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Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Splicer posted:

Extended character creation, frequent combat as both an implied and explicit expectation of the game, little to no mechanical persistence past death, and above all, nobody actually expects to be critted by random chumps so it's always seen as coming from out of nowhere. It's basically a list of how to do it wrong.
If you said just this I would seriously not be able to tell if you were talking about 3e D&D or L5R.

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NinjaDebugger
Apr 22, 2008


Yawgmoth posted:

If you said just this I would seriously not be able to tell if you were talking about 3e D&D or L5R.

That's because L5R does it EVEN WORSE, especially if your GM is one of the many who bans Great Destiny/Dark Fate, which is the only in-game protection against stupid death. Or worse, limits it strictly to mechanical effect and does poo poo like killing you because you survive the fall into the ocean, but you're unconscious and so you drown. On top of the random crits, it adds a giant death spiral and story considerations that often make it functionally impossible to retreat or back down.

All of which is why I give all my PCs Great Destiny off the bat, and am looking at the possibility of removing those and replacing with the death flag from TBZ.

Kavak
Aug 23, 2009


D&D at least has the decency to allow resurrection magic, but that opens a different can of worms where death has minimal impact for the PCs.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






To be fair to L5R, it's pretty frank about its own lethality and additionally gives two separate ideas on how to reduce the issue. The obvious one is the sidebar right in the middle of the combat section which offers a variant on wound scaling. The second shows up in the GM section that discusses playstyle on the "thug rule", suggesting the (not necessarily exclusive) use of chump NPCs in combat.

But that being said, more complex games (like L5R) do need some sort of mechanic that allows PCs to be hurt by combat without also reliably dying. Besides TBZ's death flag, one example is the injury table from Iron Kingdoms. If you drop in combat, you roll 3d6 on the table for what your resultant injury is. Most of the injuries inflict penalties (several of which are permanent but small), a few place a doom countdown on your head (which can be lifted with swift field medicine), but only one (3, at a 1/216 chance) actually kills you outright. It's a good way to do "gritty" without also being lethal.

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Splicer posted:

In a good system built around death by chump, by the time the chump kills you you'll have already given informed consent for this to happen. Unfortunately the death by chump systems most people are familiar with are 3.x/5e, or inspired by them, which couldn't do it more wrong if they tried. Extended character creation, frequent combat as both an implied and explicit expectation of the game, little to no mechanical persistence past death, and above all, nobody actually expects to be critted by random chumps so it's always seen as coming from out of nowhere. It's basically a list of how to do it wrong.

I'm working on a Darkest Dungeon-inspired game now and this whole issue is basically the founding principle I'm working with. (Yes, I know Torchbearer exists, but I want something with "tactical" combat and I want to poach some Blades in the Dark crew management and stress mechanics.) The assumptions are:

1. Character creation needs to take less than five minutes. Pick a class, pick a name, circle one positive and one negative trait, start playing.
2. You fill in your backstory as you level. With each level you gain, you assign skill ranks and then tell a little story about why your character is good at that thing. A character has to earn a backstory by surviving.
3. The group is playing an adventuring company, not necessarily individual adventurers. It's assumed you'll play more than one character (you can only play one per dungeon run, but if that character is injured or you just want to play a different character, you can play another). While it's inevitable that players will eventually have favorites and a character they consider their "main" character, those characters will never be immortal. If they die, or retire in "peace," it's nice to have another established character you've already been playing.

When I run other systems, I build in "chump protection" mechanics. Either you're unlikely to be put in a truly lethal situation in a chump fight (how I run, say, Dungeon World, or Blades in the Dark) or there's the "marked for death" thing I did in 13th Age. If you "die" in a fight where the stakes are low, you just get badly hurt, but Death has your number now. The next time the stakes are super high, your character is definitely going to die, but they'll do so in a meaningful and/or appropriately dramatic way. My players like feeling like there's a chance that even a normal goblin could kill them, but enough people wanted to avoid just outright losing a character that this seemed like a good compromise. A chump fight will never kill you outright, but it can lead to your (dramatic) death down the road.

