hey there @Yuuki

Hi.

how're things going?

The heater went kaput unfortunately.

@ACuriousMind Other trades, yes. Barbarians are not usually as good at reading the room, and also don't care as much.

@Yuuki oof. what kind of heater?

They are as likely as anyone (or more likely?) to tick off nobs, but they won't feel embarrassed about it.

@Yuuki Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

@Shalvenay The heater that currently means we're still staying at the hotel.

@Yuuki ah, I meant "electric, gas, ...?"

Electric, I think.

@Yuuki ah

@SevenSidedDie i like your style of demonstrating singular they while explaining they're using singular they. :D

@doppelgreener They're better at explaining they to them than they are?

Them they they them them they

They them they?

Sorry just too much fun

hey there @nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

@nitsua60 how're things going?

good, thanks. Kids have a snow day tomorrow, as we're expected to get a bit of a dumping. Unleashed my 2.5D model at AL tonight--it works =)

@nitsua60 ah, and nice

@nitsua60 I thought of your kids.

@BESW aww... shucks. Thanks,

@Shalvenay Cold out your way, too?

@nitsua60 yah

@DragandDrop Hi!

More like how RPg are design to put the player understress of death. more than witch one is the dealier. Because we all died in Chutulu.

@DragandDrop It would likely be too broad or unclear.

Sounds like a game recommendation question, which we tried to support and found we couldn't. But this chat is a place to ask those sorts of questions instead!

Broadly speaking, RPGs with the threat of sudden random death aren't very good at maintaining tension because death means the suspense is over.

Yeah. Losing one's character often means the player doesn't really get attached to them, so death becomes cheap.

Good games where you just suddenly die tend to be more comedic, like Paranoia (where you have a six-pack of clones to replace your character because everybody's expected to backstab each other) or Great Ork Gods (where it's so fast to roll up a new Ork that you actually get penalized for taking too long mid-game).

Instead, games that stress players use a slow burn mechanic, like Cthulhu Dark where the only way you suddenly die is if you choose to fight the monsters rather than run, and that's just automatic death. Instead, there's a slow decline into madness as your experiences grant you more and more insight into the true uncaring nature of reality.

Yeah, targeting something indirectly works too. There's ten fires and one gets to put out only seven.

That Superman Fate thing you linked some time ago was really good in that sense.

Ah, yes: Making Superman Truly Invulnerable describes how to avoid the "Superman always wins" problem by reinforcing the "paper world" feeling. Superman doesn't get physically hurt, but bad things happen around him.

Well game like Kobolt eat my baby are savage but still really fun. Game like Deadland is just badly design, and frustrating. I knew the question would have been off topics. But comming gave me a chance of asking it at try to improve it. I will came back with precise question about survivabilty in precise game.

@BESW 404. superman not found

@DragandDrop Sure, they're fun, but the player is not actually at stress of death in those. Their character might die quickly but that's different from actually being stressed of dying.

In Deadlands: Reloaded, the very punitive wound penalties made us all a bit scared of getting hit in the first place, however. It wasn't very good fit for our desired playstyle though.

:42083247, We just end a Deadlands Reloaded as people had really hard time getting into it. As they were either underpower or out played. This make me think I have to translate 200 page of a french Deadland scenari. That drove us crazy. Bascally time loop in a crazy town with murder, rape, canibalism, and big gun.

@DragandDrop Bah. Better link.

Critically, Fate and systems like it recognize that death is often the most boring outcome of failure. Think about most good long-running TV shows with main characters: we know the main character won't die, so the plot has to offer some other kind of stake.

Hi, folks!

@BESW Well, a protagonist's death at least ;)

@Anaphory Sup!

@DragandDrop Yeah, Reloaded didn't work too well for us either. One of our players really liked his character but got visibly bored at the game at getting a -3 wound penalty.

@Anaphory Yawp.

I think it would've been better if we had a handful of characters each.

@kviiri Hopefully I'll get out of hospital on Sunday! So it's time to look at the internets again!

@Anaphory Hurray! You've been there for quite a while haven't you?

@Anaphory I hope your holidays were acceptably... hospitable.

