TRPG General Chat - 2015-08-27 (page 1 of 3)

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12:06 AM

No, they aren't.

Unless they say so.

I dunno, I kinda like the idea of contamination on spells.

4e ruleset isn't interested in simulationism

Power Word Kill was cast on you, but your buddy was holding your hand, so he dies too.

0

Q: Does Hellish Rebuke spread through contact?

If someone casts Hellish Rebuke on someone, does anyone in contact with the target get affected also?

dungeons-and-dragons

@Ben You need a system tag on that.

12:11 AM

4e and 5e, yeah? Was HR in any other games?

@Ben The thing is, it's 2 separate questions for 4e and 5e. Answers will have to reference completely different rules.

@Miniman Now I'm thinking about hand-holding spells.

@BESW OH MY GOD.

@Pixie I've played Captain's Fancy Valentine Sweetheart

My DM did that

12:14 AM

I CAST A-HA'S HOLDING HAND!

2

@doppelgreener, @trogdor. Someone in the Amaterasu campaign needs to be able to cast A-Ha's Holding Hand.

@Miniman Edited, and while yes it's still two editions, I feel the question is more about the rule for contact, regarding this spell, rather than the system rules in general (if that makes sense)

In addition, @SevenSidedDie did mention something similar

This is two questions right now. Please pick one game you want an answer for, and if you have another question for different game, ask about that one in another post. In both cases, indicate what exactly you're reading that is causing difficulty. — SevenSidedDie ♦ 5 mins ago

@Ben Ok, it's better, but you still haven't said why you think this might be the case. You've said why you think it isn't, but not what is giving you the idea that this is possible.

@Miniman Hrrrmmm... any suggestions?

Especially confusing is why you're bringing 4e into it!

12:26 AM

@Ben Er...no? I have no idea why you think spells could potentially spread through contact.

@BESW Cos 4e has Hellish Rebuke?

@Miniman Uhh... Hard to explain... It's just one of those things I always thought... not sure why or where I got the idea from... I feel like I did, but I can't remember.

@Ben 3.5, 4e, and 5e all have fireball, but if 5e's text is confusing we generally only ask about 5e.

@BESW Also, every edition of D&D going backwards from 3.5, too.

@BESW dnd4.wikia.com/wiki/Hellish_rebuke

@Ben I am well aware of the spell. What?

12:29 AM

Now I'm lost...

What's fireball got to do with anything?

@Ben Ok, let me put it this way. If I was wondering whether fireball spreads around corners, I could ask that.

@Ben What's 4e Hellish Rebuke got to do with a potential reading of 5e's Hellish Rebuke as an AoE?

They're different games with different rules.

But asking it for every edition of D&D that fireball is in would be a nonsensical thing to do.

The answer would be (and is!) completely different between different editions.

Ohhh... Ok.. Right. I follow now.

What problem are you facing that a comparison of two totally different rulesets with a similar spell concept would help solve?

12:31 AM

They share the same name, but they're different spells

@BESW But what does it do? Sweep someone off into a bewildering dreamscape?

@AnubianNoob More than that, spells in general are fundamentally completely different between 4e and 5e.

@doppelgreener That seems reasonable.

@BESW Brother Charles.

Edited, again. Limited to 5e

12:33 AM

@doppelgreener Or Trogdor's oneiromancer

@BESW His whaaaaaaa? @trogdor What is this oneiromancer?

@Ben Voting to re-open.

@doppelgreener Oh, he showed up for one or two sessions while you were Internetless.

@Ben It's a single, answerable question now, and I suspect it'll get reopened, but it could still really use some reasoning for why you think it might spread through contact.

He can do amazing dream-power things, but it's opposed by Will when observed by waking people.

@Miniman Eh, it's a "flavour text as mechanics text" reading now, which is legit if 5e handles those sorts of things like 3.5 does (I don't know).

@BESW There's no separation between the two, so yeah.

12:36 AM

One small step for clarity, one great leap for [unintelligible]

(seriously though separation of flavour and mechanics was a great thing, why did they undo that ;_;)

@BESW So... you're saying the "flavour text" is how it works...?

