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Elfgames posted: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. This sounds similar to the idea I had back when Next was in its "open playtest" phase which was to attach "techniques" (powers/exploits/whatever you want to call them) to weapons themselves so being well-versed in daggers would give you access to various dagger-centric combat techniques (striking vital gaps in armor, hamstringing, causing bleeding/painful wounds, etc.) while someone with mace training would have access to a different set of techniques (dazing strikes, smashing knees/joints, stuff like that). Fighters, as the Best At Combat™, would have proficiency in all weapons, and thus be able to access every weapon's basic techniques right off the bat whereas other classes would have far fewer proficiencies to choose from. I guess you could make them class-dependent if you wanted to so Rogues would get to choose among Rogue-centric weapons like daggers, hand crossbows, slings, short swords, etc. while Clerics would have to choose maces or warhammers or maybe staves for that Friar Tuck thing, Wizards would get none because they already probably have cantrips and stuff. And then you'd have something ala BECMI weapon mastery rules where by more deeply specializing in particular weapons you learn more advanced techniques, and of course Fighters would probably be the best at that too. Ultimately this was an idea I fiddled around with that was inspired in large part by that thing P.dot brought up about D&D weapons being boring and the realization that there was never any real impetus for a D&D Fighter to, say, bury his sword in one guy, snatch the axe out of that dudes hand and throw it across the room to kill a second guy before drawing the dagger from his boot and using it to shank a third. D&D Fighters generally pick a weapon and stick with it, focusing on it to the point where being forced to use a different weapon is considered a handicap, despite the fact that "proficient in all weapons" is supposed to be some kind of amazing class feature.
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Jul 14, 2015 08:06
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Rather than trying to encourage that behavior through the interplay of complicated systems I think you could just offer a sizable bonus for the first time a character uses each weapon type every session. Tie the bonus to each type of weapon so it's ~thematic~ or just leave it as guaranteed dice of damage, hit or miss. Limit the number of bonuses a character can claim per session so everyone doesn't carry the entire equipment list. Then offer a an additional use of a bonus each time your character sources a weapon locally to the fight. Do not have an improvised weapon category unless it's as powerful as any other weapons. Fighters pulling up fence-posts and hurling them like javelins, rogues picking up a tankard of ale in a tavern brawl, and barbarians tearing down a tree branch to smash enemies are all way too cool to encourage DMs to poo poo on them by having a rule that says any improvised weapon only does 1d4 without proficiency.
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Jul 14, 2015 08:59
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TheBlandName posted:Rather than trying to encourage that behavior through the interplay of complicated systems I think you could just offer a sizable bonus for the first time a character uses each weapon type every session. Tie the bonus to each type of weapon so it's ~thematic~ or just leave it as guaranteed dice of damage, hit or miss. Limit the number of bonuses a character can claim per session so everyone doesn't carry the entire equipment list. Then offer a an additional use of a bonus each time your character sources a weapon locally to the fight. Do not have an improvised weapon category unless it's as powerful as any other weapons. Fighters pulling up fence-posts and hurling them like javelins, rogues picking up a tankard of ale in a tavern brawl, and barbarians tearing down a tree branch to smash enemies are all way too cool to encourage DMs to poo poo on them by having a rule that says any improvised weapon only does 1d4 without proficiency. The thing is I think people actually like interplays of complicated systems which is why spellcasters are more than just a handful of spells like "Arcane Bolt" and "Arcane Blast" and "Ten Variations on Gaining a Skill Bonus" and calling it a day. And just like how if a player wants to be a blaster wizard that doesn't bother with all the various crazy spellcasting stuff like creating a skeleton army or polymorphing shenanigans they can simply stick to the spells that do direct damage and make big explosions, someone who just wants to be a very basic "hit things with a sword" fighter could do that by sticking with his chosen sword and sinking all his mastery upgrades into being the best dude with that sword. It's easier to make a setup that offers complexity for people that want it but also allows someone who's uninterested in complexity to stick with a subset of things and still get what they want out of it then it is to make a simpler setup that scales upwards in complexity for people who want that. Like, a Fighter who uses three or four weapons in a given fight would be a nice option to have, but I wouldn't be interested in forcing someone to do that if all they want to be is the iconic guy with a sword and shield for their entire adventuring career. As far as weapon damage itself goes I'm increasingly of the opinion that it would be better to just tie "damage dealt with weapons" to the classes themselves as several D&D derived games have done. I just can't bring myself to care that much about longswords doing d8 damage but bastard swords do d10 damage anymore. I mean, even some attempts at 4E clones I've seen people tinkering with here that have gone for simplified approaches to weapons still have Fighters stuck doing like 1d6 damage if they use the wrong sort of weapon and it's like why? What possible benefit does this serve to tell someone interested in being the King of Combat "no don't use that weapon it sucks, use this one instead."
