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SkyeAuroline posted:Some cursory anydice checks indicates it's a few percent closer to 50/50, so slightly but not especially meaningful. Plus you're introducing the psychological aspect of "I can't even guess what I need to roll", "I would have passed except for this easy task rolling a 12 to try and beat", etc. In theory, with more dice being rolled, the outcome should be less swingy, in the sense that the results are more likely to clump around the mean. If it helps, you could think of it as "4d6 vs DC 14" instead of "2d6 vs 2d6," since a low roll on the DM's part is effectively the same as a bonus to your own roll. Logically, "2dX + 2dY" produces the same shaped distribution as "2dX - 2dY," and from my experimentation on anydice, you'll get the exact same outcomes with the exact same probabilities if you set a flat DC equal to the average value of 4dY, where Y is the DM's die. In other words, 2d6 vs 2d10 produces exactly the same distribution with the same odds of success as 2d6 + 2d10 vs DC 22. The only "problem" with converting it to a flat DC model is that it's unintuitive for you to get a "bonus" in the form of bigger die for taking on a harder check. That said, while the mean result will be more likely, the extreme outcomes, although rarer, will be even more extreme. In other words, you could miss the DC by up to 10 points if you roll snake eyes against boxcars, while a 2d6 against DC 7 will miss by "at most" 5. Mathematically, though, you could definitely convert it into a flat DC system, and doing so would make the system less intuitive.
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Mar 29, 2022 01:37
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A bidding game between the player(s) and GM would be both unpredictable and non-random. That said, I think one advantage of the player rolling against a fixed DC, as opposed to some kind of opposed contest, is that the player feels as though they are fighting against the system, while the GM is just a meditating 3rd party. If the player and the GM make an opposed roll or contest, then it sells the idea that the players and GM are in direct opposition, which may or may not be the desired effect.
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Mar 29, 2022 20:14
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:i think classes should mainly be distinguished by function and distinguishing by feel is a better left to different systems, partly out of concern for how easy it is to cause balance problems by using different mechanics for purely experiential reasons and not anticipating the ways in which they actually are functionally different, but also because i just don't think distinguishing things by "feel" is worth much to begin with Tuxedo Catfish posted:and if you insist, i'm gonna play the guy who does lots of "little" multi-attacks and break your game in half I too really do enjoy myself some d&d 4e 
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May 6, 2022 02:18
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For a slightly nicer but more material-intensive solution than index cards, you could also sleeve up some MtG (or other TCG) cards and put in a little paper insert for whatever it is you're trying to proxy; they'll feel nicer to shuffle and deal, at least.
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Jun 8, 2022 23:32
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Splicer posted:What's the name of that old program for totally not running copyrighted CCGs in. L-something I could have sworn Cockatrice was the most popular one, but I wouldn't personally know.
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Jun 8, 2022 23:44
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CitizenKeen posted:For an RPG concept I'm tinkering with, I'm creating these nerd groups called houses. Think MMO guilds that transcend any setting/IP. Anyway. House Zeon
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Aug 26, 2022 08:12
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Xiahou Dun posted:No those are “makes burn very much” and “capable of spontaneously combusting” which are getting really close but neither is encoding the causative nature. Wouldn’t want to trample over all the inchoate fire’s niche. Incendiary, maybe? Or maybe phlogistic would be more appropriate.
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Dec 24, 2022 05:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:
Happy to help, and thanks for all the language effort posts!
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Dec 24, 2022 08:26
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Nessus posted:Isn't there some kind of guidance for doing quick-picks for a character in 4e? Not to, uh, continue to fight the skeleton war too hard. But you could quick-pick that poo poo with a coupon for a respec into your proper bizarre concept at the next meaningful downtime. I guess you can crank out a new character in under 5 minutes if you've got Character Builder installed, beeline all the premium powers in each slot, and avoid doing anything too weird? The other solution is that 4e character building is so fun you probably have like at least three backups kicking around anyways, so the real limiting factor if anything is going to be porting sheets into your preferred VTT, although that's not strictly necessary either. The real problem with running a high-lethality meatgrinder in 4e is that combat is so darn fun that the response to losing a fight isn't to take fewer fights but to squeeze blood from stone even harder until you end up with really degenerate builds and tactics like three controllers to consistently rearrange the enemies into one catatonic pile, or like all vampire hybrids to adventure forever without long rest, but that could also just be me being insane.
