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I never got a chance to play much of old Ravenloft, so most of the details are long forgotten. But it felt like to get mileage out of it whether you were in Not Transylvania with Strahd, or the mother loving "It's the Darksun section of Ravenloft, HAVE FUN" you had to grasp that- A: The Dark powers are dicks. B: "LOL roll for SAN/Morality" is not horror. C: The dark powers are dicks, but don't just use it as an excuse to enact failure and punishments with a handwave. D: Don't set tasks for the players just to go 'You fail because failure is grimdark'. E: The Dark powers are dicks, did you miss every realm has a heavy dose of Ironic Hell for it's masters? I admit my preference is "End goal of the campaign is we save X and everything is cool", but as much as anything my dislike for "Horror" or  "Dark" campaigns is people just go straight for two of the following.1: Instant GM gratification mental or physical trauma, or death. 2: The Campaign is primarily an exercise in how much you can gently caress with your players, because "It's a dark setting, It's justified!" You gotta have any reasonable expectations of success at your given tasks or hooks, to give a poo poo if you fail. Only so many NPCs can be kidnapped or killed off because you so much as laughed at a joke the made, only so many dark sacrifices can be failed to prevent at the last moment, before just maybe, the problem isn't "My players are not invested in their characters" when they don't give a poo poo even if they have to kill off a fellow player who has turned into a vampire werewolf. JackMann posted:Idea I've been toying with since 3.5 is having hit point damage lower saves. So, monsters will resist a wizard's spells almost every time when they're on full health, but once the fighter gets them down to half health, they're much more vulnerable. It's something I was hoping 4e would do with the bloodied condition, but alas. It would make the wizard much more reliant on the melee guys to do his job, and keep him from winning encounters by bypassing HP completely. EDIT: Comedy option. Inflict a curse where they can't damage monsters before they admit "'Fighter can attack as much as they wan't' is bullshit and I know it" or "A selection of weapon proficiency is not the same thing as a selection of cantrip spells" (Seriously, I've had a friend debate that 'Martial At-will options are different weapons!' when commenting only cantrip casters get at-will attack powers variety anymore). Section Z fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Jan 20, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 20:43
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P.d0t posted:It still amazes me every time I read something like this, where basically someone says "Man I love how 5e gets rid of lovely/dumb 3.5isms!" but apparently when 4e did the exact same thing there were tears about how it changed too many things too quickly and isn't real D&D!!!1! Yeah, I can admit as much as I love the options in 4th ed, leveling up can be involved for every class since you have a specific to your class/level chart nearly every single time. But most of the people I know, or are friend's of a friend gushing about what's "Improved/Totally great idea they should have thought of before!" are about stuff 4th ed already did, and that they probably hated when 4th ed did it. Like how At-will powers for fighters and wizards are dumb stupid trash because there is no more spell table and they ruined rituals-oh cool, 5th ed gives me at-will cantrip spells? 5th ed lets me recharge wizard spells on a short rest? This is AMAZING! Why didn't they think of this before!?... Oh Fighters don't get poo poo? What's your point? 4th ed already did this? What's your point? I got my issues with the formatting of the rulebook and I miss a lot of the options, as much as I can admit the system itself doesn't seem bad. Mostly it's all the "REAL DnD is-" Baggage that's the problem. Like "Realism" being "It's not realistic to houserule back in 4th ed's ranged attacks can knock out, because arrows are sharp and that doesn't make sense. But I'll totally allow the warlock to knock people out with fire and radiant lasers.... what? It's not my fault magic isn't realistic. It's okay I'll let you use lovely variant blunt arrows... why are you looking at me like that?" I can understand the desire for trying to keep stuff realistic in the sense of not just being full bullshit "Oh I just know boats, you know? whatever". But 90% of the time "It's not realistic it-" and "Immersion" are just words people swing around like a club to smash things to fit their specific opinion  At least the above "Guy A just know boats, I guess? Vs. Guy B put effort into why they know boats" is a GOOD example. Unlike people telling me (expensive bought and paid for, in other system) immunity to poison isn't "realistic" to have it actually, you know, provide immunity to poison. (and also, it's "Not fair" to attacks with "Disadvantage:Poison" bolted onto them  )
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Jan 25, 2016 01:46