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Jul 14, 2015 09:15
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Kai Tave posted:Ultimately this was an idea I fiddled around with that was inspired in large part by that thing P.dot brought up about D&D weapons being boring and the realization that there was never any real impetus for a D&D Fighter to, say, bury his sword in one guy, snatch the axe out of that dudes hand and throw it across the room to kill a second guy before drawing the dagger from his boot and using it to shank a third. D&D Fighters generally pick a weapon and stick with it, focusing on it to the point where being forced to use a different weapon is considered a handicap, despite the fact that "proficient in all weapons" is supposed to be some kind of amazing class feature. Getting hurl range was incredibly useful too. You had a 1/3 chance of just hitting them full damage, no hit roll, no save. It's fantastically easy to just add little things like that and make melee more fun for everyone but they seem firmly opposed to giving martial save or dies. BECMI fighters had like -4 AC at level 3 and have enough proficiency to get utility weapons like nets and bolas. Bolas were nonlethal until you rolled a 20 then they strangle the monster to death. So I guess my point is that it is trivial to give effects on par with spells to weapons to make them interesting. Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 14, 2015 |
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Jul 14, 2015 10:19
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Kai Tave posted:someone who just wants to be a very basic "hit things with a sword" fighter could do that by sticking with his chosen sword and sinking all his mastery upgrades into being the best dude with that sword. I wonder how you'd balance "put all my bonuses into sword" with "spread my bonuses around"? I can see it working if your upgrades broaden your abilities rather than increasing your numbers, but that doesn't really gel with "basic guy". Kai Tave posted:As far as weapon damage itself goes I'm increasingly of the opinion that it would be better to just tie "damage dealt with weapons" to the classes themselves as several D&D derived games have done. I just can't bring myself to care that much about longswords doing d8 damage but bastard swords do d10 damage anymore. I mean, even some attempts at 4E clones I've seen people tinkering with here that have gone for simplified approaches to weapons still have Fighters stuck doing like 1d6 damage if they use the wrong sort of weapon and it's like why? What possible benefit does this serve to tell someone interested in being the King of Combat "no don't use that weapon it sucks, use this one instead." This is my thing too. I tried to post about it last night but I can never phrase this particular thing properly. Babylon Astronaut posted:I think that after becmi the rules for using non proficient weapons have been getting more and more punishing. Basic was half damage. No -4 to hit or roll at disadvantage. It made picking up whatever was around do able. Maybe if you had damage-dice-by-class and then more/less damage based on weapon proficiency? Fighters get the maximum damage dice and they get it with all weapons. Everyone else is restricted, either with lower damage, limited weapons lists (half damage if it's not on your list) or both. I guess it'd keep to the to-hit math constant?
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Jul 14, 2015 10:33
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quote:Getting hurl range was incredibly useful too. You had a 1/3 chance of just hitting them full damage, no hit roll, no save. It's fantastically easy to just add little things like that and make melee more fun for everyone but they seem firmly opposed to giving martial save or dies. BECMI fighters had like -4 AC at level 3 and have enough proficiency to get utility weapons like nets and bolas. Bolas were nonlethal until you rolled a 20 then they strangle the monster to death. So I guess my point is that it is trivial to give effects on par with spells to weapons to make them interesting. Smash is one of my favorite lost B/X martial abilities: take a -5 penalty to the attack roll and lose initiative for the chance at adding your entire Strength score to the damage roll. Power Attack before there was Power Attack, and it didn't even cost you a feat. quote:Maybe if you had damage-dice-by-class and then more/less damage based on weapon proficiency? Fighters get the maximum damage dice and they get it with all weapons. Everyone else is restricted, either with lower damage, limited weapons lists (half damage if it's not on your list) or both. I hope I'm not sounding like a broken record when I say this is almost what Scarlet Heroes does: everyone can use any weapon they want, but a Magic-User wielding a two-handed sword is only ever going to get 1d4 damage out of it, whereas a Fighter using the same gets 1d12 Where is still sort of falls short is that a Fighter with a dagger gets 1d4, whereas I'd personally rule that class-based maximums should go hand-in-hand with more uniform minimums: a Fighter is going to hit you for 1d12 damage no matter what, whether it's stabbing you in the face with a dagger, crushing your collarbone with a mace or hacking off your arm with an axe. The other other alternative would be roll it all back to OD&D and all rolls of damage are for 1d6 damage, because really, if it's an abstraction, it's an abstraction.
