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My memory, without checking...basically: there is a prophecy among the Blindwater Congregation, a civilization of Cajun swamp gator people, that one day a great warrior will rise and unite them with his might. However, the gatormen tend to die a lot - in fact, no one knows how old they can get because none of them have ever died of old age. Bloody Barnabas is the oldest (and so largest) Gatorman out there - they never stop growing. And he's decided the prophecy is about him. So he's teamed up with an undead swamp gator, some frog people and other gatormen to try and unite the swamps by force, after which he will probably lead them conquering because gatormen are violent as poo poo. They are also very deeply in tune with nature and the cycle of life and death in the swamp, using voodoo necromancy and so on to command the souls of the dead and also giant death gators. Both sides in this war hire out to basically anyone nearby to get more resources to kill the other side with.
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Jun 29, 2015 01:37
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Just Dan Again posted:I had a fun time reading everybody's explanation of caster supremacy, something that I'm thoroughly familiar with in 3rd, 3.5, and Pathfinder (not sarcasm, I really did enjoy the step-by-step, thorough analysis and elucidation of the concept!). My focus was on the constant cries of "Caster Supremacy Returns! All Hope Lost!" in regards to 5th edition. From what I've seen and read, the spells seem well-balanced to their level of play. For example, the Sleep spell in 5e will often make a big difference in a low-level encounter but won't simply wipe it. There are certainly still times where a cleverly-used or unexpected spell can turn an adventure on its head. That being said, I've been in plenty of non-D&D games where a player's bizarre decision changed the course of a game despite their complete lack of narrative-defying powers. This isn't an effort to say that my anecdotal experience renders any dissenting opinion moot, I just think that the response to casters having access to spells in 5th edition in a manners similar to 3rd and previous editions has been overblown. 5e still has the fundamental problem with caster supremacy: spellcasters get narrative control and noncasters get none. At level one, a fighter can roll to attack things and roll skill checks. At level one, a wizard can roll to attack things, roll skill checks, and three times per day say "these five goblins are asleep now" or "this person likes me" or "I do 4d4 damage to this orc automatically". At level five, a fighter can roll to attack things more often and roll skill checks. At level five, a wizard can roll to attack things, roll skill checks and can say things like "I'm doing 6d6 damage to everyone in this room" or "I can fly" or "it is impossible for anyone to see me for the next five minutes" multiple times per day. At level 20, a wizard can roll to attack things, roll skill checks and bend the laws of the universe with their arcane might. At level 20 a fighter can roll to attack things and roll skill checks, but that's okay because the fighter can roll to attack things a lot of times in one turn. It's just a fundamentally unbalanced framework, and it's one that 4e mostly left behind and 5e brought back because of tradition. quote:When I was a little kid learning about dungeons and dragons, I wanted to play a dragon. Dragonborn are pretty cool, but they're not dragons. Using 4e, if I wanted to design a class that was "Dragon" rather than "dragon-inspired warrior" or "dragon dude with a breath weapon and wings" I would have to create all of the powers from the ground up, providing options at every odd-numbered level for encounter and daily powers (not to mention Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies). I did that in 5th edition and it felt much easier. You'd be justified in saying that I could have just played a dragonborn fighter and reskinned everything, but this has felt more right to me. I will say that making a full 4e class is a lot of work, but the standardized framework does make it a lot easier to, say, make a custom daily or two if a Dragonborn Fighter is close to how you want your dragon to play but you want more breath attacks. Also makes it easier to predict how those homebrewed powers are going to act in actual play, for that matter.
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Jun 29, 2015 01:48
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Mors Rattus posted:Warmahordes has a truly amazing setting and I've considered writing about it before, but I'd be focusing on the wargame setting material rather than the RPG. IKRPG, Kings, Nations, and Gods, and Unleashed are all amazing books, and I really wish someone would run an IKRPG game again. The d20 books are.. less.. good.
