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Mendrian posted:Bonus xp for player behavior is a terrible idea and anyone who has GMed for a while likely tell you so. I'm sure at least a few cool groups make it work but it's almost universally a fast track to degenerate behavior. We get more xp for tackling extra fights? Okay everybody shut up while I mastermind our fights. Be quiet Joey I don't care that you've been at 10% HP for something like 12 encounters. Burning Wheel had an interesting "xp" system as I recall. Every time you did something, you gained XP in it, and as your skills got higher you started to need better tiers of success for it to count. Failures could also grant you xp for most skills (besides things like spotting, where failure means you saw nothing) because people learn from their mistakes. So a low level skill you might need to use 5-6 times and then it went up a rank. Something that's gone up a few times you might need 7-8 successful uses to go up, and a few of those might have to be better than just barely passing whatever skill check. It looked like a neat system, and you really just had to tick off skill uses so the bookkeeping was mostly pretty easy looking until you got a really highly leveled skill.
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Nov 25, 2015 02:07
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The Gate posted:Burning Wheel had an interesting "xp" system as I recall. Every time you did something, you gained XP in it, and as your skills got higher you started to need better tiers of success for it to count. Failures could also grant you xp for most skills (besides things like spotting, where failure means you saw nothing) because people learn from their mistakes. So a low level skill you might need to use 5-6 times and then it went up a rank. Something that's gone up a few times you might need 7-8 successful uses to go up, and a few of those might have to be better than just barely passing whatever skill check. It looked like a neat system, and you really just had to tick off skill uses so the bookkeeping was mostly pretty easy looking until you got a really highly leveled skill. It's actually more ingenious than that. You need (as I recall) one success AND one failure per rank of the skill in order to increase it. So not only do you need to be using a skill a lot in order to increase it (whether or not you succeed) you also end up being encouraged to constantly take on more challenging uses where you have a decent chance of failure in order to continue learning. Of course, consequences for failure are usually commensurate with the Obstacle level, so continuing to do this becomes riskier and riskier. This also ends up interfacing in interesting ways with other systems in the game where you intentionally take a disadvantage in a check due to a situation or personality trait in order to earn another kind of reward (essentially a Hero Point). So you may try and do something you're skilled at, but decide you can afford to fail, so take a narrative disadvantage for a check. Success or Failure, it helps you level up.
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Nov 25, 2015 02:40
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Hubis posted:It's actually more ingenious than that. Ah, yeah, that's right! It's been a long rear end time since I looked at that game, and I think it was before the latest edition came out as well. It's very cool, and it was a neat way to reward people for trying to do things as well as not making it easy to just "grind" out skills on meaningless tasks.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:02
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/12eLe52BegBFroKQ1hKAjSlenRT4YbBztxVjpVgPZsxg/edit?usp=sharing So I made some improvements based on feedback I got here: - Fighter now receives "martial recoveries" instead of hit dice. Recoveries are hit dice that always come up 12. This increases the size of the fighter's HP reservoir by between 50 and 100%, depending on con mod. I'm kind of feeling this system (with different recovery values) for martials in general to give them more staying power throughout the day and let them mix things up, secure in the knowledge of how much healing they have coming to them during a short rest, and that it's pretty reasonable compared to their HP totals. - Second Wind is back to its original PHB value, but you can now drop fighter recoveries when you pop it. Since you can't drop ordinary hit dice, it doesn't scale with other class levels. - Saves are now back at Str/Con and fighting style is level 2, to reduce the fighter's value as a single level dip. - Sup dice now start at d4. They increase to d6 at level 5 and from then on are one die size lower than they were before. - Remarkable jumper now lets you spend a die to double your jump distance instead of the crazy math thing I was doing before. - Indomitable now lets you reroll the failed save as a constitution save, which will hopefully bring its value into line with the other exploits.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:30
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https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/playbook-for-prd/id1023397374?mt=8 It looks like the guys that were making the 5th Edition digital tools finally got their Project Morningstar thing off the ground.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:40
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Why in 2015 does WotC find it impossibly difficult to build an online character creator? I remember using one for 3.X well over a decade ago and it changed chargen from essentially a few hours of nerd homework to 15 minutes of clicking buttons. This is poo poo that could be done in a week with a competent team, it's not like NEXT has two dozen splats adding extraneous poo poo that interacts in weird ways.......yet.
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Nov 25, 2015 03:45
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Why on earth did it take you multiple hours to do 3.5 chargen, unless you were doing high level?