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Jul 14, 2015 10:50
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Kai Tave posted:The thing is I think people actually like interplays of complicated systems And it doesn't even do it that well.
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Jul 14, 2015 10:54
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I did try and use weapon damage by class for my 5E game, but it just confused my two newbie players (my veteran one who's played Dungeon World etc. was fine with it) Will try again when they're more comfortable with the game and the idea of houserules and so on.
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Jul 14, 2015 11:04
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The system I've been tinkering with is similar There are a number of damage types (physical, magical, mental) Each class has a damage dice for each type baked in (fighters get D10 physical, D4 magical, D3 Mental - Wizards D10 magical, D6 mental, D3 physical). When you use a spell, item or ability it specifies what damage type it is and how many dice you roll. So a fireball might say "5 magical damage". So if a fighter somehow manages to cast a fireball spell he does 5D4, where as a wizard does 5d10) Abilities, items and spells can also have extra keywords, for instance "fire" or "slashing" - you can get feats, effects or abilites that add extra stuff if you use something with a relevent keyword. For instance a feat "SwordMaster - when you use a thing that has slashing, add 2 extra damage dice", Pyromaniac - When you use a thing with the fire keyword add +2 to each damage dice" or "Magic Hat - your mental damage is D10"
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Jul 14, 2015 11:06
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Mr Beens posted:The system I've been tinkering with is similar [Emphasis mine] It would probably be clearer if you used the word 'dice' instead of 'damage' in that context. "5 magical damage" sounds like it just does 5 points of damage. "5 magical dice of damage" is less likely to be misunderstood(though still clunky, I'll admit).
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Jul 14, 2015 11:20
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I really like the sound of that.
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Jul 14, 2015 11:25
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Werewhale posted:[Emphasis mine] Yeah you are right - I've still got some work to do on wording things clearer - at the moment its just at "roughed out on notepad" stage 
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Jul 14, 2015 11:37
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Splicer posted:This is the only reason I'm still interested in D&D. Everything else D&D does is done better in other systems, but very few systems scratch the metric fuckton of interlocking options itch like D&D does.
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Jul 14, 2015 13:40
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alg posted: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.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:24
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AlphaDog posted:I wonder how you'd balance "put all my bonuses into sword" with "spread my bonuses around"? I can see it working if your upgrades broaden your abilities rather than increasing your numbers, but that doesn't really gel with "basic guy". That's about the point where I lose interest in trying to make it work given that this is all just hypothetical and not a project I'm actually working on. The thing is that blaster wizards aren't usually balanced with wizards that exploit every aspect of the magic system but it's still considered an acceptable tradeoff for people who just want to sling fireballs around. I don't know if it's possible to create an all-in-one martial class that simultaneously caters to someone who wants robust and interesting depth of choices and effectiveness and Bob, The Guy Who's Just There to Roll Dice. Showing my own biases, I'd prefer to err on the side of the former rather than the latter, because "well Bob needs a class to play too" is how you wind up with something like Next's Champion Fighter in the first place. Oh, and another thing I'd kill would be things like Expertise Feats. No feats, no techniques, no whatevers would give you to-hit bonuses because I think it's a matter of record by now that when you include something like that in a list of choices for D&D characters (or really, in most RPGs) that it winds up making people feel obliged to take them.
