@Sandwich My favourite die are an unknown brand d20, a companion cube d6, and the rest are part of a set that are unfortunately not currently in my possession. (Left at a mate of a mate's place, haven't seen them since)
I am currently a player in a D&D 3.5 game where rolling a 1 on any attack roll is not only an automatic miss, but also means that something "bad" happens – such as dropping your sword, falling over prone, etc. The DM insists that this is part of the core rules, but I cannot find a reference to it...
@BESW OK, that answers my question. I was worried we were doing it wrong (we don't really mention it's a 1 anymore, just more of a groan, which could just mean "no, it wasn't high enough")
@Ben I had one player in my last 3.0 campaign (and in other 3.5e ones) who consistently moaned at the d20 and said "I miss" every time he rolled low-ish (natural 5 or 6), against enemies with low ACs. "How much, Alex?" "Total 5 + 15 + 4 + 2". "You hit". Consistently.
@Ben -- re: fumbling -- I find that most folks' notion of "critical fumble" is just plain out of line with how severe the effects they're simulating are
In our homebrew a player fumbling magic can fumble so bad that he loses skillpoints/experience. It does require 3 1's in a row. Hasn't happened yet. But I've had players fall unconscious mid fight or lose their weapons. My players enjoy it though. It's not something I'd add personally for a "fun" game.
having the ranger fix a snapped bowstring for a turn, or having a -1 on your weapon because you dinged it up a bunch in a fight, or even your fighter having to switch weapons because he dropped what he was using, is a whole different ballgame from the way fumbling is typically treated by fumble tables, with their long-lasting status effects and attacks-on-teammates
@William'MindWorX'Mariager Then, fumbles are legit--but they should further the story rather than be purely negative. The "fail forward" concept is especially useful in that sort of playstyle.
@Shalvenay I'm building a spreadsheet for my online game where I mark the spells I have active and it automatically generates the string of code I need to roll attacks in chat
> Not exactly according to plan. If you fail by 3 or more while using create advantage to make a new aspect, you can instead place a free invoke on any existing aspect.
> Y'savvy? You get +1 when using Rapport or Provoke to overcome by confusing someone.
> The day you almost caught Captain Jack Sparrow. Once per session when someone uses a free invoke against you, you can add +6 to your roll.
> Misleading reputation. Once per session you can automatically succeed on a Rapport or Provoke action targeting someone who has never met you before that scene.
(In ARRPG, title aspects are setting aspects that represent previous adventures, and experiences are temporary character aspects that represent the individual's growth/learning/gain from the previous adventure.)
@BESW Huh, apparently Experiences have special boost rules:
> When you gain an experience, it sticks around until you use it, even if that means it’s on your sheet through multiple issues or volumes. In every other respect, an experience is just like a boost. After invok- ing an experience, draw a line through it, but leave it on your character sheet. When you have three crossed-out expe- riences at the end of an issue, erase them all. You can never have more than three recorded experiences
> Your heart's desire. You have a compass which unfailingly points in the direction you need to go in order to remove your highest-ranked consequence, if that's the kind of consequence it is.
(For example, Sparrow starts the first film with the major consequence Lost the Pearl. So the compass points at the Pearl.)
I'm having trouble thinking of a wild stories stunt, but that might be because I'm not sure what I want it to palpably do.
Ideas that came through my mind are: whenever you enter a place populated by pirates or the navy (including a boat), place an aspect on it for free - but you're already there with your aspects, you don't need that. Or whenever someone finds out who you are, if they haven't met you before, place an aspect on them.
Or your difficulty for getting people to believe wild and unbelievable stories is never greater than +4, but that doesn't work out to anything that makes sense in the narrative. (You can't say "This one time I sailed behind the moon.")
Probably the misleading reputation is a fine mechanisation of it.
