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mastershakeman posted:Basically we play a heavily modified d&d game and it's useful to read this thread for overall concepts and ideas then tie them to our own system. But the dm just absolutely hates bards as a class. Flavoring a priesthood to do most bard things (playing the bagpipes while blessing those aroundwith +1 to hit) would work but for now we're sticking with rogue, partly because we don't have one in the party. Which is it? Deadly serious DM or Bad at Smelling Power DM? You can tell by if he has also banished gnomes in the first case, or if he's obsessed with making paladin character fall in the second.
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Feb 23, 2015 22:10
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mastershakeman posted:Let's face facts, d&d is all about weird edge cases and house rules. It's true, I made it less than a week into my D&D game before we needed to determine the size and target value status of fetuses. I think it's just something that comes up for everyone all the time but no one wants to admit. Like if a pregnant lady tries to get away from my character's ministrations, does he get two opportunity attacks because the fetus is also escaping his tender clutches? Or just one because the fetus is subject to forced movement? For reals I don't know why D&D doesn't just have rules baked in for maximum anal aperture width. Thanks for selling us half a book, WOTC. Thanks to you idiots I don't even know exactly how many books you can cram up your rear end! A lot though, probably.
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Feb 24, 2015 17:23
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Laphroaig posted:I can't tell whats worse about D&D Next, the large influx of creepy weirdos with house rules for how to target fetuses or the large influx of creepy weirdos complaining that their DM is cheating them out of the value of their harvested lizard dicks. You guys find a magic portal, on the other side appear to be your characters having fun in a better game system, and you note that they lack pouches full of rancid man-lizard genitals, such as those that have been weighing you down. Dare you enter this magical realm? Oh also there's a magic ring in front of the portal that turns the lucky person who touches it level 11 and then also anyone near him at that time. Realistically though it's not that 5e is written for creeps. Creeps just naturally need a bunch of nearby people to be awful at, and so they congregate towards the more populated games. Note that is is specifically the viviparous crested creep, whereas it's cousin, the reticulated whooping creep, prefers to build deep complex nests in an old crazy game system, often at that one weird table in the back of the store.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:16
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Ederick posted:I'm confused, or maybe just really inexperienced with RPGs. Every RPG that I can think of relies on dice rolls in combat to determine if you hit or not. What's wrong with this? I can totally imagine games without dice rolling where attacks just hit, but it seems like a totally different style of game. There was some edition where a lot of attacks did damage if you missed, to help with the chipping away and to reflect that your character is competent and accurate, but sometimes just doesn't hit as hard or effectively, but it's been lost to the mists of history.
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Feb 26, 2015 07:35
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PurpleXVI posted:The problem is, though, if you make the random element large enough to unburden the GM in some sense, and large enough that players feel a bit endangered, like a given encounter isn't completely predictable, then you're already heading back towards what we had in the first place. But if you don't make it large enough for that, it remains as kind of a vestigial mechanic and still leaves us with hard, but not insurmountable, problems. So I think I'd just scrap the random element completely, if I was really going to work on it, just go all-in towards a non-random system and see what the end result was. Mostly players casting Invis and then X-Zone.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:53
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Kai Tave posted:Okay, well I wasn't telling you that you absolutely had to ditch your game and play 4E right this second or anything, I just think that the whole "but 4E needs a grid!" thing is, and has been, very, very overstated. And even accepting the idea that 4E requires a grid where other grid-based games can just work fine without them, I'm not really sure that it's more of a pain in the rear end to set up maps and minis in real life every time a fight starts as opposed to setting up a map in paint and throwing some tokens up on a Google docs page online is. We (not you and me, the general we) had this discussion a few chat threads back about PbPs and I maintain that if you're willing to do all the setup and takedown for a face-to-face game full of grid combat that doing so for a PbP isn't really that much more work. It's simple man. 4e is good with a grid, and bad without a grid. 3.x is bad with a grid, and bad without a grid. So to an observer, 4e gets worse without a grid present, but 3.x does not. It's just all relative.
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Feb 26, 2015 20:56
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Kai Tave posted:It's like it's 2008 all over again. It's tabletop WOW, also I really enjoy Flo Rida and T-Pain and see great things in their future.
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Feb 26, 2015 23:47
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PurpleXVI posted:Legitimate question here: Has anyone here, when just playing with friends, and not in some sort of tournament or con setting, had a system where they used every last rule, and invoked them every time they could? Not counting intentionally minimalist stuff that's basically only got one mechanic. I'm honestly trying to think of a rule that got ignored during our 4e games. We used all the minor stuff like grappling, skill challenges, and trap DCs. But no, since we didn't track XP according to the charts and just levelled up every couple of sessions. So close. I did play Rifts, 100% by the book, following every single rule (I'm leaving the bar by backflipping, I'll mark 25 xp), when I was 15 though.