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Jul 14, 2015 18:43
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I don't really believe that you need to cater to Bob, The Guy Who's Just There to Roll Dice. Either you're playing OSR D&D and all Fighters are like that* or you go full crunch and give the Fighter real and varied choices to work with. The problem with the latter is that they did give the Fighter choices to work with, but then they also threw in a bunch of lovely options and let God sort 'em out. It's goddamn inexcusable that "the Pathfinder Strategy Guide" came out a whole 5 years after the corebook did. The problem isn't that Bob isn't ever going to want to step up, it's that the systems are rarely ever designed or laid-out well enough to make it easy for Bob to do so. * which technically still isn't true either given attack options that existed for B/X and AD&D
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Jul 14, 2015 18:53
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Duct Tape posted:[Two mage hands carrying a bag of holding logistics] Thanks for the feedback on this idea. I finished up the next session with this group, and we all agreed that sailing through the air inside a bag of holding was too hilarious to rule out, but that it would be impractical for the vast majority of situations. Enemies could grab the bag, the hands move relatively slowly, they could drop it, they'd be a really obvious target during combat, they'd run out of air quickly, it's susceptible to heavy wind, etc. It's slow and dangerous, but we all agreed that it's a ridiculous tool they have at their disposal. I was looking forward to them attempting to use it this session, but they got distracted by persuading a group of Kobolds to dig an underground storage/tunnel/labyrinth beneath the store they managed to acquire earlier in the campaign. Not sure how I'm going to play that one out, but there are a lot of ingredients for interesting things to happen.
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Jul 14, 2015 19:26
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I don't really care if Bob is just there to roll dice because in my group he has the best attendance rate. Though, with a +4 dex bonus and the archery fighter specialization he is pretty much mvp of the starter kit in a game full of newbies, myself included. And he pretty much inspired the rest of the group to do the "I take my shot then run behind everyone else" strategy, no matter what npc dies because of it. drat it, Bob.
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Jul 15, 2015 08:39
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AlphaDog posted:Maybe if you had damage-dice-by-class and then more/less damage based on weapon proficiency? Fighters get the maximum damage dice and they get it with all weapons. Everyone else is restricted, either with lower damage, limited weapons lists (half damage if it's not on your list) or both. Just a general weapons-chat idea, but if you want to make weapons actually different, you could do a simple "weapon speed" thing, whereby the smaller dice get more attacks. But then dumb poo poo like Bless and Haste would just get even more absurd. Gee, I wonder why those hit the cutting room floor in 4e? 
P.d0t fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 15:37
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Weapon speed is a great thing to trade for damage if spells get interrupted by attacks.
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Jul 15, 2015 15:44
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Sardine Wit posted:Anyone mind if I plug a thing? I was expecting a different member of the Axis of Awesome I have to say.
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Jul 15, 2015 18:03
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Duct Tape posted:I was looking forward to them attempting to use it this session, but they got distracted by persuading a group of Kobolds to dig an underground storage/tunnel/labyrinth beneath the store they managed to acquire earlier in the campaign. Not sure how I'm going to play that one out, but there are a lot of ingredients for interesting things to happen. If your group is anything like the ones I've played in, they're going to create a canned hunt for rookie adventurers.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:54
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Just a quick straw-poll kinda thing: Which Fighting Styles do you/your players pick the most (if/when you can get them)? What are the reasons for not selecting the other ones?
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Jul 17, 2015 07:51
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mastershakeman posted:Weapon speed is a great thing to trade for damage if spells get interrupted by attacks. Did your groups also have Fighters with tons of throwing daggers and darts? All just to interrupt casting and chew through stoneskin...
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Jul 17, 2015 10:14
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P.d0t posted:Just a quick straw-poll kinda thing: Archery and great weapon fighting are, I think, mechanically the strongest. Defense and dueling are nice but don't have as significant an effect, protection is too situational, and two-weapon fighting is just inferior to other options.
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Jul 17, 2015 15:36
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Yeah it's usually either Archery or Great Weapon Fighting. TWF also gets play if the player is dual-wielding, but dual-wielding will eventually lose out to two-handers, especially with Savage Attacker. Meanwhile, Defense is blah without anything to get the enemies to attack you, and Protection is even worse since you only have the one Reaction per turn. Dueling is okay, but only if you believe the designers ruling that it works even if you have a shield in the off-hand. Otherwise, the only reason you'd want to have it would be if you want to grapple a lot, since grappling requires a free hand, but given the relative weakness of grappling, it's still not a great option.
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Jul 17, 2015 15:48
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thespaceinvader posted:I was expecting a different member of the Axis of Awesome I have to say. haha Jordan's coming on the show next month.
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Jul 17, 2015 16:06
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Sardine Wit posted:haha Jordan's coming on the show next month. Sweet. I had a pretty good time listening to this, though there's not actually a lot of Next in it, which is roughly what I was expecting given that it's a bunch of comedians who've never played D&D. So disappointed that the Mr Feeze jokes got shut down though D:
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Jul 17, 2015 17:11
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thespaceinvader posted:So disappointed that the Mr Feeze jokes got shut down though D: They really gave that idea a cold shoulder.
