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It is super cool-and-good that not only is Schwalb ostensibly using post-release feedback to improve his game (because there's undoubtedly a bunch of stuff that you'll never catch in the design phase, or even in the limited-numbers playtester phase), but also that he's completely "replacing"/"patching" a core class. Like, WOTC may have created the Warblade, but never in a million years would they have explicitly said "toss out the core Fighter and use this instead"
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May 26, 2017 05:32
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gradenko_2000 posted:It is super cool-and-good that not only is Schwalb ostensibly using post-release feedback to improve his game (because there's undoubtedly a bunch of stuff that you'll never catch in the design phase, or even in the limited-numbers playtester phase), but also that he's completely "replacing"/"patching" a core class. They pretty much did exactly that with the Ranger.
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May 26, 2017 06:21
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Serf posted:The fact that they get 1 extra Fighter Talent alone is huge and makes the Path way better than it was before. Well yeah, I think the fact that you didn't previously was something that struck most people as odd about the path immediately. Though it also helps that the weaker Talents got buffed, the boring ones got removed, and everybody effectively gets 3 Talents now since you get a better version of the old "Fight With Anything," Fighter Talent. It's kind of nuts how much better a level 3 Warrior/Fighter seems- even the most basic rear end sword and board build gets a lot better because you can, say, choose Fight With Two Weapons in conjunction with Fight With Anything and have a build with the option to lower it's defense for a serious offensive boost. You likely won't even miss the option to take the boring defensive stat increase, because you can now wear better armor wayyyy sooner (or ever for some races). It also enables a lot more viable builds- i.e. a goblin with a staff is a potential wrecking machine, knife fighting no longer feels like a bad mechanical decision, you can dual wield whips effectively, etc.
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May 26, 2017 06:22
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After reading the Knight from Paths of Battle, I am very pleased with the design. This is the tank Path the game really needed. Only instead of drawing aggro it deals in damage mitigation, which is a very cool take on the archetype.
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May 26, 2017 06:25
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sexpig by night posted:I have to say at first I thought this was just a SUPER GRIM DARK GRITTY FANTASY YOU WILL DIE BECAUSE YOU START AS A SHITFARMER AND MAYBE FIND A GOOD SWORD kinda thing and wasn't really into it. After reading good reviews (and this thread) I saw my first impression was wrong and this seems right up my group's alley. I just got the bundle and boy is this a solid world after all. I love the little world building snippets in things that they sprinkle around. Yeah, my initial brush with it was kind of similar, especially because a lot of the art makes it look like gross kind of edgy. That actually seems to not be the case after spending a little more time with it.
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May 26, 2017 20:26
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marshmallow creep posted:Yeah, my initial brush with it was kind of similar, especially because a lot of the art makes it look like gross kind of edgy. That actually seems to not be the case after spending a little more time with it. It definitely incorporates some body horror stuff, and there are a few elements that can sound bad taken out of context, but describing the game in those terms is extremely misleading. If you just heard that one of the spells gives you explosive diarrhea and that another is named 'Hole of Glory' you'd be tempted to think the game was competing with FATAL, but that's not the case at all- the first is from the "ultra-evil witch" school of magic that appears designed around sorts of invisible curses that would terrify peasants the most if a witch actually had them (inflicting disease, permanent disfigurement/disability, possession/body stealing- in this context the spell described basically gives someone instant Cholera), and the second is a totally normal Teleportation utility spell whose name is part of an undercurrent of humor that runs throughout the books (see also: a low level Enchantment daze/stun effect being called Mind Bondage). But all of that is a very small part of the whole, and overemphasizing those features is really doing the game a disservice.
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May 26, 2017 22:15
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I've been running a more heroic fantasy-style campaign with it and have had zero problems stripping out the DARK and EDGY stuff. Insanity and Corruption are easily ignored, and aside from the general deadliness of low levels, there's nothing in the game that really enforces the dark tone.
