|
Kurieg posted:Well yeah, when you have Bandwidth Throttle as a level 1 encounter power you don't really need anything else.
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 20:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 08:10 |
|
|
Thanks! I've just been playing these dumb games for way too long. I really should give design a try, though. The worst thing that can happen is the world gets another half-baked free game.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 20:55
|
|
|
I really like this idea of intrinsic meta-abilites you propose. What if everyone gets a pool of per day "feats of X" they use to really shine in their niche? Feats of Magic for wizards replaces vancian spellcasting Feats of Strength for fighters to insta-kill non-fighters, bust down doors/lift gates, automatically intimidate, etc Feats of Cunning for rogue types to disappear, act first, fast-talk perfectly, etc Feats of Faith for cleric types to heal, turn undead, inspire or beguile humanoids, etc Of course, how many feats does each class get and should their be restrictions or just DM fiat them all? That's way beyond my expertise to sketch out.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 22:30
|
|
|
FordCQC posted:I really like this idea of intrinsic meta-abilites you propose. What if everyone gets a pool of per day "feats of X" they use to really shine in their niche? Fate points? e: Not phone posting now. You're talking about a system where you can say "I do my thing" and then it just happens, subject to having the resource available. I assume you're already fine with stuff getting abstracted to "spend point, do thing" if you're talking about meta-abilities and instakills. You should look at FATE if you haven't. Has there been a FATE version that's supposed to specifically emulate the stories that emerge from D&D? Like, where you have aspects like "Fighter" so you can spend a point to do that fighter poo poo (eg, automatically crash through a giant portcullis, throw the rogue across the river, just straight up behead this guy) and regain points by also doing that fighter poo poo (eg "gently caress this, I charge", "gently caress them and their little arrows, I'm not moving" or "gently caress that, I push the wiz out the way and the ogre's atack myself"). Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Dec 19, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 22:42
|
|
|
My personal super secret D&D hack is to just play anything else other than loving D&D over and over again 
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 23:09
|
|
|
Bedlamdan posted:My personal super secret D&D hack is to just play anything else other than loving D&D over and over again mine is to play a version of D&D I like and enjoy it and just not worry about circlejerking about D&D being bad
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 23:11
|
|
|
Mine is to play the dumbest characters I can come up with in other people's campaigns.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 23:26
|
|
|
Comrade Gorbash posted:This is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of what's going on. There are two issues with what's routinely going on in D&D. This still happens without too much effort in 5e, as well. My experience is that, for all our rogue and barbarian are fightier, a sorceror (and presumably anyone else) still has the kind of utility to bypass fights and other difficult encounters those classes can't just trivially ignore by declaring a spell.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2018 23:54
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:Fate points? Yeah I'm not as well-read on what's out there these days, I agree it sounds like I should look at FATE. The other thing you describe sounds loving awesome too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 00:21
|
|
|
spectralent posted:This still happens without too much effort in 5e, as well. My experience is that, for all our rogue and barbarian are fightier, a sorceror (and presumably anyone else) still has the kind of utility to bypass fights and other difficult encounters those classes can't just trivially ignore by declaring a spell. It is absolutely still an issue in 5th edition and is one of the major design flaws of the system that was intentionally reintroduced after 4th edition fixed it. There is simply nothing that really stacks up against spells like Suggestion or Banishment, much less poo poo like Wish. The best you can say about fighters in 5th edition is that they can out-damage a caster...if you build them correctly and aren't considering AoE situations. And they do that by breaking the action economy, which is uhhh frankly not the best way to go about designing it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 00:34
|
|
|
Especially when the vanilla BM ranger is sitting there with an actual for real excuse for breaking the action economy but WOTC says no, leaving them worse off than just not picking a fighting style.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 00:37
|
|
|
Reene posted:It is absolutely still an issue in 5th edition and is one of the major design flaws of the system that was intentionally reintroduced after 4th edition fixed it. There is simply nothing that really stacks up against spells like Suggestion or Banishment, much less poo poo like Wish.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 01:01
|
|
|
Elephant Parade posted:Speaking of design flaws 4e fixed and 5e reintroduced: why the hell do monsters have ability scores again? They serve no mechanical purpose except adding another step to homebrew, and just figuring out what they should be for a custom monster can be a pain because ability scores as a metric were always intended for humanoids and humanoids alone (example one: how dexterous is a cheetah?). I'm not really a fan of its discrete powers and tactical combat, but 4e made so many great changes before 5e reverted them to appease grognards. It's one of the bad and dumb results of ability scores and saves being the same thing now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 01:04
