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FMguru posted:Gorgnards.txt is gone, and for good reason, but I do want to draw some attention to this flaming trainwreck of an RPG.net thread. A GM pitches a Star Trek campaign, then switcharoos his players with some John Wick Play Dirty bullshit in play, and when he asks for feedback afterwards his players tell him they didn't think much of having their characters' backgrounds mined for things to use against them and didn't actually enjoy the campaign very much, which sends the GM off to RPG.net to post about how angry he is that his spoiled entitled babby players aren't more appreciative of all the hard work he put into his campaign. It's a real treat. Man, I can get bringing backstory into the plot but drastically retconning it and setting up for a nasty PvP confrontation if the truth comes out? Why would anyone do that? Yessss
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Sep 20, 2017 20:18
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Nuns with Guns posted:Man, I can get bringing backstory into the plot but drastically retconning it and setting up for a nasty PvP confrontation if the truth comes out? Why would anyone do that? Also, why would you do that in a game that you pitched as "Let's do Star Trek!". To me, that means phasers and Klingons and weird energy monsters and meeting new lifeforms (and loving them) and beaming down away parties and fixing the warp drive and not mind control and betrayal and shattering secrets revealed. It's straight out of page one of the unoriginal nerd hack's idea book - take something bright and optimistic and make it grimdark - oooh, did I just blow your miiiind? FMguru fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 20:19
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Countblanc posted:based on context I sorta think someone/everyone got rules wrong rather than any malicious attempt to see the system flop. my current theory is that her group was using 3.5e HP rules (their favorite system next to numenera) or that the GM used inappropriate monsters accidently - when I ran the numbers wrt player HP and monster damage just to make sure a crit wouldn't kill from full health I googled for "Orc stats D&D 4e" and the first result was a fairly official-looking stat bloc that had them doing 2d10 damage at level 2. it's possible something like that happened I guess??
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Sep 20, 2017 21:08
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unseenlibrarian posted:Maybe the one time they played it was RAW fight with Irontooth in Keep on the Shadowfell, which could straight up murder a party. The only character death I ever saw in 4e was during that module, so it seems plausible. Some bastard with a sling straight up crit the party warlock down to his instant death value, though it was our first time playing 4e so we may have got that wrong.
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Sep 20, 2017 21:45
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 The lastest blogpost for The Next Project is up.Today's topic is basically knowledge skills and power sources, and how those two things are linked, within this particular system. Some changes are coming!  Let me know what you think of the proposed adjustments. 
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Sep 20, 2017 22:07
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Splicer posted:It's not impossible. The absolute minimum hp a level 1 4E character can have is 18. You die on three death saving throws or reaching negative HP equal to or greater than your bloodied value. So they'd need to have taken an absolute minimum of (18 + 9) 27HP in one shot to go from full HP to dead. If by "Killed instantly" they mean "took enough damage to go from current, non-max HP to dead-no-saves" then yeah an 8 con Wizard on 1HP could be knocked to dead by a 10HP attack. But that's a weird complaint to make since 3.x was the same but worse (swingier crits and the instadeath threshold stayed at -10 forever) Why anyone would have less than like a 10 in CON -- even in 4e -- is beyond me. It's like a solid 12 on every character I've made / 13 if you're planning to bump it at all / more if your class actually gets riders off of it.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:26
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I've had a character... sort of oneshot in 4e? I was playing a Warforged Tempest Fighter, and in the first fight of the campaign I ran up to some kind of LV 1 Golem Solo or something from a Dragon Magazine module was running. It then proceeded to crit me, had an ability giving it a free attack on a critical, and then crit me again, reducing me to negative bloodied. In the first round of the first fight of the campaign. What can you really do at that point? The DM of that game who I met for that game for the first time has since gone on to become one of my closest friends, so at least that went well from it.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:38
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sure but people playing a game for the first time probably wouldn't realize that, especially if they're apparently disengaged from mechanics enough to not realize how much more rocket tag-ish 3.5e obviously is if you compare HP totals to monster damage at level 1. like every fiber of my RPG being would be like "you're a wizard, ignore CON because you aren't supposed to get hit"
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Sep 20, 2017 22:39
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I remember reading some dumbass column in Dragon or Dungeon Magazine about how cool it is that monsters can coup de grace dying PCs and how DMs shouldn't be afraid to do it. Some people just don't understand DnD, and unfortunately they also make it.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:49
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Nuns with Guns posted:Man, I can get bringing backstory into the plot but drastically retconning it and setting up for a nasty PvP confrontation if the truth comes out? Why would anyone do that? I get the impression that he didn't do much retcon the backstory as he just played out something prior to the mother's murder. He's just an insanely terrible communicator, even though if you subject yourself to his stupid podcast it's clear he's at least very fluent if not a native speaker of English. He also thinks that Civil Rights in the 60s and Obama failed so we might as well try ethnostates I guess.
