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Taciturn Tactician posted:This is basically at the core of every Murphy involving forced actions in games and every weird forced action exception in games. Setting mines and then firing arrows over them so your opponent has to charge over the mines to stop you? Good tactics. Setting mines, then picking up the enemy and dunking them onto the mines? Extremely silly and potentially immersion breaking. It's only a "trap" for your enemy if your enemy's actions contribute in any way to activating it. Actually dunking dudes into mines is  and should be done as often as possible, and if you were a real tactician you would've known that
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Aug 21, 2019 23:26
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My time in dynasty warriors has taught me that the best traps usually involve beating a couple hundred dudes up, then lighting their general on fire.
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Aug 22, 2019 00:18
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My time in Super Robot Wars has taught me that the best traps involve armies of giant robots fighting each other and also horrifying abuses of the time-space continuum.
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Aug 22, 2019 01:17
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any issues with using forced movement to trigger traps and hazards can probably be handled simply by reining in the amount of damage caused by the trap/hazard so that it's valuable enough to want to do without causing instant kills
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Aug 22, 2019 03:22
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hyphz posted:Pathfinder 2e, it turns out, has a complete mess of rules related to responding to a character or creature moving. I like how PF2E feels the need to clarify that "when you are dead, you cannot take actions" but doesn't have a consistent definition of "move" or "walk"
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Aug 22, 2019 11:52
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Omnicrom posted:My time in Super Robot Wars has taught me that the best traps involve armies of giant robots fighting each other and also horrifying abuses of the time-space continuum. The only thing in Super Robot Wars that gets abused more than the fabric of the universe is children! 
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Aug 22, 2019 13:02
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Every SRW has a bad GM moment where the party are untouchable and blowing through mook after mook and then the GM goes "and uhhh, so you're getting overwhelmed, there's too many guys" and everyone has to go "Oh no! We can't keep this up!" despite it being someone doing the hand on a child's head so they can't hit them thing.
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Aug 22, 2019 15:46
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Strom Cuzewon posted:I like how PF2E feels the need to clarify that "when you are dead, you cannot take actions" but doesn't have a consistent definition of "move" or "walk" They read the part of this thread about the RAW definition of drowning and death.
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Aug 22, 2019 17:31
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gradenko_2000 posted:any issues with using forced movement to trigger traps and hazards can probably be handled simply by reining in the amount of damage caused by the trap/hazard so that it's valuable enough to want to do without causing instant kills I mean, for intelligent foes, a visible trap that cannot be triggered by forced movement is essentially a boulder that doesn't provide cover. If it really made flavor sense to have the distinction, I think the d20 solution would not be "no forced movement", but to have a saving throw of some kind when the target is aware of the trap.
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Aug 22, 2019 17:59
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I mean the Edition That Shall Not Be Named (4e) solution was you get a saving throw to not fall into bad things on forced movement but we're not allowed to take good ideas from that system because it is unclean and this is Pathfinder.
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Aug 22, 2019 20:13
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Glagha posted:I mean the Edition That Shall Not Be Named (4e) solution was you get a saving throw to not fall into bad things on forced movement but we're not allowed to take good ideas from that system because it is unclean and this is Pathfinder.
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Aug 22, 2019 21:31
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Masiakasaurus posted:Only some things if I recall. Pushing someone over a cliff granted a save to fall prone at the edge instead, but pushing someone into the Wizard's wall of eldritch flame didn't. That led to ridiculous pingpong shenanigans where you bounced enemies in and out of zones repeatedly. Strike! had an explicit rule on only taking area damage once per round - being waved back and forth through fire isn't going to hurt you more than being held in it - which is an obvious patch-job, but effective. I feel like PF should just let things trigger on forced movement, and give the reactions where this is inappropriate an explicit exception. So AoO would trigger "when an adjacent enemy voluntarily moves away from you". Or even "you cant react to movement you cause". The current rules are messy, contradictory, and likely to be house-ruled into something else just for simplicitiy.
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Aug 22, 2019 22:49
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Strike! had an explicit rule on only taking area damage once per round - being waved back and forth through fire isn't going to hurt you more than being held in it - which is an obvious patch-job, but effective.
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Aug 25, 2019 21:52
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Flame Spiral was the big one that remained after the great nerfening, along with a couple of daily powers. But even at its most broken, 4e wasn't especially broken.
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Aug 25, 2019 22:24
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The forced movement + damage strat was good if only because it resulted in a build for 4e where two fighters juggle an enemy back and forth between them until death. It was called Knights of the Roxbury.
