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AlphaDog posted:The best parts of the old red box weren't the classes or races or weapons lists or spells, they were the CYOA tutorials and "this is how you dungeon master" handholdy included adventure. They do propose something like that as an introductory "solo play" adventure, as a direct reference to the old Red Box: quote:We will include a choose-your-own-adventure style introductory game that is fun for learning or for solo play. Just like the original!
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Jan 15, 2016 00:27
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I'd echo AlphaDog's thoughts: while it should be possible to convert 5e to Basic (and I contend that 5e as-is is quite different from Basic and I'd pick Basic over it right now), that project seems like it's going a bit far afield from being a straight conversion. Rules-wise, Basic Fantasy already exists as a "modern" B/X ruleset, although it's also nice and good to have "complete" boxed sets of RPGs.
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Jan 15, 2016 01:16
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Cool that they're going the solo tutorial route, weird that they're including oldschool (or oldschool sounding) stuff like hit locations that isn't in 5th ed or Mentzer basic. 5th ed's different from Basic, sure. I could see a stripped down actually basic version of 5th being pretty drat fun though - remove a lot of stuff, rework some other stuff so it's simpler, ditch the poorly designed monsters in the process, simplify and restrict class choices, and you could have a pretty fun dungeon crawl game. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 01:18
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What do you think of the stat block format here? I was going for a copy of the book stat block format at first, but I decided to experiment with it some. Also, I may end up turning the attacks into a section with actual attack-specific formatting, because it all just being inline text is kind of dumb.
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Jan 15, 2016 03:53
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This is just me, but I think that for attacks, saving throws, and basically anything that requires a d20 roll, you should still include the d20. I've seen far too many people get tripped up by what that floating "+x" actually means. I would add a line below the six attributes denoting the d20+x saving throw (or just the +x if you want to stand by convention) I would reformat the attack as something like: quote:Bite, Melee Weapon Attack Or again, just "To-hit: +5" etc. if you want to stand by convention.
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Jan 15, 2016 04:31
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Roadie posted:What do you think of the stat block format here? I was going for a copy of the book stat block format at first, but I decided to experiment with it some. http://thegeniusinc.com/dd-monster-maker-download/ I'd recommend using this math instead of the stuff in the DMG though. https://songoftheblade.wordpress.com/2015/09/09/improved-monster-stats-table-for-dd-5th-edition/ Edit: I see you're actually talking about creating the 5srd site. Any reason you've decided to make a separate one instead of going with (and I guess contributing) to the http://5esrd.com that's already started? Gerdalti fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 05:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is just me, but I think that for attacks, saving throws, and basically anything that requires a d20 roll, you should still include the d20. I've seen far too many people get tripped up by what that floating "+x" actually means. gradenko_2000 posted:I would add a line below the six attributes denoting the d20+x saving throw (or just the +x if you want to stand by convention) gradenko_2000 posted:I would reformat the attack as something like: Gerdalti posted:Edit: I see you're actually talking about creating the 5srd site. Any reason you've decided to make a separate one instead of going with (and I guess contributing) to the http://5esrd.com that's already started? Basically, wanting to try and do interesting things with structured data instead of just having premade pages. For example, those monster stats are stored as YAML and the index with CRs is dynamically generated from them, as are the monster stat blocks.
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Jan 15, 2016 05:47
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Roadie posted:Adding the saves is a good idea, but which monsters actually have proficiency in saves? I don't want to add a line that's identical to the ability scores almost all the time. Proficiency in saves meaning their +x to save is different from their ability modifier? Starting at the start of the MM: Aboleth, Angel (Deva and Planetar), Animated Object (Flying Sword), Azer, Banshee, Beholder (and Death Tyrant), then I stopped looking.
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Jan 15, 2016 06:17
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AlphaDog posted:The best parts of the old red box weren't the classes or races or weapons lists or spells, they were the CYOA tutorials and "this is how you dungeon master" handholdy included adventure.
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Jan 15, 2016 07:44
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Babylon Astronaut posted:That is the best part at first, then the best part becomes the fact that it has a failsafe resolution system for things not covered by the rules besides "ask your DM." You're talking about the "New Rules and Items" on page 20 of the DM's Rulebook, right?
