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KyloWinter posted:What's the best way to play this online? I tried a roll20 session with LFG people but I got a some autism kid who was having difficulty saying what his character's hair color was. Keep trying until you find a group of normal, stable people. You may be at it a while...
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Jul 13, 2015 02:10
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KyloWinter posted:What's the best way to play this online? I tried a roll20 session with LFG people but I got a some autism kid who was having difficulty saying what his character's hair color was. Please way more about this in the cat piss thread
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Jul 13, 2015 02:11
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Mendrian posted:Please way more about this in the cat piss thread Link me. e: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460258&pagenumber=177#post447671599 barkbell fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 02:11
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KyloWinter posted:Link me. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460258
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Jul 13, 2015 02:14
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gradenko_2000 posted:They're not a stereotype I've ever really come across before in CRPGs and I want to understand them better, not to mention they're probably a more "grog acceptable" martial class than anime Martial Adepts. Despite D&D's science fantasy origins and the presence of psychic powers in then contemporary fantasy like Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, there are quite a few grogs who view psionics as strictly sci-fi and accordingly hate them. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 02:27
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Lightning Lord posted:Despite D&D's science fantasy origins and the presence of psychic powers in then contemporary fantasy ike Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels, there are quite a few grogs who view psionics as strictly sci-fi and accordingly hate them. And most of those grogs are morons(even if Psionics in most versions of D&D have been awkwardly implemented at best)
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Jul 13, 2015 02:40
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That is always implied, yes.
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Jul 13, 2015 02:43
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Night10194 posted:So, then, is the adventure about overthrowing the rear end in a top hat wizard dictator and his thugs and ending their racist regime? Guys dead. He was not good enough to become a Lich and accidentally killed himself trying to become one. From what I read, the current dictator is an rear end in a top hat Fighter with a bunch of mercs. (Don't know for sure his class was never stated but he seems the fighter type.) If you feel like reading about the city here is a link http://dndadventurersleague.org/state-of-hillsfar/ All I know of the city is what I read here a few days ago. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 02:57
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I've just recently been reminded how boring 5e weapons are. Discuss.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:36
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P.d0t posted:I've just recently been reminded how boring 5e weapons are. Sounds like that hasn't changed from 3.x either.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:41
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TBH I'm kinda hard pressed to think of a fantasy game where basic weapons aren't either boring or hideously unbalanced, or else just glossed over.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:44
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P.d0t posted:I've just recently been reminded how boring 5e weapons are. In fairness this is hardly a problem unique to 5E. 4E's weapons were boring too. So were 3E's and so on. There've been attempts through the years and editions at making D&D weapons and the selection thereof interesting, but a lot of them are either so fiddly that most people would rather not bother with them or just led to a fairly obvious "find the weapon with the best overall package of attributes and go with that while ignoring everything else" approach.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:45
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As the one that might have precipitated the discussion, on reflection I could have just taken a shortsword, which is already a 1d6 piercing melee weapon that is Finesse (and Light) and cannot be thrown, and simply said "it actually looks like a spear", but I thought that would have been more awkward. As others have said, it's not really limited to 5e, but is a general D&D-ism where you've got a bunch of different weapons with different properties, but what it aesthetically looks like also matters to players, and you have to reconcile with that too. Alternate approaches would be 13th Age where you just have broad types of weapons: one-handers use this damage die, two-handers use this damage die, etc., or the Scarlet Heroes model where you can say you're using any kind of weapon you want, with properties to match, but your damage die is capped at whatever's appropriate for your class/build, or a sort of hybrid system where the property and the handed-ness of the weapon determines what the damage die is, but in all cases the weapon takes whatever form the player wants it to have.
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Jul 13, 2015 06:03
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P.d0t posted:I've just recently been reminded how boring 5e weapons are. I don't think the problem is that the weapons are boring, though they are. The larger issue is that the combat actions available to players are generic. I would actually just leave it up to the players to make up the interesting fluff about their equipment if they want, but give them rules to do more varied and interesting things with them. Stuff like feinting, disarming, trip attacks, charging, parrying, etc. etc. shouldn't be locked up behind class-specific abilities or feats.
