Murphy's Rules: Your Favorite Game Is Weird

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Murphy's Rules: Your Favorite Game Is Weird

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Rifts has a class that was inspired by the game for the Nokia N-Gage.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2013 23:36

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:18

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Rulebook Heavily posted:

Sometimes the rules just speak for themselves. From AD&D 1e:

Every part of this spell is wonderfully bizarre.

And to complement that we have the tesseract dungeon which I know first appeared in an issue of Dragon or Dungeon in the 1980s and was refreshed as an actual thing that you could travel through in 4E.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2013 00:38

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Mors Rattus posted:

In Legend of the Burning Sands, there is an Advantage, Blessing of the Elements.

Nowhere in the book does it ever tell you what an Affinity for an element is, or how you might get one.

Isn't that from Legend of the Five Rings where Shegunja have an affinity for an element and a forbidden element?

# ¿ Feb 13, 2013 14:42

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Yeah, it's a holdover from Legend of the Five Rings (it's a trait shugenja / spellcasters often have).

Is it actually completely useless in that game?

# ¿ Feb 13, 2013 14:46

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

dwarf74 posted:

Got patched with the free action attack limits. Still hilarious, but no longer workable...

Actually you can still grant about five attacks with a Wizard with Beguiling Strands and a specific feat from PHB II. Basically someone idiotically wrote a feat that grants basic attacks when an you are forced moved next to an enemy. Of course it doesn't state that it has to be an enemy that does the moving.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2013 16:35

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Masiakasaurus posted:

2) Since anyone with an in-game IQ stat of 5 or less doesn't qualify for any classes, but IQ is determined by a 3D6 roll, you have just under a 1-in-20 chance of rolling up an unplayable character. There are no rules in place to handle this, not even a simple "if your attributes are too low reroll," so at this point RAW you've BSoD'ed character creation.

I'm pretty sure the Juicer, Crazy, and I want to say a bunch of the Cyborgs in Rifts have the same exact problem. In theory if you wanted to make an elf Crazy there is a relatively high chance it will just day in the mist of character creation.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2013 19:36

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

quote:

While there are wizard spells that give the features of other classes, there are very few other classes with features that give wizard spells at anything other than a rudimentary level

Actually, if we are including Pathfinder and are just simply invoking abilities that mimic the wizard's spells then the Alchemist gets a ton of Wizard features that are either flat out better or slightly worst.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 7, 2013

# ¿ Apr 7, 2013 18:26

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

LightWarden posted:

I don't think that the alchemist's infusions quite reach the same level of power as the wizard's highest level spells, but they're good, and the alchemist has some pretty awesome discoveries and interesting archetypes. I'd certainly place an alchemist on the list of "people a wizard wouldn't mind hanging out with." If you're going to be a wizard hanging out on alien planets and wishing up contestants for your arena, it's not a bad idea to have an alchemist on hand to act as the Spiral to your Mojo.

The litany of stuff that you actually wrote in that paragraph are either Alchemist infusions or discoveries. Admittedly, I'm most fond of the ability to rapidshot dispel magic.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2013 20:31

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Rulebook Heavily posted:

Creatures on the ground.

Nope. The definition does actually include anything underneath it too. To be on something means that you're being supported by it. Its the primary reason why I hate the naturalistic writing of D&D because its vague as all hell and unless you start using a dictionary it gets annoying. Here is the dictionary term:

quote:

so as to be or remain supported by or suspended from

# ¿ Jun 21, 2013 18:10

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Rulebook Heavily posted:

No, it doesn't. Being beneath a surface is not being supported by said surface or be suspended from that surface, so the dictionary term doesn't even apply. More importantly, it makes no sense in actual use to use "On" to mean "Under" or "In" in this instance. It feels very ungrammatical to say.

