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Dareon posted:Is it his theme music? Oh my god, it needs to be.
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Feb 26, 2017 03:11
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ItalicSquirrels posted:Hey, I never heard that phrase for *years* after that comic came out. Then some number of years ago (five? I was drinking a lot back then) I started hearing it. Made a QED to me at least. that's about when NWN2 came out, where it literally ends that way no seriously, a cave buries you and the entire party after all's said and done, caused a massive uproar on top of the many other issues NWN2 had (a creepy romance with stalker elf, female players again getting the shaft in romance, an influence system that's basically "say whatever makes them happy even if it's encouraging the stupid idiot's pyromania" and a pretty Eh story) Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Feb 26, 2017 |
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Feb 26, 2017 05:48
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Robindaybird posted:that's about when NWN2 came out, where it literally ends that way no seriously, a cave buries you and the entire party after all's said and done, caused a massive uproar on top of the many other issues NWN2 had (a creepy romance with stalker elf, female players again getting the shaft in romance, an influence system that's basically "say whatever makes them happy even if it's encouraging the stupid idiot's pyromania" and a pretty Eh story)  I mean, encouraging an idiot party member's pyromania is a time-honored tradition of D&D videogames, but Jesus Christ.
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Feb 26, 2017 05:59
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Dareon posted:
I have very low opinions of Qara, she's very much the poster child for chaotic stupid, and will get pissy if you suggest she could not set something on fire (especially if setting something on fire is detrimental to whatever it is the party's trying to do) - I suppose her cut storyline might've made her tolerable but who knows. Mask of the Betrayer pretty much saved the series due to how loving good it is in terms of story and tweaking the mechanics.
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Feb 26, 2017 06:08
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Only good thing about NWN2: Mask and the Castle building section.
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Feb 26, 2017 07:28
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It's strange that the best characters were the actual evil ones: Ammon Jerro and Bishop were a lot more interesting than the other characters on offer.
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Feb 26, 2017 08:27
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NWN2 is what happens when Obsidian is told to do a "Normal" RPG story.
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Feb 26, 2017 10:06
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Kavak posted:NWN2 is what happens when Obsidian is told to do a "Normal" RPG story. Didn't they only do mask of the betrayer? I don't remember
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Feb 26, 2017 15:33
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Under the vegetable posted:Didn't they only do mask of the betrayer? I don't remember They did both, MotB was them being cut loose and allowed to write the way they want.
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Feb 26, 2017 15:56
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rumble in the bunghole posted:It's strange that the best characters were the actual evil ones: Ammon Jerro and Bishop were a lot more interesting than the other characters on offer. Yep. The rest are such a mixed bag. Sand was amusing. Qara was dumb but if you ignore her or don't support pyromania she joins the evil boss. If you are nuts like her then Sand can go evil instead. Seemed appropriate that you can't satisfy everyone and you shouldn't even try. But that isn't typical, a harmonious party has become the expectation in bioware-style games. Some of those nwn2 characters were just terrible though. Grobner was the absolute worst, only redeeming moments are when Bishop insults him. That tiefling too, annoying personality and forever held back by the 3.5 racial level adjustment, ugh.
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Feb 26, 2017 16:02
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Not to mention she was a rogue in an undead and construct focused 3.5 campaign and traps could be solved by having someone walk through them and rest.
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Feb 26, 2017 19:12
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berenzen posted:Not to mention she was a rogue in an undead and construct focused 3.5 campaign and traps could be solved by having someone walk through them and rest.
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Feb 26, 2017 19:42
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Dareon posted:Is it his theme music? I don't know; I just randomly pick an enchantment. I'll use theme music if it ever happens again, though. Setting a party of super murderhobos against each other though is the best thing ever. Just sit back and enjoy the hilarity.
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Feb 26, 2017 19:54
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It's been a million years since I ran 3/3.5 but doesn't CR 2 mean that one of them would be an appropriate challenge for a party of four level 2 PCs (party balance bullshit notwithstanding)?
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Feb 26, 2017 20:03
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PantsOptional posted:It's been a million years since I ran 3/3.5 but doesn't CR 2 mean that one of them would be an appropriate challenge for a party of four level 2 PCs (party balance bullshit notwithstanding)? Yuuuuup. Remember kids, not gaming is always superior to bad gaming.
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Feb 26, 2017 20:08
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Not to mention that templates make an even further mess of the already poo poo CR system. Skeletons are reduced CR (usually) because they lose almost all special abilities and can only hit things. Owlbears lose improved grab and that's all. They get more dangerous than their normal CR of 4, not less.
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Feb 26, 2017 20:19
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CR has never worked because it didn't have any kind of hard guidelines behind the numbers that were assigned to the monsters. You ended up with poo poo like undead that were unkillable unless your casters prepared direct damage spells for the day at CR 3, enemies that could permanently reduce your ability scores before you could use spells to counter or reverse it, and goddamn dragons at every level.
