|
ActingPower posted:I figured it made sense, since the main characters are mostly roguish criminal types. There is a paladin in the movie, and he doesn't do any divine magic that we can see, he uses a magic sword at one point but that seems to be about it
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 01:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 02:05 |
|
|
Maybe this is a hot take, but divine magic has always kind of been a weird artifact unique to D&D and the various fantasy pantheons mucking about in mortal affairs are the single most boring part of every campaign setting that includes them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 01:46
|
|
|
It might also have something to do with the fact that divine casters are most heavily associated with healing magic, which is a niche the narrative doesn't really need given how infrequent full fight scenes are and how they're fully being blocked as "injuries are serious" rather than the common D&D gameplay trope of "everyone gets stabbed as part of every fight." With those narrative assumptions, you don't need the extra exposition baggage of a divine caster, especially when you have the paladin there to serve as the conscience, just with a cool sword, as LF mentioned.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 01:47
|
|
|
It's been done well before, like in Glorantha.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 01:48
|
|
|
MonsieurChoc posted:It's been done well before, like in Glorantha. I’d watch a Glorantha movie. Get Eggers on it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 01:50
|
|
|
There was a gloriantha film?
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 01:50
|
|
|
Antivehicular posted:Or, like... they just didn't want to do a story about the FR gods? They're infamous plot hogs, and the writing is clearly trying to keep the film brisk and accessible to a layman audience, so maybe in that context you don't want to get bogged down in Mystra nonsense. You can nod toward this core element of the setting without making it "a story about the FR gods."
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 02:07
|
|
|
Pocky In My Pocket posted:There was a gloriantha film? Yeah, DuckTales.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 02:10
|
|
|
Kestral posted:You can nod toward this core element of the setting without making it "a story about the FR gods." At the same time I'm wondering what divine magic a cleric would do in a D&D movie... there's healing and then there's loving up the undead, really, and healing would generally just seem to... undercut feelings of danger towards the main characters and the people they care about, and maybe this particular story does not feature a lot of undead that need loving up. Most of the rest of what D&D clerics do is making the party's numbers bigger in non-flashy ways like casting Bless, not really something that'd be ideal for the big screen.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 02:39
|
|
|
Honestly my favorite part of the D&D movie is the paladin guy is clearly the one guy in the group who takes the lore very seriously, but then his hours at his job change so he has to leave the campaign for a while.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 03:44
|
|
|
Maxwell Lord posted:Honestly my favorite part of the D&D movie is the paladin guy is clearly the one guy in the group who takes the lore very seriously, but then his hours at his job change so he has to leave the campaign for a while. Nah, he is absolutely The DMPC who is like five levels over the rest of the party that is there to help them through the rough patches and then leaves when the DM ratches up the difficulty
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 03:56
|
|
|
Plutonis posted:Nah, he is absolutely The DMPC who is like five levels over the rest of the party that is there to help them through the rough patches and then leaves when the DM ratches up the difficulty Right, that's why when he leaves he walks in a perfectly straight line away from the PCs. Also, maybe there's no divine magic because everyone is low level and they're using ODnD rules where clerics don't get spells at first level.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 06:12
|
|
|
I enjoy having characters commissioned and so I have had a total two wizard characters commissioned. I was just wondering what your guy's thoughts on which one of these looks like they would be the more powerful wizard/spellcaster. Alexandra "Alex" Dempsey  Or Astefelos the Wise 
trapstar fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Apr 29, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 10:05
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Most of the rest of what D&D clerics do is making the party's numbers bigger in non-flashy ways like casting Bless, not really something that'd be ideal for the big screen. The non-flashy effects actually are ideal, if the goal is to nod toward the idea of a world where the gods are Extremely Real and active in everyday life. This is something I go to great pains to emphasize in any setting where the gods behave like Faerun's gods canonically do: little blessings in exchange for small offerings and prayers. The degree to which the gods are active in the Realms is part of what distinguishes it from other fantasy settings, and it's worth putting that on screen to make it less of a generic fantasy adventure flick. I haven't seen the D&D movie so I can't say what would fit best in it, but since I hear it's basically a heist movie, then off the top of my head: a scene where some necessary dialogue that could take place anywhere takes place in a temple to Shar instead of a bar, or a tool for the heist needs to be blessed by the God of Thieves. As much as I'd love to see a film set in the Realms go full Northman on taking its religions seriously, you could do a great deal of implied worldbuilding with three lines of dialogue, a change of scenery, and making someone's lockpicks glow or what-have-you.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 10:37
|
|
|