Harrow fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Feb 1, 2016

bbcisdabomb
Jan 15, 2008

SHEESH

Harrow posted:

I'm working on a Darkest Dungeon-inspired game now and this whole issue is basically the founding principle I'm working with. (Yes, I know Torchbearer exists, but I want something with "tactical" combat and I want to poach some Blades in the Dark crew management and stress mechanics.) The assumptions are:

1. Character creation needs to take less than five minutes. Pick a class, pick a name, circle one positive and one negative trait, start playing.
2. You fill in your backstory as you level. With each level you gain, you assign skill ranks and then tell a little story about why your character is good at that thing. A character has to earn a backstory by surviving.
3. The group is playing an adventuring company, not necessarily individual adventurers. It's assumed you'll play more than one character (you can only play one per dungeon run, but if that character is injured or you just want to play a different character, you can play another). While it's inevitable that players will eventually have favorites and a character they consider their "main" character, those characters will never be immortal. If they die, or retire in "peace," it's nice to have another established character you've already been playing.

When I run other systems, I build in "chump protection" mechanics. Either you're unlikely to be put in a truly lethal situation in a chump fight (how I run, say, Dungeon World, or Blades in the Dark) or there's the "marked for death" thing I did in 13th Age. If you "die" in a fight where the stakes are low, you just get badly hurt, but Death has your number now. The next time the stakes are super high, your character is definitely going to die, but they'll do so in a meaningful and/or appropriately dramatic way. My players like feeling like there's a chance that even a normal goblin could kill them, but enough people wanted to avoid just outright losing a character that this seemed like a good compromise. A chump fight will never kill you outright, but it can lead to your (dramatic) death down the road.

Definitely post this when you're done with it, I love the way it sounds.

Re. resseruction magic in DnD: My 4e players neatly sidestepped that whole shebang completely unintentionally by making a party without arcane or divine power sources until the Priest joined the campaign at level 16. Not only was death A Thing To Be Avoided, they managed to go so far without anyone who knew anything about magic. I'm planning on having the epilogue end on a scene where a young adventurer comes in to a tomb they've cleared twice already and find an ancient artifact sword of incredible importance at the bottom of a pile of trash equipment.

Otherkinsey Scale
Jul 17, 2012

Just a little bit of sunshine!

Poison Mushroom posted:

I think, if you have to implement a "death comes when it comes" policy, that Next Episode thing is about the best way to do it.

I still prefer TBZ's Death Box, though.

I like Dungeon World's "Last Breath", where you literally come face to face with Death.

But then in Dungeon World, every fight feels important and cinematic enough that it's never just "oh, some mook killed you." At least, that's my experience.

Volcano Style
May 2, 2006

THERE IS ONLY ONE
I've been playing a Scion game for just short of two years now as a Loa Scion of Kalfu. I'm the talky Manipulation-heavy member of the party who started making out grandiose schemes that almost never worked out, and has had some disastrous ones to finally get him to mellow out. We're currently midway through Demigod level, and I just got closer to Godhood by...basically making one of my pantheon laugh.

Forever ago, when all of us in the party were only at Hero level, we were sent to a bar to speak with Sisyphus, who'd gotten out of his rock pushing deal by a fluke. We were told that he was planning on using his cunning and scheming to help the Titans topple the Gods, but when we got there, he was waiting for us to have a polite conversation. It turned out that all he wanted was to be revered for his intellect and to be worshipped as a God for the grandeur of his story. The entire time, he's being a massive pompous rear end in a top hat, and none of the party think they have much of a chance in hell in getting the Egyptians, Norse and especially not the Greek Gods to accept him as an equal.

The Loa are totally up for it though, and River strikes a backroom deal that ends up getting Sisyphus inducted as an honorary Loa deity.

Much much later, and all of us are now Demigods, having only just lifted a veil between the world and the Overworld which was blocking communication with the Gods. My character decides he's long overdue for a talk with one of his pantheon, and goes about his usual ritual of having an offering of good food, alcohol and cigars to invite one of his pantheon in. Except I decide I'm going to deliberately try and summon Sisyphus, so I'm very particular with my choices for the ritual.

When he turns up, he sees what the offering is and absolutely loses his poo poo. Starts smashing the room, completely overpowers my character and threatens to kill him. He probably would have, except Baron Samedi turns up laughing his rear end off telling Sisyphus to calm his poo poo and go home. The Baron tells me everything I need to know, and even gives me a new Relic for giving him such a good laugh.

