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ZearothK posted:Shadow of the Weird Wizard kinda does that with weapon traits only becoming active if characters have certain stat thresholds, and then you have combat tokens available to martial classes that you can spend to improve your attacks. I'm hoping this is a solid refinement of the core ideas, with hopefully less poop jokes and gross-out horror.
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Mar 21, 2023 21:09
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Lemon-Lime posted:I am begging the people suggesting that fighter/caster disparity would be solved by giving fighters small, incredibly finnicky maths bonuses to please play a game other than D&D. I just thought about iron heroes
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Mar 21, 2023 23:28
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Lemon-Lime posted:I am begging the people suggesting that fighter/caster disparity would be solved by giving fighters small, incredibly finnicky maths bonuses to please play a game other than D&D.
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Mar 22, 2023 00:28
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Lemniscate Blue posted:So you're telling me you've never been to an academic conference.
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Mar 22, 2023 00:31
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PurpleXVI posted:I think the problem with operating off of Fighter Mana is that you ultimately get the same thing as Wizards do where after blowing their spell load for the day, they have very little to fall back on. I was thinking they get those points every round.
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Mar 22, 2023 03:44
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I was thinking they get those points every round. Have powers that operate on cooldown I guess. Like you can only use Shield Bash every 3 rounds, Mega Cleave every 4 rounds, etc.
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Mar 22, 2023 03:48
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Operating on strict cooldowns, to my mind, just ends with people getting locked into "optimal" rotations of power usage. Energy expenditure is more flexible.
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Mar 22, 2023 04:02
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But what about out of combat?
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Mar 22, 2023 05:09
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Ominous Jazz posted:But what about out of combat? Simply replace every system with combat. Social interactions? Combat. Picking a lock? No, you're fighting it. Stealth? You're attacking their senses.
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Mar 22, 2023 05:16
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Ah yes The Exalted solution
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Mar 22, 2023 05:24
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Ego Trip posted:Ah yes “I parry the falling damage with my buster sword” is still my quickest, most effective pitch for Exalted.
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Mar 22, 2023 05:31
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Kestral posted:“I parry the falling damage with my buster sword” is still my quickest, most effective pitch for Exalted. 
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Mar 22, 2023 05:37
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It didn't seem like this was against the rules, but I have about, 20 postcards some of them are game-related, and was wondering if anyone would like to be sent a postcard. It seemed like a neat thing to get in the mail.
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Mar 23, 2023 01:07
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Admiralty Flag posted:My first thought was, "That'd be OP. How about Brutal 1 (reroll all damage dice=1)?" Daggers give AC bonuses and have an expanded crit range. Halberds trip and disarm. Lances charge for big damage, while spears repel charges. Swords disarm, give AC bonuses, and can parry attacks, while flails are hard to parry. Bows make enemies lose initiative, crossbows stun. Most weapons have multiple abilities, and it really gives the fighter a reason to put down the sword and pick up something weird like a bola or a net if the situation calls for it. The defensive boosts from weapons like staves and swords are great for Wizards and Thieves. Just as importantly: unlike 3e, monsters aren't balanced against the assumption that the martial characters are operating at peak minmaxitude with a one-trick-pony build. A 10th level Fighter with a few ranks of Mastery in his favourite weapon can reliably hit 20HD red dragons, and may semi-reliably hit the epic-level boss monsters that have AC -12. But the system would need a bit of an overhaul for modern sensibilities. Some weapons are still just better than others. Some abilities hinge off saving throws, or cross-referencing your level/mastery with the target's HD to determine how nasty a status effect you can slap on them. Also, every weapon has two tables, one vs. "armed" and one vs. "unarmed" opponents. (Bears, owlbears, and dragons are considered "unarmed." There's this idea that some weapons are better for fighting other guys with weapons and some are better for hunting beasts.) I'm not surprised that no one in the OSR wants to put the work in. The best version of these rules is in Dark Dungeons, but that's a faithful retroclone. Humbug Scoolbus posted:Or have a pool of 'X' points based on level and stats, maybe, that they can distribute to any targets in range, no to-hit roll needed and that ignores stuff like DR The problem I have with the AD&D ability is that it's only useful for fights with a bunch of very weak enemies, and I think the vast majority of players don't want to run fights with 6d10 goblins. PurpleXVI posted:Operating on strict cooldowns, to my mind, just ends with people getting locked into "optimal" rotations of power usage. Energy expenditure is more flexible. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Mar 23, 2023 |
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Mar 23, 2023 15:41
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Plus if you're using energy points, it's another mechanical lever to pull: abilities that recharge or drain energy, or hamper your max energy pool.
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Mar 23, 2023 15:48
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3e monsters weren’t designed assuming fighter types are at maximum efficiency. 3e monsters are designed to fit into fictional ecosystems first and foremost and their challenge rating to the party is a happy side effect. It’s a really weird design ethos that makes the edition’s monster design make a lot more sense when you figure it out. (Note: it was replaced by modern design-to-a-challenge-for-the-PCs principles around the MM5, maybe a bit before.)