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Sep 20, 2017 22:51
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Works for Israel
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Sep 20, 2017 22:53
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Can you loving not
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Sep 20, 2017 23:01
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P.d0t posted:Why anyone would have less than like a 10 in CON -- even in 4e -- is beyond me. It's like a solid 12 on every character I've made / 13 if you're planning to bump it at all / more if your class actually gets riders off of it. You're playing a Dread Necromancer and really looking forward to level 20.
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Sep 20, 2017 23:26
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Saw this on /tg. The poster said that it's not necessarily the alignment of the setting, but the alignment that a player (but not necessarily the character) gets the most out of it
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Sep 20, 2017 23:39
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Alignment continues to be dumb
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Sep 21, 2017 00:24
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I'm looking at 4E books on drivethrurpg and trying to figure out what I need as a baseline -- does PHB + DMG + MM3 for the updated math about cover it? Do any of those books have outdated rules that you have to patch over with something else for best results? Is there anything optional but so good / balanced / useful it'd be dumb not to have it? (I've played 4E before but was always able to borrow books or look up build options online, and I've never run it as a DM.)
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Sep 21, 2017 00:29
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I know the PHB got some errata over time and I have no idea if it was included in reprints or if it was something you have to seek out yourself. Although not all that errata was for the best...
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Sep 21, 2017 00:32
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm looking at 4E books on drivethrurpg and trying to figure out what I need as a baseline -- does PHB + DMG + MM3 for the updated math about cover it? Do any of those books have outdated rules that you have to patch over with something else for best results? Is there anything optional but so good / balanced / useful it'd be dumb not to have it? Do they have the Rules Compendium? That one is invaluable.
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Sep 21, 2017 00:35
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Serf posted:Do they have the Rules Compendium? That one is invaluable. They do. Thanks, guys.
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Sep 21, 2017 00:37
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Rules Compendium, Monster Vault/MM3, Offline Char Builder
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Sep 21, 2017 00:37
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm looking at 4E books on drivethrurpg and trying to figure out what I need as a baseline -- does PHB + DMG + MM3 for the updated math about cover it? Do any of those books have outdated rules that you have to patch over with something else for best results? Is there anything optional but so good / balanced / useful it'd be dumb not to have it? I'd grab the DMG 2 and/or the two Dark Sun books, too, if you can. DMG 2 has a surprising amount of good advice and introduces Inherent Bonuses as a thing, which should be used in every 4e game. The Dark Sun campaign setting book treats Inherent Bonuses as expected, and also introduces boons and themes, both of which are nice. The Dark Sun monster book is more good post-MM3 monsters.
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Sep 21, 2017 01:12
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I'm looking at 4E books on drivethrurpg and trying to figure out what I need as a baseline -- does PHB + DMG + MM3 for the updated math about cover it? Do any of those books have outdated rules that you have to patch over with something else for best results? Is there anything optional but so good / balanced / useful it'd be dumb not to have it? https://songoftheblade.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/how-to-get-started-with-dd-4th-edition-without-ddi/
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Sep 21, 2017 02:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://songoftheblade.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/how-to-get-started-with-dd-4th-edition-without-ddi/ This is perfect, thanks again.
