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kingcom posted:Unironically the best argument in defence of D&D. Cause holy poo poo ever since 3.x did they make character creation a laborious nightmare. I'd still recommend people go check out one of the retro D&D games that make nice and quick character creation a real thing but yeah being able to sit down and get a full group from blank slate to ready to play in a few hours is a long forgotten fact about rpgs. Dungeon World lets me create a character by circling boxes and ticking checkmarks, and they'll have a depth of play roughly comparable to 5e   Don't even need to look at the book.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:07
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I have a supplement in the works. Here's the final draft: Make up some cool monsters to fight and assign them a CR number. Build a balanced encounter for your players by rolling on the following table: Encounter table 1 1-49: DM's choice 50-59: DM's choice 70-84: DM's choice 96-00: Roll again and use either or both of the results, DM's choice. The DM should feel free to alter this table to suit their game.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:11
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Dungeon World is better than 5e but not by much. Like 5e it does a really good job of not understanding its own rules, which creates a lot of problems.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:12
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bewilderment posted:Dungeon World lets me create a character by circling boxes and ticking checkmarks, and they'll have a depth of play roughly comparable to 5e I mean yeah if we're going for different systems theres a tonne of easier/quicker/cleaner/simpler things but baby steps I guess.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:16
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Arivia posted:
You missed what started this off. User0015 posted:I could see the issue of DM Fiat or homeruling be problematic, but that blog really shoots itself in the foot with its comparison to pathfinder. I mean, his first complaint is that the classes aren't balanced, but Pathfinder is the epitome of dumpstering martial classes in favor of magic casters. I don't know much about the gear grind because our DM homeruled a system for improvement that wasn't gear dependent, but his claim its easy to fail character creation in 5e versus pathfinder? Is that a joke? How much errata and how many books are on paizo right now that you'd have to familiar with to roll a character properly? That's absolutely crazy. Here, I'll fix it. Argument: Pathfinder class balance is worse than 5e. Reason: Errata is extensive and favors magic users. Proof: Path of War is specifically designed to shore up martial weaknesses and is third party. Proof the second: 5e includes a subclass almost exactly like Path of War that is included in the core PHB. Ergo: 5e is better than PF for class balance.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:27
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bewilderment posted:Dungeon World lets me create a character by circling boxes and ticking checkmarks, and they'll have a depth of play roughly comparable to 5e That's cool. I'm surprised they don't have something like that for DnD.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:29
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User0015 posted:You missed what started this off. You made that post two posts after the originating post I quoted that you made. You've got your lines crossed, kid. And if you think that the 5e fighter archetypes are comparable to Path of War, you obviously didn't read the latter well, or at all.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:33
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AlphaDog posted:I have a supplement in the works. Here's the final draft: Hey Alpha Dog somebody already made this game here. It's a hack of Lasers & Feelings, of course. Downside of the hack - rolling your number gives 'extra insight' instead of 'dungeon dragons'.
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Feb 10, 2017 01:48
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Arivia posted:You made that post two posts after the originating post I quoted that you made. You've got your lines crossed, kid. And if you think that the 5e fighter archetypes are comparable to Path of War, you obviously didn't read the latter well, or at all. The blog post in the quote is what started that discussion. Also, that post is between the other two, not after. Get your poo poo together, Arivia!
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Feb 10, 2017 02:00
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User0015 posted:That's cool. I'm surprised they don't have something like that for DnD. In D&D there's 5+ pages for class, 2+ pages for race, skills, gear, backgrounds, feats, etc to go through to make a character even if you're not dealing with the spell lists. You could probably do a pre-gen with options to pick from, but I don't think you could do a 2-page sheet for character creation and play like DW does. bewilderment posted:rolling your number gives 'extra insight' instead of 'dungeon dragons'. 2/10 would not play. Also I feel that as gamemaster I am constrained by those tables. There is no note telling me that I can change them if I want. (Laser & feelings is great though). Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 02:01
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Super 3 posted:That tomb of horrors play through sounds absolutely boring as gently caress. Scripting every room or interaction to a series of steps like was described seems to suck all the fun out of it. To top it off spending 13 hours doing it... ugh.  - it's why I was playing Skyrim on my laptop and drinking cider instead of playing Tomb of Horrors. They all had fun though, and it was a hell of a thing to watch. What can I say, the spectrum is strong with the people I game with.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:03
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User0015 posted:The blog post in the quote is what started that discussion. Yes, and you attributing it to the other posts is your attempt to move the goalposts. You made the posts in that order, don't blame me when your bad arguments are laid bare.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:04
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koreban posted:Is that fundamentally different from me just letting him roll charisma at a lower D.C.? Absolutely yes - it's fair and consistent, and player facing to boot. The player gets to control his Strength and Intimidation bonus so it's the player who makes sure he can pass that Intimidation check. If you lower the DC it's all on you, and there's no system to keep you fair and consistent. Even ignoring consistency and fairness, and ignoring the difference in gameplay experiences between player-facing and non player-facing mechanics, in a pure "this is less work for me, the GM" the former is still superior.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:09
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Arivia posted:Yes, and you attributing it to the other posts is your attempt to move the goalposts. You made the posts in that order, don't blame me when your bad arguments are laid bare. True words. When my arguments are proven wrong, and PB has better class balance than 5e, I will not blame you; I will dance in the streets and praise Paizo's name. Anyways, this stupid poo poo aside, I'm still curious about write-ups on 5e that cover mistakes and rules issues. I don't think think that blog was well thought out, mostly because they invoked PB as their reason 5e class balance is bad. So if anyone has some good posts on problems and issues with 5e, I'd like to read them. Maybe even some house rules stuff I could suggest in the future. Also, it's an Adventurer's League campaign, if that changes things.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:14
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Give your players 6-8 extra HP if you start them at level 1.