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Dec 26, 2022 00:45
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Runa posted:The end result would lead to the creation of the Elemental Plane of Cops but only the payday gang can open that portal Well, now I know what I'm doing the next time I run a game.
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Feb 20, 2023 02:07
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Upsidads posted:Oh God yes I have, looking for something multiplayer for my far off pals. Wingspan worked pretty well Spire With Friends mod lmao, you can play cooperatively or even have a race to the top. In the vein of Wingspan, I guess there's also a good Steam (or browser) port for Dominion, too, if you haven't sank hundreds of hours into it already.
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Nov 11, 2023 04:46
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Silver2195 posted:Not sure this is the right thread for this, but: I remember "Death to ability scores!" being a common catchphrase here at one point. What I find odd about it is that I can't actually think of any tabletop RPGs (aside from maybe some ultra-rules-lite ones) that don't have ability scores. I can think of a few systems that superficially don't have them, but actually have them in disguise. What are these ability-score-less systems that people were calling for D&D to imitate? Strike! and ICON, I guess, are both close to the D&D-sphere and don't use ability scores at all. Practically speaking, ability scores make sense as a check against excessive multiclassing; 4e is pretty mechanically dense and has a robust multiclassing system to justify ability scores existence, Strike! just doesn't allow it at all, and ICON expects if not outright requires you to go hog-wild with mixing classes and jobs. On the other hand, with 5e you could probably replace just about every instance of "ability modifier" with "proficiency bonus" and the game probably works better for it. Off hand, at minimum you'd make most PCs more consistent in their proficient knowledge skills, reduce the amount of random competency at untrained skills in your good stat, and also solve the problem weak saves never scaling.
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Dec 29, 2023 05:56
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Ferrinus posted:4E's ranger (most builds) and fighter (some builds) were good ways to combine the general gameplay idea of "I'm just here to make the red bar over the bad guy's head shrink as fast as possible" with the 4e design principle of giving everyone equal amounts of equally-important resources to spend. It's like the difference between a Vampire character who puts all three of their starting dots into Vigor (which just gives them a passive strength boost, and the option to pay vitae for a bigger active damage boost) or who puts all three of their starting dots into Dominate (which gives them a series of interdependent special powers that require special dice rolls to activate and saddle specific status effects on their targets that later powers can interact with). These are sort of 4E fighter vs. 4E wizard archetypes, where one guy's power set is a lot more varied and complicated than the other but both guys have vitae and willpower to spend and are both playing around in the same basic economy. Keeping with the idea of "same basic economy," everyone's ability to contribute to non-combat encounters in 4e is normalized via skill challenges, too, so everyone's still rolling a d20 + mods to solve problems, instead of letting the wizard wave their hand and spend a trivial spell slot to outdo the rogue's job. (I mean yes, the wizard can still do that, but the spell slot cost is less trivial, they still have to roll, and their contributions are only equal and not better.) Simple characters and combat monsters aren't really any worse at Doing Stuff that isn't making hit points go down, and the best feats for combat (i.e. multiclass feats) even make you better at noncombat stuff too, by giving you an extra skill training to work with. Turns out you solve a lot of problems by forcing people to roll skill checks to do things covered by skills!
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Mar 25, 2024 20:18
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MonsieurChoc posted:I think they just didn't realize they could Ranger controller. It would have even fit with giving Martial one of each roles. They did try, twice, both with the Hunter subclass of Ranger (different from the Hunter fighting style for Rangers!) and the Seeker class. The problem is that "uses trick arrows," or even "uses magic trick arrows," is just inherently more limiting than "uses trick arrows, magic trick arrows, plus magic that isn't tied to arrows." The bigger problem is that "martial" as a power source defines what you can't do, while every other power source says what you can do, on top of the sword-slinging that everyone can take for granted. What I'm saying is that Final Fantasy 1 had the right idea by having Fighters that promote to Paladins and Thieves that promote to Ninjas, i.e. gaining overtly magical powers as part of the expected progression.
