in a tabletop format (where there's no saving your game and retrying a failed combat) combat needs to work in such a way that the PCs are not boned if they make a few tactical errors in the fist rounds of combat. Because under a system where there's no separate attack roll the PCs can generally expect to take more damage, hit points obviously need to be scaled upwards. But yeah, there I go rambling again. This idea might not be the best fit for 5e (although I'd like to try it out), so if this develops further I'll probably take it into the design thread.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:11
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Rabble posted:Sometimes I wanted to play a big dumb brute that base attacked their way through an encounter No you didn't, not even once. Even if you were telling the truth, there would be nothing stopping you from rolling an essentials Slayer and going hog wild with basic attack.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:14
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Rabble posted:If I extend this reasoning I can say that 4e actually forced you to consider the rules that groups might have previously ignored simply due to every class now having abilities that required you to understand those rules. The bane of gamers everywhere, a game where you actually have to understand what the gently caress you're doing. Rabble posted:I disliked 4e because it made every class essentially into a spell caster (with "skills" instead of "spells"). It's like it's 2008 all over again.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:16
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Rabble posted:If I extend this reasoning I can say that 4e actually forced you to consider the rules that groups might have previously ignored simply due to every class now having abilities that required you to understand those rules. Take nothing but x(W) abilities. If a guy you hit tries to get away, hit him again.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:17
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Garl_Grimm posted:You are what's wrong with D&D. Never mind.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:22
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Rabble posted:Never mind. Come the gently caress on, you really think "4E made everyone spellcasters!" is going to get anything but derision in this, the year of our lord 2015? You can not like 4E without resorting to dumb edition war rhetoric from ENWorld and 4chan.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:31
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Kai Tave posted:It's like it's 2008 all over again. It's tabletop WOW, also I really enjoy Flo Rida and T-Pain and see great things in their future.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:47
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I would pay good money to listen to T-Pain play D&D, Ice-T can be the GM.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:08
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Rabble posted:Sometimes I wanted to play a big dumb brute that base attacked their way through an encounter, but even the barbarian had a list of abilities that you had to work with. Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Barbarian, Cleric, Warlock, Warden, Avenger, and Paladin can all be big dumb brutes that spam one move, if we're only looking as far as phb 2. Does it matter that the Barbarian spams "Howling Strike" instead of "Basic Attack," or that the Paladin calls it "Virtuous Strike"?
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Feb 27, 2015 00:10
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Play a ranger. Take all the two weapon strike powers. When you hit a guy, hit him again.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:12
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Splicer posted:Play a ranger. Alternatively, pick the class you want, pick one at will you want and just use it over and over again and dont even look at the other powers. Sure you will be way less effective but its not any different than playing a fighter in any other dnd system.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:15
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theironjef posted:It's simple man. 4e is good with a grid, and bad without a grid. 3.x is bad with a grid, and bad without a grid. So to an observer, 4e gets worse without a grid present, but 3.x does not. It's just all relative. I thought that this was obviously what's happening here. Going gridless can't break what's already broken.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:16
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kingcom posted:Alternatively, pick the class you want, pick one at will you want and just use it over and over again and dont even look at the other powers. Sure you will be way less effective but its not any different than playing a fighter in any other dnd system. Yes but now you're playing a fighter suboptimally, whereas previously you could play a fighter optimally and still only do one thing and be worthless compared to the casters.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:17
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Yeah, realtalk, 4E doesn't support the stereotypical "big dumb brute" i.e. "I hit it with my sword, oh is that guy dead already, then I hit the next guy with my sword" in the sense that it requires everybody to actually be engaged with the game instead of Bob checking out and playing Flappy Bird on his phone while the Wizard and Druid pull some poo poo that takes a spreadsheet to figure out. It absolutely does support "I want to play a guy whose thing is he hits people in the face really, really loving hard for like as much damage as I can" in about a dozen different flavors, and that was before Essentials came along and made Fighter 2.0, now with Less Stuff™.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:19
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Rabble posted:If I extend this reasoning I can say that 4e actually forced you to consider the rules that groups might have previously ignored simply due to every class now having abilities that required you to understand those rules. Dude chill out and don't be so aggro, D&D as a game design problem was solved with 4th edition, though a few very small fixes to the RAW combat math are worth implementing at your table. Otherwise the game is the pinnacle of game design as far as making a D&D game is concerned. Other games might implement player engagement in or control of the narrative better, but no D&D is as good as 4th edition. You just have to like, free your mind from the shackles of tradition and reactionary conservatism and appreciate how good, well balanced and tightly designed a rules system it is. Once you do that you'll never want to go back to 3.5 or anything derived from it, like 5th edition so obviously is. Learn to adjust your personal preferences and expectations to the play style that 4th editions design fosters, which is a clearly superior one that encourages players to engage fully with an elegant rules set that doesn't contain any chaff. It really is a better system than 3.5, Pathfinder or 5E and once you learn to embrace its objectively better game design decisions, you'll start not only playing a better game, but will become a better person for the experience.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:23
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, realtalk, 4E doesn't support the stereotypical "big dumb brute" i.e. "I hit it with my sword, oh is that guy dead already, then I hit the next guy with my sword" in the sense that it requires everybody to actually be engaged with the game instead of Bob checking out and playing Flappy Bird on his phone while the Wizard and Druid pull some poo poo that takes a spreadsheet to figure out. It absolutely does support "I want to play a guy whose thing is he hits people in the face really, really loving hard for like as much damage as I can" in about a dozen different flavors, and that was before Essentials came along and made Fighter 2.0, now with Less Stuff™. I actually had a group that I GMed where one guy did that. "I hit it with my axe." The rest of the time? He was reading the PHB. Wasn't interested in playing the game, mostly about reading it. Really not sure why he played, at this remove.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:24
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Kai Tave posted:Yeah, realtalk, 4E doesn't support the stereotypical "big dumb brute" i.e. "I hit it with my sword, oh is that guy dead already, then I hit the next guy with my sword" in the sense that it requires everybody to actually be engaged with the game instead of Bob checking out and playing Flappy Bird on his phone while the Wizard and Druid pull some poo poo that takes a spreadsheet to figure out. It absolutely does support "I want to play a guy whose thing is he hits people in the face really, really loving hard for like as much damage as I can" in about a dozen different flavors, and that was before Essentials came along and made Fighter 2.0, now with Less Stuff™.
