TRPG General Chat

BESW

12:00 AM

@Miniman Well, what's broke?

Shalvenay

@BESW -- the stock Truenamer :P

BESW

Do you mean that the class is written to be so self-contradictory that it's literally impossible to figure out how it plays?

Shalvenay

@BESW -- more like it's written so sloppily it simply doesn't function in practice

Miniman

@BESW I guess "does not function at all" is probably the best I can come up with.

I know what I mean but I don't know how to explain it :(

BESW

"Does not function as intended" runs up against intentional fallacies, but more important--it usually manifests, practically speaking, as imbalance.

Either the feature is broken so that it fails to be effective compared to similar features, or so that it is significantly more effective than similar features. Either way can "break the game."

Shalvenay

12:04 AM

@BESW -- the level of sloppiness in the stock truenamer is astounding

BESW

@AnubianNoob You might also find it useful to read guides on deliberately creating group dynamics for certain purposes. I find Nightmares of Mine to be useful far beyond its horror speciality.

Miniman

@Shalvenay In any case, the perception about non-PHB books starts with the idea that the most overpowered combos are achieved by combining options from a bunch of different splatbooks.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/41343/…

Miniman

Therefore, the more splatbooks are allowed, the more likely a player is to come up with an overpowered combo.

BESW

@Shalvenay ...I'm confused. Why do you keep telling me about the truenamer?

Miniman

12:07 AM

(Which is still true-ish.)

Shalvenay

@BESW -- because its the example that comes to mind of "this thing is nonfunctional"

BESW

@Shalvenay When I asked "what's broke?" I was asking what it means to be broken.

Miniman

Then that turns into the idea that splatbooks are bad and shouldn't be allowed, which is entirely un-true but a natural progression.

BESW

I still have friends who believe the Tome of Battle fundamentally disrupts 3.5 balance.

Miniman

@BESW Well, it does.

Shalvenay

12:10 AM

@BESW -- "does not do anything better than any other class, even after maxed-out optimization effort"

Miniman

3.5's balance is that magic is vastly more powerful than lack of magic.

ToB makes that slightly less true, disrupting the balance.

(Admittedly, not by much.)

BESW

@Miniman Yeah, but when they say "disrupt" they don't mean "makes non-casters moderately viable alongside casters."

Shalvenay

I'd say Tome of Battle fundamentally disrupts the 3.5 balance equation for the better :)

BESW

They mean "Makes non-casters more powerful than clerics."

Shalvenay

@BESW -- WTF?!

I have a very hard time imagining how a non-caster could be more powerful than a cleric

BESW

12:12 AM

@Shalvenay I have never been able to have a proper discussion about it with them, because they find my challenge utterly un-entertainable.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- have they seen a fully charopt'ed cleric before?

BESW

They aren't really high-power optimisers.

Put it this way: I was once in a campaign with them where a monk was the most powerful PC.

Shalvenay

I'd lead the challenge with showing them a fully charopt'ed cleric then

and then asking them to match that with anything from Tome of Battle

BESW

That wouldn't work. "You're talking about a special edge case that's been specifically made for the argument; it doesn't make the general case any less true."

Miniman

@Shalvenay Ah, but that just shows you're better at char-op than them.

From their point of view, you might be perfectly capable of making a better ToB character using your black magic.

Shalvenay

12:15 AM

@BESW -- I wish my high-power 3.5e game didn't get shuttered because of lack of DM time to manage the homebrew campaign he was running

(I have what looks to be the makings of a well-optimized druid in that game)

BESW

Here's the thing: objective evaluations of a feature's potential power in 3.5 are largely irrelevant to the vast majority of actual games.

An objective measurement must make assumptions which we can guarantee will be untrue in most games.

A GM's choice of the sorts of monsters he fields, and the tactics they use, can drastically change the practical power of a feature.

Shalvenay

yeah, true -- PunPun was never meant to be a playable character :P

Anubian Noob

Whaaaaat? PunPun is 100% within the rules

Most definitely a playable character!

BESW

A player's personal charisma and the GM's susceptibility to it can totally change a feature's usefulness too--not just "Diplomacy stops combat," but a player who can convince a GM to use rules in unintended contexts or misinterpret the relationship of rules with reality.

Theoretical optimisers work very hard to create a sterile objective environment that assumes a baseline play experience, but ultimately it's a spherical cow in a vacuum.

So, for example, my group that sees Tome of Battle as creating options which let physical characters outperform casters is working from an experience base where spells are used more intentionally than exploitatively.

