There are actually very productive dice notations (MM3 changed damage expressions and averages, and the whole system is supposed to use that now), but the builder seems out of the loop.

second has a lot more variation though. More erratic an attack, first is a lot more consistent steadily deadly

@BESW I noticed a whole lot of diceless-damage. Six, nine, ten - way more common than 3.5

4d8+10 (average 28) is the 'official' expression for high-end damage on an at-will power.

@LitheOhm Minions never roll damage.

@BESW on minions, too. "A missed attack never damages a minion." Are there instances where missed attacks do deal damage?

@LitheOhm PCs have powers they can only use once per day, and they almost always have an effect on a miss.

@BESW got it. The powers that be got tired of their paladins missing on smite attacks, I bet

There are also feats and features that do similar things.

@BESW k

@LitheOhm That's the general idea, yes.

I especially like the implementation of 'roles,' for monsters. I understand it's used for PCs too?

@LitheOhm Yeah, though it's a slightly different system for PCs.

k

Monsters get soldier, skirmisher, artillery, lurker, and brute. There's the subtype (leader), and then there are indicators of power or challenge: minion, standard, elite, solo.

PCs get defender, leader, controller, and striker.

the monster controllers, at least in MM3, were relatively small in number

I like the subtypes, too

@LitheOhm Controllers are usually more complicated to run.

it is a good differentiation for relative challenge level.

In 3.5, a level 10 monster is expected to be a challenge for a party of four level 10 PCs.

yep. No matter the monster and no matter the PCs. Any DM worth his salt knows there's a case-by-case difficulty rating

In 4e, a level 10 standard monster is a challenge for one level 10 PC.

and the mechanics alone don't take it into consideration

interesting

XP is standardized now, and not dependent on level?

Four or five minions are equivalent to one standard. An elite is as challenging as two standards, and solos are equivalent to five standards.

k

@LitheOhm Yes. No more fractional per-PC maths.

oh god that's nice

So if you take your number of PCs and multiply that by the XP value of a Standard monster of their level, you get the XP budget for an encounter of their level.

k

And you're encouraged to use higher and lower level monsters, but never more than two or three levels lower and five levels higher.

what about levelling? Is it still standardized by 1k XP, 2k, 3k... or did they change that?

k

with the advent of minions it doesn't seem very necessary to go far lower to give a quick-and-easy skirmish

@LitheOhm Yup! I love me some minions.

Though I have to use them carefully or they encourage metagaming.

XP leveling no longer seems to have a mathematical progression.

that's a 3.5 tactic I like a lot. Give them easy battles to start, and build their confidence before the harder battles. Sometimes even before BBEGs.

k

I'm told this is because you can't hold a mathematical progression as intellectual property.

@BESW haha. That's interesting

though Facebook tried patenting the word "book." Not sure if they succeeded, stopped following it

@LitheOhm [face/palm]

@BESW mhm.

that's right... Now it's a part of the user agreement.

colekcolek.com/2012/04/02/facebook-patent-word-book

and more. Kind of slippery slope. dailyfinance.com/2010/08/28/legal-briefing-facebook-patent-face

"Facebook recently made headlines for going after teachers' networking site Teachbook for trademark infringement, claiming that anything "--book" and social networking infringes its mark. If it didn't enforce, said Facebook, then "--book" would become generic for social networking."

Sigh.

lol

you know I been thinking. Whats the point of immunity to magical ageing.

Ive never seen an effect that magically ages anything.

@Novian it's freakin' terrible. I've seen it here and there in 3.5

Explain.

Heck, even 4e has magic ageing.

it doesn't get undone. And everything takes physical ability score penalties. I think it had something to do with a dragon, and it made it to where the creature gained none of the benefits

Ive never seen anything that actually does it.

@Novian It's very rare.

also, even timeless creatures that were once mortal "still die when their time is up"

@Novian incredibly rare

In 4e, it's part of the Tomb of Horrors Superadventure.

except for alienists. They are stolen away by horrible entities when their time is up.

Best part? No save.

@BESW daaaamn

No attack.

No resistance need apply.

@BESW that's some bad luck.

Age 1/3 of your total life because you walked through a door.

I watched my entire party conga-line through that sucker.

@BESW haha. Door of Time à la Zelda OOT

A doorway is a doorway.

@Novian that's deep.

Thus is vulnerable to what doorways are vulnerable to.

There was a way to get rid of it, but context made you rather likely to go through again.

large and bombastic Blasts of firey doom.

(Other doorways in the room reversed their effects if you went through again. This one just stacked age debuffs.)

@Novian hehe

@BESW I dig the flavor even while being leery of the mechanics

Even a red dragon can be killed with fire if done correctly.

@LitheOhm Tomb of Horrors Superadventure is weird.

@BESW yeah. Doesn't that series date back to Gygax?

dont aim at the dragon aim at the cliff underneath stun the bastard and run.

It's a 4e module trying to retain the flavor of the most abusive of AD&D legends.

@LitheOhm Rumor has it that Gygax wrote the original Tomb of Horrors adventure as a rebuttal to accusations that he was soft on his players.

