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sexpig by night posted:I've dealt with a lot of terrible Romanian stereotypes but if you're goddamn telling me the bad guy in Left Behind was named 'Nicolae Carpathia' from Romania that's probably the worst. That is 100% what I am saying, yes. He's clearly totally normal. edit: This is the worst page snipe.
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Oct 22, 2018 14:48
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At least he is not Vigo, Scourge of the Carpathians, Sorrow of the Moldavians.
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Oct 22, 2018 14:56
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Mors Rattus posted:So far as I know, it's still going. Not that I can tell. He's still doing "Left Behind Classic Fridays", but I can't find anything reviewing newer books after July 2016. Which is fine IMO, because we got all we really needed about how the series is awful anti-Christian trash from the first two or three.
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Oct 22, 2018 15:06
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potatocubed posted:I contend that any RPG where the endgame isn't fighting God is inherently flawed.
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Oct 22, 2018 15:07
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There are only about eight pages of text in this 'cutscene'. The rest of the thirteen total pages is made up of incredibly generic black and white art. The total page count for this game is 180. The Fifth Seal The Last Martyr from a sermon by Father Joseph Pieper, Diocese of New York City quote:"It would seem to me that the time of our Lord's return is upon us. Eternal torment certainly awaits the murderer of our beloved Sister Elizabeth." Sister Elizabeth Kaleta had been working at an inner city shelter when one of the residents took a shine to her and tried to hook up. She refused of course and this suitor got more and more insistent until finally her gathered some friends and they kidnapped tortured, and raped her over a period of seven days; until they killed her on her 24th birthday by dousing her with gasoline and immolating her because all she would say to them was the Lord's Prayer. The Season of Rest May, June, and July were unusual for no new terrors erupted, but all the other ones were still around. The Blood Toxin had by now killed off all sea life in the Pacific and was moving into the Indian Ocean. The Hand of God was killing anyone in rural America seemingly at random, and everybody still alive was trying to get into the cities which seemed immune to its attacks. Anybody who had an SUC and was still alive from the other sorts of death out there was now infected with Gold. Their ncapacitation made them prime targets for robbery and abuse. During this Season of Rest the Horsemen's agents got bored and decided to branch out. Famine's Locusts developing a taste for human flesh for example. By the beginning of August all mass communication was gone, the governments had failed, and civilization was destroyed. And most importantly to the game, it was when the Meek realized how hosed they were. People started to notice that they didn't catch the plagues. The Hand of God didn't harm them, they were ignored by Death's Crows and the Dogs of War. They realized that this was the world that they were going to live in forever. As for the rest of the population? quote:At the end of the Season of Rest, there were fewer than 10 million people on Earth.
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Oct 22, 2018 16:21
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All I can think of when reading these reviews is the Samuel L. Jackson speech from Pulp Fiction
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Oct 22, 2018 17:27
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I like how this entire backstory could have been about 3 sentences total to get to this point becuase Im assuming all the specifics and time separation between disasters has absolutely gently caress all to do with the game as she is played
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Oct 22, 2018 18:22
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"Blood toxin in the water, Hand of God in the air, Dogs of War, Death's Crows, Jesuits. Got all that? Good, because the Blue Helmets are executing people for suspicion of Christianity and we've got to loving MOVE."
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Oct 22, 2018 19:19
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Tibalt posted:"Blood toxin in the water, Hand of God in the air, Dogs of War, Death's Crows, Jesuits. Got all that? Good, because the Blue Helmets are executing people for suspicion of Christianity and we've got to loving MOVE." My thought is that a good Christapocapunk game should be the latter half of that American Dad Christmas episode where the Rapture happened: crazy synth/darkwave in the background, demons stalking the Earth, dead angels on crucifixes, grizzled badasses on motorbikes shooting both entities.
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Oct 22, 2018 19:26
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Snorb posted:I love the Modiphius 2d20 System; Star Trek Adventures uses a variant with six Attributes instead of seven and six 2d20 is Modiphius' house system, and they do a great job of adjusting it to each game line they use it in. Infinity, Star Trek Adventures, Conan, and Mutant Chronicles all use it, but they manage to tweak it for each setting so it feels appropriate. I love STA's use of departments rather than skills, and how the rules encourage non-violent solutions by giving the GM the Heat equivalent every time someone uses a lethal attack. (In space combat, the GM gets 'Heat' whenever torpedoes are fired.)
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Oct 22, 2018 19:58
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If you're at this level of specificity with regards to Revelations, I would say that the obvious course of action if you aren't totally brain-blasted by losing little Skyler and Madison or similar is to hole the gently caress up and wait for Jesus to get here. Halloween Jack posted:I remember before he got banned hpapylfe was talking about a system for dynamic modern action where the PCs could build up "Flak," which I think had some positive effects (unlocking Limit Break type powers) but a critical mass of flak was extremely dangerous to you.
