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Whybird posted:Or he's right at the top of the chain, but all the stuff you'd originally planned for him to do is now one of his underling's plans instead, and said underling now has a power vacuum to move into and start putting those plans into motion (but also peers who he's competing with for that power, who are now potential allies for your PC) Yeah, never have your players' awesomeness turn out not to matter. This is a good plan. Also overhearing freaked out underlings talking about their bosses mysterious death/disappearance is always good fun.
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Apr 29, 2016 22:16
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Thanks everybody, you've given me a lot to think about. The mysterious stranger in question is actually a secret agent from rival planet that set up a drug smuggling operation. Basically what the CIA got up to in the 60's and 70's but a little reversed. Since he's out of commission I'm thinking the operatives under his command are all scrambling to back whichever local gang they personally think is going to be the big dog in the coming brawl, because there's nothing that gets spies harder than a power vacuum. My girlfriend also thinks the stranger is still alive, for obvious reasons. I'm going to let her keep thinking that and drop little hints to confirm it, and if she ever manages to track him down he's going to be comatose in a hospital bed hooked up to a life support unit. girth brooks part 2 fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Apr 30, 2016 |
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Apr 30, 2016 01:48
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I just realized that in my first session my player managed to boot my entire plan of a straight forward drug ring bust 'em up into the trash, and now I'm trying to figure out the major players in a borderline civil war that's really just a proxy for the interdepartmental power struggle of a sleeper cell. TRPGs are pretty cool!
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Apr 30, 2016 05:58
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You could have your agent be comatose for the rest of the game, but since this is a far future setting, that doesn't mean he has to be out of the story. Perhaps there is some device that will allow her to travel into his dreams to retrieve a piece of information she needs (if you've never set an adventure in the dream world before, it can be a blast and a half). Maybe there's a way she or one of her associates can assume his identity to unravel the mystery (maybe they don't know enough about his real role to keep from getting in trouble). Maybe she'll meet someone at the hospital who knew him (but may not know who shot him). That person could be a gangland figure (his lackey, his moll, etc.) or someone from his old life. Maybe he'll wake up with amnesia. Maybe he'll have cool cybernetic parts. Really, the sky's the limit with this one.
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May 2, 2016 01:16
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Duckbag posted:You could have your agent be comatose for the rest of the game, but since this is a far future setting, that doesn't mean he has to be out of the story. I was flipping through Ultra-Tech looking for ideas for various things, and oh yeah there will be all kinds of mischief she will be able get up to if she gets her hands on the drooling pre-corpse of a spy chief. One of the big things I'm hoping will happen next session is her gaining a black market contact, so I'll make sure he does his best to get the toys for her to do whatever she decides. Although if she wants to mind probe the bad guy it's going to be a whole adventure. She's going to have to figure out how to get his body onto a flagship transporting foreign dignitaries. There are reasons for it that make sense in the setting we've got going and I already accidentally set it up with a bit of background flavor I threw in during the introduction. And I'm sure the results of a mind probe with someone suffering massive brain trauma will be... interesting. It would definitely be a high risk huge reward kind of deal. I also have a rough idea for one last loyal follower of the bad guy that didn't just take off on his own. He's going to be trying to carry out the original plan although with severely diminished resources since it didn't occur to him to grab what he could and make himself look good. He's a mix of true-believer and disillusioned that I don't even really know what he's going to do. He could be the new thorn in her side, a powerful ally since he's so drat mad at the others, or maybe just desperate and capable of anything. I considered the shiny new cyberparts route. I even put down that he had cyberware in my original notes for him, but dropped it at the last second. She seems to think this is what's going to happen, but I don't know if it would be a fun "I knew it!" or a lame "I saw it coming." It's kind of funny that a lot of the stuff I've mentioned was already in my notes, some of it is even sort of set up already. It was all more generic though. Stuff like this is bad guy 1, 2, and 3. They stay in this place and do what King Bad Guy says. Here's some background noise so the world looks like it has people in it. But since she put a bullet in the guy doing the saying I'm having to go back and make them all more three dimensional to figure out what they would do and why. I'm sure I had quite the look on my face when he got shot, but it's probably the best thing that could have happened. I'm even more excited about the game now since I don't really know what's going to happen next.