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Feb 26, 2017 20:21
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senrath posted:Not to mention that templates make an even further mess of the already poo poo CR system. Skeletons are reduced CR (usually) because they lose almost all special abilities and can only hit things. Owlbears lose improved grab and that's all. They get more dangerous than their normal CR of 4, not less. Kwyndig posted:CR has never worked because it didn't have any kind of hard guidelines behind the numbers that were assigned to the monsters. You ended up with poo poo like undead that were unkillable unless your casters prepared direct damage spells for the day at CR 3, enemies that could permanently reduce your ability scores before you could use spells to counter or reverse it, and goddamn dragons at every level.
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Feb 26, 2017 22:04
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Yawgmoth posted:Yep! There was a decidedly laughable amount of QA done for stuff like templates, on top of already poor guesswork of baseline enemies and poo poo like intentionally lowballing the CRs of dragons because they wanted them to be extra dangerous. So for example that CR5 dragon is actually CR7 but your DM sets you against one at lv3 to be "a significant challenge" and wipes you all out with its first breath weapon use. Whoops! Not sure what your problem with it is - it has no ranged attacks, and lives in the desert. Fly is only a third level spell, so unless you're playing a NPC class like Fighter or something this guy is pretty trivial.
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Feb 26, 2017 22:33
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It's not in a book (just in an article on the Wizards website, updated version in Stormwrack which I don't have), but what you really want to go for is the Monstrous Crab. The Monstrous Crab is Large, giving it 10-foot reach, has an AC of 19, and has 66 hitpoints, making it pretty beefy. It also outspeeds the party with a base movement speed of 40 feet, so that it can grab you with its +19 bonus on grapple checks and crush the life out of you to the tune of 1d8+9 damage per round that you're grappled. Its stated strategy is to come out of the water, grab you, and then pull you back under the water where you drown or get crushed to death. It's CR is 3. It will wipe the party effortlessly.
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Feb 27, 2017 00:36
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Not if they just write off the first guy and run the gently caress away.
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Feb 27, 2017 00:40
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It's done 1d8+9 when it grabbed them, and then 1d8+9 again for initiating the grapple (which it won), so whoever it's grabbed is likely to die within a turn or two. Plus, thanks to Improved Grab it can move at full speed as it grapples somebody. There is no escape, dehumanize yourself and face to crab death.
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Feb 27, 2017 00:54
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It has int --, so a simple silent image will remove any challenge posed by this unintelligent simpleton - why, even a first level pc could trivialize this challenge. It should be CR 1 at highest. Also, I think quickdraw should require two feats - one to unsheath the weapon on a single turn, and one to attack with it.
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Feb 27, 2017 01:08
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Improved Grab doesn't let you move with your victim any better than normal, just lets you make a grapple attempt after hitting with a claw. So it would still need to choose between moving (at half speed as a standard action) and dealing damage. So if you do choose to sacrifice your grappled friend , his optimal move is actually to grab another party member and drag you down with him. It'simportant to have the right mentality in that situation.
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Feb 27, 2017 01:09
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Tunicate posted:It has int --, so a simple silent image will remove any challenge posed by this unintelligent simpleton - why, even a first level pc could trivialize this challenge. It should be CR 1 at highest. Now you're thinking like
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Feb 27, 2017 01:16
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berenzen posted:Not to mention she was a rogue in an undead and construct focused 3.5 campaign and traps could be solved by having someone walk through them and rest. Yea, picking Rogue as an NPC or as your class was a sucker's bet. The Paladin suffers from having much of his storyline cut, Dwarf's fun, but letting go Monk actually is worse than discouraging the idea since Monks are kind of a mess, Zheejve was a poor man's Drak'kon. Sandra was a fun party member but too good to last. Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Feb 27, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 02:50
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Yawgmoth posted:In theory, an encounter of CR N would consume 20% of the daily resources of a party of level N. In practice, it was "throw a dart, your score for that dart is the monster's CR." From a design perspective I think part of the problem is how unpredictable combat can be. If characters never missed, it'd be a lot easier to reliably duplicate something like "this fight should deplete 20% of your daily resources" (namely HP as a daily resource). But with hit ratios being somewhere within the 60-80% range (and the d20 being what it is), it gets all wonky. Sometimes the players can clear an encounter without taking a scratch, other times it's a whiff-fest that drags on for far longer than it should. And then from a practical perspective, it's also not that easy to just say "just throw another pack of goblins at them" if you need to stress their resources some more, because the whole act of rolling initiative and conducting combat takes time. I keep deliberating over the idea of either making AC values low enough that hit rates are in the 80 to 95% reliable range even for a mildly optimized character and granting the same to enemies, or enforcing some level of "damage-on-a-miss" mechanic, in an effort to "guarantee" the attritional promise necessary for D&D's resource management assumptions to actually work.
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Feb 27, 2017 04:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:From a design perspective I think part of the problem is how unpredictable combat can be. If characters never missed, it'd be a lot easier to reliably duplicate something like "this fight should deplete 20% of your daily resources" (namely HP as a daily resource). 13th Age handles this fairly well. On a miss, you deal damage equal to your level, and most spells have effects even if you fail to get past their PD/MD (just lesser effects). However, this goes for the enemy side too - monsters do a static amount of damage. On a natural 20, this is doubled (this works for players too) and on a miss, it typically does half. Lesser monsters do nothing on a miss.