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Oct 22, 2018 20:01
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Nessus posted:If you're at this level of specificity with regards to Revelations, I would say that the obvious course of action if you aren't totally brain-blasted by losing little Skyler and Madison or similar is to hole the gently caress up and wait for Jesus to get here. Depending on your interpretation, that may be 1,000 years from now. Whether you become immortal, and if not what happens to you when you die, is also up for grabs
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Oct 22, 2018 20:21
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 Adventure 2: Raw Recruits - Extraneous Exposition & Pixelbitching  Let's kick off the second adventure with a Dark*Matter posted:You have each had contact with the private organization known as the Hoffman Institute. Though the average person knows HI as merely a non-profit think tank (as stated in its PR brochures), you know it as an organization involved in investigating paranormal activities. And then: Dark*Matter posted:Having assembled in the briefing room at the Chicago branch office, Patterson notes each of your presence, clears his throat, and begins.  Come for the middle-aged middle manager's lengthy harangue, stay because of arbitrarily imposed time constraints! Not the most engaging start by any measure. Oh well, each of the packets Patterson left on the conference table are stamped CASE FILE 01-43A28-0007453: CONFIDENTIAL. In all, there are more than 75 pages contained within, including hand written accounts, witness reports from anonymous sources and even a mimeograph copy from the earliest days of the Chicago branch. The book instructs us to give each of the players the first of 9 handouts, and for each hour of game time each hero spends reading, they can review an additional document. The trick here is that the heroes are all going to be reading the same documents in the same order unless they specify that they're dividing up the workload to cover as much material as possible - for example, if four heroes spend two game hours reading, they'll all get handouts 1, 2, and 3 by default. They can specify a different order (player one reads handout 2 and 3, players two reads handout 4 and 5) but in that case the expectation is that the players' characters won't all have read all of the documents, so different characters will have different gaps in their knowledge. Except, there's at least a 90 minute drive from the Chicago office out to the site of the investigation, which is considerably enough time for a group of investigators to share what they've read. I'm completely mystified why it's important that the adventure goes to all this effort to turn the adventure handouts into an exercise in pixel bitching. We also get a detailed list of the equipment that HI is going to allow the players to use - a modern commercial van with a nondescript black exterior (seats 6), two micro-casette recorders with 6 micro-cassettes, a video recorder with sensor boom 6 blank video tapes, HI approved cellphones (Androids with a custom HI OS hacked on), a 13" color TV/VHS player combo mounted inside the van, a portable gas generator, a first aid kit and a basic roadside emergency toolkit. Heroes can attempt to requisition any additional equipment that they want, but the requisition process eats up 1/2/3 hours of time (depending on how successful the hero rolls) which directly eats into the three hour window they've been given for research. Alright, so these handouts must be pretty sweet right, based on all the special rules we've been given about them? Well, judge for yourself!   That's a lot to digest, and the next scene involves the investigators' first visit to the Desmond residence, so I'll break this off here.  BONUS NO-PRIZEOne of the handouts is from a different case and shouldn't have been included in the packet that the players receive. Which one was it? NEXT TIME: Act I - The Haunted House
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Oct 22, 2018 23:49
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Nessus posted:If the Doom Pool maxes out, does Doctor Doom come for your rear end?
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Oct 23, 2018 00:28
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AD&D: 2nd Edition Chapter 3: Player Character Classes  Essentially, rolling up our abilities and selecting our race has been the prep-work for picking our class. Figuring out what our guy's good at doing, and then further narrowing the field by picking a race which may or may not qualify for parts of the selectable options. We're probably all familiar with the options ahead and broadly familiar with how they work based on how their later-editions incarnations function, but how they precisely function and interact isn't quite the same, nor is the starting selection. For combat, we've got the Fighter, Ranger and Paladin. For priestly stuff we've got the Cleric and Druid(as well as an "Other," we'll get into that later). For wizardy stuff, we have the basic Mage and the Illusionist(and once more an Other). Rogues are represented by the Thief and the Bard. Notably, we're missing 3rd edition regulars Barbarian(instead of being a fully-fledged class, it's now a "kit" introduced in later supplements. In general, "kits" were stuffed into supplements where they wanted to offer minor variations to a class without completely rewriting it word for word with the addition "and he can do 1d4 damage with a fish wielded in his off-hand, but only on tuesdays under a waxing moon."), Monk(this game has unarmed combat for everyone but, uh, oh boy. It's a fuckin' ride that I have no idea how anyone thought was a good idea. No one spoil it for the people who haven't dealt with it before.) and Sorcerer(that might make Mages somewhat less hugely vulnerable and fragile).  Clearly, 2e AD&D has the best "iconic" Fighter art Fighter Ability requirements: 9+Str A laughing stock from 3e and a good while into the future, the 2e Fighter is a force to be seriously reckoned with, even compared to Paladins and Rangers. Fighters level up faster than Mages but slower than Clerics and Thieves(yes, this game has different XP progression tables for each class), have the potential to have 2.5 times the HP of a mage, without even counting that all warriors can get a higher HP bonus from Con than anyone else, if they roll well(and considering that HP progression stops at 9th level, becoming instead a generic +2 HP per level, the Mage will never progress to the Fighter's durability, even in the high-level ranges), upgrade their ability to hit stuff every level(all non-Warrior classes have to wait longer between Thac0 improvements), gain super-strength if they reach 18 Str(if a Fighter, Ranger or Paladin has 18 Str, they roll a percentile die for superstrength that can more than double their strength bonuses in a best-case scenario), is the only class that can Specialize in a weapon(giving them further early-game combat advantages in both damage