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Sep 21, 2017 02:19
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Lurdiak posted:I remember reading some dumbass column in Dragon or Dungeon Magazine about how cool it is that monsters can coup de grace dying PCs and how DMs shouldn't be afraid to do it. Some people just don't understand DnD, and unfortunately they also make it. This sort of goes along with the implication that since monsters play by the same rules players do, that monsters should also be subject to the death-and-dying rules. One of the Unearthed Arcana variant rules was to allow armor to convert lethal damage into non-lethal damage per point of AC bonus, and the sidebar goes into the potential moral problem of having a bunch of goblins that are only merely unconscious and will need to have their throats slit. We take it for granted playing RAW because those goblins would bleed out without having anyone to help them, but as a GM, if you really wanted to play it out, you could engineer scenarios where the a monster hitting zero HP instead "dead-dead" yet, and can either be heal-checked or heal-spelled by their allies, forcing the party to think about using Coup de Graces in the middle of combat.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:This sort of goes along with the implication that since monsters play by the same rules players do, that monsters should also be subject to the death-and-dying rules. That was the beautiful thing about 4e, monsters absolutely didn't play by the same rules, and it was awesome. gradenko_2000 posted:One of the Unearthed Arcana variant rules was to allow armor to convert lethal damage into non-lethal damage per point of AC bonus, and the sidebar goes into the potential moral problem of having a bunch of goblins that are only merely unconscious and will need to have their throats slit. Are there no goblin prisons? Are there no goblin workhouses? gradenko_2000 posted:We take it for granted playing RAW because those goblins would bleed out without having anyone to help them, but as a GM, if you really wanted to play it out, you could engineer scenarios where the a monster hitting zero HP instead "dead-dead" yet, and can either be heal-checked or heal-spelled by their allies, forcing the party to think about using Coup de Graces in the middle of combat. Hey, if that kind of verisimilitude is what the group actually wants, more power to them, I'm only against the idea that this sort of gently caress-you-gotchaism should be treated as a default that players just have to deal with or be considered poor sports. I can't imagine how lovely it'd feel to be the guy who drove 10 miles to hang out with his DnD group, only to have his character coup de graced by a random orc in the first combat encounter.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:34
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That reminds me of the number of times I've had various GMs tell me that coup de grace is always an evil action, but letting someone bleed out is fine and dandy. I'll never understand the thought process that leads to that.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:48
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Recent posts just make me wonder why we have potential instant death crits on PCs at all, such as the simple "multiply damage" ones. Even just recently Starfinger dumps d20 crit confirmations (though it also keeps crits to 20s as a *cough* "solution")... obviously, in the old days NPC and PC combat rules just worked relatively the same and that was that, and so you have the issue with crits cutting characters short and people just accepted that as part of the rules. And then you have games like D&D 3e lessening their frequency as a "fix", though it's obviously only a stopgap measure. Various means to fix the instant-death issue seem to confront the frequency of it happening, or even encourage GMs to lie about rolls (like Starfinger does) without realizing that you could just remove it from the rules. Not to say random terrible injuries happening to PCs is a necessarily bad thing - a good crit system can a lot of flavor to injury - but it's mind-boggling to think about how many games include potential death for PCs on a bad roll because D&D set the standard and people just take it as a presumption. And if that were an intended state, fine, but I imagine most games that include it never consider why that kind of rule exists, and that it can be readily done away with. Or, at the very least, one could emulate Fantasy Craft and hand full control of NPC crit confirmation over to the GM, negating the need for lies and "fudging" to preserve long-played characters.
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Sep 21, 2017 06:03
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senrath posted:That reminds me of the number of times I've had various GMs tell me that coup de grace is always an evil action, but letting someone bleed out is fine and dandy. I'll never understand the thought process that leads to that. a lot of people see a strong ethical distinction between letting something happen (that you could easily stop from happening) and making it happen. personally I think this is insane but it's a pretty popular view
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Sep 21, 2017 06:03
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"Something special needs to happen on a 20" was one of the very first things that people started putting into D&D, and one that Gygax resisted for the longest time, in part because he (correctly) realized that putting crits in the hands of monsters was going to cause insta-deaths given the mathematical structure of his game. His idea of verisimilitude apparently stopped him from saying that only players get to use it, though.
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Sep 21, 2017 06:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:"Something special needs to happen on a 20" was one of the very first things that people started putting into D&D, and one that Gygax resisted for the longest time, in part because he (correctly) realized that putting crits in the hands of monsters was going to cause insta-deaths given the mathematical structure of his game. His idea of verisimilitude apparently stopped him from saying that only players get to use it, though. I think there's a good case to be made for having monster attacks just do flat damage (maybe even player attacks - rolling to hit already adds plenty of variance). it would cut down on the number of dice rolls a lot!
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Sep 21, 2017 06:39
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senrath posted:That reminds me of the number of times I've had various GMs tell me that coup de grace is always an evil action, but letting someone bleed out is fine and dandy. I'll never understand the thought process that leads to that. Think of every action movie you've ever seen where the good guy stands triumphant over the bad guy who's been trying to kill them all movie but because they're a good guy they opt to take the high ground and not murder the bad guy...until the bad guy PULLS A GUN IN A SHOCKING TWIST and then the good guy can blow them away free and clear. It's the same sort of thought process at work, that murder is wrong unless someone gives you an excuse, even if you and the audience at home know how it's gonna play out no matter what.