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Feb 27, 2015 20:47
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Splicer posted:Edit is dead - Quote I can agree with that. Wasn't that thing that was basically in every powergamer manual ever from a Dragon magazine? White Lotus something or other. goatface posted:That appears to have almost nothing to do with D&D at all. He has just published a barebones wargame model. Barebones is what they do best!
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Mar 3, 2015 00:05
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hyphz posted:The verisimilitude issue came from a player, who is actually also our regular GM, who said "If we meet goblins in the swamp, I want to know they were always there." So any sort of adjustable worldbuilding broke his suspension of disbelief for whatever reason. Did you tell him that goblins are nomadic opportunists, or was he too busy counting specifically red cars by that point?
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Mar 4, 2015 21:08
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Congratulations, you've managed to reinvent the D&D 1st Edition signature move, Random poo poo Happens To The Main Plot Solely Because of the Dice: "Your party is taken to meet the King, and he's..." *rolls dice* "...super pleased to meet you!" He's also a "brazen" "trollop" who is "dead." Man this game is great.
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Mar 5, 2015 22:22
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Kurieg posted:Why? PA is amazing because it's like two interlocking yet completely different kinds of ugly. They look like two pages in the big book of chinless humans.
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Apr 9, 2015 23:13
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Personally I like random rolling when it's that stupid kind where there's so many do-overs and choices that you might as well have picked an array. Like "Roll 6 sets of 4D6 drop lowest, arrange from first roll to last roll vertically in a grid that is 6x6. You may now choose any horizontal, vertical, or diagonal unbroken line of statistics, and reroll any one statistic that is 8 or less. Arrange these statistics as you like, then you may add 1 to one statistic by subtracting two from another statistic. Random!"
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Apr 18, 2015 21:04
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Why is this argument always about smart fighters and strong wizards? Never once have I seen someone want to play like an especially charismatic priest. Also why do people think that playing a buff wizard is like extra-special good roleplaying?
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Apr 20, 2015 17:28
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mastershakeman posted:Hell, you shouldn't be able to pull a jean valjean and lift a carriage off of someone with an 8 in str, even if you did take the skill athletics. You should also be hitting things a bunch better and harder (than others of your class and level) if you're the strongest guy alive . etcetc. This isn't complicated What does someone's STR score have to do with your ability to pull a carriage off them?
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Apr 20, 2015 17:41
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mastershakeman posted:Someone's strength doesn't have anything to do with their strength? No, you said, and I quote "Hell, you shouldn't be able to pull a jean valjean and lift a carriage off of someone with an 8 in str." Your dangling participle indicates that the person under the cart has an 8 in strength, and therefore the valiant original subject of the sentence shouldn't be able to get the cart off them. I figured this out even though I have an 8 in wisdom.
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Apr 20, 2015 19:58
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odinson posted:The only reason I'm ~ two levels behind is because my normal Adv L. DM is taking 3-4 weeks off to have a kid. I joined another party that is around 3 "episodes" ahead of my group. They're actually in the second book, so I've missed the climax/xp/loot from the big finale in the first. You are supposed/have to be Lvl 8 to start the 2nd book. Only reason I was able to join that one because some folks didn't show in their group, and my friend had started playing in said group weeks prior. So it was either play with them or sit around for over two hours and twiddle my thumbs. Every Sunday, they do these one-shots, called Encounters (I believe). That is where you can get some extra XP, items, and gold. However, I work every Sunday and can not attend. I don't get how people do this honestly. If I was sitting down at a table with a bunch of strangers with a character from another game entirely and this was the local rules, I'd miraculously be two levels above everyone else every time. Also would you believe a vorpal sword dropped last session and my DM said I could have all the spells?
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Apr 22, 2015 23:51
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odinson posted:The other game I played it was at a table 15' away. In Adv. Lg you have to record all your stuff earned on a log sheet with everything was gained or lost relevant to your character with the DM's DCI #. Magical Items have their own wotc made cardboard cutouts that have to be signed. Everything about this just makes me want to mess with it. I want to get four friends and start my own table at a league, just throw the magic items at them, have all the monsters die from coronary heart disease when the players enter the room, make everyone level 20, unleash them on the rest of the room. It's like seeing a picture of a nerd adjusting his calculator watch and he's standing right by a pool.