and ability to hit, and a greater increase in rate of gaining attacks in the late game. Not even Rangers and Paladins get to specialize.) and, as the classic Fighter advantage, if he owns a decent property at 9th level(or thereafter) he attracts an elite troop of fighting dudes whose leader will even come with his own magic items and is about as strong as a PC in his own right. Fighters can also use all weapons and armor, and unlike 3e, Dexterity bonuses to Armor Class aren't capped by wearing heavy armor. So a dexterous Fighter in heavy armor can be nearly impossible for physical attackers to land a blow on. Fighters are not to be hosed with, and once we get to the Mage and poke a bit at how 2e spellcasting works, we'll learn why. Paladin Ability Requirements: 12+Str, 9+Constitution, 13+Wisdom, 17+Charisma. Must be Lawful Good. Paladins are seriously rare in 2nd ed AD&D. You need to roll really awesome stats, and then, if you're using a roll method where you get to assign them as you want, you have to expend one of your best rolls on Charisma. Charisma's hardly useless if your GM actually rolls for NPC reactions, it adds some modifiers which distinctly increase the chance of NPC's either being friendly when approached peacefully or choosing to run away if approached threateningly. Like a Fighter, they can use all weapons and armor, improve their Thac0 every level, gain percentile Strength if they have an 18 Str and have the best HP die available. The Fighter advantages they don't get include Specialization(at high levels the +1 to hit isn't such a great loss, but the bonus to damage per hit if specialized in a melee weapon, as well as lost extra attacks can really matter), don't attract 9th-level followers and they level up more slowly. In return, they can Detect Evil at will, gain a +2 to all Saving Throws(this is MASSIVE), can't be diseased, gain the ability to heal a decent amount of HP per day, can cure diseases, radiates an aura of Protection Against Evil(since a Paladin will probably largely fight Evil things, this translates into a more or less constant AC bonus unless enemies are hitting him with arrows from range), can turn Undead at higher levels, can cast Cleric spells at higher levels, can summon a his horse from any range and if he gets a Holy Sword he can just twirl it around to destroy hostile magic. The cost for this, aside from tossing away what's probably your best roll... you have to tithe 10% of everything you loot to your church, your henchmen must be Lawful Good, and of course there's the Paladin Code. It's very vaguely termed. If you perform a Chaotic act, you gotta do penance for it. If you do an Evil act, boom, paladin status gone. You become a Fighter who doesn't have Specialization or 9th-level followers. Considering how vaguely it's termed, without some sort of agreement between the GM and Paladin player what constitutes an Evil or Chaotic act, it's not hard to see where the stories of GM's being out to ruin paladins comes from. Though the game does mention that it has to be done knowingly and willingly, so your GM can't make your Paladin fall because he thought he was contributing to an orphanage being built when the entire fund was in fact being embezzled to commit war crimes. Ranger Ability Requirements: 13+Strength, 13+Dexterity, 14+Constitution, 14+Wisdom. Must be some flavour of Good. Rangers get the usual bevvy of Warrior abilities such as being hard to kill, being able to wield anything, wear anything and being good at hitting things. In addition, they get a mixture of Druid stuff abilities, a few Thief abilities and some abilities that are entirely their own. The thiefy abilities only work when not wearing heavy armor, though, making it somewhat of a trade-off whether you want to be stealthy or tanky. Any Warrior or Rogue class can attempt to dual-wield, but without sufficient Dexterity they're piled on with penalties for doing so. Rangers have no penalty, no matter their Dexterity, which means that a low-Dexterity Ranger can add on a decent amount of killing power compared to a Fighter of equal level and Dexterity. They also get a massive +4 bonus to hit against a chosen type of enemy(orcs, ghouls, etc.). Interestingly enough, Rangers also gain followers, but without the need to build a fortress, and only at 10th level. These 2d6 followers can be anything from a pack of dogs to Treants or even non-Evil lycanthropes. Having a Werebear posse would be pretty goddamn hardcore. Hilariously, the Ranger doesn't get any special ability to communicate with the weirder potential followers, so he may just end up with a dozen Hippogriffs staring mutely at him every night around the campfire while he wonders if this is the night where they decide to turn him into lunch. Rangers, like Paladins, come with a prohibition against doing Evil stuff, at the cost of their powers of being able to hang out with Bears. Mage Ability Requirements: 9+Intelligence. So, Mages. You know them, you love or hate them, and you expect them to kick rear end and chew bubblegum that they summoned from the astral plane. This is considerably less likely to happen in 2e than in 3e, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Wizards of any flavour get absolutely rock-bottom HP, their Thac0 almost never improves, they can't wear any armor and they have the chumpiest weapon selection of the entire lot. On the bright side, they do have their magic, eventually. They start off with one level 1 spell per day, and unlike Clerics who get bonus spells/day for high Wisdom, Wizards do not get bonus spells/day for high Intelligence(I always houserule that the same table applies to Mages, just so they aren't total dead weight). Secondly, their spells aren't quite the threats they are in 3e. For one thing, any damage taken, ANY damage taken, in the round before the spell fires off means it fizzles and does nothing. This means that a couple of Fighters with fast weapons can repeatedly shove a Mage in a locker until all his spells are fizzles. And then there's how Saving Throws work... In 3e D&D, a saving Throw is the caster using his stats to impose a DC, with the victim then rolling 1d20+his save to match or beat it, or he's turned into a radish. In 2e AD&D, instead it's a simple roll-over the target's Saving Throw for him to shake off the spell or only suffer half damage or whatever a save amounts to. Only very rarely is the save penalized in any way. This means that high-level characters and monsters are more or less completely immune to anything targeted directly at them. Additionally, there's Magic Resistance, which quite a few high-tier enemies have. 3e had its Spell Resistance, a mechanic that I never quite understood how worked, but everyone assured me it was laughable and thoroughly useless. In 2e, Magic Resistance is no such thing. It's a straight percentile chance to completely ignore an enemy spell. Even if a passed save would normally permit for some sort of partial effect, a successful Magic Resistance check completely negates it, and even if the MR fails, the normal Saving Throw is