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Jul 13, 2015 06:20
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gradenko_2000 posted:As the one that might have precipitated the discussion, on reflection I could have just taken a shortsword, which is already a 1d6 piercing melee weapon that is Finesse (and Light) and cannot be thrown, and simply said "it actually looks like a spear", but I thought that would have been more awkward. This is what we especially "4e people" mean when we say "reskinning." Kai Tave posted:In fairness this is hardly a problem unique to 5E. 4E's weapons were boring too. So were 3E's and so on. There've been attempts through the years and editions at making D&D weapons and the selection thereof interesting, but a lot of them are either so fiddly that most people would rather not bother with them or just led to a fairly obvious "find the weapon with the best overall package of attributes and go with that while ignoring everything else" approach. The big problem I have is that you basically get pigeonholed into a few valid choices, and then you're encouraged to specialize into ONE of those. Finesse weapons in this edition give you some measure of versatility for melee/ranged, but really not even as much as something as simple as "Master At Arms" feat from 4e does, which is loving sad. Half-orc Barbarian? Greataxe. Always. Greataxe. Rogue? Shortsword. Maybe a dagger as backup if you wanna get fancy and throw at people occasionally. Other? Pick the thing with the biggest damage die that matches with your weapon stat (STR or DEX); 1st tie breaker is Bludgeoning, for that one encounter per campaign where your fight skeletons, 2nd is gp cost, 3rd is weight, I guess? Like, picture this. A barbarian duel-wielding longswords, occasionally two-handing one of them (because they're versatile). You need Dual Wielder feat, and probably want Great Weapon Master, plus the associated fighting styles (which barbarians don't even get, LOL) So you'd be burning resources on feats and fighting styles that you can't even use at the same time, goddamn. And would anything break if you didn't need to? Nope. EvanSchenck posted:I don't think the problem is that the weapons are boring, though they are. The larger issue is that the combat actions available to players are generic. I would actually just leave it up to the players to make up the interesting fluff about their equipment if they want, but give them rules to do more varied and interesting things with them. Stuff like feinting, disarming, trip attacks, charging, parrying, etc. etc. shouldn't be locked up behind class-specific abilities or feats. This IS an issue, but picking your weapon is a problem you face before you're even playing. 
P.d0t fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 06:21
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P.d0t posted:The big problem I have is that you basically get pigeonholed into a few valid choices, and then you're encouraged to specialize into ONE of those. Finesse weapons in this edition give you some measure of versatility for melee/ranged, but really not even as much as something as simple as "Master At Arms" feat from 4e does, which is loving sad. Sure, but again, this isn't a 5E exclusive thing. There's nothing physically preventing you from making an Avenger who uses dual scimitars if you want that Dervish thing going on, but there's virtually no real reason to do so aside from a stubborn refusal to reskin a Fullblade or Executioner's Axe as "a pair of scimitars." Even if you stocked up on whatever feats you could to try and make dual-wielding Avenger a thing you were still just burning resources that could better go into other stuff, and I'm not even talking hyperspecialized charop nonsense, just "trying to hammer this square peg into this round hole is probably going to be nothing but an exercise in frustration." 4E had some cool weapon-swapping stuff for Fighters going on near the end of its life...but unless you were specifically going out of your way to take the Weapon-Swapping Fighter abilities and feats and such then most characters, as you say, picked the thing with the biggest damage die/proficiency that fit their style, maybe with an eye towards which Expertise Feat was the best. The biggest consideration I saw with regard to weapon choices in 4E was "do I want a polearm for reach/forced movement shenanigans or not?" edit; also maybe it happens all the time in other games but apropos of nothing I've never actually seen anyone switch between one-handing and two-handing their longsword for that Versatile bonus, most folks just seem to forget it even exists. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 06:37
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Kai Tave posted:Sure, but again, this isn't a 5E exclusive thing. Oh well that makes it ok then.
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Jul 13, 2015 06:49
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Kai Tave posted:a stubborn refusal to reskin Why is this such a specifically D&D (and pathfinder, I guess) thing?
