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Asimo posted:Hmm. I dunno about the no grid thing. One of the best parts of 4e was how it had a lot of powers and tactics focusing on positioning and forced movement, while still being simple about it. Abstracting it more wouldn't feel the same. Yeah, I feel the same. I always felt that the good 4E encounter areas had a character of their own and could transform the umpteenth battle against a group of orcs into something new. However, I am more than willing to keep an open mind about it if the designers can have more creative freedom that way, and I can still get tactical options that matter. I can't say the same thing about Alignment though. Like I said in the 5E thread, I am against it in all forms (core, optional, "kinda there but don't mind it"), although I bet that any player that is willing to give this system an honest try is going to have an open mind about alignments.
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# ¿ Mar 20, 2012 20:47 |
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 18:59 |
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fosborb posted:Part of the fluff. Civilization is in its 13th Age. How interweaved is the fluff to the mechanics? Are there classes or abilities that are there to reflect specific elements unique to the fluff, or I can just lift the mechanics and drop them inside Eberron, for example, with no problem?
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# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 10:45 |
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fosborb posted:The setting is Grade A. There are (at least at this point) very few Big Events in the fluff. It's more about setting up pieces for the players to interact with. Icons are the best example and where I think a lot of the innovation in the system rests. Oh man, this sounds awesome. Now if only I could convince my friends that Forgotten Realms is not really The Best Thing Ever. I didn't actually apply for testing because I didn't want to take the place of someone who will actually get to playtest the game, but I am having second thoughts now.
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# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 15:17 |
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Without getting into detail, is there a unified ability mechanic, like AWED Powers in 4E, that serves as a baseline for class balance? I keep hearing things like "monks have combos", "rogues have momentum" and even that thing in the OP about classes being ranked by complexity, and I am wondering if we end up with a system that's hard to balance. I mean, it's Rob Heinsoo we are talking about here so I have nothing to worry about, but I would really like to know how people who have had a look at the rules feel about this.
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# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 16:01 |
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But that's the argument that led to the 3E Fighter. What if I want to play a barbarian because I just read Conan, but I also like complexity? What if I want to play a wizard but I am a new player? I think we have gone over this in the 5E thread already. Edit: I hope that the reason the Barbarian does not have the "turn on complexity" switch is because it hasn't been designed yet, not because it's destined to be the low-effort class.
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# ¿ Mar 21, 2012 19:26 |
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Lemon Curdistan posted:I can understand the desire to make sure you get as much independent playtesting as possible but can someone tell them that passing up on free advertising is really dumb? They are more likely to generate some bad first impressions with the community if they release an incomplete set of the rules, rather than get free advertising. We are more than willing to cut them some slack, but there are also people who hated the game just by looking at the elevator pitch text.
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# ¿ Mar 22, 2012 14:43 |
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Mikan posted:I am enjoying this playtest. moths posted:e: I am enjoying this playtest. I am enjoying reading about people enjoying this playtest. No, seriously, I am. Edit:Yeah, this is what I am talking about. vvvvvvvvvvv Rexides fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Mar 25, 2012 |
# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 01:57 |
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And the final boss will be the Escalation Die itself. It was behind everything that happened all along!
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# ¿ Mar 25, 2012 22:39 |
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Ferrinus posted:I hope this game can somehow do away with the adventuring day entirely. If there's an official X fights before each rest standard that the game strongly herds you towards using that's better than nothing, but ideally powers, hit points, and healing are rationed out such that a day with one fight in it (or ten fights in it) doesn't particularly privilege or punish a given character. I agree with this. Trying to visualize a group of adventurers/explorers/heroes/looters and their rest patterns outside of the context of DnD, I can't imagine a reason other than "it's getting dark and we are tired" or "someone was gravely wounded, we must tend to his injuries and let him rest" for breaking pace and camping. At what point did we even get into the habit of "we need to make it part of the game design to force players to rest after X encounters"? Even 4E did it with the dailies/healing surges. Is it so terrible to imagine a group of characters storming a tomb and emerging only after they have found what they were after? What if after each encounter you get back ALL your HP and abilities, but with the trade-off that if someone drops below 0 HP, you MUST find a safe place to rest for him to recover. That way rest can tie more nicely to the narrative, as it is a response to an important event that happened, not part of a routine that the rules force you into. Of course, I understand that it's not good design to have someone wait it out for the rest of the battle if he drops below 0 without any way to recover in the same encounter, but I think there can be ways to make it more interesting than just "you lie in the ground, unconscious."
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 10:25 |
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Transient People posted:I'm not opposed to giving characters all of their abilities back after a fight (in fact, that's a pretty cool thing IMO), but not if it means that some bad die rolls can chuck you out of it outright. Haha, no gently caress that, I HATE that (death to SoD). But you are still seeing this from the DnD context where HP/Damage/Healing is balanced in a way that assumes that there is a good chance that a character will drop below 0, but there will always be a healing ability available to bring him up, and if you take that out of the equation it will come crumbling down. So you rebalance the math to make that event a more rare occurrence (more HP or bigger heals). In fact, why does "0 HP" have to mean "unconscious"? Maybe you are still up, but can't use your cool abilities and have slower movement rate. So you can still participate, but not as effectively (btw, gently caress penalties to rolls due to injuries).