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May 26, 2017 22:18
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I think a lot of it depends on how you intend to use it. Like I'm not really into the dark fantasy aspect of the game, but I do think it works well mechanically. In the few times I've run it, I've played it more humorous than written or intended, I imagine. Like the grimdarkness in most things is pretty silly when you don't take it seriously, so I lean into that. The Corruption and Insanity systems can lead to very funny things happening if that's what you frame it as. I've never been into serious roleplaying and I prefer to keep things light, so the way I run SotDL reflects that. The gross and dark stuff in the book is good fun but can also be taken at face value or excised completely.
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May 26, 2017 23:34
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Honestly I think you could wring the basics of a pretty decent FF:Tactics game out of the setup for this game. Wouldn't really have to lighten the tone much even, (or at all, really, given the actual plot of the first FFT.) ...Except now I want a Dragoon Master path.
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May 27, 2017 05:35
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Wouldn't seem too hard to create, I think you could basically pattern the Jump ability off the Martial Artist's Flying Kick talent (from the companion) but make it polearm/staff specific and then just give it some more bonuses to jumping distance and using spears.
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May 27, 2017 06:15
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Help, I'm blind and dumb. What's the difference between core Warlock and Paths of Power Warlock?
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May 27, 2017 10:29
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Lichtenstein posted:Help, I'm blind and dumb. What's the difference between core Warlock and Paths of Power Warlock? Nothing, as far as I can see. I guess not every Path got/needed changing.
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May 27, 2017 12:45
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The Interesting Thing tables from Godless are  A few of my favorite results:
Also Godless includes this picture of an orc if you need any more convincing: 
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May 27, 2017 16:38
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OK, rules question: if an ability requires an action (or a triggered Action) to use, is it only available during combat? If it's usable outside of combat, how often can it be used? I'm asking with an eye towards the Witch's "Guidance" ability, which seems overpowered if it's available out of combat.
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May 29, 2017 12:52
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Serf posted:The Interesting Thing tables from Godless are That Orc is wearing the Bauhaus Corporation logo from Mutant Chronicles 
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May 29, 2017 14:38
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Jimmeeee posted:OK, rules question: if an ability requires an action (or a triggered Action) to use, is it only available during combat? If it's usable outside of combat, how often can it be used? I'm asking with an eye towards the Witch's "Guidance" ability, which seems overpowered if it's available out of combat. Nope, they're available all the time and can be used at will (unless it's a per-rest ability or has some other limiting factor. I mean would you say a Rogue can't use Trickery outside of combat because the challenge roll they're making isn't part of a structured combat round? Nonsense. A Witch's Guidance is a pretty strong and flexible ability, but that's a big part of the reason you'd take the class to begin with, right? It's also probably less crazy strong than you're thinking, since the first boon you get on a roll is a lot more important than subsequent boons and a level 2 Priest can already do that for everyone with Prayer.
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May 30, 2017 03:23
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I am overcome with the desire to run a full ultra-serious grimdark campaign, just to pull out The Measure of a Man as the final adventure. [edit] I'll just leave this as a teaser: quote:Manhood’s Revenge Lichtenstein fucked around with this message at 11:34 on May 30, 2017 |
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May 30, 2017 11:28
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Is there any information on the Poisoned Pages being collected into their own print sourcebook?
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May 30, 2017 16:06
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Is there any official errata on the Prepare action? I ask, because it doesn't restrict what the trigger on the activity should be, it just says: "describe what event has to occur for you to undertake it" and then when it happens you perform the activity "with 1 boon." By that logic (and my table was pretty quick to start exploiting), you could set triggers that will obviously happen, for the sole purpose of giving yourself a boon. For example, a demon was pummeling our dwarf. It was incredibly obvious that the demon was out for blood and was trying to murder the dwarf. When it came time for the new round, the magician set a triggger of "I attack when the demon continues it's attack on the dwarf". Lo-and-behold the demon continued it's attack, which was interrupted by the magician's trigger, who got a free boon on their attack roll. Every once and a while that's fine, but it quickly turned into every round looking for some stupid, 100% likely trigger to prepare against. It slowed the game down and felt stupid. Is there a good way of handling this? I was thinking of something like "You can only prepare for an activity that you couldn't perform right now," but was wondering if was addressed officially somewhere. edit Found an official response: https://plus.google.com/+ThomasDrevon/posts/TgamQWp2jHg It's a long discussion on this topic, but the crux seems to be whether or not your trigger can be part of an action (e.g. beginning to attack, or starting to move), which is more-or-less left up to the GM. The official rules is that the trigger may "interrupt another creature’s turn", but it doesn't say that it may interrupt another creature's action. I think I'll go with a "You can only prepare an activity that you couldn't perform right now, and if your trigger is based on an action then that action completes before your trigger occurs." This allows for positive Prepared actions like "I stand watch and shoot anything that comes through that door", but prevents stupid Prepared actions like "I attack if the creature that's currently attacking me continues attacking me." Duct Tape fucked around with this message at 19:49 on May 30, 2017 |
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May 30, 2017 19:34
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Ok, I bought the Bundle of Holding offer and have been slowly working my way through the books, and honestly Hunger in the Void is probably mandatory if you're going to put any sort of horror aspect into your SotDL into your game. It takes the rather antiseptic "dark forces" vibe from the core book and makes it nice and visceral. Ugh.
