TRPG General Chat - 2014-07-21 (page 1 of 3)

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12:06 AM

np

@InbarRose It's mainly because the LGBT community gets so little acknowledgement, and a lot of flak. (e.g.: Most characters are straight and just assumed that way.) It's a bigger deal in some countries where the LGBT community has a pretty hard time. (Rather a lot of them, actually!)

So, little victories are nice and important to some people in the LGBT community.

@InbarRose But on this comment specifically: I'll remind you that racism, and sexism such as women being considered property, were still present before people started talking about it. Likewise, the LGBT community suffering abuse was still happening before people started talking about it. Not talking about an issue doesn't make it not exist, it just means people aren't recognising it as an issue and talking about it. (So, yeah, it'll go away, but only in dialog, and not in reality.)

Though, do let me know if I totally misunderstood what you were getting at there.

12:27 AM

@waxeagle Thanks, I couldn't find that for whatever reason.

2 hours later…

2:04 AM

@Adeptus Yo.

2:26 AM

hi

woo I just earned "vote down" privileges

Grats.

2:55 AM

I was going to ask an optimisation question, but ended up finding reasonable info by googling

I'm playing a Ranger in D&D 3.5e, with only the core books

I was considering taking a level in Horizon Walker, just so I can get Darkvision... but now I'm considering taking 6 levels, so I can get Dimension Door...

General rule of thumb for 3.5 builds: never use class levels to acquire what gold can approximate.

heh ok, so save up for (item) of darkvision and (item) of dimension door?

Pretty much. As I recall Horizon Walker is... kinda underwhelming in that department.

The class features are +1 attack & damage vs creatures native to the chosen environment, and +4 to a specific skill (other than underground = darkvision... and the planar environments at levels 6+)

1 hour later…

4:12 AM

Last chance for the XCrawl Kickstarter! kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/…

5:09 AM

@JonathanHobbs Got anything more specific than "weekend" in mind yet?

I can't do Sunday morning (taking dad to an appt), and usually Saturday afternoons/evenings are Geek Night IRL.

@BESW No, but should I try to nail it down for either Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon/evening?

That'd be ideal.

@blue Hi!

hello

do I know you from math or something?

Unlikely.

Just being friendly.

ah, this is just an amicable room

5:17 AM

[wave]

I could do with some advice, also... we've got this question that's the one about wizard & cleric spell casting that finally prompted the whole why-are-our-5e-questions-terrible meta topic, and then I saw the actual rules about the casting and preparation process and they're really not clear.

so I figure it's a good question to have, right? and might as well be a canon question on the topic

but then this came up - asking exactly about a portion of the process, and see the comments on that

was originally looking for arqade's chatroom but this might fit better. I know paper mario keeps track of first strikes (on a sign in mario's house), and I was wondering if 1000yr door did the same.

i'm thinking of asking a "what should we do about this spellcasting dealio, and these topics" meta Q, but i'm not sure if that's the right course of action

@blue this is about tabletop RPGs - pen and paper, dice on a table. If you want arqade's chatroom...

first go here

Yeah, Arqade would definitely be a better fit, I'm afraid.

then....

5:19 AM

ah, that kind of game, sorry to disturb

RPG.SE is more the Dungons-and-Dragons kind of place.

user image

No worries! Hope you get your answer.

@JonathanHobbs I'm inclined to leave it be.

@BESW i am kinda inclined toward the same

Can't really articulate exactly why, something about broad generic overview vs extremely specific minutia.

Also I am amused by the answer's comments once again totally ignoring 4e.

5:25 AM

@BESW which one's?

@Thunderforge Maybe. You're not the first person it's tripped up; but I think its mostly an issue of preconceptions. Honestly, the whole "spell list" thing has always been my least favorite aspect of D&D so I'm glad to see they're at least taking some steps away from Vancian magic. — Wesley Obenshain 8 hours ago

4e eschewed Vancian magic almost entirely, and 5e is stepping back TOWARD it.

Oh xD

Yeah...

Just because they haven't gone full Vance again doesn't mean it's not a movement in that direction post-4e.

Morning!

Hello

5:29 AM

Hafa.

That depends on if 4e is really d&d or not :p

@GMNoob Branded that way, at least.

Yes, it's just funny when it's to be treated as a different beast and when it's not.

[blink] I have no idea what that means, but it sounds exclusionary.

