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Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos
The Demon of Snappy Comebacks You Only Think of After It's Too Late is fantastic. I assume it was just L'Esprit de L'Escalier in French.

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Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos
How does 'you can never give up a Word, ever' interact with the 4-6 Word-Forces' comment that 'Often these Words are stepping stones to higher and more responsible Words.'? Did they just forget about that? Can you have a littler word and a greater word that encompasses it simultaneously? Or does that just require the Seraphim Council/Lucifer to get involved? (I assumed at first reading that the fact that what they do is decribed as stripping Words that it was a punishment.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Libertad! posted:

Pathfinder has the spell Bull's Strength which is the main STR boosting ability, and it only grants a +4 bonus. In Pathfinder ability scores scale at a slower rate of magnitude than in old-school D&D. A 20 Strength might be phenomenal in OSR retroclones, but in Pathfinder it's very good for a 1st level fighter and rather low for a mid-level one.

So if we're to assume that this is a normal goblin quaffing this potion, his Strength would be 12, merely "above average" +1 modifier to attack and damage instead of tough enough to tear a breastplate. There's also the fact that sample objects have hit point values and hardness ratings, so the goblin would need a means of dealing a poo poo-ton of unarmed damage to rip through metal. Iron materials grant a Hardness rating of 10 (which deducts 10 points of damage from physical and most energy sources), and armor has a total hit point value equal to its bonus (+6 for breastplate) x 5.

So a goblin would need to deal at least 40 hit points of damage with his bare hands (which deal 1d2 + STR modifier for Small creatures) to tear a breastplate in half going strictly by the rules.

Oh yeah, you need at least levels in Brawler, Monk, or have the Improved Unarmed Strike feat to deal lethal damage with your bare fists, and objects ignore all nonlethal damage.

You can use the Breaking Items rule instead 'when a character tries to break or burst something with sudden force rather than by dealing damage', and I would think that trying to show off by bending a piece of metal with your bare hands probably counts in that case. You probably couldn't rip it with this rule, but bending it is intimidating too so let's try it.

Bending iron bars is a DC 24 strength check, and you get -4 on your check for being Small, so they still can't do it. They'd have to roll 24+ on 1d20-3.

Prism fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Feb 25, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Black August posted:

I'd let the goblin rip it up because that is cool and fun looking.

I probably would too, honestly, though it's been a long time since I was a DM. 'Make buffed versions of normal enemies sometimes' is actually pretty good advice, especially when it's obvious which one is the suddenly scary one! It's just... the rest of it, not so much.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Night10194 posted:

I mean we already objectively finished Witch Girls when someone made Punch Witch, the Witch which Punches.

Fixed it.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Doresh posted:

Doesn't hitting your enemy's weakness give you an extra turn?

Yeah, but it doesn't stack. Hitting a weakness makes one of your turn icons blink instead of making it vanish. If all the icons you have left are already blinking, you get nothing (besides the extra damage of the weakness hit). Also, you can lose turns by hitting an immunity/reflection/missing. It's also a core conceit of the system, something not tied to a stat, and, most importantly, SMT is a single-player game that does turns by teams rather than a group system where extra turns are making my guy more useful than your guy, or my guy is getting the spotlight longer than your guy.

Basically, not directly comparable.

Prism fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Mar 4, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

The Lord of Hats posted:

Golden Sky Stories looks like so much fun. I want to play a fox and lord my vast wealth of 435 yen in small change from my shrine over all of the other PCs :3:.

'Be impressed, as I can buy as many as two and a half candy bars!'

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

oriongates posted:


The Pathfinder is one of those life-shaped items that's theoretically useful but there's tons of much more practical ways to do things (say by drawing or carving markers). For instance, the fact that the pathfinder can only follow its scent trail on the ground means that if you have to pick it up and carry it then it'll lose that trail and become useless. And considering that you have to allow it to walk along all the way through whatever maze or trail you're trying to mark and all the way back...no mention is given as to how fast the Pathfinder can travel. Considering its basically a foot-long caterpillar I can't imagine its very quick.

Anyway, that'll be all for now. I'll finish the rest of the life-shaped later.

Sure it does. A movement rate of 6 is half as fast as a human, which was 12.

Most of these life-shaped things seem like they would be cool but just... aren't, mechanically. That makes me sad. I want freaky parasite things to be cool!

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Alien Rope Burn posted:

I just find myself wondering why every monster list feels the need to include animate severed hands. I know there have been a surprising number of b or c-grade horror films with them, but does anybody use them? Because... animate hands.