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ScaryJen posted:e- I don't really want this to come off as "5e beats the hell out of 4th in every way ever", because that's not what I'm driving at. Ideally,for me, new D&D would resemble something to a pared-down 4e at its core, with a little less emphasis on the battlefield mechanics and a little more on narrative abilities by class and tier. As for the simulationism thing, I feel like the desire for that kind of play is pretty system agnostic and everyone house rules it anyway. Most of my pals and I joking "I can't roleplay in this system!" every time we, you know, roleplay, is over the kind of people who act like it is literally impossible to do more than beep boop robot WoW clone because they give you "suggested" lore a lot of the time, and no big novels of "This is how you should make your world, no takebacks". Even while we do sometimes wish there was more reference materials for a good groundwork to either use, ignore, or modify. Like, people actually pissed off the Thunderbolt Hammer's flavor text sums up as "Might be Moradin, might be Kord, or maybe it's own thing. We only know it's cool and is Not Mjolnir". Or that scream if you reflavor stuff to your tastes. Because it's not "Roleplaying" if you came up with anything using your own imagination. Like a swarm druid turning into a horde of ravenous adorable puppies. That's a nono, Must Be Bugs. And the usual "Only applies where they feel like it" issues. Like how Inernal warlocks are not allowed to do anything but suck the cock of DnD satan, but they are totally fine with a Fey Pact warlock being pacted to either their family or THEMSELVES, because they are from the Feywild  I CAN agree that the design is more focused on "Grid Combat stuff" in 4th than other systems. But that's as much because wizards are stuck casting their fireballs within 10 tiles as opposed to "Okay, I Roleplay that I cast color spray at every single enemy, they are totally close enough to all be hit by it, right? WHAO There fighter, how did you reach that goblin? You only have a movement of 30 feet and they were totally 31 feet away." Again though, that's more mindset baggage than any failing of either 4th or 5th on the "Can I roleplay in this system?" front.
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Jan 25, 2016 02:20
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kingcom posted:Also one thing people seem to miss is that your powers can be used outside of combat. Even a super strict interpretation of what a target, every class has a tonne more options for roleplaying. Combining Kord's Force Athletics At-Will Utility (Use Athletics skill for STR checks) with Kord's Mighty Strength Boon (+2 Athletics, +5 to STR checks to break poo poo) goes a long way towards turning you into the Kool-Aid Man, yes. "Adamantine shackles? No problem!. Yes I know I'm level 6" Section Z fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 02:33
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I know in some cases, Psionics used their own list of powers. So I guess that could be why, in those cases. Because they aren't using the Spell Table like a Wizard or Cleric Or maybe it could just be 90% of the psychic poo poo in DnD is rear end in a top hat stuff like the mentioned Flayers, Aboleths, or "Dark Sun. I wish I was in Ravenloft instead" Section Z fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 13:15
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thespaceinvader posted:Yeah, skill challenges sucked prettyt hard early on, it took two fairly major overhauls oof both the system and the DCs to get them more or less right. Likely because they didn't want to even pretend to follow a difficulty chart table that frequently. Not that 4th ed does much better. Or ANY system, honestly "Here is the DC table" for mostly any system I look at tends to get ignored by both the official writers and every DM I've played with. Be it commercial system or one they made up themselves.) Uuuuuugh. Why the gently caress do DC charts basically only exist to fool your players into thinking they are up to standard? One minute you're dealing with "DC 30 Acrobatics to climb onto the bar counter, at level 1". The next you are dealing with "please make a DC 13 check a level 1 character couldn't possibly fail, in this lv 16+ module's skill challenge", coming hot off the heels of "DC higher than the DC chart goes to disarm with thievery. OR, you could use the gimmick to disable it instead! but we TOTALLY gave you the option!" Nevermind side effect stuff like how people love to build traps with Perc Checks as high, or higher than their thievery DCs. When a Rogue, guy who's job is to deal with traps, isn't exactly gushing in Wisdom. Or DnD magazines outright saying in articles "If your PC's are taking skill focuses feats or otherwise raising their skills, totally jack up your DC's to match to keep the challenge!". Section Z fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 20:46
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Yeah, if he's being that much of a headache about it then he's either- A: using Language barriers as crutch for dangling information from your players (case of 'you can't translate my plot coupon early') B: He doesn't actually have anything specific in mind for what it says most of the time, and doesn't want to come up with an answer (case of 'It's just flavor scenery stop bothering me'). C: Both. Especially if you went to the trouble of taking translation aids and they keep pulling that poo poo. Made more glaring that your patron seems to have the whole "Origin of language" deal. Could be worse, could be star wars. Where language barriers are never a problem for anyone (except when making jokes with Ewoks), but when you're playing Tabletop it's loving constant and of I see player A took a species that can't speak basic, have fun with that guys. Section Z fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 03:35
