|
gradenko_2000 posted:but we don't like to do this in a tabletop game, because having to break out the initiative order, the mat, and the dice, for a three-round combat that could result in a single hit against a player, a dozen times in one night, that doesn't advance the plot at all, might be regarded as bad gameplay, and with good reason, and so the DM is incentivized, out of practicality, to make fewer combats, but with each individual combat either being that much more difficult, and/or always being relevant to advancing the adventure
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 14:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 00:40 |
|
|
Siivola posted:What I want to ask here is, why and how does letting the computer handle all of this make it actually fun to play? Why is this fun when you don't have to do the math yourself, but can just click at things and watch the character models loop their attack animations? 1. it's a lot faster to process 2. you're not "holding up" three+ other people to play out a trash fight 3. you control multiple characters, so it's not "I roll to attack, then I have to wait another three+ minutes for my turn to come around again"
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 16:45
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:1. it's a lot faster to process
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 16:48
|
|
|
Siivola posted:Right, but what's the fun part of a thrash fight? You get to dispatch enemies in short order without having to exert too much effort about it. Also, I do have to immediately backtrack on my own qualifier because "trash fight" sort of assumes that you then have a "boss fight" at the end, but the way D&D can be structured, you don't necessarily need one at all, because lots of "trash fights" strung together with little-or-no resting in between will by itself exert enough pressure on the party that the tactical and strategic dynamics still come into play. We do have boss fights for narrative purposes, but we also have them because, as I'd mentioned, people don't always have the patience to do lots of trash fights, so we throw in a few individually-very-tough fights, rather than lots of easy-but-long-term-draining fights. I guess whether or not that's "fun" is subjective, but it is how the game is intended to work.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 16:56
|
|
|
Siivola posted:Right, but what's the fun part of a thrash fight? TTRPGs are fun. Even when the outcome is never a question, how badly you thrash them is 
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 17:12
|
|
|
I guess at this point I have to admit that the only video game I play these days is theHunter: Call of the Wild because I got so sick of having to deal with fights and other assorted  gameplay
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 17:19
|
|
|
Oddly last night the General was complaining about the exact opposite in the video game of Pathfinder Kingmaker. They've added a bunch of extra fights compared to the tabletop version, but many of the boss fights still assume that the casters are coming in with most of their slots intact, because it still has the D&D 3rd edition spell where certain spells are effectively necessary to survive certain encounters because of the swing they provide (Resist Elements for example).
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 17:22
|
|
|
Siivola posted:Right, but what's the fun part of a thrash fight? That, to me, depends whether trash fights are all games of patty-cake until people fall down or whether there's both variety and skill expression involved so although you can always win you can e.g. if you play well and adapt what you do to this individual set of foes not take a single hit.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 18:08
|
|
|
Siivola posted:Right, but what's the fun part of a thrash fight? Succeeding really well is fun! (In appropriate amounts) It helps with pacing and offers contrast to bigger fights.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 18:25
|
|
|
Siivola posted:What I want to ask here is, why and how does letting the computer handle all of this make it actually fun to play? I need to read the original adventure module and check which battles are actually taken from the text, versus which ones were added by Owlcat. I increasingly suspect that the cool boss fights and ambushes with varied enemy composition were written by the original module authors, while all the "this room has four more trolls in it" fights were added by the CRPG designers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 18:25
|
|
|
Siivola posted:Right, but what's the fun part of a thrash fight? Winning without a scratch. I played a 4e game once that actually had a lot of trash fights, but they were quick and easy ones, like a room with just 2 goblins in it or whatever. Winning was a foregone conclusion, but whether or not it cost you hitpoints or dailies in the long-term wasn't, so lining everything up so as to make them die in like 1.5 rounds and miss the only attack they got to make was quick and satisfying.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 21:26
|
|
|
Relatively easy challenges with fine degrees of success isn't just good game design, it's the specific principle that makes most mastery-oriented TTRPGs work at all. With that in mind, the only real "trash encounter" is one that's so easy, even sloppy play is still going to result in a perfect victory. As long as your performance means something, there's still room for the satisfaction of doing better. Conversely, being right on the line for binary success / failure all the time is both exhausting and, potentially, tactically shallower as well - there's a danger of being forced into corners where you have to do X or you'll lose for sure, where failure-avoidance simply dictates your decisions instead of them being genuinely tricky judgment calls. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Feb 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 21:36