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May 2, 2016 10:38
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I've skimmed my Chronicles of Darkness book, and I think get the gist of the mechanics, but what are you supposed to do in a game? The Storytelling section seemed to be more about describing how to run a game, but not what the game should be about.
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May 4, 2016 16:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've skimmed my Chronicles of Darkness book, and I think get the gist of the mechanics, but what are you supposed to do in a game? The Storytelling section seemed to be more about describing how to run a game, but not what the game should be about. Welcome to the world of darkness!
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May 4, 2016 16:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've skimmed my Chronicles of Darkness book, and I think get the gist of the mechanics, but what are you supposed to do in a game? The Storytelling section seemed to be more about describing how to run a game, but not what the game should be about. I haven't seen Chronicles of Darkness yet, but World of Darkness games are, in my experience, best suited for a game mastery style that works like this: A) map out your setting and its movers and shakers. If you're setting the game primarily in one city, who's in charge? Who hates them and wishes they were in charge? Who has their own poo poo going on the side? Aim to set things up to be mostly balanced - Faction A and Faction B are pretty evenly-matched, while Faction C is smaller and biding their time, for instance. B) introduce your PCs to the setting and figure out how they upset the aforementioned balance. Will Faction A recruit them? Does their initial goal of setting up a base of operations infringe on Faction B's turf? Does the dude they casually murdered last week work for Faction C? Essentially, the PCs should be the game's Rogue Variable. They're the bit of chaos that comes in and fucks up everyone else's carefully and elaborately laid plans. This keeps the game's focus on them and their actions instead of letting them be subsumed into the ongoing tapestry; the poo poo they do should matter.
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May 4, 2016 16:59
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So basically Urban Shadows creation, but instead of asking the PCs what they like, you guess?
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May 4, 2016 18:27
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Lynx Winters posted:Welcome to the new world of darkness!
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May 5, 2016 06:40
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Golden Bee posted:So basically Urban Shadows creation, but instead of asking the PCs what they like, you guess? That's pretty much how all rpgs went before much of the newer stuff (I like the newer stuff overall).
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May 5, 2016 06:51
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I wrote a thing about telegraphing your monsters' attacks in order to make combat more informed and reactive that I wanted to share.
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May 5, 2016 07:07
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Golden Bee posted:So basically Urban Shadows creation, but instead of asking the PCs what they like, you guess? I've never played Urban Shadows, so I can't speak to the comparison, but I tend to assume that some degree of "okay, guys, what kind of game are we interested in? Do you want something all politicky and Machiavellian, or something more punk 'fight the power,' or kung-fu action, or what?" has already happened, because I am an optimist. Having said that, WoD games tend to be heavy on the "wheels within wheels and plots on top of plots" kinda deal, so I find that some degree of keeping the setting 'under wraps' helps to sell that kind of thing. I know that Bob and Chuck have an alliance against Dave, but the PCs don't necessarily go in knowing that. This is predicated on the idea, mind you, that the PCs are by nature newcomers to the game's setting; you have to approach it differently if they've been there for years. That's why I mentioned that they should be introduced to the setting, to uncover what details they can as they see fit. They're the newcomers that no one else has a handle on and who are ready to upset the applecart, in this type of scenario.
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May 5, 2016 08:40
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Or if you want a pre-baked campaign arc to go through, just pick a supernatural TV show (like my partner did, with, uh, Supernatural) as the starting point, and make your players the protagonists instead. Then diverge as needed.
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May 5, 2016 10:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wrote a thing about telegraphing your monsters' attacks in order to make combat more informed and reactive that I wanted to share. This is cool advice, I'll try it out. Thank you!