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Feb 27, 2015 00:26
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Daetrin posted:I actually had a group that I GMed where one guy did that. "I hit it with my axe." The rest of the time? He was reading the PHB. Wasn't interested in playing the game, mostly about reading it. Really not sure why he played, at this remove. Because all his friends were chilling out for 5 hours every saturday and having a good time and it isn't fun to be the guy across the room playing Oblivion on the Xbox
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Feb 27, 2015 00:30
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Play a Rogue. Take all the target reflex powers. Before you hit a guy, Glorified Scrivener posted:Dude chill out and don't be so aggro, D&D as a game design problem was solved with 4th edition No. \/ You are doing god's work \/ Splicer fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Feb 27, 2015 |
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Feb 27, 2015 00:39
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The Elf stares at you across the table, the gold-flecked green of his eyes standing out in the smoky haze from his premium grade pipeweed. "GENTLEMEN," he barks. His voice is oddly harsh for an elf, but then it's rare to see one with a face so heavily lined, so old. "The project is 85% comPLETE. We can, with 99% reliability, permanently transform any willing orcish test subject into a manticore at the bargain cost of 14,000 gold pieces per unit. The other races are coming, we're just months away from cracking humans, and from there the lab wizards say it's downhill all the way." "AND YET, they are not only threatening to cut our funding, but to close. us. down. All 'The war we designed them for isn't a prospect any more', 'our battles with the drow are all underground', 'the gnomes are our friends now' snivelling. THEY don't see the value in a military force that ignores fortifications. THEY are talking about filling in the spiked border trench which WE spent YEARS digging. I believe that it is our DUTY, to make these people SEE what threats we face." "YOU, will travel via secret tunnels into gnomish lands. There you will foment revolutionary ideals among their youths and the traitors who live among them. Make them think they should take back one of those cities we liberated or something. It's not important, just get them agitated. THEN, at the given time you will make an illegal crossing of the border back into our territory at point Beta, where you will STRIKE at the heart of our liberal leadership and destroy the dam on the Lilypad peace reservoir. The skeletal guards should prove little resistance, they're nothing compared to the REAL FIGHTING MEN who were sold down the river when they legalised necromancy. Once the target is destroyed, you will recross the border at point Charlie. Temporary bridges will have been placed over the spike trench, collapse them after use, we will have already dispersed bodies of gnomish terrorists around the scene." "Questions?"
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Feb 27, 2015 00:48
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PurpleXVI posted:I again, never really found that to be a problem. If the fighter wants to protect the mage, he can protect the mage, I just assume he's not glued to a single square and can move around freely as a mobile wall to intercept any orcs coming for the wizard, unless they mob him with a dozen at once. For the mage, I assume that if they don't know what he's capable of, or are raging or stupid, enemies generally let him hit the majority of them with any AoE spells without roasting his buddies(unless one of his buddies is currently fighting one of them in melee), and otherwise just hazard a fair and reasonable guess. If the rogue and cleric move to pincer an archer... they move to pincer the archer, I'm... not sure why I need a grid for that. And that's why I said you can abstract it. Can the fighter set up a choke point so that he can hold off the Orcs without getting swarmed? Can the Wizard get more Orcs with a FIreball than a Lightning Bolt. If the Fighter is willing to take the hit how many more bad guys fry? Can the Rogue get to the other side of the archer without provoking an attack himself, from the archer or from someone else on the way? Can any of the players of these characters find out these things without directly asking the DM? Are you contending that the rules are actually not written for grids, or that it doesn't cost much to figure it out without one, despite their design? quote:Yeah, I entirely agree that some things work better with a grid, and I never said the game might not have been designed with them in mind. But most of the mechanics are perfectly possible to abstract and, frankly, a lot of them are more fun if you just roll with them in a way that's cool rather than nitpicking over every last inch of boardspace. I'm not judging you or your game or whatever. Someone pointed out that the last several editions were written specifically for a grid, and that there were other games designed to be gridless from the ground up. You replied that that was only true of 4e. Would you agree that that isn't really the case, and that, regardless of the particulars of what happens at a given table, the rules themselves include many aspects that were written with a grid in mind?