@Ben I'm saying that 3.5 (and apparently 5e) have a fast and loose relationship with the difference between mechanics and flavour. Doesn't mean all flavour is mechanical--far from it--just that it's often impossible to be sure which is which.

@BESW Arr. Well that seems... Helpful...

They put flavour and mechanics together in the same block without signalling transitions.

Compare 4e, where flavour is given its own special section and typography in each power.

Or rather, it means there isn't "flavour text", there's just "text", and the text contains stuff that is most definitely rules and other stuff that is... either rules or not, but since it's just part of the rules passage, we can't make that distinction objectively.

We can just make a judgement call of "yeah that's not important, ignore it" or "hey yeah I guess that chair you're in should be on fire now."

That's great for a paradigm where every group should just make up how the game works for themselves, which is one of the paradigms they deliberately recreated in 5e.

12:42 AM

It'd be less of a problem if the systems weren't so attached to the idea of the mechanics-first paradigm that they keep undermining the power of "group decides."

.... some groups are not well prepared for that burden of making those judgement calls themselves.

The idea that everyone who plays a particular edition of D&D has a shared common experience is alluring.

0

Q: Unawarded Badges?

Earlier today at one point A question I had posted an answer on had 23 votes with an accepted answer of 11 votes on the question, and supposedly met all of the requirements to receive the Populist badge. It remained like this for about six or so hours, after which the person who asked the questio...

discussion badges

@BESW -- I agree that the "here's a basis, build your campaign world the way you want it" is how 5e works vs. the "RAW wins" attitude of 3.x and 4e

And now for something completely different.

user image

12:49 AM

@BESW Very pretty. I hope it's comfortable.

but here's also "fiction-first-as-in-story-rules-over-all" vs "fiction-first-as-in-the-world-metaphysic-rules-over-all"

I'm very impressed that the photographer was dedicated enough to contort so their reflection is totally hidden behind the steam swirl.

*there's

Seems like you'd have to keep your legs bent

@BESW That is impressive. I didn't even notice that

I'm guessing it's a hot tub style, with a bench.

@Ben Graphic designer, son of a photographer. I look for these things.

12:50 AM

and most of my understanding issues stem from that gulf I think vs. "fiction-first" vs "mechanics-first"

@Shalvenay Are you responding to that longer conversation BESW linked, or the flavour text thing we were just talking about?

@doppelgreener --the flavor text thing mostly, but also the longer conversation in an oblique way

@BESW But... how? They aren't that skinny, what's going on?

@doppelgreener I'm honestly not sure, but I suspect the doorknob's been taken out and the lens is sticking through the hole.

@doppelgreener Men and women of the industry have their tricks... am I right @BESW

12:52 AM

@Shalvenay <- Ok, then this thing here isn't the issue. (And, seriously, replying directly to specific messages sometimes like I did just now would be of massive help at times like this. Please get in the habit of doing that sometimes.)

ah, sorry :)

@BESW That would do it. The photo does look slightly off center that way.

Alternately, it's a tilt-shift lens.

(Or Photoshop to simulate tilt-shift in post.)

I am a dumb man. I am eating spicy food before going dancing.

Tilt-shift would make the reflection slightly off-centre too, but I'm not sure if there's room for it.

12:57 AM

@Shalvenay Specifically, both 3.5e and 5e experience the exact same issue with regards to not distinguishing flavour text and rules text, and just having "text", so there isn't a difference between them on the flavour text issue being discussed.

@BESW What is this magical technology?

Tilt–shift photography

Tilt–shift photography is the use of camera movements on small- and medium-format cameras, and sometimes specifically refers to the use of tilt for selective focus, often for simulating a miniature scene. Sometimes the term is used when the large depth of field is simulated with digital post-processing; the name may derive from a perspective control lens (or tilt–shift lens) normally required when the effect is produced optically. "Tilt–shift" encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens plane relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the...

