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Xiahou Dun posted:This is all just an argument based around actually thinking design and working towards that. If your goal really was "Wizards are gods and shout neener neener neener fart from on top of their very own dragon while the fighter carries their luggage" and you advertised as such, who could blame you for your bizarre quixotic thing. But then you should really rename the class "Bellhop" instead of "Fighter" to be honest. which is almost word-for-word what Ars Magica does, and it's great but it also doesn't offer you "fighter or wizard?" as a mechanically fair and equal choice in the first place, or even put them in the same opportunity cost-context
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 08:48 |
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# ? Jun 12, 2024 18:31 |
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Lemon-Lime posted:I don't want Warlords tainted by being associated with 5e, so I'm vetoing this motion. Okay, actually, fair. Every other RPG besides 5e and it's attendant grossness should have Warlords, and let's keep this in mind for 6e. And hey maybe we don't go out of our way to employ rapists or neo-Nazis. Or maybe just don't employ them at all. Especially none who poo poo their pants at a Chik-Fil-A or talk about cultural marxism and make people who just quietly smoke look even badder.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 08:49 |
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Zaphod42 posted:And now I have to ask, is there a good wrestling roleplaying system? That could be a ton of fun if done properly. Sky's the limit with kayfabe. World Wide Wrestling is pretty good, and it's specifically about the spectacle and a franchise rather than say focusing on being a combat sim, where you're just rolling to beat each other up. So it's great if you're a fan of wrestling and go in wanting to do a weekly soap opera of in ring antics and personal relationships affected by 'em. So like you'd roll cooperatively for a match to put on a good show, but the complications might be one player takes a real bump that sets their career back. Or a real rivalry winds up forming because someone decided to 'no sell' a few moves and now they're hot, and what was supposed to just be kayfabe turns into actual hatred because they're costing the other wrestler a chance to shine or even just try a new gimmick. It's another powered by the apocalypse game, so great if that style clicks with you, but something to skip if you want something crunchier or that's more focused on being a punch sport simulator just over the top instead of soap operas in spandex.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 08:52 |
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Zandar posted:The only reason going magical gives you more options is because D&D has defined magic as having all the options. Very little other fiction gives a single wizard the breadth of ability that D&D does. If wizards had to choose an area of magic like pyromancy, or if magic had definite and restrictive rules, suddenly you can't just justify everything with, "Well, it's maaaagic." On a related note, this universality of magic is a direct cause of a lot of the balance issues in D&D. That's fair, if you're restricted to "you can only control fire magic" then you're about on par as a warrior for how much range of creativity you have. But I think with magic its easier to say "you have domain over matter magic" which is a bit wider, without going full hog "you're a D&D wiz and can cast nearly anything". Like I was trying to say before though, this isn't about realism. Its just about keeping things feeling distinct. I do actually like systems that are entirely class-less and you just build a free-form character, but for games where class identity is strong, you need a way to say "these things feel physical fightery and not a thing a wizard would do" and "these things are wizardy and not things a warrior could do" and the more creative you get with the supernatural physical powers, the more they start to just feel like another type of magic. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, and you can just have another type of magic for warriors. But then its like, why have classes? And because some people keep misunderstanding and getting upset, I want to be clear none of this is saying "classes are bad" or "classes are the best" I'm just talking about different tradeoffs and difficulties in roleplaying. Coolness Averted posted:World Wide Wrestling is pretty good, and it's specifically about the spectacle and a franchise rather than say focusing on being a combat sim, where you're just rolling to beat each other up. That sounds pretty rad.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 08:59 |
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Zaphod42 posted:Like I was trying to say before though, this isn't about realism. Its just about keeping things feeling distinct. I do actually like systems that are entirely class-less and you just build a free-form character, but for games where class identity is strong, you need a way to say "these things feel physical fightery and not a thing a wizard would do" and "these things are wizardy and not things a warrior could do" and the more creative you get with the supernatural physical powers, the more they start to just feel like another type of magic. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, and you can just have another type of magic for warriors. But then its like, why have classes? If magic can do anything, then "just another type of magic" isn't actually samey at all. It's like saying "oh well if it's just another type of adventurer then that doesn't feel very distinct." Those words don't actually mean anything.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 09:10 |
