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Mendrian posted:Well, he sometimes gets fake-mad at me for trying to use my magic telepathy or using Sending to convey logistical messages to NPCs who are days-travel away. I really wanted to set myself up as a pure scholar/utility character and I often feel like it's somehow annoying him because he can't account for me. I can kinda-sorta understand if he's having an issue with accounting for the kinds of abilities spells can give you: if a character can fly, if a character can detect magic at will, if a character can read minds, it can shoot down lots of traditional plot devices, and thinking up of ways to challenge the group when ordinary logistical limits have been circumvented can be difficult. I think he really isn't out to screw you over deliberately, just that he's running into the kind of power curve issues that have always dogged D&D whenever you try to make it more than a "kill them and take their stuff" kind of game.
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Jan 29, 2016 10:21
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Counterpoint: in my 13a game a player took the feat that let you understand literally any language, my next move was to put poo poo in other languages goddamn near everywhere that only they could read or understand, because that's the whole point.
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Jan 29, 2016 11:11
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ProfessorCirno posted:Counterpoint: in my 13a game a player took the feat that let you understand literally any language, my next move was to put poo poo in other languages goddamn near everywhere that only they could read or understand, because that's the whole point. Pretty much this, some times catering to that odd utility that only one player has every now and then can make them feel ultra satisfied. It doesnt have to be all the time but just every now and then can really make them happy. In my dragon age game the noble character and the dalish elf recieving help from two different groups made for a very happy party and some fun plot decisions.
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Jan 29, 2016 11:46
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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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Section Z posted: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". Yeah, agreed. If the GM can't or doesn't want to deal with ability xyz, they should just say so and work with the player to either modify the ability into something that they're willing to allow, or possibly just ban the ability entirely and let the player take something else (personally, up to and including a complete character rebuild). Passive-aggressively blocking it and hiding under the cover of a rules disagreement is not cool, because now you're both stuck resenting each other.
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Jan 29, 2016 11:54
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Section Z posted:
Well there is one star wars system that doesnt actually use languages beyond droid/not droid also holy poo poo sever that GM lol. I assume hes one of those people who has only played a system where jedi are imbalanced and so assumes the normal is to just come down like a super brick on any jedi regardless of context/system?
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Jan 29, 2016 13:49
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Cross posting from the gaming experiences thread, but I'm just really proud of this. My brother and his partner made these for my fiancee and I for Christmas. Custom, handmade boxes for all of our 5e stuff.  "Speak friend and enter" in dwarvish. Made to look like an old mining box. The words, anvil and hammer are all done in a weird resin that glows brightly in the dark.  For my lady whose first character was a sailor. "Not all who wander are lost" in elvish. Also glows and done in a dyed version of the same resin.  They open to reveal a whiteboard, places to hold pencils, cards, dice and everything you might need. Even the hardware is thoughtful and thematic for each box. Just big enough to hold all the standard book formats.  Makes the game way better. Still smells like the shop 
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Jan 29, 2016 15:14
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ProfessorCirno posted:Counterpoint: in my 13a game a player took the feat that let you understand literally any language, my next move was to put poo poo in other languages goddamn near everywhere that only they could read or understand, because that's the whole point. And that's you being a good GM, the system being used isn't the problem here. It's the GM. The same GM could have (and likely would have) pulled the same thing in any system. PS - That's an awesome way for you to handle it. If I were the player doing that I'd be really happy that I'd taken that feat, and would totally be into the game.
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Jan 29, 2016 17:14
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Section Z posted:Yeah, if he's being that much of a headache about it then he's either- If the dm doesnt feel confident enough to make up unplanned lore that they may feel stuck with later, then maybe you can both agree to a different angle on the characters powers..?
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Jan 29, 2016 18:10
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Being able to read everything is an ability that shines when you're all happy collaborative world building and the DM is comfortable winging it to roll with your inclusions. In anything like a module-based campaign it really depends on if they ever just put "words in an undecipherable language are written all over the walls" in the middle of a text block without thinking about it.
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Jan 29, 2016 18:21
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Reznor posted:That sounds like bourgeois propaganda to me. I don't recall seeing that RAW. Further any leaking negative energy would kill the field pests long before it harmed the crops. With a minor capital investment charms could be installed to curtail negative energy emissions. Perhaps even improve performance through exaust energy recirculation. A necroturbocharge. Or a Turbonecro, if you will. It would be the Apocalypse, Dudes.
