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Yawgmoth posted:I don't think I have ever seen a game with grappling rules that weren't awful. In Fate the grappling rules are "you roll to create advantage, if you succeed you put a "Grappled" aspect on the target."
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Mar 4, 2015 16:49
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yes, I once had an argument with a 2e DM that Knock was the equivalent of burning a 2nd level spell slot and saying "these dummies left the door unlocked". "And that's ok, because it's MAGIC" was his response. And that's why I don't play any D&D other than 4e, which definitely ain't perfect but isn't a completely garbage Magic Show.
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Mar 4, 2015 17:25
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Yawgmoth posted:I don't think I have ever seen a game with grappling rules that weren't awful. Weirdly, Scion's were alright. It was just a brawl check that made both you and the target immobile and easier to hit for a turn.
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Mar 4, 2015 17:57
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My Lovely Horse posted:It occurs to me that 4E practically reversed the setup: used to be that the wizard cast Knock before the rogue could even get her lockpicks out, now Knock is a ritual and before the wizard even opens the book the fighter's probably kicked the door in. You are 100% right. As an aside, Fighters have had it bad but Rogues/Thief players were even worse. Even back when I was in my teens playing lovely 2e I realized that Wizards totally made Rogue players redundant by like level 4. You didn't need Hide in Shadows when you could become Invisible, you didn't need Move Silently when you could Levitate, you didn't need lockpicking when you had Knock, and it was easy to pile the loot on a Tenser's Floating Disk before gently sending it out the second story window. Eventually even the climbing skills got assed out by Fly and Thiefs were basically lovely fighters that could read scrolls (LOL) and argue with the DM for backstab bonuses. And get killed by traps, of course. True story: I got roped back into a 2e campaign around 2010 and I played as a Thief. Pre-campaign, I begged the DM to specifically omit all the magical poo poo that stomped Thiefing flat. I also pointed out that Thief characters would die to traps easily. He assured me that everything was cool and that he was taking what I said to heart. 3 sessions in, our Magic User already had Invisibility, somebody else had Boots of Elvenkind, blah blah blah. Of course I bailed. Later I found out that the character died to a trap. There's just no winning with some people.
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Mar 4, 2015 18:02
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:You are 100% right. As an aside, Fighters have had it bad but Rogues/Thief players were even worse. Even back when I was in my teens playing lovely 2e I realized that Wizards totally made Rogue players redundant by like level 4. You didn't need Hide in Shadows when you could become Invisible, you didn't need Move Silently when you could Levitate, you didn't need lockpicking when you had Knock, and it was easy to pile the loot on a Tenser's Floating Disk before gently sending it out the second story window. Eventually even the climbing skills got assed out by Fly and Thiefs were basically lovely fighters that could read scrolls (LOL) and argue with the DM for backstab bonuses. And get killed by traps, of course.
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Mar 4, 2015 18:13
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Yawgmoth posted:I don't think I have ever seen a game with grappling rules that weren't awful.  quote:WRESTLING: 
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Mar 4, 2015 18:15
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Yeah, all the editions before 3rd had separate XP tables for every class. That was the "balancing mechanic".
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Mar 4, 2015 18:18
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Doodmons posted:Weirdly, Scion's were alright. It was just a brawl check that made both you and the target immobile and easier to hit for a turn. Scion had much much bigger mechanical problems, so the simple grappling rules are only a small comfort.
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Mar 4, 2015 18:21
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DalaranJ posted:Yes, I would like someone to make a 'Monster Hunter' RPG, TIA. I was thinking about this while sinking many hours into 4 over the past couple weeks and really the mechanics are mostly already there in some of the reasonable systems, if you wanted still crunchier combat that started taking all the positioning and cat herding (note: literal cat herding. You have cats.) and armor skills and weapon damage type into account it would probably be kind of a boardgame scenario. But a Monster Hunter setting within a fantasy-esque RPG would be really easy and fun to work with--the games already situate you as a member of a community you are assisting with your efforts rather than a poacherhobo. Not to flog the PbtA horse relentlessly but Defying Danger to mount a monster seems like it'd be an obvious usage. ETA: It might also allow for less-lovely underwater combat. 