That is, they don't spend a lot of time looking for edge cases where the spell's effects produce more benefit than seems to be intended--in fact, they often shy away from such exploits.

This means any discussion of the "full potential" of a caster is gibberish to them.

Miniman

@BESW I'd question that spellcasters require using spells exploitatively to be vastly more powerful than physical characters. Many of the most powerful spells appear to be working exactly as intended.

BESW

12:25 AM

Oh, I agree.

There's a lot more going on to why they have this experience.

But this particular bit means "look at this high-op cleric" isn't a useful rhetorical device for them.

Their experience is with casters being outperformed by non-casters on a semi-regular basis, even before the Tome of Battle.

Miniman

@BESW I completely understand - I had the same experience at the start of my D&D career. Just figured I'd point that out.

Sandwich

Man I love Swordsage though

BESW

Partly, their experience is because of this guy.

Partly it's because of the extreme work I put into encounter design to make their characters matter regardless of mechanical choices.

Partly it's because the GM I played under decided that monks were totally overpowered, and so that's how it fell out: his encounter design favoured monk gimmicks, his house rules made it easy to stack multiple stats and acquire features which shored up monk weaknesses, and any time GM fiat was required it would favour monks.

Shalvenay

LOL

BESW

He didn't do it on purpose, of course.

Shalvenay

12:31 AM

oops.

BESW

He thought monks were overpowered because his playstyle already favoured that kind of design and play before D&D 3e.

And then when he tried it, his playstyle reinforced that impression because he was the GM and the GM's playstyle defines the world.

Another example: Freedom of Movement is a level 4 spell that by epic levels everyone can have as an always-on effect from items without any effort at all. If you play in a game where only the biggest and baddest of bosses have a ring of freedom of movement, you're going to value movement-restriction options far over what a theoretical optimiser will feel is "reasonable."

A class built around grappling became pointless in the eyes of the theoretical optimiser many levels ago, while you're still running around using full attack actions to hogtie five guys in one round for your friends to coup de grace on their turns.

(Yes, I made that character, and then retired him as a threat to other players' fun.)

The Oracle

0

Q: No Enlightened badge to go with Nice Answer on first-posted accepted answer?

I got Nice Answer for How to deal with combat immediately after entering room through narrow passage more than two hours ago, but no sign of Enlightened, though I'm pretty positive it meets the qualifications: there are no undeleted answers with an earlier timestamp (deleted answers [if there wer...

Shalvenay

@BESW -- monk gimmicks as in, btw?

(sorry, I don't deal with monks much, mostly for flavor reasons)

BESW

12:50 AM

@Shalvenay The character I remember best specialised in trip cheese.

But tripping is a lot less useful against characters with high touch AC, or ranged attacks. So the monk's success was largely predicated on the GM's preference for heavy, slow, melee enemies.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- druids can be plenty good at trip cheese...

just depends on your choice of summons and wildshapes

Miniman

@Shalvenay And monks are bad at it - that's not really the point.

Shalvenay

aaah

my point was actually going to be that a druid can play the trip cheese game one day and switch out to charger stuff the next

BESW

This is about how perception changes with context: no amount of "monks are bad on paper" will ever make that player forget that his monks were awesome and outshone everyone else.

Shalvenay

yeah, he needs some contrary experiences

BESW

12:56 AM

And that means he thinks people believe "monks are bad" because they can't do monks like he can.

Because his experience is true. It is, it really is. His monk made everyone else feel less effective.

Shalvenay

(a druid out-tripping his trip-cheese monk in a trip-cheese-oriented encounter would be ideal ;)

BESW

That would do nothing.

It wouldn't prove anything about monks.

It'd say that somebody can make a better druid, not that the best possible monk build is going to suffer from fatal flaws--because in his games monks aren't flawed that way. This is true, it is not a false statement.

A class's flaws are based on its actions in a context, and we label "tiers" and "power" based on assumption about the context for action. Any discussion with him about monks will be meaningless to him unless you bring it to his context rather than asking him to come to yours.

Shalvenay

hrm. so basically to sway him, you'd need a non-monk that could basically outshine a monk, in a monk-optimized campaign of his, in basically every fashion possible...

BESW

What are you trying to convince him of?

Shalvenay

that monks just don't have the same level of versatility as a top-tier class ever would...and that's I think what he doesn't grasp the most about tiers. high-tier classes aren't necessarily better than mid-tier classes at any one thing, they're more versatile than mid and low tier classes

they have more options for any given situation, IOW

BESW

1:03 AM

That seems accurate.

