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goatface posted:I knew a guy like this. If the NPCs weren't statted and equipped the same way as the PCs, then it wasn't fair. They were firm in their belief that enemies shouldn't be able to do something unless it was possible for the players to do the same. Well,I can kinda understand being disappointed if you can't take equipment that they have. The core of the game is killing things and taking their stuff, after all. From a 'pretty mechanics' point of view, it feels a little less artificial to know that your level 1 wizard is effectively the same as all the other level 1 wizards out there, but it's usually not worth the GM effort. I think there are definitely circumstances where you've got an archnemesis or a rival or something, where them being on 'even ground' with the player characters from a mechanics standpoint would definitely make them seem more 'real' than their faceless minions, but that's still possible. Basically the same thing as playing a JRPG and noticing some NPCS have unique portraits and character designs, while the rest of them kinda are boring and detail-free. Any GM worth his salt in 3e fudged NPC stats anyway. After all, who gives a gently caress about what the fifteenth barbarian's bonus to knowledge: kittens is, or what first level spells Warrick the Wargsoul War Wizard Warden learned eight levels ago? I remember seeing a bunch of people developing autoscaling 3e classes purely to be disposable NPCS.
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Dec 19, 2014 20:54
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Makes sense, yeah. I was statting up casters by just printing out the text of three or four spells. Maybe do something weird like a metamagic. Track HP until it looks like he should be dying based on how the combat is feeling, then have him pull out the best spell to go out in a flashy way.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:20
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AlphaDog posted:I don't get the "everything by the same exact rules" attitude. I mean, I sorta get it as a design conceit, but I don't understand why you'd want D&D to work like that. B-but what if I want an army of demons 
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Dec 20, 2014 00:31
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Babylon Astronaut posted:I've said it time and time again, but THAC0 is not difficult. It's lovely, slow, and obsolete, but not difficult. Yeah, anyone who thinks subtraction is difficult probably shouldn't be bragging about that fact. I mean, I like messing around with fiddly system bits, but I sorta stopped doing that once I helped put together Pun Pun. After you've won, no need to keep playing that game.
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Dec 20, 2014 04:34
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By the way, can I say gently caress items that only give +x bonuses? Changing numbers on your sheet is boring as hell, and adds a lot of player overhead. Same for spells.
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Dec 21, 2014 17:25
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djw175 posted:I think they more meant the weapons that are just +1. Yeah, or an item that's +50 to picking your nose, or an at-will spell that's +1d4 to skills. If you haven't seen the flamewars about clerics spamming the guidance cantrip, they're pretty amusing.
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Dec 22, 2014 18:46
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Also, guidance cantrip is pretty broken. Unlimited uses per day, +1d4. The only downside (aside from being bad design) is having the cleric player constantly saying 'I cast guidance to help' gets old.
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Dec 25, 2014 01:12
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ascendance posted:Having played a bunch of different online CCGs and the Talisman board game, I can honestly say scrapping and minimizing multiple out of turn reactions is a good thing. Well, you want players to not be totally bored outside their turn. Settlers does a good job of that.
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Dec 25, 2014 18:05
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As far as house rules go, I've always liked putting unconsciousness instead of death at < 0 hp, and using up injuries as a hp restoration mechanic. So you can either lie the battle out (and get revived at the end), or get back up with half hp and a broken leg or something.
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Dec 26, 2014 19:15
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Even 3e isn't that unbalanced if you set the level cap at 6.
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Dec 27, 2014 04:54
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deadly_pudding posted:You can still have a big, dumb murder machine in the form of the barbarian, but can also spread some of that ability to solve some problems over there. Barbarians and rangers both have access to magic involving plants and animals now, and the class distinction is in combat style. Rangers are subtle, and barbarians are not. Both of them are good at nature lore and traversal type things. But you don't understand, that's turning it into Diablo. Literally, they made a couple Diablo setting books early in 3e, and they're like that. All the melee classes have a mixture of partial and standard action 'magical' abilities, so they got more options than spellcasters (who only went up to level 6 spells), too. And the martial equivalent to spell slots wouldn't be spent if you succeeded on an ability check. It was probably the most balanced thing WotC put out.