Actually its nonsensical either way now that I think of it as the most common definition of ground doesn't actually relate to it being on top of but just being earth. You're right it is stupid but for reasons that have nothing to do with what you pointed out.
EDIT:

quote:

And even if it were correct use in this instance, or go with the "surely they meant in and under too", the area of the spell is clear: it doesn't actually reach into the ground at all, just the surface (no mentions of "cubes", which is the usual parlance). To wit: "Area: 80-ft.-radius spread (S)".

You're right. Why did they actually use two completely different sets of measurements for that?

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jun 21, 2013

# ¿ Jun 21, 2013 19:19

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Humans are so ineffectual in melee combat that improving strength is pointless. +15 to damage is pointless when it turns into +0.15 damage against the grand majority of antagonists.

I don't think it ever clearly explains the mechanics though because all it says is that it provides a bonus to damage if you attack with a melee strike. It never actually explains what the hell happens to the +15 damage if you attack with a MDC weapon which happens often.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2013 15:19

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Rulebook Heavily posted:

AH The Age of Heroes
AQ Al-Qadim Arabian Adventures
Bb The Complete Barbarian's Handbook
CB The Complete Bard's Handbook
CH The Complete Book of Humanoids
CN The Complete Book of Necromancers
CR The Complete Ranger's Handbook
CS The Complete Sha'ir's Handbook
CT The Complete Thief's Handbook
Dw The Complete Book of Dwarves
GR The Glory of Rome
OA Oriental Adventures
Nj The Complete Ninja's Handbook
Pn The Complete Paladin's Handbook
Ps The Complete Psionics Handbook
PW Planewalkers' Handbook
SP Player's Option: Skills and Powers
SM Player's Option: Spells and Magic
SS Sages and Specialists

That list is strangely incomplete as it references the Chronomancer book which is where all of the insane future skills come from.

Rulebook Heavily posted:

That's probably exactly where that NWP comes from. Very often, AD&D writers would just write rules designed to recreate specific scenes from novels or movies word-by-word. Aaron Allston was usually better than that, though.

That is why there are so many insanely weird future ones as the Chronomancer book deals with time travel.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jan 14, 2014

# ¿ Jan 14, 2014 22:59

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

homeless poster posted:

Like, all of their multitude of spells that can already divine the future weren't enough, so they absolutely needed a (I'm assuming) mundane way to predict the future too.

No. As if you aren't powerful enough you become a time lord.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2014 23:11

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Esser-Z posted:

I think that combo works anyway. Use the metamagic feat Fell Drain on Presto, then say change the color of your enemy (which has no save or attack roll because nobody expected it to be an attack) to inflict free negative levels. It might not work, but there's probably plenty of mundane spells that DO become offensive with Fell Drain.

If its the feat that I'm looking at it won't work as it says spells that do damage.

# ¿ May 12, 2014 14:50

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:18

MadScientistWorking: Jun 23, 2010; "I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

hyphz posted:

Rather odd murphy in the FFG Star Wars system.

When you want to use the Force, you have to roll a Force die - one of the many funky dice that come with the system. The Force die has sides showing numbers of white spots (light side) and dark spots (dark side); always 1 or 2, but never both on one face. You can use the light side dots as power-ups freely. You can also use the dark side dots if you want to, but you take corruption/damage/bad stuff when you do.

The problem is that in any case where you are spending dark side points, it's only because you weren't lucky enough to roll a die face with light side dots. In other words the only difference between a Yoda and a Palpatine could be that Yoda had better luck on the dice.

Don't know how it works in the actual Jedi supplement but the dark side pips only damage you with strain and do nothign more. On top of that in theory as you get better you can roll both dark side and light side at the same time but the criticism of it being way to slow is a bit justified.

Splicer posted:

There's several fairly major differences between a single penny and a column of water.

Well on top of that water can shred through materials fairly easily if you get it going fast enough. Bomb disposal units typically use what effectively is a massive water gun to shred up potential bombs.

MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Sep 23, 2014

# ¿ Sep 23, 2014 03:44

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Murphy's Rules: Your Favorite Game Is Weird