Since 22 November. My holidays were horrible and made them decide to operate as soon as possible, but I had strong support from family and friends throughout, so it was just about bearable.

Aw.

I offer this commiseratory cute:

@Anaphory Have you made any friends at the hospital? I hope they've treated you well.

The nurses were all very nice and helpful, but I can't say I made friends.

@kviiri Yes, though, I know we make sure all our favorite antagonists get away, or at least get an ambiguous death.

One antagonist uses telerobotic androids while he's safe in his Moon base, so we can shoot, dismember, and explode his avatars without ever worrying about removing an interesting story element before we're good and ready.

Another antagonist recently bought out our cult and now he's our boss.

But yes, nobody cried over the occasional impaled laserwolf.

Evening all... quick 5e question

Warlocks... What's the go? The Warlock in our Party has pointed out that while we're at level 7, he has very little to go on in terms of battle versatility.

3 cantrips, and while they know 8 spells, they only have 2 spell slots

Sure, they recover them every short rest, but it's pretty easy to use them up in a single fight

And the invocations don't seem to help that much either

@kviiri the cumulative dice is a non sense, we had to use Gm Loaded dice to make people recover. Tank open a trap brunch of rat run out dealling 1d6-2 damage. The purpuse was to scrach him.. He had toughtness and homemade armor. but the 1d6-2 maxed out a couple of time.

So whats the go there?

@Anaphory Oh! my condolences :(

@Ben No worries, it's finally nearly over now!

@Anaphory long time no see here!

@Anaphory Do you think you'll be able to go see SW:TLJ before they stop showing it?

@eimyr I haven't paid attention, I always need someone else to watch and discuss films with, and I don't know if there are any relevant people in my surroundings left.

@Ben I don't really understand the problem...

@eimyr Indeed! Good to see you here! Comes with not being able to concentrate properly and sit upright and stuff. Mobile phone for short messages is much easier than chatting here when lying in bed with pain and fever!

(Yes, I know there is a SE chat app. It was just never relevant to me.)

@Anaphory That's precisely why I'm happy to see you here, your presence means you are feeling better.

@Szega Every fight the warlock is effectively stuck firing Eldritch blast over and over and over again, and if they want to do any kind of significant damage, they have to use a spell slot. Since they only have two, that's really not much to go off.

Oh, so much!

@Ben That is the go.

@Ben That's how it works. And if a "normal" caster paces out their spells, they arrive at the same rate of casting

Warlocks get to recover their stuff on short rests, and their at-will option (Eldritch Blast) is comparable to non-spellcasters.

This is true. I understand that.

But battle gets repetitive pretty quick.

Hey, still less repetitive than it is for the fighter.

@Ben Is it less repetitive for a fighter?

Or the Barbarian, or the Monk, or the Rogue....

Not entirely

At least, I don't feel that way

Unless you're playing the champion, they have enough to be able to make a battle interesting by throwing in manoeuvres, or spells

That's less options than the warlock has, though.

@Ben They get 4 superiority, true, but the effects are really situational and on higher levels the warlock gets better relative to that

The difference is, I think, that the fighter et al has less options but more chances to use them.

The warlock has more options, but can only use a very limited number of them in a fight.

Yeah.

So it feels more restrictive, I guess.

I mean, I like the fighter for that reason (@Miniman can vouch for this), I'm effectively a murder hobo - just waiting for the next fight to come along so I can see how quickly I can dish out the pain.

The class abilities themselves will not make a fight really interesting anyway

But for someone that's basically stuck with "I suppose I cast EB again..."

They can get more options with invocations: push or pull on EB, one with shadows...

though OwS is not really for doing combat

@Szega I am a little fuzzy with invocations... they basically let you do it... better?

@Ben The ones I mentioned add a bonus effect on all EB hits

push10 or pull10

Ok. So yeah there are some that do extra stuff for EB, and there are some that would be useful because you don't need a spell slot for them, but what's the point of the ones that do need a spell slot??

@Ben Not much, sadly. There are practically two that might possibly worth it

> Fuzzy invocation. Once per scene you can procure a furry mammal small enough to hold comfortably in one hand. It's adorable.