@GMNoob Not to toot my own horn, but there is No Such Thing As D&D.

Which our discussions clearly demonstrate.

5:32 AM

@Magician Aha. Ha.

Yeah... I need sleep.

D&D 4e is D&D, the same way both Basic D&D and D&D 3.5e are D&D

I've never seen an argument that 4e "isn't D&D" which didn't boil down to "It didn't have what I like about D&D."

it means that very often, when people ask questions about 4e it's preferanced with, '4e is unrelated to previous versions of dnd'. But then when a trend exists in d&d save for 4e, it's always brought as a counterpoint.

@GMNoob Those are two totally unrelated things, the first of which I'm not sure I've actually ever seen.

Asking for answers based on a particular edition of D&D isn't exactly limited to 4e questions, and is almost never actually necessary to say out loud.

And it's entirely separate from talking about trends between editions.

I've warned people in chat many times about making it sound like 4e isn't really dnd

5:38 AM

I am entirely confused by this on account of never having even seen that...

Mmm, save against breath weapon.

but then again I've been struck by inactivity here in the past few weeks

If I wasn't on the phone I'd find it for you

If you're talking about the times that Magician and I have observed the WotC blog's tendency to gloss over 4e when talking about influences on 5e, I think you've totally misunderstood the point we were making.

No, not talking about that

5:42 AM

@GMNoob If anything, this chat is moderately unusual in its ability to have conversations about 4e and 3.5 which acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of each system without having to take sides.

I'm not taking sides.

There are no sides to take

It's always brought up as a factual point that something in 4e can't be compared to things in previous editions .

Same goes for any other edition, though. They're different games with sufficiently different mechanics. Which is why I thought the question on terminology difference wasn't a good one: treat it as a brand new game, be pleasantly surprised if something's unchanged.

As for vancian, what is and isn't considered vancian has always been interesting to me.

From TV Tropes:

> 1. Magical effects are packaged into distinct spells; each spell has one fixed purpose. A spell that throws a ball of fire at an enemy just throws balls of fire, and generally cannot be "turned down" to light a cigarette, for instance.
2. Spells represent a kind of "magic-bomb" which must be prepared in advance of actual use, and each prepared spell can be used only once before needing to be prepared again. That's why it is also known as "Fire & Forget magic."
3. Magicians have a finite capacity of prepared spells which is the de facto measure of their skill and/or power as magicians. A w…

It isn't easy to talk about Thor the Norse myth without thinking about Thor the avenger now adays

5:50 AM

I've managed to be almost completely unaware of Thor the Avenger's existence.

@BESW I find this limiting, somehow.

I add the "school" concept to my personal notion of Vancian magic.

I first learned of Thor in an old DOS game called "God of Thunder". Very fun game, btw.

Have you read the dying earth series?

Those three points don't fit the magic in Vance's world very well, IMO

(The idea that spells are of particular "types" --schools, elemental subgroups, etc.)

@GMNoob No, I have not. And frankly I don't think it's necessary, any more than one has to have read Polidori's The Vampyre or the Alan Scott Green Lantern to have a solid grasp of the contemporary popular culture notions of vampires or the Green Lantern.

Useful, perhaps, but no longer the primary source for how the notions are used.

5:53 AM

The main points I got from the books is that spells have unique and funny names, they are lost because people don't know math or science very well, and they take up space in your head, which once cast in action have to be restudied

But that is why I find it so interesting what is called vancian and what isn't. Vancian magic is sci-fi in nature

Which makes it a reasonable --if maddening-- choice for a magic system whose basic requirement is that it be utterly quantifiable.

The tv tropes definition fits daily abilities

Is Vancian magic actually learn and then forget? I thought that was just discworld making fun of it, and that Vancian magic was prepare and then fire off (but still remember)

But it doesn't fit the 5e spell casting system

46

A: How does D&D Vancian magic make sense in-game?

That depends on your definition of "illogical." While I've personally never been a fan of Vancian magic due to cognitive dissonance ("It's like only being able to use the quadratic formula once on a test!"), there are in-fiction explanations for it. Spell Preparation What's important to underst...

6:00 AM

In the Vance books, the spell is prepared save for the final key word. Once the word is said you have to spend time to go over the spell again

Each spell is like a recipe, and the final word is like taking it out of the oven. Forgetting or not doesn't really seen relevant. There are only 100 known spells in the world, and at one point the main charachter finds a math book which allows him to create new spells for the first time in recorded history.