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I can understand not being ready to deal with the magical equivilent of "My Cellphone is working in today's episode of the X-Files", but if it's completly nonstop stonewalling, either try to as tactfully as possible point out he's making your entire language gig useless, and hey maybe if that's not ever gonna turn out let you adjust your character instead of leaving you stuck with "I cast make the GM angry I use my class feature". Either way, openly state the whole "What is the point of a power you bend over backwards to prevent me from using" issue and try to at least work something out. I've done the whole banging my head against the wall with my supposed gimmick thing, and you are never going to get through that wall just by continuing to try and get it to work. kingcom posted:wtf kinda system are you using that this crops up? Honestly it wouldn't matter WHAT the system is. If a GM wants to make poo poo a hassle because somebody picked a wookie, or a Rodian, or whatever, and nobody specifically trained in their language, too bad nobody in the party can understand him because "That's realistic"  even though nobody has any loving problems in the movies. Nevermind that galactic society would come crashing to a halt if that poo poo was enforced upon the galaxy at large with dozens of throwaway "can't physically speak basic" aliens.Then again, my luck has in the past run towards being told I'm cheating if I try to use my super powers to throw my voice and do sound system stuff (after picking out the specific stuff listed as 'this is for building a sound system mechanically'), because I don't know loving ventrilosiosm. But the same GM will then suggest I use my minimum cost power as a 5 kilometer radius "make everyone poo poo themselves or have a heart attack, even Batman" intimidate check with my supernaturally boosted presesnce. Because THAT's apparently fine and dandy in their brain, but if I wanna be the guy from police academy without the ventriloquism skill I'm a munchkin metagamer. Section Z fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 11:47
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Andrast posted:When I ran 4e I just gave everyone ritual caster for free and let everybody reflavor the rituals so they made sense for their class. Maybe a low grade 'works on rituals only' version of Residuum? 4th in general, Residuum was nice for your magic Item budget in general, if you remember it's the most expensive fine powder in existence on top of being a universal spell component. "You ever see an inn keeper try to make change for Residuum? Do you even WANT to give them the chance, when several thousand gold worth will accidentally end up under their finger nails?" I think per weight it's the same value as Astral Diamonds. weight/mass of one coin = 10,000 Gold, 1 pound/belt pouch =500k. Obviously RAW, residuum is just another currency that doubles as a component. But when breathing too heavily will scatter thousands of gold, it's a good justification for "Why this is only used for magical poo poo and not because you feel like buying a yacht". Section Z fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Feb 1, 2016 |
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Feb 1, 2016 01:06
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kingcom posted:Please nobody ask how stealth works again. I cant handle it. Stealth rules in any edition, of any system, primarily exist to make it harder for Players to sneak, while NPCs gleefully ignore stealth mechanics as the GM and Module Writers desire.
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Feb 3, 2016 01:21
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AlphaDog posted:There's any number of ways to have the bad guy do something that the players won't get (or maybe even won't want) to do without saying "there are different rules". Making pacts with evil powers, having innate or hereditary abilities, and a simple willingness to do things that permanently gently caress you up are three bad-guy things that immediately come to mind. Putting thought into that at all is more than you usually get when it comes to "Enemy has X ability/Weapon, and no it won't work for YOU" being the standard mindset of the official writers It's even worse when it comes to consumables or the like, but people seem more willing to give"Oh look, another batch of Drow who's poison lasted EXACTLY as long as the encounter, and none of them thought to bring spares." a pass than "I would like to learn that spell I've seen used against us the last five fights." If you want your players to have a shot at using the enemy toys, that's good on you. If you don't want it to be a thing, that's also fine and reasonable. Though if you don't want them to have it, you'll get a lot more mileage telling your players in the first place after the first few times they ask. Because if you tell them "Oh, you have to sacrifice your left nut to learn that spell" or any other requirements you set to give an In Character justification to keep it out of player's hands, your players still might try it. Sometimes telling your players that NPCs follow different rules than them works. But your outlook can also work great, as long as you keep in mind setting a hurdle instead of outright telling them no (and WHY no), means somebody is probably going to try and jump said hurdle if you put it in front of them enough times. You are so not wrong, I've just see so many blurring together over the years cases of GM's bending over backwards to avoid admitting they arn't "following the same rules as you" lead to more frustration for all involved than outright antagonistic GMs.