@doppelgreener It's a camera where you can change the angle of the lens relative to the image plane.

user image

Related:

Inside a Camera at 10,000fps - The Slow Mo Guys

@BESW I am so confused about the everything about this.

My dad used an old bellows camera when he wanted that effect.

It's a lot easier to understand with a bellows camera.

@doppelgreener I was not aware he was called that XD

1:09 AM

(Don't worry @BESW, this one is safe :P)

Photography confuses me... Most visual art does :(

Tilt-shift is basically light physics.

I get that changing the lens changes the plane of focus (this hurts my head, I don't understand at all how that works yet), I don't however get why shifting it suddenly produces amazing differences in photography

@doppelgreener To the Not A Bar?

Sure.

2:09 AM

@Ben FYI the turn of phrase is "case in point" ;)

>_> I don't know what you're talking about :P

I feel like "Case in Point" fits in here :P — Ben 5 mins ago

2:27 AM

Hmm... I must have slipped into an alternate reality for a bit there then.

Question - was there a talking anvil, or a black frying pan?

There was not, it was eerily mostly the same except for a comment being different... at least as far as I could tell.

Dang it. Well, the talking anvil is fine, because it turns out that was just a work of fiction by a brain-sucking parasite... But I want to find that frying pan. It's very valuable to someone and I could earn a lot for finding it for him

Ok, for a new player, what would you suggest: Pathfinder, or D&D (5e, cos that's what we're currently playing)

I would pick games not on that list.

Unfortunately, that's our current options. A friend of mine wants to get into a game, he started looking at Pathfinder, and I suggested he join our group (so that he had someone else to play with), which is instead, DnD 5e

2:41 AM

Of those two, I'd probably go for 5e.

My boyfriend struggled a lot with Pathfinder and took to 5e like a duck in water. That's probably not going to be everyone's experience, and I haven't played 5e myself, but it was a big deal for him. PF stressed him out, 5e made him excited.

I don't even really know enough about either system to make a choice like that

they both sound a little too much like 3.5 D&D for me to really feel like trying them any time soon

not in every way, but in enough ways

I would agree with 5e too. It's simpler. Frankly creating a Pathfinder character at all is an enormous and unpleasant experience unto itself. 5e is much more minimal and doesn't have that problem.

Aside from that, it's hard to know what is best for a new player without knowing more about them and knowing things that they don't know because they haven't played yet.

Pathfinder has grown to a point where the number of parts and mechanics to consider in character creation alone is overwhelmingly large for someone new to it like me.

2:53 AM

It may be a good idea to show them character creation options in both systems and see what they seem to gravitate toward.

Like, let them flip through character creation chapters, and tell them a bit about what you're doing in each campaign.

3:22 AM

Today in my brain's "stop, think about this terrible awkward moment from your past for like six seconds, okay now resume" instant replay: that time at the beginning of my very first IT security course in University, when the lecturer asked the difference between a computer virus and a computer worm, and I put my hand up and answered based on something I'd read in a Dan Browns novel.

(This was before I knew about Dan Brown's notoriety for taking absolutely no care for being across his subject matter.)

@doppelgreener Oooh, what'd you say?

Brains like doing that...

(PHEW. Got the wrong name. Dan Brown is notorious. Dan Simmons is a beautiful person who wrote my favourite book ever and it's wonderful and he actually does research.)

Oh, there.

And.... yeah.

According to Dan Brown's novel Digital Fortress, a worm is more destructive than a virus: "eat, crawl, eat."

3:26 AM

@doppelgreener I lol'ed.

(And I kinda needed that, so thanks!)

Dan Brown can't tell the difference between a line and a stanza.

In real life: a worm exists independently in an executable file. A virus relies on some other body to execute it, such as a virus embedded in an image file that activates when IE5 tries to open it. (Such viruses were a decent attack vector once upon a time.)

Just like real life viruses, a computer virus can only really come to life when it comes into contact with the kind of body it targets. Until then, it's just drifting around harmlessly.

and jeez I'm glad I got that edit in on the name in time. :I

The distinction between types of maleware has become so blurred that it is almost pointless to distinguish them.

