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Does Fantasy Grounds include all official classes, feats, gear, etc. that are part of books outside the initial release?
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Apr 7, 2015 21:55
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Generic Octopus posted:Versatility? It gets the ability to jump slightly farther. Everything else is some slight +numbers and some regen. Sorry, it's been declared by most 5e fans that The Champion Is Versatile. You see it all over on ENWorld and probably in plenty of other 5e fansites as well. The actual mechanics don't matter at all. It LOOKS like it should be versatile, so clearly it is. Trying to actually dig into more then just the appearances of the math is something most people simply do not do. I mean this shouldn't come as a surprise, most of these people also claimed the 3e Fighter was the Most Versatile Class because with you had so many feats! The monk isn't weak, look at how many unique abilities it gets, especially compared to the wizard! It has and never will be the actual math that matters - only the perception of them. Yeah, the actual math paints an extremely dire situation for the Champion. But the feel...!
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Apr 7, 2015 22:50
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Well it's obviously not particularly good at anything. So if we assume the game is balanced, then it must be versatile. Otherwise we'd have to admit it was poo poo.
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Apr 7, 2015 23:04
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Incidentally to repeat you don't need to make things up about 5e, the edition that seems to give interviews exclusively to The Escapist, which has more or less become one of the premiere shithead gathering points of the internet. ON that note, they have a new interview! What's this? quote:"While we were working on the Essentials books for 4th Edition in 2010, Mike Mearls started pondering what a fifth edition might look like." Crawford said, so in a quick session "He grabbed me and Rodney Thompson, and the three of us dreamt up what later became some of the principles for our work on the new edition." Anyone who thinks Mearls wanted anything at all to do with 4e is fooling themselves. He wanted to create 5th edition from day one - Essentials was just his way of desperately trying to crowbar 4e into it's shape.
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Apr 7, 2015 23:05
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/13729-An-Interview-With-Jeremy-Crawford-Co-Designer-and-Editor-of-Dung Oh Escapist.  "D&D has many kinds of fun. Some kinds of fun in D&D work against other kinds of fun or remove them altogether." Dare he say, these kinds of fun are basically some sort of... fun tyrants? Wow, these guys really got stuck in the good old edition warring rhetoric of 2008. Littlefinger fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Apr 7, 2015 |
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Apr 7, 2015 23:48
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It's sort of hilarious that, at bad as the 4E apps started out (and still are tbh), they're still the best RPG support apps available
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Apr 8, 2015 00:14
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In pretty much any other context 4E's character builder would be regarded as laughably clunky and badly designed, but by RPG software standards it is, or was before they decided to "improve" it by making it online only, considered pretty good.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:20
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Littlefinger posted:http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/13729-An-Interview-With-Jeremy-Crawford-Co-Designer-and-Editor-of-Dung The Escapist has lost pretty much all of their integrity in the last year. And most of their talent has either been fired or quit because they wanted them to work for peanuts. Paradoxically they've also latched onto Tradgamers as an untapped market for some reason, they've got the nodwick guy doing a comic for them every friday. I would be very surprised if it was still around in it's current form a few months from now.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:34
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I like the tacit admission that they threw out any playtester feedback they didn't like.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:40
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So for $270ish you can get access to the stuff you've probably already purchased physically, but on Fantasy Grounds. Way to go WotC.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:41
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Littlefinger posted:http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/13729-An-Interview-With-Jeremy-Crawford-Co-Designer-and-Editor-of-Dung "Playtesters are impeccable at saying what they hate or love, but not at knowing what's causing them to feel that way. (...) People would tell us they hate a rule, but then we look at the rule and it's giving them something they say they want somewhere else in their feedback. So we know from sleuthing that it's not what they truly want. Much like a physician we have to figure out what's actually causing the pain, not just the symptoms." Yes. Or... 1. Maybe the rule was, in fact, not actually giving them what they wanted. 2. Maybe some playtesters can tell you just fine what's causing them to feel some way but your survey is completely garbage at extracting that information.