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Nov 25, 2015 03:48
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So about that article... Groggy or not, I'm pledging for Dungeon Crawl Classics. The degree of support and supplemental material is insane, and I simply have no idea why WotC - a much bigger company, with a lot broader reach - can't do a fraction of it.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:16
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I don't know what's holding WOTC back - I made a Pathfinder character just now in less than 5 minutes using Pathguy's site, and we saw a bunch of independently-made 5e character generators before WOTC started issuing takedowns.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:I don't know what's holding WOTC back - I made a Pathfinder character just now in less than 5 minutes using Pathguy's site, and we saw a bunch of independently-made 5e character generators before WOTC started issuing takedowns. The one on Google Play seems to be back. Or was a few days ago, anyway, with SCAG material added. Fifth Edition Character Sheet.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:22
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So, going back to the earlier discussion of how to incentivize going longer in the day. We talked about the carrot in terms of XP and treasure, but what about the stick? How about having the encounters become more difficult if the players rest too frequently? For players with immersion problems, this can easily be explained by word having the chance to get out that someone is going around ganking their buddies. So, they start setting more traps, calling for help, getting hazards in place they can use against the players. If you go straight on, or just take a short rest, they don't have time to get the word out/summon reinforcements/arm the spike traps.
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Nov 25, 2015 04:46
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JackMann posted:So, going back to the earlier discussion of how to incentivize going longer in the day. We talked about the carrot in terms of XP and treasure, but what about the stick? How about having the encounters become more difficult if the players rest too frequently? For players with immersion problems, this can easily be explained by word having the chance to get out that someone is going around ganking their buddies. So, they start setting more traps, calling for help, getting hazards in place they can use against the players. If you go straight on, or just take a short rest, they don't have time to get the word out/summon reinforcements/arm the spike traps. Yeah but that just starts a spiral of 'super hard one encounter ->better rest quickly after it'
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Nov 25, 2015 04:48
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It makes sense for such things to happen, but from a mechanical perspective, as Tunicate said it just creates a situation where you make the encounters harder so the players feel even more pressured to Long Rest after one or two fights (and if the fights really are that much harder and drains them of more resources, then you can hardly blame the players) I suppose you could swing it back by saying that "you've killed so many Orcs at this prepared fortification that they're now suffering from attrition" so that the next coming encounters are then easier after they finally do an adventuring day where they when they "should", but from a broader perspective, if the players let the evil get out of control, that should change the context and texture of the fights, but perhaps not always the actual encounters.
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Nov 25, 2015 05:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:I don't know what's holding WOTC back - I made a Pathfinder character just now in less than 5 minutes using Pathguy's site, and we saw a bunch of independently-made 5e character generators before WOTC started issuing takedowns. WotC is notoriously absolutely awful when it comes to digital products. As for takedowns it's 50/50 on it being either "overzealous lawyers" or "D&D exists at this point for and only for brand protection"
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Nov 25, 2015 07:53
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Wizards couldn't ban a card from magic because it has the letter Æ. Users with 3 letter names couldn't make replays. There was a card that would crash the game if you used it, so instead of fixing it they banned anyone who used it. Wizards is extremely bad at computers.
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Nov 25, 2015 08:54
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Babylon Astronaut posted:Wizards couldn't ban a card from magic because it has the letter Æ. Remind me the circumstances of this one? As far as I can tell, Aether Vial is the only Ae card that's ever been banned, and it was only banned in formats from ages ago. I could have sworn the banned list thing was more recent than that, though I technically don't know that for sure.
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Nov 25, 2015 09:12
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Hubis posted:It's actually more ingenious than that. That's Torchbearer. In vanilla Burning Wheel you simply need a certain number of tests. However, the higher your Skill exponent gets, the more difficult tests you need to advance the Skill. Eventually you'll reach a point where you need tests to advance that you can't actually pull off without spending Artha, so you'll have to choose between trying and failing or spending Artha to succeed. Also, you can gain tests through training and practice as well. Anyway, speaking of XP tracking, I'm currently using it in a Strike! campaign of mine to act as a risk/reward mechanic: the difficulty of all dungeons is public so the players know how much XP they'll gain for completing a given dungeon, so it gives them a decision to make between completing a bunch of easy dungeons and gaining XP slowly or taking their chances with a more difficult dungeon that can potentially level them up right away. Normally I too use leveling for completing milestones, but for this style of campaign I feel tracking XP is appropriate.