@GMNoob Oh cool. :)

@GMNoob Oh, so in that, would preparation be reciting the first extraordinary number of words, and then finishing it would be saying the final one?

Yes, but the books make it sound more ritualized. It never goes into detail though

6:16 AM

@JonathanHobbs A spell might consist of reciting words, performing gestures, creating and manipulating ritual objects, etc. You do everything needed until only the very last action (word, gesture, etc) is undone, and then you stop.

Also spells have names like, 'the excellent prismatic spray' and 'bigsbys crushing hand' but never such a mundane name like fireball . Unless I'm remembering wrong

Iskenderun's Mystic Blast

> A frequently used fourth rule is a naming convention: Possessives and variations thereof — e.g. Sumpjumper's Incendiary Surprise. In a series of spells that is often the same or slightly varied, e.g. "Bigby's X Hand" (...Grasping, Pushing, Clenched).

I think the books over reveal 10 of the 100 spells

The names add a nice touch. It makes it seem as if someone actually invented the spells and makes them seem far less pointless.

6:20 AM

Yeah, I like the names

Yeah, I like the names

Though oddly, I don't feel that way about named physics laws

generators.christopherpound.com/dyingearth.html

Yeah, I like the names

Though oddly, I don't feel that way about named physics laws

@GMNoob like Higgs Boson being named after its discoverer?

> Magical item: A grimoire of potent spells, but demonstrating in their formula a certain brute force and naiveté in the personality of the author. Each spell is titled "Bob's Spell," with no further specification, and every spell's final casting component is to shout "BOB MADE THIS!"

3

I guess fireball doesn't have a name because it's so generic... maybe you could homebrew a whole range of slightly different fireballs - Bigby's Fireball does less damage but over a greater area, where Mordenkainen's Fireball does more damage, but in a smaller area

More like the rules. Keplers law, or Einstein's releativity. Etc

Ha, where is that item from?

@GMNoob ~~I just made it up.~~ BESW MADE THAT!

6:26 AM

@Adeptus More descriptive names would be useful for distinctiveness. "Bigby's Scorching Wave", "Mordenkainen's Minuscule Hellstorm" etc.

I think I'll start calling the spell, ' the joyous ball of fire'

"Gandalf's Great Gush of Gag-inducing Gas"

I really like,Phandaal's Critique of the Chill .for protection from cold. Don't know why

I lolled when I read that in the book the first time. I was just reminded of it now from the spell generator.

Dungeon Crawl has a few of these good ones, such as the aforementioned mystic blast and "Ozocubu's Refrigeration" and "Lee's Rapid Deconstruction".

Ars Magica, the game about researching new spells, has somewhat similar naming conventions. I still remember Surprise Gift of the Pineapple which had killed my character....

6:30 AM

Ozocubu is particularly good, btw. His name appears in a few good ice spells, and manages to create a hint of his character in a game with very, very little actual lore.

@kviiri I think the Doctor used that one in Curse of Fatal Death.

MTG also used this to good effect in the earlier years

MTG also used this to good effect in the earlier years

@Magician That must be a later edition addition... when I played Ars Magica years ago, the spells were all named in Latin, from a short list of verbs (eg, create, change,...) and nouns (eg. fire, mind, body,...) so fireball would have been "creo ignem" (but, so would have a spell to light your campfire)

@Adeptus Which is why DFRPG says mages use languages they don't understand.

@Adeptus Oh, you create spells like that, but you can name the formulaic version of it however you want. Surprise Gift of Pineapple was Creo Herbam.

6:37 AM

@Magician ah ok. I don't remember the formulaic naming... either it was there & I've forgotten, or it was added to later versions (I think I played 1st or 2nd ed)

Latin naming feels too Harry Potter for me.

For the low price of 1 pawn of herbam vis (condensed magic essence), it was supposed to create a warehouse's worth of pineapples at any place (or individual) to which I had arcane connection. Why? Because I could.

2

@kviiri [feels old]

Botching severely and repeatedly on experimentation rolls, last one being 3 0's on 3 dice, resulted in a neat little crater where my lab used to be.

@Adeptus I've only played 5th, and it's firmly there, in all the example formulaic spells.