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Jul 13, 2015 06:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:As the one that might have precipitated the discussion, on reflection I could have just taken a shortsword, which is already a 1d6 piercing melee weapon that is Finesse (and Light) and cannot be thrown, and simply said "it actually looks like a spear", but I thought that would have been more awkward. that 13th Age approach reminds me of how Gamma World 6th edition handled weapons by putting them into very broad categories and leaving the aesthetics up totally to the players, for example in a campaign I was going to do that never took off, one player ended up rolling a character that became a Sapient Christmas Tree, with it's ranged attack becoming it throwing Christmas ornaments at people and it's melee weapon becoming one of those metal tree stands that it'd just bludgeon people to death with AlphaDog posted:Why is this such a specifically D&D (and pathfinder, I guess) thing? probably cause most editions of D&D cover very broad grounds and so people don't normally feel the need to do such a thing, so when situations come up where such a thing would be needed they overreact to the game not being able to cover it by refusing to reskin
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Jul 13, 2015 07:03
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P.d0t posted:Oh well that makes it ok then. Okay, let's try this; weapon choice in Next isn't any more boring or pointless than it was in 4E so I'm not actually sure what your specific criticism w/r/t Next is in this case compared to other versions of D&D. If it's "this thing in D&D Next is boring and kind of uninspiring" then yes, that goes for most of the game as well. I agree that the way D&D handles weapons is bad and boring and I've thought so for a while now, but it's not exactly like Next dropped a ball when the ball hasn't been there to begin with. There are lots of opportunities to take a boring thing and make it less boring that got missed along the way.
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Jul 13, 2015 07:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:As the one that might have precipitated the discussion, on reflection I could have just taken a shortsword, which is already a 1d6 piercing melee weapon that is Finesse (and Light) and cannot be thrown, and simply said "it actually looks like a spear", but I thought that would have been more awkward. That doesn't work with all DMs. Yaaaay 5E. Empowering the poor DMs to keep rogues from using anything but various length needles. P.d0t posted:... Rapier and darts, actually. The rapier is the only weapon that deals 1d8 and allows sneak attacks. Darts are slightly cheaper to keep a good stock of than daggers (but I'm sure that changes once magic weapons happen). AlphaDog posted:Why is this such a specifically D&D (and pathfinder, I guess) thing? Because there are RULES for all those specific weapons. And there's a specific prestige class if you want to control your own shadow, and a different one if you want your shadow to act of its own will (And a third if you want your enemy's shadow to obey you). It probably goes back to AD&D where Gygax (in an effort to sell more rules) decided that sworn knight of a god was different enough from weapon wielding priest of a god to make separate classes for them.
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Jul 13, 2015 07:05
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AlphaDog posted:Why is this such a specifically D&D (and pathfinder, I guess) thing? I guess my take on it is that because the rulebooks exist, it's heavily implied that you have to work within the framework of those rules to get the result you want. What ended up happening between myself and P.d0t was that I pitched my character concept, we figured out what I wanted to do, and I was told to reskin rather than having to bend over backwards* to make the kind of spear that I wanted to wield. Maybe that's how it should work? Like, if ever one forgets to say "hey guys go ahead and reskin to whatever you want", there should be a conversation across the table for what the player wants to accomplish and what the DM will allow to let them get there. * my plan was to take Crossbow Expert to remove the Disadvantage when throwing weapons within 5 feet of an enemy, buy a bunch of javelins, then "throw" the javelins in melee range.
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Jul 13, 2015 07:34
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This is Missed Opportunity #4,356 in 5e. I'd always thought that an updated version of BECMI's Weapon Mastery rules would help make weapons feel more distinctive, as well as being a way to give fighters nice stuff that did not trigger the "Too Much Like 4E" alert. It could even have been a *cough, cough* module.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:40
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Selachian posted:This is Missed Opportunity #4,356 in 5e. I'd always thought that an updated version of BECMI's Weapon Mastery rules would help make weapons feel more distinctive, as well as being a way to give fighters nice stuff that did not trigger the "Too Much Like 4E" alert. Meaningfully crunchy weapon rules (like BECMI) would improve Next, but so would simplifying the hell out of weapons (like 13th Age, for example).
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Jul 13, 2015 12:09
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Yeah, stuff like Deflect, Stun and Delay, and a short sword going from 1d6 damage to 1d6+9 damage, and a +8 bonus to attack rolls and a +3 bonus to AC against the first attacks in a round would be a hell of a bonus and would be much more of a Fighting Style than what we currently have.
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Jul 13, 2015 12:22
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It's hard to see WotC making interesting weapons without leading to Everyone Only Uses Exotic Weapons like 4E. More weapon feat combos like GWF and Polearm Mastery would be neat. Two Weapon Fighting is also pretty neat. Optional rules for fighting styles would be excellent.
