shotgunbadger posted:

let me clarify this statement with a five page essay titled 'nigorcs, racial relations and orcs in the world of fantasy'

The General posted:

I haven't comformed to your lovely rule sets

FirstCongoWar posted:

My general philosophy is that the only balance that really matters in D&D is the interclass balance between the various PCs in a group. If the group as a whole is very powerful and flexible, the DM can simply up the challenge level and complexity of the encounters. If it's weak and inflexible, the DM can lower the challenge level and complexity.

Countblanc posted:

What is actually broken about Truenamer? All I know is the fluff was cool, I never read what the class actually does.

RagnarokAngel posted:

That doesn't always work though. If you have a min maxing tricked out Wizard and a beginning player with a vanilla human fighter in the same party you have to make the challenges harder so the wizard doesn't win all the battles.
But by making the fights harder the fighter now can't hope to successfully hit anything or do real damage.

rabbitman posted:

I'm not sure what Wizards of the Coast was thinking when they started this grand venture, but I'm hoping they missed the mark and are just too embarassed to admit it. From the few bits and pieces about the 3rd edition I've seen, many changes have taken place, so much so that the original core set of rules almost seems non-existant. THAC0 has been removed entirely, relying on a challenge rating of the creature being fought by party members as well as a rating assigned to the party themselves. Action or battle also consists of feats, instead of proficiencies. Saving throws have been reduced to 3 categories and initiative has been reverted to highest number goes first.

Wayback posted:

The only game I've gotten skeeved out in was playing in a group RPGA event in college. The vast majority of the players were college aged kids and a few older/younger players, but of course I had to sit at the table where the 40+ year old guy playing an elf bard 'seductress' decided to play at. Thankfully it was a short module since his squeaky 'woman' voice hitting on NPCs and PCs alike got creepy real fast. Yet again, my worst experiences tie back to the RPGA.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

I like how everyone who has a story about the RPGA, it usually involves something unpleasant or being scarred for the rest of their lives.

shotgunbadger posted:

poo poo yea, Dwarf Power, burn the forests.

:gimlisay:

Tolan posted:

Maybe an opposed roll with your parents to see whether you did it at a convenient time or not.

Etherwind posted:

Everyone knows Gilgamesh is the hardest NPC.

Relentless posted:

For powers, yes.

For rituals, no. You can get magic flying horses starting with a level 6 ritual, if you're lucky and have good Arcana, otherwise you just get regular horses.

I think there's a 10ish invisibility one as well.

That's where the 4e difference is. Stuff like that got moved to non-combat situations. You can spend 10 minutes and make 6 magic flying horses for 12 hours. Or you can fly for 1 round once an encounter, if you're the proper class and take the right power.

The General posted:

Holy poo poo. I skipped to the tl;dr part and then he kept going! This man has anger like no other!

The General posted:

d02

ZorbaTHut posted:

We figured out what we wanted in a game, and found a game that - with a small amount of tinkering - provided it. If that makes us 12-year-olds, then I guess we're 12-year-olds

FMguru posted:

Being able to fart through so many diapers is awesome, for certain values of "awesome". I guess.

Countblanc posted:

It's bullshit to say "without death there is no heroism", but there needs to be risk for sure. Death is just a very convenient and elementary risk since it doesn't force the players to have interesting stories that allow the DM to dabble. Maybe that 45 year old paladin is just adventuring to earn money for his family back home; the Big Bad might pick up on this and whoops sorry we killed your wife and took your baby hostage and plan on raising it to be a dark sorceror. Cheers.

Countblanc posted:

Min-max your backstory.

Countblanc posted:

i am apathetic to the world around me, and don't value anything more than myself. also i'm a paladin with an urgent sense of righteous justice, and cannot stand to watch this world i have no attachment to be plagued by evil.

opaopa13 posted:

Common sense? What feat do I have to take for that? Is there a table I could roll on?

The General posted:

Me either, but every now and then 'that guy' pops up. And sometimes it's someone who should know better. It's a sign of either stupidity or burnout. If you want to play a Face, play Shadowrunner. But even then you'll have the pistols skill.

Etherwind posted:

If the courtier dominates the social scene while the bushi basically stays silent, it seems only fair that during combat the courtier basically hides behind a rock and lets the bushi shine.

Etherwind posted:

Roll the dice first, then have them role-play to the result. After all, if they're such good role-players they can portray their character's gently caress-ups just as well as their successes.

Etherwind posted:

Why?

LGD posted:

Yeah, that's just some good basic gamemastering.

Tolan posted:

Well, wands are capped at 50 charges in 3.5. So cure minor wounds is sorta pointless for putting in a wand, since you're only getting 50 hp cured out of the wand. If you wanted to make it, though, it'd cost you 187g5s and 15xp.

Cure light wounds would cost you 375g and 30xp and get you 50d8+50 hp of healing.

Also requires a 5th or higher level cleric. Not incredibly uncommon, but they're not going to be all over the place, either. They also have to take the Craft Wand feat, which not all will.

Purchase price is 750g.

So yeah, probably best not to think too much about this. I seem to recall one of the 3.5 guys (Monte Cook?) saying that the magic item creation rules were fairly broken.

