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Kavak posted:On a similar note, the "Wizard Supremacy" rules come back into pay when White Wolf Mages end up in crossover games. Mages are on a power level and thematic level so far above everyone else it's not funny. When you're dealing with a guy who, with the right combination of Arcana, could untraceably kill anyone in the world or make the spirits you were designed to fight his bitch without breaking a sweat, things kind of end up centering on them. Of course it's relevant to point out that while you can do crossover World of Darkness games the books don't necessarily focus on or encourage such things (at least in nWoD, which is what I'm familiar with). Each line focuses pretty much exclusively on its own brand of supernaturals and gives you a full setting complete with its own plots and antagonists. Mages are definitely head and shoulders above other supernaturals in terms of their "I make a swimming pool of Liquid Chlorine Trifluoride and kill you horribly" level of power, but the Mage books are 99% of the time exclusively focused on mages doing mage things against abyssal entities and other mages and other Mage related antagonists in a Mage-focused setting. There's the casual mention of vampires and werewolves every so often, and a few pages devoted to cross-splat interactions, but the assumption is that if you're playing Mage your party is made up of mages and your game will focus on mages. Similarly Vampire is all about being vampires and dealing with vampire problems and vampire antagonists, and Werewolf is about being a werewolf and dealing with werewolf problems and werewolf antagonists and so forth. By contrast Dungeons and Dragons' specific assumption is that you will have a mixed party with a combination of casters and non-casters, and that's where the disparities in power really come to the forefront. WoD "allows" cross-splat cooperation but DnD EXPECTS cross class cooperation. DnD always says you should probably have a Cleric and a Wizard handy, and the game is built around the assumption the players will have some degree of magical aptitude in their group. Mage supremacy is less relevant in WoD because by rights you should only have a lot of mages running around if you are playing a mage in a Mage game.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:53
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Evil Mastermind posted:Did anyone ever actually have casters track somatic components?
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Apr 24, 2015 19:55
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Zereth posted:You're thinking of material components, and I was thinking of the ones which have actual money cost listed. Right, but that's what I mean. Once you get to a certain point in D&D, money stops being a concern.
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Apr 24, 2015 19:57
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Omnicrom posted:Of course it's relevant to point out that while you can do crossover World of Darkness games the books don't necessarily focus on or encourage such things (at least in nWoD, which is what I'm familiar with). You've never played in a nWoD chat game  They made attempts at having the various gamelines play nice with each other, unlike with oWoD, so the Mage issue is kind of glaring. Honestly, they shouldn't have bothered- crossover is the devil's business.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:09
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Evil Mastermind posted:Did anyone ever actually have casters track somatic components? If it had a gold piece cost, we tracked it in 2E and 3x. Otherwise, we gave up on that poo poo a few weeks into 2nd.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:20
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It gets weirder in 5e when they changed the rules so that what were focuses and material components in 3.5 are just all material components now, and only spells that specifically say they consume their components actually do. There are only around 6 spells that actually do. Focuses are now things that allow you to completely ignore material components (unless they have a cost), they also let you ignore somatic components if and only if the spell also has a material component that the focus lets you ignore. Leading to the awkward situation where you can cast a spell with a weapon and focus because it has a material component, but then you suddenly need a free hand again because the next spell you cast doesn't.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:32
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theironjef posted:Of course just about anyone ever in this thread is going to reject the phrase "steals the fun of magic" as pure unadulterated unsubstantiated feels. Because it's equally true to just say "4e gave the fun of magic to every class and then every class had fun!" Yeah, I remembering thinking about how 4e broke things down and that it would be totally boss if everyone had access to a flight spell at some point, even guys with Martial powers. It would mean you are so good at swinging a sword, you just cut the air in front of you and keep going to your target like a loving Vanguard in Mass Effect. Or you turn yourself into a human helicopter.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:10