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Jun 29, 2015 01:49
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As ironic as it is for me to say this, the thing that turns me off the most about the IKRPG is that its combat really is very much like a wargame in the sense that it's highly, highly reminiscent of the WMH tabletop game down to the fact that it uses things like movement measured in inches and facing rules. I appreciate a degree of tactical crunch in an RPG combat system but I feel like D&D 4E struck the right balance between tactics and abstraction (gridded movement measured in squares, no facing but a "flanking" system, etc). I felt the same way about Iron Kingdoms as I did about Heavy Gear, which was another RPG with a deep and expansive setting full of neat detail and worldbuilding married to a combat system that was "hey, do you like the Heavy Gear minis game? Well you're in luck!"
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Jun 29, 2015 01:57
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Halloween Jack posted:I remember that in the lead-up to 5e, one of the things they went on about was how your race shouldn't make a big difference at character creation, but you could get more elfy/dwarfy/etc traits as you leveled. Did that happen at all? In the PHB 2, they added Racial Paragon Paths, and then they became a standard inclusion whenever they would introduce a new race. Just imagine any paragon path, they generally tended to focus on one of the archetypes you chose with your class, so like if you were an archer ranger, you might take an "extreme archer" paragon path. The Racials were like that for your race. So the dragonborn one was basically "You get excessively draconic and noble and eventually can fly" and the minotaur one was "You really focus on those horns and doing goring charge damage." They even had a human one, which was really good at dungeon stuff. It read a lot like taking levels in "D&D character" because it was sort of meta. Extra action points and stuff like that. It was actually a really good paragon path. Between that and racial feats available at paragon and epic tiers, I'd say they did actually have the ability to become a "gnome expert in being a gnome" even if it wasn't the perfectly optimal choice. Kai Tave posted:As ironic as it is for me to say this, the thing that turns me off the most about the IKRPG is that its combat really is very much like a wargame in the sense that it's highly, highly reminiscent of the WMH tabletop game down to the fact that it uses things like movement measured in inches and facing rules. I appreciate a degree of tactical crunch in an RPG combat system but I feel like D&D 4E struck the right balance between tactics and abstraction (gridded movement measured in squares, no facing but a "flanking" system, etc). I felt the same way about Iron Kingdoms as I did about Heavy Gear, which was another RPG with a deep and expansive setting full of neat detail and worldbuilding married to a combat system that was "hey, do you like the Heavy Gear minis game? Well you're in luck!" I love the game a ton, but the big issue with it is you basically need a wargame table to play it, and you need to be pretty comfortable with doing your combats standing up. theironjef fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 01:58
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theironjef posted:I love the game a ton, but the big issue with it is you basically need a wargame table to play it, and you need to be pretty comfortable with doing your combats standing up. Or alternately, if you're playing it online you either need to be very ready to employ copious amounts of Theater of the Mind or use something like Vassal.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:06
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Kai Tave posted:Or alternately, if you're playing it online you either need to be very ready to employ copious amounts of Theater of the Mind or use something like Vassal. I'm doing a play by post using roll20 that's doing very well. Though I am ignoring initiative and just doing player/enemy turns.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:08
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Kai Tave posted:I appreciate a degree of tactical crunch in an RPG combat system but I feel like D&D 4E struck the right balance between tactics and abstraction (gridded movement measured in squares, no facing but a "flanking" system, etc). I felt the same way about Iron Kingdoms as I did about Heavy Gear, which was another RPG with a deep and expansive setting full of neat detail and worldbuilding married to a combat system that was "hey, do you like the Heavy Gear minis game? Well you're in luck!" Actually, SilCore is confusing to me in general because it's a fairly detailed "simulationist" system with a novel die mechanic. But I took a look at the basic system math, and it became clear that the most efficient thing to do is to raise your Attributes (which give flat bonuses) and just have so-so levels in your Skills (which are roll-and-keep). When I pointed this out, I was told that while this is true, it's munchkiny to try to game the system this way. That's just a ridiculous thing to say about a system that calculates precise movement rates, facing, falling damage based on exactly how many meters you fell, etc. That you should just choose to be ignorant about a basic feature of the system.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:10
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Listening to the character creation podcast for Raven Star, I have to add that the whole "roll dice and add a number for attribute points" is also a Cyberpunk 2020 thing. I don't know if other games did it beforehand (not counting Cyberpunk 2013, of course), but that Raven Star seems really influenced by it.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:22
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Just Dan Again posted:I had a fun time reading everybody's explanation of caster supremacy, something that I'm thoroughly familiar with in 3rd, 3.5, and Pathfinder (not sarcasm, I really did enjoy the step-by-step, thorough analysis and elucidation of the concept!). My focus was on the constant cries of "Caster Supremacy Returns! All Hope Lost!" in regards to 5th edition. From what I've seen and read, the spells seem well-balanced to their level of play. For example, the Sleep spell in 5e will often make a big difference in a low-level encounter
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Jun 29, 2015 03:23
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Zereth posted:The issue here is that the Fighter doesn't have anything like that. They have stuff that's pretty comparable until the higher levels, provided the GM is actually running multiple encounters per long rest. It's not fantastic design, but if you're working within the stated encounter framework, it's reasonable.