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May 5, 2016 15:16
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wrote a thing about telegraphing your monsters' attacks in order to make combat more informed and reactive that I wanted to share. I am definitely going to try this out. Also, the top comment, with the modified initiative resolution stuff, is pretty cool too. One thing though, is there any way to resolve what happens when a player thwarts the monster's plans? ie, if the Lich is going to cast Frostbolt next turn, and his only target casts some sort of frost-resistance shield, would there be any reason for the Lich to actually continue casting the spell, or is he going to switch gears to another spell? Like, yes, he could change targets, but what if there isn't one to change to? You could argue that he has to discharge it into a wall, or something, but that seems to give the players a heavy advantage (which, of course, isn't necessarily a bad thing). Morpheus fucked around with this message at 17:50 on May 6, 2016 |
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May 6, 2016 17:46
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That's really up to you to decide, but intuitively I would say that the monster still does the action you said it would do unless the players do something to make it literally impossible (per the rules). If the players do something to "counter" your move, but you redirect the action into the new optimal, then in a way you haven't rewarded the players for playing tactically. To bring it back to the raid boss analogy, the boss doesn't skip his Whirlwind even if he knows all the melee DPS have left the radius, and the Lich still shoots the Mage that's already protected themselves with a Frost Ward. But yeah, up to you to play around with, really.
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May 6, 2016 18:58
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It's weird to put *AW concepts into non-*AW games. Because Fire an arrow at the players makes sense when it's obviously followed by "What Do You Do?", which leads to a roll, which leads to a result. Less so when you say you're firing an arrow, they react and roll, then YOU roll.
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May 6, 2016 19:58
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Golden Bee posted:It's weird to put *AW concepts into non-*AW games. Because Fire an arrow at the players makes sense when it's obviously followed by "What Do You Do?", which leads to a roll, which leads to a result. Less so when you say you're firing an arrow, they react and roll, then YOU roll. This is not an AW concept, it's a narrative concept that generally doesn't exist in tabletop RPGs because they aren't granular enough. Spell casting times and disrupting progress was supposed to be a thing in AD&D and 2e, was sorta sidegraded in 3.x by removing casting times (because nobody used init that fine grained in practice) and adding readied actions. L5R also includes the concept, with any spell above rank 1 taking more than one round to cast by default, and Dark Sun in AD&D 2e nerfed wizards by doing the same thing to anybody who didn't choose to defile. In practice, it's no different than saying IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZOR followed a round later by IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR. 1e L5R also did the "everybody rolls initiative, declare in reverse order, then act." thing, it was just discarded because in practice it not only took a long time, but also led to a lot of anger from players. It's just a bad way to implement that sort of thing.
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May 7, 2016 00:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wrote a thing about telegraphing your monsters' attacks in order to make combat more informed and reactive that I wanted to share. I dig this quite a bit. How specific do you get with spells? Do you make it clear beyond a doubt what spell is being cast or do you keep it somewhat vague but enlightening (i.e. "Fire erupts from BBEG's hands as she channels her spell, it could be quite damaging to the wizard" vs "The BBEG looks like she's channeling a big fireball at the wizard.")
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May 7, 2016 03:10
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Most of my monsters only really have one or two gimmicks, so I say something like "It rears up, it's going to shoot at Bob next turn!" heavily implying that it's going to be a damaging spell.
