- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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I joined to bring some year-old grog from the Paizo RPG Superstar contest forum threads!
The entire thread is pretty good so here it is. Highlights (emphasis mine, original formatting stripped):
SKR himself posted:
26. Item encourages metagaming.
This is a broad category, and it's a doozy. Examples are items that analyze a trap and tell the players its DC ("I have a 75% chance of making that save!") or expected damage ("have the barbarian set it off, she can take that much and the cleric can heal her afterward"), or let players use player knowledge of monsters that their PCs wouldn't know ("this wolf has way too many hit points, it must be a barghest in wolf form").
Don't create an item that encourages the players to metagame, or rewards them for doing so. The short definition of "metagaming" in an RPG context is, "actions made by a PC that rely on player knowledge rather than character knowledge." You can read up on other examples of metagaming on Wikipedia here.
Don't make items that encourage this.
This category is another example of creating an "arms race" between the GM and players. Which is bad.
Related to this are items that make playing the game easier, but aren't necessarily things that people in the world would need. Items like magical moneychangers that transform all your coppers into silvers and your silvers into gold, so the player just has to write one number in the Money area on the character sheet.
Items like auto-mapping devices that record all dungeon rooms the PC passes through, so the player can justify knowing exactly how far it is from here to there and the best way to get there because he's looking at the overhead map on the tabletop.
Items like magic walkie-talkies so a PC can justify knowing the table talk of other players/PCs even if the character is far away from the other characters.
While some of these devices are useful to PCs (the map and walkie-talkie items definitely are), they're really there to make life easier for the players by dealing with things they can't hand-wave away (things like why your character never has to use the bathroom); players don't have to announce potty breaks for their characters, but they do have to write down "25 gp, 130 sp, 210 cp" on a character sheet, so while you'll probably never see a wondrous item that removes the need to visit a lavatory, you may see a moneychanger item because the moneychanger fixes a "problem" the player actually has to deal with.
When your item has the PC thinking like a player rather than a character, you're opening the door to metagaming.
tl;dr: SKR thinks you need an item to abstract your wealth into one gold number, but wouldn't let you have that item because it's dirty metagaming and makes you think like a player, not a character. Because counting each coin is immersion.
quote:
2) A siphon/pump contraption that can pull the enchantment out of one item and transfer it into another item of appropriate form and quality, so that you can take that +1 keen shocking glaive-guisarme-voulge your sadistic GM gave you as treasure and transfer the enchantment to a masterwork spiked chain (since you blew half your feats specializing in that bad-boy, and you'll *never* randomly find a magic one as treasure!). Just watch out for that 5% chance of losing some of the magic in the transfer...
Where to start... has no problem with the fact that the fighter has to spend half his class being gimped without his signature weapon, but god forbid you should be allowed to get treasure you can actually use. And if you must have an item that lets you convert useless junk into something worth the quest, don't forget you're still hosed if I roll a 1 on this d20!
Oh, and response to the above:
quote:
Actually, Wolf did vote to auto-reject her item. He called it grade A cheese that would never see the light of day in his campaign, or something to that effect.
Transfer Enchantment is grade A cheese. You heard it here.
Cleric supremacy:
quote:
"My issue with this is that it's basically duplicating the Luck domain's good fortune ability. Items shouldn't steal class abilities because they make players of that class feel robbed. Frex, you shouldn't create an item that lets you sneak attack if you're not a rogue."
But spells that let you rage like a barbarian, find traps like a rogue, and... okay, to give them credit, there aren't actually any spells in Pathfinder that give you sneak attack. (Just several that negate sneak attack.) Still, stay away from the cleric's rerolls!
Paizo messageboards, Caphi, GTXT news. Back to you, Slab.
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Jan 6, 2012 02:39
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Apr 26, 2024 21:46
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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A fresh batch from an old recipe. This one comes from Giant in the Playground.
quote:
I see a lot of posts on this forum about Nerfing casters or making melee characters up to par with full casters. I think making the classes equal kind of destroys the point of having different classes in the first place (as 4th edition did) from a genera savvy perspective. I enjoy the idea of the super powerful wizard; who struggles through the first hand full of levels to obtain true power. I also like the idea of the warrior working with nothing but the strength in his arm, his trusty weapon, and some armor against all kinds of beasts, demons, and magical creatures. I like the craft rogue using his wits to overcome obstacles.
I get that at later levels the non-full casters get out classed by their caster friends, but who cares! Most campaigns I've been in don't get past level 10 if that (unless you are starting at a higher level), and I've never seen a person play a "god" wizard, cleric-zilla, or whatever.
The name of the game is role-playing, not roll-playing. If a person is coming up with a character concept, and throws in "oh by the way he/she's a gish" "Why?" "because it's more powerful, dude!" I think that person has lost perspective on what the game is about.
As for "It's a fun to repeatedly do the same action over and over again in combat as a non-caster." Not having fun at the table is a problem. After all this is a game. Fun should be involved in a pretty big way. I would than summit you are playing the wrong class for you. I personally like standing toe to toe trading blows with the big bad. I let my imagination do the work there as just dealing a numeric HP damage is silly at best. I think people get stuck on the idea that to be in a party has to fill all the roles: skill monkey, tank, striker, arcane, healer. In the 3/3.5/pathfinder I've never found this to be true in fact the more interest parties I've been in lacked some of these roles, and have had to use creative problem solving to over come challenges that could be easily beaten had that role been filled. Party of wizards, why not. Team cleric, cool. Traveling band of musical bards, awesome! Monk, fighter, paladin, rogue, sweet. This is not a video game run by a program. The DM can adjust to what ever party is thrown together.
Also this game is designed to cooperative game, not competitive. Cooperative between you and the other players, and cooperative between the players and the DM. A competition usually involves winning and a reward for winning. How do win D&D? What's the reward? You see a player lagging behind the rest of the party, why not help him/her out throw them a buff. Check in with the person OoC to make sure they are having fun, and if not what you can do to help that person.
