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Someone linked this earlier, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFqCSbV-Ag Besides being a great movie, that was the inspiration for hitpoints in D&D. The back and forth, whoever has the upper hand, is when that person succeeded on an attack roll. The final blow is dropping to zero hitpoints, which is the first time anyone was actually struck full on by a sword. What that fight doesn't include and what D&D has a hard time modeling is fireballs and arrows and other poo poo hitting somebody. The best way to abstract hitpoints in tabletop is John McClane injuries. If he does get shot, it's in the shoulder or the arrow hits your warrior in the thigh, but it doesn't slow him down. If you must do a narrative consequence to being hit, make it cool like when McClane's feet got cut by the glass and he leaves a trail of blood.
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Aug 13, 2015 18:12
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As System Mastery pointed out, I think the problem is that D&D is most people's first RPG, and it dumps a lot of abstractions on you. Some of which may seem baroque even to avid gamers, as they're built on wargames from the 70s. What I don't understand is how decades later, people are still complaining, arguing, and house-ruling over realism in combat for various versions of D&D, when there have been so many "D&D but with detailed realistic medieval combat" games written since. It's especially baffling when it comes from grognards who had the opportunity to buy those games when they came out. Most of the venerable RPG companies got their start publishing somebody's extensive house rules for D&D, and it's where most of the classic multi-genre RPGs come from.
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Aug 13, 2015 18:16
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Rulebook Heavily posted:The insane thing is, I can see why you'd limit lockpicking to just one try. Trying over and over just makes the lock kind of pointless because you'll eventually succeed. AD&D made you try once. 3e automated the process of rolling over and over. The way I go about dealing with lock challenges is that if the first check fails, you try again, only this time you will cause visible damage to the lock (that passing guards will notice), and if that check fails, you try again to open the lock with some noise and commotion. 1st check to pick the lock invisibly and quietly, 2nd check to force it quietly, 3rd check to break it noisily.
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Aug 13, 2015 18:22
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Halloween Jack posted:As System Mastery pointed out, I think the problem is that D&D is most people's first RPG, and it dumps a lot of abstractions on you. Some of which may seem baroque even to avid gamers, as they're built on wargames from the 70s.
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Aug 13, 2015 18:31
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Halloween Jack posted:As System Mastery pointed out, I think the problem is that D&D is most people's first RPG, and it dumps a lot of abstractions on you. Some of which may seem baroque even to avid gamers, as they're built on wargames from the 70s. We're in the middle of a readthrough of AD&D for episode 50, and you'd think based on Gygax's preface (or foreword, or introduction, I forget which since the book has all three) that he wanted to do away with some of the sillier bits of realism that had been applied to games over the years. Check this out: 
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Aug 13, 2015 19:19
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Guilty Spork posted:OTOH pretty much anyone who started playing RPGs with a game other than D&D finds a bunch of things about D&D really bizarre, because there are so many things that are core to D&D that the rest of the industry dropped like a hot rock, so now it's in this weird position of being the dominant leader while also being a quirky fossil. Like, it took me a while to get over the idea that you didn't get to roll to defend, and what's this spell memorization crap, and so on. Forget "from other games", from coming to D&D after playing video-game RPGs I found it bizarre you memorised spells. I gravitated to sorceror and loved psions when I discovered them because they were most intuitive from the "spend MP to cast spells" model Final Fantasy and their ilk taught me.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:24
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Mors Rattus posted:
Where the gently caress do I buy this? It looks rad.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:31
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spectralent posted:Forget "from other games", from coming to D&D after playing video-game RPGs I found it bizarre you memorised spells. I gravitated to sorceror and loved psions when I discovered them because they were most intuitive from the "spend MP to cast spells" model Final Fantasy and their ilk taught me. Psionics are cool and good, I've come to learn. I'm also sure there's anti-psionic grog out there.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:31
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LordSaturn posted:Where the gently caress do I buy this? It looks rad. Read it on Batoto for now.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:32