Now you're going to have to argue with him about how a monk doesn't have to prepare spells, so all the monk's options are available at any time.

Shalvenay

druids can blast, sit back and plink, mix it up in a melee, buff, heal a bit, spy....

and a lot of that's with wildshapes and summons

Miniman

@BESW cough Uncanny Forethought cough

BESW

And then you'll have to talk about casters vs monks in anti-magic fields, and so forth.

I gotta go. ttfn

Shalvenay

and WIldShape isn't affected by AMFs as its Su not Sp

Miniman

@BESW Cya!

Shalvenay

1:09 AM

so, dungeon design for two, with neither a full healer nor a skillmonkey in the party. obviously, I'm going to have to have a very light hand on doors and traps...but what else should I look out for?

Miniman

Depends on the two, really.

With no doors or traps a dungeon becomes a series of combat encounters, so to stop that from being dull I'd normally suggest puzzles, but the two might love combat encounters and hate puzzles.

Shalvenay

well, I know my dad's more combat-oriented, but my mom would lap up classical puzzle stuff (she does crosswords and such)

doppelgreener

A dungeon can also be a place of story and exploration and discovery

Shalvenay

(as in serious crosswords. as in "you have to have the knack for where to put the black")

doppelgreener

e.g. let them come across things which teach them more about the world they're in or the challenges they're facing, connected to the immediate adventure or not. (foreshadowing future threats, for instance.) there can be soft challenges, like coming across some of the upper henchmen talking, they work out where to hide in order to listen in carefully.

Shalvenay

1:23 AM

yeah :) I think that's a good approach

doppelgreener

perhaps in this dungeon there's an alcove with a shrine to something or someone. how's the room lit? is there a natural opening to the sky above from here? (this could be something they can exploit later if they want to return.) is the shrine in the direct sunlight or the shadow? is the room sealed off, and is it lit with torches, enormous braziers, a firepit, something glowing? what's the shrine to? how's it decorated? are there tributes to it? is it something beautiful or frightening?

is it cared for or desecrated by the people here, or has it simply been left alone? (that might suggest the relationship to it of the people here)

if you've got something relevant, you can present that. this could be an opportunity to teach them that this thing even exists, even if it's been left alone, deliberately defaced, or is just being used for a towel rack.

Shalvenay

yeah

doppelgreener

that's just like, one specific thing, but there's a lot of room to play around with things like that.

BESW

3:06 AM

How to draw a cave.

9

Zachiel

7:55 AM

I would like to pinpoint D&D 4e's worst problems and create a set of houserules that prevent them, hoping my group agrees. We now have:

- Changing character at levelup is a great way to get better uncommon magic items.
- 2' minutes workday ("I still have 12 pulses, but I have no dailies!")
- They hit us on a 2, we miss them on a 16 (or sometimes higher, when they stack debuffs)
- Attacking someone that's not the fighter (who we hit on an 18)? We get dealt way more damage than we dish out! (probably because of the previous point).

I accept discussion on those points.

BESW

The last two points are just about encounter tuning, no house rules needed.

Sounds like your GM is using monsters higher level than the party. It's not strictly wrong but it's not a problem with the system either.

10

A: How can I tune encounter difficulty appropriately in D&D Essentials?

The system is designed to accomodate this ...but without the DMG it's a little tricky. The science: Basically, each enemy has an XP value. This is how much XP it's worth when it's defeated (divided among those who defeat it), but it's also useful for building encounters. Here's how you build ...

The first point is also simply down to the GM's choices: if magic items are being distributed so that a new character starts with more/better ones, that means the GM should re-evaluate how he's choosing to make magic items available to characters.

5

Q: How am I supposed to award magic items so that PCs aren't over/under-powered?

I'm a noob DM. In previous campaigns, I've only given out magic items as rewards for completing quests, but players complained that they didn't have enough control over what items they wanted to use, and often threw away or sold the magic items I did give them. So in this campaign, I've made it ...

dnd-4e magic-items

Zachiel

@BESW no no no no I'm the GM and I'm speaking from the monster's PoW. Equal level monsters.

BESW

I have no idea what you mean.

What's PoW?

Zachiel

Point of view.

BESW

Then I'm still confused. Monsters are complaining about two-minute workdays and item distribution mechanics?

Start over again, please, and give full context.

Zachiel

8:05 AM

No, 2 minutes workdays are not "we want 2 minutes workdays" it's what happens, no point of view (then the quote is explaining why, but that was actually said by a player, not even by a character. I might have been inconsistent in the first point because I changed PoW later, checking now)

BESW

Yeeeah, if you're changing point of view between bullet points that's really confusing because there's no indication of it except they make no sense.