@Magician Did it smell tropical?

6:40 AM

@Magician Ah yes, the explosion of flavor.

@Magician Pineapples would have been rare & valuable at the time

@Magician sounds like you created this sort of pineapple en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mk_2_grenade

Not if someone constantly created warehouses full of them.

@kviiri Make the rainbow. Eat the rainbow.

The smell of pineapple forever permeated the covenant. And my character became some sort of pineapple Swamp Thing.

M. Agician was a normal magic researcher. Then one day, a freak pineapple accident destroyed their lab and transformed them into... the PainApple!

6:44 AM

Hah. I have a supers game to run tomorrow, I think I found my villain!

@Magician And the theme song: youtube.com/watch?v=3-PtpGBmr5E

@kviiri Nah.

You can easily re-jigger the Spongebob theme song.

PainApple, henchman of Doctor Von Bat, a vampire-themed science supervillain with an aspect of Oblivious Wombatness.

@Magician He's impervious to backstabbing!

Aww heck. One of my AW party members had to cancel...

At least there's still four of us left, should be plenty enough.

Out of the four original members, three chose "Weird"-based characters. What an odd bunch!

7:04 AM

@kviiri Four is a luxury in my group these days.

I'm still aiming to get a replacement!

For a while I had a group which fluctuated between 4 and 7, sometimes up to 10, but the last year it's been 1, sometimes 2. The last month and a half we've sometimes hit 3 or 4.

I kinda like the flexibility where an absent member is no big deal.

Indeed. We've been doing a lot of short-form games for that reason.

In my massive 4e campaign, though, the four or so most regular PCs were pretty important and their loss would be noticed.

So I developed a plot-based justification for them to randomly vanish and then reappear later.

Also, of the five people + one prospective replacement, only two (myself included) are experienced roleplayers. I'm mentally prepared for one or two of them not liking it enough to continue.

7:08 AM

I'm in one game with 8 players (though often a couple can't make it), and running one with 4

We tend to just hand-wave absences jokingly.

If someone didn't show up, his PC would basically no-clip through the wall or floor and fall into some place which would later become important to the plot. They'd stay there for a few seconds and then no-clip back to the party when the player returned to the game, regardless of how long the party'd been adventuring without them.

@Adeptus I have an eight-man party as well in my other ring. We've basically agreed that if the GM and five others make it on any day, it's a game day.

(This was one of the game's first indications that the Far Realm was orchestrating some Seriously Messed-Up Stuff to break reality itself.)

The 8 are long-time RPG players, but mostly new to the system (D&D 3.5), the 4 are mostly newbies (apart from my wife, who plays in both)

The good thing about a big group is, if not enough people can make it, it's still probably enough for a boardgame or something

7:11 AM

I'm usually disappointed when I go to an RPG session and it turns into miscellaneous boardgaming.

When it's just @Trogdor and I, we sometimes watch Spider-Man or Blade or something.

We find one-on-one RPGs with each other a little difficult to sustain.

The game I'm running, the players are my wife, my daughter, and another couple. So, 3 female & 1 male player. Turning the stereotype on its head! ;)

(The Blade TV show for Spike TV was awesome, and it's a terrible shame it got cancelled. The Marvel Anime version of Blade was... pretty interesting, I really liked the Asia-Pacific vampire travelogue theme.)

I'm running published adventures, and the next one has a succubus in it... poor thing is only going to have the half-orc to hit on :P

@Adeptus It took a while for one of my players to bring his girlfriend to the game, because in the past they'd found they had to do RPGs separately or their characters would compete and it'd lead to bad feelings IRL.

So they'd each found their own games to play in.

But by using systems which actively support players working together to tell stories about their characters working against each other, I've managed to create an environment where they can game together.

7:19 AM

We have a couple in one of our gaming groups. She's the more active roleplayer, while her boyfriend just hangs around and watches most of the time (if he even bothers to come).

@BESW What game were they playing that the characters were competing?

@GMNoob D&D 3.5/PF, apparently.

I think the only RPG I've played where there was that sense of competing with other PCs, was when they were all evil. (Also one of my few character deaths). Most of the time, the party works together fairly well.

How does competitive rpgs work? Who has the bigger attack bonus?

It doesn't have to mean the players are actively fighting each other, it just means they have conflicting goals.