I'm pretty sure I could beat one up, is all.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Hostile V posted:

One of the new Delta powersets is "Forger". You're super good at forging. That's it.

At first I thought you meant forging as in metalworking, and I was like 'using badass armour and weapons sounds pretty good actually'.

Then it sunk in.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

FrostyPox posted:

IIRC a lot of medieval Islamic artwork depicts Muhammad in a similar fashion, either with a blank space for a face, or blacked out, and I think I've even seen a piece where his face was veiled in flames or something.

Yup. Sometimes you got both.

(The Progress of the Prophet, 16th century, Turkey)
(Siyer-i Nebi, ~1388)

Some of these may have originally had faces that were removed, but others were never made with any.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Robindaybird posted:

I like to know what creature he's riding on.

Buraq, a divine steed.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Doresh posted:

While we're at Western weapon nerdgasming, just think about what kind of funky stuff you could do with a halberd that isn't made for formation combat (aka is only around as tall as you as opposed to 2-3 times as tall). These things are like swiss army knives.

It's called a pollaxe. Haft 4-6 feet long, topped with a head that was an axe on one side and a hammer or spike on the other, plus a spike (often bladed) on the butt of the weapon. The axe head is smaller than the halberd's for superior armour-crunching power. You fight with it using some mad cross between axe and quarterstaff techniques.

It's a pretty good option.

Edit: (Art showing techniques from Le Jeu de la Hache, written early 15th century; art is from later)

Prism fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Aug 23, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Tatum Girlparts posted:

I'm the random sleeve of armor that was made before I guess the smith got bored and wandered away

Gotta show off the tats.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Traveller posted:

Epilepsy (4 points, what you get for all that Crane/Imperial interbreeding :v:, TN 15 Willpower in a tense situation or have a seizure, some people think you're communing with the kami :wtc:)

Not sure what the :wtc: is for, as historically epilepsy has been thought to have spiritual associations (in that spirits cause it - often bad spirits or even demon possession, but sometimes not) from western Europe to India. Hippocrates believed it was a purely physical condition, but that wasn't at all the common belief until, oh, the 1700s or so. It probably didn't help that there was no useful treatment for seizures until 1857, when potassium bromide was used for it - if you can't find the reason it happens and nothing works to treat it, you're more likely to conclude it might be spiritual.

I have no idea what medieval Chinese or Japanese physicians thought of it, but the association with spirits is pretty common in other places so it wouldn't surprise me at all if this was completely accurate.

Edit: And the guy who introduced potassium bromide thought that epilepsy was caused by masturbation, so it's not like they knew even then.

Prism fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Aug 28, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Mors Rattus posted:

Chinese medicine typically did not invoke possessing spirits very often, instead focusing on internal balance of energies within the patient. These were, to an extent, described as independent entities, but more in the sense of 'this is the spirit of your spleen.'

That's what I thought. I don't know how closely related to the Chinese traditional Japanese medicine was, though. Even then, 'talking to the kami' is different than 'possessed by a kami'.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

hectorgrey posted:

I recall The Riddle of Steel used this; in that while you rolled d10s, the target number for each individual die could go above 10; in which case, you'd roll, and then reroll any tens to see how many successes you actually got. This was very much for the "You're almost certainly going to fail, but it's more fun to let you try" rolls rather than anything you're seriously expected to actually succeed at.

Personally, I didn't really see much of a problem with that; for the most part, you could ignore exploding dice because they were already successes; it was only for the rare occasion where something was practically impossible that you'd actually care what the exploded dice ended up as.

I agree. If you have to have exploding dice, that's a good way to do it - it's fun, if you ever managed an 'impossible' roll, but it doesn't mess up the probability for normal uses.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Cythereal posted:

Miniature giant space hamsters (and regular giant space hamsters and carnivorous giant space hamsters) are from Spelljammer, another book that deserves a good write-up here.

I actually own the original boxed Spelljammer set (minus actual box, but I have all the contents of the Adventures in Space set). Somewhere. In a storage box.

If I can find it, maybe I'll write it up in a couple weeks.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

megane posted:

Claw & Order: Spectral Victims Unit

:golfclap:

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Bieeardo posted:

"We got you a wedding present. It's a thousand screaming kami."

"You shouldn't have. No, really, you shouldn't have."

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos
Does the 'inability to recognize other modrons' apply only to drones, or do the hierarch levels have the same issue? (And if nothing else, can Primus understand all modrons, if it is granting spells to all the hierarchs?) The hierarch judge example you used suggest that, if nothing else, the judges can recognize all the ranks below them. Also, does a promoted pentadrone get to jump to decaton, or are the drones and hierarchs created seperately?

