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Nessus posted:I don't think this is quite the case because I've seen drawings of pugs and bulldogs from the mid-19th century and they were recognizably the breed while being much less distorted. This is probably easier for bulldog than pug of course. Yeah, I know that the older versions of the breeds were different, hence my use of 'modern' pug. But I suspect most of the 'awww, this little dog that clearly can't breathe properly is sooooo cute' crowd wouldn't consider it as the same beastie. I'm glad that there's people trying to breed dogs and the more extreme cats back to something functional again - e.g. traditional persians rather than flat-faced ones.
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Mar 5, 2018 09:41
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Robindaybird posted:5e is probably not the best choice for pugmire, but it beats creating an entire unworkable system from scratch And gives you a MASSIVE leg up in terms of approachability, bad system or not. If practical constraints dictate that you not build your own system (or adapt something that just happens to be a Really Good Fit), then I can't fault someone for mimicking the market leader.
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Mar 5, 2018 17:10
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FATE or Savage Worlds or some sort of PbtA game would almost certainly work a lot better, but 5e is going to sell a lot better. There's still a huge portion of the population for whom "roleplaying" means D&D. I could wish they'd gone with a better game system, but I can't blame them for going with the one that's most likely to sell.
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Mar 5, 2018 20:18
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 Rifts World Book 16, Part Ten: "Witchery or Witchcraft - a pact with a powerful demon lord, evil god or alien intelligence (not Wicca) - creates a supernatural bond between the supernatural being and its mortal servant." Spell Magic Spell Casting Terms & Notes By Kevin Siembieda So, first off we get a dry explanation of how duration / range / level / radius etc. of magic works. Though this is largely welcome and should help with rules arguments, I'm not sure anybody would have gotten over two dozen books into this game line without coming up with their own answers. We also get rules for what happens when a spellcasting is interrupted (not that there are any rules or guidelines for how to disrupt a spell) and how to disrupt a ritual (which seems to be largely intended for PCs trying to stop eeevil ceremonies). We even get clear rules for how to combine magic actions / attacks and regular actions / attacks! It's meandering, but it at least clears things up, but... It also clarifies that mages are just crippled action economy-wise, which if any part bugs me, it's that. In a game where most characters will have at least five attacks per 15 second "melee round", and some will easily have up to eight to ten attacks, it takes 2 attacks to cast a 1st through 6th level spell, and you can only do it twice per round. So a mage with five attacks only really gets to do three different things if they're casting magic. If they cast a 7th through 10th level spell, they get only one spell per round; 11th or higher, and they take two rounds casting one spell. I wonder... why people would rather play Glitter Boys and 'Borgs... hm... there could be a reason... could this be part of it? I can only wonder. Certainly sitting around the table for what is likely an hour of play where a group of five players could be resolving fifty to a hundred actions while you wait to use your one action lets you get important things done, like bathroom breaks, grinding in mobile games, and measuring relative dust levels on the bookshelf between actions. You call it a broken action economy, I call it an opportunity for dust science. But then it gets a lil'  :Rifts World Book 16: Federation of Magic posted:Gender & Sorcery Well, that wasn't terribly necessary.  We also get a reference list for all the books that have included magic systems not detailed here. And there are a lot. One of the neat things about Rifts is that when you choose a new magic class, they often have their own magic subsystem and feel all their own. However, those systems are often dodgy, unplaytested, or ill-thought out. And there are a lot of them at this point. As we're reminded, there's:
 Chinese linking rings is the only True Magic. Siembieda's treatment of magic is remarkably confused. On one hand, he wants us to know magic is indisputably cool and that we really should play wizards. And that's backed up by the massive amount of pages Rifts in general puts over to spells and spellcasters. But on the other hand, there's an intense concern over letting them run roughshod over games like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, so he throws in things like making spellcasting slower than a turtle with three busted legs, limitations on armor (really? really?), and the nebulous ability for spells to be disrupted during casting. While they'll finally get some notably damaging spells in this book, the limited attacks of a wizard cripple them more often than not. The main "strength" of wizards in Rifts is to exploit the less well-designed spells like carpet of adhesion. In general, here's some advice to Palladium wizards: wear a neck brace, and prepare for designer-inflicted whiplash. Next: Spelling bee.
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Mar 6, 2018 00:41
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Alien Rope Burn posted:However, those systems are often dodgy, unplaytested, or ill-thought out. 
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Mar 6, 2018 00:54
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Zereth posted:So exactly like every other system in a Palladium game, then. I believe Robotech 2nd Edition: The Shadow Chronicles was playtested by one of authors, who was under the mistaken assumption that was the sort of thing you do when writing a Palladium game.
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Mar 6, 2018 01:03
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JcDent posted:Rifts 5e Haven: 5e of Violence.