7:22 AM

I wasn't there for any of it, but the impression I got was that in their 3.5/PF games it was hard for one character to pursue their unique goals or gain unique rewards without disrupting and impeding other characters' pursuit of their own goals and rewards.

I refer you again to Making the Tough Decisions.

I see, competing over DM and party time rather than competing for who has the better "score"?

In a stricter game-theory sense, I'd restrict the term competitive to apply to zero-sum games; games where one's victory is always an equal loss for the other.

But that could be misleading as several competitive games have components where altruism works fine.

@kviiri That's the part I wasn't understanding. I guess the DM's attention is Zero sum.

@GMNoob Yeah, in a sense - if the DM is paying more attention to Sally he's diverting that attention from someone else. But I don't think the strict definition works very well for RPG's.

@BESW I find that article interesting, mostly in that it's a view to a world I never experienced.

7:28 AM

But in general I think competitive elements in RPGs usually revolve around conflicting objectives.

3.5 is a strange game in that it operates on the basic assumption characters will work together, but allots rewards in discrete mostly-unsharable units.

@BESW Much less so than 2e

I have no experience with 2e, nor does the precedent make the notion any less strange to me.

@BESW How do you mean?

Rats, I saw a PDF that explained roleplaying to "newcomers" on RPG.SE but I can't find it anymore.

7:31 AM

In 2e, each person advanced in levels at their own rate. XP was given to each player based on that's players actions, and mostly only that player's actions. Shared xp was based on how the team decided to divy it up.

@Adeptus By default 3.5 characters advance independently of each other: XP is assigned per character, levels are gained and lost individually, loot is generally indivisible ("Who gets the sword?"), and even pooling cash into a group fund is presented as an alternative to the default assumptions.

Each member of the party was pretty much a mercenary that happened to be together for the trip.

Some classes have "do it my way" built into their mechanics, like the paladin who can be personally crippled for associating with other party members unless their players modify their behaviour to accommodate him (happily often houseruled away, but nonetheless a clear precedent).

"But I must do this, I'm chaotic neutral!"

Encounters and spells are designed on the assumption everyone's working together toward common goals, but the reward-and-punishment systems are individual rather than collective.

7:35 AM

@BESW For the most part, XP is assigned per encounter, and distributed (more or less evenly depending on everyone's levels) among those who helped defeat it. Loot items, you're right about. Loot cash, is usually divided evenly, sometimes taking the value of an item off the cash share.

And yes, often that works out okay because the party makes it work out okay, but the system itself works against it in many subtle ways.

@BESW Which other systems better promote collective gains, do you think?

@Adeptus In Fate, character advancement comes from moving forward in the story. Everyone gets the Fate equivalent of a levelup when they complete part of the story, so there's mechanical incentive to work together to do so.

(And nothing to quibble over when it comes to dividing up the advancement mechanics.)

I've always considered mechanic gains to be fairly irrelevant. I prefer advancement of story and personality to advancement of gear and stats.

@Adeptus It's interesting to compare 2e, where different classes got XP %bonus based on stats, and different classes required different amounts of XP to gain different levels, to 5e's module approach which doesn't keep track of XP at all, and players increase levels at plot points.

7:39 AM

In Apocalypse World, advancement is based on purely your own activity, relationship with other characters and special moves like sex etc.

@kviiri Unfortunately many people feel that's a false dichotomy. In order to advance the story in D&D 3.5 or 4e you have to be able to survive increasingly difficult challenges, which necessitate gear and stat advancement.

Thus mechanical gains are necessary for story gains.

@GMNoob I'm not sure about "doesn't keep track of XP", the Basic rules has a XP/levels chart

@Adeptus Yes, it's there as an option.

@BESW I wasn't intending to present it as a dichotomy at all. I just feel that part of character advancement serves a boring bookkeeping role and unnecessarily complicates the game.

I've been trying to get my DnD group to scrap XP altogether, but they're a bit too traditional for that.

@kviiri I've moved away from such games almost entirely now, so... yeah. But the D&D "tradition" tends to equate them in ways which is nearly impossible to excise.

@kviiri Heh. I did that toward the end of my 3.5 days.

In 4e I used XP as a budget mechanic for my encounter designs and little else.

7:41 AM

@GMNoob Interestingly, one of my past DMs (D&D 2e) would do that. "You beat the Big Bad, everybody go up a level!" Which probably threw out the balance from having all the classes use different XP per level...

