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Subjunctive posted:What does a Druid do, or a Bard, or a Cleric? Because, ignoring 3.x for Druids and Clerics and 5e for Bards, they at least have a theme. Like yes. ALL spellcasters quickly become too powerful (for the same reasons) but, outside of 3.x, druid and cleric isn't OP, because their spells are largely niche spells, because they're thematic casters, the same way someone who only had necromancer spells would be. Wizards aren't thematic casters. Because... quote:A Thief attacks and sneaks and disarms traps with stealth and skill. You could just as easily say that a Wizard casts spells, no? I know what the thief does. I have no idea what the wizard does. Once again, with the thief, you have described what they do. With the wizard, you have described how they do it. "The wizard casts spells." Spells that do what? Tuxedo Catfish posted:Single-function classes suck. I don't want a game with hitstuff fighters, healbot clerics, and where we finally cornered wizards into only doing one wizardly thing. This isn't the problem though, and once again, you've revealed the secret to what the problem with wizards is. This is not a mechanical statement, it's one of class intent. You yourself said it once more. When you remove everything but that class' one single function, the fighter fights, the thief/rogue handles the non-living dungeon obstacles, the cleric heals damage or otherwise soothes the dungeon's tension mechanic, and the wizard...does "wizardly things." Like, the fact that loving nobody can actually pin down what the wizard's thing is sorta showcases it, doesn't it? We know what fighters do - they do HP damage to enemies. We know what clerics do - they HEAL that HP damage. But wizards? They "cast spells," which is the same as saying "they do stuff, uh, but like...with magic." WHAT STUFF?
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Aug 31, 2017 21:33
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Countblanc posted:I actually know nothing about it, what's it like? Ok, so every combat action in Spellbound Kingdoms revolves around using particular martial or magical styles, as represented by style sheets like this:  Each round of combat, the actions a character can take are determined by what move they did last. If a character is just starting off, they can only pick the underlined moves, called balancing moves. On the sheet above, that's Dodge & Feint, Lunge, and Warrior's Strike. The pick determines the character's attack, defense, damage, and any special effects for that round like movement or armor damage or whatnot. All moves are revealed at the same time, and resolve simultaneously, Battletech style. In any subsequent rounds, you're allowed to pick any move that's connected by a row or column (imagine a rook in chess), or any of the balancing moves. So if your last move was Free Sword Strike, you could choose Unbalancing Feint, Onslaught, Eviscerate, Free Sword Strike, or the balancing moves. There's more to it than that (eg, some moves force you to rebalance the next turn), but that's the core of it.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:39
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Bar Crow posted:No. Oh, OK. Thanks for engaging with me.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:40
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To give you an idea of the difference, imagine if the rogue used tricks, with tricks ranging from "climb a wall" to "convince the omnipotent gods to enact the rogue's will."
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Aug 31, 2017 21:49
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Haystack posted:Ok, so every combat action in Spellbound Kingdoms revolves around using particular martial or magical styles, as represented by style sheets like this: I see, thank you. Without seeing it in practice (or within the context of more rules) it's hard to say, but I at least think it's novel and interesting. It seems more engaging than a typical rotation because, while you probably need to do something of a premade rotation to unlock the Big Hitties - Free Sword Strike into Eviscerate in the listed example - the option is (presumably) there to just not go for those most of the time and the whole system seems to present options along the way. Most importantly there aren't actual "you must do this or [effectively] start over" combos aside from the aforementioned single example and that's my big beef with those sorts of rotation systems. I will say that, again not having much context here, the powers on that card are very simple and mostly seem to be "do damage" or "do less damage but in an AoE" or "do less damage now but do extra damage next turn or in between rounds". That's not like, inherently bad or anything, but it does make a system like this much more simple to make functional because what you're doing isn't terribly different depending on your option. Like even my Ranger's powers in 4e seem a bit more complex than that and that class is very basic (and the character is designed to be basic within that frame). I certainly think it looks neat though.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:54
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Subjunctive posted:Oh, OK. Thanks for engaging with me. If only there multiple posts explaining why your statement doesn't line up.
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Aug 31, 2017 21:54
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Countblanc posted:I see, thank you. Free Sword, the one used, is meant to be the most basic yet versatile fighting style. The main thing to understand is that damage is low. Getting "+2 to damage" is significant when most attacks only do 1 damage. Likewise, it's intended so that your various moves have a point to them. Going Dodge and Feint -> Counterattack isn't very offensive, but if you're outnumbered, it's maybe your best ploy, as now your defense is d8+d6 (or d10+d4), and every time an enemy misses you, you get a free attack on them. And what makes this great is that it didn't take any player resources to unlock other then going into that fighting style - this sorta thing would cost like five feats in 3.x. And of course, you can do that, and then bounce into more offensive stuff. Note that if it has the "M" in it's upper-right corner, it's a Mastery move, and you don't ge tthose until later.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:03
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Also going from move to move in a style is basically intended to take the place of standard tactical movement stuff. Movement's handled by abstract zones, so you might have an back alley setpiece that has 'street level' 'rooftop' and 'fire escapes and clotheslines' as locations and move between them as you take actions.