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Jun 29, 2015 03:55
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I'm not sure what was the first game to do Stat+Skill+(dice) vs. Difficulty, but it's fairly common. Unisystem does it too, and Fuzion, of course. SilCore has a system where your Skill is a die pool and your Stat is a bonus to the total. So if you have Agility +2 and a Melee skill of 3, you roll 3 dice, keep the highest, and add 2. (Skills also had Complexity, which I don't even want to get into.) It's unusual, and honestly I wonder if they chose that method just because the early 00s was a time when it seemed every non-D20 game needed to have a novel resolution system. If I remember right, there was one SilCore game (Jovian Chronicles) where it was suggested that you flip things around, rolling Stats and adding Skills, because breeding human perfection is a theme of the setting. But that's getting the system math wrong; in the default system, you're better off pumping your Stats and just buying Skills up to level 2. (Except for those weird Complexity rules.)
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Jun 29, 2015 03:58
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure what was the first game to do Stat+Skill+(dice) vs. Difficulty, but it's fairly common. Unisystem does it too, and Fuzion, of course. I want to say SilCore went with Skill being the deciding factor than Stats because the other games of the time, Skill could be largely irrelevant compared to having high Stats, for example, the game system they used originally for Jovian Chronicles, R. Talsorian's Interlock (used in Mekton and Cyberpunk). In Interlock, a Joe Average grunt with average Reflexes and Handgun +5 or Mekton Piloting +5 could be totally owned by someone with just an "Olympic gymnast-equivalent" Reflex stat of 10 and unskilled in either one, which resulted in a lot of characters, both PCs and NPCs, suddenly having these high stats to be competitive. I want to say that Jovian Chronicles' doing the opposite was less a theme and more likely them still working out what SilCore actually was. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 04:15
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Mors Rattus posted:My memory, without checking...basically: there is a prophecy among the Blindwater Congregation, a civilization of Cajun swamp gator people, that one day a great warrior will rise and unite them with his might. However, the gatormen tend to die a lot - in fact, no one knows how old they can get because none of them have ever died of old age. You're leaving out the very important fact that one of their heavy warbeasts is a giant gatorman luchador. One of their better tactics involves these luchadors picking up hurling eachother across the battlefield.
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Jun 29, 2015 04:18
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm not sure what was the first game to do Stat+Skill+(dice) vs. Difficulty, but it's fairly common. Unisystem does it too, and Fuzion, of course. Well, what I meant is that Cyberpunk had you roll 9d10s, total them up, and that gives you your character points to divide between your attributes. It's a odd mix of random and point-based generation where you're random-rolling your point total. I can only presume it's mostly just an artifact of older games. It also had the option of just random-rolling your attributes down the line, and rerolling anything at 2 or less. It was a common house rule just to provide X attribute points instead, of course, which was pointedly less pants-on-head.
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Jun 29, 2015 04:40
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, what I meant is that Cyberpunk had you roll 9d10s, total them up, and that gives you your character points to divide between your attributes. It's a odd mix of random and point-based generation where you're random-rolling your point total. I can only presume it's mostly just an artifact of older games. It also had the option of just random-rolling your attributes down the line, and rerolling anything at 2 or less. No, although I'm thinking that may have been a change between 2013 edition and 2020 edition. I'm looking at CP2020 right now and they include point-buy as an option listed under "Cinematic", allowing for leveled games from 50 attribute points (Average) to 80 points (Major Hero).
