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I'm going to roll out of the thread since I feel like I'm responsible for a derail. Sorry to the people who wanted to chat D&D 5 in here. Thanks to those who were civil whether they agreed or disagreed with what I had to say. I appreciate the differentiation between myself and what you don't like about my employer, and I hope you'd give my writing a shot in the future. I'm relatively new at writing about games, and this is where I could get a job, so this is where I work. I appreciate the criticism and it is a little painful to look at some stuff I wrote last year. As an aside, I'd appreciate a PM that points me towards some mobile app design 101. Y'all talkin about this stuff like they obviously screwed the pooch on DungeonScape - which I didn't quite see - and I wanna be working from the same base knowledge you are in the future.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 21:06 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 01:18 |
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Well, it's not that the coding was bad or anything, they just built a really poor visual concept. Compare the first page of a character sheet--what you get and what's important--to that app screenshot. A third of the screen real estate is visual description (no one looks at this and people very rarely even fill it in)! You can't see your Charisma score! Whereas the 4E builder isn't very good because it uses an app framework that was outdated even at the time and manages to take up a horrendous amount of real estate while being repetitive, omitting key details, and not being verbose about what it does include. Six pages for a 1st-level character, it's daft.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 21:14 |
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Lurks With Wolves posted:but in a perfect world The Escapist wouldn't be courting Gamergate At the risk of bringing Gamergate discussion in here, which is pretty much always a toxic and miserable experience no matter what side of the fence you're on, just what did the Escapist do, exactly, to "court" Gamergaters? Like are we talking pro-GG articles? Pro-GG moderation?
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:02 |
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PurpleXVI posted:At the risk of bringing Gamergate discussion in here, which is pretty much always a toxic and miserable experience no matter what side of the fence you're on, just what did the Escapist do, exactly, to "court" Gamergaters? Like are we talking pro-GG articles? Pro-GG moderation? Both. The Escapist was basically the only major video game periodical on the web to actually have anything close to a positive response to Gamergate. The Escapist famously ran a pair of articles about "Game developers respond to Gamergate" which runs hard and heavy with the "It's about Ethics in Game Journalism" angle, digging deep into the well of game developers to get pro-GG spokespeople including getting sources from 4Chan and putting over some harassment all-stars. Here's a Pair of links for more details.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:19 |
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They also fired, let go, or pushed away a large number of staff members and replaced them with open partisans, and the owner of the Escapist is a heavy partisan himself. Initially two articles were "Female opinions on Gamer Gate" followed by "game dev opinions on gamer gate," which totally shows no bias at all, with the latter including not only some of the bigger harassers, but one or two in particular actually using the interview as a means to continue harassing others, as well as the softest interviews imaginable. tl;dr the Escapist is owned by a major gg partisan and has been pushing his opinion for awhile now.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:29 |
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Omnicrom posted:Here's a Pair of links for more details. Thanks for the links. That web series sounds great. Like better than Acquisitions Inc. But I'm a sucker for the 'porn actresses do X' format. Man. If only PA, PVP, Will Wheaton, and Pat Rothfuss did porn.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:54 |
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TheCosmicMuffet posted:Man. If only PA, PVP, Will Wheaton, and Pat Rothfuss did porn. Why? Why would you think this? Why did you do this to my brain?
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:55 |
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Kurieg posted:Why? Save vs. Heaving, Hairy Manflesh
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:56 |
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We're all beautiful.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 22:59 |
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Kurieg posted:Why? PA is amazing because it's like two interlocking yet completely different kinds of ugly. They look like two pages in the big book of chinless humans.
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# ? Apr 9, 2015 23:13 |
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Has anything major changed since NEXT released?
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# ? Apr 10, 2015 13:47 |
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Kylra posted:Has anything major changed since NEXT released? Not sure what you mean, but as far as errata or updates to the shittier classes, no. Just a couple sorta funny Unearthed Arcana articles, in that they're bad.
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# ? Apr 10, 2015 14:29 |
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This was a few pages back, but I finally managed to dig up some links. Regarding the big WotC-prompted CharOp discussion of 4e's flaws...OneThousandMonkeys posted:Can you link or is it buried in the depths of the WotC forums' re-org from a year or two ago? Original Thread, but it got stickied as an announcement so non-mods couldn't post in it, prompting this thread with lots of discussion of flaws.
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# ? Apr 10, 2015 20:42 |
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Kylra posted:Has anything major changed since NEXT released? What sort of things are you looking for? The answer is probably no.
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# ? Apr 11, 2015 00:16 |
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DalaranJ posted:The answer is probably no.
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# ? Apr 11, 2015 00:18 |
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5th has a pretty slow release schedule reflecting how short staffed they are. It's probably for the best that they didn't go with a modular approach since there's no way they could support that at this pace.
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# ? Apr 11, 2015 00:50 |
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Kylra posted:Has anything major changed since NEXT released? Ask your DM.
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# ? Apr 11, 2015 01:39 |
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Kylra posted:Has anything major changed since NEXT released? Well they did Improve skeletons with the DMG
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# ? Apr 11, 2015 12:50 |
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How so?
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# ? Apr 12, 2015 10:38 |
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Blank Construct posted:How so? The Death Domain Cleric and the Oathbreaker Paladin give bonuses to Undead that'd make skeletons even more powerful than they already are.