@Ben They're pretty awful, yeah. 1/day and cost a spell slot invocations are the warlock version of an animal companion.

Or warlock version of the Protection fighting style, if you prefer.

:/

So basically it's "I do EB", or if they're feeling rich "I do EB, but betterer"

@Ben Well, there are not many options for battlefield control outside of this

You can disengage your friends for "free"

(disregarding opportunity cost)

@Anaphory that is good to hear at least

@DragandDrop It's the banes of realism in places where it doesn't belong, in my opinion.

How can I get a slotless shoe? What does such a thing cost?

I'm asking because I injured my ankle, and my doctor told me I should wear one of these ankle restraining equipment, to reduce the chance of a more serious injury during the duration of the first one, but those take up the boot slot, so I can't wear them inside my boots.

And it doesn't work like a normal shoe, so I can't walk on the street in the winter wearing only that one.

Alternately, perhaps a pair of boots that take up another slot instead of the boot slot could work. But I want to know where I can buy one and how much it costs, because I can't craft them myself.

Learning to walk on your hands is a non-trivial, yet awesome option.

@kviiri Would that cost a feat, or just skill points?

@b_jonas Depends on your GM I guess.

Hey, does anyone know good tactical combat systems with minimal bookkeeping and simple rules? I'm looking for some inspiration.

What does "tactical" mean for you?

Hard to pin down exactly, so it's probably a good question. I'm most interested in trying to recreate the 4e experience as a more lightweight version and with a greater emphasis on motion and position.

Grids and minis? Positional importance? Your spells-this-day choices being a future-guessing minigame?

So... 4e does positional importance and encourages movement. It doesn't do much "guess what's going to happen next" out-of-combat prep work. It likes role-based tactics where each party member has a particular specialty niche they're expected to fill in order for the scene the end well...

Grids and minis, yup, and positional importance emphasized more than in 4e would be one of the main goals. My favorite abilities in 4e was those that tied somehow to one's allies' and their relative positions, eg. Hunter's Mark, that Warlord ability that allowed all adjacent allies to strike freely and such.

And little or no guesswork prep-work, that's not my style really.

The between-game play of character building/advancement is a major part of 4e, with all its tiny little moving parts.

Also, minimal amount of wasted turns. I've been thinking of dropping misses completely.

I'm not too big on grids-and-minis games these days, so I may not be able to help with actually suggesting stuff.

I'm far more fond of other stuff too.

...you could check out Heroes of Hesiod.

Or D&D for Dads.

Both are basically 4e boiled down for kids.

Haven't heard of either - sounds cool!

I was actually thinking of designing a dungeon crawler for kids at some point.

So far I've been thinking mostly about one of the two things DnD isn't particularly good at - a very large amount of combatants. (the other would be a very small amount of combatants...)

After all, is it not a staple of heroic fantasy that the heroes hold on against a horde of goblins or such?

Or undead, demons, anything of that sort.

Currently I've been thinking of a system where monsters are divided into the levels and those lowest levels would either be instakilled by attacks (as 4e minions are) or get "downed". Downed enemies will recover soon, but can be finished with an auto-hit coup de grace.

The bigger enemies need some more though, but I'd like something equally simple but obviously more engaging and dangerous for them.

Heroes of Hesiod (and The Champions of the Elements, with which I'm unfamiliar and I'm guessing it's for 5e); D&D for Dads.

Ah, no, looks like Champions is the same 4e-ish system.

@kviiri I like "on miss" riders on attacks, like "hit for damage, push on a miss" sort of things.

@BESW Yeah, I noticed 13th Age uses them extensively.

@kviiri When I ran 4e, I stopped using solos entirely and instead represented them with multiple smaller monsters.

@BESW Yeah, I recall that discussion. It's actually a pretty good idea for a simpler game too.

Like, a dragon was five standard monsters: head, body, wings, claws, tail. Each had its own turn and its own actions and its own role (striker, leader, defender, brute, etc) and if you defeated one the dragon lost that turn and those actions.

Oooor, an elite that could summon minions--either representing parts of itself, or actual minions.

I had a gnoll priest who could summon an absolute buttload of hyena spirits if you let him get near the room's shrine.