Thank you for listening.
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Jan 26, 2012 20:14
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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Rasamune posted:
Look, it's a lot of hard work to write "Wizard" on your character sheet and I deserve to be rewarded for it, goddammit!
Actually it's kind of the opposite problem. Playing an "optimized" or "creative" wizard in 3.5 the way grogs mean it involves being a sociopathic sperglord who casts contact other plane at the end of every day to spend an hour trying to annoy the GM into giving you his campaign notes so you know what to prepare the next day, manages trade routes to sell off a zillion daggers, and ultimately (this is true) never actually goes anywhere, just sending out a hologram of yourself to do everything for you while you sit in a locker personal pocket universe that leads to Ed Greenwood's den. It's incredibly involved and utterly boring for the entire table.
(The other way involves buffing and enabling your party members, and those wizards can be pretty cool if they're played right, but that's separate.)
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Jan 30, 2012 17:21
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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chrisoya posted:The elves and the human don't get to have fun in early editions.
And yet the half-elf exists.
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Jan 31, 2012 17:38
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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More from Giant in the Playground.
Reasonable child stats posted:
my next character im planning is a dread necromancer child very loosely based on Claudia from interview with a vampire but ive been having trouble figuring out decent stat penaltys and or bonus's for a child character.
im thinking a young enough age where she would be small sized but human so i was looking for negatives to offset the bonus feat
Someone recommended Pathfinder's "young" template, which is more or less -2 at everything except bonuses to dexterity. Someone else recommended a flavor of halfling that gets a feat like a human, which actually sounds reasonable.
Then, suddenly:
quote:
A kid should be no match for an adult in about everything.
All the modifiers (bonus or malus) granted by ability scores are reduced by 4
The actual score is unchanged, only the modifier is reduced.
It counts when determining HP, skill points, DCs, dice rolls etc
At the age of 8, this malus is reduced to 3
At the age of 11, this malus is reduced to 2
At the age of 14, this malus is reduced to 1
At 17, this malus disappears
Whenever the malus is reduced, you gain more HP and Skill Points as if you never had the removed malus
Example:
A 12 years old fighter 4 with these ability scores:
STR 18 (+4, reduced counts as +2)
DEX 12 (+1, reduced counts as -1)
CON 14 (+2, reduced counts as 0)
INT 12 (+1, reduced counts as -1)
WIS 10 (+0, reduced counts as -2)
CHA 8 (-1, reduced counts as -3)
Has -1 to initiative (will become +0 at the age of 14, and +1 when he is 17)
Has 10+3d10+0HP (will recieve 4HP when he turns 14 and 4 more when he is 17)
Has 4 skill points (will recieve 0 when he becomes 14 and then will get 4 points when he becomes 17)
He gets called out on it, and responds!
quote:
That 12YO fighter is pretty good, he can easily defeat a group of standard adults (commoners) and even some soldiers (he probably hits harder than the average 4th level npc combatant if he got wep.specialization)
If he was a Wizard, he'd be able to use 2nd level spells (with the DC being lowered by 2, and so the damage... but still pretty deadly)
So, basically, he is already so much better than normal people.
If he keeps adventuring he will eventually become a super-kid.
If you feel that it's too unbalancing, one could rule that kids get slightly more exp...
as actually happens, TBH, cause they learn faster compared to adults.
quote:De gustibus.
D&D isn't suited for 6YO children, core rules won't even let you adventure if you are not an adult.
You want to be a kid?
It is fun to have kids limitations.
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Feb 2, 2012 19:50
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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Okay, so maybe I actually hang out on Giant in the Playground.
(this is about the Book of Nine Swords)
quote:
Never have banned it. Players and I looked at it. Read part of it. Got sickened by page after page of new mechanics, put it down and ran away screaming.
That is my problem with the majority of the material that I read out of that book. It's overly complex. I have enough problems keeping track of NPC's, monsters and the story. I don't want to, right in the middle of a fight, have to stop and read something that I've forgotten. Or get it grossly wrong, and have the players get all upset. (Cause they do, players are very fragile creatures most of the time. Go figgure).
I've gone the "trust your players not to take advantage of you" route. It failed. Miserably.... So I have to read and understand every aspect of what ever your trying to play. If I don't get it, or don't want to...It's not allowed.
Lame excuse?...yep...
Do I care? Nope.
Why? My story and if you don't like it. Go DM your own.
I also don't have the issues with casters that everyone else does. Cause I know how to say "NO" to people. And if necessary I'll fight back with the same thing that they are doing. You would be surprised how fast people quit using Over powered crap when they get killed by it.
Players "DM why are we getting attacked by waves of Golems?"
Me "Your tank is a Warforged Warblade, now get out your oil and lobe it up."
Player #2 "Ok I'll just grease the golems them!"
Me "Ya you did that the last time. This time they are wearing cleats. Your grease is useless now! baaa hahahahaha"
Player "Dude why is that Troll holding a Panther Assault Cannon? That thing will turn me into paste in one hit!"
Me "What are you holding in your hand? O ya that's right it's a Panther Assault Cannon? Better hope you go first cause he smart linked his..Doubt that he'll miss."
Player "I'm taking a Light Pistol next time."
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Feb 6, 2012 19:34
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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Vanadium posted:
Who makes decisions like this? Ah, yes, my opponent is bringing tremendous firepower to the table. Clearly to counter this I need to bring less firepower.
The point is that by daring to try to have a good character, he pissed his GM off and now he's going to get killed by a gently caress-you monster as punishment. By being lovely, he gets the vindictive douchebag to not kill him in the first place.
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Feb 6, 2012 21:03
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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In this episode, Caphi goes head to head with a save-or-die apologist on the battlefield!
