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Verisimilidude posted:And if you don't even consider your racial stat bonuses on character creation, why even bother having them? I think this bit got edited in, sorry for missing it I don't disregard the bonuses but they're tertiary to me behind racial abilities and how I imaginr the look of a character. I wouldn't weep if they were done away with but I think they make decision making mire complex for a player who doesn't focus on max efficiency. So, yes, in a way I'm arguing for this because it's what I like
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May 13, 2019 02:58
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Elector_Nerdlingen posted:"These people are smarter, those people are stronger, these other people are inherently more likeable" stuff has uncomfortable present-day real-world parallels, while "these people spit fire, those other people breathe underwater, these other people can have conversations with trees" generally does not. It's okay that twelve foot giants are stronger than real people. It's okay that psionic mind flayers are hyperintelligent. It's okay that faeries are supernaturally attractive to everybody. But it's problematic for a player to have these characteristics for their characters? RPGs are definitely a blank slate that can have ugly and inappropriate themes when fleshed out, but it seems like you're really grasping for something here.
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May 13, 2019 03:51
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Elves are real. Orcs are real. I play D&D because racism is real, and strong, and my friend.
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May 13, 2019 04:33
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Did not expect  in the D&D Thread
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May 13, 2019 04:35
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mango sentinel posted:Did not expect When I broached this subject before the most common response was something like "a halfling is always weaker but faster and smarter than a half orc. that's science"
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May 13, 2019 04:37
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Infinite Karma posted:oppression Olympics Lol gently caress off
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May 13, 2019 05:54
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mango sentinel posted:Anyone got a ~3rd level adventure with a small town and nearby rear end in a top hat wizard? Just steal the first day of Kingdom Hearts 2 only make Diz the guy behind the thief.
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May 13, 2019 06:20
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Josef bugman posted:So, I have a question to ask everyone. Oh, friend, hello! I brought this exact question up earlier in the "Facists in Trad Gaming" a couple weeks ago because it has been tearing at me for years. It's an incredibly complex question, and I need to get to bed soon, but one aspect that has not been discussed yet here is that it is implicit in the alignment structure that authoritarianism is considered morally superior to anti-authoritarianism. If you look closely, you can see that this was known to the designers of 3rd edition to be a problem, and I think there's some evidence that this is the case in 5th edition as well. I just think that it was a bizarre position for the game to take as it seems to me that the type of people who would most likely become adventurers would tend to be anti-authoriatrian.
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May 13, 2019 06:38
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Josef bugman posted:So, I have a question to ask everyone. DalaranJ posted:Oh, friend, hello! When you asked that question, I was gonna make a thread about building RPG settings so we can discuss that stuff without people who just want to slay orcs without thinking about it having to read about it. For whatever reason I forgot, but here it is: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3889405
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May 13, 2019 07:39
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I'm 100% fine with existing settings as they are, it's good for people who don't want to put any work into things. In the end, it is after all a game about peoples that just don't exist and it is fine for people to simply want to traverse dungeons, kill monsters, and collect loot as the base game is designed for. However I am a big fan of making the various humanoid peoples not so entirely chained down by their common alignments. Hobgoblins actually show some of this already, with the fact that they can make for an enemy that makes more sense than just a random monster in a dungeon. The Invader. They'll bring their goblinoid kin together, along with conscripting(well, or enslaving) other creatures for their war machine. However they don't seek to destroy, they seek to conquer and expand while bringing citizens of lands they take into the fold. It's a far more interesting take than usual. You could easily push it even further really. I think it was Matt Colville who made a video which asked the question, "If the nations of your world aren't at war, then why not?" Going into the nuances of diplomacy, land and resources make for a far more morally grey setting and there's no reason this has to only be limited to what you can play out of the PHB. But again some people just want to dungeoncrawl instead of trying to go all Total War in their D&D.
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May 13, 2019 09:39
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I did kind of think its a bit weird to have "well most of them lean towards evil" to which I have to laugh.
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May 13, 2019 09:44
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Josef bugman posted:I did kind of think its a bit weird to have "well most of them lean towards evil" to which I have to laugh.
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May 13, 2019 10:26
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Toplowtech posted:*a group of adventurers sit around the campfire* WAIT ARE WE THE EVIL GUYS??? I more meant the whole "hobgoblins are an aggressive, expansionist power" and I then compare it to all the human kingdoms and just sort of raise an eyebrow.
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May 13, 2019 10:37
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Josef bugman posted:I more meant the whole "hobgoblins are an aggressive, expansionist power" and I then compare it to all the human kingdoms and just sort of raise an eyebrow.