@Tritium21 i think you mean malware c(:

yus

3:38 AM

femaleware: not yet invented, have yet to find maleware that possesses a rib.

I am starting to regret voteing for sevensideddie

Not to be confused with Malware:

user image

...Mal wear*?

@BESW these coats do not look like they have the same construction...

@doppelgreener Cosplay websites are... erratic in their accuracy?

3:43 AM

@Tritium21 Oh?

They likely do not. And depending on the site, what you get might not even be what's pictured. :P

probably shouldnt have said that, i am just growing dissatisfied with the site since he was elected

If you can pin down specifics, maybe a meta post would be good.

@Tritium21 The game-rec ban?

Is a recent example

3:47 AM

Yeah, that's not an SSD thing. Game-rec has been rumbling downhill for years.

Maybe its just that I came in late to the party here, but it seamed to be working a-ok

It's important to remember that the mods work together pretty closely. For any major or contentious issue, regardless of which one does the actual posting they will generally have discussed it amongst themselves first.

That doesnt make it any better, I already see the other mods as adversaries of the community

In the specific case of game-recs, though, they didn't make the decision. SSD put up a review, and the community's votes made the decision.

@Tritium21 Game-rec posts required a ridiculously disproportionate amount of curating, largely because of established users who felt that requiring them to observe the site's universal "Back it up!" principles was personally offensive.

Disproportionate bad answers were taking up an unreasonable proportion of the site's energies (more from high-rep citizens than mods, but the drain is effectively the same) to keep quality up. It was always a probationary experiment.

3:52 AM

@Tritium21 Any examples of that? Obviously if the community had voted for not banning, and the mods had banned anyway, that would make some sense, but the majority of the vote was in favour of banning.

@Tritium21 Alas, this is because the nature of moderating is that mods only act as mods when there's a problem which requires moderation to solve.

Peel's Principles of Policing are hard to maintain on an online site.

There wasnt really a vote. there was a post asking if something needed to be readdressed. Then they were banned.

@Tritium21 This is a concern that should really be taken to meta.

@Tritium21 A post is the only method we have of taking a vote. What do you think should have happened here?

I dont think i could be as calm there as I am here.

@Miniman A second post that actually was a vote to ban the question type. The post in question was only identifying issues with the question type

3:56 AM

The chat is not a good place for policy to be debated, because it's necessarily a non-representative clique which excludes anyone from the discussion who isn't present at the right time.

I dont think I am going to change any minds here

@Tritium21 Open a word or google doc, write your meta post in there. When you think you're done or you're getting angry and nonconstructive, save it and close it. Return to it a day or two later, attempt to approach it with a calm head and address any anger-related tones in what you wrote.

@Tritium21 This could be a valuable point to raise, I think.

@Tritium21 It's not a matter of whether we can have our minds changed, it's a matter of this is not the place to try to change them.

There was a little bit of "wait, what?" in having the meta thread that looked like "How are we doing?" turn out to also be "Ban? Y/N."

When mods misstep, it's important to give them feedback about it. If you feel that was a misstep, the only way they can possibly try to improve is if you let 'em know.

Otherwise we get upset at them for failing to read our minds about what upsets us, and their response will reasonably be "Wait, what? How were we to know that was a problem if you didn't tell us?"

4:04 AM

It did seem pretty rushed and not necessarily clear as to the intention of the thread. I don't think I'm comfortable or motivated enough to create a meta post about it myself, but I also don't think one would be amiss.

oracle will say something soon

@Pixie Thinking about it, that might actually be my fault - I put up the original "we should ban" post.

@AshleyNunn you've been popping up a bit more regularly lately. How's the group coming together?

Eh, it was supposed to be an evaluation on the state of things. It's not surprising that there were suggestions that it should be banned coming up.

The surprise was that the 'evaluation' post turned out to also be the 'final decision determiner' post.