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Jun 29, 2015 04:48
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fool_of_sound posted:They have stuff that's pretty comparable until the higher levels, provided the GM is actually running multiple encounters per long rest. It's not fantastic design, but if you're working within the stated encounter framework, it's reasonable. Unless 5th level counts as higher levels, since that's when the Wizard gets Leomund's Tiny Hut and starts the "Every rest is a long one" game.
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Jun 29, 2015 04:52
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theironjef posted:Unless 5th level counts as higher levels, since that's when the Wizard gets Leomund's Tiny Hut and starts the "Every rest is a long one" game. Reading over that spell's effects, someone could easily gently caress over that by dousing the Hut's sphere with gasoline and setting it on fire. But that's a pretty dick move. I know I've had a friend's climatic encounter in a campaign was ruined when someone dropped Heroes' Feast right before it, which made them immune to fear effects. So, instead of being a challenging fight which involved a facedown with a Lich, it turned into a routine battle. Young Freud fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 05:04
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Young Freud posted:No, although I'm thinking that may have been a change between 2013 edition and 2020 edition. I'm looking at CP2020 right now and they include point-buy as an option listed under "Cinematic", allowing for leveled games from 50 attribute points (Average) to 80 points (Major Hero). It also notes "This option is for Referees only". It's not 100% clear if they mean only Referees use that kind of point build for NPCs, or if only they can dictate that kind of point build, but I'd lean towards the former given the wording. Of course, what's bizarre about the quick NPC system just a few pages later - designed to make mooks and other nameless baddies - actually results in more powerful characters than most PCs. Because math is hard. 
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Jun 29, 2015 05:10
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Halloween Jack posted:I remember that in the lead-up to 5e, one of the things they went on about was how your race shouldn't make a big difference at character creation, but you could get more elfy/dwarfy/etc traits as you leveled. Did that happen at all? That's actually more what happened with 4e's design, not 5e's.
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Jun 29, 2015 05:11
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Lurks With Wolves posted:5e still has the fundamental problem with caster supremacy: spellcasters get narrative control and noncasters get none. At level one, a fighter can roll to attack things and roll skill checks. At level one, a wizard can roll to attack things, roll skill checks, and three times per day say "these five goblins are asleep now" or "this person likes me" or "I do 4d4 damage to this orc automatically". That may be my big point of confusion- when I hear "narrative control" I hear "control over the story." These examples don't really sound like something that a spellcaster could do that a non-caster absolutely could not do. A charismatic rogue can roll to influence someone with a skill check, and in 5e the spells simply give a wizard an advantage on that check- the rogue will have a more steady bonus to every single attempt they make at influencing, intimidating, and deceiving every NPC they happen to meet, while the mage will expend resources to even make the attempt. At the end of the day they can both make friends, they can both turn enemies into allies or scare off weak-willed opponents. It's entirely possible that I'm grasping at straws to justify my own good experience with the game after the fact, but I think that the way that individual spells work in 5e is well-balanced and that the game provides a good framework. The damage spells aren't as effortlessly catastrophic as 3rd edition, and a lot of the metamagic and feat-based insanity that you could get up to back then with a finely-crafted array of abilities is gone. The game even encourages you to have character traits and personality flaws right on the front of your sheet to remind you that you're roleplaying a person rather than a set of spells. theironjef posted:Unless 5th level counts as higher levels, since that's when the Wizard gets Leomund's Tiny Hut and starts the "Every rest is a long one" game. Unless you're running something like The World's Biggest Dungeon or a Castle Greyhawk kind of thing, I'd think that if you stopped for a full eight hours between encounters you'd probably fail at whatever objective you're trying to achieve Sage: A horde of orcs has attacked our city and stolen off with the count's only heir! Please save him before they torture him to death! Adventurers: We'll do it, but only if we can get a good night's sleep between every group of orcs we run into on the way there. Also, a bulette or any other burrowing monster could totally get in there, so it'd be a pretty dangerous thing to rely on if you're underground in a 5th-level dungeon.