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Jan 15, 2016 07:59
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Exactly. It's my favorite section in all of D&D. It justifies ability scores.
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Jan 15, 2016 08:26
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AlphaDog posted:Proficiency in saves meaning their +x to save is different from their ability modifier? Point taken. Yeah, a 2x6 arrangement makes way more sense than what the MM does.
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Jan 15, 2016 08:33
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ritorix posted:My home game is playing through Rise of Tiamat, early teens levels. Some of the combats have been nuts, like a 3+ hour dragon fight including their whole lair of monsters. During that, the barbarian I'm playing soaked up over 350 damage and used the 'I cant die' class feature 3 times. But most of the 'adventuring days' have been 1-3 real fights and maybe 2-3 trivial encounters to soak up resources. Did everyone have fun? Because honestly that sounds really fun to me.
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Jan 15, 2016 08:35
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Exactly. It's my favorite section in all of D&D. It justifies ability scores. The whole section is really great and it's a pity it didn't get more prominence in the book. "Be sure to write down any rules you create, and apply them fairly to everyone" informed my whole view on how you should make alterations to the game, which is what I was talking about yesterday.  Roadie posted:Point taken. Yeah, a 2x6 arrangement makes way more sense than what the MM does. It was a reasonable question to ask! I'm sorry my answer was a bit blunt, I was trying to do like 5 things at once this afternoon (including repairing my computer and reshelving all my RPG stuff that's cluttered my desk for 6 months) and was phoneposting in between things. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Jan 15, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2016 11:48
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AlphaDog posted:Cool that they're going the solo tutorial route, weird that they're including oldschool (or oldschool sounding) stuff like hit locations that isn't in 5th ed or Mentzer basic.
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Jan 15, 2016 13:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:This is just me, but I think that for attacks, saving throws, and basically anything that requires a d20 roll, you should still include the d20. I've seen far too many people get tripped up by what that floating "+x" actually means. True story, when 5e came out and my group picked it up, we had a guy who had never played D&D before. Halfway through the first session, we realized that he was rolling a d10 for his attack rolls. Turns out, that's what he though his classes Hit Die was for.
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Jan 15, 2016 14:48
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Gambor posted:True story, when 5e came out and my group picked it up, we had a guy who had never played D&D before. Halfway through the first session, we realized that he was rolling a d10 for his attack rolls. Turns out, that's what he though his classes Hit Die was for.
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Jan 15, 2016 15:18
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chaos rhames posted:Kind of a sidenote but stats as roll-under saving throws is a really great system for a D&D thing. Obviously you need modifiers but it's nice and simple. I'm not sure what this means, is this a variant rule? This isn't just the standard hitting a DC number right? Does anyone else think that the starter set adventure is a little lacking? I see a lot of people using it to introduce people to D&D but there's something deflating about telling a group of newcomers that your goal is to meet a dude for a business venture. Obviously the action ramps up afterwards.
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Jan 15, 2016 15:30
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Radio Talmudist posted:I'm not sure what this means, is this a variant rule? This isn't just the standard hitting a DC number right?
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Jan 15, 2016 15:35
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Halloween Jack posted:The oldest school optional rule for what are now skill checks was "pick an appropriate ability score and roll under it to succeed." It's still popular in OSR games. There are a few problems with it, the biggest being that it places even more importance on the ability scores that you roll/choose at the beginning of the game and which don't change a lot. On the other hand, it is much less swingy than normal skill checks and lets strong/smart/fast characters embody that aspect more effectively.
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Jan 15, 2016 15:41
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Radio Talmudist posted:Does anyone else think that the starter set adventure is a little lacking? I see a lot of people using it to introduce people to D&D but there's something deflating about telling a group of newcomers that your goal is to meet a dude for a business venture. Obviously the action ramps up afterwards. Every adventure published for 5e so far is really lacking and has no sense of pace or excitement. You will have way more fun if you make things up as you go along, let the players contribute to the plot and the collaborative world and basically run the story that everyone actually wants to be in, instead of reading from a script and putting players through hoops that aren't even interesting or well-written to begin with.