Context: the Subject was describing his idea for a plane that caused you to make will saves or else become obsessed with staying there.
Names and descriptions changed to protect the groggy.
quote:
<Caphi> Those coming to this plane to seek an answer must make a will safe each day (DC 15+amount of days spent here.) If they fail, they become engrossed in their search (ed: I was quoting, here)
<Caphi> I hate it already
<Caphi> It is a notch below compulsion flaws of the form "whenever you could follow your compulsion you must make a will save not to do so"
[...]
<Subject> Caphi, it's not supposed to be a beneficial effect, it's a plane that traps people.
<Caphi> I don't recall how that is relevant to anything I said, in fact I understand completely that it's a negative effect
<Subject> You were talking about flaws. It's not a flaw. *shrug*
<Caphi> In fact it would be slightly less horrible (but not not horrible) if it were supposed to be positive somehow
<Subject> Keep in mind that one of the design goals of this cosmology is that the multiverse is a sucky place to be, and you're usually better of staying on Prima.
<Caphi> Your design is basically "make a will save or your character is now a different character for weeks"
<Peanut1> I assumed it was positive. Getting trapped has the benefit of ironically making you better for free (except time invested). >_> Like, I'd be upset if I succeeded on the Wis check, because then I'd miss out on the free poo poo.
<Subject> Caphi, weeks? What.
<Caphi> or "you sit out the game for weeks"
<Caphi> I don't know how much game time your sessions cover
<Subject> This is supposed to be a character end, not a character disappearance.
<Peanut1> I see no issue. Tell your fellow PCs to wait up, you got some book learnin' to do
<Caphi> Mine are about a day each, maybe less
<Caphi> Oh okay so it's not save or be irrelevant, it's just save or be removed from play
<Peanut1> If everyone waits, there's no sense in actually doing the waiting, so scene skip
<Caphi> That makes it better
<Peanut1> Wait what?
<Peanut2> Uh huh. Mundo Kook sez, "make your own drat game".
<Caphi> This is an incredibly sucky thing to be put on an incredibly sucky save-or
<Caphi> It doesn't do anything to make the game interesting, it just says "gently caress you" to the player
<Subject> Caphi, it's in the same vein as some of the effects on canonical planes.
<Caphi> Also it perpetuates the design cancer of "will save or act like a moron"
<Caphi> There are zero parts of this design I don't hate
<Subject> Caphi, the plane is pretty much designed so that going there is a bad idea.
<Caphi> Then think of a less lovely way of making it look like a bad idea than "if you go there I'm going to roll a die and it might erase you from the game"
<Subject> Also. You can circumvent it easily by now trying to search for answer.
<Subject> not*
<Subject> So you can, in fact, go there to try to save your friend.
<Subject> I should probably clarify that a remove curse or such things can remove the effect.
<Caphi> So again, you're one will save away from being locked up in a rescue arc
<Caphi> And "will save or do a goofy dance" is still a terrible game design cancer, that hasn't changed
<Subject> I don't think a rescue arc is bad thing.
<Caphi> Have you ever been the rescuee? I have. It's not fun if you're just stuck in the box.
<Subject> It's a terrible cancer that people think that their characters must succeed at everything.
<Subject> It removes all possibility for interesting design space.
<Caphi> That is a complete non-sequitur.
<Subject> No, it is exactly what you are saying.
<Caphi> I can't even argue with it only because it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that was said before it.
<Subject> DomSubjectte is design cancer too?
<Subject> How about charm person?
<Subject> Let's just scrap every mind affecting spell in the game then.
<Caphi> On PCs? As an override? Absolutely.
<Subject> gently caress you.
<Subject> You want to play I Succeed.'
<Subject> I want to play a story.
<Caphi> No?
<Peanut1> I love I Succeed!
<Caphi> I want to not be one die roll away from losing control of my character, though.
<Subject> And in stories, characters often fail before they can become stronger.
<Caphi> If that's succeeding then sure.
<Subject> Caphi, so basically you want to play 4e. Noted.
<Subject> Get out of my lawn.
<Peanut2> Low blow.
<Caphi> 4e is a game where GMs are encouraged not to place people in situations where they can roll one die and if they roll wrong it's "welp hand over your character sheet"
<Caphi> so in that sense, yeah
<Caphi> 'course I've run 3.x that way too
<Subject> Editions of D&D prior to 4e all contained 'save or lose control' effects in high degrees.
<Caphi> And those were awful.
<Subject> If you ignore them, you're not playing the game.
<Caphi> Um...
<Subject> You're playing a mockery of the game.
<Peanut1> Now, now. Let's not turn this into the Edition Wars Episode MMMCCDXIV: "Luke, I Thought You Said You Got Rid of the Flamers and the Trolls?!"
<Caphi> Okay. Well, the mockery is a less terrible experience for everybody so I guess I'll be playing it.
<Subject> Caphi, let me put it more clearly.
<Caphi> I'll be enjoying it too.
<Subject> The game you want to play sucks in my eyes.
<Subject> And is not the game I want to play.
<Peanut3> And the game you want to play sucks in Caphi's eyes, clearly ;-)
<Peanut2> Legend doesn't have "save or lose control of your character", does it?
<Subject> So your commentary does not make one iota of sense from my design paradigm, and statements like calling design that differs from what you -prefer- design cancer is a horrible cancer that needs to die.
<Caphi> Sorry arbitrarily removing control from players, especially for long periods of time, is objectively terrible to put in a participatory game
<Caphi> Lots of things are fine preferences but that sort of thing is just a dick move
<Subject> Peanut2, thing is that D&D has interesting effects that are not save or suck, this is not true for any edition of D&D.
<Subject> 4e has no interesting effects period.
<Subject> Caphi, you're trolling me, aren't you?
I was trolling, but only a little bit...