still rolled afterwards. So Mages are somewhat less useful in a straight-up fight against the enemy than they are carefully ensconced on the back rows buffing the party's beefier members into being horrifying blenders, modifying the battlefield without directly targeting anyone or using their spells for various out-of-combat utility purposes. Illusionist/Other Slightly less useless are specialist wizards(the Others would be the ones that aren't Illusionists). These all have a non-Intelligence stat that they require 15+ or 16+ in, though. In exchange, you pick one school of magic where enemy saving throws are penalized, spells are learned faster and more easily, get a free spell pick from it on level-up to a new spell tier and they have one more spell per day from each spell level that they have access to, which is pretty huge when you just get access to a new level and only have one per day. Even late-game, it's notable, since a given spell-level will cap out at 9 spells per day, so it'll still represent a +10% boost at worst. Oh and then there are the two spell schools you lose access to entirely(Diviners only lose access to Conjuration, and Illusionists lose access to three schools of magic). Cleric Ability Requirements: 9+Wisdom Clerics are awesome, mostly because they feel kind of like a debug mode someone accidentally left in the game. They can wear all armor, wield all blunt weapons, are second only to the Warrior classes in knowing how to bash faces in, automatically knows all spells appropriate to his level(except for a few restricted to Druids), has a vague religion that he doesn't actually need to flesh out, can turn undead, gets more spells per level than a Mage of equivalent level if he has a high Wisdom and once he reaches 9th level, his faith handles half the cost of any fortress he decides to build since it's considered a bastion of the faith. Now, this is clearly not the class you're meant to play, if you read onwards. The GM is meant to make actual specialist clerics, like Specialist mages, with more limited access to the various spell spheres, customized weapon restrictions(for instance, a Cleric of the Sea Dude might be allowed to wield tridents or some such as a holy weapon) and unique powers(turn undead is really only a placeholder example. Clerics are meant to have thematically appropriate ones for their religion instead). Oh and, of course, they're meant to actually have some sort of religious faith they're meant to follow, uphold and spread. Druids, for example, despite being stuffed into every setting I've ever seen, are clearly described as an example of a specialist Cleric.  Best get off my lawn, you little assholes Druid Ability Requirements: 12+Wisdom, 15+Charisma Druids are weird. They can wear any armor not made from metal, but their weapon selection is basically the Mage's terrible one with Scimitar and Spear shoved in there. They get access to some of the most commonly used Priest spheres(like Healing) and some ones that are almost never used(Weather?) in exchange for this, and also they're afraid of books and will never read magic books. They get secret druid speak, can look at nymph tiddies without having their brains implode/being charmed, can ID plants perfectly, never leave tracks in the dense woods, learns special woodland creature languages, can shapeshift into natural creatures a few times a day(none of the super-broken poo poo from 3e, sadly, but 2e bears are significantly scarier, so there's that. Aside from the AC, a Polar Bear is the equivalent of a high-level ranger with an even higher damage output barring magic weapons). His main limitation is that at 12th level or above he enters a magical Fight Club where he needs to chump on another druid of equal level in a ritual duel to be allowed to level up. At 16th level, you're at the top of the Fight Club, and you can finally move on from it. At this level you're described as being stuck in an extremely dull hell of Druid politics, and your main goal is to gather another half million XP so you can continue advancing, and then hand on your role to some other unlucky chump so the rules will actually let you advance. Seriously, this class is so weird. Parts of it make great sense and other parts are just whacko. Rogue Ability Requirements: 9+Dexterity Being able to wear up to leather armor, wield short bows and carry long swords, Rogues are actually reasonably capable of holding their own in a fight. Though since they'll probably have pretty solid Dex, they're best suited to bringing out their shortbows and providing fire support assuming they can't backstab some unlucky rear end in a top hat(2e backstabs are multipliers to the damage done, rather than their own roll of damage dice. It's also entirely possible for a thief to sneak in combat and backstab someone that the Fighter's keeping tied up, and attacking from behind and by surprise will do a lot to outweigh the Rogue's poor Thac0). Their Thac0 is mediocre and their hit die is the second-worst. Aside from that, the Rogue gets access to some pretty useful utility options that no one else does. Anyone can try to hide somewhere, or to move silently, but they'll never be as good as a Thief is. Thieves are also the only class that can deal with traps and locks without brute-forcing them and potentially getting someone killed or getting awesome valuables lost. They're also another of the classes that can recruit cool buddies at high level, in their case of course the followers once they establish a den of ill repute will be Thieves of various flavours. Thief abilities in 2e AD&D also don't rely on a roll-vs-DC model like in 3e, and are instead just straight percentile rolls. If you roll under your score? You do it. gently caress that trap. You owned it. Only Open Locks really has room for the GM to crank up the difficulty of the roll some, as-written.  Bard Ability Requirements: 12+Dexterity, 13+Intelligence, 15+Charisma Bards are an odd class, though not quite as weird as the goddamn Druid. They come able to use any armor up to chain mail, and any weapon, which makes them decent combatants though they're still stuck with the poor Thief Thac0 and hit dice to hold them back. Additionally, their mage abilities require no armor being worn, and their thief abilities require no heavy armor(chain mail) being worn. They get a handful of Thief skills(mostly the less useful ones) and basically cast spells like a Mage, though they're limited to never getting above 6th-level spells and advance in spellcasting slower than mages do. But if you're not aiming for the top-tier ultra-epic levels, and you want to be a wizard who can do poo poo when his spells-per-day Vancian allowance is spent, you could do considerably worse than to play a Bard. The unique ability Bards have is their ability to shift others around on the reaction tables, either towards the friendly or hostile end of the spectrum, using rhetoric, jokes, music, anecdotes, whatever's available. Likewise, the Bard can also buff his allies. It's a small buff, but considering that it can be used once per fight at no real cost, there's no reason not to use it. And early in the game, it can be very useful for making non-primary combatants, like thieves and clerics, catch up with warriors in terms of being able to actually hit the enemy and do damage. They can also provide loud music to counter any sort of mind control or suggestion spells that rely on verbally giving orders to the victim. He also gets to construct a stronghold and attract fighty followers at 9th level, because why not, that makes perfect sense for a musician with a giant sword.  