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Mar 6, 2018 01:10
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The mechanics on Pugmire should really have been dog-based, you bring a dog, if you can get a dog to come to you within 10 seconds, that's a success; the margin is how quickly it came, if it rolls over and wants belly scratches, that's a crit. Nipping or growling is a crit fail.
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Mar 6, 2018 01:14
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Kevin, no, the only reason Rifts societies are male-dominated are because you wrote them oh nevermind.
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Mar 6, 2018 04:32
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Ah, good, they remembered to include the "you can play a female X, because we're progressive and fun! ...but obviously only men could REALLY be one, haha, so here's a page of reasons you should feel strange and unaccepted and expect the GM to have NPCs disrespect you if you do so," sidebar, as required by federal law.
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Mar 6, 2018 05:14
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
Why do poo poo games get good illustration megane posted:Ah, good, they remembered to include the "you can play a female X, because we're progressive and fun! ...but obviously only men could REALLY be one, haha, so here's a page of reasons you should feel strange and unaccepted and expect the GM to have NPCs disrespect you if you do so," sidebar, as required by federal law. It's not that severe in this book. It's basically saying that "out of 10 wizards you encounter, 6 are likely to be boys. Also, there are "no girls/boyz/Irish allowed" magic clubs and this is amazing in pointlessness. Like, even if you point out a specific group to one gender only, nothing can stop GMs of doing whatever and certainly no DM that's making their own magic group is gonna bother with the percentage of dbees in it.
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Mar 6, 2018 08:02
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Mar 6, 2018 09:26
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Rifts World Book 16, Part Eleven: "Marked by death, whenever ghouls are encountered they point, lick their lips and giggle; banshees weep bitterly; vampires find him unworthy of eternal unlife; and those who can see auras can actually see the black, negative energy of the curse and know he is a murderer." New Spells By Peter Murphy & Kevin Siembieda additional text and ideas by Patrick Nowak There are over 125 new spells here, so I'm going to restrict myself to a top ten spells of note in Federation of Magic. Not much else to add, it notes that elemental spells in this second can be used by Warlocks, but those aren't tagged or anything, of course. Your local GM is a far more reliable resource of proper answers than Big Palladium. Rely on locally sourced, sustainable house rules.   "I only cast it for the protection, I swear it's not a fetish thing."
  "Catch!" And though a lot of  are put over to high-level spells, once we get past 10th level we get into "too impractical in many situations to bother casting" territory, on account of the time and casting cost. Other honorable mentions in new spells include Summon & Control Sea Serpents, which lets you summon and control a monster only detailed in a different Palladium game, Giant, which lets you turn somebody into a giant (side trick: turn an armored foe into a giant, shattering their armor, since there's no save, then immediately cancel the spell, leaving their rear end in the wind), or various healing spells (while generally overcosted, healing is now a thing wizards can do). There are some legit cool gimmicky things wizards can do, but it's indicative of the wishy-washiness with wizards - some spells are really, massively effective, while others have enough catches that you feel like you're reading a EULA every time you cast a spell. And with their action economy being crippled, they have no choice but to zero in on the most effective, most game-busting spells if they want to have fun.In Conclusion So, that's Federation of Magic. It leans a lot on "Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle makes you think hm?!" by making the True Federation so mustache-twirling that it actually makes the Coalition look marginally better. Dweomer gets a lot of interesting crunch but seems to go out of its way to provide actual character hooks other than "Keep our poo poo secret!" Stuff like the magi and automatons are neat concepts, but their implementation has issues, particularly to them being tied to one of the most boring faction that has little reason to interact with the wider world. Much of the technomagic material has to be bought from unapologetic slavers. It's really not a book built with thought towards "how do players interact with this?" I mean, sure, you can be a magi, no problem, it just requires you to largely detach from the faction you're associated with. Some of the monsters like the Darkhounds are kinda neat, but need a little more fleshing out. It's got some interesting ideas, at least, but follows the usual Rifts issue of avoiding nuance in making something multifaceted. Either the Federation is dyed-in-the-wool-with-blood or ineffectually well-meaning, and there's no particular reason for them to ever engage politically with each other barring a situation of complete annihilation. As such, there are none of the human relationships that make things interesting - Alistair Dunscon is a cackling madman and the Lords of Magic disdain human connections - and so there's not much interplay in the region and not much for PCs to do. I mean, I guess you could fight Alistair, but he's just a regional meddler and doesn't come across as a major threat no matter how much the book plays him up. You could work for Dweomer, but all you'd really have to do is maintain the secret of its existence. I guess PCs could work with the Mystic Triad, but they're so close to PCs already it feels like it would be more interesting to just nab their concept and use it yourself. Well, the art is generally rather nice. Also the Federation of Magic isn't a federation at all because there's no unifying federal government, that's why you call it a federa-tion, take note if you've read this far, Palladium authors. END
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Mar 6, 2018 17:08
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In fairness, 'there isn't much for PCs to actually do' sounds like Rifts in a nutshell.