EDIT: I thought this could be relevant too.
quote:<Subject> And I've ran a game[ of D&D4] that lasted from mid-heroic to late-paragon.
<Subject> I hated it, but it was the only RL gaming I could get, and when we got the system out of the way it was fun.
<Subject> Combat was, and remained, a terrible chore.
<Subject> Instant victory rolls let me get combat out of the way quicker.
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Feb 14, 2012 05:11
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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Someone on Giant in the Playground asks: should melee be able to rival casters? How can I possibly not investigate?
quote:I'm a fan of the Linear Warriors - Quadratic Wizards thing.
It feels silly to have a high level warrior be on par with a high level magic user. Its gets really silly when you start trying to balance a mundane against someone who can raise the dead, fly, and eventually cast wishes. But at low levels it makes sense for a wizard to be relatively weak and useless. So as long as you balance it that the wizard overtakes the fighter at about the halfway mark you're fine. Unfortunately this kind of unravels when different groups play different levels.
The problem is that at low levels the fighter is not superior to spell casters. The wizard has serviceable save or suck spells at level 1. With things like abrupt jaunt, he is probably a nastier combatant than the fighter. The cleric has decent armor and HPs on top of his spellcasting from the start. And the druid gets a weak fighter pet at 1st level on top of a melee capable chases and full spellcasting. At level 1 spellcasters are set to kick mundane arse.
Casters at low levels win at everything instead of sucking horribly like it should be. Casters at high levels win at everything and this is how it should be.
I'm not done with that thread so there's probably more.
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Feb 16, 2012 00:28
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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From later in the same thread: systemmastery.txt
quote:
As I wrote: we think about character levels differently. You think it should be measure of character power.
I think it's a resource. A resource I can use effectively or not (go wizard or commoner). Like gold pieces (have someone cast magic weapon on your arrows or buy +5 arrows). Like stats (high str, low int wizard...).
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Feb 16, 2012 01:21
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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This GITP thread is a goldmine, you guys.
quote:
I think that flavor dictates that casters should be better in sheer power. Really, something like fireball is in almost all fantasy novels and settings force to be reckoned with. This is the most irritating thing about 4th edition — while I appreciate that the classes are more balanced, I do not appreciate it when my fireball cannot kill a single bat and looks more like a firework for five bucks.
I also like the idea that wizard can kill a fighter without problems only if he has enough time to do it. Some of you may be familiar with the "Witcher" game. In books this game is loosely based on, a warrior stands next to a mage and spits on his boots. The wizard cannot do a thing only because he knows that he will be decapitated as soon as he rises his hands to cast a spell.
This is just for the relation in PvP.
But as we know, D&D is not about that and while a wizard should be able to smoke a melee fighter, he should not be able to have him replaced by spells in an adventuring party. They ought to be equally useful (however hard is that to achieve  ).
One of the most entertaining magic vs. melee systems I encountered in the Sword of Truth series. Wizards can be extremely powerful and fast, but they have one significant weakness: they are not batmans. The do not have tons of spells just to avoid every possible threatening situation and can be easily surprised.
And that is the fix I would propose to D&D — wizards should retain their staggering offensive power but should also be denied most of the protection and divination spells. Make them feel powerful but vulnerable at the same time. Make it impossible to avoid surprise round, make it impossible to achieve +30 Initiative modifiers etc. Make it possible for a meatshield to be useful and make them WANT a meatshield in a party.
Suddenly threads like "how can a Fighter kill a wizard" would stop being that obvious 
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Feb 24, 2012 20:25
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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Drox posted:
So the fix to d&d is to make 4e? I guess?
No I think he wants to make wizards extreme glass cannons, that can do outrageous damage but die to a single arrow.
Doesn't that make 3.5 like... WoW?
Also, I just got to the parts of the thread FactsAreUseless quoted and... god drat. (The person responsible, Psyren, is a pretty well-known crazy person on that board, but still.)
e:
quote:
It isn't to me: brain trumps brawn, both in our world and theirs.
It's easier for a smart person who isn't strong to bulk up, than it is for a bulky person who isn't smart to become intelligent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Voyager_I
*snip*
I somewhat doubt that Michael Phelps is a Fighter 1. I similarly doubt that all the goblin, elf or even human Fighter 1s are Olympic-level athletes.
Now, for the ones that make it to mid or high levels, I can see that level of training/physique - but I still don't see why they should be able to keep pace with people that can fly, teleport and see the future, other than an arbitrary notion of fairness.
Jocks! 
double e:
Seriously, it just keeps giving.
Psyren;12769302 posted:And yet, top or even middling biologists can understand all the rigors of the physical body just as well as any athlete, while the athlete cannot say the same about biology. Who develops all the proteins, nutrition, steroidal compounds, even the gear and exercise equipment they need to excel?
That's right - the guys in the lab coats do. And the system captures that, just with magical equipment instead of Gatorade, Bowflex and Adidas.
Hordes upon hordes of them were killed. This statement makes no sense to me.
The ones that survived did so through strategy and tactics (typically, developed by the cooler/smarter heads among them rather than the majority), not through sheer brawn.
"Limitations of the body" is the operative term here. Getting really mad can only take one so far. Not needing magic's assistance to go beyond that barrier makes no sense. Call the drugs "magic" if that makes the concept more palatable - the point is that the human body has limits that ingenuity does not, even without the building blocks of reality being a few words away.
Not 15 levels - 15 years. And the system already accounts for that, it just puts them in the background, in the starting age metric, so as not to bog down play with minutiae.
"High" is relative. A high level of skill at hitting someone with a pointy stick and a high level of skill at rewriting reality are orders of magnitude apart.
I reject the notion that all Fighter 1s have that level of skill - or even the potential for that level of skill - out of the gate.