|
|
|
Because FRW is gone. Now you need to know what the individual ability scores are to calculate their saves. Why did 5E bring back saves, and double the saves you need to care about, is a valid question, however.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 01:04
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Because FRW is gone. Now you need to know what the individual ability scores are to calculate their saves.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 01:09
|
|
|
FordCQC posted:I really like this idea of intrinsic meta-abilites you propose. What if everyone gets a pool of per day "feats of X" they use to really shine in their niche? This isn't necessarily a bad place to start with something but it does tie back into something that D&D has historically done which is the implicit statement that a "feat of magic" is "potentially anything and everything." It gets back to what moth is saying about narrative control and agency. A Fighter might say "I use my special point to bust down this wall" and that's cool but what stops the Wizard from going "I just teleport past the wall" or "I turn invisible" or something which similarly steps on the Rogue's toes, etc. Like yeah it's still noticeably better that Fighters and Rogues in such a system do have the ability to simply say "I do X" but it's always been a hassle that D&D's conception of the Wizard has veered so heavily into the territory of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 01:35
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:This isn't necessarily a bad place to start with something but it does tie back into something that D&D has historically done which is the implicit statement that a "feat of magic" is "potentially anything and everything." It gets back to what moth is saying about narrative control and agency. A Fighter might say "I use my special point to bust down this wall" and that's cool but what stops the Wizard from going "I just teleport past the wall" or "I turn invisible" or something which similarly steps on the Rogue's toes, etc. Like yeah it's still noticeably better that Fighters and Rogues in such a system do have the ability to simply say "I do X" but it's always been a hassle that D&D's conception of the Wizard has veered so heavily into the territory of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better. Touches on something I've wanted to ask for a while. Given that D&D is apparently now it's own genre (shudder), what are that genre's expectations? Like, let's say I wanted to do a pbta game that, rather than emulating the trappings of D&D, produced the same in-fiction stories as a (good) D&D game? A bit like what I mentioned above, but not as OTT. Are ineffectual meathead fighters and do-anything smartguy wizards actually a part of it, or are those just kind of weird bits of baggage? If we include (the possibility of) a fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard, elf, and dwarf, have we got all the "classes", or do we need things like halflings, paladins, and double-vampire vampire werecrystal turbobards? What do I need to include so that someone hearing the in-fiction narrative would immediately know that they were seeing D&D happening?
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 01:59
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:What do I need to include so that someone hearing the in-fiction narrative would immediately know that they were seeing D&D happening? Drizzt
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 02:24
|
|
|
Spell levels
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 02:38
|
|
|
andrew smash posted:Drizzt Who for years was part of a party with no primary spellcasters. Suicide in D&D, but very successful in the fiction.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 02:56
|
|
|
The first Forgotten Realms novels, the Moonshae trilogy, had no heroic wizard characters. A lot of the popular storylines in the 90s featured few or no wizard protagonists, or even spellcasting protagonists in some cases. None of this led to any reform in the formula of what playable D&D was. If anything the shift from 2nd edition to 3rd edition seemed intended to ensure no one could ever try to play Drizzt or Arilyn Moonblade without a wizard to prop them up. D&D fails to emulate D&D. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the D&D that can be named is not the eternal D&D. If you meet Elminster on the road, kill him.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 03:28
|
|
|
FordCQC posted:I really like this idea of intrinsic meta-abilites you propose. What if everyone gets a pool of per day "feats of X" they use to really shine in their niche? If you squint hard enough, you can sort of see bits and pieces of this kind of design peeking out from D&D: The Fighter fights, and is (at least intended to be) really good at fighting, but ultimately still has to resort to rolling The Thief can disarm traps and unlock doors, but again they do this via rolling, which means there's still a chance of failure The Wizard can cast spells that disarm traps, cast spells that unlock doors, and cast spells that end fights ... but they only have a limited number of these Of course, that makes the Wizard a really powerful character, because until and unless you can apply enough pressure to get the Wizard to spend those spells, and until and unless you can apply that pressure enough times to deplete those spells, and until and unless you can also convince the party to keep going for some time after those spells have been depleted (rather than the party just peacing out as soon as they've run out), then the Fighter and the Thief never get to shine. What should happen, if we're to interrogate this particular line of thought at all, is that the Fighter gets "Fight Tokens" that they can spend to win fights handily, the Thief gets "Five Finger Discount Tokens" that they can spend to grant them success when thievery is critical, and the Wizard gets their own niche of things to spend their spells on, and everyone reverts to rolling once those tokens/spells are used up (or if the players think that the particular scene is "easy" enough that they can leave it up to rolling). That way, everyone gets their time to shine without having to wait for the Wizard to deign to let them, everyone gets to participate in the resource depletion minigame, and everyone is invested in completing scenes and getting through the adventuring day efficiently. 