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 10:56 |
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ImpactVector posted:Right. If there's no pacing mechanism in the game then you either end up with a death spiral waiting to happen or you need to keep all characters at full effectiveness all the time (like Gamma World). I don't see the problem if the only requirement for getting back to full effectiveness is making it out of the fight alive, and someone dropping bellow 0 HP is a kinda rare event.
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 17:13 |
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ImpactVector posted:I think the bolded part is arguable. The gradual reduction in resources is a mechanic intended to increase tension. It's just tough to find a balance point so that the climax of the arc coincides with when you're on the brink of collapse unless you're really strict about pacing. Which most RPGs are not. Except that rarely happens, and when it does you are more likely to fail because you ran out of resources. But that Tilt mechanic sounds sweet. Sort of like the Escalation Die, but on a larger scale.
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# ¿ Mar 28, 2012 18:16 |
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fosborb posted:I think "less interesting" is pretty unfair when you have the slayer as part of 4e. Not only are they less interesting, but the grid basically acts as a filter for the more interesting choices you have, which also bogs down play. Most of my experiences with interacting with the grid (4E and 3E) were measuring whether an enemy is withing range of my abilities, if I can reach someone with a move action, if I can get as many enemies as I can in an area effect, or if pushing an enemy will give me any tactical advantage etc, things that are not actually choices themselves, but tell you which choices are valid, while eating up precious game time. Now, I am not in the playtest for 13A (didn't even read the leaked docs), so I don't know if this is the way they implement it, but I can imagine a more abstract representation of the battlefield getting rid of all those problems. If, for example, you represent a 10x10 square room with just four segments, with creatures in a single segment considered to be in melee, leaving a segment triggers AoPs from all other creatures in the same segment, pushing effects move enemies in adjacent segments, and area effects affect a single segment, you get the same amount of choices as with a grid, but this time they are always meaningful and don't waste your time measuring distances.
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# ¿ Apr 16, 2012 19:45 |
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Hallgerd posted:Hoping the Orc Lord's origin doesn't turn out to be some 'he was an elf that we turned into an orc' bullshit. He was a grognard who rolled a Warlord.
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2012 17:59 |
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fosborb posted:Each defense is boosted by an ability score mod. AC: middle value of Con/Dex/Wis, PD: middle value of Str/Dex/Con, MD: middle value of Int/Wis/Cha. Can someone tell me how this works out in the game/character creation? I understand (I guess) that it's there to remove the temptation to max a single stat, while not gimping people who want a dump stat, but does it work out like that in the end? It seems as if it will be very possible that two defenses will end up tied to the same stat, and with the third being a value very close to that number anyway, so does it really convey that characters have strengths and weaknesses? And another thing: I am glad for the abstract battleground, because gently caress counting squares, but one thing I loved about 4E was how each battleground had a character of it's own and could shape the combat. Are there any mechanics that allow the GM to give different flavor to a battle taking place in a cramped mine shaft, and one in an open square witha raised platform in the middle?
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# ¿ May 2, 2012 17:19 |
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Yeah, but that works for a party where only one person has such a strong positive relationship with an icon and the rest just follow along. What if there are two players with such a relationship with different (or even opposing) icons? Three? Five? Of course, a good GM can make this work and have interesting result, but a good GM would not feel constrained by the rules regarding relationships in the first place. I have not read the rules so I might as well be talking out of my rear end here, but I feel that this restriction exists to prevent a party of conflicting icon relationships from overwhelming an average GM.
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# ¿ May 5, 2012 08:48 |
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moths posted:Probably the simplest fix is to eliminate the good, ambiguous, and evil verbiage entirely. Wait, is this a thing in 13A already? As a person who absolutely hates the alignment system in DnD, I would be very disappointed if the icons were categorized in that way. I don't want this to be Warhammer, I mean, we already have Warhammer anyway, but spelling it out on the rules that "this is the good guy, this is the bad guy" can't lead to anything good. You don't even have to give everyone a dark side, everything can work out as long as you are not specific about alignments. Maybe the Emperor is the most caring and goodhearted person in the world, but the vast bureaucracy required to run an empire might seem uncaring. Maybe the Gold Dragon cares so much for the continuation of the universe on such large scales, that the famine that plagues a single village seems insignificant to his agents. And the rangers of the High Druid may be attacking poachers from nearby villages, but only after warning them and only if it's absolutely necessary for the protection of the ecological balance of the area. But nothing of this can happen if you try to court DnD players with an absolute view on morality and you categorize your icons on the good/evil scale. Again, though, haven't read the rules, might be talking out of own rear end.
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# ¿ May 6, 2012 16:54 |
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No no no no, maybe (probably) it was bad wording on my part, but the "this is the good guy, this is the bad guy" comment was about the current version of 13A rules, not Warhammer.
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# ¿ May 6, 2012 18:23 |
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At first I thought that he just copied a certain WoW armor, but after having a look at that beetle I can see how two artists can arrive at the same concept.
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# ¿ Jun 10, 2012 07:55 |
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 18:59 |
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Does Combat Advantage always boil down to +2? Is there a framework where we can pick other kinds of bonuses or penalties to apply?
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# ¿ Jun 13, 2012 11:08 |