occamsnailfile fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 18:23
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Yawgmoth posted:In theory, wasn't the rogue/thief/sneaky class supposed to be like level 20 by the time the wizard was level ~6 or some crazy poo poo like that, by getting double xp for stealing things and making spot/listen/hide/MS checks and so on? My memory is hazy because 2e was awful in so many ways (and my DM only made them all 10x worse) but I recall this being a thing. No, because you're dead. You died to a trap that went off on a chest that you lockpicked successfully but didn't detect the trap. Or you did detect the trap and didn't remove it. Or you failed the lockpick check and the trap went off in response. 2e had thieves make 3 die rolls to unlock, detect, and defuse a trapped chest and frankly didn't give out enough skill points to be good enough to pull this off with any regularity until level 10. But you never made level 10, because you died when you failed your move silently check and got pinioned by 3 gobbos with crossbows or you failed your climb check and fell off a 40 foot ledge and smashed your head open or the scroll you decided to read was cursed and now you're a statue. Being a Thief in 2e is like watching the end credits to a Jackie Chan movie where he tries to do dangerous stuff and ends up falling on his face or hurting his hand or if he's really unlucky breaking a bone and everyone winces in pain. Except in this case it's some poor bastard being splashed with acid or being turned into a pile of ash or falling off a mountainside or having his soul stolen by the gem. Basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l464ZF5jK3Y
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Mar 4, 2015 18:26
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PresidentBeard posted:Scion had much much bigger mechanical problems, so the simple grappling rules are only a small comfort. Yeah, it's telling that the grappling rules were basically the high point for Scion.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:09
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Even back when I was in my teens playing lovely 2e I realized that Wizards totally made Rogue players redundant by like level 4. You didn't need Hide in Shadows when you could become Invisible, you didn't need Move Silently when you could Levitate, you didn't need lockpicking when you had Knock, and it was easy to pile the loot on a Tenser's Floating Disk before gently sending it out the second story window. Eventually even the climbing skills got assed out by Fly and Thiefs were basically lovely fighters that could read scrolls (LOL) and argue with the DM for backstab bonuses. And get killed by traps, of course. It does suck when the Magic User in the group is decides it's better to memorize Knock instead and crap on the thief's parade instead of say, preparing stinking cloud, yes. I'm not being facetious, nor am I going to defend the class balance structure of older D&D as a paragon of good game design. But I think its a little hyperbolic to dismiss what balancing mechanisms there were out of hand though. In the older D&D campaigns I've played in, whenever spell casters prepped spells that duplicated the class abilities of thieves, they were spending limited resources (spell slots) that otherwise would've allowed them to do things other classes couldn't. In effect the trade off the the spell caster operates as a crappier spell caster whenever they use resources to fill in for another class. I only ever saw Knock prepared after a thief had botched an open locks roll - nobody wanted to prep it just to have on hand, since even at 2nd level there were cooler spells. But of since course every single campaign ever in any system using Vancian spell casting has relied on a compact between the DM and Players to maliciously subvert that spirit of that action economy, I guess its a moot point. I swear, y'all are so bitter that sometimes I just want to get a Gurps hit location chart and ask y'all where the mean adversarial Dungeon Master touched you...
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Mar 4, 2015 19:21
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Evil Mastermind posted:In Fate the grappling rules are "you roll to create advantage, if you succeed you put a "Grappled" aspect on the target." I just want to point out that Dresden Files: the RPG included grappling rules that were just as fiddly and dumb as any I've ever seen in a non-Fate RPG. I discovered this the first time I made a character using super-strength with it and wanted to know what the procedure was for grabbing and chucking someone and it turns out it's kind of a dumb pain in the rear end actually, at least going by that iteration. Glorified Scrivener posted:But of since course every single campaign ever in any system using Vancian spell casting has relied on a compact between the DM and Players to maliciously subvert that spirit of that action economy, I guess its a moot point. I swear, y'all are so bitter that sometimes I just want to get a Gurps hit location chart and ask y'all where the mean adversarial Dungeon Master touched you... So I guess when you said you were going to stop making GBS threads up the Next thread your plan was just to bring it to the chat thread instead.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:27
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Glorified Scrivener posted:It does suck when the Magic User in the group is decides it's better to memorize Knock instead and crap on the thief's parade instead of say, preparing stinking cloud, yes. The issue is that there's really no reason for spells that specifically are better than class abilities to exist in the game at all, and class abilities that are effectively obsoleted by spells should be made more useful to compensate, or replaced with something better. This didn't happen because D&D's design was a mess barring a few periods, but it's something that should be taken into account rather than just porting over spells because they were in previous editions of the game.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:27