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Mar 6, 2018 18:20
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Well, usually there's some impending crisis, like the Coalition is about to invade Tolkeen, or the Gargoyles are getting ready to invade Germany, or the Four Horsemen are going to merge into the Apocalypse Beast- usually Rifts is characterized by being on the brink of some disaster for the PCs to get sucked into. The Federation of Magic is... Alistair's probably going to attack the Coalition... years from now? Decades from now? You know, whenever, he's not a strict time schedule. There's also no real idea of the forces he has arrayed either, so he's just kind of generically threatening. I suppose the big impending disaster is that the Coalition will find out about Dweomer and assault it, but that's a ways off, and they already have two potential wars to fight (against Tolkeen and Free Quebec), so stacking another on top of that doesn't feel particularly immediate. We'll get a disaster for the Magic Zone in the near future, but... well... be careful for what you ask for and all that.
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Mar 6, 2018 18:46
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Dark Heresy: Part 4 Surprisingly Competent Priests The Cleric is a weird class. They're not bad at anything; literally. They get no poor stat advances at all, and they're good at Ballistic Skill, Fellowship, and Willpower. They also get a lot of talents that will help them with fear, they're pretty good investigators, they learn a lot about various occult and religious lore, and they can build a good reputation with a wide variety of social classes and populations. They're meant to be a jack of all trades class, but being sociable, brave, and not at all bad in a fight is actually a pretty great mix for the kind of game Dark Heresy is trying to be. As an added bonus, if you're using the RAW monthly incomes for your PCs in top of whatever else they earn, Clerics get more money than anyone else. They aren't supposed to be great at melee, but they get a ton of little boosters to it in having lots of access to Hatred talents (Hatred gives you +10% WS against a specific enemy type, and trust me, Hatred (Mutants) or Hatred (Cultists) are good bets for any DH game) and getting the Blademaster (Reroll one miss per round in melee, limited to swords and knives if your GM is going RAW but I don't think anyone does that anymore) talent by level 4. Their real prize is Unshakeable Faith coming early and cheaply: Unshakeable lets you reroll any failed Fear test. Unshakeable is loving awesome in DH (where almost every really serious enemy causes Fear, and worse, causes it at -20 or so WP). The Cleric splits between the wise and even more personable (and better at gunslinging, weirdly) Bishop and the melee focused Zealot, who actually gets a full 3rd melee attack and most of the melee specialist talents, as well as the ability to let other PCs use their Hatreds, too. Zealots also eventually become Fearless, invalidating the likely thousand+ EXP you probably spent on trying to mitigate Fear before you got that talent. Still, a class that splits between being a wise, expert social character who is great at shooting people with twin pistols or a surprisingly tough paladin type is always going to be nice to have around. Poor Guardsmen. They're actually really good at their specific thing: They're the only class with a Good Strength advance, and they're good at both BS and WS, too. They get a ton of buyable Wounds (Second only to the Arbitrator), they're pretty tough, and they're loaded with heavy weapons talents. They also get the ability to carry around and hand-fire heavy weapons more easily and sooner than most, Crushing Blow (the melee equivalent of Mighty Shot) pretty easily (It requires a good Strength, and they can do that), and they can hit like a truck. However: They have a Bad Willpower, Fellowship, and Intelligence advance, limited skills that mean they usually won't be that useful outside of combat, terrible subclasses at level 6, and that poor WP means the Guardsman is going to curl up into a ball on the floor at the first sign of suppressive fire or demons. You know, the exact moment you'd really like the guy with the rocket launcher to keep their head. They, for some reason, split into 3 different subclasses. The Commander branch is worse than useless, since the social skills it gives are surprisingly costly (often 200-300 EXP for one, rather than a cheap 100) and it's sort of throwing good after bad after a full career of being useless at social matters, kind of like the Social Assassin. The Stormtrooper path is a solid close combat commando type that will, at max level, as your campaign is ending, finally get Fearless and stop panicking like an X-COM rookie. The Sniper gets some stealth and Mighty Shot, but putting it in Sniper means no other Guardsman can learn it, which really hurts HMG using characters. The Guardsman is an example of why the Fear system can really screw you. DH is also much more of a spy/mystery game at heart, so a pure fighter is going to struggle a lot more than they would over in WHFRP, especially as the whole 'buying non-combat skills might cost more because we want diminishing returns on the things your class isn't as good at' thing hurts them. Oh, the Psyker. Psykers' class advances really don't get into the Psyker class, because their core is the Psy system, which we won't get to for a long time. Suffice to say Psykers are significantly more powerful, overall, than WHFRP Mages. They're good at Int, Per, and WP and bad at WS, Fel, and Agility. They can partly replace an Adept in any party, being good at learning stuff and general nerd stuff, and they've got their specific psychic skills to help them find the presence of demons, witches, and other problems that the party wants found. They also actually get