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Jan 29, 2016 21:32
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OBAAAAAMAAAAH!  http://geekandsundry.com/when-a-player-asked-for-healing-the-cleric-handed-them-this/ 
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Jan 29, 2016 21:42
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DrOct posted:And that's you being a good GM, the system being used isn't the problem here. It's the GM. The same GM could have (and likely would have) pulled the same thing in any system. I contest that games have cultures to them that drive groups to act in different ways. It's utterly unsurprising to see GMs ignore or get angry at players for getting in the way of their plot or perfect game or w/e in a game that constantly puts emphasis on the idea that the GM is the most important person at the table, that the GM is a king amongst peasants, that the GM must be obeyed at all times, etc, etc. Neither 5e nor it's proponents would shut the gently caress up about it's GM EMPOWERMENT. Of course you're going to get bad GMs that take that to heart! People keep saying "this could've happened in 4e" but it didn't. That game had a radically different culture. It was one of the reasons 5e fans hated it so much. It's why you had so many posters on ENWorld whine about "player entitlement." When a book devotes several pages to lavishly praising spellcasters or talking up how the GM is the only one who makes important decisions, you're going to get a very different game culture then a book that talks up ensuring all characters have important roles, or that a D&D group is something like a complicated conversation, and that all players, GM included, should be involved in it.
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Jan 29, 2016 22:19
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ProfessorCirno posted:People keep saying "this could've happened in 4e" but it didn't. That's a pretty bold statement. I'm quite certain there were plenty of GM horror stories during the 4e era. I certainly did some boneheaded things while GMing 4e (admittedly it was my first time GMing anything). You can believe what you want about why this GM made a bad call, but from my perspective it's it's really stretching things to lay something like this at the feet of the system. DrOct fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 23:12
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Honestly I had the best, most rewarding and fun games of D&D in fourth. I attribute that to how almost universally the players with lovely attitudes and terrible opinions aggressively self-selected themselves out of 4e's player base. Bad games happened, yeah. But the culture was definitely a cool kid's club of people who weren't just playing out of momentum and a lack of other options.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:28
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I am DMING right now and I kinda figure my position as a queen ant. I kinda just sit in my corner and make things for the hive to use. I wrote a nice little section about an orc village teying to fit in. They kill the first orcs they see. Turns out the next part of the story was about evading orc justice. I had some flavor from the old material I could use but it all pretty much just went out the wondow. And I did my best to mark it a fun and fully featured campaign arc.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:40
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moths posted:Honestly I had the best, most rewarding and fun games of D&D in fourth. I attribute that to how almost universally the players with lovely attitudes and terrible opinions aggressively self-selected themselves out of 4e's player base. It was a nice change of pace, not having to triple-check my campaign notes and remove anything that could be raped.
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Jan 29, 2016 23:46
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I once played a Pathfinder game with this dude who only played paladins who got literally hysteric when the DM called him out on instantly shooting a DIVINE ARROW right through an orcs skull, as we approached what we were told was a 'peaceful village of orc outcasts'. and then literally threw his chair when he got told that he lost all his paladin abilities for killing an innocent, and got banned from the game shop. D&D brings out weird loving people
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Jan 29, 2016 23:47
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KittyEmpress posted:D&D brings out weird loving people
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Jan 29, 2016 23:56
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DrOct posted:That's a pretty bold statement. I'm quite certain there were plenty of GM horror stories during the 4e era. I certainly did some boneheaded things while GMing 4e (admittedly it was my first time GMing anything). You can believe what you want about why this GM made a bad call, but from my perspective it's it's really stretching things to lay something like this at the feet of the system. ProfessorCirno suffers from some form of extremely long-winded confirmation bias.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:04
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DrOct posted:That's a pretty bold statement. I'm quite certain there were plenty of GM horror stories during the 4e era. I certainly did some boneheaded things while GMing 4e (admittedly it was my first time GMing anything). You can believe what you want about why this GM made a bad call, but from my perspective it's it's really stretching things to lay something like this at the feet of the system. It's very difficult to lay anything of note at Fifth Edition's feet, really.
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Jan 30, 2016 00:56
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FRINGE posted:OBAAAAAMAAAAH! Aside from the church part, this is EberronDragonmarkedHouses.jpg
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Jan 30, 2016 01:03
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FRINGE posted:OBAAAAAMAAAAH! This is hilarious. It wasn't quite this extreme, but I had an artificer in a party once who wrote up contracts for magic item commissions after somebody tried to use dying as an excuse not to pay up.