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May 7, 2016 04:02
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So my brother-in-law and his girlfriend finally a brought a D&D beginners set they've had for years (3.5, might be 3, too basic to tell the difference - fortunately the edition I'm most familiar with as a player) and the 4 of us had a good time, with me as DM and running the Cleric character. He and I smugly declared the stats on our sheets to be "garbage" and rolled up new ones, the girls actually had pretty decent stats as the hobbit rogue and elven sorceror but were too intimidated by rolling anyway. I ran them through the beginners dungeon and we all laughed as they discussed in depth and cheered over things like listening at the door, and unlocking doors with picks. The had a fight with 2 kobolds that the rogue girl who was the most newbie ended up killing in each of her rounds, then opening the chest to find the baron's ring. She forgot to search for traps on the chest, but she rolled so well on picking the lock that she didn't get hit and I gave her a vial of acid as a bonus. That's it. The end of the adventure. Unlock a door, fight 2 kobolds, disarm a trap, get ring, go back to town. Fortunately instead of that lame poo poo, I went with the guy's fighter using the orc miniature sniffing out his brother's butthole and killing him in vengeance, and I had them fight another character that was in the Advanced Rule Book that comes with it (kind of half a player's handbook). He was level 3 with 26 HP, 15 AC - No idea if he was much of a challenge. They wrecked him. He missed on his one attack then got stunned by a daze from my wife's sorceror on his other turn before he got taken out by 3 greatsword swings and an arrow from the halfling. The killing blow did 14 damage from a level 1 character, thanks to his power attack feat and the magic weapon buff I gave him. So I had him sever his head and he decided to keep it. The fight and the aftermath was great because he really got into roleplaying and through questions from the other characters like "Woah, you aren't like, the son of an Orc Chieftain or something are you?" entertained everyone. As a reward, I'm having the head give him a +1 bonus to intimidate and K Nobility. I'm currently writing all over their character sheets and planning where they go from here with a few branching paths and skill checks. I've decided the ring they've got is going to be fake and they'll have to pass a diplomacy or intimidate check or fight the baron and his hounds (the 4 dice we don't use, since there aren't that many miniatures) and flee town. Then I'm pretty sure they''ll return and go further into the dungeon no matter whether they went back to town and rested or not. What I really don't have an idea about is balancing combat encounters. TLDR - I'm totally new at DMing, where can I go to find how to balance combat encounters for my party, for 1st level parties and giving them treasure and rewards that are balanced too?
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May 7, 2016 04:42
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The Final Boss of this Dungeon given with the basic game is a young black dragon with 5 attacks, 85 hitpoints and 19AC. Which I think might be a bit hard for a gaggle of level 1 adventurers. I'm going to give them all a stat point for the next fight they encounter to beef up their characters as they have kinda crappy stats and it's a small party (plus simpler than levelling them up or giving them fancy equipment to beef them up at this stage). One thing I can't tell is whether it has to use all 5 of its attacks against one person, or if it can split them between multiple targets?
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May 7, 2016 04:58
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At level 1, you're going to want to throw CR 1/4 monsters at the players on a 1-to-1 basis. You can use this: http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20monsterfilter/ if you don't have a Monster Manual. Just set the Max CR to 1 and look for monsters that are CR 1/4, like http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/cat.htm It might not seem very amusing to have the players fight literal cats, so reskin them into something else. It's a goblin! But it has the same stats. You can use higher CR monsters to make more difficult fights, but the upper limit is probably a flat CR 1 monster You can this: http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/treasure/ to generate treasure, but you're going to get a lot of "boring" results since that edition has a fairly specific "treadmill" of when to get which bonuses. Feel free to do what you like, and/or to let them buy stuff with their gold that isn't directly related to in-combat power. Creatures with multiple attacks can resolve their attacks one at a time, and change to a different target per attack.
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May 7, 2016 05:14
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Does your module say it gets 5 attacks per round or does it just list 5 attacks such as "Claw, d20+Str to hit, 2d6+Str slashing damage" "Bite, d20+Str to hit, 1d10+Str piercing damage" If it's the latter that just means the dragon has options.