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Jun 29, 2015 05:15
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Young Freud posted:Reading over that spell's effects, someone could easily gently caress over that by dousing the Hut's sphere with gasoline and setting it on fire. But that's a pretty dick move. The game doesn't have rules for how rapidly fire consumes oxygen, so that just does nothing. It's just theoretical peasant railgun math. Just Dan Again posted:Unless you're running something like The World's Biggest Dungeon or a Castle Greyhawk kind of thing, I'd think that if you stopped for a full eight hours between encounters you'd probably fail at whatever objective you're trying to achieve "Count's sole heir, eh? We'll be back with a guy or a suitably resurrectable chunk. The Magic Fixes Everything Company is on the job!" Also it's a sphere, not a hemisphere. The problem is magic can't be overruled by the DM, and it's the only part of the game that works the other way. Though honestly you're right, this is just doomsay and theorycraft. I've never played at a table that works the way the book would seem to indicate. theironjef fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 05:21
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theironjef posted:The game doesn't have rules for how rapidly fire consumes oxygen, so that just does nothing. It's just theoretical peasant railgun math. It's not that the fire consumes oxygen, it's that it raises the outside temperature. The Tiny Hut spell has an exterior temperature range that only withstands normal environmental stresses (-60 degrees to 120 degrees above Fahrenheit). When it surpasses those ranges, the inside temp of 70 degrees is effected on a 1-1 degree basis. A gasoline fire can raise the temperature outside the Hut from 495 to 1500 degrees, so anyone inside suddenly cooks at over 400 degrees minimum.
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Jun 29, 2015 05:42
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Young Freud posted:Reading over that spell's effects, someone could easily gently caress over that by dousing the Hut's sphere with gasoline and setting it on fire. But that's a pretty dick move. 1: Gasoline isn't usually present in your average D&D campaign. 2: Good luck getting right next to the hut while there's a watch going on. 3: Your not-gasoline flammable substance probably has to be hauled in heavy barrels by noncombatants. 4: Worst case the non-wizard party members sally out of the hut and kill the attackers then go back to their rest before an hour of total interruption. 5: Such extreme tactics on the part of the DM are pretty much proof that the wizard is a potential campaign breaker. Does the DM have to expend special effort to disrupt the rogue's plans for a safe night's sleep?
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Jun 29, 2015 05:50
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TheBlandName posted:5: Such extreme tactics on the part of the DM are pretty much proof that the wizard is a potential campaign breaker. Does the DM have to expend special effort to disrupt the rogue's plans for a safe night's sleep? That's pretty much the whole point. I could have said that it was buckets or barrels of tar or oil or something rolled down a dungeon hall, or they've got archers to allow for covering fire, or the enemy has their own spellcaster who casts fireball, but the point remains, it's an extreme tactic that has to be done in order to provide tension when casters are in the party.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:03
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Just Dan Again posted:That may be my big point of confusion- when I hear "narrative control" I hear "control over the story." These examples don't really sound like something that a spellcaster could do that a non-caster absolutely could not do. A charismatic rogue can roll to influence someone with a skill check, and in 5e the spells simply give a wizard an advantage on that check- the rogue will have a more steady bonus to every single attempt they make at influencing, intimidating, and deceiving every NPC they happen to meet, while the mage will expend resources to even make the attempt. At the end of the day they can both make friends, they can both turn enemies into allies or scare off weak-willed opponents. The problem with 5e is that a vast majority of the book, supplementary material, and drat near every single online article have been devoted to casters. Whereas most of the stuff involving Martials and Skills are entiretly up to the DM to manage off the cuff. Also, the way skills and proficiencies are distributed means that you might not have the capability to succeed on a check even if you want to, but anyone who has access to a spell will always be rolling their proficiency + their highest stat or be forcing the monster to make a save in something they aren't proficient in(not to mention they alone have the ability to hit NADs). The primary way of hemming in casters (I.E. herding them in and forcing them to eat opportunity attacks) is gone in 5e because save attacks don't provoke attacks or get disadvantage. Also many spellcasters have ways of doing things better than the noncasters can. The druid can turn into a bear and be better than the fighter, or into a spider and sneak better than the rogue. The bard and Skill cleric are just better than the rogue could ever actually hope to be at any skill. The shorter version is that the experience of the Martials, for good or for ill, is entirely up to the proficiency and temperament of the DM. Whereas Casters can just say "No, this happens" and it happens.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:06