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:It doesn't. The filler combats are the worst part of Kingmaker. Because of the aforementioned resource expenditure issue, and because a lot are just more of the same - more bandits, more kobolds, just in a slightly different shaped room. from my experience with paizo modules it's probably the other way around. owlcat is pretty painstakingly faithful to paizo's design process in terms of how dungeons and quests are laid out, and where they deserve the credit as video game adapters is in expanding the story scenario and giving their unique twists on the big important bits. a paizo dungeon kind of asks to be done OSR style, with exploration rounds and tracking time and wandering monster ecology, but the books themselves don't really aid you in that, and neither edition of pathfinder is particularly interested in the exploration-as-hazard playstyle Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Feb 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 22:35
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Relatively easy challenges with fine degrees of success isn't just good game design, it's the specific principle that makes most mastery-oriented TTRPGs work at all. With that in mind, the only real "trash encounter" is one that's so easy, even sloppy play is still going to result in a perfect victory. As long as your performance means something, there's still room for the satisfaction of doing better. This all lines up with my experience. It creates a different kind of optimization problem, and some players find that very satisfying. I'm currently running an endgame 5e megadungeon whose gimmick is based around this dilemma: "You have strictly limited opportunities for short / long rests and a long way to go, at least half the content is optional and off the critical path but directly impacts the epilogues of the NPC cast you've grown attached to, can you play optimally enough to It's not something I would do for every group, but for that set of players the intersection of extended resource optimization problem + epilogue motivation has been compelling.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 22:42
|
|
|
Siivola posted:What I want to ask here is, why and how does letting the computer handle all of this make it actually fun to play? Why is this fun when you don't have to do the math yourself, but can just click at things and watch the character models loop their attack animations? Theoretically, if a game is meant to be interesting on an adventure-wide resource management level, fights that aren't inherently decisive are still interesting to make good decisions in, and having fast combat allows fights like that to exist in the first place without being a huge drag. If combat takes too long to resolve, fights like this drag the game out. If there's no resource management, fights like this feel pointless. D&D videogames have a leg up on the tabletop version because they get to have a lot of fights that in theory could be very easy to resolve, enabling this kind of play to a degree that is a bit harder to do at the table (at least with the ones that have more involved combat systems).
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 22:46
|
|
|
In any one of my given player groups, the odds of it being a thrash fight greatly increase the odds of a fight occurring.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 23:14
|
|
|
ninjoatse.cx posted:In any one of my given player groups, the odds of it being a thrash fight greatly increase the odds of a fight occurring. metallica vs. slayer
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2023 23:16
|
|
|
Mister Olympus posted:from my experience with paizo modules it's probably the other way around. owlcat is pretty painstakingly faithful to paizo's design process in terms of how dungeons and quests are laid out, and where they deserve the credit as video game adapters is in expanding the story scenario and giving their unique twists on the big important bits. This may be a divide between Pathfinder Society scenarios (bite sized adventures combining investigation, diplomacy, puzzles, exploration and combat in a four hour package) and full adventure paths, which I haven't played any of.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 01:27
|
|
|
What is the best pathfinder adventure path, either 1e or 2e?
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 02:33
|
|
|
CitizenKeen posted:What is the best pathfinder adventure path, either 1e or 2e? It really depends on what your players want, or what you enjoy GMing. Kingmaker is certainly a contender, newly released in 2nd edition. It wasn't made a video game because it's unpopular. Abomination Vaults is the best version of "a town with a dungeon" I've played or run. Hell's rebels is really good. Curse of the Crimson Throne is really good edgy adventuring without going too far. But there're plenty of reasons to run other ones that may make them "the best" for a certain group. There're more combat focused and dungeon crawl heavy ones, and ones that focus on politics a lot more. I think a lot of the older ones, like Rise of the Runelords and such are popular mostly due to nostalgia and not because they're just incredible adventures when run today. Though this is also true of Curse of the Crimson Throne, but it's still pretty good if you want a city focused adventure with dark themes. Paizo puts out so many APs that a lot of them are laser targeted at a specific fantasy, and if that's what your table wants then the AP will feel a lot better.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 02:44
|
|
|
The best AP will need to come from a category that Pathfinder as a system does well, so immediately throw out all the ones that have a sizable social component. Kingmaker almost gets an exception on the strength of its premise, which is very strong, same with Strength of Thousands. I imagine you'd want to focus on the ones with the best-of-the-best encounter design and set-pieces?
