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A D&D Next article about lycanthropy posted:Medium (varies in animal form) Monstrosity Those Old School players may recognize another way that D&D Next has failed to capture the true flavor of D&D. Any games can have a variety of were-creatures - what preserved the feel of D&D was the most important shape-changer that ever graced the pages of the game.  Wereboars aren't the same, WOTC!  Where are my "powerful and evil" devil swine? They are the only antagonists worthy enough to face Winnie the Bear. 
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Mar 1, 2013 06:26
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Has WOTC said anything about animal companions / summoned monsters? I imagine those are going to be interesting in a Free Market Action Economy.
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May 2, 2013 04:53
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OtspIII posted:I like the roll under stats thing since it gives everyone a chance but also gives big bonuses to well-suited characters. I'd personally want just a bit more interactivity than just that, though--maybe a way to have psuedo-trained skills where if the action is one your character is specifically supposed to be good at you get a reroll, so a low-INT knight's not hugely less likely to know about the king's family tree than a high-INT hermit wizard. You could probably handle it through common sense, or maybe even come up with some system for giving each character a number of skills/traits/facts that both serve to mesh them into the setting better and also to give them a sort of loose skill set. If only there were a way to make characters proficient at things that aren't weapons... 
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May 4, 2013 04:44
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Littlefinger posted:Skill monkeys and strongmen always had to make some kind of check with a chance of failure, while wizards could go "oh, the rogue couldn't pick a simple lock, I guess I'll just read my Knock scroll  - a good question from AD&D 2e, The Complete Necromancers Handbook. Speaking of necromancers, any information on specialist mages in Next yet?
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May 27, 2013 19:14
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Mendrian posted:While there might not be a 4e Pathfinder in the sense that we'll see 4e verbatim reprinted by another company, there is hope. 13th Age is basically the spiritual successor to 4e. It's a lot looser and probably doesn't appeal to all 4e fans. But the fact that it exists suggests you might see similar products on the horizon as well. It's kind of funny because 13th Age actually would have been a really good intended model for next. Mechanically it's more like 2e / 3e than 4e, but it has a ton of interesting quality of life upgrades that would have made it a nice "sequel" to 3rd. In fact, I'd wager that the original 5e design would have probably looked like it - If Numenara is an example of what Monte Cook would've liked to do in 5e, well, 13th Age and Numenara share more design philosophy than either of them and Next.
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Jun 1, 2013 22:02
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WordMercenary posted:If you want a more useful answer, game design is the ability to perceive of and create systems that mimick life and/or produce entertaining results. While maths might be considered an important part of that, it isn't the be all and end all. Design is deciding what actions the players should have available, how they intermesh and what the desired probable outcome should be. The reason I phrase it that way is because although RPGs design usually relies heavily on maths, other types of game design don't. Video game design for example uses very different mechanisms to produce the desired effect, but the top down design process is surprisingly similar.. This is really dumb, video games use a ton of math. Do you think the people who designed Fallout just said "oh man you know we could just put a 60 damage on this pistol, who cares about how it fits with the rest of the game?" The New Vegas thread is full of Ropekid talking about the mathematical implications of weapon design. Edit: It doesn't matter if the setting designer says "This weapon is good for piercing armor" if no one is watching the math to actually make sure that the weapon is modeled in a way that makes it good at piercing armor. This is one of the huge problems with just about every edition of D&D outside basic, the setting info will say "This is great if you want to do this thing" but mathematically it'll end up the worse option by far. Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jun 8, 2013 |
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Jun 8, 2013 16:36
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WordMercenary posted:I wouldn't hold New Vegas up as an example of great weapon design myself. Huh, so what you are saying is maybe someone with a better grasp of math should have helped design the weapons? whoah.