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I'm thinking about adding warlords to all these different RPGs and yeah, it makes them more better: Traveler, Paranoia!, Star Wars, RIFTS, PDQ T&J, Champions... basically there's always room for a character who has the power to inspire other characters to exceed their normal limits in specific and tightly-managed but useful ways, plus is handy with normal weapons and can hold their own in a fistfight. I know I keep mentioning this one niche game that isn't a game lot of people play (conan 2d20), but it's just because that's the rule set I've studied most recently, but: that system defines two different damage types, one physical (Vigor) and one mental (Resolve). Resolve is essentially morale/psychology, and you are explicitly supposed to use either or both in combat... so you can defeat an enemy you're fighting by convincing them they've lost without actually hacking them to death (or perhaps at the same time that you're hacking them to death). You just have to get past their Resolve soaks of Courage and /or Morale, burn through their available Stress, and start doing Harms (the permanent/long-lasting damage type) which for resolve attacks is called Trauma. Four harms incapacitates a PC, but you can generally take out an NPC with fewer. You can recover your own Resolve stress using the Discipline skill, and assist other characters to recover using the Counsel skill. In this system, skills are how everything is done, including attacks in combat, so again the way you fight is not strongly divorced mechanically from the way you climb a wall or charm a snake or pick a pocket or bullshit a noble. So there's nothing stopping you from doing Counsel in combat, but there's other skills and also talents that seem fairly Warlordish. The Command skill keys off Personality, and one use is to use the Assist action to bolster another character's task - so you could use Command to make an ally fight more betterer. If you take the prerequisite Captain talent you can then take the Heed My Words talent, which is a Display that uses the Command skill to do four dice of mental damage with the Area and Stun qualities once per scene; or the Inspiring Leader talent that lets your allies and subordinates gain two dice of morale soak while they can see or hear you, or if they're in close range they get 4 dice. So just being in the same zone with your buddies gives them some solid protection against losing any Resolve. And then there's yet another skill, Persuade, with talents like Force of Presentce that add a damage die to your mental attacks, and Strong-arm Tactics that let you add a die to Persuade and Command tests and add the Piercing effect to your Threaten attacks. So this classless system doesn't exactly have a Warlord class, but it's got just enough options for Warlordish stuff that you could make a Warlord type character. You could also roll in some other Leaderish type control options if you wanted to, there's stuff in there for that.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 09:18 |
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Like, nothing that anyone else has said has anything to do with classless or classed systems, but if you want to frame it in those terms: the problem is that D&D wizards are functionally a classless type of character with no real limits, in an otherwise class-based game. Which is also separate from the aesthetic/narrative question of "does this seem wizardly" because the two ideas aren't actually related in any way, apart from an arbitrary traditional association that doesn't even line up with fiction or mythology, just... older games.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 09:22 |
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Zaphod42 posted:Like I was trying to say before though, this isn't about realism. Its just about keeping things feeling distinct. I do actually like systems that are entirely class-less and you just build a free-form character, but for games where class identity is strong, you need a way to say "these things feel physical fightery and not a thing a wizard would do" and "these things are wizardy and not things a warrior could do" and the more creative you get with the supernatural physical powers, the more they start to just feel like another type of magic. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, and you can just have another type of magic for warriors. But then its like, why have classes? I think what you're trying to say here is that as the physical powers get stronger, the types of things they can do and their mechanical effects start to resemble what magical powers have classically done? Which, yeah, kind of. There's a reason that 4E mostly separates powers by role (defender/striker/leader/controller) and has "arcane" and "martial" as power sources with relatively minor mechanical effects (although they do have some, like arcane classes tending to have more AoE, IIRC). If martial characters are as unrestricted in theme as arcane ones, it starts making more sense to define classes along the lines of what they can do rather than how they do it. HERO System might be the ultimate example of that kind of thinking. But the classes are still very distinct in how they play in combat, it's just that their mechanics aren't super-tightly coupled to their power source (which is part of why it's so easy to reskin). They're rather less distinct out of combat unless you take utility powers or ritual casting, but "out-of-combat stuff mostly depends on skills and spell access rather than class" kind of applies to all editions, it's just that other editions have let spells do much, much more.