The brand of beer I used to summon Sisyphus?

Rolling Rock.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Carrasco posted:

I like Dungeon World's "Last Breath", where you literally come face to face with Death.

But then in Dungeon World, every fight feels important and cinematic enough that it's never just "oh, some mook killed you." At least, that's my experience.

Well yeah the extremely scalable combat of Dungeon World means you never have to fight "mooks", which by extension means any fight you get into can be important enough warrant death. D&D gets into trouble because "a fight that's difficult enough to drain some resources" and "a fight that's easy enough to not kill anyone" can be a very fine line, and you have to keep treading it for the central conceit to work.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Volcano Style posted:

The brand of beer I used to summon Sisyphus?
Rolling Rock.

Son of a BITCH

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.

Volcano Style posted:

The brand of beer I used to summon Sisyphus?

Rolling Rock.
:master:

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Carrasco posted:

I like Dungeon World's "Last Breath", where you literally come face to face with Death.

But then in Dungeon World, every fight feels important and cinematic enough that it's never just "oh, some mook killed you." At least, that's my experience.

Last Breath caused some great moments in the Dungeon World campaign I ran last year.

We did a sort of Spelljammer/Treasure Planet thing and the party decided that they were "pest control"--they took jobs to take out threats to take out galactic "pests," up to and including star dragons or (in the case of this campaign) a time mage trying to undo 200 years of history to save her planet at the cost of many others.

The ship's captain--actually played the Survivor, not the Captain--ended up at 0 HP pretty often. I think the player liked the Survivor's "you lose something each time but keep on trucking" death move. But he did end up getting a partial success Last Breath once, during which he accepted a deal with Death to work for him ferrying souls to the afterlife after their current mission is over. (He ended up striking up a little friendship with Death after this, in an amusing side note. He found a drug that let him see beyond the veil and ended up taking it occasionally just to chat with Death and play chess with him.)

Interestingly, that deal ended up saving him. The climactic battle (a story I've posted about before but will probably post again sometime) took place in a broken timeline where they had to have the time mage's younger self help them defeat her older self. At the end, they had to escape the collapsing timeline, and the captain ended up staying behind to hold off the villain, being lost in time forever. Except Death wasn't going to let him out of his deal that easily; even though the rest of the party never knew it, Death plucked him out of there at the last second so he could fulfill his promise. It felt like a suitable ending for the captain.

Smash it Smash hit
Dec 30, 2009

prettay, prettay

Kavak posted:

D&D at least has the decency to allow resurrection magic, but that opens a different can of worms where death has minimal impact for the PCs.

what i do to combat this is make the ressurrection magic give the caster some "deformity" for doing it. Kind of like a full metal alchemist thing where something must be lost to restore it. I have a chart that has the 6 abilities and a d4 subgroup that permentantly effs up their character. Stuff like half their movement, or disadvantage on all ability checks using this ability.

That way it makes them really think about who they want to bring back, or could be a fun plot point where a cleric is litterally withering himself to death bringing people back.

Doodmons
Jan 17, 2009

Smash it Smash hit posted:

what i do to combat this is make the ressurrection magic give the caster some "deformity" for doing it. Kind of like a full metal alchemist thing where something must be lost to restore it. I have a chart that has the 6 abilities and a d4 subgroup that permentantly effs up their character. Stuff like half their movement, or disadvantage on all ability checks using this ability.

That way it makes them really think about who they want to bring back, or could be a fun plot point where a cleric is litterally withering himself to death bringing people back.

Surely the answer to that is just get someone else to do it?

ellbent
May 2, 2007

I NEVER HAD SOUL
You might take a look at a Blades in the Dark hack for that Darkest Dungeon game. There's a character sheet for the group that determines its theme, individual characters are created pretty drat quickly since it's based off playbooks, and your characters rarely straight-up die -- only accumulate enough trauma and injury that they're forced to retire on account of being crazy, achy, and useless. Which is how half my Darkest Dungeon characters meet their end, really; being discarded.

the_steve
Nov 9, 2005

We're always hiring!