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Jun 8, 2013 16:54
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WordMercenary posted:No actually, not at all. I think someone with a better grasp of sound design and visuals and all those other things that are incredibly important in gun design should have designed the weapons. Stat sticks are important to what the gun is, though because they determine how the gun actually works in gameplay. "How much damage does this gun do?" is absolutely important for how the player uses it and interacts with the game world, if you gently caress that up it doesn't matter if it is the prettiest and best sounding gun. "The average monster at the level where the player gets this gun will have this much health and this much armor, and we want the weapon to be useful in these situations, so it needs to bypass this much armor and do this much damage. This other weapon is another weapon the player can use, we want it to player differently" - the playing differently isn't just "it looks nice and they used celery when they made the sound for it," it's got to play differently and that involves math. That is why you need someone strong at math helping design things - because good math stays out of the player and GMs way, it's when people put bad math in the game that it gets in the way in the first place! When the math is done well, you don't notice it. You need to know the math for the game because your players are NOT mathemeticians. You are a new L5R DM. One of your players has 5k3 dice and the other has 6k2. What TN do you use to challenge them? I don't know about you, but the gently caress if I know because I am not a statistician. In this case I have to download a TN probability chart to even know how to challenge my players because the bad math is getting in the way. Is toughness a good feat? the gently caress if I know as a new 3e player, because the math is bad and there is no easy way for a new player to grasp what is good HP at a certain level or what is bad HP at a certain level because it's all over the place. As a counter-example, because the math is good in 4e, I as a non-mathemetician can easily figure out what will challenge my group without killing them all because even though there is math, it is laid out and consistent. The assumptions are right there! No one is saying "Yo creatives out," most of us here have only taken a few math classes in college, but we are saying that if a writer says "This weapon is good for armor-piercing" then the mechanics should reflect that, and if the person designing the weapon is bad at math there is a great chance they will probably reflect the opposite.
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Jun 8, 2013 17:24
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OtspIII posted:The unfun cleric is just Bad, though. The system's providing no 'put in effort to earn X' incentive, it's just making a lovely to play class. A big part of the problem is that there aren't really any decision points in D&D healing like there are in MMO healing. It's boring being the healbot because the healing process is this: Is this dude hurt? y - Cast your Cure X Wounds n - Don't cast your Cure x Wounds In an MMO a healer can be an interesting role because you have a lot of decision points in an encounter - what kind of damage your group is going to take, where your group is standing, encounter movement, all of that affects what type of healing spells you are going to cast. Even after all that, you are going to have a variety of ways you heal someone - Do you straight up outheal damage? Do you ward someone with shields? Do you place reactive heals on someone? Juggle heal over time spells? Do you cast damaging spells that heal your group? Do you reverse curses into blessings and blessings into curses? If you are going to have "Healer" be a role in the game, healing powers should be just as diverse and interesting as the combat powers.
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Jun 18, 2013 01:04
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ZombieLenin posted:I'm really at a loss here, because "spontaneous" generation of sentient creatures from the earth is so incredibly dumb, I could never suspend disbelief. OTSP posted:I think spontaneous generation can work within a very deep dungeon that already borders on other dimensions, but it does feel weird to me on a larger campaign scale. Al-Ghazali posted:Moreover, we have seen genera of animals that are spontaneously generated from earth and are never procreated - as for, example, worms - and others like the mouse, the snake, and the scorpion that are both generated and procreated, their generation being from the earth. Their dispositions to receive forms differ due to things unknown to us," That's way more interesting than "5d10 Goblin Children (Alignment: NE)" which is something I actually saw in a 2e book last week. How does generation from the earth work? Why do some generated things become orcs and others goblins? That's a hell of adventure hook. I don't see how spontaneous generation is any more difficult to suspend disbelief for than any other thing our ancient ancestors believed, like people exist that have the heads of dogs. Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Jul 9, 2013 |
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Jul 9, 2013 01:18
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Splicer posted:Yeah, but as you said, those are settings. If you want setting information you buy a published setting. If you want a book of generic fantasy monsters to populate your homebrew too many assumptions about these monsters will get in the way of your brewing. Generally if a setting had goblins they'd get their own entry in that settings MM that was different from the regular MMs entry.
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Jul 9, 2013 18:08
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kingcom posted:What atmosphere do beholders work in? Are they comical spastics that are all about being mad scientists or are they supposed to be being of unimaginable power that descend on from high? If you are playing a comical game, the first, and if you are playing a serious game, the latter? I mean Beholders have been both things throughout D&D.
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Jul 10, 2013 02:01
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kingcom posted:I'm explaining this from the standpoint of 'knows nothing about the topic'. If the game is comic why isn't the DM just making the monsters comic? Your question relies entirely on setting, not on generic monster info. It's the people running the game that determine the tone. Is an orc appropriate for funny games or serious games? Either! You're the one putting them in, you determine the tone.