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Feb 10, 2017 02:45
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Here is my cat next to a Gelatinous Cube.
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Feb 10, 2017 03:02
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lifg posted:Here is my cat next to a Gelatinous Cube. 
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Feb 10, 2017 03:17
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The last few pages of this thread are abysmal to read and absolutely awful.
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Feb 10, 2017 03:46
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lifg posted:Here is my cat next to a Gelatinous Cube. Redeeming quality by this tabaxi about to take on a terrible dungeon monster.
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Feb 10, 2017 03:48
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Big Black Brony posted:The last few pages of this thread are abysmal to read and absolutely awful. this was all a very important conversation about 
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Feb 10, 2017 04:06
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lifg posted:Here is my cat next to a Gelatinous Cube. Lookit dat fuggin' cat
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Feb 10, 2017 04:07
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koreban posted:Is that fundamentally different from me just letting him roll charisma at a lower D.C.? In a way, yes, because it's an acknowledgement that the standard spread of ability modifier + proficiency bonus alone does not sufficiently capture the intended competency/success rate that the rules are supposed to depict. Like I said, if you have a Rogue that has high Dex and is proficient in Sleight of Hand, versus a Fighter or Wizard with low Dex and is not proficient in Sleight of Hand, and you still have to give the Rogue a lower DC anyway when they try to pickpocket someone, exactly what use is the Dex modifier and the proficiency bonus supposed to be in the first place? A little more than a year ago, I tried to break down and come up with some guidelines on how to set DCs that would make sense: gradenko_2000 posted:On a lark, I decided to try and build a DCs by level chart, since the ones provided don't really make sense beyond just "hey let's kick it up by 5 because 5 is a nice round number". And this further reflects how the math just doesn't work out very well because, as you correctly discerned and have been band-aid-patching with your houserule, the "specialization" into a particular skill set still relies so much on the roll of the d20 that you have to give the specialized players their own lowered DC because the game's flat modifiers contribute so little.
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Feb 10, 2017 04:30
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What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) I'd really like a game that does what 5e is trying to do, but correctly -- I just don't think that game exists.
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Feb 10, 2017 04:55
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As a general question, what would everyone expect baseline competence in skills like the ones in 5e to look like in a person who is a professional D&D style adventurer?Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) What do you think 5th ed is trying to do? Or to put it a bit better, what do you want out of your fantasy RPG? If you want something like a big dungeon or a hex map to explore, BECMI D&D or a retroclone might suit you pretty well, and there's heaps of good advice in the old D&D / retroclone thread about modernising those games, or finding versions of them that have been modernised by someone else. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 05:01
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Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) You take that loving back.
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Feb 10, 2017 05:06
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AlphaDog posted:As a general question, what would everyone expect baseline competence in skills like the ones in 5e to look like in a person who is a professional D&D style adventurer? I've thought of (and looked at) OD&D and retroclones, but they don't really have that many cool character options or concepts to explore, which I'm pretty fond of. I've also read a lot of the retroclone thread and most of them don't really try to deviate all that much from the extreme simplicity of OD&D. So ideally: * a reasonable amount of character options, preferably balanced between fighters and wizards * magic items and other treasure * reasonable rules for both the DM and the players I almost want to say my favorite that I've seen but wouldn't want to play is Dungeon Crawl Classics, which has a lot of cool ideas and then doubles down extremely hard on both the meatgrinder style of play (that quickly gets tiresome to me and my players) and the lack of any help to the DM. Skills? I dunno. Non-combat things? Make stuff up! Monsters? Well, here's a few, but we want you to make up your own without any guidance on how to do that and not end your game immediately. So far, imperfect though it is, 5e has done the best job of hitting all these notes. (4e is arguably better, but it's really complex and time-consuming, and most players I've played with don't like it for those reasons and not because they're edition warriors).