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Feb 24, 2012 20:34
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- Caphi
- Jan 6, 2012
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INCREDIBLE
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I'm ignoring the entire rest of the thread and picking on just Psyren now. He is literally arguing on a hundreds-of-replies thread about game balance that "wizards should be able to beat up dumb jocks because versimilitude."
quote:
quote:
We're in agreement in the basic premise here, but you seem to be assuming that being able to design a piece of sporting equipment is inherently more valuable than being highly skilled at that sport. One wouldn't exist without the other, and it's not the athlete who's in jeopardy in this case.
If overall value is the question, I know which one I'd rather do without. And in a D&D setting, if the value judgment is to be made between mundane and magic, I'd apply a similar thought process.
quote:
...maybe, but that's not really what I'm getting at. It's a state where training and reflexes take over and thought becomes action without any conscious interference. It's really something to experience, and it might help you understand what some of us are talking about.
You need to reach a state where you are so intimately familiar with the situation you are in that you can make the correct response automatically, because if you have to actively think about the best course of action you're going to lose to the guy who has it down to an instinct. There is only one way to attain that level of performance.
quote:
You misunderstand my point. Of course I expect adventurers to augment themselves, but what you are talking about was a sporting event, and part of the premise of a sporting event is a level playing field for all competitors.
You were also making claims that the ability of scientists to create performing-enhancing chemicals rendered athletes obsolete, but that's simply not the case. The fact that world-class athletes are generally very close to each other in performance (pushing the limits of the human body as they are) means that the interference of varied access to chemical supplements could very easily alter the results, and the winner would not be the best athlete but the athlete with the best scientists behind him.
Note, however, that this only makes a difference when the competitors are already extremely evenly matched. One of the scientists, even making the best use of their own chemicals, would not at all be able to compete with even un-augmented athletes. This is not the same thing as Wizards, Clerics, and Druids, who are easily capable of buffing themselves into better fighters than a Fighter.
But my point was that, if D&D magic existed, we'd already be there. So it makes sense to me, that in a world suffused with it, we are viewing the logical conclusion.
As for an augmented scientist not being able to keep up with an athlete - that's not an issue of concept. If we had the technology to replace someone's physical form with that of an athlete (or augment one's physical form into that of an athlete), and then possibly computer systems to help with the reflex bit, that's what you would start to see. There is a training component to it, sure, but that's a shorter hurdle to jump once the body is in place.
I'm talking Captain America-level stuff here - someone who has no business doing physical activity of any kind, becoming a super soldier with the right tech - and his most important attributes being his mental/spiritual ones.
quote:
Level 1 Warriors are a dime a dozen, as are people who played Intramural Soccer in college. The truly excellent in their fields are no more common among athletes than among academics. Player characters are the exceptional few whatever their chosen path, and even by mid-level have become figures of legend. A level 8 Fighter isn't "pretty good at swinging a sword", he's Roland.
Can this Roland guy use magic? Because if not, I'm not sure how he can hope to keep up even if he's better than Zorro with his pointy stick.
quote:
I will agree that a fantastically smart man will probably be able to put his talents to broader use than someone who is merely fantastically dangerous. This is especially true in the real world, which has a pronounced lack of epic monsters in need of vanquishing. However, given that D&D worlds tend to be rife with beasts and villains and campaigns often revolve heavily around combat, I would like to think that an exceptional individual (read; is to the greatest human who has ever lived what the greatest human who has ever lived is to an idiot child) who has devoted their entire lives purely to the destruction of other living things would still have a place.
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As a side note, even today we have problems that are best solved by the careful application of very dangerous people. Certainly, they need very smart people to plan their missions and design their equipment along with very talented people to get them where they need to go (and possibly fix them up afterward), but do not think that trivializes the contribution or the talents of the dangerous man.
I agree, and I'm the one in favor of them working together. The game is not broken beyond playability for just that reason.
Sure the wizard CAN buff himself into becoming the dangerous man and go in solo, but doing so costs resources better spent elsewhere when there are so many other dangerous men willing to go in for free.
quote:
Posthumanism is an interesting concept, but do keep in mind that we live in a world where much of the population is still concerned with much baser matters like feeding themselves. When it becomes a reality, it will be for an incredibly small number of people.
quote:
As for the specific instance, you are again trivializing the contributions of the athlete. Yes, the Wizard made a magic item, but it's still nothing without a Fighter capable of wielding it.
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Feb 24, 2012 21:06
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ProfessorCirno posted:
3.x caused brain damage.
I'm slowly reaching the point where I wonder if 3.x literally killed D&D. It changed the game in so many ways and then pounded those changes to become permanent that the game simply cannot get past it. Even as strong as wizards were pre-3e, fighters weren't stupid useless jocks who can't do anything. But now that 3.x has come and go, I wonder if we'll ever be able to get rid of that bizarre and dumb idea.
I would say you're overstating the case. This really is just one person who has gotten a taste of 3.x's "magic can do everything, without magic you can do nothing" philosophy and twisted it to be validation of his own horrible views on how ~intellectual pursuits~ make you an inherently superior human being to dumb jocks who have no talents but dancing to amuse the master race.
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Feb 25, 2012 18:55
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The "I must know how the world really physically works in rules or there's no agency and you're a railroading coward" is a real thing though. This one paradigm means people can't live without D&D3 spells (because otherwise magic is whatever you want and it's railroading bullshit), classes (because otherwise enemies are whatever you want and it's railroading bullshit), and even HP-as-blood-points (because otherwise enemies die whenever you want and it's railroading bullshit).
I've had this conversation with multiple people, multiple times. It's a real pattern.
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Mar 8, 2012 19:18
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I am a programmer and I am almost certain that "object oriented" does not mean what he thinks it means, unless there's some kind of horribly labyrinthine connection between an entity/action paradigm and whatever the hell he's talking about.
Actually, if he really wants to liken a modular magic system to a programming style, he might be looking for "functional."