Smash it Smash hit posted:

what i do to combat this is make the ressurrection magic give the caster some "deformity" for doing it. Kind of like a full metal alchemist thing where something must be lost to restore it. I have a chart that has the 6 abilities and a d4 subgroup that permentantly effs up their character. Stuff like half their movement, or disadvantage on all ability checks using this ability.

That way it makes them really think about who they want to bring back, or could be a fun plot point where a cleric is litterally withering himself to death bringing people back.

My first group did this too, except it was anytime you got knocked below 0hp and came back from it. You rolled a d12 and got a random minor deformity like "missing the tip of a finger."
And if you rolled the same thing a bunch, it'd get progressively worse. My Wizard/Thief went from having a slight limp to his leg being so stiff and useless that he was taking penalties to doing anything with it.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

the_steve posted:

My first group did this too, except it was anytime you got knocked below 0hp and came back from it. You rolled a d12 and got a random minor deformity like "missing the tip of a finger."
And if you rolled the same thing a bunch, it'd get progressively worse. My Wizard/Thief went from having a slight limp to his leg being so stiff and useless that he was taking penalties to doing anything with it.
In WFRP3E when you get knocked down from HP damage (wounds) you gain an injury (critical wound). You also gain injuries from being criticaled, and you die when you're unconscious and have too many critical wounds. So even if you get absolutely pasted in a fight, as long as you walked in fresh you're almost certainly going to end up unconscious and injured rather than dead. Since the more injured you are entering a fight the more likely you are to rack up enough injuries to hit the danger zone before you fall unconscious, if a character gets killed it's because the player decided they wanted to engage in a fight that they knew carried a high risk of character death.

Whybird
Aug 2, 2009

Phaiston have long avoided the tightly competetive defence sector, but the IRDA Act 2052 has given us the freedom we need to bring out something really special.

https://team-robostar.itch.io/robostar


Nap Ghost
My approach is just not to have fights against chumps where the stakes are 'Does the group die?'. If the enemies aren't important enough for the PCs to feel like dying to them would be awesome and dramatic, they're not important enough to break out the full combat rules for.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.
Stories again!

Played Feng Shui today. Amazing session; we had a Gambler, Old Master, Scrappy Kid and Driver. It was the classic intro adventure ("What's with all this weird stuff? Ohhhh, it's the metaplot of the game line!") and everyone kicked rear end.

Since Feng Shui is an action movie RPG, what everyone did is more interesting than the story. The two big fights were at a community center (crashed by Triad Gangsters) and a hospital (crashed by terrorists and robotic simians, one of whom had a chainsaw for a paw.)

The Driver, Ford 'Honda' Chevy:
*Took a gangster out of the fight by kneecapping him, pulling a burnout, and trapping him in the trunk.
*Tossed a guy into a community pool, then hit him with a wrench when he tried to climb out.
*Teamed up with the Scrappy Kid to perform The Liberator and The Liberator MK 2 (see below.)

The Old Kung Fu Master, Kwan Chao:
*Mostly got around with his Leaping Crane Kick (think flying soccer kick), and his spinning roundhouses.
*Was so good at martial arts he deftly slap-parried a chainsaw.
*Dropkicked a bazooka user from 34 feet away.
*Caught a fleeing terrorist leader by jumping wall-to-wall down three flights of stairs. He then kicked the leader in the face.


The Gambler, Kingsley "Kings" Zhao:
*Had an ability to reverse lucky and unlucky rolls, as long as he explained his foresight. One time, the explanation is "my horoscope this morning said I'd be attacked via cleaver."
*Another time, he closed a door in Ford's face so their timing would be better. In response, Ford stumbled into a terrorist (killing him with his own gun), tripped another terrorist and shot a third terrorist in the elbow, who killed the second.
*Rested his gun on Ford's shoulder while Master Chao threw an oxygen canister. The explosion was so bad it melted the rubber mask off the robo-gorilla.