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Apr 23, 2015 00:05
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ImpactVector posted:I should say, the DM did eventually agree to let me use the array, but just given the culture of this group I suspect I'd probably never hear the end of it. We're going to see how it goes and if it's awful he's okay with switching. When you say culture, you mean like how the contents of petri dishes are sometimes called culture?
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Apr 30, 2015 16:55
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gradenko_2000 posted:I can never get the whole mindset of "a player that isn't satisfied with the character they're playing needs to kill themselves first or some other arm-twisting bullshit just to remake their character" in an RPG where nobody's holding a gun to your head and there's no computer code to hold you back from "respeccing". "If he can reroll then I should should get to reroll." "If he gets to reroll I'm gonna reroll til I have all 18s." Judgement posted:And in order to maximize your roleplaying cred and earn the respect of everyone else at the table for your amazing skill, be sure to play your awful character as obnoxiously as possible to also make the experience just as grating for everybody else as well. Hell and drat yes. Play your character as one of those old "gypsy" kits from the 2e browncovers, tell everyone in the party that you're not evil, you were just raised in a society where ownership of an object is defined as keeping it on your person, steal everything anyone puts down. But roleplay about it. Describe how your character was raised in a culture where he was taught to strap every item back to himself meticulously as you sell the fighter's sword. Talk about how mamma warned you against thieves as she diligently tied the careful knots that kept your cooking equipment attached to your ankles.
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Apr 30, 2015 18:43
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:What was that you said? 2nd Ed, Player's Option: Skills and Powers, you say? Reminds me of the budget for robots in Heroes Unlimited. Why is it randomized? So that some robots are purely better? Presumably.
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Apr 30, 2015 22:34
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Dr. Tough posted:Does anyone in this thread actually like 5E? Everyone here seems to be talking about how 4E was so much better, which is odd because everyone I've talked to who has played it hated it. In my experience it's mostly people that haven't played it that hate it. You can tell because the arguments they use are generally nonsense instead of the many valid issues with the system. If someone says something like "It doesn't feel like D&D" when "Combat has too many tiny modifiers to track and the first MM was near useless" is available, you can tell they never actually played the game. Dr. Tough posted:Well you'll be pleased to know that neither of those are reasons cited. The most frequent were "it's a board game with light roleplaying elements attached", "it's a rollplaying game", "all the classes are the same/too similar". Exactly, nonsense arguments like these.
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May 5, 2015 17:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:"all the classes are the same/too similar" - this is the big one. This is not a bad thing. The entire CRPG/MMORPG genre has built an multi-million dollar industry around people being able to have fun because they're all able to contribute meaningfully to the group that they're playing with! Simply put, you'd only consider this a bad thing if you were coming off of previous editions where spellcasters were significantly better than all the other classes and wanted to retain that position of power to the detriment of other players who want to play a different archetype. I've always found that argument hilarious when it comes from 3.x diehards, what with that being the edition that proudly introduced the Sorceror to the class list. What's this, a wizard who learns spells automatically? Introduced in the edition where wizards first started to learn spells automatically? What a huge difference!
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May 5, 2015 18:00
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Dr. Tough posted:Well regardless, once my group wraps up our current Deadlands game I'm going to start a 5E campaign because after 14 years of playing and enjoying three versions of 3E it's time for a change. Noooooo every die you roll for the Jesus edition burns my demonic 4th edition skin! No but seriously have fun and no one gives a poo poo.
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May 5, 2015 18:07
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Dr. Tough posted:2E wasn't a huge change from 1E but that didn't mean it was "mush" or "reheated" The big difference with 1e moving into 2e is that it was forward movement.
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May 5, 2015 18:10
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Dr. Tough posted:I bought the core books with an Amazon giftcard so if I don't like it I'm not out any money. Nah, you shoulda just opened with "I'm gonna start a 5e campaign, guys" since your opinion on 4e is irrelevant to your plans.
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May 5, 2015 18:16
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Dr. Tough posted:I was actually serious when I asked if there was a new edition wars thread I get the impression that the stuff you have to say about 4e would probably play well in grognards.txt. Just pretend you found your ideas on RPG.net and you'll be a hit.
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May 5, 2015 19:23
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Kai Tave posted:RPGnet at least started banning people who couldn't stop frothing about how 4E was a WoW clone boardgame MMO for rollplayers not roleplayers, so there's that. Yeah, I always forget where the grog bastions actually are.
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May 5, 2015 19:30
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Kurieg posted:The same interview said that they're going to keep putting out FR stuff until they're out of ideas for FR, then they'll consider looking at other settings. But they've "Got a lot of ideas for FR" so that might not be for a while. Gonna go out on a limb here and say "a lot of ideas for FR" will be like "Gold Dwarf, Shield Dwarf, Ghostfoot Halfling, Drow..." Speaking only of personal predilections, I think we'd be super lucky if they felt like throwing Saurials back in.