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Mar 23, 2023 15:49
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I confess, I like my janky old "designed for ecology" monsters more than "designed for a challenge" monsters. I don't care if the Globwitch is a perfect challenge for parties of level 9 to 10 featuring a minimum of one Plywood Elf, if I don't also know how the Globwitch fits into the ecology of the world and what she does when there aren't adventurers around to boil in a big pot for their bones. 3.x lost a ton of that, in my opinion, with their stripped down Monstrous Manual entries.
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Mar 23, 2023 16:17
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PurpleXVI posted:I confess, I like my janky old "designed for ecology" monsters more than "designed for a challenge" monsters. I don't care if the Globwitch is a perfect challenge for parties of level 9 to 10 featuring a minimum of one Plywood Elf, if I don't also know how the Globwitch fits into the ecology of the world and what she does when there aren't adventurers around to boil in a big pot for their bones. I do as well, but I'm also a permanent GM, so I read my source books than I actually put into play. Monsters that fit into an ecology are more useful as building blocks in make your own story time than in actual gaming. The "why"s of monster design have taken quite a bit of evolution, and needing more plot hooks than "a wizard tamed them".
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Mar 23, 2023 17:23
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Honestly I think the best way to bridge the two approaches to monster design is to lean more heavily into making the monster stat blocks easily customizable and scalable, so a particular monster doesn't need to exist solely to fill a CR niche. While I generally like the idea of monsters being designed with the fictional ecology they exist within as the driving factor, an important aspect of that philosophy of design (especially in sandbox play) that's often overlooked is that the players should have some ability to gauge in-universe how touch a particular monster is going to be. I think the various iterations of bears in pre-3.x D&D are an example of this principle being applied fairly well: Everybody at the table knows how tough a bear is in real life and, true to that, an AD&D bear is going to gently caress up the poo poo of lower level characters. But things start to become a bit trickier when nonsense fantasy monsters enter the picture, especially when those monsters are deliberately designed to be dumb "Gotcha!" traps on the part of the DM to specifically subvert player expectations in order to kill them. Basically I think the sort of unleveled sandbox play that is the ideal of a lot of more old-school players falls apart when the players aren't given the means to broadly assess which monsters they'll be able to handle and which ones are going to immediately on-shot them if they get within 100'.
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Mar 23, 2023 18:28
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KingKalamari posted:While I generally like the idea of monsters being designed with the fictional ecology they exist within as the driving factor, an important aspect of that philosophy of design (especially in sandbox play) that's often overlooked is that the players should have some ability to gauge in-universe how touch a particular monster is going to be. I think the various iterations of bears in pre-3.x D&D are an example of this principle being applied fairly well: Everybody at the table knows how tough a bear is in real life and, true to that, an AD&D bear is going to gently caress up the poo poo of lower level characters. But things start to become a bit trickier when nonsense fantasy monsters enter the picture, especially when those monsters are deliberately designed to be dumb "Gotcha!" traps on the part of the DM to specifically subvert player expectations in order to kill them. I propose the Borf Scale. If bears are tough predators in the ecology, but not apex predators, it would stand to reason that even tougher predators might hunt and eat them. Thus, the amount of bear skulls outside a given monster's lair indicates how tough it is. It has the advantage of being inherent easy to parse since skulls are scary, so everyone will intuitively grasp that the more skulls, the scarier the monster ahead of them. Less jokingly, perhaps lovely "gotcha!" monsters should simply not be used. 
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Mar 23, 2023 18:41
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PurpleXVI posted:I propose the Borf Scale. But how will RPGs be able to simulate the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? ...although now that I think back on it, that ALSO had a cave lair surrounded by skeletons, so yeah no the Borf Scale checks out
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Mar 23, 2023 18:55
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How do you not have mimics and piercers and other hilarious stuff though? In all seriousness, we are playing a game and in games sometimes it is necessary to give players OOC information so that they can gauge how their character would react in their own world. I like the idea of dressing the environment appropriately but it's not the only option. Also if you trick your players, have their NPC allies backstab them, put a lot of traps they don't notice, etc. they will play in a paranoid manner that can grind games down to an excruciating crawl forever.
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Mar 23, 2023 19:36
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Leperflesh posted:How do you not have mimics and piercers and other hilarious stuff though? Mimics are such classics that any vaguely suspicious chest gets tested, though, on the other hand players aren't going to start tossing rocks at every loving stalactite the GM describes. Then again, my personal rule is that any time there's some sort of "ambush predator" around, there are signs of them. Scattered bones, blood splotches, belongings that weren't shiny or otherwise interesting enough to get dragged back to the creature's lair, etc. anything else is just being a dick GM.