Unshakeable even faster than the Cleric, and they're going to be buffing WP, trust me (It's the primary stat for all Psyker stuff). The copy I have (It's an early copy) also has the first levels of their split printed out of order (FFG is notoriously not great at editing) and they split much, much sooner than other classes. They split between warrior psyker (gets a bunch of weapon talents, never quite reaches the same level of Psy power or academics) and scholar psyker (ultimate wizard nerd) at level 4. Level 4 is also when they first start to get 'real' powers, equivalent to a WHFRP mage learning their Lore. Even the Minor Powers that come before are potentially extremely broken if chosen carefully, though, and the only limiter on wizbiz is that the Psyker can cause Perils of the Warp and potentially kill the entire party, which is much more likely than it was in WHFRP. You remember how a WHFRP wizard had to roll doubles, triples, or quads and those caused varying levels of trouble? Psykers, when they throw down Psy dice, cause a Perils roll (on the same tables, no adjusting for severity) for every 9 they roll on their dice. They can roll up to 6 dice. An individual Perils roll has a 25% chance to become much worse. The 25% chance to become much worse table has a 10% chance to cause the Psyker to turn into an endgame level boss monster and attack the party. Thus, each die you're rolling has a .25% chance that you probably kill your party. And that's not counting the explosions, Kill Your PC, social consequences, etc. This is not a good way of balancing magic. The Scum doesn't really know what it wants to be. It's a sociable rogue and party face, but the Cleric already does that. It's an infiltrator and dirty fighter, but the Assassin already does that. The Arbitrator's Intelligence agent class can do a lot of their stuff better. On top of this, it takes several levels for a Scum character to learn how to actually do all the skills necessary to break and enter, talk their way through things, smuggle, etc. They're good at Agility, BS, and Fel, bad at Str and Tough. Hope you rolled well on those stats because you aren't advancing them. Scum get a weird grab-bag of survival skills, low tech skills, blathering and thievery, and gunslinging as they level, but they're not really especially good at anything. Which is a shame, because a class literally named "Scum" should be more fun. They're hardly useless (Social+Stealth is useful for a game with a heavy spy bent) but they never turned out to be as useful as you'd hope when I had them in my personal games. They split between the slightly more fighty but not fighty enough to stand up against any serious fighter class Gang Lord and the all-in-on-social-trickery Fixer. In general they're just kind of there. Finally, the Tech Priest. The Tech Priest cannot advance their Fellowship stat. Ever. This was dropped in later books in the line. They're bad at Agi and Str, great at Toughness, Int, and WP, and they get all kinds of crazy cybernetic add-ons and techno-miracles to use. They're kind of the equivalent of WHFRP Priests, compared to the Psyker being the Mage, and get a ton of unique stuff like the ability to curse guns and make them jam, or whack a gun just right to unjam it instantly, or powers that let them talk to robots or shoot lightning out of their hands while flying. Techpriests are actually reasonably balanced in DH, and that is the last time this will ever be true. It will stop being true pretty much as soon as they get into the supplement books. Their tricks are cool, but most aren't gamebreaking, and they make great medics and tech specialists while being able to handle themselves in a fight. They split between the more combat and adventure focused Magos Errant and the hyper-knowledgable Magos, and they're really just a lot of fun to play and have around. Jump start stalled cars with your spine! Throw lightning at people! Yell on subsonic frequencies that terrify your enemies! Try a Techpriest today. In general the Career system is a bit rickety and has a bunch of weird gaps in it, but it works. It gates power and gives players a good sense of progression as they go, there's room for multiple builds in each class, and most characters will (eventually) end up quite competent. They start a lot lower than their WHFRP equivalents, and I imagine many DH campaigns start at rank 3 or 4 to avoid the early game wobbles, but it's playable. It will get a lot crazier with the add-on books, and in future game-lines. A LOT crazier. Next Time: Skills. All the flaws of the WHFRP skill system, intensified!
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Mar 6, 2018 19:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
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Mar 6, 2018 21:53
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...Battleship Potemkin?
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Mar 6, 2018 21:54
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Alien Rope Burn posted:
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Mar 6, 2018 22:52
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Alien Rope Burn posted:[*]Negate Mechanics (7th Level Spell): Sometimes it's really hard to resist making bad puns. I was thinking of a joke about house ruling things, in other words.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:22
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Night10194 posted:In fairness, 'there isn't much for PCs to actually do' sounds like Rifts in a nutshell. Honestly, that's not one of the problems the game has. Mostly because there is probably a world ending thread - or threats - in whatever part of Rifts Earth you find yourself in.
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Mar 6, 2018 23:38
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RIFTS: The Game for People who Can’t Do Basic Math But Want to Fool Others into Thinking they Can.