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Mar 13, 2012 17:07
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Darwinism posted:
I think one of my favorite silly 3E weapons, even above mercurial weapons, were the ~*elven*~ weapons like the courtblade. You see, because it's ~*elven*~ it's a claymore that can be used with finesse and crits like a rapier and and and
Except weapons didn't really do anything in 3.x so the main reason you used a courtblade was to Power Attack with an otherwise Finesse-based character and get the two handed bonuses. Because it's 3.x, either you're using a two handed weapon or two concealable weapons and nothing else matters.
(It's me.)
And while 4e does use [w] notation a lot, it still has reams of weapons with slightly different damage dice that aren't really that different but you have to note it down anyway. One of the best things about Legend is that it goes "Your weapon is two-handed? 2d6 damage. Want a trait on it? 1d8. Are you a rogue type? 1d4 and you can do this extra poo poo with it. Describe it however the hell you want."
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Mar 13, 2012 18:18
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Chaltab posted:
Good lord. Did Paizo run their drat numbers at all?
Actually that is completely consistent with the idea that they will let you do something almost like a low level spell with a martial class, but only at high levels, heavy investment, and the restrictions and bookwork involved is like pulling teeth.
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Mar 14, 2012 00:18
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This predates 4e, of course. Tome of Battle, in it's 3.5 way, attached reams of fluff to every maneuver (about ki and fighting spirit and stances and whatnot), and people still kicked and screamed. The disciplines that outright say they're supernatural (and are only accessible to swordsages, the explicit monk replacement) are one thing. The healtank crusader (proto-Warlord)? Nonmagical healing is unrealistic. The school of supreme discipline that lets warblades win at saves with Concentration checks? Broken. The ability to jump over a monster while cutting it? Anime.
The real gems are when people use fighter feats like Two-Weapon Fighting and Whirlwind Attack to benchmark maneuvers, though.
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Mar 15, 2012 17:53
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Not perfect timing, but close enough: from the GitP (Oots) forums, as usual.
quote:
No, I don't like the warblade, it's one of my least favorite classes in the game, and im happy we are banning ToB in the next campaign. It is mostly an attempt at balancing things by giving the melee class spells, which i not only think is the wrong way to go about it, but they have also made the warblade so obscenely powerful that it makes all other frontline almost pointless. Medium skills, max hp, spells, bonus feats, full BaB, urgh.
Being disciplined as gently caress, jumping really high, and smashing through rock with your sword: spells!
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Mar 15, 2012 21:33
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NecroMonster posted:
That is exactly how it should be. That's the first genuinely good bit of new I've heard re: 5e.
4e was loving retarded with its five different named kinds of action and chart to convert to each other. It read like a legal document, written for robots when it's presumably meant to be played by human loving beings.
Out of 4e's many, many terrible failings, its writing style was the worst.
To be perfectly honest, I think this is not a completely invalid preference. The 3.5 style for writing out powers was to mix the description with the mechanics, leading to prose like "You call on the powers of good to aid you in your fight against evil, giving you a bonus to attack rolls..." 4 really separates the two ("Your weapon rips through armor and bone [five lines of break] 2[w]+str damage and the enemy takes -2 to AC"). We can argue for a while about which one is better, clearer, easier to read, and so on, but they're two different approaches and I think it's fair to prefer either over the other.
Now, saying that one of them is "retarded" is terrible.
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Mar 15, 2012 22:56
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ProfessorCirno posted:
Pathfinder:
"When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon’s damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision-based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total."
4e:
"4[W]"
No, that's different. That's the sound of Pathfinder trying to do something different and interesting. 3.5 was better than that at its worst.
It's also the sound of Pathfinder trying to overcomplicate the issue far beyond what the it really needs in an effort to generate balance, realism, or both. Obviously, it's failing at everything. x[w] is a core part of 4e, so it has a simple notation; Pathfinder, in a series of bad decisions, is trying to ape it without understanding what it's for. It's terrible, all right, but the reason for that isn't notation.
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Mar 15, 2012 23:07
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copy posted:
Every time I read poo poo like that I go a little cross-eyed, like a defense mechanism put in place by my body to prevent me from reading whatever dumbfuck opinion will undoubtedly follow.
"Some people just have more ability than others! Why shouldn't a game of heroic fantasy demonstrate this?" Uh how about it is being demonstrated because in a game of heroic fantasy, the player characters are the somebodies who are just better than others. They're loving heroes, you rear end! How do you take the time required to think this poo poo and then type this poo poo and then post it on loving reddit or wherever-the-hell and somehow not realize "man I sure had the dumbest idea right there!"
e: not even to get into whatever this dude's bullshit ideas about how some people are better than others (and how people like him are the best of all because he made a subreddit echo chamber about how programmers are awesome).
Because for some reason (Cirno would say it's because 3e caused brain damage, of course), a lot of people have got it into their heads that PC generation rules and PC operation rules are actually how the population of the setting at large works, and likewise, that the PCs are supposed to represent a "realistic" sampling of the setting's "existing" characters.
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Mar 20, 2012 20:16
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The Giant in the Playground forums are usually surprisingly chill. But every so often, they bear fruit.
quote:
The Problem with Abstraction: Interesting Combat, Boring RP
When D&D 4e was released, it was decried as an MMORPG-gone-tabletop. Roleplaying was no longer the objective of the game, and combat had been made king. Certainly, given the changes made in comparison to previous editions and even the terminology used to describe the monsters, this was not an entirely undue accusation.