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When I say "made rogues redundant" I'm saying that Wizards could do whatever they could do, with no chance of failure, with the big fat zero mechanical penalty of having to rest after 8 hours. There's specific rules in 2e that says a Thief may NOT attempt to repick a lock immediately, so if he failed (and there was a decent chance that he would) that was it. You're hosed until the Wizard steps in. This is the dynamic of so much of 2e. "Get hosed or get a Wizard." I also want to say that if you want to understand how lovely D&D used to be, go download a Sierra game from the 1980s. They are garbage pixel-bitching "you're suddenly dead" turdfests and that's the kind of stuff that professional designers influenced by D&D were puking out. These were adults that were incredibly negatively influenced by the badness of D&D. The typical teenage DM had absolutely zero chance of doing anything of value at all with the system. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 19:29
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While it's true that it was actually rather difficult for Magic-Users to get all the spells they needed to really start making GBS threads on other classes prior to 3rd Edition busting open the gates to spell selection, I think that was sort of neutered by the fact that people threw out those rules regarding how spells were supposed to be acquired specifically because it was so difficult. Besides, the DM refusing the Wizard from ever finding a scroll of Knock is no big consolation to the Thief whose chances of successfully using their skills is low even when no one is upstaging them.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:29
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I didn't even think it was that controversial that AD&D2E was the Bad For Thieves edition, even fans of 2E pretty much agree that playing a straight-class Thief is a sucker's game in that one.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:31
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Kai Tave posted:I didn't even think it was that controversial that AD&D2E was the Bad For Thieves edition, even fans of 2E pretty much agree that playing a straight-class Thief is a sucker's game in that one. I can hardly blame Wizo from memorizing Knock if the Thief only has a 30% chance. I let my players add 3x their Dex score to all thief skills when I ran RC a few weeks ago. It was too miserable otherwise....
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Mar 4, 2015 19:53
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Kai Tave posted:So I guess when you said you were going to stop making GBS threads up the Next thread your plan was just to bring it to the chat thread instead.  gradenko_2000 posted:...I think that was sort of neutered by the fact that people threw out those rules regarding how spells were supposed to be acquired specifically because it was so difficult. Besides, the DM refusing the Wizard from ever finding a scroll of Knock is no big consolation to the Thief whose chances of successfully using their skills is low even when no one is upstaging them. Yes, people throwing out rules does rather undermine any sort of balance those rules might have achieved, however limited it might have been. And I won't argue that the chances of success for low level thieves in AD&D/2nd aren't atrocious. Effectronica posted:The issue is that there's really no reason for spells that specifically are better than class abilities to exist in the game at all, and class abilities that are effectively obsoleted by spells should be made more useful to compensate, or replaced with something better. This didn't happen because D&D's design was a mess barring a few periods, but it's something that should be taken into account rather than just porting over spells because they were in previous editions of the game. I agree that a lot of periods of D&D have been a mess, but not entirely with the logic behind spells that can duplicate class abilities not existing in pre-4th edition D&D. They mostly tie into games not taking place in a vacuum and random ability score generation. I’ll try to roll those reasons into an effort post for later.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:57
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Glorified Scrivener posted:Yes, people throwing out rules does rather undermine any sort of balance those rules might have achieved, however limited it might have been. And I won't argue that the chances of success for low level thieves in AD&D/2nd aren't atrocious. My point was that while it might have worked, it's not particularly good design for your class to be balanced with respect to others by making it really inconvenient to actually flesh out your class.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:03
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Kai Tave posted:I didn't even think it was that controversial that AD&D2E was the Bad For Thieves edition, even fans of 2E pretty much agree that playing a straight-class Thief is a sucker's game in that one. I played 1st and 2nd when I was like 14-18 and it is fascinating to hear people analyze the mechanics of it. With no internet we just figured things out as best we could. Oddly enough, I remember us all hating playing mages as they seemed useless unless you were allowed to rest all the time. I assume we had gotten it into our heads that resting anywhere other then a secured location was impossibly dangerous and we very much made transporting and protecting a mage's spellbook a huge deal. Often they would have to decide weather it was even safe to bring it along. I have been getting back into rpgs and sadly nothing seems to excite me as much as old AD&D does. bongwizzard fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 4, 2015 |