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Sep 21, 2017 06:46
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:I think there's a good case to be made for having monster attacks just do flat damage (maybe even player attacks - rolling to hit already adds plenty of variance). it would cut down on the number of dice rolls a lot! Oh, I agree. It's incredibly convenient on the DM's side, on top of removing a degree of variance that might otherwise cause these swingy, unlucky deaths, but it's worth noting that even in a flat-damage scenario, an averaged crit from a 3e Kobold, [(1d6-1)x3], is still going to knock out a 4 HP Wizard in one hit. And an averaged crit from a 5e Kobold, [1d4+2], is almost going to knock out a 6 HP Wizard in one hit gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Sep 21, 2017 |
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Sep 21, 2017 07:04
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A crit that KO's is, at least in my opinion, very different from a crit that kills. Getting knocked the gently caress out in one hit is a great way to show how powerful and dangerous something is without the loving up of everything that happens from pointless character death.
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Sep 21, 2017 07:40
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ProfessorCirno posted:A crit that KO's is, at least in my opinion, very different from a crit that kills. Getting knocked the gently caress out in one hit is a great way to show how powerful and dangerous something is without the loving up of everything that happens from pointless character death. Well yeah, but the problem is that if everyone is knocked out, then they're as good as dead because nobody is left to try and save the rest of the party (short of DM fiat). Like, going by the rules of 5e, it's technically just as difficult to go from dying-to-dead as it is in 4e, but it's a lot easier to go from alive-to-dying, and if all four players are making death saves ... then it's almost certainly going to be a TPK.
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Sep 21, 2017 07:46
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Recent posts just make me wonder why we have potential instant death crits on PCs at all, such as the simple "multiply damage" ones.
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Sep 21, 2017 09:35
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I know I bring up this game nonstop already, but Fragged Empire's crit system is kinda weird, where essentially you can't be taken out unless you're crit. You have two sets of HP, uh, sorta - your Endurance (standard HP), and then you're attributes. Each attribute has a score, of course, and when you get crit, those get damaged (with how much based on weapon), with you bleeding out when one of them hits 0. When your Endurance hits 0, you can still fight, it's just that every attack against you is now counted as a crit. The last thing that fits in is armor - which lowers the damage you take when you get crit, NOT when you take Endurance damage. That said, it actually kinda ends up working - heavily armored enemies essentially need to either have their HP ground down with a lot of focse fire or their armor reduced, lightly armored enemies you want to be extremely accurate against so you can paste them in one crit.
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Sep 21, 2017 10:10
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SirPhoebos posted:Saw this on /tg. The poster said that it's not necessarily the alignment of the setting, but the alignment that a player (but not necessarily the character) gets the most out of it They hosed that one up. Swap Forgotten Realms with Dragonlance. Knights of Solamnia for days.
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Sep 21, 2017 10:21
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ProfessorCirno posted:I know I bring up this game nonstop already, but Fragged Empire's crit system is kinda weird, where essentially you can't be taken out unless you're crit. You have two sets of HP, uh, sorta - your Endurance (standard HP), and then you're attributes. Each attribute has a score, of course, and when you get crit, those get damaged (with how much based on weapon), with you bleeding out when one of them hits 0. When your Endurance hits 0, you can still fight, it's just that every attack against you is now counted as a crit. The last thing that fits in is armor - which lowers the damage you take when you get crit, NOT when you take Endurance damage. That said, it actually kinda ends up working - heavily armored enemies essentially need to either have their HP ground down with a lot of focse fire or their armor reduced, lightly armored enemies you want to be extremely accurate against so you can paste them in one crit.
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Sep 21, 2017 12:11
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:a lot of people see a strong ethical distinction between letting something happen (that you could easily stop from happening) and making it happen. personally I think this is insane but it's a pretty popular view I think it's more that, when you're reducing a foe's HP to 0, they're (presumably) an active combatant. Once they're down, they no longer pose a threat - and they're helpless. I can see an ethical distinction between leaving them to their own devices (where they might survive) and making sure a helpless foe is dead-dead. Not that I'd argue it would always be an evil act - I think it would depend on the circumstances, and also who cares alignment is dumb.
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Sep 21, 2017 14:22
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Whenever my players reduced an enemy to 0 HP in 4E I would ask them if they were going for a kill or a knockout. I found that when given that option, they preferred to incapacitate their enemies and leave them for dead, which was really helpful for making recurring villains.
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Sep 21, 2017 14:25
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