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Feb 4, 2016 00:34
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The above advice to "Play the zombies like zombies" is a huge deal if you are concerned with how the fight will play out. Regardless of what stats or abilities an enemy has, how you use them is often as much, if not more important. You don't want to make it so easy that you can make ninja assassins mouthbreathing idiots who will be easily tricked by minor illussion. But you also don't want to do to the opposite extreme of making wild dogs spam the dodge action because "Well it's the most logical thing for it to do this turn". etc. Said examples being a thing with an old pal of mine that GMs for us on rare occasions. He lets us get away with (and encourages) so much bullshit, to the point I have to talk him down from giving us more... But drat if he doesn't go full long war mod tactical when beasts or low INT monsters like hook horrors are involved for some reason Section Z fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jun 16, 2018 |
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Jun 16, 2018 06:00
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Gridlocked posted:Yes I do have to avoid doing the old "The 5 goblin archers all shoot the Wizard because they know what a Wizard is and are smart enough to know shot the mage first." The very rare occasions I've handled combat I've had AMAZING mileage with designating "That one rear end in a top hat taking potshots at your wizard/ranger" until there are no more ranged enemies to busy trying to avoid being murdered by the melee dudes. Every two bit archer or enemy caster aiming at your back row PCs just blends into the background noise of encounters. But when you have one rear end in a top hat with a crossbow on a ledge essentially daring your wizard to waste a spell slot on just him? Oh yes. (Also if any of the zombies crit, make them do a roundhouse kick and explain "Clearly they used to be a monk or something")
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Jun 16, 2018 07:00
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What about kicking down a door, only to discover a SECOND door behind it? Then after the moment of shock, but before it can grow into irritation, you reveal it's a screen door.
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Jun 18, 2018 02:40
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hangedman1984 posted:Whats wrong with Owls?? Kaysette posted:They’re by far the most used familiar in my experience due to the use of the help action and the flyby feature. Using that constantly is kind of cheesy in many people’s opinions. I have a GM who actually ENCOURAGES "Flyby aid other" spam via familiar. Which I don't do myself mostly out of laziness and not wanting to scrape up my familiar with a spatula later. I think the bigger deal it's directly listed on the familiar spell description itself. So more GM's are afraid to say no to it than say, asking for a Winged Snake even if you remind them it can't bite anything since you're not a chain pact familiar. (Which above GM did let me have because we were both amused at the idea of snakes that Hiss and Squawk at the same time). Section Z fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 24, 2018 12:37
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gradenko_2000 posted:The response to "a newbie DM shouldn't houserule a game until they really know what they're doing" isn't to bring up the shittiness of level 1 as an excuse to actually jump into houseruling right off the bat, it's to point out the game is badly designed because people die in one hit if you try to run it by-the-book. Enemies using the dodge action, for example. Yes, they can technically do this. It makes sense for a near dead enemy to try it at least once if they want to run away from the party. But it just makes your players with a ranged weapon feel like they are wasting their time if an entire pack of wild dogs is spamming dodge on approach until they reach melee/caster cantrips that ignore dodge range
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Jun 26, 2018 06:55
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Hobo By Design posted:One of my players is an arcane trickster rogue who took warlock spells with magic initiate. They've gotten good use out of it and I figured it'd be neat if their usage caught the attention of an actual warlock patron, especially since "fey spirits terrorizing the neighborhood" was a major plot point for a while. They aren't interested in multiclassing (afaik), but I think throwing them an RP bone could be fun. Not sure where to go with a hook like that, though. Traipsing through the Feywild would be a major diversion from what's going on in the campaign. Bad Seafood posted:They're a thief, right? Or presumably a scoundrel, at the very least. If you know they would love that sort of fantasy offer you cant refuse deal though, go for it. Section Z fucked around with this message at 10:11 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 10:08
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Malpais Legate posted:Is that really what you're taking away from the situation? It's not always a problem of course. Sometimes you can't go five minutes without the GM reminding you that YOUR ability to cast fireball means you are indebted to powers beyond your mortal imagining, and they start using your familiar as a mouthpiece for dark powers. Other times you get away with claiming your patron is the "Prince of Hearts" Archfey, only mentioned once in a single 4th edition item. Then you name your warlock an anagram of Keebler just to drive the stupid joke home. You can even see both extremes from from the same GM. Sometimes it's used well for good hooks that naturally fit into the game, sometimes it's clear they are just trying to fill a 'patron puppet strings' quota. Also "Dick with them for the rest of the campaign" is a pretty clear cut statement, even with the backpeddaling are you honestly surprised by Piell's response to a line like that? Section Z fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 16:56
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Josef bugman posted:Okay I just go the PHB and I might have been somewhat spoiled because I am very used to Glorantha sourcebooks but mother of God the art in this book is such generic shlock. It is astonishing how there is no uniformity and not even different styles that mesh or are obviously different. I think the worst is probably the halfling species picture. Me and my pals have a joke theory that,at least where halflings in 5th ed are concerned, they were trying to distance themselves from 4th edition "Halflings are basically just scale models of normal sized people. No more insane proportions" by going all in on the insane proportions.