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Kavak posted:You've never played in a nWoD chat game Anyone who knows anything about WW knows that crossover games are fraught with difficulty between the splats given their different fields of expertise and power levels. Mages are generally head and shoulders above everyone unless certain conditions start occurring (Changelings getting max mileage out of Contracts, Demons going Loud, Vampires manipulating enough sleepers, etc.). Crossover in limited scopes do well though or with a certain thematic bent since with ghosts and spirits, Mages are equivalent to wrecking balls when dealing with those types compared to Sin-Eaters and Werewolves, respectively, who're more akin to finer instruments. Alternatively, gutter mages.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:28
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Young Freud posted:Yeah, I remembering thinking about how 4e broke things down and that it would be totally boss if everyone had access to a flight spell at some point, even guys with Martial powers. It would mean you are so good at swinging a sword, you just cut the air in front of you and keep going to your target like a loving Vanguard in Mass Effect. Or you turn yourself into a human helicopter. I played a Warlord for like two years straight in that game and never failed to come up with a badass non-magical description for the crazy poo poo I was doing. The guy playing the fighter was the same way. The trick was just being willing to grab the reins on describing the monsters if your power happens to move them around. Come and Get It becomes even more awesome when you describe how the taunted monsters roar and snort in outrage at your demonstration of superiority. Man I miss that. My at-will was literally fastball special-ing the halfling rogue across the field (Opening Shove was the best power in the game by god).
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Apr 24, 2015 21:32
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theironjef posted:I played a Warlord for like two years straight in that game and never failed to come up with a badass non-magical description for the crazy poo poo I was doing. The guy playing the fighter was the same way. The trick was just being willing to grab the reins on describing the monsters if your power happens to move them around. Come and Get It becomes even more awesome when you describe how the taunted monsters roar and snort in outrage at your demonstration of superiority. Man I miss that. My at-will was literally fastball special-ing the halfling rogue across the field (Opening Shove was the best power in the game by god). Does 5E not have a warlord? BOYCOTT FOREVER.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:39
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wdarkk posted:Does 5E not have a warlord? BOYCOTT FOREVER. Warlords are stupid because you can't shout a hand back on. This is more or less the position of the lead designer of Next, a game where there are no rules for the loss of hands.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:42
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wdarkk posted:Does 5E not have a warlord? BOYCOTT FOREVER. I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but that was a huge issue during 5e's development. There are certain builds of bards and fighters that have some enabling things that seem Warlordy, but "you can't shout arms back on" so healing is a magic only club again.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:42
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It's actually a miracle that 4e turned out as well as it did, considering that when it was over, we found that most of the dev team disliked it and actively tried to sabotage it for most of its existence.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:45
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Halloween Jack posted:It's actually a miracle that 4e turned out as well as it did, considering that when it was over, we found that most of the dev team disliked it and actively tried to sabotage it for most of its existence. Same thing for the later books in 3.5 that led to 4th ed. The team involved never actually played with the rules as written and basically never playtested.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:48
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Kurieg posted:I can't tell if you're being facetious or not, but that was a huge issue during 5e's development. There are certain builds of bards and fighters that have some enabling things that seem Warlordy, but "you can't shout arms back on" so healing is a magic only club again. I'm not. I felt betrayed by how 4E was handled and this is sort of a "final straw" thing.