I like how in Apocalypse World you never have to feel impotent because you're still 800 XP from the next level. All moves are level 1 - you have cool stuff at first, you'll get more cool stuff later on. No peashooter starts.

@Adeptus Rather, it's the modules that advance at plot points, not the rules themselves

@Adeptus Yes, they made it official, because from what I can tell, that is how many if not most played.

@Adeptus Mearls wrote about it here: wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140217

Also, advancement is FAST in Apocalypse World. Leveling up twice during an intense session is fairly common.

Anyway, love to continue the conversation, but I gotta run!

I had a rule of thumb that they should advance at least once a month, and I tried to match that to "downtime" points in the adventures.

@Adeptus ttfn

7:44 AM

I'm currently playing in a play by post, where we seem to level up at hte start of each week. (XP is rewarded based on how many forum posts we write) I'll be honest, it's going a bit too fast for me.

Rewarding players for activity requires a bit of trust.

But I'm all fine with it myself.

@GMNoob Yeah, I found that my players needed at least two sessions to play with their new toys before they got more.

The levelup sweet spot was every third or fourth session.

@BESW That matches my experience as well

In general, or for DnD?

For D&D 3.5 and 4e, in my case.

7:48 AM

Hmm, I can kinda see why. In DnD, leveling up is a huge deal, something you wouldn't want to do in every episode.

Fate doesn't give such substantive "new toys" in its levelup mechanics that it's as important.

In 4e, you'll get new feats and new powers and 1/2 modifier and more hitpoints... crazy amounts of new stuff each level!

@kviiri For all the RPGs I've enjoyed playing.

I think once every three sessions would be too slow for AW.

Not that advancement is a huge part of the game, though.

Gotta run get food for my dad. ttfn.

7:52 AM

For each "level up", just pick one from a small checklist with things like "+1 to hot", "get a new move" or "get a new gig and change your crew".

They're simple and small enough to be handed out every session or two.

They're also nothing worth really celebrating, unlike DnD levels that are, as I said, huge deals.

Oooh a grappler feat

time to change an answer

8:25 AM

@BESW is saturday morning OK for Cthulhu Dark?

Sounds like a great campaign. The Dark saturday morning of Cthulhu

@GMNoob Yessss. A surprisingly sunny and bright one too, possibly.

@JonathanHobbs ...yes, that should work.

Any time after.... say, 9.

@JonathanHobbs With but a single white fluffy cloud.

@GMNoob That's no cloud.

I just told a telephone scammer that they should stop calling us because nobody here is stupid enough to fall for their trick.

8:36 AM

@GMNoob the glow cloud

Does Saturday morning with Ctuhulu in a bright sunny sky, come with a black hole sun?

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(Image is from a Call of Cthulhu Card.)

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8:41 AM

@GMNoob That's not Lovecraft; it's just The Middleman.

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Bit embarrassing when asked why you are getting up.

Apparently there isn't an airraid siren in the middle of that song.

@JonathanHobbs Earlier the better, I think. Not sure how long we'll want to go...

@BESW How long did the last one take?

@JonathanHobbs Hrmmm. [thinks back] "Abominable Snowmen" probably started a bit before 3 and went 'til... between 6 and 7, maybe?

Some of these people do not even look real

8:45 AM

@JonathanHobbs The one I linked is a picture of Mancoids, aliens who masquerade as humans on Earth by pretending to have had far too much plastic surgery.

@BESW Well that sure seems like it would work

The Middleman is frankly awesome.

tv show?

A series of comic books which got a single season of TV show.

I think if aliens ever appeared, people would assume they are folks in costume

8:50 AM

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looks about right.. what is that from?

manimorphs

it is about animals who turn into people

and then they get stuck as people, and find various ways to turn back into animals

@JonathanHobbs Wat.

Not saying I wouldn't watch that, but wat.

@BESW don't you mean

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8:56 AM

deadpool makes everything better

exercise for readers: go through everything you know and love. insert deadpool into it in some capacity to try to prove he doesn't make it better. think about it for a moment. realise he makes it better.

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@BESW yessss

[source]

(Frankly I think one of the reasons Deadpool is so well-liked is that they paired him up with Cable on that character's run for godhood. That'll make even Deadpool look good by comparison.)

