|
Sodomy Hussein posted:They can play too, I just forget about them often because I've never been in a group with a runepriest that I can remember. That's because you look at the name and say "cool! What's their deal?" And then: thespaceinvader posted:It's a pity they have nothing but mechanics distinguishing them from Clerics is what it is. They're Clerics.
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2018 22:57
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 00:41 |
|
|
Vandar posted:And poor runepriests get left out in the cold. Runepriests came out fairly early, they just didn't get a lot of content. Also trying to differentiate the exact nature of the difference between paladins and avengers is AIDS. Not everything must fit into very specific niches that have no overlap. If a cleric wants to roll out and cave some heads in "like an avenger" then let them. Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Aug 14, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2018 23:13
|
|
|
I had a player play a runelord for as a temporary character for a vignette once. He figured out pretty early on that the different rune states gimmick didn't really help much and he was better sticking with Rune of Destruction 95% of the time.Dick Burglar posted:Runepriests came out fairly early, they just didn't get a lot of content.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2018 23:30
|
|
|
I've never looked too close at runepriest. I heard it's "cleric but more complicated"
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2018 23:30
|
|
|
What Runepriests SHOULD have been is Truenamers but not awful.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2018 23:41
|
|
|
I made some custom poker chips for my IRL game feel free to use them if you want. EDIT: Psionic Point renamed to Power Point Moriatti fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Aug 15, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2018 01:40
|
|
|
The Crotch posted:I had a player play a runelord for as a temporary character for a vignette once. He figured out pretty early on that the different rune states gimmick didn't really help much and he was better sticking with Rune of Destruction 95% of the time. There were a few Dragon Magazine articles that gave it some more options, which is more than you can say for the Seeker. But yes. It came out after Divine Power so WELP.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2018 16:14
|
|
|
Hi! The next session in my current game (it's a spellpunk setting under the 4e ruleset) is going to open with a three-way shootout and I have a gnawing concern that I've bitten off more than I can chew: The PCs were hired by one gang, Faction 45, to rob an abandoned facility. They went in and encountered another gang, the Bastard Dogs, who they're pretty friendly with. After burning most of their dailies taking down the lurking monstrosity that had caused the facility to become abandoned and rescuing one of the bigwigs who was trapped inside, they've headed out with their Dog buddies and completely forgotten that Faction 45, who are watching the entrance for them, are at war with the Dogs (and specifically hired them to stop the Dogs from looting the place first). The session's going to start with a firefight between the 45ers and the Dogs. The 45ers got armed with high-tech spellguns earlier in the plot, so they're gonna be dropping a lot of ranged attacks and terrain effects. The Dogs are lower-tech, and melee focused. There are two named NPCs, one in each gang, who I established earlier were present. There's also the exec they rescued, who's going to try and get away from any gunfire. On top of this, an Imperial skyship has just shown up, and on seeing scum like the PCs, the 45ers, and the Dogs shooting it out in front of their facility they're going to blindly open fire: the area in range of their guns is going to roll forward at 3 squares per round, and anyone ending their turn inside is going to eat an attack vs Reflex (plus, all the dust that the gunfire is scudding up will block vision). The ultimate goal of all parties concerned is to get to one of two pickups at the far end of the combat area and get away before they're chewed up by the aerial fire, but both sides also want to rescue the exec and to settle each others' hash if at all possible. I've no idea who the PCs are going to side with; they might just try to leave both sides to fight it out. So my concern is that there are an awful lot of moving parts in this fight. Both the faction leaders are statted as Elites, with them having 4 Standards each as backup. On top of that there are 6 PCs, the exec, two vehicles, and a moving wall of skyship-flavoured pain. Kinda feels like I'm setting myself up for a bookkeeping nightmare. Has anyone else done something similar as a GM and lived to tell the tale?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2018 21:57
|
|
|
How about swarm solos for each gang, instead of elites+standards?
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2018 22:14
|
|
|
I would be wary of controlling two separate factions that are going to battle against each other. You absolutely do not want to be rolling attacks against yourself - that just leaves the PCs sitting there bored.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 12:46
|
|
|
Since there's too many moving pieces for a traditional fight, turn it into... a skill challenge. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 13:18
|
|
|
Yeah, I think the spellguns mostly setting up terrain, or taking out moks with no roll is a good way to handle it. Keep as much stuff as you can narrative or passive and let the players take center stage. Maybe have the spellguns telegraphed so PC's can move characters into those spots?