4:06 AM

@doppelgreener thats ok. the actual change should have been its own topic

user15026

@ben it is still in the planning stages, but I have been trying to learn more about 5e and stuff. Hardest part about a group is finding time among very different schedules!

oracle is slow

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Q: The procedure for making changes to the community needs review

A recent meta post about the efficacy of game-rec questions, which had the initial tone of "How are we doing with this question type?" became a tacit vote to ban the question type. This is problematic. Reading the question, and the first few answers does not make it clear that casting a vote of...

discussion votes

@AshleyNunn Indeed. As for learning, you've definitely come to the right place! Haha

@AshleyNunn That is hard. P:

@Tritium21 Oracle takes about ten minutes even after the question's posted. That's by design, so that you have a chance to do some editing before it heads to chat, instead of it capturing the very first version with all of the typos in it.

user15026

4:10 AM

@ben indeed! My biggest hurdle is realizing my group I used to play with was really lax about rules and so I really don't know D&D all that well. We mostly just hung out and ate popcorn and told a story with less combat and more "whee shenanigans" which was fun but this group will likely be a bit more on track in terms of rules and so on so I want to learn some stuff to minimize the amount of book flipping

Just wanted to stop by and wish everyone a great day/night/whatever is appropriate for your time zone! Man, I wish I could regain some of my time so I could go back to spending it here.

@sillyputty [wave]

user15026

(sorry for the run on sentences, typing on my phone means I am sometimes bad at grammar)

@AshleyNunn The struggle is real...

@AshleyNunn Which edition was your previous group?

4:12 AM

(I also can hardly type on my phone without swipe auto correct enabled, which makes some... funny corrections.)

@Pixie Autoswipe mistakes are more like my regular typing mistakes!

user15026

@Miniman 3.5, when we paid attention to the rules

@AshleyNunn Well I would hazard a bet that the shenanigans will still be around haha. Our group definitely has a lot of shenanigans, and a few of our meta discussions definitely get carried away haha

@BESW True enough, I do replace words with entirely different but vaguely similar words myself. xD

user15026

@ben I do hope so but I also want to try actually using the system more like it was designed to be used, if that makes sense?

4:14 AM

If I'm playing the Princes of the Apocalypse campaign, does that mean D&D 5e?

Yeah it does :)

user15026

@Pixie I use SwiftKey so it mostly saves my butt from spelling errors, grammar not so much

@HadesHerald Unless your GM is working their ass off converting it.

2

Q: The procedure for making changes to the community needs review

A recent meta post about the efficacy of game-rec questions, which had the initial tone of "How are we doing with this question type?" became a tacit vote to ban the question type. This is problematic. Reading the question, and the first few answers does not make it clear that casting a vote of...

discussion votes

Cool, thanks

4:16 AM

@TheOracle Right on time, 10 minutes after the post itself.

And 30 seconds before a title edit

I think my prose needs editing

Thanks for splitting up the "we have a problem" and "here's a solution" bits so I could vote differently on each.

your welcome

and now i have a player problem >.<

(but not a problem player)

I need to give one of my players a crash course on 50 years of trek history

@Tritium21 Star Trek?

if they played a human, or a klingon, or a vulcan... they would be set, but they decided to play an ex-borg (which i am ok with) but they dont know a lick of that history

4:28 AM

@Tritium21 Do they need to? I wouldn't have thought individual drones would know anything about where the Borg came from, their history, etc...

they would have seven of nine levels of knowledge about the borg

and the rest of the universe... a klingon can get away with not knowing what a tholian is, not a borg

Hmm. Any way at all you could justify a lack of knowledge? And if not, are there any salient facts that you can cut it down to and fill in the rest of the blanks later, as needed?

We are working out our PCs for Kingmaker and someone is trying to find character art...

user image

I have made them bookmark memory alpha, for one. And I think I am going to give them a fragmented memory disadvantage, but I will have to convince them that it can be worked around

i.imgur.com/lalKwYg.gifv

user image

Someone shot them with a lightning gun and they have amnesia but remember a lot of skills. Time to start a new life! Like Data, only Borg edition.