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Dec 30, 2014 02:41
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moths posted:The problem is that wizards don't have throttles, they only have kill-switches. And if you even think about using one, it's because you're an rear end in a top hat DM who's just trying to ruin Larry's night. And honestly, separately tracking cheap material components (removing the cheap-as hell pouch with all components item) gets brought up as a way to bring down wizards, but all it does in practice is add a bunch of tedious micromanaging and not really change class power level. Like, sure you can specify the wizard has fleece underroos so he always can pull the wool over peoples' eyes with silent image, and note that he keeps his pet rat in a bag of pork rinds for casting grease, and has a little wooden carved archery target on a bracelet for True Strike, but all that really does is add a couple lines to his inventory or character description. It's like counting the ranger's arrows - in theory it makes him weaker, but really it just adds busywork.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:03
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AlphaDog posted:So, you track material components? All of them, or just the "rare" ones? Do you, for instance, disallow the casting of Barkskin if you've described a week's travel through a pine forest and the Druid forgot to write "big sack of oak bark" on his sheet? Oh wait, you just need to write "component pouch" and you're fine. I bet everyone who has no problem with that would also have no problem with me writing down "weapon and tool belt" which contains whatever weapon or tool I might need, right? The tools thing was actually part of the 3e rules. Artisan's tools, 5 gp, 5 pounds. "These special tools include the items needed to pursue any craft." And if a player said 'My fighter has a bunch of cheapo weapons', I'd say sure. Throw as many daggers, shoot as many sling bullets, entrench as many spears and pole-vault with as many quarterstaves as you want. If you feel like having an excuse, have them on the mule who help carry all your heavy loot offscreen. (Loot logistics is busywork too. If I wanted to micromanage selling off goblin armor, I'd be playing dwarf fortress) If you want to spend your GM effort on ruling exactly how much time, space, weight, and effort is involved in obtaining and carrying around "a pinch of soot and a few grains of salt," and how many castings of comprehend languages you get with 5 grams of soot and 3.5 grains of salt, more power to ya. But specifically ruling and nitpicking the components for each and every spell is going to be super time-consuming, but not actually nerf the wizard in any notable way - he might end up spending 1 copper to get a gram of salt for a thousand castings, but at low levels the cost of obtaining soot out of a chimney or some fleece out of an old robe is probably less than a handwave generic material component pouch would cost (effectively making this a tiny buff), and at high levels a difference of 2 or 3 gp is worthless. Material components just aren't a good balancing target. They're basically just a bunch of silly jokes (or if you're charitable, sympathetic magic flavortext) about the spell. Excluding the expensive components like the diamonds for raise dead, or whatever, but I haven't ever seen anyone handwave those. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 11:11
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Sage Genesis posted:Multiclassing is totally different. It used to be that you could select to multiclass at character creation and from there on out you'd just split up your earned xp between your classes and eventually level up here and there, taking the best traits from all your classess. In 3e it changed so that each time you leveled up you could select on the spot which class that level would be in. This gave rise to "builds" that got pretty complicated if you throw supplements and prestige classes into the mix. You could plan a 3e character ahead for 20 levels and take them to all sorts of wild places, unlike in 2e where the course was pretty much set at level 1 and could only barely be adjusted afterwards (especially if you're non-human).
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Dec 30, 2014 21:27
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let's get back to a more classic flamewar Hexes vs squares: which are better?
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Dec 31, 2014 20:00
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Ah yes, the thriller strategy.
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Jan 2, 2015 23:19
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Has anyone played E6, and have ability to compare?
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Jan 3, 2015 04:50
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ThirdEmperor posted:I actually like the idea? That can really go wrong though. There's the eberron prestige class with abilities like 'at level 4 you befriend some drow living on the shore of the lake, and they'll give you a cure potion every two months and let you crash at their place'.
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Jan 4, 2015 06:30
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The Bee posted:Okay, I gotta hear a source for this. Drow Roomate seems like the best class feature. Turns out it's the 'Thunder Guide'. Serial Hero: At 8th level, famed Korranberg Chronicle reporter Kole Naerrin writes a serialized account of your adventures appearing over the course of thirteen weeks. You earn 1,000 gp per point of your Charisma bonus for the rights to your story (minimum 1,000 gp). Really seems like someone just wrote up their personal character.
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Jan 4, 2015 21:20
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Mordiceius posted:What. It's like megaman, except the first three levels you punch things instead of using your gun.
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Jan 9, 2015 08:21
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Mordiceius posted:That's the only way I could see using the immunity effectively. Other than that, why does it even exist? So your villain can stomp through a town of villagers, and they'd be literally unable to harm him? 
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Jan 9, 2015 18:54
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Dick Burglar posted:Eldritch Knight Fighters and Arcane Trickster Thieves use INT for their spells as well, but yeah. EKs are apparently hot garbage but I don't know how ATs fare. From reading their abilities they appear to be at least very flavorful, if not terribly effective. They have a special place in my heart because their capstone, Spell Thief, was my favorite class from 3.5 (again, from a flavor standpoint, not an actually-mechanically-good standpoint). My spell thief was great because of shoddy rules writing. Having a spell-like ability stolen meant you couldn't use it for a minute, but didn't deplete your uses. So I spent a lot of time embezzling buffs off the party warlock and factotum.
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Jan 13, 2015 06:38
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Rusty Kettle posted:To be honest, I imagine a lot of it is me. They are new and don't know they difference between these kinds of nerd things. They trust my judgement on board games for the most part, but I fear that I have a reputation as an opinionated hipster when it comes to everything else. This may or may not be true, but I find myself holding my tongue during conversations about popular movies, music or TV. So they hear indie RPG and think I'm going to spend 4 hours playing some high brow indie thing they don't understand. Maybe play a couple of games of Descent first?