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 15:15
|
|
|
Three-way fights in D&D generally never work. It makes the fight like three times as long, and twice as likely that an unpredictable negative outcome occurs.isndl posted:Since there's too many moving pieces for a traditional fight, turn it into... a skill challenge. Historians are vexed by the skill challenge to this day, as it neither requires skill nor is a challenge.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 18:40
|
|
|
So what do you guys do instead of skill challenges? Real question, since I'm running a game and I kinda want a replacement for them as written. Individual skill checks occasionally like Pathfinder or 3E? Some other house rule? Do you count XP for them like a skill challenge? Prism fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Aug 21, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 18:49
|
|
|
I have never given out EXP and I never will.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 22:58
|
|
|
Yup just do whole group story-beat based levelling. And honestly, I'd probably just be doing skills on a narrative basis unless you're talking about an in0combat SC, which method can actually... well, work... because there's a cost to doing the checks beyond 'get x successes before y failures'.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 22:59
|
|
|
Through the entire run of 4e I could never figure out a way to do a skill challenge that didn't seem arbitrary or gamey. Sodomy Hussein posted:Three-way fights in D&D generally never work. It makes the fight like three times as long, and twice as likely that an unpredictable negative outcome occurs. I've found the opposite true, a 3 way fight is really just a two way fight from the players perspective, just some time the enemies attack themselves instead of the party. It's a good way to put pc's in a situation that would normally be way over their heads.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 23:36
|
|
|
Honestly I'm inclined to say that you should handle a skill challenge narratively, instead of what happened in all of my groups: telling someone "roll a skill [that you're trained in], and then [whatever it says on the page] works or doesn't." Make a player actually think and attempt to surprise you and/or themselves. That's not really a "good" answer for 4E,, especially if you are trying to intermix skill challenges and fights, but there you go.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2018 23:41
|
|
|
Wait is that not how you're supposed to do it? I just present problems and suggest skills sometimes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 00:11
|
|
|
Moriatti posted:Wait is that not how you're supposed to do it? With the asterisk of *every group I've personally played in (which involved several published adventures), often you get a list of skills you can roll and combat isn't involved. The penalty for failure is something dumb and utterly inconsequential, like "lose a healing surge."
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 00:22
|
|
|
The Zeitgeist adventure path handles skill challenges pretty well: the PCs are faced with some big problem or task, like a murder investigation, and successes with different skills will accomplish different discrete things like uncovering specific clues. Six clues would be enough to identify the culprit. Extra successes provide additional information on the culprit's resources and likely location. Failures give the culprit more time to dig in, so the PCs face a tougher fight when they go to arrest him. It was never just "ok you need X successes before Y failures."
Hwurmp fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Aug 22, 2018 |
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 01:26
|
|
|
OmanyteJackson posted:Through the entire run of 4e I could never figure out a way to do a skill challenge that didn't seem arbitrary or gamey. It's the strictly set numbers of successes/failures. Every time I tried having a skill challenge as written we'd get to a point where from the narrative, the problem was solved or the situation was hosed, but the mechanics demanded more rolls to be able to declare success or failure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 06:39
|
|
|
Prism posted:So what do you guys do instead of skill challenges? Yes. There's nothing in the book that says you can't present a SINGLE skill check to surmount an obstacle / advance a scene, specify which skill is specifically intended to be used with it, and have the players roll against that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 12:09
|
|
|
The X passes vs Y fails “Skill Challenge” mechanic can come in handy if e.g. you want a trap to take multiple combat turns to disarm but to be able to be bungled outright — although bear in mind that you might thereby be asking a player to sacrifice their combat actions to interact with it. It’s also a way to make a particular obstacle drain a random number of healing surges or otherwise deal random “damage” to the party in the course of being overcome. Otherwise you should just use regular skill checks to resolve player actions as the story/your intuition suggests.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 14:33
|
|
|
My players told me years ago that they generally didn’t like skill checks in combat because they felt giving up a standard action to just roll a d20 wasn’t as fun as selecting a power and rolling a d20. I started to argue that it was essentially the same, rolling and hoping for a big number, but stopped when I realized that the powers were where all the Cool Stuff happened. After that I avoided skill checks unless I worked it to be only a move or minor action (depending on the encounter). If a player came up with an idea to use a skill on their own I just went with it. Otherwise skills were mostly used during role play times, if ever. I toyed with using the 13th Age background concept during the next campaign and that worked out just fine.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 16:36
|
|
|
I just ran a skill challenge in my game the other weekend. I've tried the Obsidian Skill Challenge system before but this time I just went with a basic # of successes before # of failures. A big bad had fled after a fight through a secret door, and the party followed shortly after. Most of it was narrative where I had them try to figure out which path through the sewer he had taken (roll dungeoneering/nature), follow him across a thin section of rock outcropping, and then pursue him into the town where he tried to blend into the crowd. The players came up with ways to try and spot him and kept pursuing and I just threw in some obstacles that the big bad either caused or slipped by and the party needed to dodge or overcome. They gained or lost ground depending on the success or failure and I just kind of winged it to vary up the skills people would use. It was also a game where I was introducing a new player and reintroducing a player who hadn't been there for the last two sessions so the skill challenge moving the party along helped to rope them into the chase in a pretty natural way. Otherwise I would have had to work them in with a random RP meeting. One player kept essentially forcing acrobatics checks, so after the second successful one I just didn't count any of his successes toward the total to avoid letting him spam his high trained skill to win.