Zachiel

Anyway ok, I could have been more clear in my statements and I hope what I explained now made it clear now

So, i was playing a battle against a solo. Level 8 solo, AC 22, other defenses 20. +13 to hit against AC, +11 against Fortitude. At one point he had -4 to hit against the fighter (the wizard debuffed him), -6 against the shaman (debuff+mark) and another -6 against the warlock. Seriously, the warlock gets concealment moving and has a feat that gives -4 to hit against him by marked enemies? -4? What were people at WotC thinking?

@BESW Unfortunatley, it's too late to edit

BESW

Okay, so the first question should be: where did you get the stats for the monster?

Monster stat guidelines changed rather drastically with the MM3.

There's really solid math for monster numbers.

Zachiel

Later they faces a room with a trap and a level 11 soldier. 27 AC. The poor guy just wanted to escape a trap but they kept pushing him back and blocking his path so he tried attacking. The mezzoloth's AoE only hit one character in 3 he had in range and that was all he did in that encounter before dying. Level 11. Against a level 8 party of 4.

BESW

It'll take me a while to dig the stat worksheets back up.

One of the big issues pre-MM3 is solos.

Took a long time for Wizards to figure out how to make them work.

Zachiel

8:14 AM

@BESW That was a handmade solo from a guy that based his math on Monster Vault. It was a horrible solo with no way to get rid of conditions, but that wasn't that big of a problem. He just got dazed a pair of times.

The author has whole pdfs with what post MM3 monsters to use instead of the regular ones so I suppose he's in line with the improvements to monster mechanics.

BESW

Let's see.

So your concern is that the party is too powerful for the monsters, right?

Zachiel

I would link you the pdf but it has unlegitimate copies of the statblocks from MV. I guess you can find it by yourself if I say I'm using the Orcus Conversion manual for H3 - Pyramid of Shadow.

@BESW Pretty much yes.

BESW

That's a common problem for solos.

@Zachiel I've used "Quickleaf's 4e DM Cheat Sheet."

Zachiel

I think I have it.

Let's see the math there

BESW

My encounters balanced much more accurately once I started using those numbers.

But if your group is stacking numerical buffs and debuffs more than mine did (mine preferred conditions which restrained movement options), you'll have to accommodate that or leave it be and reward them for their specialty.

Zachiel

8:21 AM

Base monster AC: 14+level = 22. Attack vs. AC: 5+level = 13. Looks like he used the table too.

But AC22 is nothing when the worst in the group has +17 to hit (due to the Sentinel's wolf giving CA to everyone near)

BESW

How often DO you want players to hit, then?

Tinker the numbers until you find your sweet spot, and then they'll re-tune their characters to be hitting more often again.

Zachiel

I think monsters of equal level having an equal chance to hit characters than characters have to hit them, on average, would be nice to let monster power effects actually be a part of the battle.

BESW

Then 4e may not be the right system for you.

Monsters aren't supposed to be the PCs' equals.

PCs are supposed to be able to go toe-to-toe with great hordes of them.

Zachiel

Ok, so how often should a monster hit, in your experience?

It's quite dishearthening to know they have cool powers and the players never know them unless they pass the knowledge check...

BESW

I honestly can't remember. It's been two+ years.

Zachiel

8:26 AM

I would be OK with monsters hitting more often for proportionally less damage, for instance. Hoping they won't start stacking temporary HP and damage reduction.

BESW

But I do remember the "cool powers never used" frustration, and figuring out how to mitigate it with always-on and on-miss effects.

Zachiel

(which they already sorta do)

BESW

"hitting more often for less damage each time" is exactly how MM3+ solos work.

Zachiel

I think that, in that solo fight, while they grinded through the 440 HP in 7+ turns, I only managed to push one character away thrice, and it was a minor action close burst 2 againt 3 melee characters. The ranged guys? I never even got to touch them (sticky fighter)

BESW

Mmm. The other thing about solos? It's a bad idea to take their role descriptor literally.

I'm fond of solos that spawn minions.

Zachiel

8:32 AM

Yeah. Push away melees as a minor seemed a good way to keep them at bay but that didn't really work. I guess that encounter-long zone that dropped people prone (and kept missing anyway) should have worked during the solo turn (giving CA from being prone), not on the beginning of player's turns. Especially with people whose basic attacks are better than powers.