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May 5, 2015 19:44
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Tunicate posted:How do you gently caress that up? That's a Vestige Pact warlock. You could call them Binders, but there's also a Binder class that you could call Binders if you wanted, which you wouldn't because they are hosed up.
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May 5, 2015 23:39
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IT BEGINS posted:I don't even know what you're talking about in regard to 'rulesfeel' (what even is that?). Sounded like it's when you make your players roll dice even though those dice aren't going to do anything, because otherwise your players will come adrift from the game due to sheer lack of having recently rolled dice.
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May 6, 2015 17:14
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I have a Drizzt miniature that came with the old Kilsek Legion box set for the Chainmail tactical game WOTC flirted with before dumping it for plastic minis a decade ago. It's a weird model because he has a mohawk for some reason, but is otherwise verifiably Drizzt. Same armor, same twin scimitars. Always wondered if that model was sculpted based on some brief period where he was rocking a hawk.
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May 7, 2015 16:16
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Tunicate posted:Minsc was 2e, wasn't he? Yep, via Baldur's Gate.
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May 7, 2015 16:28
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Covok posted:I think it comes down to what AD&D is supposed to be. If I recall correctly, Gygax made AD&D with the intent of unifying the game because, at the time, it was custom for people to carry characters over to different campaigns run by different people. As a result of this custom, houserules caused some friction so AD&D was supposed to fix this issue. It was also supposed to fix the issue of some GMs being too liberal with XP and magic items and others being too stingy. I bet it was also supposed to fix other issues caused by this custom. Obviously, it didn't work and this is likely why that gamer custom died off. Reading about how the game used to be built with this assumption is like finding one of those MTG cards that references ante to me. I first think "People actually had fun with that and weren't massive tools to each other immediately?" and then think "Oh no wait it wouldn't have died if that was the case."
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May 11, 2015 23:45
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Lightning Lord posted:I also thought a critique of Elric exclusively based on how the setting and character are presented in the RPG was actually pretty worthwhile and interesting. It's sort of like if you've never heard of Superman and critiqued him based on Superman 64. Thank you. Exactly! That is 100% what we were going for. I mean what is he, like a guy that hates a robot and proves it by collecting rings?
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May 12, 2015 20:54
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FRINGE posted:Because that makes sense..? Well actually it came about because druids/clerics were the only decent fighters of 3.x.
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May 13, 2015 17:06
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si posted:Should I take the fact that the last several pages are entirely discussions of other editions/other games and how to convert to those instead of this as an indication that we shouldn't start a 5E game? Was hoping to find discussions of ongoing play of 5E, useful tools, rule interpretations and such. Not promising. Standard "Should I play 5e checklist" here: Does your group own any other editions of D&D and enjoy them at all? Does your group care all that much about what game they are playing or do they tend to prioritize the social value of play over the medium? If your answers are "No" and "Our group is awesome and can make a bad or boring system work" then you should totally get 5e.
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May 14, 2015 20:22
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si posted:This is our first stab at D&D in general - we have all played it before, but somewhere around the 20 years ago mark. Recently we have played games like Apocalypse World, various Fate system games, etc. So we're definitely on the second aspect there. Sounds like you're fine, though if you've enjoy apoc world and FATE you're likely to find this game a little restrictive and backwards. If you can find a way to play it for free first, I'd recommend that. Honestly despite the constant lack of actual 5e conversation in here, I don't think anyone hates the game, it's too basic and plain to hate. You'll have a good time, it might just be the same good time you had with other systems that didn't take the big buy in. Hell if you're specifically looking for a "Hooray we're playing D&D and everyone keeps dying to dumb mechanics and weird traps but it only takes three minutes to make a character" even that has a better edition or two you could get for peanuts. theironjef fucked around with this message at 20:47 on May 14, 2015 |
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May 14, 2015 20:40
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He's not wrong, he's just applying information that's correct about every RPG to one as if it was unique. Every game gets better with creative players and sucks with boring ones. Smart dude.
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May 15, 2015 06:29
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Dirk the Average posted:I still recall trying to describe how my character moved, attacked, etc. while playing D&D once, and my friend telling me that he would penalize how far I moved or how well I attacked based on certain details of my description. I had that happen once when I was playing a bard in a pickup 2e game. Didn't feel like singing constantly for the bardic valor or whatever. Switched to a Psionicist during the dinner break. So I guess it's creative players AND DMs that aren't dumbasses.
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May 15, 2015 07:38
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