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Or, you know, have some semblance of life in your campaign world where bad things can happen if you decide to rest 8 hours after every battle. Monsters wander around the dungeon, goblins put up new defenses in response to patrols being killed, competing adventurers show up, ect. Putting time constraints on the party isn't just a DnD thing either; most games benefit from forcing players to take risks to save time. It also means that spellcasters only get a limited number of 'gently caress this problem' buttons per game. It's not great as a balancing factor, but 5e isn't going to utterly fall apart like 3.5 does post 7th level, and it has a very different focus and tone than 4e or 13th Age. I like the latter better, but 5e isn't the absolute trash goons pretend it is. fool of sound fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 06:08
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Yea I really can't think of an RPG that works well if your party can take a nice leisurely nap every couple encounters when in 'adventure mode'
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Jun 29, 2015 06:12
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fool_of_sound posted:Or, you know, have some semblance of life in your campaign world where bad things can happen if you decide to rest 8 hours after every battle. Monsters wander around the dungeon, goblins put up new defenses in response to patrols being killed, competing adventurers show up, ect. Unfortunately the more the DM has to intervene to rein in the power of the caster, the more it's going to cause friction with the Caster's player unless they are explicitly in with being limited in that fashion. Just like the dude who goes out of their way to get a character who can fly, only to find that every puzzle and encounter conveniently has something in place to prevent (possibly via murder) them from flying, you are in no uncertain terms preventing the caster from exercising their utmost power. It's not in an any way unreasonable fashion and even they will probably have more fun because of it, but that's not what people think about in the moment and that's assuming their well-adjusted individuals in the first place.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:15
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I have both the old D20 IK setting books (in boxes somewhere) and the Full Metal Fantasy core book, I might poke at that after I finish Nightbane up. It's pretty fun, though I remember the d20 version having some... interesting decisions. Are those books still worth a bunch?
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Jun 29, 2015 06:25
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The thing is, pressure is already built into the game outside of casters: if you have a party of an Archer Fighter, a Tank Fighter, a Two-Hand Weapon Fighter and a Sneak Attacking Rogue, they can't take an 8-hour rest after every fight because they cannot create a secure campsite for themselves all the time, and if the DM asks for a "stand watch" roll against a random wilderness encounter you might just fail that roll and get ambushed by wolves or whatnot. But if the Wizard can cast an Alarm spell and/or can create a tent, then the DM has to take additional effort to "re-create" the pressure that already existed in the first place, "uhhh well yeah you can pitch a tent wherever and you'll always be alerted if someone's about to attack you, but if you try to do that the Princess is going to die because Jaffar only gave her 7 hours to live" There's this constant tug-of-war between the players trying to squeeze in every Rest that they can because they can and because who doesn't want to start every fight with full health and resources if you can get away with it, versus the DM that doesn't want every fight to be life-threatening, but has no choice if they cannot enforce back-to-back encounters. The alternative is to come to an agreement with your players that the system is built for 4-6 encounters every day and we'd all be better off if we respected that regardless of what's happening in the in-game fiction (assuming tactical combat is a focus of your session), but the problem derives from the fact that casters can subvert that arrangement in the first place.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:34
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fool_of_sound posted:Putting time constraints on the party isn't just a DnD thing either; most games benefit from forcing players to take risks to save time. Most RPGs don't gate party resources behind a thing like "got 8 hours of sleep" either, that's largely a D&D dynamic. At any rate, this is probably better served being hashed out in the actual Next thread.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:41