The Kid, Christina Eagle:
*Slid along a buffet table, back first, and then used her dirty hoodie to blind a Triad Leader.
*Threw a hoagie into a bazooka.
*Rollerskated through a hospital hallway, using an IV stand to knock two baddies off a balcony. She then threw the pole at a third, arrived at where the badguy was exiting an elevator, and pushed the down button.
*Escaped a Red Pole leader's attack and was so bored, she took a selfie.
*Co-Created the Liberator. That's when you lead an infuriated enemy past a teammate, who uses a tire iron to hit the opponent as hard as possible in the genitals.
*Co-created the Liberator MK 2, which is when you do the previous to a robot gorilla with a pistol instead of a tire iron. Then, you shoot the gorilla in its groin. The robot will instinctively reach for its junk, which is bad if one of the gorilla's paws is a chainsaw.

Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:57 on Jun 19, 2016

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

Splicer posted:

In a good system built around death by chump, by the time the chump kills you you'll have already given informed consent for this to happen. Unfortunately the death by chump systems most people are familiar with are 3.x/5e, or inspired by them, which couldn't do it more wrong if they tried. Extended character creation, frequent combat as both an implied and explicit expectation of the game, little to no mechanical persistence past death, and above all, nobody actually expects to be critted by random chumps so it's always seen as coming from out of nowhere. It's basically a list of how to do it wrong.

oh definitely. I'd say that one game that does random chump death very well is Grunt, and that's because 1. character creation is lighting fast and 2. you go in knowing that you're playing a random private fighting in Actual Historical Vietnam, so random, violent deaths are not just expected but an underlying theme of the game.

Ilor
Feb 2, 2008

That's a crit.
In the Apocalypse World game I'm running right now, one of my players is running with a hacked version of the Macaluso playbook I've called "The Urchins." He's basically playing something like 6 or 7 kids between the ages of 4 and 13. One of the abilities of the playbook that he has chosen (a "move" in AW parlance) is where do they keep coming from?, which means every time one of his Urchins dies, he brings in a new one. This is good and cool for the player, because a) individual Urchins are incredibly frail, and b) he's a bloodthirsty madman who will escalate pretty much any conflict to violence with zero provocation. In the first four sessions of the game, he's already gone through like 6 kids, 4 of which were killed (2 accidentally, 2 otherwise) by other PCs.

It puts a whole different spin on the concept of "character death," that's for sure.

Shady Amish Terror
Oct 11, 2007
I'm not Amish by choice. 8(
Peak murderhobo.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

Ilor posted:

In the Apocalypse World game I'm running right now, one of my players is running with a hacked version of the Macaluso playbook I've called "The Urchins." He's basically playing something like 6 or 7 kids between the ages of 4 and 13. One of the abilities of the playbook that he has chosen (a "move" in AW parlance) is where do they keep coming from?, which means every time one of his Urchins dies, he brings in a new one. This is good and cool for the player, because a) individual Urchins are incredibly frail, and b) he's a bloodthirsty madman who will escalate pretty much any conflict to violence with zero provocation. In the first four sessions of the game, he's already gone through like 6 kids, 4 of which were killed (2 accidentally, 2 otherwise) by other PCs.

It puts a whole different spin on the concept of "character death," that's for sure.
So, he's turned children into a swarm of murlocs?

Ichabod Sexbeast
Dec 5, 2011

Giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle
The Lil' Rascals got dark

e: what kind of poo poo has he done with them?

Soylent Pudding
Jun 22, 2007

We've got people!


This thread is really making me want to try GMing Feng Shui. Is there a good introductory adventure (preferably a free sample adventure) that's good for getting a feel for the system?

StringOfLetters
Apr 2, 2007
What?
When you describe something that happened in your roleplaying game without much context, and without a word spared for dysfunctional people around the table, it's a lot like describing a dream you had to someone you don't know. Especially if you just mention the 'highlights.'

In college I played a game of D&D that ran for like a year. In the last session, we reached a big and (supposedly) meticulously prepared labyrinth. We got through a maze, some riddles, some traps, a loving ton of goblins, and some weird stuff. He kept describing really bizarre and imaginative things, like falling through a long shaft filled with hands, where the hands would form facsimiles of faces to ask quesions, and drop you further if they didn't like your answers. And a barely-intelligent beast with magic boulder-chucking powers, which we sort of tamed, sort of befriended. His descriptions were, at times, pretty spare, but everybody else seemed super engaged with it, so I figured I was just having a hard time keeping up. It was pretty entertaining, if occasionally railroady.