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Jul 10, 2013 02:15
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A generic monster manual and a setting manual with monster info in it serve two purposes and need to be handled in different ways. In a setting book, having a ton of grounding info is really good. Drow getting a ton of work in Eberron makes sense, because it is exploring the world and giving you setting-specific hooks that are relevant to what you are playing. There's already buy-in, here: You are buying the Eberron monster manual because you want to know how things work in Eberron, so several paragraphs on Drow culture and scorpion worship and their history with the giants rules. A generic monster manual shouldn't be about grounding the monster in the setting, because it should be a toolbox to help you make your setting. Five paragraphs about how Goblins fit into Points of Light doesn't help anyone who isn't playing points of light. If you are thinking about making your own setting or playing in an established setting, you are getting exactly what people are complaining about in the thread - just a statblock. I mean, was anyone who didn't play Greyhawk happy when the Monster Manual for the entire game relied on Greyhawk as the setting? Who cares about the Yoemanry, I am playing [any other setting because Greyhawk outside of the Suel Empire was kinda dull]. A good Monster Manual shouldn't be five paragraphs on goblin tribal structure, take those five paragraphs and give me five suggestions to how I might work goblins into my game. Here is a paragraph on Goblins as a race of familiars in a Wizard Country, here is a paragraph on tribal goblins whose shaman prophecy animal movements, here are goblins who secretly manipulate kobolds in a vast underground empire, here are goblins...
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Jul 10, 2013 02:27
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kingcom posted:The question is rhetorical. I'm pointing out that I don't know what this is or how to use it, so why not provide...oh lets say 2 paragraphs giving me some more detail. Its not a discussion on what a monster is. Its a question designed to prompt this. They already have background information equivalent to "elves are agile and smart and live longer." "Beholders are xenophobic abominations who think that their individual clan of beholders are the perfect form and kill each other over minor differences in body type." edit: to continue your Beholder example, the creator of Eberron, Keith Baker, did a Complete Beholder book where he has a page that has 9 paragraphs, each paragraph is an idea-seed for what a Beholder group would look like if they were each alignment. That would be way more useful in a Monster Manual than "This is how Beholders live in the Valley of the Mage in central greyhawk, our 'default' setting." Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 02:33
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PeterWeller posted:D&D has never had a generic monster manual. Every D&D monster manual has been rooted in D&D's core setting, explicit or implied. The times they have tried to focus on that setting impeded the monster manuals usefulness. Did you play Greyhawk? Did Greyhawk specific information in the Dungeons and Dragons monster manual help your game?
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Jul 10, 2013 02:53
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PeterWeller posted:They have focused on that setting in every monster manual (and compendium) ever. D&D has always had an implied or explicit core setting. The GH information in the 3E MM didn't impede my game, neither did the PoL information in the 4E MM. You keep repeating that, but no one is denying D&D has had an implied setting. You know what would be more useful than Greyhawk information? A variety of information! Suggestions on how to work them into a setting! Why stick to Greyhawk when you could actually do more with the manual? edit: People in this thread keep going "But if you take away all the lore, all you end up with is statblocks." If the Monster Manual relies on greyhawk and you aren't running greyhawk, then it's the same situation - you are just paying for statblocks.
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Jul 10, 2013 03:04
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PeterWeller posted:Sorry, your "the times they tried to focus..." statement seemed to indicate that you were denying the existence of a core setting. The rest of your argument relies on pretending the core setting isn't itself very generic and adaptable. I think the core setting is a lot more useful to new DMs or those who don't want to be bothered making their own setting. I think the DMs who do wish to create their world can extrapolate how to place the monsters in their own world from how those monsters are placed in the generic core world. If the MM is built around Greyhawk, and you aren't playing Greyhawk, that doesn't mean the information is suddenly meaningless. It means the information becomes a springboard instead of an endpoint. By "the times they tried to focus" I mean the times they made the default setting "explicit(ly greyhawk)" as opposed to implicitly greyhawk. A little bit of setting info is good for using as a springboard, but when you start getting specific it gets less and less useful unless you are buying into all the setting elements. "Elf, Wood" is pretty easy to springboard, but "Elf, Valley of the Mage" with paragraphs on how they relate to the citizen-farmers of the Yoemanry is less valuable as a springboard because so much of it relies on the context of the Valley of the Mage, surrounding countries, etc. Basically, yes, there is going to be a core setting. It should be adaptable, but the more things you positively set in stone the harder it is to adapt. edit: To reply to your edit, the difference is that the Monster Manual should keep being adaptable as a goal, whereas a setting Monster Manual doesn't have to worry about that. Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 03:34
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I was talking to Kingscom on IRC about the beholder entry fluff across editions and decided to dig up some comparisons for the thread and check out some concrete Monster Manual stuff. Here's an early Beholder. It's more like the D20 SRD link someone posted up there - it's completely generic and only talks about what they can do. quote:The beholder is the stuff of nightmares. This creature, also called the sphere of many eyes or the eye tyrant, appears as a large orb dominated by a central eye and a large toothy maw, has 10 smaller eyes on stalks sprouting from the top of the orb. Among adventurers, beholders are known as deadly adversaries. Here is the 2e version, with a lot more info. It's got some setting information but it's really generic, and a good springboard, but it definitely got a lot of weird minutiae like the GP cost of a small beholder eye. quote:
Here is the 4e statblock, which doesn't have any of the info on one eyed racism.  Here is the statblock for Goblin (Children), Alignment: Neutral Evil, 35 xp for each kill. Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jul 10, 2013 |
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Jul 10, 2013 04:55
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FactsAreUseless posted:The only correct way to eat beef is to eat lamb instead I'm hype about the D&D next warlock. I wish all magic classes were that focused, and "the chain" sounds all kinds of awesome. If there are non-infernal pacts, I wonder how that will be handled. "Yeah, I have this dryad minion."