"I stand up and I charge him."

BESW

That's another thing--a monster's basic attack should be at least roughly equivalent to a PC's at-will power.

They don't get a lot of screen time, make everything they do stand out and be something other than what everyone else can do.

Nyoze

From everything I hear about 4e, you can get some crazy insane PCs who can almost stand toe to toe with dragons and demi-gods :(

Zachiel

this one had two basic attacs. A double slam (kinda appropriate for reanimated corpses) and a weakening ray he never got to use, because the fighter was never pushed away.

BESW

@Nyoze Thing is, the best thing about 4e is that PCs can get that sort of strength and still be challenged, because monster design uses a super simple but flexible toolkit.

Nyoze

@BESW If only 4e was covered under the OGL so I could actually read it :(

BESW

8:42 AM

For example: If you've got too many melee PCs so your monster can't use ranged attacks without getting killed on the spot from opportunity attacks... give him a "close burst" attack with a target of one.

Zachiel

@Nyoze the basics are in the introductory adventure, H1 Keep on the Shadowfell, freely available somewhere on WotC's site.

BESW

Note the link to Magician's blog in the starbar. This sort of lateral monster-design thinking is exactly what it helped me with.

Tonight's dinner is potatoes and onions with microwave-steamed veggies, fried together in a sauce of ketchup, soy, ginger salabat, garlic, and honey; served on leftover brown rice.

Zachiel

9:00 AM

I'm looking for numeric fixes, not for restatting all the monsters myself. As usual.

I'm wondering what could go wrong if I added 2 to the monsters hit chance.

Nyoze

@BESW That sounds yummy :)

I wish I could cook :(

BESW

@Zachiel At the worst, the party wipes.

@Nyoze I learnt a lot from Tassajara Cooking. It's a proper cookbook rather than just a recipe book.

Nyoze

@BESW I'll keep that in mind if I ever find a copy, thanks!

The most advanced cooking I do is in the form of frozen stir-fry veggies thrown in with a bottles sauce and pre-sliced meat :\

BESW

Instead of just giving you specific soup recipes, for example, it'll teach you the sorts of things you need for thin soups, and for thick soups. So you can look at the food you have and make a soup out of it.

And, yeah, it starts with "here's how to cut carrots" and so forth.

Nyoze

Oh wow. That's what I need I think :(

BESW

9:08 AM

However, you won't get any meat guidance.

It's written by a Californian Buddhist monk.

So, for this dinner, I had leftover rice I needed to use up, and some fresh potatoes and onions. I added veggies to round it out, and I made a sauce that's a lot less spicy than I usually do because my dad's stomach is tender.

I like doing stir-fries, that's my most comfortable kind of cooking.

Sliced the onions and put them in the pan with a bit of olive oil to start while I cut the potatoes. (Frying onions makes it smell like I know what I'm doing, even if I don't know what I'm making yet, and will be welcome in almost anything I do decide to make.)

Nyoze

@BESW Friend Onions go with almost everything. Garlic as well, I think. That could just be personal taste though.

BESW

Yup.

Cubed the potato small and put it in the pan with the onions. Added about a third-cup of water, honey, and garlic powder. (I would've added fresh garlic instead, but mine went mushy.) Tossed it a little to coat the potato with the honey and then covered it on medium heat.

Nyoze

You're making me hungry :(

Miniman

Today in blog posts I would write if I wasn't too lazy to have a blog:

BESW

Then I stuck the veggie steamer in the microwave (5 minutes) and made a sauce: organic ketchup is a good base for savoury sauces, and I knew I wanted it sweet so I added more honey. Ginger salabat powder is sweet too, and is good for digestion (and has a tiny bit of pepper in it already). More garlic powder. Soy sauce for salt and body. Add some water to make it runny so it covers everything easily, and to make steam.

Miniman

9:18 AM

Why allowing a party of aarakocra is a bad idea, but allowing some aarakocra in a party with non-aarakocra is a horrible one.

BESW

Add the veggies and the sauce together, cover on medium until the potatoes yield to a gentle fork-poke and most of the liquid is gone. Meanwhile, microwave the rice in a partly-covered container with a little water in the bottom (on half power) until it's hot to the touch.

Nyoze

@Miniman I'm guessing it has very similar structure along the Drow in 3.5/PF?

BESW

(Oh, and all through the stir-fry process, occasionally use a pancake turner to scrape the bottom of the pan and stir things up. Blackened bits are good, cooked-to-the-pan is bad. Try to give everything equal time on the bottom without opening the pan so often that all the steam escapes.)