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LornMarkus posted:Unfortunately the more the DM has to intervene to rein in the power of the caster, the more it's going to cause friction with the Caster's player unless they are explicitly in with being limited in that fashion. Just like the dude who goes out of their way to get a character who can fly, only to find that every puzzle and encounter conveniently has something in place to prevent (possibly via murder) them from flying, you are in no uncertain terms preventing the caster from exercising their utmost power. TBH if you have a player who is in effect demanding full heals any time they want with no opportunity cost or repercussions, you probably need to have a talk with that player about the expectations of the game. A decent 4e GM wouldn't allow characters to regain Daily Powers after every fight, why should 5e be any different? You are absolutely correct that casters have too many ways to approach problems; utility imbalance is a major sticking point for the game, and there isn't really a good way to avoid the problem other than polite spell caster players. Kai Tave posted:Most RPGs don't gate party resources behind a thing like "got 8 hours of sleep" either, that's largely a D&D dynamic. That thread is a steaming pile of poo poo, so no thanks. And specifically 8 hours of sleep? Sure, that's a DnD-ism, but almost most games and stories have some matter of time pressure that doesn't allow for unlimited prep/recovery time within a session/story. Healing times, shopping times, crafting times, ect. e: Hell, rations in DungeonWorld play the same role. fool of sound fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 06:42
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theironjef posted:Also it's a sphere, not a hemisphere. My book says "dome," sir, and this is the hill I will die on.  Kai Tave posted:At any rate, this is probably better served being hashed out in the actual Next thread. An excellent point. Time to head back through the wiki, read a Rifts supplement review, and remind myself what F&F is all about! 
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Jun 29, 2015 06:50
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Nessus posted:I have both the old D20 IK setting books (in boxes somewhere) and the Full Metal Fantasy core book, I might poke at that after I finish Nightbane up. It's pretty fun, though I remember the d20 version having some... interesting decisions. Are those books still worth a bunch? Most of Ikd20's weirdness can be backtraced to trying to bolt the iron kingdom's mythology onto the d20 spellcasting system. I can imagine them getting to the magic item creation section, remembering the that orgoth existed and what that means for magic items, then throwing up their hands and going off to get shitfaced.
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Jun 29, 2015 06:51
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Kurieg posted:Most of Ikd20's weirdness can be backtraced to trying to bolt the iron kingdom's mythology onto the d20 spellcasting system. I can imagine them getting to the magic item creation section, remembering the that orgoth existed and what that means for magic items, then throwing up their hands and going off to get shitfaced. I remember a lot of odd workarounds in that system to make it line up with what they'd written in the Warmachine sourcebooks. TONS of prestige classes to reflect pretty integral parts of the overall storyline (with all of the pitfalls of 3rd edition prestige classes), as well as some extremely weird healing rules to explain why people don't get healed all the time in the tabletop game. Nessus, I hope you'll be able to take a crack at them in the thread before selling them off (a quick look on ebay makes it look like they're kind of rare, though the copies that I can find are only priced prohibitively if they're coming from France). There's doubtless a goldmine of F&F material in any one of those books!
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Jun 29, 2015 07:05
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fool_of_sound posted:TBH if you have a player who is in effect demanding full heals any time they want with no opportunity cost or repercussions, you probably need to have a talk with that player about the expectations of the game. A decent 4e GM wouldn't allow characters to regain Daily Powers after every fight, why should 5e be any different? You are absolutely correct that casters have too many ways to approach problems; utility imbalance is a major sticking point for the game, and there isn't really a good way to avoid the problem other than polite spell caster players. A decent 4E GM also won't keep pushing a party past the point where they've expended most of their Dailies and everybody but the Fighter's got maybe a surge in the tank or less, "time pressure" or not, because that would be pretty lovely. So no matter what there's always going to be a metagame element at play between making the players feel a sense of urgency and not being stingy with resource recovery. 