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Nov 5, 2013 03:31
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I don't know why people are acting like there aren't going to be any new D&D games. There's a pretty good one in development that should come out soon, it's called PFO.
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Nov 17, 2013 21:11
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Have any of the playtests previewed the cohort and minion rules yet? I know they said that Ranger animal companions are going to be handled under the hireling system, and that sounds a little bit weird.
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Dec 4, 2013 02:50
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What Dead Can Dance song would be most appropriate for a not-Dragonlance game?
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Dec 12, 2013 00:53
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Halloween Jack posted:Not really, no. This is the thing that worries me. By putting animal companions and summoned minions as "hirelings" instead of addressing this in the class rules, that throws all balance out of whack. If an animal companion is the same as hireling, doesn't that mean that if a Ranger takes one everyone else is not going to be nearly as effective as the ranger unless they take hirelings as well? It's not so bad when you've got one wizard or one ranger, but if everyone is having to take hirelings to keep up in a hireling arms race, that is going to suck.
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Dec 23, 2013 20:50
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I really hate it when people try to shoe-horn real puzzles into elfgames. "Yeah, you can keep going on the adventure - if you take thirty minutes to figure out this tower of Hanoi puzzle I've placed in front of you that exists only to take you out of the game for a huge chunk of time."
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Dec 29, 2013 20:46
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The real solution to the Tower of Hanoi puzzle is to have the other players distract the GM while you google a solver on your phone under the table.
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Dec 29, 2013 20:59
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Mendrian posted:I think puzzles like a sphinx's riddle or a complex trap that can be circumvented with logic or skill are good for DnD. Like in the first case if you get it wrong you just fight a sphinx, which is metal. In the second case you can bypass the ambiguity of dice if you know exactly what to do, in the same way that a key bypasses the need to pick locks. Or in the second case no one knows how to figure it out except the GM (because what "logic" is easy to grasp by the GM may not be easily grasped by his players) in which case the game grinds to a halt while the players bug the GM for hints. edit: Putting in an actual honest-to-god puzzle is like handing your group a rubix cube. Mormon Star Wars fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 22:51
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Splicer posted:In a badgame. In a goodgame they stare blankly at the puzzle and then the Fighter pulls a Gordian Knot and just starts punching the lock mechanism. I have a friend that has the Rubix Cube formula down pat. He can solve any rubix cube you give him in 20-30 seconds. So if a clever GM wanted to give our group a puzzle and handed us a rubix cube, one of two things would happen: 1) If he was playing the game he would solve the cube in 20 seconds while the rest of us twiddled our thumbs and we would move on. 2) If he wasn't playing the game it would die and the unsolved rubix cube would sit on someones shelf for the next year because none of the rest of us know the formula.
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Dec 29, 2013 23:14
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AlphaDog posted:Won't it fail because it's too much like... actually, I dunno what it's too much like since Blizzard hasn't really released a non-sequel fantasy game since 4e. Maybe Next could go back to being too similar to Diablo, like 3e used to be. Or a simplified baby version of AD&D, like 2e was. D&D Next is just Kingdoms of Amalur is just Offline Wow!!