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Mar 23, 2023 19:43
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Leperflesh posted:How do you not have mimics and piercers and other hilarious stuff though? And that, I think, is why systems like CR or 4e's monster math can still be valuable tools even in the less mechanically rigid ecosystems of old school sandbox play, because they make it easy for the DM to know at a glance just how deadly a particular monster is and communicate that to the party. Because bove a certain point it becomes difficult to tell at a glance just how much more powerful one made up nonsense monster is from another made up nonsense monster...
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Mar 23, 2023 19:45
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PurpleXVI posted:Mimics are such classics that any vaguely suspicious chest gets tested, though, on the other hand players aren't going to start tossing rocks at every loving stalactite the GM describes. Then again, my personal rule is that any time there's some sort of "ambush predator" around, there are signs of them. Scattered bones, blood splotches, belongings that weren't shiny or otherwise interesting enough to get dragged back to the creature's lair, etc. anything else is just being a dick GM. The real dick move is to put a chest covered in blood at a corner of the dungeon, have the players trying to check it was a mimic and while it isn't, the real threat is of the cloaker or whatever other camouflaged monster hiding on the ceiling ATOP the chest.
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Mar 23, 2023 19:50
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I've always played mimics as stupid, insofar as they don't understand people beyond imitating things that they think will attract people. They'll turn into a treasure chest or a golden statue while standing in a pile of gnawed bones.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:03
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Halloween Jack posted:I've always played mimics as stupid, insofar as they don't understand people beyond imitating things that they think will attract people. They'll turn into a treasure chest or a golden statue while standing in a pile of gnawed bones. Conversely I always tend to play mimics as pretty intelligent, not in the sense that they're super-intelligent ambush predators, but intelligent in the sense that they'll let adventurers bribe them with rations in exchange for dungeon rumours rather than engaging in a battle to the death over the chance to eat someone's hand.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:09
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Mimics always struck me as a pest species that evolved in a high magic civilization imitating garbage cans and the like that receive a consistent amount of food. You only get the predatory chest mimics after those civilizations fall apart and the garbage becomes scarce.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:23
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One of these days I should really run the nautical adventure I've been kicking around in my head for years that the glass bottles with treasure maps in them that have been washing up on nearby beaches are Mimic eggs laid by an enormous mature Mimic "Ghost Ship" that hauls itself into shore to spawn like a sea turtle. It also handily explains buried treasure chests: intermediate stage in the Mimic lifecycle!
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Mar 23, 2023 20:24
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Terrible Opinions posted:Mimics always struck me as a pest species that evolved in a high magic civilization imitating garbage cans and the like that receive a consistent amount of food. You only get the predatory chest mimics after those civilizations fall apart and the garbage becomes scarce. Go the magical realm route and introduce the concept of Toilet Mimics.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:29
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Trap monsters are also monsters that can simply not be part of your game. You see a chest? It's trapped! GOTCHA! You check it for traps? It's a mimic! GOTCHA! They really just slow down play, and 13th age did a good job getting rid of most of them.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:30
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Plutonis posted:Go the magical realm route and introduce the concept of Toilet Mimics. i have never poo-ed
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Mar 23, 2023 20:30
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ninjoatse.cx posted:i have never poo-ed Extremely suspicious GM: Your rations have not agreed with your bowels. Roll a CON save or suffer from cramps. And yet, you can rid of those if you go to this convenient restroom within the dungeon...
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Mar 23, 2023 20:33
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Mimics are basically lampshading the absurdity of having so goddamn many dungeons full of chests just lying around. They're a joke monster that shouldn't be taken too seriously.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:51
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ninjoatse.cx posted:Trap monsters are also monsters that can simply not be part of your game.
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Mar 23, 2023 20:58
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Mimics might be less of a dick move by the GM if they're generally more sort of annoying rather than dangerous. Take a page from freshwater mussels that use mimickry to spread their larvae and just have Mimics luring adenturers so that they can cover them in, like, rings and piercings and stuff that will be carried out of the dungeon, where they'll eventually detach and settle down to mature into new Mimics, peacefully filter-feeding on lint and lost buttons and paperclips and stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2x8ts5STzY
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Mar 23, 2023 21:05
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The mimic is trying to sell you time shares in a resort town that's just more mimics.
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Mar 23, 2023 21:10
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Asterite34 posted:That loving orangutan, bro... I was in a fate game where we could be any librarian from a work of fiction and ended up going to a literary themed event filled with hundreds of similar people. There was a locked door murder. I played the Librarian from Discworld...
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Mar 23, 2023 21:13
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MuscaDomestica posted:I was in a fate game where we could be any librarian from a work of fiction and ended up going to a literary themed event filled with hundreds of similar people. There was a locked door murder. lol
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Mar 23, 2023 21:14
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Terrible Opinions posted:The mimic is trying to sell you time shares in a resort town that's just more mimics. There's just an entire secret society of Mimics who are working from the shadows to replace every human-created object with one of their own. Not for any nefarious purpose, mind you, they just really like being our stuff.
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Mar 23, 2023 21:15
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