Gygax soft? nah.

@Novian indirectly, yeah. Stunning usually is a fort save, aye?

@BESW I dig it

just a little round in the middle.

Damnit! Am I going to have to stop saying interesting things again?

@LitheOhm Im sure there is a way to do it with ranged touches.

@BESW hehe. Well, I call 'em like I see 'em

@Novian your ideas intrigue me and I wish to learn more

Im nor sure it one exists but it stands to reason that a spell with a stun effect that is a ranged touch attack exists and if it doesnt needs to be made.

@Novian 3.5?

Dragons are unable to fly while stunned correct?

@Novian that is correct, but stun effects I know of allow a fort save.

yea. 4.0 might but might not since it is different.

how does reflex sound?

@Novian the monk's stunning fist, for instance

if you could find it, totally

at least there'd be a shot

well for this method it requires them to fail a reflex and a will save to be stunned

its a Psionic Power called Energy Stun.

I knew Psionics had at least one.

now I wonder if conventional magic has one.

@Novian I'm not as familiar with psionics. Never used them, only perused the material

good stuff.

mental magic.

and full of neat little things.

dndtools.eu/spells/players-handbook-ii--80/condemnation--2906

A will Save....Not bad.

Avascular Mass and Avasculate allow Fort saves to negate.

an outsider.

@BESW: sorry about earlier, lost Internet connection

dndtools.eu/spells/players-guide-to-faerun--22/…

@KRyan No problem.

@LitheOhm Psionics is a really good system; I strongly recommend it since you were interested in a Spell Point system

@KRyan aye. I haven't forgotten our earlier discussion of it

....that spell is a nasty bugger

...I really like what 4e did with psionics...

avasculate and avascular mass are two of the worst spells in 3.5

@BESW well played sir, well played.

by worst, of course, I mean over-powered

@BESW I thought that was a clever way to get psionics to work within the 4e framework

I liked that

Yeah, I'll stop looking now.

@KRyan It keeps the flavor of psionics without making them actually overpowered as a subsystem.

And really, one of the design goals of 4e is to make everyone feel like they're overpowered.

...why is it assumed that it would be overpowered?

I mean, 3.0 Psionics was brokenly **under**powered

@KRyan On my part, that's not an assumption about psionics.

and 3.5 has XPH as one of the best-designed and well-balanced books in the system, other than the Soulknife anyway

oh

I never understood Soulknifes usefulness.

ok, then I'm confused

anyway, I thought it was cool

I also thought the way they did the Wizard was interesting

It's because whenever you add a new subsystem, especially when it's a system that can allow repeat uses of higher-power features, it is likely to mesh with the existing system in unprecedented and breakable ways.

4e really doesn't have... any subsystems or overlays except psionics, which is one reason psionics is balanced: it has less to intermesh with.

And psionics replaces the encounter-power system rather than appending to it.

@KRyan Wizards are a headache in 4e but not nearly as much as they were in 3.5.

Im gonna call it a night, cya.

@Novian Ta!

@Novian later :)

oh yeah, in response to your now-starred comment about gentle information, I would comment that that is the approach I take with people who express an interest in ToB, even a skeptical one. most of my aggression is for the hostile opponents of it that haven't even read/understood it

like with @LitheOhm, we had a pretty calm discussion of ToB IIRC

@KRyan I've seen that, and I laud you for it.

@KRyan I second that.

yeah, you'd heard bad things but were willing to listen

so I just explained where I came from and I why I think so highly of it

when people have heard badly, and now assume it's awful and deride it, well...

that's when I get annoyed

But --probably because you've encountered such vitriol-- you're also very ready to read hostility and willful ignorance where there isn't any.

@KRyan gotcha lol

See above, when I mentioned "psionics" and "overpowered" in the same sentence.

perhaps

@KRyan are you familiar with Nuklear Power/8 Bit Theater?

@LitheOhm yup, I've read the whole thing

@KRyan awesome :) I've gotta say my favorite is black mage. Currently looking for a quote lol

would my guess be correct that he's yours, too?

....I'm sorry, after four years of having a player obsessed with Black Mage, I'm gonna bow out for a moment.

@BESW lol. k

@LitheOhm indeed

@KRyan hehe, awesome :D

@BESW ok, that sounds like a real pain in the ass if you mean he played like BM

@KRyan lmao. Got to agree there

He was actually a really great roleplayer once we worked out some hiccoughs.

If anything he was the anti-Black Mage at first, and it got him killed. And killed. And killed.

@BESW there wasn't a white mage char for him to hit on, was there?

@LitheOhm No.

@BESW at least there's that lol

He died helping people out of burning buildings. He died by betraying the party to the nice lady who gave him tea..

He could've written 50 Ways Being Lawful Good in a D&D Campaign Can Get You Killed.

@BESW it's funny the really simple things that fall under PCs radars

I tried to help him.

I gave him astonishingly powerful homebrew healing potions. He overdosed on them and died.