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Aug 31, 2017 22:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:To go off a little bit more on this tangent, there was a discussion on RPPR a while back about how one of the drivers of creativity in old-school D&D was the random assignment of spells: This is a good post, and if I end up running 3.5 or 5e I will keep it in mind. Probably 4th too--consider giving everyone Ritual Caster for free, and handing out oddball rituals as loot and only letting each one be learned by a single character. So maybe out of combat the Fighter also sometimes lights incense in his cabin and communes with the gods for glimpses of the future. Or...a better example.
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Aug 31, 2017 23:47
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Reminds me how last year I was tinkering with some house rules to rebalance 5e D&D, and quickly decided the best way to do it was to just give all classes access to magic(well there were quite a few other changes as well), with the main advantage classes like Wizard have over Fighter in that area being that they have a larger selection of spells to use
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Aug 31, 2017 23:58
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ProfessorCirno posted:This isn't the problem though, and once again, you've revealed the secret to what the problem with wizards is. If it's not a mechanical statement, then it's not a problem. You can do anything with fluff.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:03
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Mr. Maltose posted:If only there multiple posts explaining why your statement doesn't line up. After that one, yes, though I don't entirely agree with the framing still.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:If it's not a mechanical statement, then it's not a problem. You can do anything with fluff.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:21
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Yawgmoth posted:Yeah, yeah, but your game designers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. Let me put it this way: insofar as this argument matters at all, every class should be a "how do they do it?" class.
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Sep 1, 2017 00:26
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Let me put it this way: insofar as this argument matters at all, every class should be a "how do they do it?" class. Also, I wanted to make a Jurassic Park reference. 
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Sep 1, 2017 00:48
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Warhammer ref
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Sep 1, 2017 01:23
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Yawgmoth posted:The question of class intent isn't fluff or mechanics, though. It's a statement from which both the fluff and mechanics flow. It's pre-design. Every class should have a what and a how, and they should be equally important and interesting. That's the problem with the standard D&D wizard; there's no "what" (or more aptly, their "what" is "everything"). Beyond the loosest sense of inspiration, I'd rather start with mechanics and have everything else flow from there.
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Sep 1, 2017 01:26
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Yawgmoth posted:(or more aptly, their "what" is "everything"). Yes, this is the problem. It wouldn't be any better if wizards instead stabbed fools, shouted arms back on, sang locks open, conjured envoys to negotiate for them, and entreated with nature to unravel mysteries. The issue isn't that they can be defined by a power source ("uses magic"), but that they can do too many things. Resolving the former doesn't improve the game, and resolving the latter doesn't require that the stop using magic.
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Sep 1, 2017 01:27
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Haystack posted:Ok, so every combat action in Spellbound Kingdoms revolves around using particular martial or magical styles, as represented by style sheets like this: Speaking of the Spellbound Kingdoms attack flowcharts, I realized a while ago that a Dark Souls/Monster Hunter type game might work really well with something like it. The flow of the moves and the way you have to navigate the chart is predictable enough that you can anticipate your enemy's next move and react to it in real time. Maybe include some reveal mechanic for the first fight, but after each move is executed once, it's permanently visible?
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Sep 1, 2017 03:36
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The problem is that they are defined by a power source while nobody else is. There isn't a singular "martial" class that just does everything physical. There's, like, a hundred, that each have their own dumb niche. But there is a singular "arcane" class that is expected to do everything supernatural ever. EDIT: Nuns with Guns posted:Speaking of the Spellbound Kingdoms attack flowcharts, I realized a while ago that a Dark Souls/Monster Hunter type game might work really well with something like it. The flow of the moves and the way you have to navigate the chart is predictable enough that you can anticipate your enemy's next move and react to it in real time. Maybe include some reveal mechanic for the first fight, but after each move is executed once, it's permanently visible? I'd have to look it up, but I'm pretty sure you explicitly are supposed to let the players see what their enemies are doing on their own sheets. After all, there's a reason you get attacks that force others to re-balance, shutting down their attempts at using more powerful attacks. Like, think of putting it down and almost treating it like a board game. ( Also seriously those attack flowcharts are AMAZING and I love them so much )
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Sep 1, 2017 03:47
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ProfessorCirno posted:The problem is that they are defined by a power source while nobody else is. To be fair it's more like there are three arcane classes, all of which are vaguely slanted towards a particular theme, but which all mostly boil down to doing everything supernatural ever.