But let's not kid ourselves. D&D has never been about roleplaying. In every edition*, roleplaying has been just an optional side-show to the main attraction: combat. 4e was just a little more honest about it. Take a gander at the classes, feats, and spells listed in any Player's Handbook. Notice that most of the classes are distinctly oriented towards combat. Notice that most of the feats contribute some sort of bonus to a character's performance during a fight. Notice that most of the spells are some variation of Maim (Fireball), Protect(Diamond Skin), Heal (Cure Light Wounds), or Bypass-Problem-That-Could-Otherwise-Be-Solved-With-Some-Keen-Roleplaying-Or-Even-Just-An-Appropriate-Skill-Check (Charm Monster, Rope Trick, etc.).
Now take a look at the skills section. Take a look at a few of the skills like Gather Information, Diplomacy, Bluff, Search, etc. Most of these skills do one thing. They guarantee a given outcome, regardless of however horrendously the player handles the situation. In doing so, they also eliminate dramatic sequences from the course of gameplay. Why spend time chasing down clues throughout the city and risk the attention of the local crime lords when the partyface can just make a Gather Information check instead? Why carefully examine each element of a scene for traps when you can just make a Search check instead? Why comb the city library for information on the terrors of the night plaguing nearby villages when a bardic lore check and a flurry of Knowledge checks will suffice?
Look back to the chapter on character classes. Specifically, carefully examine the spellcasting classes: all of them use spell slots. In D&D, magic, despite the etymology of the term, is nothing more than a numbers game, usually with an application of creative logic to boot. This is only worsened by the fact that spellcasters are automatically assumed to possess any spell component of a value less than 1 gold piece. Given few limitations and no drawbacks, is it surprising that wizards are so broken at high levels?
Given so many ways to bypass roleplaying, the world's oldest roleplaying game is not a roleplaying game. It's just a game.
I can't decide if this is genuine grog or just a lookalike, but it sounds to me like he is saying any level of abstraction is anti-roleplay. Also, the old "my player just rolls dice and doesn't tell me what they mean, this system kills roleplaying" song.
Also, he left this footnote:
quote:
*I should note that I've never played anything earlier than 3e, though I have played a few retroclones. Also, the retroclones tend to avoid many of the problems listed here.
Haven't read the responses in the thread yet, but I'll keep you posted.
EDIT: Jackpot.
quote:
What really grinds me about 4e are the skill challenges. They take a scenario that is ripe for role-playing, and reduce it to a bunch of the blandest dice rolls I have ever come across. Oh, look, a magical spellplague barrier. Instead of actually working out how to get past it, are actions are just providing bonuses to dice rolls, and if you make enough rolls you get past. You are crossing the desert, and because half of you made your endurance check, nobody takes any damage. Oh, you are trying to impress these 4 people, so each player matches up with them one by one, and must make a series of skill checks to impress them. All real examples I've run into, from playing in official modules. It takes the freeform roleplaying aspects, and nails them into a flat, bland system.
In contrast, I've never seen anyone run roleplaying in 3.5 in a similar manner. you are not just rolling bluff checks to trick the guards, you are telling them a lie, then using your character's stats to see if it was convincing. The mechanics of the system should be focused on combat, but they should leave the roleplaying open ended. If you are trying to solve a problem, you should be using your skills to produce a directly linked effect. You throw a grappling hook up the wall, there is now a rope, it makes it easier to climb. You make a forged document, and it adds to your faccade when the time is right. You make the climb check, and you get up. Your partner fails, and they fall. No magical "you got 15 successes in the challenge ,you win!" BS. If you want everyone to get up the wall, then you need to figure out how to get everyone up the wall. If you are trying to avoid being noticed by guards, you need to actually avoid their notice, not "get 5 failures".
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Mar 23, 2012 19:08
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BattleCake posted:
In that second quote, does he even see what he's writing? 
To clarify, the second quote is a different person. But yeah.
Actually, it's just a lot of words that come down to a feel argument, so.
EDIT: Same thread, different person, different topic: Legend grog.
tl;dr background: in Legend, negotiations are carried out using "tokens." When you enter social combat, each side is given tokens to represent the advantages they have, and then both sides earn tokens using social skills and bid them to get the other side to do stuff. The tokens are an mechanical abstraction of mental resistance, persuasive points, and both sides' stances on the issue being argued over.
quote:The Legend system assumes that everyone in the world who you will engage socially is both someone who keeps track of favors and cares about the number of favors done for them. It makes sense for certain settings (e.g. aristocratic courts, shadowrunning) but less sense for others (e.g. entering dungeons, slaying dragons). While a Mr. Johnson is likely to care about the number of jobs you've done for him, bandit leaders, warlords and even dragons could probably care less. Under a less structured system the DM has the freedom to either count those favors or not through the granting of bonuses or automatic successes in skill checks. In Legend everyone you engage in a social challenge must operate under the given social paradigm.
Except for when people think everyone in the setting is literally tracking how many "favor points" everyone they've ever met has, just in case someone walks up to them and starts a social d-d-duel. Simulationism as applied to a negotation minigame.
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Mar 23, 2012 20:01
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How is this grog, it just looks like someone sharing his cheesy setting for PCs to go around adventuring and killing people in. Am I missing something?
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Mar 23, 2012 22:27
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quote:I ran a game once with a warlock, an artificer and a barbarian in 3.5. They were mired in a political war between powerful factions in a crazed metropolis and spent most of the game leveraging warlock abilities to set up situations they could solve with really specific spells they'd prepped into magic items, then running like hell while the barbarian fought off whatever went after them when it went wrong. Whenever they had to kill something and could plan for it, they buffed the barbarian and sent him charging at it. One time they rigged an arena fight to win a bet and send a message to a city leader (the intrigue got pretty byzantine) and managed to defeat the barbarians summoner opponent by running him out of spells the day before and interrupting his chances to sleep. That all grew organically out of the crazed combination of abilities that left them barely suitable to adventure in the conventional. They sucked at dungeon crawls and actively avoided or circumvented them whenever possible. They traveled in guarded caravans whenever they absolutely had to leave the city.