> My reputation precedes me. When you arrive in a new town, city, port, or other sizable population center, you may roll Rapport against a difficulty of +4. On a tie or better, write down an aspect that represents the impressive reputation you have there. On a success, the aspect has one free invocation; on a success with style, two free invocations. When you spend a fate point to invoke this aspect, it goes away at the end of the scene, along with your impressive reputation in that place.
It should probably "whenever you arrive in a new place populated by pirates or those in the know" or something, because it'll happen when you walk onto another ship as well.
> My reputation precedes me. When you arrive in a new place populated by pirates or the navy (including one of their boats), you may roll Rapport (...)
Yeah. For Jack, I think the only people who really know about him are pirates and the navy. If you walked into a quiet village in the middle of the countryside, you don't really have a reputation. "Hi, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." "Hi! I'm Henry, this is my wife Gilda. Pleased to meet you. You look like a nice chap. Fancy tattoos you've got there. Not with the navy, are you? You look like an entrepreneur, a self-made man, like me!" [gestures proudly at a dismal and falling-apart hut.]
> Captain Jack Sparrow. You are absolutely better at nautical prowess ("Science:" Sailor) than a normal human, but you are prideful about (can be compelled regarding) your hat.
"Absolutely better than a human" means "when using that skill for an overcome action, you can exceed what normal humans can accomplish. Under the specified conditions, that action is always considered a success, no roll required."
It's the "There's something in my way, get it out of my way" action.
Create Advantage is about adding something to the scene; Defend is about preventing something from being added to the scene; Attack is about wearing down the endurance of something to remain in the scene.
Overcome is about butting heads with an obstacle and removing it right then.
"Calm the mood in a room" is Create Advantage if you're adding an aspect to represent calmness; but if you have to remove an aspect representing the bad mood, you need to Overcome the bad mood.
> To any dragonborn, the clan is more important than life itself. Dragonborn owe their devotion and respect to their clan above all else, even the gods.
And I never paid attention to that before
@Miniman What kind of "context"/"settings" are you referring to?
@Ben Okay. So: D&D has a lot of settings. These are basically entire cosmologies and universes unto themselves, with their own gods, powerful inhabitants, Earths, planes, and so on. There's Forgotten Realms, which is the D&D 5e default, which is a heavily magic setting with a lot of powerful people who could probably destroy the planet if they actually engaged in all-out war.
D&D 4e operates in the Points of Light setting which is set following the collapse of an empire. There's lots of magic, but the world is largely untamed wild, civilisation is very sprase, and powerful people are few and far between and largely unknown. Points of Light has different gods to Forgotten Realms.
@doppelgreener Okay... I think I get it. Unfortunately I really couldn't say off the top of my head which setting we're using. Unless you're saying that each game has it's own individual setting?
Very palpably, there's also the Dark Sun setting which says this: you're on a dying desert planet orbiting a dying dark, red star. Where there's civilisation, there's also incredibly powerful psionic people. Where there isn't civilisation, there's bandits and horrible mutants and many of them could make your head explode by thinking hard enough. The gods do not exist, they have all died out, divine magic is now something like sheer force of will (or there is none at all? can't remember)
@Ben Early D&D had LOTS of settings. Hollow earth, spacepunk, Mayincatec, post-apocalyptic "gods are dead" Mad-Max-minus-cars-plus-undead-emperors, etc.
Most of them fell to the wayside, but a handful --Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Eberron, and Greyhawk are the ones I think of quickly-- proved to have staying power across editions.
(Dark Sun skipped 3.5 and was revived in 4e, while Eberron was invented specifically for 3.5 and was continued in 4e.)
@Ben So, the thing is: settings come with a lot of material, like its gods and monsters (and their particular interpretation of various monsters) and how Divine magic works (does it come from the gods or yourself, etc). D&D always comes with a default setting. The book has rules for the game, then rules for the bits the setting offers (and doesn't tell you which is which). 5e's default is Forgotten Realms so you're at least using part of its material if you're using many of its monsters.