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Jul 13, 2015 13:37
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The number stuff (+to hit, +AC) I think we're fine without, since that usually just ends up being a solved problem a la weapon choice in 4e. More stuff like "when you hit with a [bludgeoning weapon], you can push the target away" and "when you hit with a [slashing weapon], you can keep the target from moving quickly for awhile " would be better. The "Forceful" tag in AW/DW is really meaningful at the table and changes the way players think about positioning and the environment. In my experience, a player with a "Forceful" weapon is always on the lookout for ledges, pools of water, jagged outcroppings, piles of sharp rusted metal, dimensional portals to Hell...and every time they get to throw some mook into some set-piece hazard, the whole table gets pumped. Even more, every other party member starts trying to set up those crazy movie K.O.s, like the Face will taunt a big baddie out onto a narrow bridge knowing that the Muscle can home-run them off into the vat of acid below. That's the real problem with 5e's non-casters, IMO: they don't get many abilities that really do anything. "Oh, you can use your Reaction to take half damage from one attack? How does that change how your character approaches the world?" But of course even that's better than "You can jump 1-5 extra feet. Yes, this is a class feature on par with Greater Invisibility or Polymorph."
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Jul 13, 2015 13:49
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Anyone mind if I plug a thing? I started DMing a comedy D&D night in Sydney, Australia last month. The basic premise is three comedians who have never played any kind of pen and paper RPG play D&D 5e on stage for the first time. Three of us are goons, and it's pretty dumb fun. We've just launched a podcast edited from the live show if anyone would be interested in deciphering Aussie accents. You can listen to it here: http://www.thedragonfriends.com I'm keeping it very rules light for now and simplifying a lot, but let me know if you dig it, or have any feedback for the next show. Thanks! (PS sorry if this is not on for this thread - I tend to only lurk in the 40k threads in TG these days)
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Jul 14, 2015 03:27
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TheBlandName posted:It probably goes back to AD&D where Gygax (in an effort to sell more rules) decided that sworn knight of a god was different enough from weapon wielding priest of a god to make separate classes for them. To be fair, OD&D and AD&D priests were much less effective in combat than clerics are today. They had vastly restricted weapon and armor selections (no spiked or edged weapons) and very little in the way of offensive spells. Also, I like how you blame Gygax for AD&D 
Fuschia tude fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Jul 14, 2015 |
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Jul 14, 2015 03:47
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Fuschia tude posted:To be fair, OD&D and AD&D priests were much less effective in combat than clerics are today. They had vastly restricted weapon and armor selections (no spiked or edged weapons) and very little in the way of offensive spells. Wait, poo poo. I looked it up, but maybe I read the Wikipedia pages wrong. AD&D (1st edition) was the version of Dungeons and Dragons expanded in order to avoid paying Dave Arneson royalties, correct? Was Gary Gygax was still very much involved in its production? And it was the edition to add paladins and rangers if you rolled high enough on your starting attributes?
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Jul 14, 2015 04:08
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For what it's worth being restricted to blunt weapons actually was a fairly potent nerf to clerics in AD&D/2e. When weapon damage was almost all you had, having much less of it mattered, and there were far fewer magic maces then there were swords. EDIT: Paladin was also decently different from cleric as well, as cleric literally could not ever get multiple attacks, there were some super rad paladin-only weapons, paladins had GREATLY increased attack and HP, etc, etc, etc. The super-fight clerics of newer editions didn't exist; they were almost 100% defensive. It was the paladin that was the offensive holy crusader. Now someone could well say "well why have paladins and rangers when you can just make a multiclass cleric/fighter or druid/fighter?" The answer is that humans didn't have multiclass, they had the very different dual class, which is why both rangers and paladins were initially human only classes (also rangers and paladins had benefits fighter multiclasses didn't get). This is one of those situations where 3e bulldozing over a ton of poo poo and proclaiming the rubble TRUE D&D causes confusion ProfessorCirno fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jul 14, 2015 |
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Jul 14, 2015 04:10
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ProfessorCirno posted:For what it's worth being restricted to blunt weapons actually was a fairly potent nerf to clerics in AD&D/2e. When weapon damage was almost all you had, having much less of it mattered, and there were far fewer magic maces then there were swords. Well yes. But it was very mild in original D&D, where all weapons did 1d6 damage and the assumption was the DM would handpick treasure that was appropriate to their group, and then populate the rest of the treasure hordes with random poo poo because it's only purpose was to be worth sweet XP. My understanding was the real weakness was in not getting the Fighting Man's significant benefits. But it was all worth it because you gained the ability to gently caress up vampires of any level as a level 1 cleric, in the (devoid of context) most passive aggressive act of DMing I've ever heard of. I absolutely love the story of Mr Fang, and am grateful that Not-Catholic Battle-Priests became so widespread in later fantasy fiction because of it.