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Apr 24, 2015 21:51
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theironjef posted:Warlords are stupid because you can't shout a hand back on. This is more or less the position of the lead designer of Next, a game where there are no rules for the loss of hands. And also where people can shoot lightning bolts out of their hands. It's realistic, after all.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:00
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wdarkk posted:I'm not. I felt betrayed by how 4E was handled and this is sort of a "final straw" thing.  Seriously, though, the moment I got a look at what Essentials was and that it was supplanting any further standard 4th releases, I pretty much just gave up on D&D entirely.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:04
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LornMarkus posted:
My collection of 4e books is like two feet high, so thankfully I don't have to give up on the game. I wish there was someone out there Pathfindering it though, because some of those late introductions in the non-essentials line needed more development they never got. Seekers and Runepriests specifically.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:07
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Glorantha does an amazing job of setting up a cosmology where you can have two religions that are at war where they have entirely contradictory beliefs but are both correct, or at least as correct as any religion can be in that setting. It's complicated but it's an interesting swerve where the age most of the world's mythology came from didn't adhere to the rules of continuity the present follows, and so often myths from the same faith can vary based on the tellers and yet both effectively be true. While my experience with Glorantha is currently limited to King of Dragon Pass, its mythology already oozes more personality than "This is Generic Main Dwarf God. He's everything you expect from a Generic Dwarf" Night10194 posted:D&D magic kills everything interesting about magic. D&D religion does the same, for the same reasons. In real world polytheism, there's a strong element of 'you know, the Gods do whatever the gently caress they want' at times. Real Gods are unpredictable as hell! You run into Kali (if I remember right), she asks for a little blood, you're an idiot so you give it to her, and she feels sorry for you and spits it back in and makes you the greatest poet alive. The next poor sap tries that and he gets eaten alive. It's just how things go with Gods. Similarly, for monotheism, sometimes God's just pissed and he's obviously made your invaders the hammer of his wrath, so you're going to have a bad time. Sometimes some rear end in a top hat buried some of the spoil that was supposed to be offered up to God in sacral destruction and so he delivers you into the hands of your enemies. Then he parts an entire sea for you and brings low the greatest kingdom on Earth. You just never know with the guy, just that there's some vague sense of a plan. I'm not even sure if you can fit the Hindu pantheon into the D&D alignment corset, seeing how every member can embody vastly different and often conflicting domains (Shiva is a destroyer, healer, ascet and party animal). Oh well, that's what Chaotic Neutral is for I guess. fool_of_sound posted:I disagree. The biggest problem with 3.5 magic is that casters have no theme; each class uses one of two spell lists (with only minor edits for each class), and each of those spell lists cover the spheres of 'can do anything'. So long as mages have specialties like everyone else, mixed parties aren't a problem (see IKRPG, for instance). In those situations, pre-made spell lists are preferable, since they clearly define what that mage may do. I think the most baffling aspect of 3.5 and Pathfinder is that I have yet to find an explanation why Rangers can use divine magic. Since it's divine, it has to come from something. But this something is never explained, nor are there any rules to follow if you don't want to lose your magic powers. I guess Mother Nature doesn't care what you do if you're a half-time spellcaster? And if Rangers can cast spells, why can't Monks, who are much more spiritual than "dude who hunts in the woods"? Kurieg posted:Focuses are now things that allow you to completely ignore material components (unless they have a cost), they also let you ignore somatic components if and only if the spell also has a material component that the focus lets you ignore. Leading to the awkward situation where you can cast a spell with a weapon and focus because it has a material component, but then you suddenly need a free hand again because the next spell you cast doesn't. That's a bit weird coming from an edition meant to simplify just about everything o_O Young Freud posted:Yeah, I remembering thinking about how 4e broke things down and that it would be totally boss if everyone had access to a flight spell at some point, even guys with Martial powers. It would mean you are so good at swinging a sword, you just cut the air in front of you and keep going to your target like a loving Vanguard in Mass Effect. Or you turn yourself into a human helicopter. Human Helicopter would make for an awesome prestige class, with the ever-popular Two-Weapon Helicopter Twirl. Fight! - The Fighting Game RPG  Man, I've been slacking off, and it's only this chapter. Let's get serious! Chapter 6: The Worlds of Fight! As far as settings go, while fighting games prefer a modern-day setting, you can really use about anything and mix-and-match to your hearts content. Now here's an idea for a Torg revival: The King of Cosms! The book goes into a bit of detail about how the fighting game genre could be best described as "comic book superheroes with hyper-charged martial arts and a bit