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 09:29 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:D&D wizards are functionally a classless type of character with no real limits, in an otherwise class-based game. Right, but I think we kinda agreed on that awhile ago. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Which is also separate from the aesthetic/narrative question of "does this seem wizardly" because the two ideas aren't actually related in any way, apart from an arbitrary traditional association that doesn't even line up with fiction or mythology, just... older games. I know. Which is why I keep trying to suggest that I wasn't even talking about that entirely separate question, but it kept coming up in the thread over and over. Zandar posted:I think what you're trying to say here is that as the physical powers get stronger, the types of things they can do and their mechanical effects start to resemble what magical powers have classically done? Yeah that all sounds right. But this was all started within the context of creativity in roleplaying, and all I was really saying was I think its easier for people to imagine magical things creatively than physical things. But as I was just saying, it could just depend upon how much wrestling or MMA you watch, so you'd have lots of creative physical actions to draw from, and can mix them together and come up with new things based on them that feel creative. But D&D and lots of systems seem to give lots of powers and freedom to spellcasters and little to physical characters, so it seems like there's something there even if its only cultural. Even in videogames, like in Everquest the warrior class had far less to do than spellcasting classes. But again, not saying anything about how things should be, just talking about what I've seen both in games and in other players. But it could be purely personal, and other people who study martial arts or watch wrestling all day may find it easier to come up with tons of creative physical actions that feel creative. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Jan 20, 2020 |
# ? Jan 20, 2020 09:33 |
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So I found out about this really neat book from the early 80's called Down In The Dungeon, that's just full of this very neat and weird art, just chock full of the kind of atmosphere that anyone interested in the early years of fantasy role-playing would probably be interested in, so of course since it's been out of print for the better part of 40 years I had to pay a slightly silly amount of money for a copy on Amazon, but that's just how it is sometimes EDIT: have a link to a bunch of images from the book, and some talking about it; http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2010/10/down-in-dungeon.html http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/10/down-in-dungeon.html http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/11/exploring-dungeon.html drrockso20 fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Jan 20, 2020 |
# ? Jan 20, 2020 09:33 |
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I let the 4E conversation continue at first because I thought it would die within a few posts, but now that it is back and way too long, please shut up about 4E.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:01 |
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drrockso20 posted:So I found out about this really neat book from the early 80's called Down In The Dungeon, that's just full of this very neat and weird art, just chock full of the kind of atmosphere that anyone interested in the early years of fantasy role-playing would probably be interested in, so of course since it's been out of print for the better part of 40 years I had to pay a slightly silly amount of money for a copy on Amazon, but that's just how it is sometimes
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:12 |
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Ettin posted:I let the 4E conversation continue at first because I thought it would die within a few posts, but now that it is back and way too long, please shut up about 4E.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:29 |
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We'll just have to settle for kick-based civil engineering projects
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:36 |
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Terraforming Mars by punching carbon into the atmosphere, raising temperature with your body heat, smashing ice comets into yourself to hydrate. Start asteroid mining projects to built heavier weights to lift.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:39 |
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Nuke the Martian ice caps *reveals T S A R B O M B knuckle tattoos*
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 10:52 |
I miss the good old days of REAL D&D when Wizards were mortars with beards and fighters were boats.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 11:25 |
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Meinberg posted:I miss the good old days of REAL D&D when Wizards were mortars with beards and fighters were boats. That does tie into one of those ideas I want to explore someday, a sci-fi game where each player is the captain of their own war ship, with it having a deep and tactical combat system