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Aug 25, 2019 23:37
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Glagha posted:The forced movement + damage strat was good if only because it resulted in a build for 4e where two fighters juggle an enemy back and forth between them until death. It was called Knights of the Roxbury.
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Aug 26, 2019 00:03
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Nessus posted:Sir Thomas and his ally, the Pinball Wizard Something something somatic components something something such a supple wri~ist.
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Sep 27, 2019 18:12
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In Call of Cthulhu 6th Ed, reading long, boring, difficult books causes Sanity damage:quote:Reading an occult book usually costs no Sanity, but not always—it might be lost because of dullness, complexity, length, or incomprehensibility. One of the books is The Zohar, which causes 1/1d6+1 Sanity damage if you read it. This is more than "find mangled human corpse" (1/1d4+1) and very close to "undergo severe torture" (0/1d10). Unlike severe torture, even if you pass your Sanity check, you still take damage. More importantly, The Zohar is a real book. Reading dense, difficult books on any topic should also cause Sanity damage. So in CoC you can't play a professor because anybody with a PhD is already insane.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:05
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Not The Wendigo posted:One of the books is The Zohar, which causes 1/1d6+1 Sanity damage if you read it. It's not just 6th Ed.; The Zohar is still listed as causing Sanity damage in the 7E rulebook, though the amount has been changed to 1/1D3+1. Nor is it the only real book that causes Sanity loss; there's also Frazier's The Golden Bough—which, as it happens, I've read, so welp, guess I lost some Sanity.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:24
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Jerik posted:It's not just 6th Ed.; The Zohar is still listed as causing Sanity damage in the 7E rulebook, though the amount has been changed to 1/1D3+1. Nor is it the only real book that causes Sanity loss; there's also Frazier's The Golden Bough—which, as it happens, I've read, so welp, guess I lost some Sanity. To be fair, the Golden Bough is so infuriatingly wrong and bad that I might buy that.
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Nov 16, 2019 19:55
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Not The Wendigo posted:So in CoC you can't play a professor because anybody with a PhD is already insane. i don't know what you're talking about that sounds realistic to me
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Nov 16, 2019 20:32
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Mors Rattus posted:To be fair, the Golden Bough is so infuriatingly wrong and bad that I might buy that. Heh. Fair enough. I said I'd read it; I didn't say I agreed with Frazier's theses.
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Nov 16, 2019 21:01
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Jerik posted:It's not just 6th Ed.; The Zohar is still listed as causing Sanity damage in the 7E rulebook, though the amount has been changed to 1/1D3+1. Nor is it the only real book that causes Sanity loss; there's also Frazier's The Golden Bough—which, as it happens, I've read, so welp, guess I lost some Sanity. Assume this is the secret occult appendix or something. Go full Bible Code and make the PCs get out templates and count every 16th letter.
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Nov 16, 2019 21:47
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Not The Wendigo posted:In Call of Cthulhu 6th Ed, reading long, boring, difficult books causes Sanity damage: Huh, I guess the lesson here is that you dont mess with the Zohar.
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Nov 16, 2019 22:53
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I took 1d6+1 sanity damage from that pun.
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Nov 17, 2019 03:57
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PMush Perfect posted:I took 1d6+1 sanity damage from that pun. If he was in the room he'd be taking 1d6+db physical damage from that pun, because someone would stab his rear end.