Well bummer, goblins are 1 on 1 with lvl 1 adventurers now

9:13 AM

@GMNoob When you compare one's HP to the other's spells?

@Metool Not sure yet. But when Comparing CR, XP cost and the Adventure build table

So... Wizards thinks a goblin is--what, a challenging but not overwhelming foe for a level 1 PC? Equally likely to kill or be killed in a vs match? Reasonable for a player to use as a PC in a level 1 party?

1 goblin is worth the amount of XP you should use for each PC in a Moderate level 1 challenge

I mean, a CR 1 creature in 3.5 was supposed to be a challenge for a party of 4 level 1 PCs (not that it usually worked out that way), while a CR 1 creature in 4e was supposed to be a challenge for one level 1 PC (which worked out slightly more often).

While an ECL 1 creature in 3.5 was a creature you could play as a level 1 character....

(Not that that worked out well often at all.)

Goblins in 5e are CR 1/4th

9:20 AM

If you want to define them that way, they're CR 1/5th.

(The 4e party is defaulted to five, not four.)

In the starter set, it's defined as a CR 1 creature is a threat that a party of 4 level 1 PCs could defeat without anyone dying. But the way the devs talk about it, it's an "uppper limit" for the size of monster when using the XP table to build encounters

4e doesn't even really use the term CR, just monster level (but I guess the concept is basically the same)

In contrast, 1 PC can take on 3 commoners as a moderate challenge

I was hoping the ratio of goblin to PC would be closer to commoner

Actually I'm not sure how to calculate the commoner

it's worth 10 xp, the 1 PC gets 50 XP

if outnumbered 2:1 you multiple XP by 1.5, 3:1 by 2, 4:1 by 2.5 etc.

@kviiri Indeed. I was sloppy in my terms.

I find it unnerving that "commoner" is being used as a standard unit of combat difficulty.

It's not

it's CR 0

9:24 AM

One PC is worth five decicommoners?

wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707

I'm not explaining something correctly

Cr 1/8th is 25 xp, Cr 1 is 200 xp, CR 3 is 700 xp

I'm using this image to figure out xp budget system. diehardgamefan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/IMG_1137.jpg

Ooh, potato.

I'm not sure if 3 commoners around 1 pc, means that each commoner counts as 20 xp each, or if it's 10+15+20

"The doppelganger has advantage on attack rolls against any creature it has surprised." I'm surprised that's actually a monster ability.

why?

9:30 AM

I was led to believe that surprise attacks was one of the things advantage was supposed to represent, but this seems to be the exception that proves that it's not the rule.

Apparently "surprise" is the new "surprise round," but as a debuff instead of a combat round and without flat-footedness.

It seems like an awkward way to do it--introducing a new condition rather than have a minor variant in the existing round mechanics--but the effect is similar.

At the end of the day it's THAC0/AC.

@Metool Ah!

"Surprise round" always got confusing at our table

"What am I allowed to do during the surprise round?" was always asked.

If someone still had doubts on D&D Next most probably being the source af a new schism, let me introduce you the first impressions of a guy in an Italian forum

I find it especially confusing because I've been told so often that 5e is more interested in deriving mechanics from the narrative than its immediate predecessors, and if anything's deriving mechanics from the narrative it's getting advantage by surprising someone.

> It looks like a pimped-up version of 4e without powers mixed with a sort of barebone 2e

9:40 AM

@BESW Someone who is surprised, loses their turn.

@GMNoob in which edition?

@Zachiel 3.x, but maybe also 4th. I don't think we ever had a surprise round at 4th when we played

Wait no, we did.

@GMNoob In 3.5 creatures which can't act in a surprise round are flat-footed (PHB1 137, "Unaware Combatants"), and in 4e creatures which can't act in a surprise round grant combat advantage (RC 191, "Surprised").

@BESW That was not the question

It was what can you do

3.5: "don't get to act"
4e: "can't take any actions"

9:49 AM

3.5e, you get an extra round called surprise round where surprised creatures don't act. Non-surprised creatures can only do a standard action during their turn.

4e, basically same thing, but it's better defined whether you can do free actions during that turn

@BESW I like Deadpool, and I have no idea who Cable is

@JonathanHobbs mm. Not saying it's the only reason he's liked, but I think without Deadpool & Cable he would've developed in a much different direction with a very different kind of position in the Marvel universe.

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