Miniman

@Nyoze No, aarakocra are a flying race.

BESW

I've had at least one party which would have just spend the whole session saying "aarakocra" in funny voices at each other.

Nyoze

9:21 AM

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to pronounce it to begin with, and why anyone would actually make a flying PC race...

Miniman

@Nyoze Having foolishly said "Yah, sure, I guess" when 2 of my 4 players asked to be one, I can tell you that it was indeed a terrible mistake.

The book specifies that DM permission is required, but it doesn't include the footnote it should telling DMs that it's a bad idea to say yes.

Nyoze

@Miniman Easy mitigation - don't rely on flying enemies to be a problem, and give the remaining members of the party some method of at-will flight to keep up?

@Miniman Then increase the CR of every encounter at +2 for remaininder of campaign :P

Miniman

@Nyoze The thing is, that's (ironically) unfair on the birdman players - they sacrificed all other racial features to get flight, so if I give it out for free it invalidates their choices.

And I could customise the campaign to challenge flying PCs (although it'd be tricky), but customising to challenge a mixed party equally is not proving simple.

Nyoze

@Miniman Are they both melee/ranged, or 1 of each?

Miniman

I love the Internet - someone wrote it for me, if not in as much detail as I'd prefer.

@Nyoze Both spellcasters.

He didn't mention the incredible amount of bookkeeping required, but that's been a primary issue, too.

Nyoze

9:29 AM

See, I instantly want to put in a melee flying enemy for them to contend with, but then you're stuck with the guys on the ground looking up and... I don't know, shouting encouragement?

Miniman

@Nyoze Yeah, it's pretty awkward. The unfairness to the guys on the ground is probably the worst part of it.

BESW

@Miniman Urrrgh yes. I've done that in 3.5.

The answer, of course, is sandworms with really long sticky tongues like frogs.

2

Nyoze

That answer is now valid for every DM problem in D&D. Ever.

BESW

For the "mixed party" problem more generally, I once created a villain who was into extreme modular body modification.

Nyoze

@BESW Please continue, good sir.

BESW

9:38 AM

It wasn't very effective at accomplishing my balance goals.

He was a gnome obsessed with magipunk cybernetics. He'd raid tombs for spare parts and forgotten relics to graft onto himself, and accidentally waken Old Things in the process.

By rights he wasn't a villain at all; he was just another adventurer with really bad luck about picking tombs of things which weren't totally dead.

Nyoze

That's an awesome character concept... I was actually about to ask how he was even a villain lol.

BESW

So it looked like he was going from place to place for the sole purpose of raising monsters to terrorise the countryside.

Nyoze

I might pillage part of that... I'm trying to find a backstory for a goblin barbarian who dual wields a gun, and trying to justify it wasn't making since in my head except he did...

BESW

And after the PCs thwarted his own plans a couple times as a byproduct of stopping the rampaging monsters, he started feeling that it was personal.

Nyoze

Ahhh

Vendetta.

BESW

9:42 AM

After that he'd go out of his way to make the party's life harder, and focus his body mods on customising himself for encounters with them.

@ZviadGabroshvili Hi!

@Nyoze By the end of the campaign he was deliberately waking an ancient beast whose creators had infused it with the blood of a demigod (and then it destroyed their entire civilisation) because he hoped the thing would know the lost art of fleshcrafting which its creators had used to make it.

There was a boss battle at the end of the campaign, but he wasn't in it.

Nyoze

So let me get this straight.

He had the brilliant idea of waking up ancient evil to learn from it?

@BESW I'm not surprised...

BESW

@Nyoze To be fair, the exact details of the civilisation, its downfall, and the godbeast abomination, were lost in time and further deliberately obscured by the efforts of the lesser fleshcrafted beings who survived the genocide of their makers.

Nyoze

Well... That's understandable I guess. At least it would of been exciting.

BESW

(If you know the lore of 3.5's Sandstorm book, this will all sound very familiar.)

trogdor

I seem to recall that

or at least something like it

BESW

9:55 AM

As well you should.

This is the little derp who released the mummified kraken on you guys.

And your monk turned into a dragon to fight the abomination godbeast.

eimyr

HIya

BESW

(Going back to the "mixed party problems," this was the campaign which had so many balance issues and ludonarrative problems that I was finally convinced to try 4e afterward.)

[wave]

What's new?

trogdor

@BESW ah ok, I thought so

for some reason I don't remember the gnome as well as it sounds like I should have

BESW

No, that's about right.