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 11:40 |
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drrockso20 posted:That does tie into one of those ideas I want to explore someday, a sci-fi game where each player is the captain of their own war ship, with it having a deep and tactical combat system A Traveller hex crawl, but the hexes are the subsector map, and you can pick playbooks from: Imperial Navy Subsector Navy Independent Merchant Corporate Merchant Privateer Pirate And the mechanics support being clever about space combat, intercepting fat merchants with valuable cargo, and developing intelligence about pirate bases.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 12:08 |
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mllaneza posted:A Traveller hex crawl, but the hexes are the subsector map, and you can pick playbooks from: I was thinking more along the lines of a heavily modified form of something like Strike, or maybe Lancer, particularly since the main inspiration for this idea is the video game Dreadnought
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 12:14 |
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drrockso20 posted:I was thinking more along the lines of a heavily modified form of something like Strike, or maybe Lancer, particularly since the main inspiration for this idea is the video game Dreadnought I only discovered that game after it was already dying. Please do this.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 17:52 |
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Does it feel like D&D play podcasts/shows are getting a little over-saturated? I feel like there's a new one popping up each week. BuzzFeed just had the Try Guys play D&D.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 17:58 |
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Tibalt posted:Does it feel like D&D play podcasts/shows are getting a little over-saturated? I feel like there's a new one popping up each week. BuzzFeed just had the Try Guys play D&D. Well there's always that joke, Q: what do you call a group of three or more white guys? A: a podcast So like we're very saturated in podcasts in general and d&d is in a huge upswing as a cultural phenomenon so it makes sense you'll see a lot of them. Plus there's that novelty of 'listen to folks you like goof off in a new way'
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 18:07 |
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Tibalt posted:BuzzFeed just had the Try Guys play D&D. It's not like they spun up their own podcast to do it. It was hosted by One Shot.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 18:37 |
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FirstAidKite posted:The issue I ran into playing 4e was that it felt like any session was pretty much just 1 or 2 battles that took far too long to get through while not necessarily being challenging. I don't know if that was more a problem with the DM or what though because maybe are some additions and other books at add on to 4e to make it feel smoother. Basic, or AD&D played like it's Basic with extra character options (which, as I've noted previously, is essentially what 2E turns out to be if you switch all the optional rules to "off"), seems to manage to scratch a different itch precisely because of its absolute poverty of combat options. The B/X combat rules actually boil down to less space than the rules for exploring - particularly when you consider that the rules for surprise and encounter distance are as much about establishing how viable it is to avoid combat and/or enter into fruitful negotiations with encountered persons as it as about determining advantage in a fight - and lo and behold many Basic advocates argue that the game is more about exploration than combat as a result, and in certain playstyles they're not wrong. There's still a certain amount of tactical skirmish DNA in there, but the natural thing to do when you run across it in Basic is to try and find an elegant way to abstract it out rather than actually play through the tactical skirmish, because trying to skirmish out a Basic combat is such a shallow experience that it feels like it wasn't worth getting the miniatures out for. Conversely, with 4E we felt that if we didn't bother getting the minis out and properly playing through the combat on the grid instead of theatre of the minding it, we'd be spectacularly missing the point of 4E - but also the point of 4E is a game session with a higher percentage of combat to everything else than we really enjoyed. It's an edition warrior lie to say that 4E doesn't support non-combat activities, but it would be wrong to say that combat wasn't the intended focus of play. 5E seems amenable to being scaled back to Basic-ish levels of laid-backness if you keep optional rules to a minimum, but on the other hand the character gen options available to you there are overkill for that purpose and once you get out of the lower levels a) it feels like a waste of time to not properly play out the fights and b) your linear fighter/quadratic wizard issue is in full effect. (I played a perfectly fun 5E campaign a while back; it worked largely because the ref ran in a broadly 2E/basic style, and because nobody wanted to play a Fighter, but having an entire character class be a trap for new folk who don't realise the system's issues is a terrible look.) On the other hand, it doesn't feel like 5E has quite the rigour needed to scale up to 4E levels of tactical combat, so it's lopsided as far as being the One Edition To Rule Them All goes. tl;dr: The rule "Only play D&D when you are specifically wanting to play D&D" definitely applies, so long as you apply the corollary that different D&Ds have slightly different uses. 4E is for tactical skirmish combat. Basic is for exploration with the occasional fast, threatening fight, the sort of game where you want to spend a fair amount of time mapping a dungeon or working out the logistics of getting a gold throne the size of a small elephant up to the surface - less murderhobos, more archaeologists and tomb robbers who'll shank you if you have them cornered. 