Multi-Classing and Dual-Classing So personally, I always felt that multi-classing worked better in 2e than in following systems, and that dual-classing was a huge pile of garbage. Multi-classing in 2nd edition is something only demihumans can do, they combine two or three of the classes they have access to(the exact options they have vary per race), and advance in all two or three of them at the same time, splitting their experience points between them equally. With XP costs generally doubling per level, this means that a two-class multi-class character will usually be one level behind his single-class compatriots in most cases. Generally, the best attributes of either class are brought along when they're training-based(for instance, a Fighter's ability to use all weapons and armor would trump a Mage's ability to use none), but the worst is used when it's ideological(a Cleric's religious weapon limitations would trump a Fighter's training). Best Thac0 is used, and HP is rolled for all the classes but the results are divided by the number of classes involved in the multi-class combo, so it ends up as sort of an average result. A Fighter/Mage still won't be able to cast spells in armor, but could, for instance, bring a bow and be useful at range even when all his spells were spent. A Cleric/Mage would have remarkable spell variety and be a lot less squishy than a Mage. Thief/Mages can back up their thief abilities with spells to make them even better at infiltration and problem-solving. Fighter/Clerics gain spells faster than a Paladin, but level slower than a Paladin or a Fighter and lose some of their weapon variety. There are a lot of options, and most of them are good! Unlike dual-classing. Dual-classing isn't good. It's stupid. It's what humans get instead of multi-classing(another flaw, I feel like it should've been the other way around. Let humans multi-class). Basically, when dual-classing, you advance as normal as a class until you decide to start advancing as another. You are now permanently locked to the level you reached as the first class, that class will never advance again. You keep all HP from the first class, but otherwise everything is as according to your new class(you can still use stuff from your old class in a pinch, but that means a huge XP penalty), until your new class is a higher level than your first class, then all that original knowledge suddenly comes flooding back in. I have a hard time thinking of any cases where a dual-class is actually good in any way, and not spicy garbage. It's a lot more like 3e multi-classing except it's somehow more poo poo. Because this post ran super long, analysis will be for the next post.
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Oct 23, 2018 01:57
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MR is actually affected by the mage's level, and as the edition ran on they got ways to inflict save penalties. Notably specialist mages inflict save penalties with their specialty school, and having those extra spells made you a cool dude who got stuffed into a locker less.
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Oct 23, 2018 02:53
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Pathfinder 2: We're gonna need more booze Chapter 6: Equipment: The first thing that stands out about this is that all prices are in silver pieces instead of gold. Why? I don't know, but it seems to be more change for the sake of change just like most everything Pathfinder related. Reading the first page of this chapter confirms that the standard copper/silver/gold/platinum exchange rates still exist, so who knows. We get some rules for damaging items as well. Item hardness persists, but an item that takes more damage than its hardness gets a Dent and taking twice the hardness' damage gives 2. At 2 dents the item is broken but can be repaired, and at 3 the item is totally destroyed. As certain items can randomly take more Dents to break I have no idea what this means for my dream of chopping through walls. On to armor. The armor is basically the same as PF1 but now armors grant Touch AC bonuses (yes, that's still a thing), and shields give a bonus to both...but require you to use an action to get the bonus. This isn't just raising your shield at the beginning of the fight either, sword and board warriors have to burn one of their 3 actions every round just to get a +2 AC bonus, at which point I again have to ask "why?" Literally every edition of D&D has abstracted out shield usage and this just adds more bookkeeping. Also the items have levels, and a first level character can't craft full plate for, uh, reasons. Weapons. The book decides this is the time to explain how attack rolls work. They decided to keep the iterative attack penalty so a second attack a round is at a -5 penalty and the third attack is at -10, but assures us we can get "agile" weapons that reduce the penalty to -4 and -8 respectively. That is still a huge-rear end penalty, and I'm forced to wonder why they have multiple attacks allowed at all - just do more damage per level and the game goes faster when you're not rolling the six attacks you get as a wildshaped cheetah or whatever. All the weapons have some kind of bullshit bonus trait that I'm not going into, because I'm sure someone on a min/max site has already crunched all the numbers and figured out that the one true weapon is the Vulcan Lirpa or whatever. There's even a little table for bonus effects on crits per weapon type you can get if you have a feat, and they are all bullshit small bonuses that could probably be mathed out for wombo combos or crit chance bonuses. Chapter 7: Spells: So Vancian prepared casting is still a thing, but you can prepare a spell in a higher-level spell slot for greater effects. Now if this sounds like we're ripping off 5e's system, you'd be right, and we all know neither system works particularly well because we've played 3.5 psionics classes and that was always a weird mess of figuring out which powers actually benefited from augmentation, levels being all over the place. The "spell points" spells are described here as "powers" and are apparently this way to run off of class features and auto-scaled to the highest level. This is the kind of nightmare child I could see if a D&D 5e wizard got drunk and smashed a 3.5 psion. Then we have innate spells that work like spell-like abilities in 3.5 and are auto-heightened. Any one of these systems would have worked fine on its own, but mushed together you just get sadness and confusion. The 8 