@doppelgreener So after all this, I should find out which setting (which I believe probably is Forgotten Realms), and that will help me determine which clan(s) my Dragonborn could come from?
@Adeptus Oh, I once made a shaman who was a member of an illegal cult dedicated to worship of the Old Gods. Her cult's understanding of the gods they worshipped, though, was limited to pieced-together fragments of whatever survived the apocalypse and the ensuing centuries of censorship.
@BESW Oh my gosh I remember this. And she'd quote bits from different gods' scriptures, which her people had reassembled thinking they were the same god, never mind the wild inconsistencies?
@doppelgreener Yup. If called on the obvious problems with a god who taught both "Keep secrets" and "spread knowledge," she'd launch into a lecture about how the gods are beyond human understanding.
> High on a hill was a lonely Dark Lord Lay ee vodle lay ee vodle lay hee hoo! Loud was the voice of the lonely Dark Lord Lay ee vodle lay ee vodle-oo!
@BESW Zerochan (some parts of this site NSFW, it's an anime image database) has a scenery tag, but there isn't much when you combine it with bamboo. There's a fair bit of images only tagged bamboo, they're just going to have people in them.
This is an interesting example of how, despite WotC creating the setting specifically to not have anything nailed down, fans will still nail everything down. — SevenSidedDie ♦Jun 19 '14 at 16:33
@Pixie Thanks. My current design job has the client asking me to make things look reminiscent of anime. Which, obviously, is useless because anime isn't actually an art style and I haven't been able to figure out what art style they're thinking of.
Ahh, as a reference they may be appropriate. But... yeah... hmm. That is a slightly tough one. There are some broad characteristics of mainstream anime art, but these mostly apply to people, and there's more variation there than people expect.
@BESW Samurai X? Here is fanart of Kenshin in bamboo! In an obviously very different style from actual Kenshin. :P This is why your situation is a difficult one...
But yeah. Mage Armor, start throwing around Ray of Frost cantrips, which have a chance of knocking out people in one hit, then once they're gathered, burning hands to finish them off.
> You can attempt to cast a spell while grappling or even while pinned (see below), provided its casting time is no more than 1 standard action, it has no somatic component, and you have in hand any material components or focuses you might need. Any spell that requires precise and careful action is impossible to cast while grappling or being pinned.
> If the spell is one that you can cast while grappling, you must make a Concentration check (DC 20 + spell level) or lose the spell. You don’t have to make a successful grapple check to cast the spell.
@Miniman Yush. We managed to ward off the Mimic from a distance, and stabilize the character, but since the player left, the warlock has been slowly engorging himself on cream buns.
Animated/foreground elements are more often cel shaded with black outlines, undefined or inconsistent light sources, and bright, high-saturation colours.
Textures are more defined in backdrop elements.
(The light source thing is more obvious/prevalent in low-budget or piecemeal anime: if the animators don't know the light source for a scene, there are some generic "won't be too obvious it's wrong" shading choices they'll default to.)
@BESW Yes, that's a good example. Though the backgrounds aren't always this detailed. And I was thinking that looked like the OVA, which makes sense 'cause the OVAs are what's referred to as Samurai X.
(OVA = original video animation, straight to DVD stuff. This is nothing like cheap straight to DVD stuff in America. OVAs often have a much higher budget.)
At about 0:36 in this bit of Sailor Moon, everything goes panned water color-esque frames because this style says "look how cool and beautiful and romantic Haruka and Michiru are." You can also see background variation, although it's less evident. The buildings are more detailed, but sometimes the background is very sparse and washy.
Yeah, asking your DM is probably the way to go. They'll either have put work into the setting and will be able to answer you, or they won't have and just won't care.
@HadesHerald It's "present day", although that doesn't really mean all that much.
Here's a thought... CN cleric of the god Kelemvor. Calls himself Necrobane, Chaos or Fire domain, arsenal geared toward kicking the crap outa undead and necromancers