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May 31, 2017 19:06
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Ok, I bought the Bundle of Holding offer and have been slowly working my way through the books, and honestly Hunger in the Void is probably mandatory if you're going to put any sort of horror aspect into your SotDL into your game. It takes the rather antiseptic "dark forces" vibe from the core book and makes it nice and visceral. Ugh. Yea that book really nails the cosmic horrors elements, the core book doesn't really do enough to drive in 'these are horrific alien beings that feed on misery' stuff
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May 31, 2017 19:43
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FYI, the Screen got added to the bundle. Not a huge cause for celebration but eh. It's nice to have, you know?
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May 31, 2017 20:19
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Gonna ask this one more time and then I suppose I should contact Shwab.Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Is there any information on the Poisoned Pages being collected into their own print sourcebook?
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May 31, 2017 21:18
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Gonna run my first game of this this weekend using Tales. Any advice for a new DM? ----- Edit: Doing my research, and I've got some questions - spoilers for Tales of the Demon Lord adventures: 1.Isn't the first adventure in Tales of the Demon Lord really lethal? I'm going to have three starting characters, and the book recommends a daily difficulty of 25 for a party of starting characters, though I'm tempted to lower that to 20 since they're a pretty small party. Entering the Moore house, the party are likely to encounter two hired killers (20 difficulty), eight rats (8 difficulty, maybe more because of the extra buffs they get), and an organ filch (10 difficulty). This seems like an awful lot. I'm tempted to throw out the hired killers and replace them with three commoners. 2. Related to point one above, I don't understand the encounter difficulty rules on pages 189-190 of the main book. I get that an encounter's difficulty is calculated by summing the difficulty of the creatures in the encounter, that's fine. But then when I get to the "example encounters" section, it says "An easy encounter for novice characters can have a total Difficulty of up to 40" - the chart on the next page says that easy encounters for novice characters are difficulty 10 or less. Then the text says a challenging encounter for novice characters should have a difficulty of between 76 and 150. But the chart says 31-50. There's nothing about this in the errata. I'm a little worried about this as I've heard the game is very lethal already and I guarantee the best way to ensure my players drop it like a hot potato is to TPK them in the first encounter. Gort fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Jun 1, 2017 |
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Jun 1, 2017 10:54
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Gonna ask this one more time and then I suppose I should contact Shwab. I got a response for you! https://twitter.com/rjschwalb/status/870296622957252608
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Jun 1, 2017 16:14
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Thank you, Serf! Shame, I feel like he's missing out on some money. I buy physical versions of most of my source material.
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Jun 1, 2017 16:43
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Gort posted:Gonna run my first game of this this weekend using Tales. Any advice for a new DM? This is just my experience, of course, and you might have a different GM style, but here's my two bits: I've been running a SotDL campaign for a couple of months, and it can definitely get dicey real fast, but at my table at least, it's led to lots of satisfying skin-of-the-teeth victories against horrible poo poo. Be sure the players know about Fortune, as well as the various maneuvers they can perform in combat. They might not realize they can disarm, or feint, or dual wield, or what have you, since DnD tends to make you buy in to use those kinds of abilities. Don't be afraid to tutorialize a bit, in the interest of players getting to know how to get the most out of boons and banes. I ended up narrative-izing some of the combat in the Starting Adventure, to give a feeling of panic and threat, without just rolling dice and dropping bodies. Also introduced friendly NPCs to help in combat and get fangoriously murderated to show how the monsters worked. Sometimes, if it looks like I've given them more than they can handle, I just horrify instead of mutilate. That is to say, sometimes the bad result, instead of inflicting grievous bodily harm, just causes some Cronenberg poo poo to go down, and a good time is had by all.