4:50 AM

give someone the rundown of the TNG episode Sub Rosa, watch them cringe

I have a new colleague with a strange habit: when a team member requests something of him and he finds the situation strange, he will go to someone else (me) and express what they should be saying to the other team member, as if I'm going to sort it out.

I agreed just now to assist with something, which may have been a mistake, but next time might have to play a "why are you coming to me about this?" card. I have not used that card before in this situation.

Specifically I couldn't handle an issue, so I assigned it to someone else more senior, who assigned it to him, and he came to me when it would've been more appropriate to talk to the person who gave him the task. So I've gone back to the senior people to find a different resolution. Apparently this is A Thing with this individual and something I'll have to learn to navigate.

Yeah... that is an awkward situation to be put in. Next time I'd at least let him know that he should talk to the other person directly.

Adventures in strange office politics!

Yeah, that is a good way to put it.

Something along the lines of, "That sounds good. I think you should talk to [x] about it." or "Why don't you address that with [x]?"

Mm. Those are fair. I think I said something along those lines, then he more or less just kept talking and sighing and so on. Next time, I'll just repeat the point. :U

5:00 AM

I am on another stack, and see the 'raw' tag, and got really really confused

...its the cooking stack

Ah, yeah, if that didn't work, repetition or more directness may be required.

@Tritium21 .... pfffffff.

I think his strategy is more or less "keep sighing and being confused and frustrated about it until someone else decides to deal with my crap for me", which is not a pattern I'm interested in engaging with.

So... repeating the point until he gives up would be effective. Just... do not do the take his hands off it step that he wants.

"Rules as written say you should bake the cake at 250 degrees, but is that their intent?"

@Pixie Ha!

Weeellll the RAW for cake here may be missing the sweet opportunity of just eating the batter

5:03 AM

@Tritium21 I can understand this confusion completely. c(:

"How long can you keep dried beans" raw ....well that is begging for an answer of "by RAW, until the date on the package"

>:D

That is an amazingly fun way to read cooking stack questions. I will remember it.

Question: Does anyone know if there is an SE for managing/dealing with people that have psychological issues?

Um, actually it's really fun to cart around common acronyms and such from one SE site to Another

I have no idea, but I doubt it

5:08 AM

@Ben I dont think so

That would be a mental health stack, and that is something I would be REALLY suspect of

@Ben If it's a workplace issue, there's Workplace.

There's a site for Academia where that would be topical if you have to deal with such a person in the context of functions in Academia. RPG.SE has handled questions about attempting to play RPGs with such a person, etc.

But in its raw form, just person to person, you should be seeking the advice of a support organisation that deals with that type of psychological issue.

I don't think so. There is a cognitive psychology SE, but the focus is academic and research. It's not practical management. I don't think a stack of that nature would do very well.

No it's more about dealing with people someone that has depression, and how I might handle certain situations... the morality behind different decisions etc

asking about morality on the internet is asking for trouble

@Ben Which country are you in?

Oh, Aus.

5:13 AM

@doppelgreener Australia

Why?

If you need support regarding someone with depression, contact Beyond Blue.

Cheers, I'll try that :)

Let me know how the call with them works out?

They also look like they have a section of resources for "family and friends," so if you need help navigating general interaction with someone with depression, that may be useful.

@doppelgreener It's not about me, it's about someone I know, and my dealing with them, It's not so urgent either, I just have some questions I want to ask about managing certain situations

I hope that wasn't too cryptic :/

5:18 AM

@Pixie Oh hey, I didn't see that: Caring for someone with depression or anxiety

@Ben No that's fine, I understood that. I wanted to know because my experience with this organisation is limited. I am pretty sure this is a valid thing they'd help with, but I want to know if I'm making the right call in recommending you to them. (If not, the worst they'd do is decline and probably direct you somewhere.)

Is it a good idea to carry like 3 harpoons and throw two, rather than one and a mace?

@doppelgreener Hmm... it seems that just diverts back to the "Get Immediate support" page if I want to contact them

@doppelgreener Ah yes, right-o. I'll probably end up sending them an email, but I'll let you know how that goes :)

@HadesHerald I do not in general recommend carrying harpoons or maces around, they're very dangerous and you should seek professional training in handling them. Was this in the context of a particular game though?