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Nov 25, 2015 09:25
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Ratpick posted:That's Torchbearer. In vanilla Burning Wheel you simply need a certain number of tests. However, the higher your Skill exponent gets, the more difficult tests you need to advance the Skill. Eventually you'll reach a point where you need tests to advance that you can't actually pull off without spending Artha, so you'll have to choose between trying and failing or spending Artha to succeed.  I should have caveated that as saying "I may be getting all this jumbled with Torchbearer". But yeah, the point stands.quote:Anyway, speaking of XP tracking, I'm currently using it in a Strike! campaign of mine to act as a risk/reward mechanic: the difficulty of all dungeons is public so the players know how much XP they'll gain for completing a given dungeon, so it gives them a decision to make between completing a bunch of easy dungeons and gaining XP slowly or taking their chances with a more difficult dungeon that can potentially level them up right away. Normally I too use leveling for completing milestones, but for this style of campaign I feel tracking XP is appropriate. See, this is a circumstance (more open, sandboxed play) where xp-based leveling makes more sense. For what it's worth, in my 4e campaign I tracked XP in 10 point intervals. I usually gave 3-5xp per session, depending on how much was done. I found it acted as incentive to get more done during our briefer sessions, and was a recognition of achievement after a big plot point (giving out 6xp for dealing with a boss fight added to the narrative satisfaction and gave players recognition for doing something "big").
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Nov 25, 2015 12:09
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This is good - talking about actual designs instead of absurd hyphz-otheticals. If you want to see a system that uses streamlined XP and rewards players for taking on longer and more ambitious challenges, you should get Strike! and check out the Dangerous Delves rules that Ratpick is referencing. It's not the be-all-end-all, but it's one implementation. I definitely fall into the "XP tracking is a tedious waste" camp as it is normally implemented because players have almost no control over how much they get and generally no control over how it is used and the DM is required to fudge it with "quest xp" anyway. Dangerous Delves turns that on its head by telling players in advance which delves are more dangerous or longer or higher level, and they can decide how much XP they want to shoot for, at the risk of taking on too much and having to retreat (or worse). Combine that with the "town assault" mechanic putting pressure on the players to keep leveling up and you get a system where XP isn't so pointless. The players decide how much XP to (try to) get, not the DM. Less-crunchy games have a lot more freedom about this sort of thing. The Shadow of Yesterday's "Keys" come to mind as the sort of thing that work well there but wouldn't work for D&D or Strike! (You can see Keys for free in John Harper's Lady Blackbird).
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Nov 25, 2015 22:55
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I agree that tracking XP is cool and good when getting XP is the objective in and of itself. I suppose that sounds like a tautology, but consider that in ye olde days you didn't really care about how or why you were in a dungeon - you went down there because you needed loot (which translated into XP). If the players wanted to get some rest, they'd need to secure a room within the dungeon, and they'd only have a limited number of iron pitons to lock doors with and rations to eat, and natural HP regen was so slow that you were mostly only resting to get back spell slots. If you were too risk-averse, you'd run out of camping supplies long before you'd looted most of the dungeon, which meant you'd have to pull out completely, at which point the DM might either reset the dungeon or declare that you could go back.
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Nov 26, 2015 04:38
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gradenko_2000 posted:I agree that tracking XP is cool and good when getting XP is the objective in and of itself. I suppose that sounds like a tautology, but consider that in ye olde days you didn't really care about how or why you were in a dungeon - you went down there because you needed loot (which translated into XP). I think that's the thing; 5e is meant to primarily appeal to nostalgia, and fans of ~the old ways~ so of course giving out XP using CR is considered the default state in the text. But it's supposed to also be the edition to unite all editions, so stuff like Inspiration->Bonds/Flaws/Traits/Ideals appear, like a half-hearted lip-service to any sort of "story gaming." D&D has the problem of being the big name in the market and therefore having to be the big tent, but it's constantly doing a half-assed job of being anything other than a wizard simulator, and when it does otherwise (4e) the peasants start to revolt.
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Nov 26, 2015 06:40
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P.d0t posted:D&D has the problem of being the big name in the market and therefore having to be the big tent, but it's constantly doing a half-assed job of being anything other than a wizard simulator, and when it does otherwise (4e) the peasants start to revolt. Exactly. There's this constant push-and-pull between the heart of the game really being about going down into dungeons and slaying dragons, and it being so popular that people use for it for everything TRPG-related.
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Nov 26, 2015 06:50
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3.5 was fun as a wizard simulator, though obviously it would have been a lot more fun without a whole pile of crufty rules getting in the way of poring over the spell list to determine your route to optimal power.