I don't get it. Other than the ambient buzz of paranoia this sounds like a pretty fun game to have played. Hell, I've been in a light system that pretty much ran like this except the abilities were generic "I can hack good" instead of "spend a full round action to create 1d3 swarms of rats" or whatever.
EDIT: I guess if you think this is a superior way to play or makes 3.x better or whatever it's kind of groggy but I don't see any problem with saying "I think playing with oddball parties and wacky schemes is awesome."
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Mar 26, 2012 19:21
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WINNERSH TRIANGLE posted:
That is so far the most reminding thing to my fellow players of how not to push me when I am the DM. I gotta go.
This is the best thing about that entire post.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:17
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Evil Mastermind posted:
Yeah, good point. What I was trying to say that there was no specific "striker" mechanic that tied to the fact that the Rogue has "Striker" as its role.
Are you saying that the rogue, ranger, sorcerer, warlock, and monk don't have an identifiable class feature that adds a bunch of damage to their attacks? (And the avenger grows one at Paragon.)
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Mar 27, 2012 17:54
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FMguru posted:
You see this most in their descriptions of the treasure rules and encounter design outlines. There's nothing that prevents 4E GMs from randomly handing out loot, or only giving players half the recommended treasure, or building an encounter that overpowers the PCs. It's just that, for the first time in the history of the game, GMs now have an explicit suggestions for calibrating treasure drops and monster groups for smooth progression and challenging-but-not-overwhelming fights.
Which is some kind of unpardonable sin.
I think it's also connected to a meme that "RAW is the way the setting operates" or rules-as-physics. What it says in the DMG is supposed to be how things get into Real dragon hordes and Real fortress caches, and when this clashes with the practical facts of abstractions and game design and such, forth come the howls of versimilitude.
Frankly, I don't think it ever bothers most of them in play. I want to believe no one would ever go "Excuse me? There just happened to be a flaming lance and we have a spear fighter? That's totally unrealistic!" when they were actually adventuring. It's just a buzzword.
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Mar 27, 2012 18:17
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"But if you have a magicless character he should not be able to do anything you or I could not do."
I feel better, that in my darkest days I never considered myself equal to a fighter.
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Mar 27, 2012 22:26
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ProfessorCirno posted:
I've lost count of how many times I've seen the argument of "Fighters get high HP, access to better armor, high attack bonuses, AND they can use any weapon. Only thing wizards can use is spells."
Realizing what spellcasting means just doesn't happen for some people. Or they just assume that wizards will run out after the first encounter. It's a major paradigm shift when you suddenly grasp that 3.x spellcasting is big.
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Mar 27, 2012 23:37
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OtspIII posted:
Exactly. Spells make up for it so it's not noticeable in play, but the basic idea of letting huge BAB gaps exist in characters of the same level is super dumb.
The intended counterweight was probably touch AC vs. regular AC, but gently caress it, attack-vs-AC scaling in 3.x is messed up.
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Mar 28, 2012 00:22
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Quality_Guaranteed posted:
Going back to the fantasy genre and how it's "moved on", can someone explain exactly how it's moved on? I mean, apart from Harry Potter, most fantasy fiction is still pretty much "1300s Land + Magic". And aren't Tolkien and Lovecraft pretty much as popular as they've ever been? God knows internet nerds (even young ones) never shut up about Cthulhu.
Just checking, this is a quote from something, right?
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Mar 28, 2012 23:38
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Rasamune posted:
there's other things that start crossing the line. Can I have ice cream?
The steward of the ice cream decides when its ice cream time. That's the point of them managing that. You'll get ice cream when it's time for it.
...what?
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Mar 29, 2012 00:14
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BattleCake posted:
Ah ok, that makes sense. So more personalized spells I suppose?
Also is this why people say pre-4e wizards are like programmers?
No D&D has a really good custom-magic system, really. The magic in 3.x and 4.x is still "pick an effect you like from this list, you might be able to reskin it." There are systems out there where you can construct effects freeform (Mage) or design your spells and then learn them (Ars Magica, I'm sure several hero systems?) but I can't say anything about their balance.
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Apr 2, 2012 17:30
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Rasamune posted:The obvious answer, of course, is to pop Fido with a crossbow bolt as the opening salvo of the approach-and-assault. If the party feels hard done by, the answer is that they're not guaranteed a powerful, strong and unkillable benefit merely because they like it a whole lot, any more than a spiffy magical item would be unstealable and unbreakable just because they like it a whole lot.
What do you even say to this?
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Apr 2, 2012 17:50
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Apr 26, 2024 21:46
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quote:
thats easy to fix in the game on many levels. falling into lava.. you die. its like a video game cut-scene where you fall off the clif in certain places, you just cant climb back up.
none of this Vader poo poo...you fell into lava, you died, unless you had magical protection.
then you can still come back to life and continue playing that character if you want to. (reincarnate+wish/polymorph)
A certain type of player just wants to know for sure when things are dead. They want NPCs to Very Definitely Die when they run out of "true HP" or when they get stuff dropped on them or (in this case) when they fall into lava, and if you bring them back as a cyborg or say they never found the body, you're cheating and railroading and destroying player agency.
Unless, of course, you brought them back through the magic rules, because magic can do everything.
(I'm pretty sure it's a subset of the "rules describe everything that happens in the world, versimilitude!" attitude.)
By the way, I had this argument just a few days ago. We were discussing the hypothetical of a boss numbered as a "challenging" fight but with the understanding that he was "really" far more powerful than the PCs and if they "won" the fight they could hope to rout him or something. The person kept asking me, over, and over, "but what if they really do kill him?" I explained that this hypothetical took place in context and maybe they could kill him with a serious shenanigan but not through conventional combat. But I kept getting "But it's not inconceivable that they'll reduce him to 0 actual HP! That means he's really dead!"
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Apr 3, 2012 21:21
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Jan 6, 2012 02:39