D&D 5e, though I do occasionally carry a harpoon around with me

Hey. Remember when we give hit point system a lot of flak?

Do you guys know if adding armor decay to the idea would make it better?

5:26 AM

I recall us discussing the unsuitability of hit points in handling issues it wasn't designed to handle (such as realistic wounds), but I don't recall us giving it flak outright.

It works fine, for certain purposes.

It works great for 'heroic epic' games

\o

"Then our hero took another three arrows to his back, BUT STILL FOUGHT ON!"

@Althis What goal are you trying to achieve in adding armor decay? Mechanics exist to support goals. In a goal-less void, game mechanics have no value.

The thing we were complaining about hitpoints in a previous conversation.

One that you were part of.

Was that the abstraction didn't reasonably represent actual narrative damage. It was just a mechanic to add non-specific tension except when you crossed some pre-defined lines on the health bar.

5:29 AM

Hitpoints make little sense in like...WoD.

Yeah. I don't have any issue at all with HP if I'm playing a game like Pathfinder. It's just an abstraction of a lot of things by nature. That has a purpose though.

What I am thinking is if adding armor to the mix, and having every hit damage your armor more would mean it would make more sense narratively.

@Althis That wasn't a complaint about hitpoints. Recently, someone was talking about the correlation between hit points and wounds and so on, and talking about mechanics under the assumption that hit points correlate to being stabbed a whole lot, and BESW and I were commenting that hit points don't work that way.

If you are going to that level of detail, then you really REALLY need to define what weapons can damage armor in the first place. A sword on plate? does nothing but dull the sword

@Tritium21 Not is it is a sword directly from the gods themselves.

5:31 AM

That discussion was in no way a discussion of hit points being a bad mechanic or anything. But if you want them to do certain things, they may be inadequate for doing those things.

Anyone knows if being encased in plate armor would help me at all if hit by a hammer blow?

If you are giving players divine weapons... then that level of realism is kinda...moot

Not a lot

@Althis It would wreck the armor, but you would likely not be too terribly badly hurt. the tactic there is to strike joints to fuse armor

It is not a matter of realism @Tritium21, it is just that in D&D for example a hit has absolutely no meaning unless it takes you from the top half of your health bar to the lower one.

5:33 AM

That way you can half-sword between the armor joints and end the wearer

and if the hit is hard enough, it'll do extra damage

@doppelgreener Email sent, they reckon it's a 24-hour response period, so I'll let you know when I receive a response :)

@Althis So if you aren't looking to add realism, what are you looking to add? You're talking about things "making sense." How so?

That ^

Well... I guess it kinda is realism what I am trying to add now that you put it like that.

I just wanted a hit to have a narrative representation.

That is all.

5:36 AM

There are systems out there with hit location damage, that is allow a bit more narrative play... And those systems usually have rules for armor damage and the like

@Althis Is this similar to the "Criticals" thing?

@Ben You have good memory, sir. Yes, this conversation is a direct consequence of that previous one.

@Tritium21 Do they take ages to do combat with?

@Althis Yes! thats the price for an abstraction like HP - its simplistic and unrealistic, but make combat a little bit faster.

As for warhammers, they're often not gonna shatter armor on one blow, but they'll bruise through it and can dent it. Maces too. This doesn't necessarily make 'em the best or most versatile weapons for armored combat, though. That depends on a lot of factors. If you want actual realistic combat, these are the things you have to sift through.

There is an acceptable level of 'close enough' even in simulationist games

5:42 AM

That's true. There are levels of realism.

@Althis Riiight... Well (quick recap of this convo...) I think again, it's merely a narrative thing. You can really choose to do one of two things: Either narrate attacks that are not "debilitating" ("Your sword thrusts into his stomach, he screams in pain then glares at you with a blood rage" or "Your hammer lands a solid blow on his leg, you hear a crunch as the bone snaps beneath the force")

Though that (for the most part) is really just narration. There's nothing specifically saying that they are incapable of continuing as normal.