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Nov 26, 2015 06:55
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cheetah7071 posted:3.5 was fun as a wizard simulator, though obviously it would have been a lot more fun without a whole pile of crufty rules getting in the way of poring over the spell list to determine your route to optimal power. That's actually why most people I know love it. Mashing together a bunch of classes and poo poo to see how it all plays out.
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Nov 26, 2015 07:28
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That's another thing about D&D, it's basically a bunch of different mini-games that appeal to different tastes, but that never really play well together. Off the top of my head:
The problem is that there's also a lot of people that when they hear that D&D is the biggest roleplaying game on the market, like to think that means improv (theatre sports-style), acting, characterization, and relationship-building between PCs as well as NPCs should/will be a valid and supported playstyle within the game's mechanics, and D&D doesn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. Now, you can argue (with varying degrees of success, depending on your audience) that simply "getting out of the way" in terms of acting/roleplaying mechanics is probably the best route for D&D to take. The problem is that the system gets far too
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Nov 26, 2015 08:58
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thoughts on languages? which are the most useful?
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Nov 26, 2015 12:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Exactly. There's this constant push-and-pull between the heart of the game really being about going down into dungeons and slaying dragons, and it being so popular that people use for it for everything TRPG-related. 5e also has terrible support for any kind of camping gear grind, given that there are a ton of spells/abilities that quickly obviate it.
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Nov 26, 2015 12:51
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ActusRhesus posted:thoughts on languages? That's sort of a broad question. One extreme would be World of Warcraft-style, where you cannot ever learn what the "enemy" is speaking, except when they violate that rule so that the enemy can deliver their spiel. The other end of the spectrum would be allowing free communication with any intelligent being, essentially allowing diplomacy to kick in unless the players decide to fight or you step in as DM and make the NPCs attack. One possible drawback to this approach is that some groups may want to take every opportunity to talk whenever they get the chance. If the group is acting too "weasely" with constant attempts at diplomacy, "otherization" of the enemy may be necessary (although this is also an issue that can be dealt with via a meta-discussion of the game's tone and direction). A middle ground would be some cultures can be spoken to, others cannot. The usefulness of any one language really depends on what your world is like and how you're going to allow the learning of additional languages from a mechanical perspective*. Obviously if the players are facing a massive Orc invasion then having at least one person speak Orcish is useful. One trick/mechanic you can pull is to hold learned languages in reserve. If they don't want to commit to a language yet, don't oblige them to until they reach a point in the story where a play can declare "of course I can understand the Elf because ..." and that's when they write down Elvish in that language "slot" in the middle of a session. Fake Edit: I realize you might be asking from the perspective of a player. If so, that still depends on how your table runs things, but I imagine you should at least be able to understand your whole party, and after that aim for either a more esoteric race so you can serve as an interpreter/ambassador, or another major culture, even an enemy one, that you want to be able to talk to, even if it's just to yell the fantasy equivalent of "Tojo sucks!"
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Nov 26, 2015 13:24
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ActusRhesus posted:thoughts on languages? Are you spending a campaign spying on orcish hordes? Learn orca and goblene. Planning on robbing the vast underdark cities? Learn Dro, Duergarin, and Svineblinienein. Getting drunk in the forest? Learn elfish and gnomvin. Your DM doesnt use intelligent/talkey monsters? Then learn dialects of the area youre in. Your DM doenst use language differentiation? Use those slots for blind fighting. Everyone needs blind fighting.
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Nov 26, 2015 13:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:That's sort of a broad question. ... Or you have a wizard who knows Comprehend Languages 
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Nov 26, 2015 15:00
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It's always bothered me how the D&D setting doesn't have languages like 'Amnish' and 'Thayvian' and instead has languages like 'Elvish', 'Dwarven', 'Gnome', and 'Air Elementalese' as if language is a loving racial property rather than a cultural construct. I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure I remember a thing from some mechanic in some edition where if you turn into a dragon you gain the ability to speak Draconic. Or that could even be a 5e sorceror thing.
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Nov 26, 2015 15:24
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Genetic memory. Even works for shape shifting. As for the language thing, it makes sense if your world is xenophobic as hell and everyone bands together in their own corners. As soon as you start having multicultural cities it falls apart.