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Apr 8, 2015 00:59
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On a related note, does anybody actually use the macro poo poo on sites like Roll20? I had a look the other week and it really seems like it'd just be easier to use it just as a literal virtual tabletop, record stuff in spreadsheets/paper in front of you and make people roll the e-dice or actual dice instead of loving about with javascript.
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Apr 8, 2015 01:01
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Sage Genesis posted:"Playtesters are impeccable at saying what they hate or love, but not at knowing what's causing them to feel that way. (...) People would tell us they hate a rule, but then we look at the rule and it's giving them something they say they want somewhere else in their feedback. So we know from sleuthing that it's not what they truly want. Much like a physician we have to figure out what's actually causing the pain, not just the symptoms." holy gently caress they did NOT just compare their stupid incompetent asses to loving MEDICAL DOCTORS 
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Apr 8, 2015 01:17
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"Hrm, yes, it appears that you have a problem with your skill pillar, mainly you picked the wrong skills." "But Doctor, I wanted to be-" "It doesn't matter what you want to be, take these 5 skills and ask your DM if it's okay in the morning."
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Apr 8, 2015 01:21
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Kurieg posted:
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Apr 8, 2015 01:24
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mirthdefect posted:On a related note, does anybody actually use the macro poo poo on sites like Roll20? I had a look the other week and it really seems like it'd just be easier to use it just as a literal virtual tabletop, record stuff in spreadsheets/paper in front of you and make people roll the e-dice or actual dice instead of loving about with javascript. I use macros on roll20 quite a lot. I've got a few templates for rolls and such to make it all nice and concise, and, barring that they don't error check to see if you put in an impossible input in some cases (!!!), it's fairly easy to use once you got a few examples. But I also took some low/mid level programming classes so
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Apr 8, 2015 01:49
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Some of my players on roll20 use macros for their at-wills or other abilities they tend to spam a lot. Me, I can't be arsed to set up up macros for every single disposable monster, especially when typing in the /roll command by hand works just as well.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:08
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mirthdefect posted:On a related note, does anybody actually use the macro poo poo on sites like Roll20? I had a look the other week and it really seems like it'd just be easier to use it just as a literal virtual tabletop, record stuff in spreadsheets/paper in front of you and make people roll the e-dice or actual dice instead of loving about with javascript. http://forums.rptools.net/viewtopic.php?f=85&t=25490 The bad side is 1) roll20 is a lot more forgiving and plug 'n' play, whereas MapTool doesn't always play well with networks and Java versions until you get it ironed out, and 2) switching over can be a pain.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:20
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mirthdefect posted:On a related note, does anybody actually use the macro poo poo on sites like Roll20? I had a look the other week and it really seems like it'd just be easier to use it just as a literal virtual tabletop, record stuff in spreadsheets/paper in front of you and make people roll the e-dice or actual dice instead of loving about with javascript. The value of macros is that you can put text with the roll automatically, so you can track what roll went with what thing. It also makes it easier to teach the game and for players to learn the other PCs' powers when there's text to go with them. As for monsters, in MapTool I kept some basic macros around on a select few monster tokens and just copied them over onto new monsters, changing a bit of the text and the damage expressions. I enjoyed doing it and enjoyed the effect in play, but YMMV.
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Apr 8, 2015 02:32
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quote:Much of that fun preservation work for Crawford was in the editing of the rules text itself, trying to ensure as much clarity, continuity, and intuitiveness as possible. "I was in charge of setting the guide that steered how we did all of our writing. Any new direction with rules design went through me," he said. I noted that I noticed some similarity between how 4th Edition and 5th Edition rules were presented. Crawford smiled. "We were able to build on a lot of the work we did in 4th Edition when it came to rules clarity. One of the reasons we were able to do that was because, remember, I was the rules manager for 4th Edition. So if you see continuity there that's why." This must be why it's so obvious how polearms work.