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Mar 4, 2015 20:21
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Glorified Scrivener posted:Yes, people throwing out rules does rather undermine any sort of balance those rules might have achieved, however limited it might have been. And I won't argue that the chances of success for low level thieves in AD&D/2nd aren't atrocious. The rules for Magic User spell components and spell acquisition were so incredibly bad and campaign-dominating that people were forced to throw them out. They didn't work for conventions because LOL what the gently caress, nobody was going to spend 3 hours on a side adventure to get spider web and crushed amethyst or whatever. They didn't work for campaigns unless you wanted the subject matter of the campaign to be Barry the Wizard and his Entourage of Gem-Collecting Statue-Sculpting Henchmen Who Feed Him All Their Loot So He Can Contribute. I played D&D 1e and 2e for like 12 years in a variety of environments and playgroups and nobody, literally nobody, at any time used those rules as written. Nobody.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:23
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Seven Seas announced their first game. It's a Space Dandy deck-building card game, holy poo poo.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:27
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Glorified Scrivener posted:I agree that a lot of periods of D&D have been a mess, but not entirely with the logic behind spells that can duplicate class abilities not existing in pre-4th edition D&D. They mostly tie into games not taking place in a vacuum and random ability score generation. I’ll try to roll those reasons into an effort post for later. I'm not saying that. There are a lot of spells that can "duplicate class abilities", depending on how we interpret class abilities. Knock, however, is essentially superior to picking locks even in the hypothetical state where thief abilities are auto-success, since it can burst welds and can be used from a safe distance (I can't remember if it was 2e or 3e that ditched its "secret door radar" function). Playing a mage who picks their spells carefully is better than playing a thief for doing most thief-y things like opening doors and stealing treasure and all that, especially since you can add in other spells to knock out guards etc. There's no reason for it to exist, and it should be made substantially weaker if it stays in the game, or somehow transitioned into something different from a spell (4e does this partially by making it a ritual). Similarly, if Mordenkainen's Sword was able to effectively obsolete fighters, then it should not exist, and so on. The second part is this, though- class-specific abilities should be superior to their knockoffs. Rangers should be able to out-track any other class. Thieves should be the best at sneaking around. Clerics should be the best at healing. Once we have a thing that a class does, it should be the absolute best at doing it. One of the key problems D&D has constantly faced since AD&D is that fighters and wizards don't have any niche, anything they do that's uniquely theirs. Every other class feels like a subclass of one or the other, or occasionally a hybrid, with the slight exception of 4e, which at least produces some mechanical/thematic niches for them, finally.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:31
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:nobody, literally nobody, at any time used those rules as written. Nobody. Hah, we did! Well, I am sure not 100% but close. I believe our games were heavily influenced by endless Sunday morning showings of the Conan movies, so for us mages were rarely for playing, but for sticking your dagger into so you could loot their tower.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:34
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Lichtenstein posted:Serious question: does anybody use game rulebooks in ebook formats? I know they exist, but it seems as inconvenient to use as ebook cookbooks. I guess it's ok to browse and check out potential elfgames on a bus? I find them really convenient if they've been properly put together (most of the ones on sale have not been). To be honest, I couldn't name any RPG ebooks that come up to my standards except the ones I made myself (and even then I'd like to redo some of the older ones).
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Mar 4, 2015 20:35
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Man, magic is just so much trouble in general. I mean on one hand, it's, you know, magic, so if all magic lets you do is things that a regular old human can do anyway, except worse, then it loses its wondrous, mystical edge. But we all know where magic that's wondrous and mystical and incredibly powerful eventually leads you. In ye olde sword and sorcery stories, magic wasn't really something the protagonists did anyway. Magic was the purview of either the villain, or a mentor to the protagonist who didn't directly interfere with his magic much. Perhaps the seasoned adventurer would have a magic item sometimes, but nothing so wide in scope as what D&D wizards get up to on a daily basis. The day was won with bravery and moxie, not with sorcery. I mean it really highlights how loving scary magic would be, really. If you're an average peasant, then a wizard showing up in your town is a great time to start aggressively making GBS threads your pants and/or hightailing it the gently caress out of there at your soonest convenience. Wizards are bad news. They're walking powder kegs, and tend to attract enemies that are even worse. Really it seems the only way high-powered wizards could exist in a setting is either as sorcerer-kings who hold iron-fisted dominion over entire nations with their magic, or as fugitives who get hunted down and killed by mobs if they ever let on what they can do.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:44
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So, Dark Sun?