4e giving everyone Daily powers sort of tried to do this, but only insofar as it (consciously) broke down the combat into various roles, and let you spend your "tokens" on expressing your combat specialty. It worked pretty well, though I imagine it could have been applied more broadly.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 03:33
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:What should happen, if we're to interrogate this particular line of thought at all, is that the Fighter gets "Fight Tokens" that they can spend to win fights handily, the Thief gets "Five Finger Discount Tokens" that they can spend to grant them success when thievery is critical, and the Wizard gets their own niche of things to spend their spells on, and everyone reverts to rolling once those tokens/spells are used up (or if the players think that the particular scene is "easy" enough that they can leave it up to rolling). To an extent this is how Gumshoe works, albeit in the context of investigations as opposed to dungeon crawls.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 03:42
|
|
|
Kai Tave posted:To an extent this is how Gumshoe works, albeit in the context of investigations as opposed to dungeon crawls. I'm still waiting for someone to a dungeon crawl hack of Gumshoe
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 03:47
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:I'm still waiting for someone to a dungeon crawl hack of Gumshoe lol I was gonna ask if someone had already done that (I know someone made a fantasy Gumshoe insert that you can slot into other RPGs to add more investigative crunch) but I figured if anyone would know it would be you. I guess they haven't gotten around to it yet.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 03:56
|
|
|
I think the biggest failure point for d&d is parties who sleep 8 hours in the Dungeon to recover spells. It is super common, and really makes no sense. Really, who plays D&D games past 10th level anyway? Staying in the lower part of the curve is better for everyone.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 04:06
|
|
|
The 3.5 warlock was supposed to be a damage focused wizard that traded in his utility and skewed damage curve for some higher AC and a damage curve that was a straight line that went on forever. If your adventuring day lasted long enough that your wizard and sorcerer ran out of spells your Warlock was still cackling like a loon in the back hurling out balls of acid.... in theory. In practice you were still limited in how much you could adventure by your cleric's ability to sandbag and once that ran out you had to rest regardless. Lord_Hambrose posted:I think the biggest failure point for d&d is parties who sleep 8 hours in the Dungeon to recover spells. It is super common, and really makes no sense. Most adventures assume that you're going to rest in the dungeon. Because the dungeons are loving huge.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 04:09
|
|
|
Servetus posted:If you meet Elminster on the road, kill him. Kill Six Billion Wizards. Lord_Hambrose posted:Really, who plays D&D games past 10th level anyway? Staying in the lower part of the curve is better for everyone. The mountain of Epic-level material that people put out indicates a whole hell of a lot of people did, for whatever weird reason.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 04:22
|
|
|
Servetus posted:
Did you literally just paraphrase the second line of the Dao De Jing while talking about D&D? ... Marry me?
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 05:14
|
|
|
Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Playing a wizard is true power. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Dec 20, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 06:46
|
|
|
Running a game of 3.5 is like cooking a small fish.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 06:55
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:Touches on something I've wanted to ask for a while. ok so i'm gonna try to answer this fighters being ineffectual is mostly a byproduct of bad design i think the "ideal" D&D fighter is competent but not supernatural, and wizards are definitely do anything superheroes you definitely need some "out there" races like halflings and gnomes or half-orcs i would say paladins and maybe monks are pretty standard by now it definitely has to have a greek style god pantheon
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 07:07
|
|
|
Elfgames posted:ok so i'm gonna try to answer this Is competent-not-supernatural actually what people think of though? I'm thinking in terms of "natty 20 lol I stole his pants / busted down a castle wall with my forehead / negotiated a win-win trade deal by helicoptering my dick at both delegations" type events.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 07:19
|
|
|
Kurieg posted:Most adventures assume that you're going to rest in the dungeon. Because the dungeons are loving huge. Time to bring back Wandering Monster rolls! 