Kestral posted:The non-flashy effects actually are ideal, if the goal is to nod toward the idea of a world where the gods are Extremely Real and active in everyday life. This is something I go to great pains to emphasize in any setting where the gods behave like Faerun's gods canonically do: little blessings in exchange for small offerings and prayers. The degree to which the gods are active in the Realms is part of what distinguishes it from other fantasy settings, and it's worth putting that on screen to make it less of a generic fantasy adventure flick. Religion being present in some way, I can roll with that. But the Cleric casting Bless and suddenly Blogbort the Barbarian is swinging their axes with an additional +1 to hit, is somewhat hard to convey, at least in an interesting way. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 10:40
|
|
|
trapstar posted:I enjoy having characters commissioned and so I have had a total two wizard characters commissioned. I was just wondering what your guy's thoughts on which one of these looks like they would be the more powerful wizard/spellcaster. i'd have to go with "i've seen a lot of poo poo" wizard, on account of him having seen a lot of poo poo
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 10:42
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Religion being present in some way, I can roll with that. But the Cleric casting Bless and suddenly Blogbort the Barbarian is swinging their axes with an additional +1 to hit, is somewhat hard to convey, at least in an interesting way.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:11
|
|
|
Piss wizardry!
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:16
|
|
|
Astefelos the Wise is going to clown some young whippersnappers, he gives no fucks
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:32
|
|
|
The magical girl probably has super main character powers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:35
|
|
|
Splicer posted:Cleric points finger guns at the barb and his axe and hands glow yellow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDMAugmUyDA
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:35
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:Religion being present in some way, I can roll with that. But the Cleric casting Bless and suddenly Blogbort the Barbarian is swinging their axes with an additional +1 to hit, is somewhat hard to convey, at least in an interesting way. There is already quite a lot in the movie, I think having a paladin being simultaneously laughable, insufferable and genuinely inspiring was enough of a win for the divine that they can get a pass on not having a glowing lockpicks scene
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:38
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:There is already quite a lot in the movie, I think having a paladin being simultaneously laughable, insufferable and genuinely inspiring was enough of a win for the divine that they can get a pass on not having a glowing lockpicks scene
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 11:39
|
|
|
They should have had characters just getting maimed right and left and then the paladin coming and praying their hands back on after every fight.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 18:15
|
|
|
My favorite part in People Of Sand And Slag is the supersoldiers that gleefully dismember themselves, roll around in barbed wire and eat shards of glass, because anything that gets hurt will just grow back. Like the lady in Dorohedoro who heals through all damage rather than dodging or blocking. Frontline fighters in a world of bounded AC and accuracy are guaranteed to take damage, sometimes a lot of damage, in any nontrivial fight. You can explain this away as "not getting hit points" but it's a thousand times better if they emerge from every encounter bristling with arrows, missing noses and fingers, and the Cleric just staples it back on every time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 19:06
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:There is a paladin in the movie, and he doesn't do any divine magic that we can see, he uses a magic sword at one point but that seems to be about it I thought his sword glowing was meant to be a Channel Divinity, so that'd be at least one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 21, 2023 20:17
|
|
|
redleader posted:i'd have to go with "i've seen a lot of poo poo" wizard, on account of him having seen a lot of poo poo gradenko_2000 posted:Astefelos the Wise is going to clown some young whippersnappers, he gives no fucks Haha he does have that kind of look to him. goatface posted:The magical girl probably has super main character powers. Yeah, I tried to give Astefelos the "Stereotypical Wizard" look so it makes sense that Alex gives off more "Main Character" vibes lol. trapstar fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Apr 22, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 07:44
|
|
|
I think we're all culturally primed to see Astefelos as the more powerful spellcaster.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 08:18
|
|
|
PurpleXVI posted:D&D should do away with the majority of its classes in favour of a few that can be customized widely.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 08:22
|
|
|
As far as I could tell, they got so excited about making the 13A druid into a totally modular and customizable class that they forgot to give it real talents. Like, you spend your talents on turning a completely blank character sheet into one that has "anything" on it "at all", whether it's a basic spell list or the ability to make decent attacks or what have you. But then you can't do the thing that real character classes do where they take the class feature and/or spell list they got by default and upgrade it further.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 09:04
|
|
|
On the topic of classes I think unless you're going for something retro in the OSR vein* that it's better to have a large array of more narrow in focus classes than a small amount of broad ones *and even then that mostly applies to core classes
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 09:16
|
|
|
was there ever an implementation of Druid Shapeshifting that was more akin to how World of Warcraft does it with their Druids, where it's "just" an application of [percentage] bonuses to a specific range of stats to make the character more capable of performing a particular role, rather than the D&D 3e/Pathfinder model of "now you take on the stats of this particular animal from the Monster Manual" which is a gigantic pain in the rear end because now you have to recompute everything?