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Jul 3, 2018 00:21
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AlphaDog posted:Can someone sanity check a character for me and also answer a couple of questions that I'm kinda stuck on? I'm sleep deprived because of children. Slippers of Spider Climb can be fun when you get to pick "Any uncommon item I want". I'm sure there are more practical picks, but for a Bard that would allow you to dance/power slide on the ceiling. Maybe flavor a broom of flying as a fantasy mike stand? Section Z fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jul 3, 2018 |
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Jul 3, 2018 03:16
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Glagha posted:Well I meant more official sources but those are pretty good ideas! Shouldn't lock myself down to D&D fluff because most of those don't do cosmic horror type critters well. I don't like the examples given in the section in the warlock pages in the PHB anyway because the ones they give are rarely strange alien beings that can't be understood but are usually just like "kind of obscure evil god". I kinda miss the Star pact stuff from 4e where a lot of them were just like, weird celestial bodies and poo poo. I wasn't joking earlier when I mentioned making your archfey patron "That one guy who sells magical cookies". Some friends let me get away with that because gently caress it, why not? Though that particular game didn't last long enough for much to come of it, star pact examples would be much more dignified draw.
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Jul 3, 2018 17:05
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Gharbad the Weak posted:I've never been a fan of having few skills. I don't know how many is Correct, but strength +2 skills doesn't seem like a lot. That might be a 5e thing, though. This understandably throws a lot of people off because every single other DnD edition, background perks are just optional bonuses. I've had to remind one friend of this every single time they make a character. Section Z fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Jul 5, 2018 |
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Jul 5, 2018 00:53
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Gharbad the Weak posted:That's what I was missing, yeah. I forgot about backgrounds, and I'm a general fan of "Two of your skills can basically be whatever". Honestly the most notable part of backgrounds is the unique features. Now you can officially be a fan of "Two of your skills can be whatever" and then learn Dwarfish and woodcarving on top. For a mildly related but even more turbo nerd bit of trivia. In 5th edition Dwarvish is the most used written language. Common is only used twice, making rarer than elvish writing Dwarves, Gnomes, giants, goblins, orcs, loving PRIMORDIAL. So my book nerds always grab Dwarven, even when they are elves. "I know the written tongue of ten civilizations  ... Well it's technically true."
Section Z fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jul 5, 2018 |
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Jul 5, 2018 01:12
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Kaysette posted:What do you mean by “in 5th edition?” All the published adventures have tons of stuff in Common. I'm sure this isn't treated with any consistency, because the only time modules or GMs make a big deal about written language in any edition is for stuff like "It's written in Orc, does any of you speak Orc? I think not" out of habit. Which has made all the "You found stuff the fire giants wrote, it's in giant." and our GM honestly saying "Good thing half the party can read it then" so great  Meanwhile, I can't think of the last time a GM or module made a big deal about what language something a gnome or halfling wrote something in was. Every single thing written by goblins will make a big deal it's not written in common. But Incriminating evidence found on gnomes of course, will turn out to be written in common even when nobody in the party speaks elvish/gnomeish. Which could just be long term confirmation bias I guess. Section Z fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jul 5, 2018 |
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Jul 5, 2018 01:29
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Lurdiak posted:They all probably used to say once per day but then someone got worried that sounded too much like 4e. And then they didn't do enough proofreading to replace them all. I have a running Not Joke with my friends that the worst part of 5th edition is the editing. "Where does it say prone grants advantage for melee?" "The conditions section. Literally 100 pages after the combat section supposedly dedicated to explaining prone" I've had some people honestly argue that it's okay the combat section only lists the movement, and not the combat effects, because it starts with "A condition described in appendix A".