4E's a lot less lopsided about this stuff though, even "glass cannon" type characters have enough healing surges to go a few fights or more in a row, everybody has access to things like second wind, everybody's got Dailies, etc. Unless people are blowing through all of their Dailies in the first fight of the session and playing so poorly that they're going through healing surges like candy, it's highly unlikely that you'll wind up in a situation where part of the party is suddenly "tapped out" while everybody else is raring to go. In a game like Next, it's likely that even the non-casters aren't going to want to keep pushing on, time pressure or no, once the spellcasters are out of spells because they don't have nearly as many tools to keep the party operating and pushing forward without a significant risk increase. "When to allow the party to rest and recover" feels a lot more organic and natural in 4E because everybody more or less reaches that point at the same time while something like Next puts a lot more emphasis on this metagame of "playing to the long rest" which I don't think is a great balancing mechanic nor does it do much to detract from the importance of spellcasters over non-casters. edit; It's this more than the specific "8 hour day" part of the equation. A lot of games do have resources which require downtime to re-acquire and can't be done on demand, but the dynamic in most games is generally a lot more equitable across the board and doesn't have the janky division of "people with extremely powerful resources that only recover on a long rest period" and "people with mundane resources that don't have to worry about that (except for hitpoints) but don't have anything nearly that powerful to keep the train moving on their own." Also a fair number of games don't place as much emphasis on the "adventuring party" dynamic either. If you're in a Vampire game (picking something at random) then you running out of blood to spend on cool vampire stuff may be problematic to you personally, but you're generally more free to address it personally rather than everyone in the group having to come to consensus (and negotiate with the GM) on how to handle it before going forward. Kai Tave fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 07:07
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Kai Tave posted:"When to allow the party to rest and recover" feels a lot more organic and natural in 4E because everybody more or less reaches that point at the same time while something like Next puts a lot more emphasis on this metagame of "playing to the long rest" which I don't think is a great balancing mechanic nor does it do much to detract from the importance of spellcasters over non-casters. I absolutely agree here; my point was that 'casters have unlimited spells because 15 minute adventuring days' isn't and has never been true unless the GM is being painfully permissive.
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Jun 29, 2015 07:10
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fool_of_sound posted:Or, you know, have some semblance of life in your campaign world where bad things can happen if you decide to rest 8 hours after every battle. Monsters wander around the dungeon, goblins put up new defenses in response to patrols being killed, competing adventurers show up, ect. The spell is in the game specifically and exclusively for the purpose of letting casters take long rests in dangerous areas. There's no other reason you'd need a force bubble that lasts as long as you sleep and houses your party. That means that the spell forces something I talk about a lot, the game of DM/Player Chicken. "Are you going to be an rear end in a top hat, DM? Or do I get to use the spell I spent resources on for its intended purpose?" There shouldn't be stuff in the game that puts players and DMs in that sort of adversarial position. There's just no need for it.
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Jun 29, 2015 07:14
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fool_of_sound posted:I absolutely agree here; my point was that 'casters have unlimited spells because 15 minute adventuring days' isn't and has never been true unless the GM is being painfully permissive. Well it sucks coming and going because of course the GM shouldn't be expected to give the players unlimited free power recoveries on demand, no game really benefits from that, but what's the GM supposed to do when the spellcasters run out and are like "yeah okay, we'd like to get back the reason we're playing casters in the first place now?" Say "tough poo poo, learn to ration better you nerds?" Most even semi-decent GMs are going to want their players to have fun, and a spellcaster with no spells in a D&D where that sort of emphasis is heightened generally isn't going to be having a ton of fun if the current situation is demanding enough to have drained his spells in the first place. Plus it raises the risk for everybody in the party when a disproportionate amount of power is placed in the hands of the characters with the limited resources to then press on while those folks are running on empty, which can also make the game less fun wien Bobdar the Fighter gets ganked in an encounter that would have been much more manageable with a spell or two. It's a lovely burden to have to put on the shoulders of someone whose number one concern ought to be "making sure everybody has a good time" to try and balance things so nobody feels like they're getting left out or "taught a lesson" (because, I mean, you can run out of spells for more reasons than being wasteful and showboating) while preserving some sense of tension and urgency, and frankly it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of GMs running games like Next were "permissive" in that regard for the dual reasons of A). not wanting to seem like they're being jerks to the guys playing spellcasters and B). it's probably easier to design encounters around the party having spells and poo poo than it is to design encounters around a Fighter, a Rogue, and two drained spellcasters that don't turn into unfun TPKs.
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Jun 29, 2015 07:21
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