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Mar 7, 2018 00:00
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That spell list sure is something. A lot of them sound cool but are incredibly underwhelming and then you have wacky nonsense which is either broken one way or broken in another way.
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Mar 7, 2018 03:59
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MJ12 posted:wacky nonsense which is either broken one way or broken in another way. Also a succinct description for Rifts.
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Mar 7, 2018 04:00
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I just finished watching Frankenstein Chronicles season 1 on Netflix. If you want Promethean inspiration, there it is.
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Mar 7, 2018 05:51
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Kavak posted:...Battleship Potemkin? 
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Mar 7, 2018 09:37
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Pathfinder (1st Edition) Alpha Playtest Release 1 With the announcement of Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and especially with Paizo putting an emphasis on its playtest, I've seen it asked around whether or not the first Pathfinder playtest resulted in a significant number of changes to the final game. I dug around and found a PDF of "Alpha Playtest Release 1", dated to sometime in 2008 (the Pathfinder Core Rulebook was released in Aug 2009). A did quick-and-dirty comparison of the Fighter class in this playtest document against the Core Rulebook this morning ... gradenko_2000 posted:I feel like this deserves a longer write-up, but I do have a copy of the original Pathfinder Alpha playtest, and as a quick example: ... and decided that I wanted to do a longer write-up for the rest of it. Design Goals This is Jason Bulmahn writing as the "Lead Designer", and he tells us the story that he had writing on a small side project of making some rules changes to D&D 3.5 - "the system itself was mostly sound", but also "everyone could agree that 3.5 needed some work". Once D&D 4th Edition was announced in October 2007, this side project became a much larger priority for Paizo since they were "looking for alternatives" to publishing for 4e. He says that a guiding principle of Pathfinder is "to make sure that it stayed true to the original vision of the game", so right off the bat we're into this narrative of 4e not being "real D&D". Other statements he makes are: * "The 3.5 rules set is excellent, but it has its flaws" - this is the other half of the groggy talking points against 4e, where people got bitter over 3.5 getting virtually pooh-poohed by WOTC's marketing of 4e fixing a lot of poo poo that was broken in 3.5. He's flattering 3.5 by saying that it's already mostly good, but just needs some tweaks on the margins. * He calls out polymorph and grapple as two particular pain points * Another stated goal was to add more abilities to classes, since apparently nobody ever took Rogues and Fighters beyond 2nd or 4th level in 3.5 * A final goal is Compatibility, or making sure that there would only be minimal conversion work needed for players to continue to play "the extensive body of work that exists for the 3.5 rules set" Sidebar: Favored Class In 3.5, multi-classing meant taking an XP penalty if your classes were too far apart, except for a Favored Class that didn't count. Here, it's "you gain an extra Hit Point whenever you take a class level in a race's favored class", with the implication that you'd miss-out on this extra HP if you multi-classed to something else, or if you prestige-classed. In Core, it was changed to +1 HP or +1 skill rank, and players simply picked what Favored Class they wanted, rather than having specific favored classes tied to specific races. Sidebar: Starting Hit Points Here we are presented with a number of different options to make level 1 characters more durable, and we are encouraged to try out all of them, since they are not yet final: * Max HP: a Fighter with 12 Con would have 12 HP - 10 base, 1 from Con, 1 from Favored Class * Double of max HP: a Fighter with 12 Con would have 22 HP - 20 base, 1 from Con, 1 from Favored Class * Max HP, with a racial bonus: a Fighter with 12 Con would have 12 HP ... plus 4 if they were a "frail" race (elf, gnome, halfling), or plus 6 if they were a "standard" race (half-elf, human), or plus 8 if they were a "hearty" race (dwarf, half-orc). Fast-forward to 2017's Starfinder, and Paizo assigns 2 HP to Halflings, 4 HP to Elves, Gnomes, Half-Elves, and Humans, and 6 HP to Dwarves and Half-Orcs * Max HP, with a flat bonus: a Fighter with 12 Con would have 12 HP ... plus a flat amount - the book recommends an extra 6 HP * Max HP, with a Con score bonus: a Fighter with 12 Con would have 24 HP We know that Core eventually adopted the Max HP option, the most conservative change. The Rogue * Sneak Attack is the same from the playtest to Core, though the playtest does have a sidebar explaining that Sneak Attack now works on just about everything, relative to 3.5's limitations * In the playtest, a Rogue's Trapfinding allows them to be the only class that can locate traps with a Perception DC higher than 20. They're also the only class that can use Disable Device skill to disarm magical traps. Also, if the Rogue beats the trap's Disable Device check by 10 or more, they can bypass the trap without disarming it. In comparison, Core's Trapfinding allows the Rogue to add half their level to Perception and Disable Device checks involving traps. * In the playtest, the Ledge Walker talent allows the Rogue to move across narrow surfaces using the Acrobatics skill without penalty. Core also adds that the Rogue is no longer flat-footed while doing this. * In the playtest, the Minor Magic Rogue talent allows the Rogue to cast a 0-level spell twice a day. Core increased this to thrice a day. * Core has the Trap Spotter Rogue talent, which lets the get an immediate Perception skill check whenever they come to within 10 feet of a trap. The playtest did not have this.