of anime/manga thrown it, except for most of the complex relationships because most fighting game characters are a bit too insane for deep social interactions", which isn't too far from the truth. What follows next are a lot of archetypes and tropes you see in fighting games. You pretty much always have a comic relief character and a "normal" boring martial artist dude. The people running the tournament are always evil, and they're probably out to somehow weaponize martial artist skills for world domination or something. Nothing to surprising here. Before things get running, the GM has of course lay down some ground rules, like the scope or realism of the campaign, and whether or not there's an actual tournament going on or he's planning to do something like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue where people just end up fighting each other because they ran into each other and are a bit nuts. The weirdest part is the "visuals" of the campaign, aka whether the hypothetical video game would be in 2D or 3D. This mainl affects the choice of whether or not Attack Strings are in use, though things have gone a bit fuzzy now that more and more traditional 2D franchises are moving over into the 3rd dimension without changing their core gameplay. Fight! can be played with just one player and a GM, but that wouldn't be nearly as much fun. 2-4 players are recommended. More is possible, but that can make it hard to include everyone into a tournament-style fight. Unless its a medieval tournament or something. Making NPCs is where the GM will probably spend most of his prep time. Team-based tournament campaigns can easily require two dozen individual NPC Fighters (maybe less if the GM uses a lot of recurring Fighters). Fight! follows a sandbox-like advice of "don't create anything until its needed", which is a lot easier to do at the start of a campaign because low-level Fighters can be made relatively quick. More experienced character have significantly more points to play around with, so I'd say making up some templates in advance can help a lot. The numer of required NPCs can most likely also be reduced if you're going for a more PvP-style campaign. For a bit of inspiration, a couple campaign seeds for various fighting game sub-genres are listed. The most interesting and unique is Avignon, aka "The Western Schism meets Dynasty Warriors. Also theological disputes are won with fisticuffs". Campaign pacing is an interesting beast, as a Fighter's Power Level is not an absolute measurement of his experience. Instead, it signifies his importance in the story. Once the PCs have reache level 8, it's time to confront the main antagonist. When it comes to such boss fights, there are a few tricks the GM can employ to have the players gang up on him. He could force the PCs to fight as a tag team, or he might multiply his Life Bar and maybe even his Fighting Spirit by the number of PCs. To make extra-sure that he's dangerous, there are the boss-exclusive Power Levels 9 and 10, which mainly focus on amping up his defense. You can even go beyond Level 10, but that only gives a small bonus to Life Bar and Fighting Spirit. These goodies are not exclusive to the main antagonist, nor does the main antagonist need to be the most powerful bad guy. These guys are "secret characters", meant for some potential after-campaign action. If you hate railroady 90's RPG philosophy of "We put up some impossible tasks and don't tell you what to do when the heroes naturally fail", you will be pleased to know that Fight! does talk about what to do when the final showdown ends with the boss curbstomping the PCs, which ranges from "Give them another shot" or "Let's see how the next campaign's heroes will fix this mess". The PCs are supposed to win, but it's good to see that this is not a given. Things get interesting when the heroes do win. They can continue to have some "endgame" fun with those "secret characters", but things can naturally get a bit boring now that the PCs can no longer improve (not to mention that having to come up with even bigger bad guys gets silly fast). Here's where the relativity of Power Levels come into place: Since the heroes have already fulfilled their purpose, a new storyline will have them start back at Power Level 1. Not because they suddenly forgot how to do most of their moves, but because they don't see a need to use all of their tricks yet. For consistency, the GM can make up some restrictions when it comes to leveling up this new old character, like having to stick to his Basic Qualities and/or having to buy at least half of his old moveset throughout the new campaign. An alternative to normal campaigning are OVAs, aka one-shot adventures where everyone has a set Power Level. Before the appendix (which includes 20 example Special Moves, a good chunk of them being more or less inspired by Street Fighter), we get ourselves two example characters, namely the two ones on the cover. The guy is Hideki Douglas, a combo devil fighting for great justice who somehow feels guilty for offing his father (whose main hobby was domestic violence). The girl is Shine Holly, a rich British girl with mysterious powers and a very fast fighting style. Well, that's it. Took a bit longer than expected (stupid Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate), though I'm not sure if I'll add an extra entry with a combat example (that doesn't seem to be a thing here, anyways). Rest assured that Fight! is probably the most robust and flexible fighting game RPG around, even if the combat system is a bit abstract and unorthodox. Other books in the line include Round 2 (ye olde booke of options) and Challengers (the bestiary, basically), but that's a story for another time. I've just realized that I have yet to write anything d20-related. So tune in next time when I tackle my second favorite retro-clone that isn't actually a retro-clone!