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May 7, 2016 05:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:You can this: http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/treasure/ to generate treasure, but you're going to get a lot of "boring" results since that edition has a fairly specific "treadmill" of when to get which bonuses. Feel free to do what you like, and/or to let them buy stuff with their gold that isn't directly related to in-combat power. I'm just going to give them little things like whips and slings, that introduce new game concepts to them one by one - Like tripping for the whip and the magic stone buffing to teach the newbie rogue about buff spells being helpful for her. I decided I was going to have the dragon be magically disguised as a dwarf who claimed his clan "forged the one ring" (a lack of miniatures - Necessity is the mother of invention) so I might just give them a balanced fight. Thematically the fights I want to have available next round are: Baron and 4 hounds vs. Them and 1 friendly commoner driving the cart out of town (optional if they screw up one of the pitfalls I've added for them, trying to return the false ring or just act like dicks) 2 Skeletal warriors, one Wolf skeleton, 1 dire rat 4 kobolds (2 x-bow, 2 spear) and the "Dwarf" who has allied with his fellow "gem-mining little people" - He'll transform once dead of course. Then I'll have them fight the dragon as much as they want, but I think I'll have him fly away the continue causing trouble, because it's always good to give a plot hook and I could reuse the badass miniature.
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May 7, 2016 05:26
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Razorwired posted:Does your module say it gets 5 attacks per round or does it just list 5 attacks such as "Claw, d20+Str to hit, 2d6+Str slashing damage" "Bite, d20+Str to hit, 1d10+Str piercing damage" It says if it moves no more than 5 feet in around, it gets to use all of its attacks (ie a full attack) - but it doesn't tell me whether it can split its full attack between different characters.
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May 7, 2016 05:27
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Adding the CRs up that looks like - 2 skeletons, dire rat, wolf skeleton - CR 2. The wolf skeleton is CR1 on its own, so if that's too much I can have it form from the corpses of their fallen foes so they don't have to fight it at the same time. 4 kobolds 1CR + 1 CR3 Dwarven Cleric who I'm giving a +4 str boost too and just not having cast spells for simplicity's sake. Once he goes down he'll turn into the dragon and plot armour will take over. I'd be worried about it, but as I said, they crushed the CR3 fighter I put up against them as their first boss fight. I guess 4 CR1/2 hounds and a Level 2 or 3 Aristocrat would work for baron and hounds?
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May 7, 2016 05:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:I wrote a thing about telegraphing your monsters' attacks in order to make combat more informed and reactive that I wanted to share. This is related to something I've been thinking about lately. In the ancient Before Times of D&D, initiative wasn't a cyclical individual thing. Coming out of the wargaming roots, initiative was a team thing; each round you basically huddle up and decide what to do as a group, then yell break and get to it. In this paradigm, you often knew exactly what the enemy was going to do in the coming round, and you were coming up with a plan to deal with it. Fighters run interference to protect the mages, send someone out to intercept their ranged/magic attackers, etc. The point being, you don't decide what you're doing on your personal turn, everyone decides what they're doing all at the top of the round, and then there's a resolution process to see how that works out. It's easy to see how the modern individual initiative system evolved out of that, as speed modifiers get added in, the different phases of the round get mashed together to streamline the game, and precise movement becomes more important. But I think there's something about that 'huddle' system that we've kind of lost, and I wonder what a game would look like where that mechanic was kept and refined over 30 years of game design improvements. A lot of games still have the declare-first, resolve-after turn construction, but it's still a pretty individual thing, if that makes sense. What I'd like to see is more of an evolution of the huddle, with more ways built into the mechanics for the players as a group to support each other in the plan. Heck, just telling them what the enemies are about to do is already a big step in helping players make informed decisions, so I'm stealing that.