Section Z fucked around with this message at 08:05 on Jul 9, 2018 |
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Jul 9, 2018 07:54
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Subjunctive posted:Huh, we’ve been playing wrong. An inadvertent holdover from the DM’s 4e campaign, perhaps. So far as every time my friends excitedly remember that interpretation.Meanwhile you often have to fight tooth and nail to have 5th ed rule "Melee distance ranged attacks vs prone get advantage instead of disadvantage" used. But I blame the crazy editing of the rulebook and old ingrained habits for that. I mean, I've lost track of how often I've heard about people ignoring the fact 5th ed kept DEX mod for finesse weapon melee damage even if it's a jokey fun loving group. So what hope does "Wait, hold on. Shooting at point blank is GREAT!" niche rule got? Section Z fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Jul 13, 2018 |
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Jul 13, 2018 18:29
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AlphaDog posted:If the player insists that the game absolutely has to be Dungeons & Dragons Next The Fifth One and not any other game, you should probably check with them before you start changing or adding to the rules. It's "Oh, we've replaced X with Y", or "Oh, we ignore X except when we don't" style changes stacking up that can get messy regardless of who is playing. What new player is going to complain if the GM reminds them something like "Oh, we have a house rule that let's you throw your battle axe for full damage while raging." Compared to say, "Oh, we have a house rule where you can't throw daggers with strength, because you can't do that in 4th edition without feats." On that note, Barbarians are probably really loving good at drunken games of darts in 5th edition. Section Z fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 15, 2018 |
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Jul 15, 2018 00:09
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Glagha posted:I love when people say that about 4e because at the very least 4e included a chart of "hey if someone tries something you didn't plan, here's a chart of DCs appropriate for different levels of difficulty, and here's some appropriate damage values if someone does something that should hurt but isn't covered under basic attack/a power." I mean they weren't good but they made an ATTEMPT. Me and my friends have a running joke of declaring "But I can't roleplay in this system!" every time we do roleplay based bullshit. I mean, 4th ed has it's own flaws, but me and my pals personal experience with directly talking to people who hate it are of the sort who complain they can't roleplay in 4th edition because there they trimmed down how many skills they need to roll dice in place of roleplaying The big irony of crying that you can't roleplay your way through content, without a bunch of dice roll rules that replace roleplaying. Hardly unique to any edition of DnD, Star wars, or any system. So I can't exactly praise 4th edition over it any more than I could praise 5th edition. No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:Just FWIW to soothe my restless mind as someone who's now spent a lot of time DMing and playing 5E: the Battlemaster's maneuver and superiority dice mechanics should literally be the core mechanic of the Fighter class, right? I don't have too much of a problem with 5th as a whole, on top of it being what my pals play more often these days due to the ease of "Oh poo poo we can actually play" rembering what does what. I don't want to kill myself over the thought of trying to make characters without a builder program. The biggest strength of 4th ed is also it's biggest weakness, like an ironic hell. I think a good example of the mentality of 5th edition split between "We took away 4th ed mechanics" and "We kept 4th ed mechanics". Are the people who STILL say "Wizards can only cast magic missile so many times a day! You can swing your sword as much as you want!" even though wizards unlock infinity castings of magic missile before fighters get their 4th swing. I think it's great that casters get stuff that prevents sitting on your rear end doing nothing after you blow your load. But it's annoying how little self awareness so many people have about it. Section Z fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 20:44
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Glagha posted:Oh hell yeah. I still like 4e better than 5e but like, I can bitch about all the flaws in that game. It's just that the actual flaws are never the ones that get brought up. I can talk about bad math, feat bloat, trap choices, and !skill challenges! any day. But instead it's always about how powers somehow stifle creativity and roleplay or how the fact that there isn't an option to put 4 skill points into underwater basketweaving means that every character is the same. Splicer posted:Perception shouldn't be a skill, it should be a core ability like Initiative or AC. Then you can add a proper system to it to make it actually work. Yet everyone expects rogues to be the guys to find the traps despite this longstanding disadvantage at finding traps. Because what loving rogue EVER has more than the bog standard default of Wisdom? In both 4th and 5th edition, a ranger proficient in lockpicks is often a better than a rogue with expertise/feats on perception at the whole "I search for traps" gig. Aside from that, is the general broad area of NPCs just ignoring stealth and perception rules because the module or plot says so. Or simply being given hacks abilities to bypass them so the GM doesn't have to bother. It's not the perception rules themselves in any system that get to me. So much as the usual grognard implementation of them in any system. One time I was playing HERO/Champions and when I rolled a 1 on perc check the GM declared "You go blind" just out of rote reflex. When pressed why they said "Uh... I don't know, a stroke?" and I walked them through less idiotic options until we landed on my alien's sunglasses being melted by the energy rifle of the cloaked sniper on an opposite skyscraper shooting at me. Section Z fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 21:50
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Glagha posted:I mean the answer to that is gently caress grognards, adapt or die. Also there's literally a paragraph in the AD&D PHB saying "HP is not literally your meat points, it is an abstraction of many factors that decide when an attack will kill you" so they don't even have an excuse. More sad, is how for some dumb reason I never remember this at the time. Only after the fact when I've wasted my breath assuming it was an honest question  Thank goodness for friends who share similar funhaver opinions  Even our guy who makes us count every individual arrow or bullet like a the dread stereotype, has a habit of fast tracking us into being a fantasy/post apocalyptic/whatever tycoon so that essentially turns into "Friend loves spreadsheets so much he'll handle that poo poo for you and remind you when you are low on potions".