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 09:20
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:was there ever an implementation of Druid Shapeshifting that was more akin to how World of Warcraft does it with their Druids, where it's "just" an application of [percentage] bonuses to a specific range of stats to make the character more capable of performing a particular role, rather than the D&D 3e/Pathfinder model of "now you take on the stats of this particular animal from the Monster Manual" which is a gigantic pain in the rear end because now you have to recompute everything? The 4e druid's Wild Shape was an at-will power that, by default, did nothing but toggle whether you had to or couldn't use powers with the "beast form" keyword. However, feats, class features, and powers could modify your wild shape in various ways, so you might have a daily to assume a big and extra-damaging wild shape, or a class feature that says your wild shape is a swarm and therefore shaves damage off incoming non-AoE attacks.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 10:00
|
|
|
In 13th Age wildshaping at its core is just "become animal" but then you get limited applications of special shifts that make your animal form more like an owlbear or more like a monstrous mantis and give you specific bonuses and abilities. If you specialize you can stack these too and become a terrifying mantisowlbear
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 16:09
|
|
|
poo poo maybe that's how owlbears came to be in the first place.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 16:10
|
|
|
My Lovely Horse posted:poo poo maybe that's how owlbears came to be in the first place. Druid shifts into a form so cool they decide "gently caress it, I'm a bear with an owl's head now, this is the good life" and go wandering off into the wilderness to hoot and hibernate. Come to think of it, that is basically the backstory to one of the OG indie graphic novels, ElfQuest, wherein psychic aliens "people" become stranded in a Neolithic world where their magic doesn't work properly anymore, and a shapeshifting sorceress ends up living as a wolf to provide for them. She falls in love with the wolf-shape and the mind-state it enforces, ends up choosing to stay that way and abandoning her people and her memory, but leaves behind a child that is at least as much beast as man to carry on the work of protecting them.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 21:28
|
|
|
13th Age's druid suffered really badly from being "here are five specializations; pick one to be adequate at and one to be bad at", which made the whole class feel very underwhelming. Pity there will never be a second edition!
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 22:27
|
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:Pity there will never be a second edition! Is this a joke about them being secretly terrible or a joke about some horrible business thing that happened
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 22:36
|
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:Is this a joke about them being secretly terrible or a joke about some horrible business thing that happened Rob Heinsoo insisted on bringing back Jonathan Tweet for the second edition after he got cancelled several years ago for wanting people to be Realistic About Race Science, at which point Pelgrane swore they'd never work with him again. As a result, a lot of people have just checked out of 13th Age for good.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 22:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 24, 2024 02:05 |
|
|
Ominous Jazz posted:Is this a joke about them being secretly terrible or a joke about some horrible business thing that happened The short version is that Jonathan Tweet is a weird conservative dickbag and Rob Heinsoo decided that he wanted him involved in writing 13th Age 2e despite him being... well, unpopular in a lot of RPG circles for being a weird conservative dickbag.
|
|
#
?
Apr 22, 2023 22:41
|
|