I actually don't know much about modrons at all beyond some very little bits! So the part that you thought most people know already is appreciated.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:

In order:
1) Modrons can recognize all modrons below them, just not any above one rank. Sorry, that was unclear, the communication barrier extends only one level in both directions.
2) Primus can communicate directly to all modrons, though only the Secundi actually know what it is.
3) Yes, pentadrones become decatons.

No worries!

Ah, so while the higher ranks can't address a multi-step-lower modron directly, they recognize it and presumably can locate the chain of command they'll have to give orders to to make it happen, at least. That makes more sense.

Thanks!

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos
Did anyone F&F Continuum? I don't know anything about it, but now I kind of want to look at it. From a safe distance.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Thanks!

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Glazius posted:

Well, the Shin Megami Tensei/Persona series has been using HP to cast physical skills since at least SMT 3.

They stopped doing so, though.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Update: I couldn't finish it.

Mors, I am impressed for you actually having gotten through it.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

gradenko_2000 posted:

The phraseology Cook uses here is "a free action that can be performed once each round", which strikes me as odd because Swift Actions were already invented by then. Is this a copyright/OGL/SRD issue?

Well, this doesn't use your swift action in case you have something else to apply it to, I suppose. You only get one swift action per round, but you could do any number of free actions that can be performed once each round as long as they're all different.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

PurpleXVI posted:

A captured Pentadrone? Aren't they reasonably tough customers? I have to admit that I can't really remember Modron stats by heart, but about the toughest Tacharim we've heard mentioned so far seem to be 4th-level fighters, which is pretty tough, but chump change compared to a lot of planar creatures. Pretty impressive they managed to capture a 9th-level ranger, too, she could probably make mincemeat out of most of the encounters by herself once the players free her and give her something sharp to wield.

For that matter, what do the Modrons do if freed? Instantly make a beeline for rejoining the March? Or do they hang around and help clear out the Tacharim since they're a danger to the March?

I dug up some old stats out of curiosity; a pentadrone has 5 HD, 3 AC, attacks for 1d4+4 five times a round (they're extremely strong but unarmed) and can emit a stream of paralysis gas in a 2' wide, 5' long line once every five turns (AD&D reminder: that's 50 rounds, or a bit more often than once an hour; they're not doing it twice in a battle). They also require magic weapons to hurt and resist extreme temperatures, including fire and cold damage.

They're pretty tough, but if the group of fourth-level fighters had plate mail and a couple magic weapons between them they could probably take a single one down, especially with the yeth hounds. (I don't remember how being a magical creature interacts with 'requires a +1 weapon to hurt with weapons' other than that it does, so I'm assuming yeth hounds can in fact hurt a pentadrone.) Alternately, if any of the spellcasters knew lightning bolt, they don't resist electricity like they do fire and cold and do not have magic resistance.

They are the most intelligent of the captured modrons... with 11-12 INT. Tridrones have 8-10, duodrones have 5-7 and monodrones aren't much more intelligent than an animal with 2-4. I assume that in a big enough group this won't matter much since they'll just be taking orders down the line.

Prism fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Nov 1, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

PurpleXVI posted:

5HD, assuming Fighter Thac0 progression is already pretty good, and considering the high strength their Thac0 might've been boosted even further, and 3AC isn't anything to sneeze at either.

5 x 1d4+4 damage means between 5 and 40 points of damage in a round if they hit someone. 40 points of damage is enough to vaporize most characters, especially if you're not assuming maxed hit dice, and the paralysis gas is basically a save-or-die. For it to seem believable to me, yeah, the Yeth Hounds would have to basically paralyze the Modrons with their fear effect.

But I'm just being a nitpicky nerd because I expected the Tacharim to be preying on the smaller and weaker modrons rather than actually being a threat to someone somewhat up the hierarchy.

Their THACO is 15. I forgot to note that. (This is why I listed 'plate mail' as one of the items you should probably have.) Also, it's five attacks at 1d4+4, not one attack that is (1d4+4)x5, so some of them are likely to miss, reducing the damage.

They only get one blast of the paralysis gas and it can only reasonably hit one target because it's a line that only goes five feet, so I was mostly ignoring that, though it is pretty much guaranteed to take the single target that it affects out of the fight. It's not an easy target by any means but it's not impossible, especially if the spellcasters are involved. Also though they're immune to illusions and fear, they're not immune to blinding, being caught in a net, being pushed into a pit (well technically they resist that once since they can hover on their paralysis gas blast, but then they can't paralyze anybody), or even being physically dogpiled and grappled. They're human-sized despite their strength and despite the art making them look like they should be ten feet tall.