Section Z fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 23:21
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AlphaDog posted:There's some kind of weird inertia of bullshit in this hobby. Like rolling stats on 3d6 in order, where the way people talk about it would make you think it's in AD&D instead of the several paragraphs that amount to "don't ever do 3d6 in order, it sucks so bad we didn't even include it". My friends love DEX on Melee but after long stretches I still have to remind them they are allowed to, when they return to 5th ed after playing older editions with their in person friends. Section Z fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 03:22
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More rules on social interactions just mean more rules a GM will ignore or selectively interpret when you try to take advantage of them rather than being restricted by them, if it's not something they would already enjoy letting the player get away with in D&D or ANY system. In a perfect world, having the rules for something would mean being able to do those things more often. In reality it's often just a bigger list of "You can't do X social interaction because you don't have Y feature!" At the end of the day, it really is down to the players and GM as people. Edge of the Empire just means if one person in your group fails their perc check before combat, the GM gets to declare unrelated consequences "because story game". (Edge of the Empire being the only SW system to say "Jesus Christ, Language barriers don't exist in star wars, get over yourself acting clever declaring that nobody in the party can understand eachother" is great though) Section Z fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 03:48
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For example, you could have a game where super strength allows you to swing a park bench at people real good. But if the GM doesn't like that, they will cry you have to buy a reach attack if you keep that up. Even with the fact you're also following the rules that mean smashing people with a bench does half the damage of just punching them. "The rules say I can do X" is not the primary factor. It's the starting point. Though I'm sure wildly different overall experiences with gaming is the biggest factor here. A group that honestly wants to roleplay their way through problems will do better regardless of system, than a group with a constrained viewpoint handed a dozen extra tables intended for roleplay opportunities. Section Z fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 04:02
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I am admittedly sort of burnt out on "Hey let's see what the big deal about these more roleplay friendly systems are" turning out to be a shitshow for my friends and I wondering if our roleplaying our way through problems in 4th and 5th ed DnD is still doing it wrong. Checking out some GM looking for players, and welp. Back to our DnD where we can jury rig a ritual into a ghost trap for gith spies the module intends to escape because we think it's cool. Instead of a dozen more charts of roleplay options in Edge of the Empire only to result in "But the module says I'm supposed to charge you more than your entire party's bankroll combined even if you succeed on your social noncombat rolls!" "But a few more charts couldn't hurt, right?" is an understandable and just outlook. But if you really mean it about the whole roleplaying your way through problems thing, you can manage without that chart. While, apparently, it's just a waste of paper to anyone too constrained to let players do anything outside of the box with or without a sidebar. That said, totally use a system advertised to support more roleplay options if your group and GM are enthusiastic enough about those options to get the most out of em. But don't let it turn into a case of giving yourself enough rope to hang yourself with by being married to those charts either. Section Z fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Jul 18, 2018 |
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Jul 18, 2018 04:55
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My naive innocent mind when it came to alignments way back when was worried that I wasn't good ENOUGH for the nicer alignments, but I wasn't a nonstop rear end in a top hat or crazy person that warranted the worse ones. Whether it was DnD's grid of "Are you an Scrupulous? Unscrupulous? anarchist?" deals. I eventually settled into 'Neutral Good' most of the time because nobody ever seems to remember that alignment exists and are unsure how to critique someone who isn't at some far extreme. Or confusing people with Chaotic Whatever/Unaligned characters that would end up morally upstanding by default. The "Worst" I get is characters wishing they were Agent 47 with no civilian deaths and fumbling their way towards that goal, instead of HK-47, basically It's amazing what wistfully wishing you were a professional does to keep you on track from attacking babies, unless they honestly tried to murder you first.These days my pals and I don't give a gently caress about alignment charts, and my longtime internet buddy jokes about how confused his in person friends are at 5th ed Detect Evil spam not working like they expect.