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Mar 8, 2018 15:00
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So, thread, question. Something just arrived in my inbox this morning. Something rather important.  Are there any objections to me Giving pugmire one or two more abbreviated updates before we get into..well..  This?
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Mar 8, 2018 15:25
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Hell, I think one of the only times that 4E marketing really directly insulted 3.x was talking poo poo about grapple, which Paizo did too. It's just they phrased it just differently enough to satisfy hurt feelings.
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Mar 8, 2018 15:25
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I permit this only so long as no-one tries to fix the stupid thing anymore and we just form a circle and kick it in the ribs.
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Mar 8, 2018 15:27
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unseenlibrarian posted:Hell, I think one of the only times that 4E marketing really directly insulted 3.x was talking poo poo about grapple, which Paizo did too. It's just they phrased it just differently enough to satisfy hurt feelings. Wasn't there a video WotC released where a dragon literally dumped poo poo on trolls (as in the monster) complaining about the new edition changes?
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Mar 8, 2018 15:43
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I got to 'CHILDREN' on that Beast Play With Yourself screenshot and started scrolling. Jesus Christ, what edginess.
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Mar 8, 2018 15:56
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wdarkk posted:Wasn't there a video WotC released where a dragon literally dumped poo poo on trolls (as in the monster) complaining about the new edition changes? Yeah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azcn84IIDVg&t=73s
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Mar 8, 2018 16:20
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wdarkk posted:Wasn't there a video WotC released where a dragon literally dumped poo poo on trolls (as in the monster) complaining about the new edition changes? Not as part of the marketing buildup, no. That came out after release and well, wasn't talking about poo poo about 3.x. Like the complaints there are just blah blah blah moneygrab blah blah blah dumbed down. There's an established mythology about them being really mean about 3.5 but it doesn't really hold up. (Especially since most of the folks who worked on 4th also worked on 3rd and 3.5) unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Mar 8, 2018 |
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Mar 8, 2018 16:25
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Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape posted:Warning! Violence and the Supernatural. Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape posted:Violence and the Supernatural The fictional world of Rifts is full of magic, demons, something something... um... and the supernatural? Evil creatures also known as demons kill and murder and do other rad stuff. Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape posted:The fictional world of Rifts® is violent, deadly, and filled with supernatural monsters and strange powers. Other dimensional beings, often referred to as "demons", torment, stalk and prey on humans. Other alien life forms, monsters, gods and demigod, as well as magic, psychic powers, insanity, and war are all elements in the game. Some parents may find the something inappropriate for younger players something about parental discretion. Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape posted:Some parents may find the violence, magic and supernatural elements of the game inappropriate for young readers/players. We suggest parental discretion. Palladium Books does not promote or condone the use of drugs, the occult, or something it's only fictional? Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape posted:Please note that none of us at Palladium Books® condone or encourage the occult, the practice of magic, the use of drugs, or violence. I guess I don't have it memorized yet.  Rifts World Book 12: Psyscape, Part 1: "The resulting manuscript was one I didn't think 'said' Psyscape, so I canned it and decided to write Psyscape myself after all."  "And she donned the final rainment of the psychic warrior, the battle towel." So, braced for boring. Psychic powers are quite often the water cracker of superhuman powers. Often short on SFX, they're unseen, tasteless, generic effects, often bereft of mythology, thematics, or even any particular origin. For example, the psychic powers of Rifts often supposedly come from mutation, even though any other mutation seems to be so rare as to be not worth mentioning. There's no table to roll on for six fingers or heterochromia, after all. Many creatures have psychic powers tacked on, often with little regard to how they work. You'd think telekinesis would have a major impact on a creature's activities and evolution, but in Rifts it's just a side order of otherworldliness. Now, to be fair, there are some psychic classes with more robust flavor. The Cyber-Knights are psychics-as-Jedi, and the Dog Boys and Psi-Stalkers introduce other angles. And who can deny the appeal of the Null Psyborg? But at the same time, there's not even that much of an origin story like magic has in the setting. They just are, because the magic came back, only they're not magic, except when it's convenient for them to act like magic... well. It was in Appendix I of AD&D, so Palladium had to have it in the Palladium Fantasy RPG, and so it got passed down to the place we're at now, without much thought to their existence or impact other than "well, it's a mystery". Speaking of routine schtick, though, this book is late. Even later than you'd think. If you're wondering why I did World Books 13-16 before getting to 12, since I do them in chronological order, that's how late this was. Kevin originally got another author (presumably Chris Kornmann, who previously worked on New West) to work on it, but he wasn't happy with the script he got, so... he turned back in to Kornmann with some feedback on what he needed to change, and he and Kornmann worked out a draft that Siembieda was happy with and could publish.  