5E is for when you want to pretend to be modern and up to date when in fact you're on just as much of a nostalgia trip as the table playing Basic. 3.X is strictly for videogames because Neverwinter Nights is a far more satisfying way to engage with that system than actually sitting down and playing it with pen and paper.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 18:44 |
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Xiahou Dun posted:Or, and I know this is crazy, everyone could do cool things????? A game where magic had a very detailed metaphysic behind it can avoid these problems. Unknown Armies does it brilliantly by, in general, making its magic-users utter weirdos who alienate themselves from ordinary society through their pursuit of power ordinary minds can't comprehend, and more specifically by loading them up with constraints on their behaviour in the form of taboos. Just as more no-supernatural-poo poo characters run up against constraints like "Human muscle can only generate so much force" or "I can only produce so many chemicals with the materials I have to hand" or whatever, supernatural dabblers end up with constraints like "I absolutely positively cannot break this taboo or the work I've put in to get this far will be pissed down the drain" or "I really need some booze in me before my magic is at all effective". Legends are legendary because they defy ordinary constraints. If you want to play someone magical in a game where people exist on a more grounded level and all the other characters are running up against the limits of the possible in their areas of expertise, there need to be special constraints and additional limits of the possible which apply to you, otherwise you end up having access to the special "I win" ability which nobody else gets to have.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 18:56 |
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Xarbala posted:There's the sort of player common to non-4e D&D and Pathfinder that wants only one type of character (martial) to be constrained by very gritty and restrictive limits while the other gets free reign to run amok (caster), and incidentally the latter is the only type of character they're ever interested in playing. When, really, all players should be given a fairly even playing ground. Hell the 3x CharOp community figured it out when they separated classes into tiers, and recommended that only characters of similar tier play together. And the casters were consistently high-tier, while non-magical classes were almost always low. This sort of player is also the sort that derides the 3e Book of Nine Swords for "giving fighters weeaboo sword magic." The real problem is that D&D presents this implicit promise that all the classes are equal, and outside of 4E they are not. If D&D just bit the bullet and said (as has been pointed out above) "Fighters are meant to be supporting cast characters like Ars Magica grogs" and adapted accordingly, then the "fighters suck" issue would be no more of a problem than the "grogs suck" issue in Ars Magica. But no edition has ever been brave enough to do this, instead offering this false promise. Warthur fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jan 20, 2020 |
# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:02 |
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Tibalt posted:Does it feel like D&D play podcasts/shows are getting a little over-saturated? I feel like there's a new one popping up each week. BuzzFeed just had the Try Guys play D&D.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:05 |
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Coolness Averted posted:I kinda wish more games would try to encourage 'mythic thinking' as a way of getting around 'realism' Myths need constraints just as much as more realistic stories do if they're not going to just zoom off into Awesome piled on Awesome until everyone's jaded and loses interest, because if everything is special then nothing is special. The difference is that mythic constraints think more about poetic appropriateness than physical plausibility.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:12 |
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D&D combat sucks and has been a slog since 3x. 4e would have been more popular if it gave casters the same "fast-forward to looting" spells disguised as good roleplaying choices. It's a polite fiction that "gee these spells are helpful but your fighter is just as important," when narrative control resides exclusively in the bookish nerd archetype. D&D players don't want an exciting, balanced combat where everyone contributes equally.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:23 |
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moths posted:It's a polite fiction that "gee these spells are helpful but your fighter is just as important," when narrative control resides exclusively in the bookish nerd archetype. It doesn't in 4E, though?