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Sep 1, 2017 03:53
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Yeah it's actually really important to see what other people are up to - we discovered this in our first playtest when the noble got his head blown off in one shot by the Black Powder and Crimson Blade stylist's chain of actions. Also note that whether you get to move around easily depends a lot on your style - some have a heap of moves available inside their tree, others just have to drop out of their style to use one of the generic actions (in the bottom right, everyone always can use) - and when you go back to your style you're back to an underlined starter move. Court Sword is amazing at duels in one place, but if your opponent can just walk away
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Sep 1, 2017 03:59
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ProfessorCirno posted:The problem is that they are defined by a power source while nobody else is. gradenko_2000 posted:As a counter-point, when you allow a player to always choose what spells they get, they'll then figure out the best "combo" or most versatile/useful assortment of spells, and always lean on those. It's when their choices are sub-optimal that they resort to doing something different. Which is not to say that I necessarily advocate for this approach, but it's interesting to think about. You could even include some objectively not-great-for-their-level spells whose call to fame is that they have multiple trees they "count" for.
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Sep 1, 2017 09:30
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Splicer posted:It sounds like one compromise could be to give spells requirements like feat chains. There's a couple of niche mind control cantrips, like Friend. To learn Suggestion you need to be able to learn 1st level spells and know at least two mind control cantrips. To learn Sleep you need to be able to learn 2nd level spells and know at least four mind control spells, at least one of which must be 1st level. You'd preserve the illusion of a do everything class, but in reality you'd need to specialise heavily for the high level spells. It's not random, but you'd end up with more "I want to take Summon Fire Elemental in my new 5th level slot so I need to spend my new third level on a fire spell... I guess I'll take fire sword and drop it on the fighter occasionally I don't care IT'S FIRE ELEMENTAL TIME" (later) hang on... can I set this frost giant's entire sword on fire?"    
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Sep 1, 2017 09:56
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ProfessorCirno posted:The problem is that they are defined by a power source while nobody else is. In Spellbound Kingdoms you are, yeah. The game offers two ways to arrange combat: regular turn-based and the simultaneously declaring attacks, which the game considers the more ideal way to play.
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Sep 1, 2017 12:55
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Splicer posted:It sounds like one compromise could be to give spells requirements like feat chains. There's a couple of niche mind control cantrips, like Friend. To learn Suggestion you need to be able to learn 1st level spells and know at least two mind control cantrips. To learn Sleep you need to be able to learn 2nd level spells and know at least four mind control spells, at least one of which must be 1st level. You'd preserve the illusion of a do everything class, but in reality you'd need to specialise heavily for the high level spells. It's not random, but you'd end up with more "I want to take Summon Fire Elemental in my new 5th level slot so I need to spend my new third level on a fire spell... I guess I'll take fire sword and drop it on the fighter occasionally I don't care IT'S FIRE ELEMENTAL TIME" (later) hang on... can I set this frost giant's entire sword on fire?" GURPS does this with its default magic system where each spell is a skill you learn individually and higher power spells have either set prerequisites (must know this this and this spell) or general prerequisites (must know X fire spells). It's kind of a hassle without a guide.