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Apr 8, 2015 03:15
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In order to demonstrate what Fantasy Grounds is capable of, I'm going to try to recreate this character in its free 5e module   For most of these, you can either click on the number or on the small dice icon to generate a roll, which will show up in the program's chatbox. What you're essentially doing is setting the stats so that all of the modifiers of the automated rolls will be correct.  Ditto the skill system. I'd just click the star on and off to set proficiency, but then I had to add the +1 bonus from Jack of All Trades on the non-proficient skills using the Misc column because the game doesn't know to apply that. The brown button at the lower right actually lets you add custom skills: name it, set the associated stat, set proficiency, and you're off to the races. Unfortunately that's as far as it goes:  This whole section for "Abilities" is blank, and all you can do is fill it with raw text. So while it is possible to create any character in 5e using just the free module, it does require that you own the books, and that you're ready to do some copy-pasting if you want the rules text to show up in your character sheet. The paid modules are essentially paying for a higher level of integration.
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Apr 8, 2015 03:40
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goatface posted:Fantasy Grounds is slow and clunky as all hell. You can bitch about how bad Fantasy Grounds is, but it can't be worse than their previous solution.
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Apr 8, 2015 04:39
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Might be hard to make Michael Haggaran without the werebear template. That said it looks like it is literally no better than the FREE Roll20. Unless you pay hundreds of dollars I guess. For Roll20 I do use Macros, though each game is fewer and fewer macros, especially if the players aren't actually in roll20 and I am just using it to keep track of some stuff and make maps. For one game I made 100+ npcs. Each with full macros for attacks, and all this other information. I did save some time by using copy paste sheets a lot, but it still took a lot of time and effort. That said it was nice when running the game because I or a player could just click a button and get all the rolls done. For the Champion Fighter and their ability to jump ever so slightly further, that is pretty funny that it counts as versatility or exploration pillar. Because it ends up being basically the same thing as the Thief Rogue gets, except it is worse in ways and is gained 4 levels later. Also it is still hillarious that a Fighter will never be better at a Bard or Rogue who decide they want to grapple or shove. I mean yeah the Battle Master Fighter can every so often use a superiority die to try and pull something off, but the Fighter will never be better at Athletics than a Bard or Rogue who decide they want to focus on it. This is, in part, why I tried to pump up the Champion Fighter. Admittedly I still kept the feature at 7th level since I wasn't moving things around and just adding a little something extra to each Champion feature, except the 18th because I couldn't think of anything for it.
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Apr 8, 2015 06:23
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Ryuujin posted:That said it looks like it is literally no better than the FREE Roll20. Unless you pay hundreds of dollars I guess. I guess it's sort of like the difference between a very user-friendly app that costs money versus a free app that you need to be a programmer/power-user to really utilize, but then the latter is much more powerful as a result. EDIT: I tried running 5e with Roll20's dedicated character sheet for it and I just hated it. Having players look for which button to press or which character sheet tab to activate their skill slowed down play immensely. It went much faster with players just having their character sheet in a notepad somewhere and typing out the roll commands with modifiers themselves. And then I realized it wasn't so much that Roll20 or FG was bad so much as there really too many moving parts to these games. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Apr 8, 2015 |
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Apr 8, 2015 06:30
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Gerdalti posted:So for $270ish you can get access to the stuff you've probably already purchased physically, but on Fantasy Grounds. For that same $270 you could buy yourself and 26 of your friends (so basically every gamer friend you have, plus a whole bunch of strangers, if you're like me) PDFs of Strike. Or buy 18 copies of Inverse World. Or like 70-something pdfs of Law's Out. Or plenty of any of the many other goon-made games. There's a lot of variety, so there is probably something you'll enjoy no matter what your taste in games. Hell, for $270 you can probably buy about 20 different games and game products made by people here. Compare that to paying for poo poo you already own and already paid three digits for. Give your money to local goon designers instead of WotC - we all, without exception, offer better games for cheaper than WotC and we aren't regressive assholes who support the Escapist, Zak S, and RPGPundit. And you're feeding a positive community of design that encourages innovation and inclusiveness.