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Apr 24, 2015 22:25
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Doresh posted:I'm not even sure if you can fit the Hindu pantheon into the D&D alignment corset, seeing how every member can embody vastly different and often conflicting domains (Shiva is a destroyer, healer, ascet and party animal). Oh well, that's what Chaotic Neutral is for I guess. Alignment is but one of many cows that must be murdered before D&D religion can be interesting. Anyone who knows Glorantha at all knows everything can be solved by murdering enough cows in the proper context, after all.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:46
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Doresh posted:While my experience with Glorantha is currently limited to King of Dragon Pass, its mythology already oozes more personality than "This is Generic Main Dwarf God. He's everything you expect from a Generic Dwarf" Glorantha dwarves are cloned personality-less sci-fi communists. They have gunpowder and machinery in a bronze age setting.
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Apr 24, 2015 22:50
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Night10194 posted:Alignment is but one of many cows that must be murdered before D&D religion can be interesting. Anyone who knows Glorantha at all knows everything can be solved by murdering enough cows in the proper context, after all. During war, the side that can sacrifice the most cows wins. fool_of_sound posted:Glorantha dwarves are cloned personality-less sci-fi communists. They have gunpowder and machinery in a bronze age setting. Sold.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:02
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Doresh posted:I think the most baffling aspect of 3.5 and Pathfinder is that I have yet to find an explanation why Rangers can use divine magic. Since it's divine, it has to come from something. But this something is never explained, nor are there any rules to follow if you don't want to lose your magic powers. I guess Mother Nature doesn't care what you do if you're a half-time spellcaster? And if Rangers can cast spells, why can't Monks, who are much more spiritual than "dude who hunts in the woods"? I think that the magic rangers use was originally supposed to be the little bits of woodland lore that seem like magic but really aren't, like Aragorn knowing to chew on Athelas and cram it in a cursed wound, etc. However, D&D players have historically looked at a spell as a line item on a big list of spells and have no regard for how they are cast and what they actually look like in play. So if a cleric casts Cure Light Wounds, then a ranger casting it is doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way, because it is the same spell. The line item spell list thing, along with "spells always work the exact same and are a known quantity" to me are some of the weirdest aspects of expectant D&D play. Like your caster learns the Raise Dead spell, which requires a 25,000 gp diamond or something. How the hell did he practice that spell? Or even test it to be sure it wasn't fake? If he learns that from a scroll aren't there pretty solid chances that the scroll was bullshit and he'll never know til he's standing over a corpse with 25k of shiny rock in one hand? But no, it works. Because Raise Dead is a spell on a list and Raise Dead works and costs a big diamond. Of course, writing that out makes me sound like the groggy DM, mayor of grogtown, because only an rear end in a top hat would do that to a player, but still, the questions of how a player learns a spell that costs some ridiculous thing (imagine having to practice casting Haste back when it took a year off your life every time you cast it) without ever testing it are still interesting to me. theironjef fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 23:07
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fool_of_sound posted:Glorantha dwarves are cloned personality-less sci-fi communists. They have gunpowder and machinery in a bronze age setting. That tells me where a friend of mine got this idea what he calls the "Combat Tour Of Moria". Although, he more or less made the dwarves cloned personality-less sci-fi Nazis with WW2-levels of technology. I ended up trying to develop something in MapTools for this, since he wanted to use Phoenix Command for the game system. It would probably make more sense for a four-man bullet-hell shooter in the vein of Smash TV or something.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:09
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Well, dwarves can develop personalities. It's just an unintended byproduct of their actual purpose, which is to maintain the machinery of the world, without which it is possible but not certain that the entire universe would cease to work. Of course, it's broken, or else free will would be an illusion and everything would, as the dwarves' creator wanted, be a perfect and static order.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:11