spell schools carry over from D&D, except necromancy is tagged as life stealing and healing rather than commanding undead. Casting spells takes 1 action per component of the spell (material, somatic, verbal) and then you can gently caress around with this via metamagic feats or picking spells that don't have components. I am willing to bet real money no thought went into assigning components based on spell power and it mostly carried over from PF1, but this book is driving me nuts enough without having to go open up the PF1 rulebook. The spells themselves are broken into "traditions": occult, arcane, divine, and primal. I could not tell you the difference between "occult" and "arcane" as a descriptor, because occult means "magic or supernatural" and arcane means "understood by a few". Occult when used as a verb means to hide something from view, so we literally have two words that map to secretive practices. Divine is at least fairly comprehensible, but primal just means "early" or "fundamental". Anyway, spells themselves. They introduce 4 levels of saving throw results, - critical success, success, failure, and crit failure, with spells rebounding on a critical success and absolutely wrecking people's day on a crit failure (instant death. harder mind control, etc). You can totally wreck people with spells, but I'd want to see the actual monster math and some characters before making a final judgement. (Fear not, I will be generating some sample characters and 'running' them through one of the playtest adventures). Also, antimagic field is the only rare spell you have to beg the DM for, I'm not sure why. There's a short list of rituals, which include commune, consecrate, and variations on friggin Planar Binding. Now these things are all uncommon, meaning I'm not sure how much arguing you need to do with the DM to get your hands on it, but you can get your 5 man team together and seriously just raise an army of demons and not have to adventure at all. Considering this was a problem with friggin 3rd edition D&D, you would think they'd reconsider adding this spell to the game, or maybe cap it. Nope, their balance is that you "call something dark and horrible, unbound by your wards, and it immediately attempts to destroy you". It's the 4e ritual system but with effects you might actually use. Kinda nuts. Any plot-influencing powers are of course tagged by the uncommon tag, preventing those pesky players from breaking the DM's faithful retelling of Final Fantasy Seven. As a bonus, the book promotes undeath clerics and necromancer wizards as things you can play but provides no animate dead spell. You can crap summons all over the board, but rewriting the minions out of necromancy really just kills any desire to play the archetype in the first place. Chapter 8: Advancement and options: Level ups get a page, then we get into the meat here: 4e-style multiclassing, where you switch some of your class feats for archetype feats that let you either multiclass OR...prestige class! Now prestige classes don't have stat requirements but they do have story requirements, so expect to be engrossed in arguing for hours with your DM whether or not you can shove in a sad backstory to get access to the class that raises your spell DCs. The one prestige class here is a female warrior who was brainwashed and tortured but is now free and uses devilish abilities including BDSM. I don't know, Pathfinder, I don't know. In addition to that and the multiclass archetypes (trade fighter feats for wizard spells!) there are cavalier and pirate archetypes that let you opt into stuff. Cav gives you a horse of course and pirate gives you a bunch of lame bonuses for ship fighting because no one has figured out people want to play pirates in landlocked campaigns. The pirate class does let you use Final Fantasy mug though. There are stats for familiars, animal companions, and a short deity writeup to round out the chapter.
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Oct 23, 2018 03:07
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So Vancian prepared casting is still a thing, but you can prepare a spell in a higher-level spell slot for greater effects. Now if this sounds like we're ripping off 5e's system, you'd be right, and we all know neither system works particularly well because we've played 3.5 psionics classes and that was always a weird mess of figuring out which powers actually benefited from augmentation, levels being all over the place. Well with 5e it's pretty simple. As Spells will say if they get bonuses from being cast in higher level slot, and you don't have to prepare it ahead of time, you can cast any spell you know in any slot. From the sound of this, you have to lock in your choices ahead of time. And with the addition of every spell of lower levels being stuff you can prepare in a slot, this sounds like it makes spell casting even more complex. I would have just stolen 5e's system wholesale to make it a bit simpler. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Oct 23, 2018 |
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Oct 23, 2018 03:23
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MonsterEnvy posted:
5e's system is bad because it penalizes numerical effects like fireball (which sucks and is a waste of everyone's time) against dope spells like suggestion, hypnotic pattern, and fear which do not scale with spell slots but are perfectly capable of ending a fight on their own with a failed save that automatically scales with your level. The same is true here.
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Oct 23, 2018 03:43
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:5e's system is bad because it penalizes numerical effects like fireball (which sucks and is a waste of everyone's time) against dope spells like suggestion, hypnotic pattern, and fear which do not scale with spell slots but are perfectly capable of ending a fight on their own with a failed save that automatically scales with your level. The same is true here. Fireball starts strong and gets stronger with higher slots. (The spells you listed are useful, but can be snapped out of, and require concentration.) As well fireball will always do damage even if saved unlike the other three you mentioned. It's not being penalized.
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Oct 23, 2018 04:24
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MonsterEnvy posted:Fireball starts strong and gets stronger with higher slots. (The spells you listed are useful, but can be snapped out of, and require concentration.) As well fireball will always do damage even if saved unlike the other three you mentioned. It's not being penalized. Fireball starts doing less damage than the DMG's max HP for 1/8 CR monsters and eats a spell slot to do it. Meanwhile you can't snap out of fear while in sight of the caster and the enemies wasting actions to break people out of CC are still a net gain for your team. The fact that fireball has an inconsequential effect if saved against doesn't make it a good use of a spell slot.