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Jul 17, 2015 17:28
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In my groups, we've had: -Archery (ranger) -TWF (paladin, carried over from the playtest where they had access to that style) -GWM (fighter, from the playtest where enemies took str mod damage on a miss instead its current incarnation) -Archery (hand crossbow fighter) The archery-based characters turned out to be very effective, despite being part of otherwise bad classes. I didn't have enough time to tell how good the GWM fighter was since he replaced a dead character near the end of a campaign and was only in a few combats. TWF didn't seem that useful. Compared to his 5d8 divine smites, an extra 5 damage once per turn (assuming a hit) was pretty underwhelming. As for the other styles, I'd like to try a dueling-based paladin, but I need a campaign to play it in. This assumes that my DM agrees with the designers about it working while holding a shield. Defense seems great for spellcasters who take a level of fighter for the armor and con save proficiencies and never use a weapon. Nobody in my groups has done that yet though, so it hasn't really come up. Protection is fairly weak since it eats your reaction and is very short range. It might be almost usable if playing TotM since nobody actually keeps track of distances that accurately in it, but on a grid, being limited to allies within 5 feet is fairly crippling.
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Jul 17, 2015 17:53
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Brag post incoming: My current DnD group is amazing. No powergamers. No racist characters. No sexist characters. No tantrums. People don't cry if their character dies. They're willing to try out any new system. I keep expecting something horrible to happen, like they slit my throat in a ritualistic fashion or something.
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Jul 17, 2015 18:17
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WiiFitForWindows8 posted:My current DnD group
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Jul 17, 2015 18:38
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He might be referring to "DnD" as the hobby and not the game specifically. That's how I refer to it because gently caress having to explain "tabletop roleplaying"
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Jul 17, 2015 18:42
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Have fun saying you are in for a night of PnP around any homosexuals.
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Jul 17, 2015 20:42
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I just tell everyone I'm off for a night of roleplaying with my dungeon master. What's confusing about that?
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Jul 17, 2015 21:44
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Slippery42 posted:-TWF (paladin, carried over from the playtest where they had access to that style) Paladins should basically be crit-fishing, so attacking twice every round is sound strategy; TWF style itself is still ~whatever~ in that context though. GWF seems really 'meh' to me, but it probably has the best feat support of any weapon loadout, Archery being on-par or close 2nd; again TWF falls short in this regard. I haven't seen Dueling used much (and there's no way it shouldn't work with a shield, good grief, loving reading comprehension  )It just seems so un-D&D, in the sense that it's "Have a shield for some +AC and get +damage" when you're usually specializing in one or the other. It sorta breaks my damaged brain. Defense is definitely "set and forget" and Mariner is nice if you're gonna be set up for it anyway. Protection is dumb, but I kinda feel like if you had every possible use of a reaction at your disposal, you'd be able to at least use ONE of them, a lot more often. But in 5e that means paying feat taxes out the rear end.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:43
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P.d0t posted:I haven't seen Dueling used much (and there's no way it shouldn't work with a shield, good grief, loving reading comprehension And then if you went the latter route, there'd be speed and frequency of hits vs raw damage-per-hit for the dual-wield vs two-hander decision. But since D&D also has to capture the depiction of the swashbuckler/fencer trope, they had to put in something to mechanically reward the decision to only hold one weapon. P.d0t posted:Protection is dumb, but I kinda feel like if you had every possible use of a reaction at your disposal, you'd be able to at least use ONE of them, a lot more often. But in 5e that means paying feat taxes out the rear end.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:53
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They could have limited every class to a single reaction per round but given the Fighter the ability to make opportunity attacks once per turn to really play up that whole "expert at fighting" thing and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have slowed combat down appreciably but well, here we are.
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Jul 18, 2015 04:57
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Kai Tave posted:They could have limited every class to a single reaction per round but given the Fighter the ability to make opportunity attacks once per turn to really play up that whole "expert at fighting" thing and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have slowed combat down appreciably but well, here we are. Yeah they really threw the baby out with the bathwater by sacrificing 1/turn OAs on the altar of grog, or however we're saying this poo poo these days..
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Jul 18, 2015 08:33
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Well attacks of opportunity used to be kinda poo poo back in third, so cutting out that bit of clutter is almost like a direct improvement!
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Jul 18, 2015 09:29
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