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theironjef posted:We're in the middle of a readthrough of AD&D for episode 50, and you'd think based on Gygax's preface (or foreword, or introduction, I forget which since the book has all three) that he wanted to do away with some of the sillier bits of realism that had been applied to games over the years. Check this out: He said baseless and arbirtrary, everyone knows that women are just weaker than men and furthermore  gradenko_2000 posted:Psionics are cool and good, I've come to learn. I liked 3.5 psions as a concept at least, but 3.0 psions were the most intentionally obtuse class I've ever seen, they didn't just have MAD, every one of their six spell schools keyed off of a different one of the 6 core attributes.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:34
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AD&D psionics were bad and dumb because they were an obtuse subsystem that worked entirely differently than anything else, and also RANDOM ROLLING FOR PSIONICS to see if you could interact with it.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:37
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I've seen it asked, several times, if the Carcosa psionics system is better. It's not, it's dumb and bad.Guilty Spork posted:OTOH pretty much anyone who started playing RPGs with a game other than D&D finds a bunch of things about D&D really bizarre, because there are so many things that are core to D&D that the rest of the industry dropped like a hot rock, so now it's in this weird position of being the dominant leader while also being a quirky fossil. Like, it took me a while to get over the idea that you didn't get to roll to defend, and what's this spell memorization crap, and so on. Ironically, getting into D&D taught me a lot about game design. Having never played games with levels and the idea of level-appropriate encounters, I had no concept of game balance beyond just eyeballing things and policing specific, ill-considered character options. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Aug 13, 2015 19:38
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Ok I'll qualify that statement with 3.5 and later psionics, because AD&D's take was a hot mess
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Aug 13, 2015 19:39
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GM posted:Everywhere I look it's feat this and feats that. More feats! No more Feats BLAH! Peanut Gallery posted:Feats are good, mmkay? GM posted:
 Sincere Poster 2 posted:
GM posted:
Edit: Apparently the OP may have just been sarcastic from the beginning, but it's generally hard to tell on the internet without cues like body language and such. (Hence the invention of emoticons, after all...) NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Aug 13, 2015 |
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Aug 13, 2015 19:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:Ok I'll qualify that statement with 3.5 and later psionics, because AD&D's take was a hot mess Between EPH and Complete Psionics, Psionics was really good and maybe better than wizards. Complete psionics nerfed a bunch of the staple Psionic powers, created a bunch of feat taxes, and introduced the divine mind, a Paladin knockoff that somehow managed to be worse than all the other Paladin Knockoffs.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:43
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Kurieg posted:Between EPH and Complete Psionics, Psionics was really good and maybe better than wizards. Complete psionics nerfed a bunch of the staple Psionic powers, created a bunch of feat taxes, and introduced the divine mind, a Paladin knockoff that somehow managed to be worse than
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Aug 13, 2015 19:50
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Kurieg posted:Between EPH and Complete Psionics, Psionics was really good and maybe better than wizards. Complete psionics nerfed a bunch of the staple Psionic powers, created a bunch of feat taxes, and introduced the divine mind, a Paladin knockoff that somehow managed to be worse than all the other Paladin Knockoffs. I think you mean EPH and the Dreamscarred Press 3PP supplements, because Complete Psionics was such hot garbage that it drove a handful of the most prolific homebrewers to form Dreamscarred Press under the OGL so they could do it themselves, but good this time.
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Aug 13, 2015 19:54
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I recall someone making the comment that the 3.0 Psionics Handbook was a physical manifestation of a natural 1, whereas Complete Psionic (no 's' at the end) was what happened when developers rolled a natural 1. 
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Aug 13, 2015 19:56
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Soulborn was at least marginally functional due to the way soulmelds worked. IIRC the mantles basically had none of the self-buff spells that the Psychic Warrior had, and since your power selection was tied to the auras you could project (and most of the decent auras were tied to offensive mantles) You ended up dumping the entirety of your power point pool into one or two spells before you were back to just taking full attack actions.Thesaurasaurus posted:I think you mean EPH and the Dreamscarred Press 3PP supplements, because Complete Psionics was such hot garbage that it drove a handful of the most prolific homebrewers to form Dreamscarred Press under the OGL so they could do it themselves, but good this time. I meant between as in "During the span of time after EPH but before Complete Psionics".
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Aug 13, 2015 19:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:Psionics are cool and good, I've come to learn. Oh, tons. Mostly from people who only have experience with pre-3.5 Psionics and refused to accept that things changed.