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Feb 10, 2017 05:15
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Paramemetic posted:Change of topic: I've recently started rolling things like perception, insight, etc for my players behind the screen and giving them the result without telling them what the roll was. This forces them to make decisions based on what they know without the meta knowledge of "well it was a 3 so I shouldn't trust this." It has been a lot of fun and ends up giving the story more of a narrative feel. I would not do this for more "active" checks like athletics or acrobatics where the player would know if they hosed up anyhow and relies on it and definitely not during combat. D&D is a binary task-resolution system. You are given a task, with a specified difficulty rating, and you succeed or fail at your task depending on how you roll. How well it operates determines on how structured the framework is that you're doing the task in. I mean, if there's a monster and the players don't know its AC, they don't just constantly make attack rolls until one of them hits. The monster operates in the larger structure of combat, where people are expected to wait their turn to attack, and the combat itself shifts and moves outside of their turn before they get to go again. When there is no structure to operate in, you get The Perception Check That Does Nothing, which I am giving all caps because it has become a fixture of the hobby. How do I know? It's the only mechanical interaction in the opening example of play for industry-leading product Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition. So, instead of rolling dice where the players can't see them and being coy about the results, you instead need to create a structure so the players can roll in the open. Maybe you want to go old-school with this - you only have a limited amount of time to act freely before there's a wandering monster check or the regent gets fed up with being eyeballed and every attempt takes up a significant amount of precious time. Maybe you want to go new-school - if you step up to the check and fail, that's it, no backsies, and you get the information you were looking for beaten into you, or conveyed through some misadventure. Maybe you want to toss 'em in a blender - there's an advancing clock and every failure suckersmacks you a little. Two things to keep in mind if you want to create a structure. People can, like, help each other out for advantage and things in combat, right? Let that apply if it makes sense. And also, since there's definitely something going on on a failure, you can also be definite on success.
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Feb 10, 2017 05:17
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I've got a player who is very strange about roleplaying. She made a great character, she's got a character voice, she wrote a few pages of backstory...then she went charging through my dungeon aggroing everything because "We were going to fight them anyway, might as well trigger all the mobs"  Gonna shock her next session when I reveal this entire adventure was a trap by the BBEG they could have avoided if they'd done any investigation whatsoever  Any other tips for shaking them of the video game mindset?
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Feb 10, 2017 05:38
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Zarick posted:I've thought of (and looked at) OD&D and retroclones, but they don't really have that many cool character options or concepts to explore, which I'm pretty fond of. I've also read a lot of the retroclone thread and most of them don't really try to deviate all that much from the extreme simplicity of OD&D. My default answer for this kind of response would be to try out Warhammer Fantasy RPG but GW just took their ball home with that so good luck trying to find either 2nd or 3rd edition selling somewhere. Vengarr posted:Any other tips for shaking them of the video game mindset? Have a group of monsters be talked out of fighting and have everyone cut a peaceful deal where both sides get what they want. A group of kobolds in a orc holdout trying to free their friends. Thats a pretty good approach to explaining why you want to approach each encounter uniquely. kingcom fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 05:39
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Zarick posted:I've thought of (and looked at) OD&D and retroclones, but they don't really have that many cool character options or concepts to explore, which I'm pretty fond of. I've also read a lot of the retroclone thread and most of them don't really try to deviate all that much from the extreme simplicity of OD&D. So... something that is much like modern D&D in terms of character creation, magic item lists etc, but with clearer/better rules, interesting combat, non-meatgridery metagame, and doesn't pay close/any attention to non-combat stuff? If you find it, let me know! edit 2: Beaten on the WHFRP thing 
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Feb 10, 2017 05:43
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Playing my first session ever right now on d20. I am 1 for 5 on easy rolls (Deception with +5, Eldritch Blasts with +3 against pissant goblins). It's great. I blew up a horse with Eldritch Blast.
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Feb 10, 2017 05:51
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Vengarr posted:Any other tips for shaking them of the video game mindset?
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Feb 10, 2017 05:56
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Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) What made Dungeon World any more handwavey than 5e? "What do you do" is something almost universal to RPGs. I'm no longer as starry-eyed about 13th Age as I once was, but I'm still mostly convinced that it's a much better designed game than DnD5e. The flipside to the happy-skycastles of 13th Age is the demonguts of Shadow of the Demon Lord and that game is also pretty cool and there's a bit of a writeup of it in the F&F thread. It's basically DnD5e but with some better design and some Warhammer Fantasy bits stuck on, that you can also choose to rip off if you don't feel the need for Insanity and Corruption points. Downside is that the game doesn't have a free SRD. Comedy option: Play Torchbearer if you wish your games were more like the video game Darkest Dungeon. Torchbearer is also a well-designed game.