I eventually learned - on my own, long after the session - that he was running us through a D&D-ified version of the Jim Henson movie 'Labyrinth,' which I had not seen. Everybody else caught on almost immediately, and assumed I had, and when I tried to go against the script they figured it was just in-character confusion.

Except, he replaced the great wizard (originally played by David Bowie) at the end with a glaringly obvious self-insert character. He could stop time or teleport around with a snap of his fingers, despite wearing golden plate mail armor and dual-wielding flaming swords, and he was incredibly handsome and witty, and he looked, "A lot like this guy. *points thumb at himself* :smug:" As a climactic final fight, it was horrible, because he was untouchable and clearly toying with the party. Our bard figured out the 'trick' to the fight, which was to go with the Labyrinth script and convince herself that she was dreaming. The DM then narrated that she (not her character, the real person) woke up from a coma in a hospital after a head injury, and that several of her worried friends and her loving husband (the DM) were gathered around her. Fade to black.

It seemed like most of the people in the group were really, really impressed with that.

One member of the party a very tall, very large person who wore a lot of button-up shirts with dragons on them, who was using a 3.5 sourcebook for something called "Incarnum," which was like magic, but he jealously guarded his secrets and wouldn't explain anything about it or let anyone else read it. He tailored his entire character build towards something called like a 'displacer beast hide,' and by exploiting what I can only assume is a bad misreading of the rules, let him cast 'Blink' to teleport himself a short distance, as a free action, an infinite number of times per turn. But he didn't even get really creative with that, most of his combat actions were making normal attacks with a hammer. The DM okayed all of it. I think the DM was Actually Schizophrenic and he had enraptured a slightly cult-like group of enablers.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Soylent Pudding posted:

This thread is really making me want to try GMing Feng Shui. Is there a good introductory adventure (preferably a free sample adventure) that's good for getting a feel for the system?

http://www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/FS2_RedPacketRumble.pdf

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

StringOfLetters posted:

I eventually learned - on my own, long after the session - that he was running us through a D&D-ified version of the Jim Henson movie 'Labyrinth,' which I had not seen. Everybody else caught on almost immediately, and assumed I had, and when I tried to go against the script they figured it was just in-character confusion.

Except, he replaced the great wizard (originally played by David Bowie) at the end with a glaringly obvious self-insert character.
We've found it: The worst person ever. Of course, that might mean that there's an absolutely amazing DM that he'd fuse with if the three suns align.

Lorak
Apr 7, 2009

Well, there goes the Hall of Fame...

StringOfLetters posted:

One member of the party a very tall, very large person who wore a lot of button-up shirts with dragons on them, who was using a 3.5 sourcebook for something called "Incarnum," which was like magic, but he jealously guarded his secrets and wouldn't explain anything about it or let anyone else read it. He tailored his entire character build towards something called like a 'displacer beast hide,' and by exploiting what I can only assume is a bad misreading of the rules, let him cast 'Blink' to teleport himself a short distance, as a free action, an infinite number of times per turn. But he didn't even get really creative with that, most of his combat actions were making normal attacks with a hammer. The DM okayed all of it. I think the DM was Actually Schizophrenic and he had enraptured a slightly cult-like group of enablers.
While it isn't exactly the case, it does make me think about what would happen if The Flash used a hammer to fight crime.

Golden Bee
Dec 24, 2009

I came here to chew bubblegum and quote 'They Live', and I'm... at an impasse.

Lorak posted:

While it isn't exactly the case, it does make me think about what would happen if The Flash used a hammer to fight crime.

I played a PBP game on these forums where I played John Henry as a speedster. Fast as a train and ready to split heads.
He died during the third post because the GM didn't like the concept.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
If memory serves Magic of Incarnum was during the period where they introduced the new action types I can check when I get home but the beholder cloak probably used a "Yeah you can do it whenever the hell you want... once per round." action.

NGDBSS
Dec 30, 2009






Blink Shirt is the only one that lets you teleport, though to be fair it's still available to totemists. That said, the teleportation ability normally requires a standard action and ends your actions for the turn after you're done. Binding it to your totem chakra shifts it to a move action, but that still doesn't deal with the restriction that effectively ends your turn. So yeah, there's your confirmation that the other player was cheating, assuming that their dogged attempts to hide and protect the rulebook from prying eyes weren't an obvious tip-off.