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Dec 31, 2013 03:31
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Nihilarian posted:
Deer meat makes everything better. Also, let's put over/under bets on the Next necromancer coming out before the 13th age one. 
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Jan 3, 2014 09:16
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dwarf74 posted:Wasabi is quite seriously a qualitatively different spice sensation than most anything else. It was the first spicy thing I liked, myself, in all its sinus-clearing glory. I put wasabi or horseradish on pretty much every sandwich I make.
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Jan 3, 2014 22:21
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Two important things about Tinker Gnomes: Dragonlance didn't invent Gnomish Mad Scientists. Mystara did! Top Ballista was a Creature Crucible book for the Known World (Mystara) setting focused on a flying city build by gnomish engineers who had a racial ability to invent unique devices using their racial grasp of "fantasy physics." Gnomish techno-magicians also later show up in the Forgotten Realms - they're a part of three major D&D settings. (If you'll take a look at the Top Ballista cover, you'll notice that the gnomes are flying bi-planes.  )Also, Tinker Gnomes rule because 'Smart but eccentric inventors' gives them an actual niche, which they otherwise lack. With regular gnomes, you have a problem - what's their gimmick? Are they just dwarves who are skinny and beardless? Are they hobbits who talk to badgers instead of eating pies? Tinker Gnomes are basically ciphers for whatever modern ideas you want to put in your fantasy game. If you want constitutional monarchies, elections, nautilus style submarines, less-than-lethal lightning weapons, or a can that scares the cult leader with a rubber snake when he opens it, you are going to want some Tinker Gnomes.
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Jan 11, 2014 06:32
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dwarf74 posted:Pretty sure Creature Crucible was published after Dragonlance. Yeah, 1989 for Top Ballista. Darnit! Is this worth embracing revisionism over?
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Jan 12, 2014 03:30
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Mimir posted:Thor: The Dark World just had Drow, in a big-budget film, two months ago. This is an awesome picture for an underground elf character, holy moly.
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Jan 13, 2014 01:16
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dwarf74 posted:I just don't understand the line of thought here. But that might just be because I rather loathe the 3e/4e D&D implementation of GP as a secondary point-buy track for magic-item power-ups. Frankly, I think fiddling around and shopping for a billion magic items to find exactly the right helm for a charge-barian is even worse than fiddling around with a billion feats. When you have to specialize to be effective, getting something off-spec sucks. A fighter who is only competitive with the rest of the party because he sinks every resource into being Great With Greatswords is naturally going to be disappointed when the random treasure roll comes up with a handaxe, even if it's a handaxe that glows in the dark.
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Jan 14, 2014 10:11
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Rexides posted:This assumes that you need that item in order to be effective. The whole point of this discussion is to decouple magical items with baseline effectiveness of characters. The discovery of the magical greatsword should be an exciting event, but not something that has to happen. As splicer kind of points out, decoupling magical items from baseline effectiveness isn't enough. If you have a bunch of feats that give +2 to greatswords and you need several of those to make a decent character, it doesn't matter whether the greatsword you get is +1 or not.
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Jan 14, 2014 19:38
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CaptCommy posted:Thought experiment! Let's say the Wizard is completely unchangeable from its current state. What's the best way to buff martial classes to the same power level both in combat and narratively? I've got some ideas myself but I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks. Remove the ability to use magic items from magic using classes, amp up their use and the ability to procure them for martial classes. Wizards choose their powers by deciding what spells to memorize, fighters do it by choosing what sword and sandals they are going to wear.
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Feb 14, 2014 04:33
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Winson_Paine posted:Oh man shoe shopping It's like spell scroll shopping but with way more opportunities for fashion.
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Feb 14, 2014 06:16
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dwarf74 posted:CATS AND DOGS, LIVING TOGETHER. It's been there the whole time! The wizard only gets to choose as many options as he has spells, while the fighter can choose whether to hit a monster or not all day.
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Feb 14, 2014 21:53
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So I was trying to discover ways to improve my egg drop soup and decided to look into not using corn starch in the broth. But while I was googling, I found a bizarre suggestion. Put the corn starch in the egg mix (and also sesame oil.) I gave it a try and instead of turning into strips of egg, the egg mix explodes into a billion particles and makes the soup thick and heavy with egg. This is amazing. Some BadWrongCook explain why this explodes into glory.
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Feb 22, 2014 02:28
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