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Feb 10, 2017 05:57
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Nehru the Damaja posted:Playing my first session ever right now on d20. I am 1 for 5 on easy rolls (Deception with +5, Eldritch Blasts with +3 against pissant goblins). It's great. I blew up a horse with Eldritch Blast. Stay staff warlock horse.
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Feb 10, 2017 06:22
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Vengarr posted:I've got a player who is very strange about roleplaying. She made a great character, she's got a character voice, she wrote a few pages of backstory...then she went charging through my dungeon aggroing everything because "We were going to fight them anyway, might as well trigger all the mobs" Sounds like a pretty good way to handle it. The basic idea of D&D progression (kill monsters -> gain xp -> level up) has been causing the "The monsters are there to fight, we should fight them" attitude since forever, so I'd also mention it outside the game because it sounds like the player's engaged with the mechanics and the roleplay but has come in with a set of expectations of what goes on in D&D that don't match the game you want to run. You've found a neat way to show them, in-game, that what they're doing isn't a good idea. Tell them out-of-game too, and be specific and clear about what sort of game you want to run. Also mention the video game thing. Maybe some of them really want to play a CRPG style tabletop dungeon crawl - if so, awesome, you've just found the GM and theme for your next campaign. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Feb 10, 2017 |
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Feb 10, 2017 06:23
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AlphaDog posted:The basic idea of D&D progression (kill monsters -> gain xp -> level up) has been causing the "The monsters are there to fight, we should fight them" attitude since forever, so I'd also mention it outside the game because it sounds like the player's engaged with the mechanics and the roleplay but has come in with a set of expectations of what goes on in D&D that don't match the game you want to run. Yeah, tell them that monsters aren't worth xp. Completing the mission successfully is the goal.
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Feb 10, 2017 06:30
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nelson posted:Yeah, tell them that monsters aren't worth xp. Completing the mission successfully is the goal. Monster kills = xp is a fine way to run a dungeon bashing game, but that's not really how the D&D's being played now (or in the last 15+ years).
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Feb 10, 2017 06:36
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Zarick posted:What's a good alternative to 5e if it's so horrible? To me, it seems to fill a niche of medium complexity high fantasy dungeon crawling RPG, which doesn't seem like there are many competitors for. 13th Age doesn't seem any better (and is in many ways worse), 3e/PF are obviously poo poo, and stuff like Dungeon World is almost entirely handwaving. (I tried to have my players play this, it didn't make it through a whole session because it was all: "What do I do now?" It's too open-ended for a lot of novice RPG players.) I actually was going to recommend Dungeon Crawl Classics. For skills, the way it works is: set a DC, d20-style. If the player's background/profession would suggest that they're competent at it, have them roll a d20. Otherwise, have them roll a d10. Add the corresponding ability score modifier. To bring this back to what I was talking about with koreban regarding basic competency/skill specialization expressing itself in the rules without need for DM fiat, consider a task of DC 8. If the Rogue tries to lockpick it, and I let them roll a d20 because they're a Rogue, and they add a +1 from their Dex, that gives them a 70% chance of success. If the Fighter tries to lockpick it, and I let them roll a d10 because that's not their wheelhouse, and let's grant that they still have a +1 from their Dex, that gives them a 40% chance of success. I didn't have to go in and "fix" the DCs myself - the rules did that for me. As for the monsters, keep in mind that DCC is at heart an OSR game, so you should be able to lift monsters, if not entire adventures, from old-school games and run them in that. Zarick posted:I've thought of (and looked at) OD&D and retroclones, but they don't really have that many cool character options or concepts to explore, which I'm pretty fond of. I've also read a lot of the retroclone thread and most of them don't really try to deviate all that much from the extreme simplicity of OD&D. You're correct that the OSR isn't going to have much in terms of mechanically-represented character options, but you kinda do have to get deep into mechanical crunch if you want that, and if you're already ruling out 4e, and 3e/PF, and 13th Age, then there's not much more to go on. You could check out Shadow of the Demon Lord, or Fantasy AGE/Dragon Age RPG. The only other thing that comes to mind would be OSRIC - the retroclone of AD&D 1e. The rules have been cleaned-up to the point where it should be playable, and there's enough mechanical complexity there across classes that should be roughly similar to what you'd get in the 5e PHB.
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Feb 10, 2017 06:54
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AlphaDog posted:Monster kills = xp is a fine way to run a dungeon bashing game, but that's not really how the D&D's being played now (or in the last 15+ years). Some of us are old mkay.
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Feb 10, 2017 06:59
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nelson posted:Some of us are old mkay. If youre old then the xp is gained based on how much gold you collected.
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Feb 10, 2017 07:08
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