Both are good ideas! Thanks

Another time, an elite sand kraken had standard and minion tentacles that it'd stick up out of the sand while it hid its elite body underneath, and you had to figure out how to make it come out.

(One way? Get grabbed by a tentacle and on the body's next turn it'll come up to eat you.)

Actually Angry did one or two articles on doing boss monsters where he brought up similar ideas. You might want to read those.

I don't find Angry very readable. My inspiration for this line of thinking was Our Very Own @Magician's blog.

I find it usually informative (and ignore the !%&@* language)

maybe a bit wordy

Oh, and if you do throw a lot of minions around, consider being creative about their deaths.

Like, a dead minion might create difficult terrain and require a low Ref check to avoid falling prone.

Or on death, the minion grabs an adjacent creature (ally OR enemy) and slows them down until an action is taken to remove them.

Or the villain can kill them to get a bonus of some sort.

Stylistically, I think I'm going for something of a wuxia/wire-fu feel so having minions getting knocked around would suit the idea.

Being used as projectiles or such :)

Nice.

I've been thinking about ways to make Fate combat be more... mobile.

I started planning this when I realized DnD combat, especially 5e, is rather static both in terms of position and in terms of ideas.

> Float like a butterfly. When you take stress, you can ignore one shift of it by moving into an adjacent zone of the attacker's choice.

> Sting like a bee. Your attacks have weapon:2 if you were not in the zone you're attacking from at the start of your turn.

> Try to remember the basics of CQC. When you Create an advantage in melee combat and succeed with style, you can immediately make an Attack against any enemy in the same zone.

> Grasshopper style. Changes in elevation do not prevent you from moving into an adjacent zone as a free action on your turn.

> Kung Fu panda. When you enter a lower zone from a higher one, you can make a free attack with Physique against a single opponent in the lower zone. On a successful defense they must move into an adjacent zone or take two stress anyway.

@BESW This sounds like a genuinely cool move

I don't know what weapon: 2 really means since I haven't really gotten around to understanding Fate Core rules yet.

@kviiri If you succeed on an attack it gives an extra X shifts

@Szega Is there an armor equivalent?

@kviiri yes

Weapons and Armor in Fate

I kinda like the red and blue variant here.

I feel the red and blue variant might be good for, say, a TMNT game.

@BESW red&blue seems to favor weapons heavily

bot effects trigger on "+", but it is more likely to roll them if you succeed

@BESW I really like how they included design justification and warnings in there too. They're really showing their work!

@Szega Blue triggers on successful defense.

@BESW no, it triggers on a failed defense

@kviiri Evil Hat's really good about that sort of thing, especially in their Fate products.

when you take stress

Ah, right.

Yeah, it specifically says "If your defend outcome is a failure or a tie..."

I'm doing too many things too late at night.

Yeeeah, that's in line with other Fate products' attitude toward weapon/armor weightings.

In large part, it's more interesting to take stress than to not take stress.

Yeah, I think weapons, as the tool of rapid change, are more in line with Fate philosophy than armor, which is mainly a tool for preserving a bit of status quo.

Notice, for example, Atomic Robo weighs a stuntsworth of armor rating as half a stuntsworth of weapon rating.

But they also include the lower-armor-then-weapon principle b&r

armor tops at 3 in their recommendation

well, it all depends on how deadly you want wepons to be

Luckily, nothing is deadly in Fate unless you want it to be.

Fate can weight attack and defense on dramatic impetus without concern for whether it'll significantly impact player agency or cause unexpected upswings in character death.

not deadly-deadly, just... deals a lotta damage

Fast fights unless there's a commensurate increase in ways to absorb stress.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one I prefer reducing stress tracks to upping stress inflicted for that goal, because it minimizes bookkeeping.

Anyway.

do not sleep, it is only,.. oh god why

zzzzzzzzzzzz

I came up with an interesting D&D 5e ability score selection scheme.

Well, it's basically point-buy but with some extra restrictions.

oh? do tell.

This is for the campaign I'm gonna try to run sometime this spring.