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 05:10
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:I can only speak to the Pathfinder scenarios I've played, including the PFS version of only the first act of Kingmaker (the tradefort-to-Staglord arc). For all their flaws, they were very intentionally designed and did not waste the players' time with filler combat. There were definitely "popcorn" fights that didn't present much challenge, but that was because the players either happened to hard counter to one of the threats (eg a Gunslinger versus an enemy with poor touch AC) or carried a broad range of consumables as a matter of course that protected them from the most threatening monster abilities (antiplague, various forms of energy resistance, movement options, etc). my experience is exclusively in full adventure paths so yes that would be it. there are some paizo outings that are just... choked with the whole Kingmaker pattern of "here's a Goblin Hallway #3 out here with the next breadcrumb of exp/quest to do" that video game kingmaker has. extinction curse is the first big example which comes to mind that evoked the comparison with my group, lots of those bite-sized dungeons with a few encounters and when you're done with all of them, you move on to the bigger one also, having read through the 2e version of kingmaker, i'm struck by the degree to which it's essentially a hexcrawl, just with some systems missing and other, different systems present. again, owlcat does a huge amount of heavy lifting in creating character motivations and reasons for plots to happen. Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Feb 6, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 06:17
|
|
|
This isn't quite up to date, but it's pretty thorough: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/raouq8/tarondors_guide_to_pathfinder_adventure_paths/
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 11:54
|
|
|
That omits.. an awful lot of considerations.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 12:48
|
|
|
It's missing the last three APs. (The consensus on Outlaws of Alkenstar and Quest for the Frozen Flame, from what I've seen, is that they're both a bit busted in different ways and there's not been enough time for anyone to play through Blood Lords yet.) It ranks and describes the other 33 APs in great detail.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 13:03
|
|
|
Megazver posted:It's missing the last three APs. (The consensus on Outlaws of Alkenstar and Quest for the Frozen Flame, from what I've seen, is that they're both a bit busted in different ways and there's not been enough time for anyone to play through Blood Lords yet.) Yes, but it misses out a bunch of stuff about them. Even if people are going to say "oh god don't pay attention to Hyphz's group", you can see that (for example) Extinction Curse has a con that the circus mechanics aren't very good, with a note that "this applies to most subsystems in Adventure Paths". But there is no similar con listed on the other adventure paths that introduce subsystems.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 19:32
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:For example, in GURPS, the mundane melee fighter with a ton of skill is actually the system mastery class, because you have to know what all the things you can do to modify an attack can do. The above mentioned Dark Elf landsknecht had a Polearm-21 to begin with, which in GURPS terms means you have to roll 3d6 and get under that number to hit the target. Always hitting every time you could possibly hit begins at skill 16, so after that, what you have to do is use the combat options where you penalize your attack roll to do things like hit someone in the vitals, or reduce their defense, or attack twice. It's funny, people make fun of the tactilol stuff in GURPS, but gun combat is much, much simpler to operate in this system. The way rate of fire works makes it so basically your gun skill always has use, even at close range where there's no penalty. Could just use MoS on the roll to allow the player to "buy" stunts after the fact--either directly translate the usual penalty for, say, a called shot into a required MoS or just set up tiers. MoS 2? You get x. MoS 4? You get x and y. MoS 6? X, y, and z. Etc.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 19:42
|
|
|
hyphz posted:Yes, but it misses out a bunch of stuff about them. c'mon man
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 19:46
|
|
|
Hypnobeard posted:Could just use MoS on the roll to allow the player to "buy" stunts after the fact--either directly translate the usual penalty for, say, a called shot into a required MoS or just set up tiers. MoS 2? You get x. MoS 4? You get x and y. MoS 6? X, y, and z. Etc. It's something i've definitely considered- i was looking for something that would be kinda one-size-fits-all and get rid of the decision-making involved(and also let my skilled fighters feel more badass), but that's also a way to do it. I wish the GURPS discord was more helpful about discussing the implications- it's just, people who mostly think everything is perfect and that i just need to pester my players more to get their turns done quicker.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 19:48