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theironjef posted:I think that the magic rangers use was originally supposed to be the little bits of woodland lore that seem like magic but really aren't, like Aragorn knowing to chew on Athelas and cram it in a cursed wound, etc. However, D&D players have historically looked at a spell as a line item on a big list of spells and have no regard for how they are cast and what they actually look like in play. So if a cleric casts Cure Light Wounds, then a ranger casting it is doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way, because it is the same spell. They should've really come up with a third magic source. Hedge Magic or something. Divine magic so doesn't make sense for the Ranger, because divine magic is granted by a higher power. If anything, they should be arcane casters like Bards. Or better yet, let's get rid of arcane and divine magic. Magic is magic. You might get it from praying or studying, but you're utlimately not sure where it actually comes from and know just enough to not fry yourself most of the time. quote:The line item spell list thing, along with "spells always work the exact same and are a known quantity" to me are some of the weirdest aspects of expectant D&D play. Like your caster learns the Raise Dead spell, which requires a 25,000 gp diamond or something. How the hell did he practice that spell? Or even test it to be sure it wasn't fake? If he learns that from a scroll aren't there pretty solid chances that the scroll was bullshit and he'll never know til he's standing over a corpse with 25k of shiny rock in one hand? But no, it works. Because Raise Dead is a spell on a list and Raise Dead works and costs a big diamond. The classic D&D magic system would be pretty strange in modern times. Imagine Raise Dead failing because the diamond price just dropped by a couple percent. Or how about how every wizard in the whole of existence needs the same amount of pages to write down the same spell. Doresh fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Apr 24, 2015 |
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Apr 24, 2015 23:22
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Doresh posted:The classic D&D magic system would be pretty strange in modern times. Imagine Raise Dead failing because the diamond price just dropped by a couple percent. I dimly remember there was some rule in place that gem prices were literally fixed, to prevent the wizard from playing 25,000 gold to the rogue for a chunk of glass, casting his spell, and then getting his gold back. Also they totally fixed that magic source issue back in 4th edition, where a ranger using some sort of weird forest magic was basically just a ranger using a ranger power, and it made sense and looked right when he did so. Heck, rituals meant they even took the whole source issue away from the rest of magic spells, since anyone could pick up Ritual Casting.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:30
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theironjef posted:I dimly remember there was some rule in place that gem prices were literally fixed, to prevent the wizard from playing 25,000 gold to the rogue for a chunk of glass, casting his spell, and then getting his gold back. I know a guy who wouldn't run 4E because it removed all pretense of simulating a world. He's otherwise an excellent DM though.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:32
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wdarkk posted:D&D economics. Yeah, that means he heard that from some rear end in a top hat in a fart-filled game store and never bothered to check.
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Apr 24, 2015 23:35
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The one AD&D ism that always stuck with me was that making a permanent magic item cost the creator a point of Constitution. I believe this was explicitly not temporary. (Resurrection also required one, and your roll for 'coming back from the dead' was also related to your Constitution.) Also, making a magic item was a sixth level spell. How many motherfuckers could've been doing this? Obviously the intention was probably to keep PCs from just cranking out +5 swords and +5 armor of the relevant sort for the entire party, but it just didn't add up with having even the odds of a PC having ONE permanent magic item by the time they got to 9th level or so. I'm sure the solution is feats, though.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:11
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Nessus posted:The one AD&D ism that always stuck with me was that making a permanent magic item cost the creator a point of Constitution. I believe this was explicitly not temporary. (Resurrection also required one, and your roll for 'coming back from the dead' was also related to your Constitution.) Well if magic items last indefinitely, then it sort of makes sense that there's a huge pile of them, even if they are difficult to make. On the other hand, you'd expect to see a huge variety of styles since you could easily see magic armors made hundreds of years ago.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:13
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wdarkk posted:Well if magic items last indefinitely, then it sort of makes sense that there's a huge pile of them, even if they are difficult to make. On the other hand, you'd expect to see a huge variety of styles since you could easily see magic armors made hundreds of years ago. Now I'm tempted to go through all these things and break them down into effects and relative costs in some general storygame term. But this at least has probably already been done.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:18
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Doresh posted:The classic D&D magic system would be pretty strange in modern times. Imagine Raise Dead failing because the diamond price just dropped by a couple percent. I think you mean totally rad. Turns out DeBeers is run by a cabal of magic users!