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Oct 23, 2018 05:10
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:MR is actually affected by the mage's level, and as the edition ran on they got ways to inflict save penalties. Do you have a page and book for the reference on MR being lowered by level differences? Because I just browsed through both the DMG and PHB, in case I missed it, and nowhere it mentions Magic Resistance does it mention this. I did not, admittedly, check the Player's Option books, because I know they added some fiddly additions for Mages that essentially amounted to to-hit rolls, in one of them, allowing Mages to get critical hits and misses and the like on their spells. So it might have been in there. MonsterEnvy posted:Fireball starts strong and gets stronger with higher slots. (The spells you listed are useful, but can be snapped out of, and require concentration.) As well fireball will always do damage even if saved unlike the other three you mentioned. It's not being penalized. I have to admit that I never saw much crunching of the numbers with 5e with regards to saves, but it's pretty similar system-wise to 3e, where it was relatively trivial for Arcane and Divine casters to stack the table so they had unbeatable or near-unbeatable DC's on their spells. This meant that save-or-die of any variant(whether it's literal death or just letting the PC's tell the target to jump into a gorge, or letting them walk up and carve out its brain with an axe unopposed) was usually the superior option, because it couldn't be mitigated by damage resistances or a large HP pool. And if it's Pathfinder we're talking rather than the other two, well PF1 is basically a straight knockoff of 3e, so I'm 99% sure it's the same, and if PF2 actually changes enough to disrupt wizard supremacy, I'm a loving newt.
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Oct 23, 2018 09:53
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It might be in the monster manual? I remember using a rule that magic resistance went up or down 5% per difference in level, but I also remember a spell called Lower Resistance, so I can't be sure that wasn't a house rule.
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Oct 23, 2018 10:11
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Bieeanshee posted:It might be in the monster manual? I remember using a rule that magic resistance went up or down 5% per difference in level, but I also remember a spell called Lower Resistance, so I can't be sure that wasn't a house rule. You may be thinking of Dispel Magic, which in 2E has a 50% chance to work against equal-level effects and varies by 5% per level difference in either direction. Lower Resistance was a spell (and saw quite a bit of use in Baldur's Gate), but was introduced in one of the later books, Tome of Magic (one of a few books which were mostly just lists of more spells). It lowered magic resistance by (30 + level)%, and only half of the target's magic resistance was used when seeing if it was resisted.
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Oct 23, 2018 13:22
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The Sixth Seal On August 26th, 2003, the Sixth Seal was broken. 200 mph winds blast the land, earthquakes shatter mountains, volcanoes erupt, meteors fall, dogs and cats living together...yadda yadda yadda... then thirteen minutes later every single sinner left that had survived so far is struck down. quote:Some were struck by fire, some by lightning, some by angels of the Lord, others by the ghosts of their victims. None but the Meek would survive the rupture of the sixth seal. When it was over the humans on earth numbered less than one million. The Seventh Seal On September 1st, the Seventh Seal was broken and God's Wrath stops. The storms abate, earthquakes cease, volcanoes quiet. It is beautiful, tranquil, and peaceful. The surviving Meek see a clear calm day as Earth begins to regenerate itself. As this new Eden forms a phenomenon called 'The Blues' begins (we'll go over this later), and the constructions of man and the wreckage rapidly begins to decay. On the first night after the Seal was broken everyone still alive gets 'The Dream'. This is the section that is in the start of book fiction only tailored for each of the Meek. The persons the Meek dreams about may be different with ascent to Heaven or descent to Hell, but it ends for all of them with the Gates of Judgment slamming shut in their faces. (end cutscene) ========== So. That's the backstory. When The End came out in 1995 there wasn't anything else like it. Post-Apocalyptic games like Aftermath, The Morrow Project, and Gamma World were predicated on the world ending from war, not cosmic judgment, so it was fresh and new. Even in other forms of fiction, the first Left Behind book had come out the same year so the odds that either influenced the other were almost impossible. I don't hate the level of detail put into the backstory. If nothing else, it shows that Donka put actual thought into it (debatable if that was good or bad) and wasn't necessarily being edgelord for edgelordiness. He really tried to put a modern spin on the Book of Revelations and in a lot of ways I think he succeeded. It really plays up the 'God is pissed and will make you bleed' attitude of the original.