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Aug 13, 2015 20:34
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senrath posted:Oh, tons. Mostly from people who only have experience with pre-3.5 Psionics and refused to accept that things changed. I had a player who cheated viciously at the table (his favorite thing was to roll his d20, pick it up right after it settled, and give me a number in the 15-20 range) so I did not let him play psionics in my game because I knew he would never subtract his power points, or at the very least he would subtract numbers way under the total power point cost.
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Aug 13, 2015 20:42
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Ah, EPH. Fun times, trying to convince a GM that casting Skate twice a day is not actually broken.
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Aug 13, 2015 20:52
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Rulebook Heavily posted:The insane thing is, I can see why you'd limit lockpicking to just one try. Trying over and over just makes the lock kind of pointless because you'll eventually succeed. AD&D made you try once. 3e automated the process of rolling over and over. spectralent posted:The thing is originally the lock challenge isn't really a "challenge" you engage with as it's own puzzle. It can be but 90% of the time it's a resource drain that a rogue gives you a % chance to ignore (are we going to have to waste a magic item, key, or spell use? Are we going to have to fight a monster and waste HP to get through? etc). Of course, once you strip D&D of it's context of being survival horror for greedy elves it becomes a weird artifact mechanic that's pointless and boring. Yeah the locks thing makes sense in the context it was made - a dungeon crawler where the dungeon is different every time. Remember, OD&D (and the start of AD&D and Basic) may as well have been the first roguelikes. You fail at picking the lock? Well, you can try bashing the door in (which could bring monsters). You could also use Knock (which removes one of your spells for that dungeon dive). Or you just leave the door locked and never learn what was on the other side (there could've been no treasure to begin with!) D&D is filled to the brim with poo poo that no longer makes sense but must be kept in place due to TRADITION! It's the American political system of ttgs.
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Aug 13, 2015 21:44
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There's a bit of logic to "well I can't beat the lock but let me try again when I'm better." Of course that's not the problem.
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Aug 13, 2015 21:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:Psionics are cool and good, I've come to learn. IF YOU WANT MAGIC YOU SHOULD MAKE A WIZARD PSIONICS DON'T BELONG IN D&D That's most of the anti-psionic grog. There's a bit of "Of COURSE it's overpowered!" but that's tied to the first one. Lots of grogs legitimately don't understand why someone wouldn't play a Vancian caster; if you don't, it must be because you found some secret way to use psionics to break the game, otherwise of course you'd gravitate naturally to the wizard! The other side of grogs don't care if you legitimately like psionics or not - they're Not D&D and thus don't belong.
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Aug 13, 2015 21:47
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Psionics don't belong in D&D!* *Psionics have been in D&D since 1976.
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Aug 13, 2015 21:55
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Guilty Spork posted:Psionics don't belong in D&D!* I'm playing in a 1eAD&D campaign right now (it's loving terrible!) and when reading through the books was super surprised to discover that things like psionics and monks have been in there almost from the beginning, despite weirdly persistent attitudes against them. Maybe it's because they don't seem to fit into the standard Western fantasy milieu? Also I'm playing a psion myself and whooo dogie are the rules a hot mess
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Aug 13, 2015 22:05
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Ixjuvin posted:Maybe it's because they don't seem to fit into the standard Western fantasy milieu?
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Aug 13, 2015 22:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:Psionics are cool and good, I've come to learn. because the advantage of D&D is it's familiarity. THere are a ton of new classes, but they're all in terms of the core. Psionics, NO. Totally different system, works like nothing else in the game. It doesn't fit the genre (any rationalizations are JUST THAT - besides, Eberron is borderline fantasy merging with sci-fi), it doesn't match the system, and most players who want to use it are munchkins.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:14
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Mormon Star Wars posted:Psionics, NO. Totally different system, works like nothing else in the game.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:17
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It's no longer fantasy when you start using technobabble. Psionics is one of those words used in technobabble.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:21
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It's a practical definition. Fantasy is defined by what books ARE fantasy... Books with something called psionics are not fantasy. An exception to this has still not been located.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:22
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Mormon Star Wars posted:It's a practical definition. Fantasy is defined by what books ARE fantasy... Source your quotes. Also what's this "better psionics" dreamscarred thing? As I said, I always liked psi a bit more because it matched how I thought of magic via "MP", as in a finite but rechargeable resource the caster has for a given time, rather than some memory process. You're right though that psionics always lingered a bit. Is Dreamscarred a publisher or a book, basically? And is it for *shudder* 3.5? 