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Jan 30, 2016 01:16
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DrOct posted:That's a pretty bold statement. I'm quite certain there were plenty of GM horror stories during the 4e era. I certainly did some boneheaded things while GMing 4e (admittedly it was my first time GMing anything). You can believe what you want about why this GM made a bad call, but from my perspective it's it's really stretching things to lay something like this at the feet of the system. To be fair, I'm 99% sure he means this story, not that nobody ever had a bad DM is 4E. In other words, he's saying that the sort of thing that would lead someone to define "written language" in such a way as to exclude at least 2 actual systems of writing in order to shut down a player's ability is... less discouraged in the materials of 5E than it was in 4E. Which may be bold, but isn't indefensible.
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Jan 30, 2016 08:17
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Gambor posted:To be fair, I'm 99% sure he means this story, not that nobody ever had a bad DM is 4E. In other words, he's saying that the sort of thing that would lead someone to define "written language" in such a way as to exclude at least 2 actual systems of writing in order to shut down a player's ability is... less discouraged in the materials of 5E than it was in 4E. Which may be bold, but isn't indefensible. I'm inclined to think if somebody wants to put on their viking hat and yell no at you they're going to do it whether the game 'lets' you or not. I just think that 4e invites fewer off-the-cuff definitions of things than 5e. If we want to be real somebody could probably make a similar argument with regard to Comprehend Languages from 4e about what constitutes a 'language' but in general 4e leaves less room for ambiguity. I think what constitutes 'writing' is fairly unambiguous so clearly I'm not one to judge what's okay to argue about. But really there is way less ambiguity in 4e, by design, which means a DM who wants to put up a roadblock has to basically invent a reason to do it.
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Jan 30, 2016 09:34
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Mendrian posted:I'm inclined to think if somebody wants to put on their viking hat and yell no at you they're going to do it whether the game 'lets' you or not. That's the point though. It's not about which game 'lets' you do anything, it's about what the game encourages. If the books espouse a "yes, and..." philosophy you will tend to see a different style of play than ones that tell you that the DM is law and you are playing in his world. Issues of self-selection aside, people come to the table with expectations, and it's naive to say that the persistent message of 5E as the edition of "GM empowerment" in response to 4E's rampant "player entitlement" doesn't impact those expectations. Just because it isn't the only factor doesn't make it no factor at all.
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Jan 30, 2016 11:02
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Harvey Mantaco posted:Cross posting from the gaming experiences thread, but I'm just really proud of this. those are fantastic. where would one acquire one?
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Jan 30, 2016 11:59
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ActusRhesus posted:those are fantastic. where would one acquire one? They were made for us as a gift, sorry!
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Jan 30, 2016 16:31
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Of course something that DnD players would need is not an actual product.  How much
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Jan 30, 2016 18:44
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Of course something that DnD players would need is not an actual product. It took him forever and I think he's rather die than make another. I bet you could probably find custom D&D boxes and things online already! It's an old hobby, there's gotta be something.
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Jan 30, 2016 21:08
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The thing I miss most about 4e is the Rituals system. Yeah it was limited by gold, which you normally either have infinite or absolutely none, but I enjoyed that no matter who I was I could take some flavor rituals and do awesome role playing things. Ritual Caster Barbarian with Commune with nature, used mostly for talking to wolves, because he was raised by them. Ritual Caster Paladin for Speak with dead and under miraculous things. Ritual Caster Assassin with "purify water," because they're the kind of person to always worry about being poison. They were never super OP, and you had to be trained in the skill to begin with. It just felt "right." The only thing I would've have changed to be honest, is have them run on Healing Surges.
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Jan 31, 2016 00:38
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So has anyone converted the neutronium golem to 5e yet? Upper_Krust has apparently vanished from the internet, so we can't rely on him to change systems and start rewriting everything yet again.Turtlicious posted:The thing I miss most about 4e is the Rituals system. Yeah it was limited by gold, which you normally either have infinite or absolutely none, but I enjoyed that no matter who I was I could take some flavor rituals and do awesome role playing things. Hmmm. I could totally see a feat for this with (ritual)-tagged spells. Just have it be Ritual Casting as per a wizard but with a GP cost or hit dice cost or something per use. The only thing I'd watch out for is the ritual spells that are ersatz class features, like Find Steed and Find Familiar. Roadie fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jan 31, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2016 01:37
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Turtlicious posted:The thing I miss most about 4e is the Rituals system. Yeah it was limited by gold, which you normally either have infinite or absolutely none, but I enjoyed that no matter who I was I could take some flavor rituals and do awesome role playing things. Same here. Making all the fun, non-mechanical spells class agnostic was probably the best change of any edition. I always straight-up ignored the gold cost unless someone was making magic items.