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Jun 1, 2017 23:56
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I just ran another one-shot of SotDL again, rather unexpectedly as one of the people in the Dungeon World group didn't show. Different person from last time, so now the entire group's had a chance to try SotDL and they all quite enjoyed it. Rolled up brand new characters again, this time using the tables from the Victims of the Demon Lord supplements. It took considerably longer than using just the tables in the core book, maybe a bit too long especially considering how lethal the game can be at 0th level. I didn't get a chance to prepare too much since I hadn't expected to run it again so soon, though I had downloaded a couple cheat sheets from the G+ group that did come in handy. We ran through Survival of the Fittest again, because it's the only adventure I've got so far, and this time I bumped them up to Level 1 beforehand so they'd have some class abilities/spells to play with. We ended up with 1 goblin rogue, 1 clockwork magician, 1 clockwork warrior and a dwarf priest. They went back to the ambush site, fighting a giant spider on the way that wasn't too threatening against the group but managed to do some damage before it got stomped. The four bandits was still a significant challenge, dropping the clockwork warrior and dealing significant damage to the others. The MVP was definitively the goblin, who hanged back and sniped bandits using a sling with Trickery, hitting every time thanks to the boon and doing respectable damage with the additional 1d6 damage. Question from the session that I was uncertain of the answer: Can clockworks not die? Normally PCs become Disabled and have to make Fate rolls and risk death, but clockworks just wind down and become objects until someone winds them up again? Since we'll be down a man next week we'll (try to) finish Survival of the Fittest, shouldn't be too difficult now that they'll get some half-decent weapons. However, it looks like I'll be running a proper game over summer, since schedules will be a bit spotty over the summer. I'm rather lazy, so I was wondering if someone had tried the two campaign packs, and which one is better/easier to run?
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Jun 2, 2017 01:47
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Gort posted:Gonna run my first game of this this weekend using Tales. Any advice for a new DM? 1. There's actually also a ghoul in there too, which is 25 Difficulty alone. When I ran it, I had the ghoul chained up as an optional fight and the Rude Boys surrendered once both of them had taken half Damage. It needs some eyeballing for sure. Hopefully this helps! 2. Is this the section you're referring to?   I think you may have an older copy of the book? I checked my physical copy and it matches this.
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Jun 2, 2017 05:14
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Antilles posted:Question from the session that I was uncertain of the answer: Can clockworks not die? Normally PCs become Disabled and have to make Fate rolls and risk death, but clockworks just wind down and become objects until someone winds them up again? This happened in my last session, twice even, and we were equally confused. After digging through the rules, we found two ways clockworks can die: instant death and damage while incapacitated. Instant Death (p39): "A creature dies if it takes an amount of damage equal to its Health from a single source such as an attack or landing after a fall." and Clockwork - Key (p15): "Although you are an object while you are incapacitated, you are still subject to the rules for incapacitated creatures." Incapacitated (p40): "If the creature takes any damage while incapacitated, it dies."
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Jun 2, 2017 06:59
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Serf posted:1. There's actually also a ghoul in there too, which is 25 Difficulty alone. When I ran it, I had the ghoul chained up as an optional fight and the Rude Boys surrendered once both of them had taken half Damage. It needs some eyeballing for sure. Hopefully this helps! Yeah, it was this. Thanks for the answers, this makes sense now. I'm going to make the adjustments you suggested. Did you notice anything like this for the other adventures? ----- Edit: Although I notice that section still has mistakes in it in my freshly-downloaded-from-bundle-of-holding copy. At least I can see it's just a single-word typo now, rather than the entire section making no sense at all. 
Gort fucked around with this message at 08:15 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 08:06
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Welp, now that I got buy-in from my players (once, you know, we finish the last adventure and a half of a Level 30 4e campaign), I went ahead and grabbed a hardbound copy of this glorious little rule set. Thanks for tuning me into its greatness, everyone.