The other option, that I mmight suggest, is adopting something similar to the Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader "Limb" system

You know, I did something for that in the main campaign I play around here. But I think it is cheating.

Each Limb on your character has a "health" meter (similar to perhaps Fallout 3), when a limb reaches below a certain point, it becomes debilitated/crippled.

In my game players are not really human, they are "SAL", Synthetic Autonomous Lifeforms.

Though I wouldn't go so far as to rule it out as completely useless...

5:46 AM

So I've said that they can take a lot of normally lethal blows without dying because they just don't need those organs that much.

And then I narrate every hit, no matter how bloody it is.

That still doesn't solve my problem with the mechanic itself.

Hitting SHOULD have an effect.

I will just sit more on it.

Just expect me to come back with another crazy idea out of the blue some other time again.

@Althis Again, depending on where you place the blow (players usually just attack "that guy", not "that guy, and stab him in the stomach/try and cut his arm off") you can employ the limb system. I assume you have an idea of what I'm referring to?

You can decide that HP loss has been achieved through a weapon blow, narratively. It's just that damage does not innately mean "you got stabbed and blood was lost." That's a narrative you're layering on top of it, because all it means is that "you're not disabled until it hits 0," etc.

Star Trek Catan. This must be played by my hands

So why are so many of the "chaotic neutral" gods so predictable in forgotten realms?

@Ben I have played Fallout, you said it is similar, right?

5:49 AM

Also: will wheatons son is as old as weslie crusher in the series.

@Althis Similar, yes. I'd suggest looking it up in the Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader system, that might be a bit more useful to you

They're almost all battle gods

@Pixie The problem, I think, is that most skill descriptions in books are pretty brutal. If they tended to describe those more in terms of gaining advantage instead of guttering people I think this would be less of an issue.

@Althis Here's a thing: Fate has hits mean something narratively immediately, bar perhaps the first couple of hits someone takes in a combat. It doesn't care about realism though.

"Smash this enemy type, then let's go"

5:51 AM

So adding realism != adding palpable and mechanically significant narrative meaning to hits. You can of course do both at once, of course.

One of the first spells a mage learns in D&D is a cloud of daggers for god's sake...

WHAT IF I WANT A BONUS TO VARYING HOW I DEAL WITH MONSTERS HUH???

NO!

Just a massive bonus against your sworn enemies

@doppelgreener That is why I am so insistent on it I think. I know it is possible for hits to mean something narratively, I just wonder if we MUST ditch out HP entirely to have that happen.

See, hitting has an effect already. It generates damage to your hit points, which can eventually disable and then kill you. It's just that that damage is not defined as any one type of narrative effect. IMO, this actually gives you narrative flexibility if you want to exercise it.

As an example of what you can achieve with this system, I had an Explorator that had his leg shot off (almost completely) and was replaced with a bionic limb, changing the rules for that limb

5:53 AM

-_-

@Althis No, we can probably totally have a system that has both HP and narrative impacts for hits. Dungeon World has that, I think? Fate has something that superficially resembles HP, but is really just a pacing mechanism for how much you can handle before attacks start having a palpable effect.

@doppelgreener Let me check my book. I also do not recall what Dungeon World does.

Ok.

I would say it is slightly better [question mark]

(I'm still talking about 3.5/PF because it's the easiest for me to use as an example here re: hit points that don't correspond to specific types of narrative effects but which can still be interpreted narratively. There are different ways HP can work.)

It still has hit points, but it has a lot less of them.

Also, since every damage you ever take will be consequence of a roll with direct narrative intent, it will always have direct narrative effect.

user image

5:57 AM

It is kinda clunky, though.

cc @Althis

@Ben So... where you hit is random?

@Althis I'm not certain of the rules, but I believe that the GM specifies where an enemy hits, and you take damage to that area. This can Damage armour as well as limbs

And the same goes for when players attack enemies, they can specify where they attack the enemy

That looks like a d100 roll to determine where you hit.

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