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Aug 13, 2015 22:26
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spectralent posted:Source your quotes. Psionics is just another magic system for D&D. We already have an artificial division between divine and arcane, why do we need a third? After all, wizards and sorcerers and bards and paladins and rangers and clerics and druids and umpteen prestige classes all share the SAME SPELL LIST -- so why does psionics have to be different? Also they seemingly duplicated everythign in the base system, only with psionics. You have psionic casters, psionic warriors, psionic half-caster half-warriors... psionic items, psionic equipment, psionic monsters... psionic versions of pretty much all the standard spell categories. Why recreate the WHOLE game, but swap out the single most important subsystem of the game for something else that is functionally equivalent yet incompatible? The mind boggles. I'd be okay with just using psionics and no other magic -- old pulp fantasy like Conan often featured "mesmerists" and such -- but you gotta change the name. "Psionics" just screams science fiction not fantasy. Also it would feel different, like Deryni or something. Also, psionics always seems tied to concepts like "molecular rearrangement" and stuff. That is to fantasy what a heavy boot is to a stray ant. And the illustrations seem to take "dungeonpunk" to an extreme, even for third edition. It not only fails to interest me ("meh"), it leaves a bad taste in my mouth ("bleh"). You asked.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:28
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Mormon Star Wars posted:It's no longer fantasy when you start using technobabble. Psionics is one of those words used in technobabble. *Ignores half the wizard's spell list*
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Aug 13, 2015 22:30
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Where did the psionics thing come from, anyway? I mean monks I can comprehend - I gather the inspiration was Caine from Kung Fu, and it seems like it'd be simple enough to keep the core concept of "religious unarmed fighter" and recast it in whatever local theological environment you prefer. But the psionics business did seem strange, if more for the "why are they calling it psionics instead of mindwitching or some poo poo." It's me, I'm the grog. I do remember parsing some statement in the 1E DMG, which I read as a tiny babby, to mean you always regained psychic strength points at the lowest possible rate. (Re-reading it as an adult made it clear that it was saying "If you're on the borderline between these, use the lower rate.")
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Aug 13, 2015 22:32
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Mormon Star Wars posted:It's no longer fantasy when you start using technobabble. Psionics is one of those words used in technobabble. ProfessorCirno posted:*Ignores half the wizard's spell list* Speaking of spell terms coming from one language or another, has anyone played that one TRPG that's basically Learn to Speak Korean?
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Aug 13, 2015 22:41
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spectralent posted:Source your quotes. Of course not! Dreamscarred Press only makes fine third party products for that vast improvement upon 3.5's ancient rule set - Pathfinder! No, but seriously, from the Fatal and Friends writeup of their psionics book (I'd link but i'm on mobile) it's pretty decent... for 3.x.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:43
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Nessus posted:Where did the psionics thing come from, anyway? I mean monks I can comprehend - I gather the inspiration was Caine from Kung Fu, and it seems like it'd be simple enough to keep the core concept of "religious unarmed fighter" and recast it in whatever local theological environment you prefer. But the psionics business did seem strange, if more for the "why are they calling it psionics instead of mindwitching or some poo poo." Authors like Katherine Kurtz, Anne McCaffrey, and of course Frank Herbert were all writing science fantasy with psionic elements prior to AD&D. The actual nomenclature does seem weirdly clinical in the era of the Fighting-Man, and I bet it came down to whoever was lobbying for psionics in the first place. Reading the actual rules, it seems almost certainly like one of those things that started because some guy wanted to have a psychic character, so they drew up a whole system for their one campaign and eventually, like many early D&D campaign things, it ended up enshrined forever.
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Aug 13, 2015 22:53
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Pieces of Peace posted:Of course not! Dreamscarred Press only makes fine third party products for that vast improvement upon 3.5's ancient rule set - Pathfinder! If you are playing 3.x, you should absolutely use Dreamscarred's material. They're 100% legit.
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Aug 13, 2015 23:01
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