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:26 |
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moths posted:D&D combat sucks and has been a slog since the middle of 2E at the absolute latest. Fixed that for you
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:36 |
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Leperflesh posted:I know I keep mentioning this one niche game that isn't a game lot of people play (conan 2d20)... I'm paying attention! Mostly because Modiphius (the 2d20 people) also do the most recent Star Trek RPG, Star Trek Adventures. I'm running a campaign now for some local goons (and likely starting a second separate campaign soon), and can confirm that the 2d20 system has a nice flexibility to it. Instead of ability scores that are fixed to specific attributes (Strength, Intelligence, etc.), your scores are more keyed to personality traits (Daring, Reason, Fitness) and stuff they covered at Starfleet Academy (Science, Engineering, Medicine). Add two scores together, roll 2d20, and any dice that roll equal to or under the total are successes. This basically allows any character a reasonable chance to do most things, with others having an edge due to specialization and focus. Does that sound like the way Conan works? I haven't looked at that ruleset yet.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 19:40 |
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Darwinism posted:Fixed that for you Would you say Player's Option was where the bloat set in, or are you thinking of something else?
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 20:22 |
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Lemon-Lime posted:It doesn't in 4E, though? And how did that work out for 4e?
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 20:31 |
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Honestly Doom 2016 would have been better without executions, and as it is the most essential upgrade in the game is the one that speeds them up so you don't have to wait for that silly bullshit. Doom 2016's executions are essentially the equivalent of a Fate Compel. Doom 2016 is the only FPS I can think of where the correct response to being either hurt or low on ammo is to rush forward and execute bad guys - the last thing you would do in a cover based shooter. This is a big part of what makes it a high adrenaline FPS that encourages risky play and removing it would make it less ... Doom.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 20:31 |
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Warthur posted:1E combat was a slog too whenever people tried to run it as written as opposed to importing a bunch of assumptions from Basic and running it like it was Basic, but yes. Player's Option stuff was the death knell (hey everyone I know let's split all our stats into two and let them vary by +/-2 baseline and then we can do stuff like divide strength up into "hit harder" and "carry stuff" what a good 'option'), I'd probably say the Complete stuff was really when 2E started getting really overly ridiculous... until 3E came along and just codified that as the new standard Darwinism fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Jan 20, 2020 |
# ? Jan 20, 2020 20:50 |
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neonchameleon posted:Doom 2016's executions are essentially the equivalent of a Fate Compel. Doom 2016 is the only FPS I can think of where the correct response to being either hurt or low on ammo is to rush forward and execute bad guys - the last thing you would do in a cover based shooter. This is a big part of what makes it a high adrenaline FPS that encourages risky play and removing it would make it less ... Doom. I think the idea was just that the animation should be faster, not that the melee rush should be removed?
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 20:53 |
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Darwinism posted:Player's Option stuff was the death knell (hey everyone I know let's split all our stats into two and let them vary by +/-2 baseline and then we can do stuff like divide strength up into "hit harder" and "carry stuff" what a good 'option'), I'd probably say the Complete stuff was really when 2E started getting really overly ridiculous... until 3E came along and just codified that as the new standard I only ever found the idea of kits useful, and even then there was so much aesthetic overlap (all four core classes got an Amazon-themed kit, a barbarian-themed kit, a noble-themed kit etc. etc.) that I tend to regard 5E backgrounds - being class-independent - as being much superior solutions to the "how do we give the classes a pinch of instant individual flavour?" problem and one of the areas where 5E has actually hit on a good idea.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 21:42 |
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# ? Jun 12, 2024 18:31 |
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Didn't 4e have backgrounds kind of like that? 5e probably does more with them, I don't know.
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# ? Jan 20, 2020 22:54 |