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Jul 19, 2018 00:29
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mormonpartyboat posted:a pact of the tome warlock following the guidance of his patron cake boss My past warlock experience loves this idea. It would even be an excuse for a Fiend pact "Because you use fire in baking, duh".
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Jul 19, 2018 18:57
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Mendrian posted:Lol what? When it's keeping people from trying to cast charm on doorways and other absurd bullshit, that's fine. That's why we have these things. When you are arguing that your glorified 'shoot it with a magic not arrow' is not allowed to shoot, you've gone off the deep end of strangling yourself to death with semantics. 4th ed, but it had my favorite rules clarifications that I can ever remember off the top of my head though. Of "Oh my god you guys, you have to HIT the enemy do deal your sneak/quarry/pact/etc damage. Holy poo poo". I also got a giggle out of any "Stop shooting yourself in the face with this power to trigger damage effects" rulings.
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Jul 20, 2018 19:08
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Elysiume posted:That's when you go the Dark Souls route where sure, you can attack the chest, but if you do enough damage you'll just smash the chest and whatever's inside.
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Jul 20, 2018 20:27
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Enourmo posted:My group plays over Discord (two separate campaigns, even) with nothing but drawn maps and item descriptions which are just copy/pasted in the chat, things work fine for us A large aspect is that we all trust eachother not to just make poo poo up, but my friends and I don't use any paid content on roll20 to play 5th edition. gently caress, I don't even use any of the automated character sheet options myself. But all of us have typed up to our personal tastes text file sheets we can all reference elsewhere, while roll20 usage of auto sheets is down to if any of us are too lazy to track stuff and want to just hammer a button to shoot a magic crossbow or cast a particular spell. But all our HP tracking is just on the tokens. Though it does make for more effort on the GM when a convenient map isn't handy to just drag n drop onto the map, creating enemy tokens by hand, etc. Again, this is very much a case of "There is no GM screen, everyone just agrees to not be a shitlord" scenario. That said, being able to see not only the health and stats of your party members, but of enemies is something that is fair to find offputting even for a casual group of friends who finds that a little too gamey even without abusing it. All the paid stuff is a lot more tempting if you have a large concern with keeping numbers things under the hood, not just speeding up the prepwork. Section Z fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 00:41
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xilni posted:So I can play on roll20 without buying the books again? I’m confused as to what buying a digital book does if I’ve already got a hard copy with me? Does it unlock features on the roll20 platform? Oh the subject of drag/dropping images. 1: Need to have a GM tag in any given game to do it. 2: First time you do so, use the in roll20 image library to reuse that image from then on. Otherwise you result in "Oh I've got 5 copies of the image I use for my PC/the encounter map/this goblin archer, and deleting any will delete any objects created by that version of the image" in cleanup. Not a single shred of paid Roll20 content is used by any of my friends though. It can be done, it's just a matter of time and effort. Though a lot of that effort smoothed over by just saying "gently caress it, I trust you guys. Everyone has GM tags" to make up for any skipped automation or macro typos. It can be done with the usual single GM method if you are willing to put in more effort. We essentially use tokens with cheat sheets in the GM notes (Hey everyone is a GM, now we can all read those!) for like, 90% of our character/enemy effort and tracking. Our major permanent sheets aren't even on Roll20. Even when we use free made Roll20 macro sheets we don't use those to track anything, just for "I'm loving lazy, *Boop* there that's my Scorching ray roll results" usage. Though we do all have to manually edit HP changes by hand with our setup, all of us being able to do so speeds that along. EDIT: The most important thing though, is "Whatever works for your group". Our fast and loose mentality has origins with play by post threads for In character content while "Everyone is a GM" access was so we could handle combat turns ourselves when nobody else was around. Nowadays we game in realtime when we can manage, but kept all the shortcuts. But taking the time to set up a more traditional experience can be well worth it, if that's what you all enjoy, Section Z fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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Jul 25, 2018 00:59
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