Basically, I was like: I want the process to be fair (no dice-rolling involved), I want characters to be powerful (because fun), but I don't want min-maxing... ideally characters will be super-good for one ability, weak in another, and then other abilities range in-between.

It's slightly convoluted, but I settled on: pick 6 numbers between 9 and 18 such that they add up to 80 and no two numbers are the same.

There are 16 ways for that to occur (each line has the scores and then the corresponding modifiers)

So I basically just gave my friends this list and said "pick your rolls"

IDK if this process is any good or not.

I wonder how this would come out with point buys?

What do you mean by "come out with point buys"?

ah I was just wondering how much each of these would cost in point buy mode. Have you ever done the point-buy system?

would racial bonuses stack on top of these?

and we can't calculate it in point buy as this adds scores over 15

we would have to assume values over that

@Szega yes

@Szega yeah it's not really point-buy

I have to say, I really don't like the idea of letting players start with a 20 at level 1. But it will certainly make them really powerful.

oh man if racial is allowed, then you have made them way stronger than any other ability score selection scheme out there I think

This is mostly me being a compsci geek and programming different ways to pick scores.

-101233 is clearly inferior to that

And yes, these scores are basically off-the-charts compared to anything considered "balanced"

how powerful did you want your pcs? because right now they are going to be very powerful.

ah ok

I see now. You wanted to give the pcs extra power but didn't want them to min max it?

Basically

If you want to make your players more powerful, might I suggest a gift card or something?

When I want to make my PCs more powerful, I just throw magic items at them until they drown in treasure.

Why not start on a higher level?

The issue with adding to the power budget via stats is that stats are typically far more versatile than anything else you can give them.

They're also kind of boring. Typically they're just flat bonuses to things that you do and they don't really have any juice on them. With the exception of classes that prepare spells, having higher stats lets you hit or succeed on tougher tasks, but it doesn't actually let you do anything cooler than you normally would be able to.

I suppose if you have super high stats, you have more room to get feats though.

@Adam That's a good point, but also compounds the power.

@Adam If you want that you could just give them an ASI and a feat on those levels.

I'd say let them choose a feat. Feats tend to be more specialized (and thus limited in scope) and they're far more visible of a power boost than stats.

@Szega That could work. Though, it wouldn't in my game since I don't use feats. At least not the way the book describes them.

I mentioned this sometime previously, but this is for my "hyperleveling" campaign. Players will (most likely) gain a level after every session, so they'll ascend to godhood over the course of the campaign. If you're thinking "that's insane" the answer is yes, it is, and that's the point.

This same group of people has a "real"/"serious" campaign going.

So my campaign will the polar opposite to that.

If the idea is to just be ridiculously overpowered, why not just have all stats start at 18 and be done with it?

@PhiNotPi That's what gestalt is for.

Although I guess gestalt is somewhat of a smaller power boost in 5e than it would be 3.5e.

Since most things are keyed to proficiency, which is based on your level.

If I get time to cook this weekend, I'm going to try adding gingerbread flavors to my no-cholesterol pumpkin brownies.

I've got a lot of ground mustardseed and the dregs of three bottles of molasses that need doing something with.

I've got a recipe for coffee gingerbread that I'll use as a base for the modifications.

@Tal Hi!

@Ash And with the rest of the can of pumpkin, I want to make pumpkin garlic knots with walnuts.

(Basically no-rise pizza dough with pumpkin to make it softer and garlic to make it savory, tied into knots and brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with crushed walnuts.)

Maybe some tempeh with the walnuts...

@PhiNotPi IIRC the number to work from is 75 rather than 80. I'll go and find the post where I got down into the dirty detail on that.

@PhiNotPi here it is Work from 75 as a basis and I think your scheme will look more "balanced" than the 80 point scheme

@KorvinStarmast I know about the 75-point scheme. My procedure is just totally made up.

Evening folks

Hello

Me: "here's a method of giving super-powerful ability scores to players". This chat room (paraphrased): "that's a terrible idea, ridiculously unbalanced". My player base: "needs moar power! Can we get feats at level 1?"