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Mar 26, 2024 20:39
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Subjunctive posted:Would a variant approach of “how much of your resources do you have to expend to get away”/“to prevent something bad” not fit into LANCER or 4e? If a fight isn't meant to be winnable then you just don't roll initiative, or even bother giving the opposition stat blocks, because in 4e at least it's a modest amount of work to input everything into your preferred VTT. In that case, at least in 4e, you should probably be open about your expectations and prompt the players on what they want to do to delay/evade/misdirect the enemy, and run it as a skill challenge, without ever officially "entering combat." And even then, "lose a healing surge on failed skill check" and/or "spend a surge to salvage a failed check" are relatively standard consequences to add meaningful resource attrition to a noncombat encounter. You can even extend the "skill check to escape combat" concept to a normal fight, too, although I don't think any official adventure ever suggests it. So yeah, 4e at least does support "spending resources to avoid something bad" in a way that slots into the games normal resource attrition model, if you follow the later skill check design and also ignore all the examples they provide you.
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Mar 28, 2024 22:01
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Nessus posted:I don't know if this totally fucks up 4E, but it does seem like in this case you could also expend Daily abilities in order to get rerolls or +1s or something. (Even if you're not really fighting the guy, casting Fireball or something might stall them.) Honestly it's usually even easier than that, since it's pretty common to just allow "roll Arcana to creatively Wizard outside of combat" if it's something vaguely covered by your existing powers already, which might as well be a free success when you're INT-primary and trained in Arcana and probably have at least one random incidental bonus, too. It's not a rule anywhere, but "spend a daily power to un-gently caress a fuckup" feels fair enough to allow.
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Mar 28, 2024 22:19
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Glazius posted:It makes a little sense given what they were going for. Elves have always kind of been woodsy elves and sparkly elves in simultaneous superposition, and 4E tried to separate that by making the sparkly elves into eladrin, leaving the remaining elves 100% woodsy. You want them all looking a bit red in tooth and claw, as it were. Splitting elves into woodsy Elves and sparkly Eladrin exists to solve a long-standing problem in 3.5, which is having Way Too loving Many elf subraces. For an extremely dated example, people would joke "There's an elf for that" on account of the dozens and dozens of flavors of elf for every setting and sub-setting, for every biome and every element. The basic reason was because the stats and ribbons you'd want to support a woodsy hunter elf are totally different from the ones you'd want on a sparkly wizard elf, and the best example on the d20srd is how Wood Elves have +2 STR, -2 INT, and Gray Elves have the exact opposite in +2 INT, -2 STR, on top of their usual elf qualities. And sure, a better game with better-unified writing might be able to square the circle, but then it wouldn't still be D&D, would it.  And I don't even disagree with you, in the sense that I think it would be really rad and cool to have a posh society of sparkly elves that are one blue moon away from donning wooden masks and saddling up to terrorize unfortunate woodcutters or something, but it was a real tension that players really felt when they question why their Elf Wizard has a random bow and longsword proficiency, or why their Elf Ranger that lived their life as a nomadic hunter-gatherer would have a special talent for finding secret doors. So no, splitting them into sparkly wizards and woodsy rangers was definitely what they were going for.
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Apr 9, 2024 03:05
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mellonbread posted:Has there ever been a tabletop RPG where crafting was good? Monster Hunter? But it's also literally the entire gameplay loop of literally the entire game. The reward for getting the rare drop from a monster is moving on to hunting a different monster. The consequence of missing the rare Peeved Mauve Diablos Gem drop is that you keep hunting the same monster some more. Either way, the point of playing the game is to keep playing the game. As far as D&D-adjacent TTRPGs go, pretty much the best implementations of crafting I've seen are either "shopping by another name" or "finding treasure by another name," although yeah I'd agree that crafting your own equipment definitely is more narratively satisfying than just finding or buying stuff the usual way.
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Apr 12, 2024 22:15
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