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Jan 15, 2016 15:53
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Halloween Jack posted:That's what I would assume Hit Die meant if I was new to D&D. Someone remind me, does 5e still have that hit die that's not really like the HD from OD&D? It does. I'm still not sure why the hell it's there.
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Jan 15, 2016 16:11
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Payndz posted:That was my first thought when I first heard about the SRD/OGL for 5e: strip out the unnecessarily crunchy poo poo and produce There's Always A Chance Next. But after thinking about it some more, I decided I'd still much rather stick with a streamlined version of Basic using a rule that was right there in Moldvay all along rather than trying to Basic-ify 5e. I just prefer a straight "roll under what's written right there on your character sheet" resolution system than "d20+this+that+the other versus some arbitrarily defined target number". (I guess I'm just not keen on d20 in general. Oh crap, that makes me an uber-grog, preferring a system that's 35 years old!) I was thinking about how to Basic-fy 5e for on and off throughout the day, and at the end of it decided that having to pick and choose which design elements to keep between the two felt largely like an exercise in trading one novel idea for another. With the exception of maybe ascending AC, there's not a lot that I think would be a clear upside to trying to move a "B/X-style" game that either hasn't been done before or would feel like trying to do it just for its own sake. Maybe Eldritch Blast?
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Jan 15, 2016 17:08
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gradenko_2000 posted:With the exception of maybe ascending AC, there's not a lot that I think would be a clear upside to trying to move a "B/X-style" game that either hasn't been done before or would feel like trying to do it just for its own sake. Maybe Eldritch Blast?
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Jan 15, 2016 17:15
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Payndz posted:I already had both of those in TAAC! Exactly, which is why TAAC owns 
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Jan 15, 2016 17:17
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Roll under is an awesome mechanic. The best example of is I've seen is actually Pendragon: Roll d20 under your score - If you roll over your score, you fail - If you under your score, you succeed; the value you rolled is your degree of success (if it matters) - If you roll your score exactly, you crit (crazy things happen) - If you roll a 20, you fumble (crazy things happen) Skills cap out at 20 -- when you get above 20, it becomes a "+1" to your ultimate result Checks for skills at 20 can never fumble/fail, but that's ok because most checks are opposed: - Both sides roll vs their skill - If both sides pass, whoever has the higher result (or whoever crits) wins the check - If only one side passes, the loser (who failed their skill check) may have an additional penalty - If both sides Crit, it counts as a tie - Things happen on ties and fumbles A good example would be melee combat: - The two combatants both roll their weapon skills - The winner deals damage (usually 3d6 to 6d6). If they crit, the dice pool is doubled - If the loser passed his check, he gets to use his shield (6 points of damage reduction) - If there is a tie (usually crit vs crit) then special events are resolved depending on the weapons being used The system seems swingy (and it is) but it really ends up feeling good narratively because there are a lot of margin-of-success factors built into it. It's also intended to be used alongside the "Passions" system, which can add +10 to +20 to your skill for a single round, meaning your 15 skill could become 20+5. It even uses the skill level in advancement. Over a session you might earn 'checks' in a skill. At the end of the "year" (while you're retired for winter, usually every one or two sessions) you roll all the skills for checks you've received. If you roll at or OVER your current skill level, it goes up. It allows for a really organic "use it to boost it" leveling system that feels very natural. Halloween Jack posted:The oldest school optional rule for what are now skill checks was "pick an appropriate ability score and roll under it to succeed." It's still popular in OSR games. There are a few problems with it, the biggest being that it places even more importance on the ability scores that you roll/choose at the beginning of the game and which don't change a lot. If your PCs are living long enough to change their ability scores much, you're doing it wrong 
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Jan 15, 2016 17:51
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Roll under is nice for quick resolution, but it gets really silly if the roll-under range is smaller than the stats you can end up with, or if you've got two people rolling under who both have high stats. Though, 5e doesn't have nearly as much of that problem as 3e or 4e where 20+ ability scores weren't uncommon, or as GURPS where you have to do weird Deceptive Attack point shuffling if you've got two people with high skills fighting each other.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:15
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Another case of  in the SRD: the monster section at the back mentions the Player's Handbook over and over, and includes a bunch of references to planes and monsters you're not allowed to use because they're Product Identity.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:33
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Roadie posted:Roll under is nice for quick resolution, but it gets really silly if the roll-under range is smaller than the stats you can end up with, or if you've got two people rolling under who both have high stats. I've brought it up before, but again, check out HeroQuest 2. It has a roll under system where abilities have a max score of 20. However, if you go over 20, you get something called a level of "Mastery". These masteries are used to bump results up or down a level of success. Levels of success/failure are divided into five levels: complete, major, minor, marginal, tie. IIRC, DnD doesn't use margins of success and is instead a binary pass/fail system, which really limits what you can do with checks.