I kid. Siembieda apparently mined Kornmann's draft, rewrote much of it, and relegated Kornmann to a "contributing author". This is essentially the same song and dance as he did with New West (only cutting out Kornmann's credit almost entirely this time), and it's impossible not to just call it out. Other authors have attested that Siembieda does not think authors listen to feedback or can edit their own work, and seeing this pattern repeat over and over is honestly pretty wearying. It's some Lucy-with-the-football poo poo. Mind, originally this book was supposed to be written by CJ Carella, but he left the company. Still, a number of ads from the period cite the version Carella was working on, including a number of new psychic classes not included in the final version. Enough of the narrative around these books, time for the actual metaplot...  The contents of this image do not appear in this book. Psyscape Legends From the writings of Erin Tarn So, we get a description from Ms. Tarn of a mythical locale that "can only be found by those who want it so badly they can taste it". Mmm, taste the Psyscape. Supposedly it's a psychic utopia defended by extremely bored psychic warriors, as hardly anybody can find it anyway. Seriously, it even says "their muscle is not needed". So I stand by my assumption of boredom. Tarn gives us a lot of that shows she believes that it did exist once in the past due to psi-stalker tribal legends about it, and that Psyscape once defended the region from demonic invasions. There are rumors that:
 "If you didn't want to be psi-stalked, you wouldn't ley line walk that way!" Then some figure appears in her sleep and is like "SUP I'M FROM PSYSCAPE WE'LL BE BACK, PEACE OUT". And Erin Tarn is like "Well, must've been just a dream!" because Tarn is unusually thick at times. Seriously, lady, some folks have a vision in Lazlo and you're like "Gosh what if it's true?!", but when you have one, you're like "Man, no more eating beans 'n beetles before I sleep!" Next: Dehumanize and face to bloodshed.
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Mar 8, 2018 16:45
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Gradenko you’re an absolute madman. Thanks.A complete moron posted:The 3.5 rules set is excellent, Start from a flawed premise, reach a flawed conclusion.
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Mar 8, 2018 16:49
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Dark Heresy: Part 5 Skills. There's nothing interesting about Skills. Honestly, it's a bit of a debate just how much I even need to say here. Just look at the WHFRP2e review's section on skills. The main difference is that instead of needing to take a career that would also get a skill, and then having the option to buy that skill a second time in that career to get a +10 with that skill, you just get 'Dodge+10, 200 EXP' or whatever somewhere in your career advance table. As your stats are generally going to be lower in Dark Heresy, skill mastery modifiers, talents that give situational bonuses, equipment, etc all come into play quite a bit more. After all, take a Thief from WHFRP: The Thief, in their first career, gets +15% Agility and may be a Halfling or Elf for another +10%, or might've rolled Lightning Reflexes as a human for +5%. A totally average, couple-sessions-in Thief might have an Agility of 45-55 or more to play with depending on their species. In DH 1e, with only the core book, only the first stat advance on only some stats will be 'cheap' and the rest will be a longer term investment, often taking the EXP from multiple sessions to buy. So you're looking at working with lower stats on average. This also means you're going to be really dependent on the people writing your career table being on the ball with pacing out skill masteries, and you're also going to be spending a lot of EXP buying them. Now, I played Dark Heresy first, and I can comfortably say that Acolytes do eventually become very competent under the DH system. But one place the line evolved a lot over time was stripping down the number of skills, adding in ways to learn whole groups of skills at once, etc because spending 300 EXP to have Scholastic Lore (Legend)+20 and then having the GM call for a Scholastic Lore (Occult) roll is a huge kick in the balls. Broadly, skills like Awareness, Charm, Inquiry (Oh gee, you think the 'go out and ask around' skill might be useful in the game about being the Inquisition?) Dodge, the two Stealth skills (Goddamnit when and how did RPGs first start separating 'Hide' and 'Sneak' and how did it take so long to stop), Tech Use etc are going to be the most useful. Skills like Carousing? Much less likely to be clutch. Same as in any game with a huge skill list. There are simply too many skills, and with the new incentives and need to specialize in skills to make up for your lower base stats, you feel it way more than you did in WHFRP. For contrast, in WHFRP, a high tier PC can get to 70-80% in some of their stats. More, if you're playing with Chaos mutations/gifts, Vampirism, magic items, or whatever. Here, with your base stats generally capping at 68 if absolutely everything goes right, and that being much less likely, you really need the extra +20 or +30 from having skill specializations if you're going to be consistent. There's also more incorporation of the old Degrees of Success rule; for every 10 points you roll under your Target Number, you get +1 DoS. Or +1 Degree of Failure for every 10 you roll over. This comes up a lot in