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Jan 13, 2015 17:56
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Harrow posted:. That they stepped back to 3.x's language of saying that a creature is telekinetic not because it just is telekinetic but because it has telekinesis on its spell list is kind of odd to me. It saves a lot of space, if you don't have to explicitly list how much your telekinetic dude can lift, how far away an object can be, whether he can shoot stuff like bullets or just pick it up and move it slowly, et cetera.
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Jan 14, 2015 17:33
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Just to clarify, are we talking about things like 'the robotplatypus has psychic powers, and can move items with its mind every round (as the telekinesis spell)', or 'the Chapel Gargoyle can cast spells as a level 7 cleric (and has the following spells prepared)'?
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Jan 14, 2015 17:57
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mango sentinel posted:The latter. Ah, yeah. I'll agree that's usually a bad idea, though obviously you'd still want a lich to be able to do wizard poo poo, since that's the whole point of the monster.
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Jan 14, 2015 18:19
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Looks like sphinx spellcasting is how they were in ADnD ("If brute force is not successful, an androsphinx can cast spells as if a 6th-level priest. Note that most androsphinxes use these spells for healing and defense rather than damage and attack. "), so that particular instance probably more a traditional grog thing than an intentional feature of monster design. Of course that assumes monster design had much in the way of intentionality to begin with. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 21:58
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neonchameleon posted:Not even that. You would have instead: Things like "Can you steal the wizard's spellbook?" "If he tries to hold onto it, is it a dex check or strength check?" or "What about the rogue, he's a 60 pound halfling, can I pick him up and fling him 90' into the lake?" About three quarters of the text of Telekinesis is dealing with that sort of stuff, since DnD mechanics didn't so much grow as metastasize. Similarly, if we have a Doom Peacock running around, and it shoots color-based deathrays out its butt, I'd prefer not to spend a page reprinting what Prismatic Spray does.
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Jan 15, 2015 00:50
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Go gridless, but use legos for all your combat.
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Jan 16, 2015 03:41
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It would have been really cool if they put multiple non-vancian systems in the PHB, then put the classic wizard in the DMG as a 'variant for higher-powered games'.
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Jan 19, 2015 04:23
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Kai Tave posted:Not even other fantasy authors use Vance's depiction of magic. Vancian casting has become an indelible part of True D&D despite having absolutely no cachet whatsoever outside of D&D itself. Except for Amber.
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Jan 19, 2015 05:29
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mastershakeman posted:Serious question: if a spell component requires a 'live' something, like say..a human, would that include a fetus inside someone? Grognards.txt is that way ->
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Jan 20, 2015 00:59
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ProfessorCirno posted:So are we just gassing this thread intentionally now or what Don't worry, if it gets gassed we have a back up in our material component pouches.
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Jan 20, 2015 03:47
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theironjef posted:It's just one of those things. Like how all dwarves are Scottish. Got into people's DNA somehow. Probably Rolemaster's fault.
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Jan 21, 2015 01:05
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Selachian posted:Let's look at the first announcement for the Adventurer's Handbook (swiped from ENWorld): Genasi are the pinnacle of lazy design. 4 elemental races, plus a shitload of two-element paraelemental races that nobody uses because their only characterization is 'I like Ice'.
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Jan 21, 2015 01:43
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ProfessorCirno posted:The Trapdoor thing is hilarious because when it was first announced nobody had any idea who that company was, and I'm pretty sure they still literally don't have a website. Like, how and why did they find this company? WotC has had so many issues with tech poo poo you'd think they'd start vetting things. Unfortunately, WotC only sent fighters to the negotiations, without a thief.
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Jan 21, 2015 07:40
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AlphaDog posted:Yep, it seems like it would take a extraordinary amount of skill to do that. That's why it's a feat. Yeah, and Lars Anderson can shoot off ten arrows in 5 seconds, and hit three moving targets in about a second. Turns out modern people aren't very good at archery.  Obviously this means archers should get a dozen attacks per round. For realism.
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Jan 22, 2015 14:30
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Peas and Rice posted:I'm trying to think of good examples of Lawful Evil characters from fantasy literature as an inspiration for a D&D character - the best I can come up with is Lord Vetinari from the Discworld series. Any other decent ones? Marcone from Dresden? Though urban fantasy might not be a good fit. The Lord Ruler from Mistborn acts like your typical LE overlord type guy. Umbridge or Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter, I guess as well.
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Jan 22, 2015 20:39
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goatface posted:What an odd way of saying "no". No, you see, this makes my Sliders campaign DOUBLE CANON
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Jan 23, 2015 16:40
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Elendil004 posted:Players in my game are starting to amass wealth with no money sink. We're looking for a simple system where they can invest in local infrastructure for benefits, e.g. plop 1k gold into the thieves guild, get access to street Intel, or distractions on request, etc. 3.5 has affiliations, which do roughly what you want. Stick money (and menial tasks) in, gain influence in an organization. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jan 30, 2015 |
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Jan 30, 2015 16:32
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