Evil Mastermind posted:

IMJack posted:

My experience with skill challenges is in not realizing a skill challenge is happening until you're 3 or 4 seemingly unconnected skill checks into it. Seems to work pretty well.

Ashenai posted:

The General, have you considered the fact that 4e owns?

Fuego Fish posted:

I think it's more missing the original point that, according to rules-as-written, you can't see the moon.

The General posted:

The moon isn't living, therefor it can't really roll to hide. The DM has to assign an arbitrary DC to the spot check, failure of make said spot check means you can't find the moon.

Cyrai posted:

I wonder how their opinions or arguments would change if WoW had never been made, or even if there were never any MMORPGs. If you're a grognard that doesn't like 4E, it's almost guaranteed you'll say it's WoW. Normal people who just don't like 4E just say they don't like 4E. Is there anything else that 95% of the grognards could agree on and use as a rallying cry if there was no WoW?

Red_Mage posted:

Wasn't the only campaign destroyer that had to be destroyed by DM fiat and not by rules interpretation the diplomancer?

Kemper Boyd posted:

Why is everyone going HAIL HACKMASTER in the rpgnet Warhammer thread?

Bobulus posted:

Lv2 pally tank here. Uh, this happens to me a lot. It's a combination of a lot of things:

- Made CHA paladin before divine power came out, my lv1 encounter power is completely worthless and GM is not letting me respec it until I hit a new level.
- Save daily power because it's dumb to waste it against some loving goblins when there could be something nasty in the next fight and we can't extended rest inside the dungeon.
- GM likes to metagame a bit and always have the monsters go against the lowest armor PC that they're in range of (is this normal?), so as a paladin tank I have to mark as many of them as loving possible to prevent five goblin sharpshooters from gang-raping the wizard every round.
- GM likes to have enemies run around and regroup, meaning combat can easily last six rounds. (and three hours of game time)

This results in me Ardent Striking every single round in a desperate attempt to keep my cardboard-armor allies up while they do the actual damage. I might get one Enfeebling Strike at the end of combat when there's only one enemy left.

I have no idea if this is normal or not.

RagnarokAngel posted:

Your GM sounds like a bit of a dick

Joudas posted:

People were still defending 2nd edition up until the announcement for 4e

Ashenai posted:

Rereading the BECMI rulebooks is pretty hilarious. None of the rules made any sense at all.

The boulevard of broken grognard dreams posted:

It's just another "D&D but better!" Fantasy Heartbreaker.

The boulevard of broken grognard dreams posted:

Technically, it's not supposed to be a new 'version' but a 'replacement'. Sadly, they've done nothing but push some blocks around.

The Fighter still sucks. The Wizards and Clerics still rule...

Nothing has changed. Not a drat thing.

FantasyCraft, here I come.

The boulevard of broken grognard dreams posted:

Dangit, the more I read...

-See invisibility remains a third level spell. (get this; one of the many new polymorph spells gives you scent at that level plus more, so whee see invisible. Not just more useless than Glitterdust, but also the new polymorphs!)

-Remember Glibness? Yeah, that spell was silly, wasn't it? They nerfed it. down to "just" +20 bluff.

-There's a cleric cantrip which causes a stabilized creature to resume dying. Just whack it with your mace, you idiot.

-The summoning spells still require trawling through an entirely different book. A book which hasn't been released yet, mind you. And they still have the same potential to overpower the game.

-Gate. Just... Gate. Yes, it still works like it used to.

-On that note, Plane shift. Still a fifth-level instakill. The ultimate bad touch, it transports you to a plane of pure pain with no way to get back.

-Darkness is back with all its 3.0 shenanigans. Really, is it honestly this hard to make it a third level spell? At least it doesn't shed light as the 3.5 version.

-Wind wall still shuts down archery.

-Freedom of Movement still makes you immune to grappling. So much for that.

-Planar Ally. Myep.

-Disjunction doesn't destroy items outright, only if they roll 1 to save against. And yes, you do have to save for each item. Unless you target one item specifically, in which case the item gets a -5 penalty to the save and is destroyed regardless.

-Form of the Dragon 3 is, besides being an awesome eighties kung fu b-movie title, just like Shapechange except you "have" to be a dragon. A huge dragon. Enjoy your aura of fear, complete with insane DC. Mind you, Shapechange is still in except it combines all high-level polymorph spells into one, so the reason for seperating them... eh.

-Incidentally, that spell is of the same level and apparently considered balanced with Giant Form 2.

-Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation are still massive cheaters, allowing you the benefits of the majority of Evocation by being an Illusionist. Poor old Evocation.

-Limited Wish minus the XP cost. Wish, too. Curiously, they went out of their way to limit the utility in duplicating opposing schools for specialist wizards, even though specialists can cast them from items and even prepare them (using two spell slots) just fine.

-Finger of death is a flat 10 points of damage per level. Consider that fighters don't get that many hit points per level, let alone anyone you'd target with a fort spell. What precisely changed here?

Honestly, I could go on.

Bieeardo posted:

Holy poo poo, that's downright hilarious. I was expecting a dud, not something that would actually explode in Paizo's face.

RagnarokAngel posted:

The equivalant would be William Shatner