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May 7, 2016 22:55
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Tendales posted:It's easy to see how the modern individual initiative system evolved out of that, as speed modifiers get added in, the different phases of the round get mashed together to streamline the game, and precise movement becomes more important. But I think there's something about that 'huddle' system that we've kind of lost, and I wonder what a game would look like where that mechanic was kept and refined over 30 years of game design improvements. It sure as hell wouldn't have 6 second combat rounds. Maybe it would have kept to something more in line with Basic where the round goes Morale > Move > Missile > Magic > Melee? I'm going to run with this and give an idea about what I think that might look like. Let's just forget about morale as part of the turn structure and assume that we're using abstracted rounds so that a fight is something like 10 minutes or so long. Phases of the round are Move > Missile > Magic > Melee. The side that wins initiative goes first in each phase. You say what you're all doing at the start of the round, then resolve phases in order*. So someone firing a bow will always shoot the wizard before the spell happens, and someone shooting acid out of their ears will always melt a guy with a sword, unless there's a special rule applying. You may attack (or cast, or the equivalent of an "action") in one phase each round. Like, if you have 5 attacks and are shooting your bow, your attacks happen in the Missile phase. Special attacks and abilities all have their phase listed, since it's a pretty simple keyword system. A charge is the obvious example of a move-phase attack. Like "Charge: Action, Move Phase. <Effect>" so if you choose to charge, it uses your Action and takes up the whole of your Move phase (disallowing a regular move), and you get to do whatever's in the effect line. Spells are cast in the Magic phase. They might not have an effect until later. Like, you can't cast Mordenkainen's Run Real Fast and run real fast this round because the move phase is over**. Magic Missile, Fireball, etc go off in the same Magic phase they're cast in. Stuff like Shocking Grasp gets cast in the Magic phase and you can use it to attack in the Melee phase since it's a melee attack. The Duelling rule: a special exception to the phase order for PCs who are going to make a melee attack, are already adjacent to their opponent, and are first in initiative. They get to make that attack in the Move phase, but they give up all their other phases this round. The opponent who gets attacked may give up their other phases to make a melee attack in response. (Apart from letting melee go toe to toe, this one allows melee to disrupt casters or artillery guys by running up on them - if the ranged opponents don't run away, they're gonna get hit hard). e: I think this'd work well for telegraphed attacks too? Like, you could have a big bad monster ability that starts charging in a Melee phase and goes off the next Melee phase, which lets everyone else get a move/missile/magic and potentially a melee in vefore it happens. * Actions might lose their target - you can switch to a new target if this happens. I'm not sure how to resolve an action that loses all valid targets (except to try to set it up so that if that's happened, the fight's over). I'd guess the most common scenario would be someone moving away from a melee guy, but I don't think that's best solved with initiative rules - maybe "engaged" as a condition, where removing it requires a certain action or penalty? **I'd guess spells would have a lot of variance. Like, you might be able to do your short-range teleport in the move phase, which consumes your Attack/Cast action and your move, at the benefit of blinking you away from Swordy McBashface. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 01:45 on May 8, 2016 |
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May 8, 2016 01:07
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There is of course AngryDM's Popcorn initiative, where you deliberately let the initiative be almost completely in favor of the players in the interest of letting them pull off all the neat tactical coordination that they want. Early D&D's "everyone declare first, then certain actions always get resolved ahead of others" is something like a middle-ground: you know what the other side is doing, and you can react to that accordingly, but you're limited by missiles always happening before movement, by movement always happening before melee, and magic always triggering at the bottom of the round (despite the spellcast starting at the top of it) EDIT: This discussion just triggered a memory: during the early beta phases of The Banner Saga, I remember a lot of people complaining about how turn order would always with one unit moved per side, regardless of how many units were available to either side. In a fight with 2 Footmen and 1 Ogre, people were expecting a turn order of: Footman A Footman B Ogre <repeat> Where instead the turn order being used by the game was: Player 1 moves either Footman A OR Footman B Player 2 moves Ogre <repeat> It was considered unfair because the Ogre was supposedly getting twice as many moves in as they should have! But I realize now that that there's a sort of hidden brilliance to it: 1. It's reminiscent of impulse-based wargames where you only get to move a small subset of units across all your 30 chits, so that you don't