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Jan 15, 2016 18:39
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All this just reminds me of how loving bizarro AD&D was in how it was made; Gygax said several times when asked that he CONSTANTLY gave his party chances to raise their attributes because his party loved doing so, but then wrote in AD&D that it should be rare at best, otherwise players will get too used to it.
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Jan 15, 2016 19:51
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One of the reasons that my 3e groups functioned relatively well was that our regular DM made us roll stats, but with an extremely generous rolling method. I found that with spellcasters, this just made them more survivable, but it was a huge boon to classes that needed high scores in multiple abilities for their class abilities to matter.
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Jan 15, 2016 19:59
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ProfessorCirno posted:All this just reminds me of how loving bizarro AD&D was in how it was made; Gygax said several times when asked that he CONSTANTLY gave his party chances to raise their attributes because his party loved doing so, but then wrote in AD&D that it should be rare at best, otherwise players will get too used to it. A lot of Gygax's early stuff is super weird, like him letting solo players explore dungeons straight up against him. I think Tomb of Elemental Evil was completed by just one player, not a party, which is shocking.
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Jan 15, 2016 20:21
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ProfessorCirno posted:All this just reminds me of how loving bizarro AD&D was in how it was made; Gygax said several times when asked that he CONSTANTLY gave his party chances to raise their attributes because his party loved doing so, but then wrote in AD&D that it should be rare at best, otherwise players will get too used to it. 5e probably might work more interestingly, if you started off with a 20 (or two) and were just bumping your secondary stuff. As it is, you end up bumping your primary (like basically every edition) unless you take a feat instead.
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Jan 15, 2016 20:57
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AD&D was about making a standardised game, not about emulating the game as run by Gary Gygax. AD&D has paragraphs and paragraphs of "think carefully about the ecology of the dungeon, making a realistic and believable dungeon is really important". Gary once decided to put a McDonald's in a dungeon because someone asked him what all the monsters actually ate.
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Jan 15, 2016 21:06
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Anyone read this: http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Imagination-Gygax-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/1632862794 ? I'm quite curious about the early history of D&D. Gygax seems fascinating to me. I've also always wondered how much of D&D is Dave Arneson's brainchild.
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Jan 15, 2016 21:07
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Radio Talmudist posted:Anyone read this: http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Imagination-Gygax-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/1632862794 ? The cover is great, and the endpapers are a map of Lake Geneva done up in the blueprint-blue style of early AD&D maps 
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Jan 15, 2016 21:22
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mastershakeman posted:A lot of Gygax's early stuff is super weird, like him letting solo players explore dungeons straight up against him. I think Tomb of Elemental Evil was completed by just one player, not a party, which is shocking. Yes, and then Tomb of Horrors was made to punish him.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:12
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mastershakeman posted:A lot of Gygax's early stuff is super weird, like him letting solo players explore dungeons straight up against him. I think Tomb of Elemental Evil was completed by just one player, not a party, which is shocking. Yes, and then Tomb of Horrors was made to punish him.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:12
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I thought he made it because his players complained his dungeons were getting too easy for them. I also seem to remember someone (ProfessorCirno?) saying the group managed to clear it by sending a herd of sheep in first.
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Jan 15, 2016 23:27
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What one of his dungeons required you to stone-to-flesh a door and hack through it?
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