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May 13, 2019 10:44
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Well you see, our expansion ranges on a spectrum between defensively searching for room and resources to live in a calm and orderly fashion < > rugged groups of individualist frontiersmen carving paradise from terra nullius. Their expansion, on the other hand, is on a scale of oppressive militarized colonialism < > rampaging hordes. Says so right on this diagram that we made up. Can't argue with the diagram. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 11:13 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 11:10
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DalaranJ posted:It's an incredibly complex question, and I need to get to bed soon, but one aspect that has not been discussed yet here is that it is implicit in the alignment structure that authoritarianism is considered morally superior to anti-authoritarianism. If you look closely, you can see that this was known to the designers of 3rd edition to be a problem, and I think there's some evidence that this is the case in 5th edition as well. I just think that it was a bizarre position for the game to take as it seems to me that the type of people who would most likely become adventurers would tend to be anti-authoriatrian. What do you mean? The most direct shorthand is that Lawful characters are predisposed to respect authority and Chaotic characters to shun it, but I feel like the idea that chaos is inherently evil and law is inherently good made its way out of the game a very long time ago in any real way. Is there an obvious thing I'm missing?
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May 13, 2019 12:22
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So libertarians are Chaotic Evil, and tankies Lawful Good? Edit: In what way did earlier editions assume Law=good? I know earlier editions actually had mechanical consequence for alignments, so what effects indicated that?
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May 13, 2019 13:02
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Liquid Dinosaur posted:So libertarians are Chaotic Evil, and tankies Lawful Good? I thought at one point law and chaos was the only alignment axis, and evildoers tended to be chaotic.
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May 13, 2019 13:16
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Mr. Lobe posted:I thought at one point law and chaos was the only alignment axis, and evildoers tended to be chaotic. Yeah, this is true in OD&D. Law is conflated with communal values and Chaos with individualist ones, and the early books basically said outright that chaotic behavior tended to resemble "evil". You could be a chaotic hero or lawful villain in theory, but in practice that isn't how things worked. Re: the politics question, I honestly think it's fair to map Good/Evil to the Left/Right axis and Law/Chaos to Auth/Anti-auth on the political compass. A sane, rational Chaotic Evil person is basically just a "true" objectivist: the only thing that matters is what they want, and they don't give a gently caress about the damage they cause other people or society in the taking.
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May 13, 2019 13:24
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Mr. Lobe posted:I thought at one point law and chaos was the only alignment axis, and evildoers tended to be chaotic. In BECMI basic there's only law / neutrality / chaos. The book explicitly tells you "Lawful behavior would usually be described as good" and "Chaotic behavior would usually be described as evil". Neutral are explicitly "neither side must have too much power" bullshit centrists.
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May 13, 2019 13:25
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Mr. Lobe posted:I thought at one point law and chaos was the only alignment axis, and evildoers tended to be chaotic. Law/Chaos was the thing in Redbox/Bluebox D&D, and in the Cyclopedia (the highest expression to-date of the Gygaxian Arts).
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May 13, 2019 13:28
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I do not understand the whole "there needs to be a balance" thing that exists in some parts of the lore. Like I can understand "to put it bluntly the Abyss is too powerful and it kind of sucks but we have to deal with it for now" but not "MORE PUPPIES TO THE FIRE, WE NEED TO BALANCE OUT GOOD ACTIONS".
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May 13, 2019 14:18
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Josef bugman posted:I do not understand the whole "there needs to be a balance" thing that exists in some parts of the lore. I kinda feel like the one good thing Dragonlance did as a setting was have its take on the "need for balance" be "when good gets too strong it attracts zealots and they do evil in the name of being extra-good, so, no, it isn't for the best if the priests of the good gods just get to run everything." Not that their execution was always ideal, but it at least stayed away from the "MORE PUPPIES TO THE FIRE" aspect.
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May 13, 2019 15:02
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Basically you should do your balance of light and darkness like Kingdom Hearts and instead of good and evil it's more like positivity and negativity. Here let me get my slides, you see Xemnas represents...
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May 13, 2019 15:08
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Glagha posted:Basically you should do your balance of light and darkness like Kingdom Hearts and instead of good and evil it's more like positivity and negativity. Here let me get my slides, you see Xemnas represents... No.
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May 13, 2019 15:31
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:What do you mean? No. I’m mostly referring to an issue that stems from OD&D and BECMI. It’s just the tendency of unexamined problems to be inherited to descendant products, partially because of shared audience. Splitting ‘morality’ into it’s own axis diminished this problem, but I don’t think it eliminated it. Which were the alignments with two axis that they felt it was important to keep in 4e, for instance?
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May 13, 2019 16:18
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I'm a fan of SotDL's system, where being a huge dick or learning Forbidden Magic nets you Corruption - a metaphysical stain upon your soul that will condemn you to Hell upon death. The only way to get rid of it is to devote yourself to selfless pursuits, or accept your fate and submit to the "tender attentions" of the devils that will feed on it before sending your soul back into the circle of reincarnation.