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Apr 8, 2015 06:38
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MadScientistWorking posted:Its because the owner of the company wrote ACKS. http://www.autarch.co/about-autarch posted:Individually, the partners have published gaming website The Escapist, written RPG supplements for Wizards of the Coast and Goodman Games, and devised miniature war games, but the Adventurer Conqueror King System™ was Autarch's first adventure together. I guess we know why they're being so nice to DND 5e suddenly.
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Apr 8, 2015 07:07
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Jimbozig posted:What the gently caress. All that and the sane upper limit on what character building software should cost as a one-time fee is probably $30-$60. Even D&D's 4E stuff has more utility.
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Apr 8, 2015 07:09
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Kurieg posted:I guess we know why they're being so nice to DND 5e suddenly. OH! COLLUSION!
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Apr 8, 2015 07:11
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goatface posted:That article is full of words. Some of them are literally nothing but "full caster progression is really important". I'm more amused by the fact that after all those words about how spellcasting is really important and you be really careful about loving with it, both their example classes then proceed to gently caress around with spellcasting in seemingly completely arbitrary ways.
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Apr 8, 2015 11:28
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Kurieg posted:I guess we know why they're being so nice to DND 5e suddenly. Only the most ethical of interview choices!
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Apr 8, 2015 13:14
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Hilariously, Escapist is the site that Gamergate holds up an example of ETHICS IN GAME JOURNALISM: http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/search?q=escapist&restrict_sr=on Someone
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Apr 8, 2015 14:45
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I understand that has more to do with overlapping Venn diagrams and hilarious conflicts of interest.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:02
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Rosalind posted:Hilariously, Escapist is the site that Gamergate holds up an example of ETHICS IN GAME JOURNALISM: My understanding is that the forum moderators actively protected and courted GGaters. This caused issues with most of the non-escapist content producers that actually know what GGate are, particularly the ones that addressed those issues in their columns and videos. Which is why they were all fired/quit. Except for Yahtzee, they love him for some reason.
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Apr 8, 2015 15:16
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Kurieg posted:My understanding is that the forum moderators actively protected and courted GGaters. This caused issues with most of the non-escapist content producers that actually know what GGate are, particularly the ones that addressed those issues in their columns and videos. Which is why they were all fired/quit. It's his hat. They love his hat.
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Apr 8, 2015 16:03
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Kurieg posted:My understanding is that the forum moderators actively protected and courted GGaters. This caused issues with most of the non-escapist content producers that actually know what GGate are, particularly the ones that addressed those issues in their columns and videos. Which is why they were all fired/quit.
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Apr 8, 2015 20:31
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MadScientistWorking posted:Its kind of a really convoluted story the likes of which kind of involves so many lovely elements of the TG hobby that its kind of amazing.
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Apr 8, 2015 21:00
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Kurieg posted:As I understand it. Jim Sterling realized that the writing was on the wall and left before he felt compromised. Moviebob was just kind of told one day "oh and you're done here." Then more recently they found out that they were pulling down a lot less advertisement revenue from videos (Since they were no longer getting 6 a week out of Sterling and Moviebob) and asked LRR if they could cut their pay for Unskippable in half, LRR said no, and took their other videos with them when they left. This is pretty much what I've heard as well. It's a shame about Moviebob honestly, he's really only good when you force him into pithy 5 or 6 minutes videos, when he has free reign to make longer stuff his work atrophies at a ridiculous rate.
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Apr 8, 2015 21:22
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Anyone know of an online utility for generating Spell Cards? Even if I have to manually type them out, whatever. Would like something nice I could print out and thumb through for D&D nights rather than flipping through the book every time I need to look up an arbitrary detail about a spell. I found this website; http://hardcodex.ru/ But the CSV export is poo poo. It just dumps all the data to an Excel file as plain text, no nice formatting or anything.
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Apr 8, 2015 21:40
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There is this, but it's an Excel document rather than an online utility. Not sure if it has the Elemental Evil spells added yet.
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Apr 8, 2015 21:54
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Don't forget that one of the former Escapist employees now works directly for WotC in their D&D department. It is pretty much literal collusion.
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Apr 8, 2015 22:09
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