The PCs considered him a minor annoyance at best. Which is one reason he got so ticked off.

trogdor

ah ok

I only seem to barely recall him as some useless twerp

BESW

10:02 AM

That's about right.

His danger was mostly in the monsters he kept releasing.

As a threat on his own... his specialty was escape plans.

(As is appropriate for someone who keeps un-bottling horrific beasts.)

trogdor

I also remember being the least useful party member in that campaign

not that it wasn't my fault in some measure

I was playing a monk going through a prestige class while my 2 compatriots were playing,.... some interesting things

eimyr

Gentlepeople, I have a question that is totally unfit for SE format: I have encountered recently a substantial number of claims that Fate Core system (and other recent narrative ones, labeled in the conversation by the term "new wave") are a distinctly more popular in the USA than in the UK/EU and as so dismissed as "other side of the pond novelty". Do you have any similar perception or any justification for this statement?

BESW

[squint] That's a claim which only a publisher or distributor could support, and then only tenuously.

Generalised claims about RPG communities are almost impossible to back up because we're such a fractured collection of people. It's impossible to really even guess how many people play RPGs at all in a given area.

(I live on an island in the Western Pacific, where I have the impression that everyone outside my group plays only D&D editions and Pathfinder and most of them don't even know much else exists.)

eimyr

I had a similar perception in people in UK Midlands area - D&D, especially older editions, are widely played out in the open but sure, there is no saying unless you have hard data

BESW

You could ask Evil Hat--via G+ or Twitter, perhaps--about how their sales are distributed internationally.

eimyr

10:14 AM

@BESW Their rulebooks are also free to download and distribute, so that data might be indicative, but not definite - assuming they track all downloads

BESW

Right.

eimyr

What I wanted is to see if you encountered similar opinions at your relative localisations at all.

BESW

Ah. Well, we only have one Friendly Local Game Store on Guam, and its proprietor doesn't play RPGs so he only knows about the stuff he's asked to stock by his customers.

eimyr

I come from Central Europe and back there generic "New Wave" was a big thing in organised groups a couple years back - and indeed USA culture is much more influential there than British

Hence my interest in that statement.

BESW

Not only does he stock only D&D editions, but when I mentioned Fate and Fudge dice--or anything outside D&D, really--he was totally confused.

eimyr

10:16 AM

While my FLGS owner was not confused (or hid it well), he also had no idea what Fate is.

BESW

And of the players I've spoken to about RPGs locally, only one had heard of Fate before I mentioned it.

When I was in South Carolina and upper New York State a couple months ago, only two out of about 16 RPG folks had heard of Fate.

I didn't visit any stores though.

trogdor

I think the actual deal is that a lot of people just have not heard of it, and that many of those who have still have the complex I once had

eimyr

And so I assume you've never encountered such a claim.

trogdor

the one that says D&D is the only worthwhile system

BESW

I haven't heard any claims about geographic preferences for RPGs, except the obvious "stuff written in German isn't very popular outside of Germany" sort of thing.

eimyr

10:19 AM

@trogdor because App-ahem-WotC products are superior by definition

trogdor

I don't think where you live actually has as much to do with it as a more general idea that seeking out new systems is silly

BESW

I suspect, however, that board game culture may play a part in openness to different RPG systems.

Not sure though, that's pure speculation.

eimyr

@BESW how would that work?

I can't see much connection between the two? Only that hardcore RPG players tend to switch to boardgames as they age, taking their preferences with them.

BESW

Folks in a board game culture are already used to playing a fairly wide assortment of games and switching between them depending on mood.

The "D&D is Best Game" loyalty may be harder to take seriously in that paradigm.

eimyr

Got it, seems quite reasonable.

trogdor

10:23 AM

to be fair, I do still have a system that I think is the best one for what I usually want, it is Fate now

but I still play plenty of new systems semi regularly

and enjoy them

BESW

Yeah. When we wanna play horror, we've got Cthulhu Dark. When we want a quick silly no-prep improv game, that's Roll For Shoes. If we want to play slapstick evil, Great Ork Gods.

trogdor

for whatever long term type of campaign I am ever currently in, at the moment I would say I will only ever do that with Fate, at least until/if I find something else

BESW

@eimyr It might also be interesting to ask people like these folks about their geographic-trend observations.

trogdor

but for short term stuff, I have had really fun games of several different systems now

eimyr

@trogdor to me saying that Fate is your preferred system is a bit like saying that combustion is your preferred mode of transportation. Sure, it has some truth and preference, but there is no such game as DnD :)

trogdor

10:25 AM

lol

eimyr

I'm just trying to say that Fate sets mood and certain style of playing, but has no indication whatsoever on what your game is about.