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Mar 4, 2015 20:45
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Well, another part of the magic problem is that D&D only really treats magic primarily as a weapon used to blow poo poo up in combat, with everything else feeling like an afterthought. Think about it; if "Create Food and Water" is a readily available spell, then why would anyone go hungry? Or bother farming? Likewise with "Continual Light"; that spell is an infinite amount of free, eternal light bulbs. You don't think that'd have an effect on society in general? Magic is an infinite, non-polluting energy source that can do pretty much whatever you want, and I think Eberron is pretty much the only D&D setting that takes that into account.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:58
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I also want to say that if you want to understand how lovely D&D used to be, go download a Sierra game from the 1980s. They are garbage pixel-bitching "you're suddenly dead" turdfests and that's the kind of stuff that professional designers influenced by D&D were puking out. These were adults that were incredibly negatively influenced by the badness of D&D. The typical teenage DM had absolutely zero chance of doing anything of value at all with the system.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:09
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Waffleman_ posted:Seven Seas announced their first game. Adding on to this, the game is designed by Clay Gardner, who created OVA! Very neat.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:13
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Evil Mastermind posted:Create Food and Water You'd think so, wouldn't you? Just the fact that magic works at all would result in a society vastly different from the shitfarmer-based ones we see in every fantasy setting ever. I mean, okay, granted, you could make the argument that magic is rare and that wizards have better things to do than conjure food all day. But really that just brings us back to the sorcerer-king scenario. You don't even have to be an iron-fisted dictator, you can just get people to join up by promising you'll cast mass cure syphilis or whatever for free every once in a while. On the other hand... having your only source of sustenance be a wizard who can withdraw it at a moment's notice is probably not all too attractive in the long run. If a peasant gets a little too uppity, you can always find another one to take over his plot and you'll still be rolling in wheat at the end of the day. I don't know, magic just ruins everything.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:24
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I also want to say that if you want to understand how lovely D&D used to be, go download a Sierra game from the 1980s. They are garbage pixel-bitching "you're suddenly dead" turdfests and that's the kind of stuff that professional designers influenced by D&D were puking out. These were adults that were incredibly negatively influenced by the badness of D&D. The typical teenage DM had absolutely zero chance of doing anything of value at all with the system. Oh man I remember one of the King's Quests games had a bit where you had to stop a cat from killing a mouse (an event that happens within seconds of your first entering a screen, and with no indication that you can or should do anything about it), and if you didn't, you couldn't complete the game because you needed the mouse hours later.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:25
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:Just the fact that magic works at all would result in a society vastly different from the shitfarmer-based ones we see in every fantasy setting ever. If I wasn't busy as hell and going to my game in an hour and a half I'd post one of my Continual Light rants. The tl;dr is that if you have people who can turn a brick into an infinite free completely safe light source, you've got street lights and lights over businesses (shops can be open later, streets are safer), which leads to a lot of other societal changes.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:29
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All this wizard talk just makes me want a setting were all casters are Discworld witches. Magic ain't for making life easy.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:30
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Captain Walker posted:So, Dark Sun? Oh man, I have not thought of that setting in years. We only got the books right as our interest in gaming was waning but I thought they were so loving cool. I think I had some novels set there maybe? If anyone wants to run a pbp 2ed low-magic game I will totally bring virtual beer every session.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:35
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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, another part of the magic problem is that D&D only really treats magic primarily as a weapon used to blow poo poo up in combat, with everything else feeling like an afterthought. My home campaign rolls with a combination of Dark Sun and Eberron, in that magic is plentiful and has revolutionized society, but ruthless exploitation of it is starting to harm the world. It is a renewable resource, but the society based on magi-tech is beginning to use it up faster than it can be replaced, and that's causing problems for people. Magic is an intrinsic part of the world, and everyone is connected to it, so when the magic gets used up, the result is sickness, blight, wonky physics and intermittent portals to Hell getting ripped open and letting through Bad poo poo. It's basically a way for me to explain the casting system for our games since it fits pretty well with whatever game. In 3.5 spell slots are part of the narrative in that you can only use to much magic, in 4E a wizard can cast magic missile all day but the flashy stuff is draining and needs to recharge, 13th Age is a mix of both, and in FATE I have an extra stress track for the environment that makes bigger spells/feats have a draining effect. ...also I guess its kinda like fantasy oil, so there's an environmental metaphor thrown in there too.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:36
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Evil Mastermind posted:If I wasn't busy as hell and going to my game in an hour and a half I'd post one of my Continual Light rants. The tl;dr is that if you have people who can turn a brick into an infinite free completely safe light source, you've got street lights and lights over businesses (shops can be open later, streets are safer), which leads to a lot of other societal changes. Not to mention using photovoltaics as long term stable and safe non-lightning based power source. The "magic breaks the world" thought experiment can be fun though. ZenMasterBullshit posted:All this wizard talk just makes me want a setting were all casters are Discworld witches. Magic ain't for making life easy. Maybe Gurps Discworld? I haven't read the source book myself but it seems like you'd be able to just disallow Unseen University characters.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:41
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GURPS was sadly not an appropriate system for Discworld. It's a setting that needs a looser ruleset. Not that the sourcebook wasn't good, but still.
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Mar 4, 2015 21:45
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Evil Mastermind posted:GURPS was sadly not an appropriate system for Discworld. It's a setting that needs a looser ruleset. As much as I like GURPS, I don't think its good system for Discworld.
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