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Feb 27, 2015 03:19
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Welp got a recruit for a 6th level game, gave everyone the chance to pick an uncommon magic item, which of course vary wildly in power, then let someone pick a template in place of their magic item. Now it seems I will be inundated with half-dragons and werebears.
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Feb 27, 2015 03:54
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I really don't get the appeal of a character that only ever does Basic Attack. I introduced some friends to Basic D&D way back and by the second round of the first combat, somebody had asked me "can I cleave to hit both these zombies at once?" and another had asked "can I drop into a defensive stance to raise my AC?" and of course I made something up on the spot to let them do it (granted, the latter is mechanically supported by Basic and even Next right out of the box) If the reason is that the rest of the group is playing D&D and one person just wants to keep hanging out with their friends but doesn't want to learn the game, why the hell is the group still playing D&D?! It wouldn't be an acceptable answer for any other activity to go "yeah let's just try to squeeze in Bob with the minimum of necessary interaction", but we need to make such allowances for this particular game? I don't buy it. Do something else that everyone is interested in, or schedule your D&D game separately with just the sub-group that wants to play.
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Feb 27, 2015 03:54
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On the topics of both "gridless gaming" and "phasing out attack rolls" my homebrew system The Next Project tries really hard to do both. Probably you want minis or counters to track position, but overall it's pretty abstract and easy to track in text (such as PbP.) You're either engaged with a thing, disengaging from a thing, not engaged, or hidden. It's d20-based, but Advantage is easy to get, and you always hit on a 10 or more; if you miss with a Basic Attack, you deal damage equal to the attack roll, so HP is always getting whittled away. I'm always looking for more feedback on the writing and actual-play experiences, so if anyone wants to give it a look, you can comment at the end of the doc or PM me. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Feb 27, 2015 |
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Feb 27, 2015 03:54
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I am completely down with gridless combat by the by, I will happily play elfgames that don't require anything more than the vaguest of "yeah, he's in range" or "well he's over thataway" in the midst of combat. I'm just extremely skeptical that D&D, as presented, really goes to any great lengths to support or encourage that when the rules are full of 30' cones and 5-foot steps, and the idea of going "let's play this really crunchy, fiddly RPG full of gridmap stuff just, y'know, without the grid" makes me wonder why we aren't just playing another game altogether.
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Feb 27, 2015 04:02
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Kai Tave posted:I am completely down with gridless combat by the by, I will happily play elfgames that don't require anything more than the vaguest of "yeah, he's in range" or "well he's over thataway" in the midst of combat. I'm just extremely skeptical that D&D, as presented, really goes to any great lengths to support or encourage that when the rules are full of 30' cones and 5-foot steps, and the idea of going "let's play this really crunchy, fiddly RPG full of gridmap stuff just, y'know, without the grid" makes me wonder why we aren't just playing another game altogether. I absolutely love gridless combat. Its loads of fun with no setup time. You need to really specifically design for it otherwise its a mess.
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Feb 27, 2015 04:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:"can I cleave to hit both these zombies at once?" This is actually kinda supported in the DMG. An optional rule for taking down groups of weak enemies. When you make a Melee attack against an undamaged enemy that you kill in one hit, you deal any damage remaining to another undamaged creature within reach if your attack roll would have hit that creatures AC and so one until you run out of damage or valid targets. So say a level 3 Paladin is surrounded by 7 Kobolds. If he hits a Kobold with his longsword, smites and deals 22 damage. That would kill 4 kobolds and deal 2 damage to another. This rule along with another to make larger battles easier helped out when I did a conversion of Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. As the PC's more or less got an Orc army near the end and those rules made running dozens of Orcs vs a few hill gaints much easier and made the giants more threatening because they could smash groups of orcs at once. Though it's no mass battle system.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:39
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MonsterEnvy posted:This is actually kinda supported in the DMG. An optional rule for taking down groups of weak enemies. Right you are. In any case we were playing Basic so I just threw up something similar. My point was that anyone remotely interested in the game/genre is probably going to want to do something besides normal attack very quickly, and if they're not interested in the game, the group should really be doing something else.
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Feb 27, 2015 07:14
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| # ? May 17, 2024 14:17 |
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MonsterEnvy posted:This is actually kinda supported in the DMG. An optional rule for taking down groups of weak enemies. When you make a Melee attack against an undamaged enemy that you kill in one hit, you deal any damage remaining to another undamaged creature within reach if your attack roll would have hit that creatures AC and so one until you run out of damage or valid targets. So say a level 3 Paladin is surrounded by 7 Kobolds. If he hits a Kobold with his longsword, smites and deals 22 damage. That would kill 4 kobolds and deal 2 damage to another. What? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the origin of this rule is TAAC, right? They stole this rule from a goon-made retroclone, or did Payndz borrow it from another game that I'm not familiar with?
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Feb 27, 2015 07:23
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