BESW

Setting isn't nearly so important as tone and theme for our group, I've found.

eimyr

Agreed, but I'm talking about the theme. Fate seems to set the tone of the game (co-narration, interesting above consequential etc.) but not necessarily the theme. I've had a dungeon crawl with Fate go just as well as a sandboxy kingmaker campaign and an Alien vs Predator wrestle.

trogdor

that is what I like about Fate though

BESW

Yeah.

These days we're using Atomic Robo as our baseline for Fate mechanics.

And for other stuff I'm slowly developing my own custom blend of various iterations.

trogdor

10:32 AM

I know I can have almost any game I want as long as my group plays it in a certain way that shares narration

and I am fine with that

eimyr

Never heard of Atomic Robo, can I have a link or a one-line explanation?

BESW

Atomic Robo is a high-adventure comic book. The RPG is about Action Scientists using brains and brawn together to do amazing things and save the world in classic pulp adventure style.

Think "Indiana Jones" style archaeology, but for all the sciences.

trogdor

it also sort of assumes a setting of "in the Atomic Robo comic" but that is easily dispensed with

BESW

We made up a setting where Atomic Robo, Hellboy, the X-Files, Warehouse 13, Indiana Jones--all of them could easily be true.

trogdor

but weren't, specifically, for copyright reasons :P

BESW

10:37 AM

Our PCs have included a computer genius, two different kinds of plant monster, a talking dog social worker, a telekinetic swordsman, a cyborg dragon, and a government agent with psionic powers.

eimyr

Two different plant monsters? I have a hard time thinking of one playable plant monster.

BESW

@trogdor's PC is a scientist who wanted to become part plant.

But he's not a mad scientist, so he tested it on a plant first, and she's now his lab assistant and field partner.

trogdor

lol

BESW

He looks like Swamp Thing in a lab coat, she looks more like a walking humanoid tree.

trogdor

he is also stuck,... having assumingly amazing and awesome travels through time and space

BESW

10:40 AM

(He specialises in science and raw physicality, while she excels in social situations and combat prowess.)

eimyr

You guys playing that game together?

trogdor

we have not specifically defined what they are yet, which is half the fun really

BESW

Yup.

And Doppelgreener is the plant lady.

@Hennes Hi!

Hennes

Hi.

BESW

What's new?

Last time you were in chat, I think, you had little trouble with TPKs.

Hennes

10:44 AM

My game problems are more a lack of games played in the last year.

BESW

Aw. That can be rough.

Hennes

I think my last game was ...uh... 3 years ago ?

It started as D&D 2. 3.0 was not yet out.

Zachiel

@BESW What I'm worried is that having harder encounters will lead to resting more often (not just for dailies but for surges too - I've read Magician's blog on the matter, or was it Bankuei's?), leading to even harder encounters which I need to engineer. And it feels like cheating on my players.

BESW

@Zachiel I'll let you in on a secret: 4e encounters aren't supposed to be hard. They're supposed to be interesting.

4e is designed to tell the story of heroes who mop the floor with everything in their path.

Zachiel

@BESW They're also more of the "follow the rules" mentality, rather than "let the DM decide"

@BESW Not hard. Challenging.

I see they like it when they must apply some clever tactics to win.

BESW

10:50 AM

There ya go.

That means raw numbers aren't going to solve your problem, though.

It's about finding monsters and terrain whose abilities have synergy with each other, for example.

I once ran an encounter with a mind flayer. He was pretty wussy, really, and I didn't want to bulk him up--but I wanted him to be memorable.

One of his powers was that, as an opportunity action, he could teleport adjacent to anyone within 10 squares when they take psychic damage.

So I added a kuo-toa priest to the fight, who had an aura of 20 squares: anyone who starts their turn in the aura takes 5 psychic damage.

Suddenly the mind flayer was right there in the face of every PC, every time they started their turn.

Zachiel

I had an encounter with frozen monsters immobilizing who they hit and dealing more damage to immobilized foes - weak monsters, mind you, that only dealt decent damage that way. And then a stronger enemy that could immobilize people. But the enemies hit only once.

BESW

He'd used up his opportunity attack for the turn, so he was actually less of a threat. But he had major presence in the fight.

And note: none of that was an attack. Only people with resistance to psychic energy could avoid having a faceful of mind flayer on their turn.

trogdor

that freaking mindflayer

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