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Apr 25, 2015 00:20
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ThisIsNoZaku posted:I think you mean totally rad. Turns out DeBeers is run by a cabal of magic users!
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Apr 25, 2015 00:22
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Nessus posted:But who the hell are they raising? Why do you think the Popes are all so drat old?
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Apr 25, 2015 00:24
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Nessus posted:Yeah but how many thirteenth level wizards (or whatever) are there? Given that civilization has been around for a ridiculously long time in most fantasy settings (30,000 years in Forgotten Realms), probably enough.
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Apr 25, 2015 00:24
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Re: making magic items being dangerous. Iron Kingdoms has a thing where making any magic item over a certain level of power is insanely dangerous to the caster. So they figured out a way to string a bunch of magic items together, run a current through them, and make a stronger one. In the game and IKRPG it's a great bit of flavor. In the d20 adaptation from the mid 00's it's basically "Oh you wanted to make magic items? Here read this 100 page supplement on all the reasons why you shouldn't."
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Apr 25, 2015 01:10
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Yea I'm so glad IKRPG proper stayed true with it because that's the most Iron Kingdoms solution to magic being dangerous. "I need a powerful magic weapon to fight my enemy." "Sorry man making that would probably make my eyes melt or some poo poo." "Ok, make me four small magic weapons and strap them together then."
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Apr 25, 2015 01:46
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Honestly I think the framework of D&D doesn't necessarily "kill fantasy", though many of the settings certainly do. For example, Planescape is surreal and weird and fantastical - and that's a setting where you can visit the afterlife and meet a god - but the fact it takes the D&D setting so literally is what makes it fantastical. If you actually implement D&D rules ideas about religion into a setting, you can end up with some weird stuff. Imagine a culture that worships Life Domain God A, who keeps all their nobles alive with resurrection, runs into culture with Death Domain God B, who use a spell that murders anybody who falls below a certain Constitution threshold. Or if your Fire God's highest blessing is to summon 3d4 murderous fire elementals, what do you take that as a sign of? Even within D&D's dorky, antiquated ruleset, you could squeeze out some interesting ideas that just don't generally get taken into account. Instead we get something like Forgotten Realms where there are so many gods that religion is barely meaningful save when the metaplot drags them kicking and screaming into relevance. What god will you worship? Well, how about the one that embodies whatever the gently caress you wanted to do anyway...
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Apr 25, 2015 02:06
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Honestly I think the framework of D&D doesn't necessarily "kill fantasy", though many of the settings certainly do. For example, Planescape is surreal and weird and fantastical - and that's a setting where you can visit the afterlife and meet a god - but the fact it takes the D&D setting so literally is what makes it fantastical. If you actually implement D&D rules ideas about religion into a setting, you can end up with some weird stuff. Imagine a culture that worships Life Domain God A, who keeps all their nobles alive with resurrection, runs into culture with Death Domain God B, who use a spell that murders anybody who falls below a certain Constitution threshold. Or if your Fire God's highest blessing is to summon 3d4 murderous fire elementals, what do you take that as a sign of? Even within D&D's dorky, antiquated ruleset, you could squeeze out some interesting ideas that just don't generally get taken into account. Plus there's the interesting tidbit about FR that not only are the gods real and have come down to visit/gently caress poo poo up many times, but not believing in any god is actually a form of damnation. If you die with no patron deity to collect your soul then it gets tossed into the Wailing Wall to suffer eternally. I believe the only respite at that point is one of the devils or demons might come by recruiting.
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Apr 25, 2015 02:18
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