As for the new action types in 3.5, those came before Magic of Incarnum. Swift actions were introduced in the Miniatures Handbook in late 2003 (yes, Wizards actively tried to cultivate a miniatures wargame in the days of 3.x), while immediate actions were introduced in the Expanded Psionics Handbook in early 2004.

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.
e- oops beaten

Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Feb 4, 2016

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

StringOfLetters posted:

One member of the party a very tall, very large person who wore a lot of button-up shirts with dragons on them
I thought you were talking about the character when I read this first.

Smash it Smash hit
Dec 30, 2009

prettay, prettay

Doodmons posted:

Surely the answer to that is just get someone else to do it?

yeah of course but the price for someone to sacrifice their own bodies and also the proficiency in magic to do it makes the price sky rocket. Its no longer the NPC just sacrificing a "spell slot" for that day but rather potentially their arm/leg/eye

Smash it Smash hit
Dec 30, 2009

prettay, prettay

Whybird posted:

My approach is just not to have fights against chumps where the stakes are 'Does the group die?'. If the enemies aren't important enough for the PCs to feel like dying to them would be awesome and dramatic, they're not important enough to break out the full combat rules for.

I also do this for the most part. I dont thrown in NPCs that are not directly apart of some sort of world plot. And if you are running a pretty good campaign the characters will even give the random "bandit captain" some sort of personality to go with.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

StringOfLetters posted:

Except, he replaced the great wizard (originally played by David Bowie) at the end with a glaringly obvious self-insert character. He could stop time or teleport around with a snap of his fingers, despite wearing golden plate mail armor and dual-wielding flaming swords, and he was incredibly handsome and witty, and he looked, "A lot like this guy. *points thumb at himself* :smug:" As a climactic final fight, it was horrible, because he was untouchable and clearly toying with the party. Our bard figured out the 'trick' to the fight, which was to go with the Labyrinth script and convince herself that she was dreaming. The DM then narrated that she (not her character, the real person) woke up from a coma in a hospital after a head injury, and that several of her worried friends and her loving husband (the DM) were gathered around her. Fade to black.

So, the first half of this is obviously terrible. Super-Badass Self-Inserts You Can Never Touch are always just the worst, but using them to replace DAVID BOWIE of all people is somehow even more the worst. On the other hand, the conclusion (waking up to find it was probably all in the player's head) fits pretty well with the whole Labyrinth thing. Making the DM the player's husband is kinda... weird, but I could see some groups not having a problem with it if they're comfortable together. Honestly, apart from replacing Bowie with a self insert, the thing sounds pretty fun.

Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

Kaza42 posted:

Honestly, apart from replacing Bowie with a self insert, the thing sounds pretty fun.
If you have a decent GM and pick the right movie/game for the game it works fantastically. I had a GM straight-up say "okay I haven't had time to finish planning out the next arc so I'm just gonna run the Resident Evil plot for a few weeks" and we had a grand old time of killing zombies and mashing together herbs.

IPlayVideoGames
Nov 28, 2004

I unironically like Anders as a character.
Pretty short story.

I played a 20s Call of Cthulhu game a ways back with my friends. One of them wanted to bring some new person that he was apparently trying to get together with. We were always fine with new players, so we told him it was ok.

She comes and decides to play a mobster character, which is fine in its own right, except she spends the session refusing to work with the group and instead trying to rob the PCs of everything at every opportunity. Midway through, she complains that we aren't letting her play her character and are stifling her creativity, and storms out.

We later found out she was a wanna be suicide girl, and our friend met her because she did cam shows and he gave her an exorbitant amount of money during one. :shrug:

IPlayVideoGames fucked around with this message at 17:49 on Feb 4, 2016

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Yawgmoth
Sep 10, 2003

This post is cursed!

IPlayVideoGames posted:

We later found out she was a wanna be suicide girl, and our friend met her because she did cam shows and he gave her an exorbitant amount of money during one. :shrug:
Tell your friend I've set aside the rest of my afternoon to laugh specifically at him.

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