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Nov 26, 2015 16:10
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D&D language works like Pokemon. Humans understand each other just fine, but to other races it sounds like they're constantly shouting "HUMAN HUMAN, HUMAN"
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Nov 26, 2015 16:13
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I dunno, I always sorta liked the idea that humans have all these different cultures and languages and belief systems and all that, and meanwhile elves are just fuckin' elves, regardless. It helps kinda spike a wedge between the two and make non-human races more, eh, nonhuman I guess. Like the elves have a name for their language and it's super long with three apostrophes and it means something real flowery and poetic but everyone else just calls it "elvish" because it's the language elves speak. Like maybe elves are literally born speaking elvish and worshiping their generic elven god no matter where they are. That's just something intrinsic to being an elf. Suddenly elves who go for other gods or who try to do non-elven activities stand out way more, because that's just not something that happens. It's not that it's looked down on culturally, it literally doesn't loving happen.
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Nov 26, 2015 16:20
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Language is an interesting thing in D&D and games like it. On the one hand, it makes little sense for every human to speak "human" and so on. Some settings do fix that (e.g. Birthright). For creatures like demons or elements it's easier to justify. They're not real people scattered to the corners of a globe, they're magic monolithical factions. On the other hand though, who really wants to deal with dozens or even hundreds of languages and dialects? This is a game about orc-punching and looting, not the explorations of Marco Polo. Some games make languages a real thing that matters, where skill with it is a reasonable investment of resources, and it results in interesting scenarios. D&D is not that game. There's also to consider that D&D is not the real world. If no matter where or when you are, the gods keep answering all questions in Aramaic and all commandments they hand out are written in Aramaic... then I'm going to guess that the people of the world will keep speaking Aramaic. No community is going to just spontaneously invent English or Swahili in such a world. ... Except perhaps if the gods can only understand Aramaic, and English is the socio-theological equivalent of Thieves' Cant; words which the people use when they want to hide things from the omniscient eyes of heaven. That could actually make for a pretty cool setting. Anyway, where was I going with this? Whatever.
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Nov 26, 2015 16:41
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The campaign I'm in has 3 major human dialects and at least a dozen minor ones and it's really over the top (and fire giants in one mountain range speak different than shorter) We use a house rule that each language learned makes the next one easier, so I actually made a gnome whose sole adventuring goal is to learn all the languages in the world. It's also fun to have old/new dialects of human, but have elvish and dwarvish be unchanged through the millennia mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Nov 26, 2015 |
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Nov 26, 2015 17:00
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Boing posted:It's always bothered me how the D&D setting doesn't have languages like 'Amnish' and 'Thayvian' and instead has languages like 'Elvish', 'Dwarven', 'Gnome', and 'Air Elementalese' as if language is a loving racial property rather than a cultural construct. I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure I remember a thing from some mechanic in some edition where if you turn into a dragon you gain the ability to speak Draconic. Or that could even be a 5e sorceror thing.
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Nov 26, 2015 18:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:I agree that tracking XP is cool and good when getting XP is the objective in and of itself. I suppose that sounds like a tautology, but consider that in ye olde days you didn't really care about how or why you were in a dungeon - you went down there because you needed loot (which translated into XP). Fair enough. Our GM is running some very old school modules in 5e, and in some of them - like Labyrinth of Madness - killing things and getting XP is the only way we actually know we're making progress at all, because there's not a whole lot of plot going on (other than that sometimes we find a magic sigil and have to say we're backtracking through every previous area we visited to see what changed when we found it. Oh, and we might be turning into lizards but we can't leave or do anything about it) On the matter of resting.. well, I've always found resting is a bit of a round peg hammered into a square hole in the first place. It fails at narrative balance because of the necessity for magic-users to be active in the narrative, and then is left as a game balance mechanic with a really awkward in-character explanation. (Especially when designers carry it forward into other genres, like superhero games with resting mechanics. Ugh.) Also, I've always tended to interpret the "humans are more adaptable" thing as meaning that humans die quicker, and therefore breed more, and therefore natural selection works better on them that it does on elves who might move to a new environment and want to hang out for 250 years before they're ready to have kids. But that's kind of brutal.
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Nov 26, 2015 19:13
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Sage Genesis posted:Except perhaps if the gods can only understand Aramaic, and English is the socio-theological equivalent of Thieves' Cant; words which the people use when they want to hide things from the omniscient eyes of heaven. That could actually make for a pretty cool setting. I'm sure I remember reading something with a returning god's prophet being an unknown archaeology professor who was the only person on the planet who could understand him.
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Nov 26, 2015 19:35
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Sage Genesis posted:Language is an interesting thing in D&D and games like it. It never got more interesting than in 1e, trying to explain how a Neutral Good child growing up in a Chaotic Good household spoke a language that his parents didn't and that no one taught him.
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Nov 26, 2015 20:39
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