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Feb 27, 2017 05:19
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Reduced damage instead of no damage on a miss even works with the earlier assumptions of D&D combat, that is that hit points represent stamina and luck as well as physical hardiness and that your attack roll represents an entire exchange of blows instead of a single hit. You know, back when combat rounds were like a minute long.
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Feb 27, 2017 13:27
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gradenko_2000 posted:From a design perspective I think part of the problem is how unpredictable combat can be. If characters never missed, it'd be a lot easier to reliably duplicate something like "this fight should deplete 20% of your daily resources" (namely HP as a daily resource).
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Feb 27, 2017 15:35
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goatface posted:Not if they just write off the first guy and run the gently caress away. Yawgmoth posted:In theory, an encounter of CR N would consume 20% of the daily resources of a party of level N.
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Feb 27, 2017 15:37
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Yeah, one of the jokes I saw in regards to CR a while back that stuck with me was "This encounter was supposed to consume 20% of our resources. It ate the ranger."
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Feb 27, 2017 17:40
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In a 5-person party the loss of one PC while everyone else escapes is a 20% resource loss. Hell, it's a Ranger. 10% at best.
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Feb 27, 2017 18:07
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Yesterday in Tanicus, our party learned that when you fold, stuff, stomp, push, jam, and otherwise cajole the flayed skin of a gold dragon into a portable hole (the villain whose tower we were crawling through had it as a carpet in front of a fireplace), the hole and skin can be used as a makeshift Claymore mine when facing off against a tribe of gnolls.
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Feb 27, 2017 20:24
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ItalicSquirrels posted:I've been running a game just for parents. Basically half of our friends are pretty certain they'll never have kids and the other half either already have them, are pregnant, or are actively trying. Ever since my wife hit her second trimester last year, gaming dropped right off our radar and now that our kid is six months old, I realized even the invitations have dropped off. Checked with our friends who have kids, and they say it's the same for them too. So about once a month we've gotten together at someone's house for D&D and kid-wrangling. There's food, there are soft drinks (a shocking amount of coffee), the occasional tantrum or dirty diaper (sometimes from the kids!), and we slowly make our way through a campaign. I figure it's a good excuse to get together with adults who at least understand the whole "kids take priority but I still want to have fun" thing. I'm late to this post, but I'm a parent of a two year old and we host a weekly game night. My kid can sleep through a bomb blast, so there's no worries about hollerin' about a nat 20 waking her up from across the house. Three of the players are parents of toddlers and/or infants, and the other two don't have kids. One player is a stay at home dad and has had to Skype in because he's juggling a baby and a toddler now, but it works. (The game mostly happens after his toddler goes to bed, so he's usually at the camera with a dozing baby in his arms). The rest of us with toddlers are able to game after the kiddos go to sleep in the respective homes. The timing is trickier than dealing with the kids. We have to wait until after the kids go to bed now, and we're all lame old people who get up at 5 or 6 AM, so we're done gaming by 10 PM. Gone are the 6+ hour marathon games until 2 AM. We game 7 PM to 10 PM, which means we have to stay on-task. It works pretty well. Kwyndig posted:CR has never worked because it didn't have any kind of hard guidelines behind the numbers that were assigned to the monsters. You ended up with poo poo like undead that were unkillable unless your casters prepared direct damage spells for the day at CR 3, enemies that could permanently reduce your ability scores before you could use spells to counter or reverse it, and goddamn dragons at every level. I never used CR when I ran 3.0 or 3.5 or Pathfinder. I just designed encounters like we used to in 2e: holistically and, sometimes, sadistically.
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Feb 27, 2017 22:05
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CobiWann posted:Yesterday in Tanicus, our party learned that when you fold, stuff, stomp, push, jam, and otherwise cajole the flayed skin of a gold dragon into a portable hole (the villain whose tower we were crawling through had it as a carpet in front of a fireplace), the hole and skin can be used as a makeshift Claymore mine when facing off against a tribe of gnolls. Freaking brilliant!
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Feb 27, 2017 22:06
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I am an idiot apparently, ignore this.
Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 22:53
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Deleted
Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Feb 28, 2017 |
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Feb 27, 2017 22:53
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Feb 28, 2017 03:35
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Female Knights are fun. --Especially when they take on incompetent squires and, over the course of 20+ hours of gaming, teach them the value of trust and nobility. --Even better when squires, freed of their nervousness and low-born shame, admit that they have crushes on the similarly aged King of Castille. --Best, though, when the nights disguise their Squires as princesses in dramatic schemes to catch bandit leaders who have far too much ink in their veins. ---Better than best is when the Knights make a pledge to follow their kingdom's best political interests and, in the last scene of a session, in front of their squires, are proposed to by the King of Castille.
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Feb 28, 2017 07:24
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