|
|
#
?
Aug 22, 2018 16:40
|
|
|
Dremcon posted:After that I avoided skill checks unless I worked it to be only a move or minor action (depending on the encounter). If a player came up with an idea to use a skill on their own I just went with it. Otherwise skills were mostly used during role play times, if ever. in combat, it's generally use to have a "DM's Fiat Action" that exists outside of the normal action economy that the players can use to do whatever whimsical thing you want them to do if you give them a gun, assigning the use of the gun to the DM's Fiat Action means they don't have to compare it against any other attack they could be making, guaranteeing its use at some point if there's a gimmick to the combat, assigning the manipulation of the on-map McGuffin to the DM's Fiat Action means that they don't have to give up as much (except maybe positioning) to work with you on the gimmick you're trying to promote (and this is not a 4e-specific bit of advice)
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2018 04:27
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:in combat, it's generally use to have a "DM's Fiat Action" that exists outside of the normal action economy that the players can use to do whatever whimsical thing you want them to do
|
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2018 23:21
|
|
|
I still use them for that since it's cool to have choices to make.
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2018 16:45
|
|
|
So I think I'm gearing up for a Zeitgeist sequel campaign. Gonna keep it to probably Heroic and Paragon. In a general sense I'm not sure if it's more interesting to set the adventure 30, 75, or centuries after.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2018 03:57
|
|
|
30 if you want all of the old PCs to be able to cameo, I'd imagine. 75 if you want their legacies to start taking shape. Centuries if you wanna portray them as they appeared after fading into myth.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2018 10:45
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:30 if you want all of the old PCs to be able to cameo, I'd imagine. 75 if you want their legacies to start taking shape. Centuries if you wanna portray them as they appeared after fading into myth. I am also considering trying out the Unity RPG as a system here, but I'll need to convert the races...
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2018 22:44
|
|
|
Actually, thinking about it, if you want the hook to scream PLOT IS GONNA HAPPEN, set it at the centennial.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2018 23:46
|
|
|
Then, having nothing important happen for 2 years.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2018 02:14
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Actually, thinking about it, if you want the hook to scream PLOT IS GONNA HAPPEN, set it at the centennial. Hhhmmm you have a point! Or maybe 2 years before it so there's a build-up.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2018 05:56
|
|
|
How much would the game break if I made misses deal either minimum damage or just stat bonus damage? My players main complaint with dnd games is misses being frustrating and boring.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2018 22:18
|
|
|
Spiteski posted:How much would the game break if I made misses deal either minimum damage or just stat bonus damage?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2018 22:24
|
|
|
Any examples? Or any ideas to mitigate that? Maybe for powers that do a token amount on a miss, doubling it/adding the extra on top of?
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2018 22:27
|
|
|
Spiteski posted:How much would the game break if I made misses deal either minimum damage or just stat bonus damage? Not even slightly. Unless you listen to the grogs this is a HUGELY triggering subject for them.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2018 22:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 00:41 |
|
|
Well, the fighter at-will whose main feature is doing damage on a miss is less likely to be taken. Unless you can stack misses.
|
|
#
?
Sep 28, 2018 22:58
|
|