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Nov 18, 2019 09:12
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Jedit posted:If he was in the room he'd be taking 1d6+db physical damage from that pun, because someone would stab his rear end. Some-One? Please, we'd take turns.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:12
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Here's a murphy from the Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying system, which I'm currently refreshing myself on as part of a FATAL & Friends review. The game includes what amount to three different systems of conflict resolution: Combat, the classic character-scale fighting with which we're all familiar; Intrigue, which is social interaction as combat dressed up with Generally, a Unit in warfare is comprised of 100 men. These might be archers, swordsmen, mercenaries, or the like. They have a statline as with regular characters, and move and attack in similar ways. Unlike character-scale combat, there are optional rules for formations, maneuvers, and flanking, which aim to add some sort of tactical element to what otherwise would play out like two 40k Ork armies facing off. Not everyone who plays tRPGs is a wargaming fan, and there can only be one Commander for an army. Out of a party of, presumably, more than one person. Though, the system does a somewhat passable job of making sure that people who aren't Commanding the armies aren't left out. This is by giving those players a number of actions they can take to contribute to the combat. Due to the larger scale of Warfare, each player character gets five rounds worth of actions to take before the Units act on their orders.  If you're the Commander of the army, you can Renounce Command, letting someone else have a go of it. You can attach yourself to a Unit, fighting alongside them and providing support. You can also recklessly charge in at an entire unit of 100 men by yourself, if you're feeling suicidal. Rather than any of those, we're going to look at the Attack Portions of Unit action.  This lets you fight a 10-round combat against 10 enemy combatants (because nothing excites the table more than having one player spend a long combat by themselves). Make a note of the two things I've called out in particular - that this is a Lesser action, meaning you can do it twice per round (and players get five rounds of actions per turn of Warfare, meaning you can do this 10 times in total); and that each man who's slain in an Attack Portions of Unit action costs the Unit one point of health. Well, that's can't be too useful. I mean, it's 100 men - they've got to have a pretty large health pool in comparison to a character, which averages 12-18, right?  Oh. Also of note is that armour in the game makes you easier to hit, but gives you greater protection against damage (in this case, soaking 4 damage per hit). Now, let's be fair - you're still pitting a single character against 10 combatants. This could be a nasty mistake, especially given how fatal combat in the game can be. A quick summary is that, on an attack, for every 5 points (degrees of success) you roll over the target's combat defense, you increment the multiplier on your damage by 1. So if you roll 5-9 over the target number, you double your damage. This goes up to 4x at 15+. So far, so good. Let's see what the Combat Defense of the 10 individual men our brave hero will be facing is. Combat Defense is a character's Agility + Athletics + Awareness - Armor Penalty. With our example unit, that means their Combat Defense is 2 + 2 + 2 - 4 = 2. Oh. Well, that's okay, right? They're soaking 4 damage out of every hit, so that mitigates a lot... right? Meet Larry Longshot.  Source: Drawception, found on Google Images Larry is a dwarf, in the style of fan-favourite Tyrion Lannister. Unlike Tyrion, though, Larry is skilled at killing people with a bow and arrows. Very skilled, in fact. He's not some Epic-level character; Larry is decently optimised, but is almost solely a product of baseline character creation. His Marksmanship skill is 5 (an average person is Marksmanship 2), and he's invested 4 points into the Bows specialty. Bows require training to use, so you drop one of the bonus dice from being specialized (You straight-up lose one of your main ability dice if you're untrained). This means that on every shot, he's rolling 5 + 4 - 1 = 8d6, keeping the highest 5. Meaning he has no chance to not hit one of the poor saps in that Unit of infantry - who, by the way, are armed with swords and can deal no ranged damage. Not in the budget, you see. In addition, Larry has an outstanding bow, and plenty of arrows. His bow damage is based on his Agility (which is 6), and modified by his Strength (3) plus a flat 1 for the quality of his bow. So with one degree of success he's dealing 10 damage, 4 of which is soaked by the Infantrymen's armour, taking out ⅔ of one man's health per shot. Okay, that's nice and all, but they're still alive. Wait, poo poo, we forgot about the degrees-of-success fuckery that multiplies damage. Well, let's see what the average of 8d6, keeping only the highest 5 dice, looks like.  Oh. So his average roll is 22.39; let's be charitable and round down. With a 22, against a Combat Defense of 2, that means he exceeds the target by 20; firmly putting him in the 4x damage bracket. So that single shot is now dealing (6 × 4 = 24) + 4 = 28 damage per shot. Which, to be fair, is reduced by 4; in exchange, the infantryman is reduce to a smear. Is that enough? Maybe not. There are still 9 more of them, they're pissed that their friend got merked, and they're coming for Larry. Larry knows this, however, and has started pretty far away from them. For the sake of argument, we'll assume he's 20 yards away - well within range of his bow. The infantrymen can move 3.5 yards per round, and Larry can run away 3. So a net gain of 0.5 yards per round - let's give them the benefit of the doubt and call it 1. They're 20 turns' worth of movement away; this is a problem for them, as they'll all be dead in 10 rounds. Not only that, but the combat will be over - remember, this miniature combat is limited to 10 rounds. Okay, so Larry might be able to kill 9 or 10 of them, narrowly escaping death himself. That's 9-10% of the total men in the Unit, so we'd correspondingly reduce their health, right? Oh yeah. Well, that's okay, they've got plenty, right? Whoops. Looks like our little dwarf friend, if luck goes his way and he can keep his range, is able to force a unit into a Disorganized state, giving them a whopping -1 die on all of their tests. Furthermore, they won't be restored to being Organized unless given the appropriate Order (which is at a -3 due to their disorganization), and if they take any more damage they Rout. Routing units attempt to flee the field, as anyone familiar with Total War can tell you. They can be Rallied by a Commander but, again, that's an Order that would take place after all of Larry's turns. If a Routing unit takes any damage, they are Destroyed and removed from play. If Larry's luck holds true, this one little man can completely Destroy three units of 100 men each, and Disorganize another. Or, if he wants to spread the hurt around a little more, he could Rout five units - which is likely to be the majority, if not entirety, of the enemy force. At least the enemy commander can rest assured that the remainder of Larry's party probably isn't going to be doing as much damage to his forces, right?   Well, maybe not. But his men aren't going to do much, either. Althalin fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Dec 4, 2019 |
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Dec 4, 2019 17:41
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Always bring archers.