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Relatively easy challenges with fine degrees of success isn't just good game design, it's the specific principle that makes most mastery-oriented TTRPGs work at all. With that in mind, the only real "trash encounter" is one that's so easy, even sloppy play is still going to result in a perfect victory. As long as your performance means something, there's still room for the satisfaction of doing better.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:22
|
|
|
Hypnobeard posted:Could just use MoS on the roll to allow the player to "buy" stunts after the fact--either directly translate the usual penalty for, say, a called shot into a required MoS or just set up tiers. MoS 2? You get x. MoS 4? You get x and y. MoS 6? X, y, and z. Etc. Panzeh posted:It's something i've definitely considered- i was looking for something that would be kinda one-size-fits-all and get rid of the decision-making involved(and also let my skilled fighters feel more badass), but that's also a way to do it. I wish the GURPS discord was more helpful about discussing the implications- it's just, people who mostly think everything is perfect and that i just need to pester my players more to get their turns done quicker.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:25
|
|
|
What's the opposite of a Power Attack? A slower attack? 
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:28
|
|
|
Siivola posted:What's the opposite of a Power Attack? A slower attack? A guarded attack, where you only deal minimum damage in exchange for some sort of defense buff. e: Or a precise attack, where you deal minimum damage but automatically hit without a roll.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:30
|
|
|
mellonbread posted:It sounds similar to Power Attack in d20 - it's supposed to be a risk/reward tradeoff where you wouldn't retroactively let a player say "I was Power Attacking" if they see that their to-hit roll is sufficient to hit the target after the penalty. But in practice, every Barb is Power Attacking all the time and building their character to negate the penalty so they can reliably hit while doing so. Which means that if you're handing a new player a competently built pregen, you might as well present Power Attack as the default and regular attacking as an option for difficult-to-hit foes. Yeah- i'm kinda thinking about just having machine gun melee be the baseline- it'll make melee combat more deadly on both sides but it'll let people cleave and have a lot of fun swinging swords without having to deal with a laundry list of advantages so they can attack twice while always hitting but having to figure that out. Yes, the fighter with polearm-21 can kill 3 goblins in one turn potentially- i am fine with this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:36
|
|
|
Siivola posted:What's the opposite of a Power Attack? A slower attack? There was a fest in 3rd edition where you could sacrifice attack bonus for AC when you attacked.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:38
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:There was a fest in 3rd edition where you could sacrifice attack bonus for AC when you attacked. Yeah, it was called combat expertise, and existed in 3.5 as well. People did it a lot in Neverwinter Nights 2 PWs to get massive AC.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:44
|
|
|
Father Wendigo posted:A guarded attack, where you only deal minimum damage in exchange for some sort of defense buff. I recall there was also an enchantment Abadar's followers could get, which forced a weapon to do its statistically average damage on a hit rather than rolling. It was either not PFS legal or I just never judged it worth the cost, I can't remember. Aside from the obligatory +1 weapon to get through DR, I never invested much in Skinner the Cleric's melee damage output. He was pretty badly optimized aside from decent domain choices (Law and Travel) and had trouble hitting anything. mellonbread fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Feb 6, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 21:28
|
|
|
2d20 Bundle of Holding. Pick up the core books for a wide variety of games. Star Trek, Dune, Infinity, Dishonored, Fallout, John Carter of Mars, Achtung! Cthulhu. https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2d20Worlds
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 22:53
|
|
|
Letting players trade-away the excess attack bonus AFTER they've already rolled is a brilliant idea, shucks!
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 01:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 00:40 |
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Letting players trade-away the excess attack bonus AFTER they've already rolled is a brilliant idea, shucks! You could call it something like "Momentum".
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 02:55
|
|