combat; for instance, automatic fire is handled by having Degrees of Success indicate extra hits, which you dodge by getting more Degrees of Success on your Dodge skill check. DoS was mostly only used for contested rolls in Fantasy, here it becomes a much more core part of the skill and resolution system. I should probably mention at some point that the resolution system is basically the same as in WHFRP2e: d100 under target number set by your Stat+/- modifiers. Also, because skills cost different amounts and are acquired at different times by different classes, you get to see some of the insanely weird logic of what the designers thought ought to be rare and cool skills. Like how it takes everyone forever to learn Wrangling and be able to ride animals. Or how it costs a poo poo-ton for a Guardsman to learn how to gamble, which they'll always be bad at due to their Int advance anyway. Or how Guardsmen and Scum need to pay like 300 EXP (on average, you get 200 EXP a session) to learn to read (later games will just assume everyone is literate). After skills, you get Talents. Talents work exactly like they did in WHFRP with one asinine new addition: Talents have pre-requisites now. So, for instance, in WHFRP you could take Mighty Shot if your career allowed it. In Dark Heresy, you need your career to allow it, and you need a 40+ base Ballistic Skill. Extra melee attacks have been moved off into Talents (Swift Attack will let you attack twice in melee, Lightning Attack three times), extra Ranged attacks are solely the province of the automatic/semiautomatic fire system that will come up when we get to gear. Talents were important in WHFRP, they're even more important here. They do things like completely remove the penalties for firing at long range (Marksman) allowing you to easily use pistols and rifles at extreme ranges without a single penalty, add damage, let you reroll failed checks (Blademaster gives a single melee reroll every round and is exactly as great as it sounds), or let you resist a Psy attack so hard you explode the enemy wizard's head (literally, Mental Fortress is metal as hell; any time someone magics you they take a WP save, and if they fail they take d10+Your WP Bonus, reduced only by their WP bonus, to the head, with lethal damage blowing their head up like in Scanners). Talents also let you get extra Dodges and Parries per round, which is suddenly really important when you add heavy machine guns, plasma edged swords, and anti-tank rockets to combat because there is no way in hell a PC is tanking a Man Portable Lascannon hit. There are also a bunch of Talents that require you to be a Techpriest. These include regenerative nanomachines in your blood (Heal faster), lightning hands (Not as powerful as it sounds, but extremely cool; a d10+WPB ranged attack you can use any time isn't a bad thing to have), recharging and jump-starting machines with your spine, magnetic levitation, various subsonic screeches, gun blessing, gun cursing, etc. Techpriests, I will reiterate, are fun. Psykers also buy their powers and Psy Ratings as Talents rather than stats, now. When you buy a new Psy Rating, it adds to the dice you can roll for Psy, just like Mag did in WHFRP. However, buying a new Psy Rating *also* gives you a bunch of spell picks based on your Willpower stat at the time you buy the new rating talent, without retroactively going back and improving it should your Willpower improve later. You don't just buy a 'lore', now, and you can learn multiple disciplines of psy, but every time you buy a Psy Rating 3 or higher talent, you can choose between learning a new discipline or getting a ton of powers in a discipline you already know. More on that when we get to wizbiz. The Talent system, aside from having a bigger effect, having actual Talent Trees of sorts created by the pre-req system, and forcing you to invest in stats to meet pre-reqs, is still mostly like the WHFRP one, just a little clunkier, much like skills. Careers, Talents, and Skills mostly work, as do homeworlds. The game is fine up to this point; a little more awkward and I often find it feels like it was developed before, rather than after, WHFRP2e but that might partly be that I played DH for years before picking up Fantasy. Chapter 5: Armory is where things start going off the rails and never come back. Next Time: Invest in the Dodge skill. Now.
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Mar 8, 2018 16:56
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Kurieg posted:Are there any objections to me Giving pugmire one or two more abbreviated updates before we get into..well.. I think it's more than Beast deserves to not finish out your prior review in earnest, unless you're really not feeling it anyway.
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Mar 8, 2018 18:37
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That Old Tree posted:I think it's more than Beast deserves to not finish out your prior review in earnest, unless you're really not feeling it anyway. It's not that I'm not feeling it. There are probably only two or three more updates out of pugmire, as the combat, task resolution, and spell lists are taken from 5e with some minor canine theming (magic paw, bark instead of shout). So there's character creation, the worldbuilding chapter, and the monsters/sample adventure. My question probably could have been better worded as "should I finish pugmire first or come back to it later?"
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Mar 8, 2018 18:51
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There's going to be more to talk about in the Dark Heresy review as soon as I get to equipment, combat, fear/corruption, and the setting, but man. The first couple updates really do drive home how much the basic skeleton of it is 'the game we already made, but fiddlier, and finished by another developer'.
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Mar 8, 2018 18:53
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