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May 13, 2019 16:40
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Glagha posted:Xemnas gesundheit
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May 13, 2019 16:44
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I always felt like it made more sense for ability score bonuses to be attributed to cultural or background forces rather than what species the player character is. Like sure, some Orcs are stronger than most people but if you get Tim the Orc who spent his whole life eating chips and reading up on government conspiracy theories i'd think that would have a much larger impact on his strength than some muscles his ancestors had.
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May 13, 2019 17:02
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Arrrthritis posted:I always felt like it made more sense for ability score bonuses to be attributed to cultural or background forces rather than what species the player character is. Like sure, some Orcs are stronger than most people but if you get Tim the Orc who spent his whole life eating chips and reading up on government conspiracy theories i'd think that would have a much larger impact on his strength than some muscles his ancestors had. You can totally play an Orc with 10 strength, that never gets better.
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May 13, 2019 17:06
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The writing and themes of the Book of Exalted Deeds sand the Book of Vile Darkness were absolute garbage, but the idea that there was lowercase good and evil that are just philosophical beliefs, and uppercase Good and Evil and Law and Chaos that have magical/metaphyt properties and physical effects/consequences was good. Random libertarian is just evil, and regular necromancy is just magic, but the necromancer who channels demonic energy is using Evil. And just like Fire and Water are elemental forces, so are the alignments... but you have to channel them in a magical way for it to matter in-character.
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May 13, 2019 17:09
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player: so when I rage I become immune to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage? me, dm: no, just resistant player: you know what I mean, I take less damage? me: yes, but you're not immune player: I know the difference ~~gameday~~ me: the arrow hits you for 8 piercing damage, so you take 4 damage player: but I thought I was immune??
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May 13, 2019 17:41
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Something I got excited about in 5e was no penalties to ability scores for races. I always thought dwarves taking a hit to Charisma for the crime of being a fuckin dwarf was bullshit. It drove me away from being a COOL DRAGONBORN MONK in Pathfinder because my dragonborn would be arbitrarily less dextrous despite being an anime. Granted, they walked that back with some of the Volo's races, most glaringly with orcs taking an intelligence hit for no good reason. I think kobolds get a negative too? I'm completely in favor of ditching racial stat bonuses and just giving everyone a +2 and +1 to stats of their choice.
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May 13, 2019 17:46
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Yeah, you can always trust your players to completely ignore everything on their character sheets and not only forget everything they have but also invent new abilities entirely. I'm personally on board with giving all players a +2/+1/+1 to distribute as they like, since adventurers are all meant to be statistical anomalies at the ends of the bell curve anyways. Between generic ability bonuses and a free level 1 feat, I'd actually feel good about playing things besides Vuman.
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May 13, 2019 17:54
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Yeah, the fixed bonuses kind of suck, I wish they were all just floating anyway.
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May 13, 2019 18:19
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The first character I ever wanted to roll was a half-orc rogue; raised by rogue mom until she was caught & jailed, tried joining dad's war party but kicked out because "orcs aren't rogues", now adventuring to prove that orcs can too be rogues. I'm sure a good DM could tweak the racial stats to account for upbringing; say you get STR/DEX +1 each instead of STR +2, you start with a rogue-related Feat, you can use a light crossbow one-handed, you have disadvantage on disguise-related checks, and you can't speak Orcish. Like the first line in the DMG is "you're the rules admin, you can pick and choose which ones make the game more fun"
PhyrexianLibrarian fucked around with this message at 18:27 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 18:22
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Does it make more sense to take Alert (initiative buff), Athlete (tons of movement perks), or Skulker (dim vision and hiding buff) for the level 10 fighter/rogue archer I’m making for a one-off game? Already have sharpshooter and maxed dex.
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May 13, 2019 18:35
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change my name posted:Does it make more sense to take Alert (initiative buff), Athlete (tons of movement perks), or Skulker (dim vision and hiding buff) for the level 10 fighter/rogue archer I’m making for a one-off game? Already have sharpshooter and maxed dex. Alert, probably. Rogues live or die by going first.
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May 13, 2019 18:38
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lightrook posted:Yeah, you can always trust your players to completely ignore everything on their character sheets and not only forget everything they have but also invent new abilities entirely. Variant Human should just be Variant Anyone, it's really the most straightforward solution to this complaint.
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May 13, 2019 19:58
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^^^^^^ Yeah that. Variant Anything.change my name posted:Does it make more sense to take Alert (initiative buff), Athlete (tons of movement perks), or Skulker (dim vision and hiding buff) for the level 10 fighter/rogue archer I’m making for a one-off game? Already have sharpshooter and maxed dex.
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May 13, 2019 20:06
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