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 08:02
|
|
|
AlphaDog posted:What do I need to include so that someone hearing the in-fiction narrative would immediately know that they were seeing D&D happening? D&D is four to six homeless powerful amoral thieves genociding 250 minorities and hauling away all of their valuables (and various parts of their bodies) while the unimpressed locals shrug and then buy all the stuff they stole for a global gold-backed universal eternal currency. D&D is a limitless, universal supply of ten foot ladders that cost less than two ten foot poles, in a world where a week's wages for an ordinary laborer are less than the price of a single meal in a tavern, which will be certainly burned to the ground by the next group of homeless powerful amoral thieves to meet up there, certainly within the next month or so, with no real consequences. D&D is a trans-planar setting of racially-segregated societies of people with universal cross-species sexual and reproductive compatibility persisting for at least tens of thousands of years. D&D is a place where magic is so commonplace and mundane that the vast majority of enchanted items are not even worthy of being named, every vaguely competent professional can possess several, they are routinely and casually exchanged for piles of gold, and yet society has never advanced beyond a pseudo-rennaisance/medieval semi-collapsed state in which laborers till the soil by hand, beggars starve in the streets, and the wealthy can purchase resurrection from the clergy without compromising the deterministic ethical superiority of half of those religions as defined by universal constants of empirically-provable moral absolutes on which the universe runs. D&D is the armored jackboot of the upwardly-mobile mercenary adventurer caste, stepping on the face of the proletariat forever, plus there's dragons. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Dec 20, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 08:06
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:what follows isn't really intended to be a refutation or real disagreement with this post, I just like to talk about design homullus posted:Did you count the number of spells that Gandalf casts in LOTR? You know, the man whose major contribution to Bilbo's Big Birthday Bash was bring fireworks? Like at least half of the magic Gandalf does could be plausibly taken as sleight of hand and using mundane resources other people aren't aware of.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 08:20
|
|
|
Servetus posted:The first Forgotten Realms novels, the Moonshae trilogy, had no heroic wizard characters. A lot of the popular storylines in the 90s featured few or no wizard protagonists, or even spellcasting protagonists in some cases. None of this led to any reform in the formula of what playable D&D was. If anything the shift from 2nd edition to 3rd edition seemed intended to ensure no one could ever try to play Drizzt or Arilyn Moonblade without a wizard to prop them up. D&D fails to emulate D&D. IIRC, wasn't the first real spellcaster 'protagonist' of the D&D books Raistlin? Who is a massive dick to his party, and generally only doesn't completely make them irrelevant because he refuses to exert himself in any way to help them? Who eventually goes on to destroy all the gods and leave himself as the sole living creature in the universe, before time fuckery by a kender ends in him instead just beating -one- of the gods and dying. His twin brother, the fighter, goes on to peak at running an inn with their party's other fighter. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Dec 20, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 08:23
|
|
|
Lord_Hambrose posted:I think the biggest failure point for d&d is parties who sleep 8 hours in the Dungeon to recover spells. It is super common, and really makes no sense. Twenty levels are there, and a lot of people want to play everything advertised in their book, weirdly.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 08:37
|
|
|
Slimnoid posted:The mountain of Epic-level material that people put out indicates a whole hell of a lot of people did, for whatever weird reason. I've known people who play epic-level D&D, but I haven't known anyone who actually played a "level 1 right up to epic" campaign all the way through. Most of the people I know who play epic-level D&D start their characters out at those levels in the first place, and a lot of them play epic-level pretty much exclusively. Kinda makes me question whether high-level and low-level D&D are well served by being the same game system.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 09:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 08:10 |
|
|
Thuryl posted:I've known people who play epic-level D&D, but I haven't known anyone who actually played a "level 1 right up to epic" campaign all the way through. Most of the people I know who play epic-level D&D start their characters out at those levels in the first place, and a lot of them play epic-level pretty much exclusively. Kinda makes me question whether high-level and low-level D&D are well served by being the same game system. I did back in 2e. Played a level 1 through to 24 rogue, because that was about the point the casters hit level 18. I was completely incapable of failing a thieving skills check, but also completely incapable of being effective past level 15.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2018 10:46
|
|