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Jan 31, 2016 01:43
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My family/friends playing my campaign have a focus on gold. Like, they are HUNGRY for it. The first game we played, they "saved" a university run by monsters for monsters that want to leave the claw and tooth behind them and peruse thing more....noble, but all the staff ended up getting killed (they were bad) and anyone else in control of the school. The players took on the charge of taking over the university and turning it into a new town/place of learning and took charge of it's development. I gave them an original list with a bunch of things they could spend gold/resources on. Nothing too specific mind you, like costs to build different kinds of buildings, enlist certain contractors, this and that. So if they say go "well, I want to build a ship yard and hire some spell jamming experts to help make it so we can make loving trans-dimensional space ships!" they could, and they wouldn't have to ask the GM, it would all be there. It's great because you don't even, as a GM, have to get too detailed. If you write "about 5k gold, someone who knows about spelljamming and 3 transarcaline crystals" you can leave it at that, it's now an option. If the players actually CHOOSE that option you can then flesh out what they need to do to get said crystals or even what they are. This has been fairly autopilot and honestly required very little goalie work from me, but they have very clear and real motivations. Also as they've done certain things "Like build said shipyard" I've given them more information on costs "If you want to reach these places, you're gonna need to upgrade your ships warp drives, here's who you'll need, this is what it'll cost. Also, you'll need to find an expert in X and a bunch of X. Also, here's other things you can do regarding upgrading your shipyards..." It's loving awesome watching them look at this dearth of possibilities before them and make informed decisions about what to do. They feel actualized and not railroaded, and I'm not having to even really "react" because I'm the one that gave them all this poo poo to do! I'm totally prepared! I know this isn't really 5e specific, but as the gold in 5e doesn't seem to have many other uses, it works exceptionally well here and gets players thinking between games. I love watching everyone planning and plotting about what to do.
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Jan 31, 2016 02:09
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Turtlicious posted:The thing I miss most about 4e is the Rituals system. Yeah it was limited by gold, which you normally either have infinite or absolutely none, but I enjoyed that no matter who I was I could take some flavor rituals and do awesome role playing things. The two big problems with it were the gold cost (which made it prohibitive to use early and pointlessly inexpensive late), and that non-casters had to burn a feat to access it. I'm not sure how much I like it running off of healing surges, though I struggle to think of a good non-combat resource to tie them to. Would also be cool to add in some non-magical rituals, like better skill uses, feats of strength, etc. tied to the same resource system.
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Jan 31, 2016 02:43
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I think you could just them Generic Ritual Points that they can burn to use Rituals, without having it interfere with the economy of the rest of the game.
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Jan 31, 2016 02:48
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Turtlicious posted:They were never super OP, and you had to be trained in the skill to begin with. It just felt "right." The only thing I would've have changed to be honest, is have them run on Healing Surges. Disagree having to make the choice of weakening yourself for a future combat or using a ritual seems super unfun
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Jan 31, 2016 02:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think you could just them Generic Ritual Points that they can burn to use Rituals, without having it interfere with the economy of the rest of the game. Thinking about it more, for the 5e equivalent you could probably just make it at will with a feat with no serious issues, given that it's that way for spellcasters already. Just make it limited to spell levels at the same rate as a full or half caster.
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Jan 31, 2016 02:49
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gradenko_2000 posted:I think you could just them Generic Ritual Points that they can burn to use Rituals, without having it interfere with the economy of the rest of the game. You could do this the way the book outlines ritual components and have generic ritual points for all the different categories of rituals, and then the residiuum would be a "universal" ritual point. Generic Universal Ritual Points. A GURP.
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Jan 31, 2016 03:08
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Elfgames posted:Disagree having to make the choice of weakening yourself for a future combat or using a ritual seems super unfun Yeah, but 4e's gold-per-level was tight enough that spending any real amount on rituals instead of magic items would weaken you in future combats too. It's just a much more opaque kind of weakened compared to a healing surge. In any case, it's a shame that 5e's rituals are just a way to give spellcasters more out-of-combat versatility instead of something that improved on the 4e system. It deserved a better implementation than it ever got.
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Jan 31, 2016 04:50
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