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Oct 23, 2018 15:58
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:If nothing else, it shows that Donka put actual thought into it (debatable if that was good or bad) and wasn't necessarily being edgelord for edgelordiness. He really tried to put a modern spin on the Book of Revelations and in a lot of ways I think he succeeded. i was raised in a turbo-conservative christian household in the 80s and 90s and i can promise you there's really not anything in this entire preamble that required the author to put "actual thought" into the work. like, with the exception of coming up with fictitious names for the relevant characters, 100% of the disasters listed could have been pulled straight from a Billy Graham or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell sermon. his "modern spin" wouldn't have been out-of-place in any kind of evangelical church service conducted in the same decade (and likely still wouldn't be). Ex: his concept of the SUCC being the mark of the beast is the same thing as your Social Security Number being the mark, or barcodes being the mark, or the magnetic strip on a charge card being the mark, or RFID chips being the mark or etc. i dunno, maybe because i grew up neck-deep in the crazy pool none of this stuff seems particularly original or fresh. poo poo, he could have probably sold this directly inside Christian book stores and doubled his potential purchase audience.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:25
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i was raised in a turbo-conservative christian household in the 80s and 90s and i can promise you there's really not anything in this entire preamble that required the author to put "actual thought" into the work. like, with the exception of coming up with fictitious names for the relevant characters, 100% of the disasters listed could have been pulled straight from a Billy Graham or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell sermon. his "modern spin" wouldn't have been out-of-place in any kind of evangelical church service conducted in the same decade (and likely still wouldn't be). Ex: his concept of the SUCC being the mark of the beast is the same thing as your Social Security Number being the mark, or barcodes being the mark, or the magnetic strip on a charge card being the mark, or RFID chips being the mark or etc. Yeah, so far the glaring lack of telecommunication fetishism is all that stops this from reading like someone's Left Behind heartbreaker.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:28
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i was raised in a turbo-conservative christian household in the 80s and 90s and i can promise you there's really not anything in this entire preamble that required the author to put "actual thought" into the work. like, with the exception of coming up with fictitious names for the relevant characters, 100% of the disasters listed could have been pulled straight from a Billy Graham or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell sermon. his "modern spin" wouldn't have been out-of-place in any kind of evangelical church service conducted in the same decade (and likely still wouldn't be). Ex: his concept of the SUCC being the mark of the beast is the same thing as your Social Security Number being the mark, or barcodes being the mark, or the magnetic strip on a charge card being the mark, or RFID chips being the mark or etc. I'm a filthy Swedenborg so this was all new to me.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:41
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Yeah this is so extremely bog standard I initially thought you were being sarcastic when you said actual thought went into this. American Conservative Christianity is absolutely bug gently caress crazy and they love reveling in the death the end times of the bible promises.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:44
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It should also be noted that the relation this all bears to the actual Book of Revelations is kind of like a four- or five-step game of telephone based on a very, very bizarre hodgepodge of Biblical sources arranged in an essentially random order. For one, the only time 'anti-christ' appears in the Revelation of Saint John, it's plural.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:45
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Freaking Crumbum posted:i was raised in a turbo-conservative christian household in the 80s and 90s and i can promise you there's really not anything in this entire preamble that required the author to put "actual thought" into the work. like, with the exception of coming up with fictitious names for the relevant characters, 100% of the disasters listed could have been pulled straight from a Billy Graham or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell sermon.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:45
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I'm a filthy Swedenborg so this was all new to me. it's almost heartwarming to know that there are people so far removed from this kind of BS that reading a book like The End can seem like a fresh batch of new ideas. are the actual mechanics of the game functional, or does it reach Obsidian-levels of absurdity?
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Oct 23, 2018 16:54
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Mors Rattus posted:It should also be noted that the relation this all bears to the actual Book of Revelations is kind of like a four- or five-step game of telephone based on a very, very bizarre hodgepodge of Biblical sources arranged in an essentially random order. That reminds me of a PC game called Inquisitor that comes with an in-manual version of their world's book of Revelations, with the joke being that it has an accompanying intelligent analysis by a church scholar talking about how everything the in-game book is a metaphor for in setting. The way the actual Revelation should be analyzed. Except in this game it is absolutely literal and saying 'Yes in 1000 years exactly the Devil is coming oh poo poo you better be ready'. It was a pretty funny touch.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:56
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Mors Rattus posted:It should also be noted that the relation this all bears to the actual Book of Revelations is kind of like a four- or five-step game of telephone based on a very, very bizarre hodgepodge of Biblical sources arranged in an essentially random order. And you will find neither the word nor the concept of the Rapture anywhere in the Bible.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:56
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Revelation will always be the weirdest book in the bible to me. I understand the Apocalypse in Daniel, given Daniel was written partly as religious propaganda in a religious war, and so speaking about a time of great religious trial that will eventually end in a better world makes sense, but Revelation is just weird. It's mostly a guy yelling at his coreligionists in code about how poo poo they are for compromising on anything.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:03
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Freaking Crumbum posted:it's almost heartwarming to know that there are people so far removed from this kind of BS that reading a book like The End can seem like a fresh batch of new ideas. I'm kinda in the same seat as Schoolbus. Even if I knew was some of the names from before, because I've spent a lot of time on the internet, and the general gist of what happens as remembered from reading Exit Mundi (remember that site anyone?). My biggest annoyance even is that no other religious apocalypse kicks at the same time in which means God gets a lot of 'freebie kills' that seem kinda meaningless since they're technically outside of his religious purview.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:07
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Freaking Crumbum posted:it's almost heartwarming to know that there are people so far removed from this kind of BS that reading a book like The End can seem like a fresh batch of new ideas. The basic skill resolution is ridiculous. Search my posts in this thread for a short paragraph about it.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:10
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Cooked Auto posted:I'm kinda in the same seat as Schoolbus. Even if I knew was some of the names from before, because I've spent a lot of time on the internet, and the general gist of what happens as remembered from reading Exit Mundi (remember that site anyone?). I really want the Islamic eschatology where Jesus returns, but he's Muslim. In fact, it would be a head trip if Revelations story has the Anti-Christ be an American evangelical politician with one-world unification government led by the US (basically America just takes over the world, instead of the U.N.) fighting Islamic Jesus.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:14
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If I recall correctly (and I'm a lot less confident on modern theology) a big part of pre-millenial theology (where the Rapture comes from) is that there's no way to actually make the Earth good, because that is only the province of God and the kingdom that comes after the end times, and that there is thus no obligation to try.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:17
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Young Freud posted:In fact, it would be a head trip if Revelations story has the Anti-Christ be an American evangelical politician with one-world unification government led by the US (basically America just takes over the world, instead of the U.N.) fighting Islamic Jesus. Is it wrong that I could immediately see this being preached by someone in real life?  Outside of swapping their positions obviously.
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Oct 23, 2018 17:18
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