@BESW odd

...why did they even have the possibility of O/Ding?

also, I'm dubious about "astonishingly powerful" potions

That one involved three natural ones in a row and a fourth on a roll I gave him to try and get the attention of his merciful god.

potions are really bad for a lot of reasons, and healing doesn't work all that well

ew, frankly, I abhor critical failures

critical miss, sure

it doesn't work

@KRyan It was my very first campaign ever, only a few weeks in. I was terrified of killing my players.

but why does a healing potion even have a roll?

@KRyan seconded, this mechanic interests me

So I gave them potions that healed them to full after eight hours of rest.

...that's not even remotely overpowered

Well, okay, can you hold on for an hour or so? I have to run and pick up dinner for my dad.

this is 3.5?

...I should probably have checked that first

Then you can get the whole story of The First Time a PC Died in My Campaign.

actually, I'm gonna go

later all

Ta.

@BESW looking forward to it

see ya

found it!

nuklearpower.com/2001/08/06/…

heello everybody

@Zachiel Heya.

what does ta stands for?

It's a UKism, "Ta ta for now." Means "See you later," "bye," etc.

See also ta-ta, TTFN.

If you mean an actual acronym, it means everything from the Third Age of Middle-Earth to Teacher's Assistant and Tel Aviv, Israel.

have you ever seen Snatch?

I'm going to assume you mean the crime film. Yes, but it was quite some time ago.

I can't find the quote but there's a scene where cousin Avi comes from the USA and tries to get informations from this youngster

and he ends up saying something like "I thought England was the place where you speak proper English" XD

Heh.

England is a fascinating microcosm of dialect.

And I can't type.

When I went to South Carolina some people thought I was English, some claimed I had "no accent," which is impossible, and one told me she couldn't understand a word I said because my accent was too thick.

Luckily youuuu didn't goooo toooo texas

(hello to all our texan friends. there's going to be a pun on you, no real offense intended)

"Sahn, yah seem lahk a mahtee nahs boie, but Ah cain't unnersan' a werd yoo say."

XD

Living on Guam I have a lot of passing experience with people for whom English is a second, third, and fourth language.

English... is weird from a non-native-speaker's perspective.

English is not my motherlanguage, Spoken American less so. Do you care to repeat that in current english spelling?

"Son, you seem like a mighty nice boy, but I can't understand a word you say."

Both American and UK English have massive pronunciation and grammar shifts across divides of location and class, but the UK's is a lot more noticeable because it's all crammed up together.

(Case in point, "mighty nice" is perfectly proper in some places, and a sign of poor education in others.)

I'm sure there are similar effects in Italy.

oooh, that was "nice boy".

@Zachiel "Boy" can be two syllables if you try.

Boyee.

I shuddered when I heard my english teacher pronounce "major"

This... is not how I say it: howjsay.com/index.php?word=major

I say it more like "mayj-er."

And when faced with a word I don't know how to inflect, I tend to give it the Spanish accent-on-the-penultimate-syllable.

How did your teacher pronounce it?

Mea

Probably "mea:"

[blink]

ummmm.

As in, mea culpa?

ah I see. I just wrote something like "Miia" right?

yeah, "mee-uh."

like in "mea culpa", except I don't want to know how do English pronounce "mea culpa"

I think it's supposed to be "may-uh," but common usage is "mee-uh."

[leans forward, chin on hands] Do go on. This is cool.

it's mee-uh

but we're OT

...what was the topic?

I guess we're on RPG chat

mee-uh cool-pah

hm

no no no

"me" as in mad without the d

Oooh.

I'm not that good in phonetics except for See-roll-lah-lee and other faerunian deities

Unfortunately my Latinate pronunciation knowledge is limited to a little Spanish class and some Renaissance art study.

@Zachiel This chat... ranges. So long as we calm down if someone else wants to talk RPG, and we aren't talking anything too controversial, the Topic Police usually look the other way.

Besides, as you just pointed out, pronunciation can be relevant!

All comes to RPG sooner or later

I still have to choose what to do of this character ç.ç

Alas!

Wish there was more I could for ya.

@JonathanHobbs Heya.

Whoops, thought he had just signed in. Weird.

it.forvo.com/word/mea_culpa the spanish one is quite good.

Very nice.

An actor friend of mine once pointed out accent.gmu.edu

Which isn't good for pronouncing exact words and phrases, but gives a good general idea of different accents.

Italian has a quite flat pronounciation and since Latin is spoken no more (and Rome is in Italy) latin locutions are usually pronuonced "the Italian way". With differences between ecclesiastic latin (vicissim is pronounced vee-chees-sim and accademic latin, which has harsher sounds (vicissim is pronounced we-kiss-him)

@Zachiel I've heard... Renaissance art study Italian and Church Latin.

I'm reasonably sure the former was pretty accurate, as my professor is fluent and has lived in Italian cities off and on his entire life.

Church latin is the most used, but I guess it depends on your school's professors

You type English very well, by the way. I don't mean to sound patronizing; my mother teaches composition to students for whom English is not their mother tongue.

You handle yourself more confidently in English than many for whom it is the only language they know.