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Sep 1, 2017 14:22
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4e didn't require you to have taken Burning Hands before you were allowed to take Fireball and it was fine.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:04
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What's the best way to play board games online? I assume you talk about rpg's here more than board games because it's much easier to do that online. But I'm curious how we can do board games online.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:36
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Zoro posted:What's the best way to play board games online? I assume you talk about rpg's here more than board games because it's much easier to do that online. But I'm curious how we can do board games online. VASSAL. It's a java-based program that simulates all the playing pieces of a boardgame, and then allows players to connect with each other so that you can manipulate the pieces as if you were playing a game together.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:41
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Ferrinus posted:4e didn't require you to have taken Burning Hands before you were allowed to take Fireball and it was fine. Yea, the problem isn't the scaling of spells, the problem is the easy ability for magic to just render anything that non-magic people can do irrelevant. Classically this is a part of most settings with magic and because of the unicorn problem rarity doesn't work as a balance, so it needs something else. Maybe everyone just expects there to be magic, maybe everyone can use a bit of magic in the area they work in, maybe people who have no magic are just "too real" to be reliably affected with magic, but you need something to change the situation.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:45
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Zoro posted:What's the best way to play board games online? I assume you talk about rpg's here more than board games because it's much easier to do that online. But I'm curious how we can do board games online. Tabletop Simulator if you're prepared to sprint past the bellends in general chat and lock yourself in a virtual room with trusted friends. I've also played a whole bunch of games on http://en.boardgamearena.com/ If all you want to play is Diplomacy there are at least two websites offering Diplomacy online.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:51
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hyphz posted:Yea, the problem isn't the scaling of spells, the problem is the easy ability for magic to just render anything that non-magic people can do irrelevant. Classically this is a part of most settings with magic and because of the unicorn problem rarity doesn't work as a balance, so it needs something else. Maybe everyone just expects there to be magic, maybe everyone can use a bit of magic in the area they work in, maybe people who have no magic are just "too real" to be reliably affected with magic, but you need something to change the situation. 4e also had totally non-magical character classes whose power sets simply could not replicate certain feats of magic (try teleporting when you're a human fighter who didn't multiclass into another power source) and it was fine. Here's the secret: martial dailies. The ability of non-magicians to do things so consequential to the flow of play that they have long recharge times or limited ammo, in the same way that spells do.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:51
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potatocubed posted:Tabletop Simulator if you're prepared to sprint past the bellends in general chat and lock yourself in a virtual room with trusted friends. Yeah BoardgameArena is fantastic, I definitely recommend them for any game they have (and they have lots of great games). I sorta hate TTS because it isn't rules-enforced a lot of the time and the 3d manipulation is more of a detriment 99% of the time, but it's the only option for a lot of games if you absolutely must play something. There's also lots of individual apps for specific popular games and these usually offer online play, tutorials, and much better artwork. Some are on Steam too. Like Zoro said this thread has mostly become about ttrpg stuff specifically so if you want a more nuanced answer with specific examples I recommend asking in the board game thread.
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Sep 1, 2017 15:57
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Ferrinus posted:Here's the secret: martial dailies. The ability of non-magicians to do things so consequential to the flow of play that they have long recharge times or limited ammo, in the same way that spells do.
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Sep 1, 2017 16:02
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Ferrinus posted:4e also had totally non-magical character classes whose power sets simply could not replicate certain feats of magic (try teleporting when you're a human fighter who didn't multiclass into another power source) and it was fine. And serious restrictions on the power of that magic. It also didn't deal with the non-combat issues of magic balance - ie, we come to a village where the crops are failing; the fighter can swing a sword and look at the wall, while the Wizard summons rain with one Arcana check. There were plenty of times in 4e where Skill Challenges would basically say "well, you can use Arcana on this if you can argue that it would apply (but magic can do anything so who the hell can argue it wouldn't?)"
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Sep 1, 2017 16:03
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hyphz posted:And serious restrictions on the power of that magic. What ritual would that be?
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Sep 1, 2017 16:05
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Ferrinus posted:4e also had totally non-magical character classes whose power sets simply could not replicate certain feats of magic (try teleporting when you're a human fighter who didn't multiclass into another power source) and it was fine. The bolded text is important. In all honesty, 4e has its fair share of problems but I'll be damned if someone tries to argue that one of its core strengths wasn't defining characters' power, roles, what they do, and how they do it, while keeping everything within those boundaries. And also trying to break the mindset that HP represent real physical injuries rather than just an abstraction of a whole bunch of different factors comprising overall ability to remain fighting, aka the whole stupid argument over 'warlords shouldn't be able to shout limbs back on'.
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Sep 1, 2017 16:21
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Can someone link the tradgames discord. I guess either
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Sep 1, 2017 16:24
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Alternatively maybe warlords should be able to shout limbs back on. That poo poo sounds rad. But at the same time, D&D doesn't have rules for losing limbs, so the concept itself is flawed.
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Sep 1, 2017 16:24
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Halloween Jack posted:Well that, and there isn't one Arcane class that gets every Arcane power by default. So the Wizard isn't simultaneously a Controller and a Striker with a good helping of defense and buff powers to boot. If literally every arcane power published in 4e appeared on the wizard power list the wizard would still have been balanced with the fighter, though. It would've been facially inconsistent - at the very least, you'd also expect the Fighter class to have access to every power previously unique to the warlord, and to the rogue, and to the ranger, and so on - but the superstructure limiting how many total powers you can have and how many of those powers can be of daily rather than at-will or per-encounter strength ensures that versatility in character building is not the same as versatility or power in play. hyphz posted:And serious restrictions on the power of that magic. You can't make an Arcana check to summon rain. You can, however, cast a weather control ritual to summon rain. ...and what's wrong with that? The party comes upon an ailing village, the wizard (more probably, the druid) blesses them with good weather. Seems appropriate to the milieu.
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Sep 1, 2017 16:37
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