Honestly, the quadrone is probably actually harder to catch because they're almost as tough (4 HD), makes attacks as if it was 8 HD, tends to use bows (which it can dual-wield since it has four arms) but can do more damage than the pentadrone in melee, are never surprised, and some of them fly. But yeah, it's just nitpicky on both our parts, ha ha. It doesn't really matter: there's one there, you can rescue it. I actually like that it's not all the weakest modrons in there; these guys are actually a threat, not just scavenging lovely monodrones.

Prism fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Nov 2, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

JackMann posted:

It's about ten to twenty pages too late, but here's my fix for Beast:

Here's my fix: Put the game book down and find something else to play.

Why try to fix something with no redeeming features? Seriously, we've heard in the thread a ton of ways to 'fix' Beast but they mostly involve not playing Beast, so why not just admit that fact?

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Loxbourne posted:

Because the concept feels like it has potential. So there's a gnawing feeling that this could be a good game if only we could [insert list here] and rip out the [insert other list here].

What concept in Beast do you think is worth saving that is not also done by another game?

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Bieeardo posted:

The golem intrusions have got to be the worst. 'You don't know your own strength!' 'You don't know your own weight!' 'You are absolutely at an unimaginative rear end in a top hat's mercy not to kill a peasant with a handshake, or go through the floor at the inn!' That's the kind of thing a new DM stretching his pucker does to a player who picked a race he doesn't like.

Right?

Even if it was something like 'you know your own weight, but sometimes it gets in the way when you want to ride a horse, take a boat, or walk across an old, crumbling ruin's second story' would be better because it's the kind of thing you could reasonably expect, and it makes a challenge, not a random 'gently caress you you just squashed some guy's hand'.

Prism fucked around with this message at 18:44 on Nov 14, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Waffleman_ posted:

A preview of Slayers d20.



This is a viable character.

Is the hat required or can we sub in some kind of a staff?

Like a stick.

A fish stick.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Nessus posted:

Jethro Tull (the farm man, not the prog rock band) invented his seed drill in 1700, and there were similar designs in China before then. This plus a few innovations in how to do crop cover and the like and you'd drastically increase agricultural production in a rather sustainable way. In the near term, wealth and free time for you and your serfs; in the mid and long term, population growth.

What you want to do with your batteries is make bleach.

If you don't mind primitive seed drills and only use European dates, they were in Bologna by 1602, making it even easier to reach (though Tull's was better, especially when combined with the horse hoe, which he also designed).

Using non-European dates, they already existed then, since the Sumerians had a single-tube version and - as you note - China was using iron seed drills some time before the birth of Christ.

edit: Originally I had the Venetian patent date mentioned from the 1500s, but apparently no details of the actual mechanism survive, while a description does for Cavalina's design in 1602. Either way, you can shave a good century off, saving you some valuable skill points!

Prism fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Nov 30, 2016

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Halloween Jack posted:

At least this is well in keeping with D&D's cosmology, where Evil is a particle (or maybe a protein).

I think it's one of those wave-particle dualities. It's definitely an energy sometimes so that detect evil can pick up 'evil auras'.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Doresh posted:

Not to mention running larger battles where almost everyone had a different Speed score. I would wager that making that one static for all characters is a very popular house rule. That's certainly the first thing I would do as a GM.

What does Speed do in Champions? Number of actions?

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Kurieg posted:

It's a fat fetish RPG that makes some interesting extrapolations about how female anatomy works.

I don't think we need that in here personally. I'd like to continue to be able to read the thread on my phone while not at home.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Asimo posted:

Holy :lol: they can't even understand what this statement means for their business and how horrible the implication is. Admittedly, it's not really unique to GW since there's several other fandom-based hobbies that circled the wagon and pandered to an insular and aging fanbase instead of trying to get new customers, but still...

I think you read it wrong. He said they weren't born when the Atari ST came out: that is, they are no older than 30. (31? Around there.)

Admittedly I'd still think a better boundary for old/young is probably lower than that. And it's still kind of weird he used the Atari ST as an example of a video game system and not, say, a console. The rest of the quote is still comedy gold, but he is not indirectly calling his fanbase super old.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Wapole Languray posted:

The ST is a Brit thing. Consoles were mostly an American thing, in the UK Microcomputers were the main method of playing vidjagams.

I thought the Mega Drive/Genesis was pretty big over there too, honestly, though that's a few years later.

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Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos
Which one are Bridge Burners? I forgot.

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