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# ? Apr 12, 2015 11:07 |
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I'm trying to convince my friends who I play D&D with that 5th edition is imbalanced. I might have gotten a bit of a point across as we just hit level 3 in our campaign. My character is a Bard, and now that i have taken the Valor Bard college and obtained some medium armor, I now have the highest AC in the party, which includes a Fighter, Paladin and Ranger. My to hit with my rapier is as good as any of theirs, and my damage only slightly less. And that's not including all of my bardic abilities and spells. The only reason the wizard in our group hasn't been the most dominant is because he's roleplaying him as a scholar and has taken no offensive spells at all. (just support spells like sleep)
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 04:28 |
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Master Twig posted:The only reason the wizard in our group hasn't been the most dominant is because he's roleplaying him as a scholar and has taken no offensive spells at all. (just support spells like sleep) "A spellcaster that never deals direct damage" was one of the way to unintentionally bust 3e's save-or-suck dynamic wide open, so your friend may well end up being dominating regardless.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 04:35 |
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To actually be a bad caster in 5E you need to waste time on real utility/incredibly situational spells like Floating Disc and Phantasmal Steed, some of which like the latter are not even good at their intended purpose. "No direct damage" in 3E is actually straight-up better than playing a blaster.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 05:01 |
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:To actually be a bad caster in 5E you need to waste time on real utility/incredibly situational spells like Floating Disc and Phantasmal Steed, some of which like the latter are not even good at their intended purpose. "No direct damage" in 3E is actually straight-up better than playing a blaster. More specifically, make at least one if not both of the spells you get every level a Ritual spell, and avoid preparing them if possible. That extra hour on the casting time makes most of them functionally useless until the party decides to stop giving a gently caress and take the short rest because you can't cast the spell otherwise.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 05:06 |
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:actually straight-up better than playing a blaster.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 05:56 |
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FRINGE posted:Nothing is ever better than blasting poo poo. I know the feeling, and I know I don't really want to play 3E again.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 06:12 |
isndl posted:More specifically, make at least one if not both of the spells you get every level a Ritual spell, and avoid preparing them if possible. That extra hour on the casting time makes most of them functionally useless until the party decides to stop giving a gently caress and take the short rest because you can't cast the spell otherwise. Ritual spell casting time is only 10 minutes though?
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 10:05 |
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Slashrat posted:Ritual spell casting time is only 10 minutes though? poo poo, you're right. I was thinking of the 1 hour on Find Familiar for some reason. Either way, 10 minutes and change to cast a spell is annoying in pretty much every situation.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 10:10 |
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If you Wizard doesn't have at least 20 AC (full plate + shield) and a +6 to con saves, what kind of weakling wizard are you?
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 15:17 |
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Get the defensive staff from the intro adventure that lets you cast shield for free a bunch of times a day.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 15:23 |
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goatface posted:Get the defensive staff from the intro adventure that lets you cast shield for free a bunch of times a day. Between the 20+ armor class wizards, infinite HP druids, super-Bards, and vanilla clerics, I would find it hard for someone to tell me that D&D next is a balanced game in regards to casters and non-casters.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 15:29 |
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Laphroaig posted:Between the 20+ armor class wizards, infinite HP druids, super-Bards, and vanilla clerics, I would find it hard for someone to tell me that D&D next is a balanced game in regards to casters and non-casters. Please talk to my friends. They claim all the spellcasters have limitations that bring them down to the same level and that you can be effective with any class you want. They all also think that 4e is a terrible system. I swear it's like I'm playing different games than all of them.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 16:29 |
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Master Twig posted:Please talk to my friends. They claim all the spellcasters have limitations that bring them down to the same level and that you can be effective with any class you want. They all also think that 4e is a terrible system. I swear it's like I'm playing different games than all of them. Ask them how to make a fighter effective in non combat roles
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 17:09 |
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Xelkelvos posted:Ask them how to make a fighter effective in non combat roles
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 17:12 |
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Xelkelvos posted:Ask them how to make a fighter effective in non combat roles My Lovely Horse posted:roleplaying This exact thing has happened with them.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 17:19 |
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Master Twig posted:This exact thing has happened with them.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 17:21 |
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I love the implication that if you play a spellcaster you are then somehow incapable of roleplaying.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 17:34 |
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Kurieg posted:I love the implication that if you play a spellcaster you are then somehow incapable of roleplaying. And it's the players of spellcasters who get to make far more game-affecting decisions "as the character would," the much-vaunted goal of true roleplayers.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 18:14 |
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Kurieg posted:I love the implication that if you play a spellcaster you are then somehow incapable of roleplaying. Well if it's a spell then it has a precise mechanical effect, unlike Fighters which must act out what they want to do, then they must get the DM's approval to do it, then they must roll for it to be successful. This is obviously in the Fighter's favor because they can badger the DM all the time, while a caster only has so many "narrative-control tokens" that they can spend per Long Rest.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 18:35 |
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# ? May 30, 2024 01:18 |
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Just had an incident that might amuse people here. My rogue and a friendly NPC broke into an enemy fortress to steal an item. Unfortunately, the item had a spell on it which - if it was taken out of the fortress - teleported it and its carrier to a cell back within the fortress. Result? We spent 30 minutes playing out a netrunner-problem style solo adventure for the rogue, in which time the other players got bored and walked away; and it ended with us still empty-handed, the friendly NPC (who was actually carrying the loot) being tortured for hours for the amusement of the enemy warlord, and me feeling my Rogue now has the choice of refusing to steal anything that might be magically protected (which will be everything significant at this stage and would effectively be me blocking my own character to disrupt the game), or merrily walking into situations he can't do anything about, because even with a Detect Magic wand he can't dispel anything. Problem is, no matter how broken the game gets I know our group will keep playing it because it is D&D.
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# ? Apr 13, 2015 19:17 |