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Jun 5, 2017 14:15
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Gort posted:Yeah, it was this. Thanks for the answers, this makes sense now. I'm going to make the adjustments you suggested. Did you notice anything like this for the other adventures? 1. I would say that it depends on your group, but I would err on the side of caution if your players aren't prepared for a TPK or even for losing a character or two over an adventure. My home group is a lot like that, so I toned down the encounters by about 10-20 Difficulty depending on what you're doing. Also don't forget about Fortune! It can really turn the tide of a bad fight, and I tend to hand it out pretty generously. It's not always necessary, but if you think the tide is turning you can fork over a little Fortune to help the players out. (If you pick up Forbidden Rules, check out to Fortune Point system. It's a little like FFG's Light/Dark side system crossed with Fate points and I love it for a game that's more heroic in tone or if you just want the players to have an easier time of things) 2. I actually brought this up to Rob on Twitter and he confirmed that the chart is correct, which makes sense. Maybe he'll fix the text in another release? https://twitter.com/rjschwalb/status/871283507229843456 dwarf74 posted:Welp, now that I got buy-in from my players (once, you know, we finish the last adventure and a half of a Level 30 4e campaign), I went ahead and grabbed a hardbound copy of this glorious little rule set. This is rad! I'm glad you're enjoying the game. Let us know how it goes! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A new Monstrous Pages just dropped: Of Fire and Venom This one is all about drakes and dragons, and lets you customize both. There are rules for making acid-spitting drakes, dragons that absorb spells, and a few new types of both along with some details on dragon ecology. There's even a new Master Path tucked away at the end: the Dragonslayer which has a serious Shadow of the Colossus vibe to it in that it allows you to climb onto larger enemies and take them down.  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, Saturday, June 17th I'm gonna be running a one-shot of Shadow of the Demon Lord. I plan to run the Starting adventure "The Witching Wood" for 4-5 players, but if we have more than that I'm down for taking at most 6. I'm looking at running it around 4PM EST, so if you're interested hit me up in PMs or here in the thread. I plan to run a few of the Starting adventures as one-shots like this to hopefully get people into the game. Remember if you don't have the book but you want to try the game out in one of these one-shots, the SRD has just about everything you need!
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Jun 6, 2017 01:39
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Serf posted:Also, Saturday, June 17th I'm gonna be running a one-shot of Shadow of the Demon Lord. I plan to run the Starting adventure "The Witching Wood" for 4-5 players, but if we have more than that I'm down for taking at most 6. I'm looking at running it around 4PM EST, so if you're interested hit me up in PMs or here in the thread. I plan to run a few of the Starting adventures as one-shots like this to hopefully get people into the game. Remember if you don't have the book but you want to try the game out in one of these one-shots, the SRD has just about everything you need! I have no idea how widely-known this is, but Serf is a cool and good GM, so if you're on the fence, you should try this one-shot. I am attending a wedding at that time, otherwise I would totally apply to join.
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Jun 6, 2017 01:49
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I would be all over that if I didn't have another game at the same time.
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Jun 6, 2017 02:55
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My weekend game went really well, thanks to everyone who answered my newbie questions. Now I've got another: The character sheet on the website is extremely rear end, anyone got a good one to use?
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Jun 6, 2017 07:49
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Gort posted:My weekend game went really well, thanks to everyone who answered my newbie questions. Now I've got another: I found a thread from the G+ community that might have what you're looking for Also, since Saturday appears to be a bad time for folks, I'm considering moving the one-shot to Thursday, June 15th at 7:00 PM EST. I want to try to keep the session to no more than 3 hours, which shouldn't be hard, the adventure in question is pretty short.
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Jun 6, 2017 14:45
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I am extremely interested in being a part of this one-shot. I can do either time. Through what will you be running it in?
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Jun 6, 2017 16:04
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SettingSun posted:I am extremely interested in being a part of this one-shot. I can do either time. Through what will you be running it in? Oh good question. My bad for not including this info originally. I plan on running it in Discord for the voice chat and Roll20 for any combats that may come up.
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Jun 6, 2017 16:10
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