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Dec 4, 2019 19:56
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But only if they're named characters. Faceless mook archers don't really do anything.
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Dec 4, 2019 22:57
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Jabor posted:But only if they're named characters. Faceless mook archers don't really do anything. You just need more archers then.
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Dec 9, 2019 04:50
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To be fair, this example uses chumps from Flaveurtown. If it was a real elite fighting unit, like say Margueriteville Heavy Infantry, this would be a different story.
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Dec 9, 2019 14:14
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Ah yes, the Margueriteville Heavy Infantry, aka the Wasters, masters of the "Lost Shako" assault
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Dec 9, 2019 21:46
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Phy posted:Ah yes, the Margueriteville Heavy Infantry, aka the Wasters, masters of the "Lost Shako" assault Boo this man!
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Dec 10, 2019 01:57
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Phy posted:Margueriteville
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Dec 10, 2019 02:05
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Some people claim that there’s a kobold to blame.
Nessus fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Dec 20, 2019 |
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Dec 20, 2019 10:46
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But I know, it’s the dice’s fault.
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Dec 26, 2019 02:14
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I did a simpler look over the math in ASoIaF way back and ranged characters are basically mobile murder machines. The strongest creatures in the book stands little chance against a lone archer from char gen. God forbid more than one. Iirc, individual archers are better than having an actual unit of them tooXelkelvos posted:This fits best in here I realize. There's an A Song of Fire and Ice TTRPG made by Green Ronin which involve rolling pools of d6s. It touts itself as having a relatively robust social combat and warfare system in addition to regular combat and styles itself as relatively gritty. One issue is that players and NPCs follow almost all of the same rules except for the damage mitigation rules. Enemies specifically do not get to utilize these things which has some potentially unintended consequences. Xelkelvos fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 02:59
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In Pathfinder 2e, Sea Serpents and Dragon Turtles have the special ability to capsize boats. There are no other meaningful attacks on boats, and no other creatures have this ability, not even much bigger level ones. “Don’t worry, cap’n, it’s only a Kraken...”
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Jan 13, 2020 04:59
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Wizards of the Coast recently released a partnership between D&D 5e and the Legends of Runeterra Collectible Card Game, including 3 new subclasses for the Fighter, Rogue and Barbarian. The fighter subclass is the Renegade, meant to be a ranged fighter with some abilities keyed off of charisma. It's pretty neat, even if it is another Charisma-focused option in a game that frankly has a bit of an overreliance on the stat already, but there's one thing about it which is... Odd. The subclass' abilities are unlocked at level 3, with the Gunfighter Form feature. This is meant to be where you decide if you're going to focus on close-range multiattacks or long range, high-damage single-shot attacks. The problem is, the way both options are worded is missing something. Pistoleer posted:As an action on your turn, you can target a creature within 30 feet and shoot. Make a ranged attack roll against the target. You are proficient with the attack, and on a hit, the attack deals piercing damage equal to 1d6 + your Dexterity modifier. Sniper posted:As an action on your turn, you can target a creature within 120 feet and shoot. Make a ranged attack roll against the target. You are proficient with the attack, and on a hit, the attack deals piercing damage equal to 1d10 + your Dexterity modifier. You're clearly meant to read that as "shoot with a firearm you are wielding", but at no point is the player actually required to be weilding a weapon to use this action. A pistoleer who attacks by spitting watermelon seeds at high velocity or a sniper that fires a laser beam from their eyes are technically both valid options to run with this subclass. This gets even sillier when you get to the 'modifications' that can be added; with the right choices, your unarmed fighter can:
I'd applaud Wizards for their bravery in opening up this new design space for themselves if I had any reason to believe this wasn't just the result of poor proof-reading.
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Jun 13, 2020 17:44
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