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Jul 14, 2015 04:20
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I really love the idea of treasure being worth xp, tbh. It's goal oriented, rather than struggle oriented like combat/skill check xp, or a time-based handout like session xp. It encourages players to act like their characters, and try to take risks to get more stuff done. IIRC there was also an optional rule at some point that spending your treasure on mechanically useless stuff like ale, expensive inns, ect. gave you bonus XP, which is a fantastic RP reward.
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Jul 14, 2015 04:24
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Blog of Holding did a piece on GP = XP for 5e and found that it should generally work, although I think part of the reason the genre has shifted more towards struggle-oriented or milestone-oriented XP and leveling is because of the style of the game people tend to play nowadays. Certainly GP = XP would be cool and good if we were still going straight dungeon crawls (which is yet again something that 5e ends up supporting decently well as far as the random dungeon generation rules being fleshed out)
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Jul 14, 2015 04:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:Blog of Holding did a piece on GP = XP for 5e and found that it should generally work, although I think part of the reason the genre has shifted more towards struggle-oriented or milestone-oriented XP and leveling is because of the style of the game people tend to play nowadays. Certainly GP = XP would be cool and good if we were still going straight dungeon crawls (which is yet again something that 5e ends up supporting decently well as far as the random dungeon generation rules being fleshed out) Yeah, GP for XP is a fine way to handle things as far as straight dungeon crawls go, but I think even beyond the notion that more people are interested in milestone or struggle/setpiece-based rewards is that it's sort of up in the air how many people who play D&D really cleave to XP rules in general instead of just having everyone level up every so often. Tracking XP makes sense when A). players are spending XP directly to purchase upgrades (ala the Storyteller system for instance) or B). you have asymmetrical XP progression. D&D hasn't had either of those things for three editions, so XP in general feels kind of extraneous.
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Jul 14, 2015 04:53
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It's semantics but there was still level disparity in 3e if someone played one of the horribly thought out level adjustment races. I don't know how pathfinder deals with those but the way they were implemented in 3e was terrible.
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Jul 14, 2015 05:30
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Trihugger posted:It's semantics but there was still level disparity in 3e if someone played one of the horribly thought out level adjustment races. I don't know how pathfinder deals with those but the way they were implemented in 3e was terrible. They were absolutely badly thought out but in theory the idea was supposed to be that LA Whatever meant that the adjustment you were making due to a race's inherent power was equivalent to the levels being compensated for, that is to say that a creature starting at level 1 due to level adjustment when everyone else was at level 4 was supposed to still be on par due to the extra benefits they received. But in 3E D&D a level 20 Fighter was also supposedly the equivalent of a level 20 Wizard or Druid and look how well that worked out.
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Jul 14, 2015 05:44
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Multiclassing is also a bad thing in 5e; it's the reason why martials get all their cool poo poo gated to absurdly high levels (not to say that their cool poo poo is anything compared to spellcasting, but that's another  )
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Jul 14, 2015 05:45
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ProfessorCirno posted:This is one of those situations where 3e bulldozing over a ton of poo poo and proclaiming the rubble TRUE D&D causes confusion NWN is "real dnd" and everything else is confusing because "I played a pirated copy of BG and I dont read manuals". Also someone told me thakko is wacko and that rhymes so it is true. fool_of_sound posted:I really love the idea of treasure being worth xp, tbh. It's goal oriented, rather than struggle oriented  As if I have time to play anything. 
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Jul 14, 2015 07:04
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I think if i was making another heart breaker i would Attach 4e like powers to something like a mix Between 4e's weapon groups and Wulin's weapon system and let players pick one or two(at a slight gold cost) Weapon proficiancy and exotic weapons are dumb.
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