get to play out an hour-long turn while your mate snoozes 2. It evens out the "action economy" because now you won't always need an two Ogres just to be able to face down two Footmen in a fair fight The gears in my head are turning. You probably shouldn't emulate the system entire because it might lead to situations where one player doesn't get to do anything for a long time because the other players always have more important moves to take, but I'm thinking you could experiment with something like: The players and the GM will always alternate taking turns. The next GM-controlled enemy that takes a turn will default to anyone who has not taken a turn yet within the round, but can wrap around to be an enemy that has if there are fewer enemies than there are players. gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 8, 2016 |
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May 8, 2016 03:45
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gradenko_2000 posted:The players and the GM will always alternate taking turns. The next GM-controlled enemy that takes a turn will default to anyone who has not taken a turn yet within the round, but can wrap around to be an enemy that has if there are fewer enemies than there are players. So if PCs A, B, C, and D are fighting monsters 1 2 and 3 the turn order looks like A, 1, B, 2, C, 3, D, 1? Then if 1 dies, it's A, 2, B, 3, C, 2, D, 3 etc? That looks kinda neat. I'd guess it wouldn't work too well in D&D where a party is fighting a single opponent unless you also changed the combat assumptions and math to account for the big bad getting #numplayers actions/round.
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May 8, 2016 11:31
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One of the most common ways to enable a big bad to effectively threaten a large number of players is to give the big bad a bunch of actions per round, so I'd call that working as intended.
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May 8, 2016 12:15
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Whybird posted:One of the most common ways to enable a big bad to effectively threaten a large number of players is to give the big bad a bunch of actions per round, so I'd call that working as intended. Yes, absolutely! And solo monsters in D&D generally already have this so you'd need to rework them to compensate. Edit: Eg, A, B, C, and D are fighting a monster with claw, bite, and tail swipe attacks. It should go A, Claw, B, Bite, C, Tail swipe, D, Claw again. Not A, claw/bite/swipe, B, claw/bite/swipe, C, claw/bite/swipe, D, claw/bite/swipe. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:53 on May 8, 2016 |
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May 8, 2016 12:49
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Reflecting upon it a bit more, this is already how Legendary monsters work in D&D 5e: a dragon has its main initiative count where it does its Move/Standard/Bonus Action, but it also has Legendary Actions which it can explicitly take only after a player-character has completed a turn. It has three "points" to spend on Legendary Actions, and each action costs either 1 or 2 points. If there are only two players for whatever reason, then the dragon can't actually take as many Legendary Actions as it could with four players present, because the "a player-character ends their turn" trigger happens that less often.
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May 9, 2016 04:17
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Legendary Actions are neat.
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May 9, 2016 04:55
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Regarding the "huddle, discuss actions, then resolve them" mechanic, the Burning Wheel systems such as Mouse Guard and Torchbearer do this, in a sort of rock-paper-scissors system (though obviously more complex) during resolution.
Morpheus fucked around with this message at 14:50 on May 9, 2016 |
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May 9, 2016 05:38
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AlphaDog posted:Legendary Actions are neat. That actually sounds pretty great, along with the variation above (that sounds like a pnp version of FFX's battle order), and I think can be adapted to Pathfinder Unchained pretty easily.
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May 9, 2016 08:02
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I am going to be a GM for the first time ever, in a group of friends who have barely any experience with role playing, in a system none of us has ever tried, 13th Age. I feel like I'm in over my head here, what are the most important things to keep in mind? Other than making sure people have fun, I mean.
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May 9, 2016 19:05
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| # ? May 11, 2024 05:53 |
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Fanzay posted:I am going to be a GM for the first time ever, in a group of friends who have barely any experience with role playing, in a system none of us has ever tried, 13th Age. I feel like I'm in over my head here, what are the most important things to keep in mind? Other than making sure people have fun, I mean. That's kind of it. Figure out what your friends want out of a role playing game and give it to them as best you can.
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May 9, 2016 19:11
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