Mostly joking, y'all are cool.

hey there @PhiNotPi @Alphaeus @KorvinStarmast

Also came up with a "plot hook", keeping it simple in the form of divine intervention telling them to go out there and fight bad guys and "explaining" why they're gonna become such powerful characters:

Unnamed deity: "Weary travelers, fate has brought you here today. The currents of time are changing swiftly, and events beyond your reckoning have disturbed the harmony of the planes. In this moment of transformation, an age between ages, I summon you to become my emissaries and restore virtue to this city, to this province, and to this realm. Accept this burden and fulfill your destiny: to forge a new order upon this dying land, and in return, be deified by my hand."

@PhiNotPi To be fair, some of it was "here are some other ways that people have supercharged [that game|relevant comparator]."

lol, well, earlier I was building out a hyper-initiative character for a DnD game

@nitsua60 Yeah I saw, I hadn't heard of the "gestalt" thing (outside of actual psychology)

@PhiNotPi Suggestion: give that prompt to players during character creation, and ask them to make sure their characters have a personal motive for biting onto the hook.

+20 at lvl 5

Since this is a hyperleveling campaign, I might decide to buy time (as in, slow down leveling while still granting levels) by doing "forced multiclassing".

My best experiences with the D&D experience mechanic involved basically ignoring it and just telling everyone they leveled up every two to four sessions, whenever the adventure had a moment to breathe.

@BESW I generally do the same

Since crafting uses XP, I just treat "XP" as a form of money/loot in my campaign just like "GP"

Balance out a bit of it in exchange for what would normally be gold

If I were skipping XP and handing out levels every couple of sessions I'd be replacing XP costs with gold or making them free

Actual character progression as a currency seems like a game design mistake

Blows my mind to have crafting cost XP rather than being a thing one can do to gain XP. (Or, at least, to gain bennies at relatively little cost.)

@doppelgreener I mean... that's what 4e did.

Yeah

@nitsua60 I agree

@doppelgreener I don't use that as a currency. I use it as something totally separate. Just another resource like food, water, gold, etc.

"XP" as in "Experience points" doesn't exist in my games. Rather, you have "levels" which are mere stages of personal development, and you have "XP" is which is a magical substance (kinda like the concept of "mana" in some games) used to aid in the creation of certain magical items/spells.

By currency I mean something that the mechanics say you can spend

And that the mechanics make you spend for certain actions

Not as a literal token people trade in world

This is a flaw in the original base mechanics, not in what you're doing — I'd just go a step further and omit that flaw altogether

Well, I like having the extra component in there, because it adds an extra level to making certain items/casting certain spells

Because crafting works around the idea that you are using time + XP + skill/feat focus to = reduced costs/increased customization

So if you eliminate the XP part, then crafting is less of a "trade" and more of "Why buy anything in the first place?"

@BESW get thee behind me BESW

Crafting already costs gold though right? So sure, they can craft what they can instead of buying it.

Crafting is already "I want to make these things instead of buying them"

It costs gold, but at a notable discount

Sure, sounds fine then

They get the discount and the stuff they made

Yeah, but I just don't like handing out free discounts (I'm not an easy DM usually, but that's aside the point).

In 4e, crafting is a subset of ritual magic and is functionally a set of "summon vendor who has exactly what you want" spells.

lol

No discount or anything, just convenience and precision--and the ability to transfer an enchantment you like to the kind of weapon you want it on, which is nice.

Lol hilarious way to put it

Since 4e's setting has a lot less "You can buy whatever you want at any random town you happen to stumble on in the wilderness."

It was real nice though

I wouldn't consider the discount free if they put character traits into earning the ability to craft at all

lol, well, one of my current characters is adept at planar travel, so whenever it's time to buy something he just takes a quick trip over to one of the big extra-planar trade-cities, buys what he wants, and hops back.

@doppelgreener I would not consider that free either

@doppelgreener Fair point, ofc, since that's usually a feat at least

Heck,I consider that to cost more than the gold

@Alphaeus Yeah, in 4e that sort of ability is gated by level but generally falls under the same ritual magic feat that grants crafting.

Right. They want to do the thing, I'd like to let them do the thing. XP costs seem like a subset of D&D's unfortunate "no, stop doing the cool things you want to do...!!" tendency that shows up from time to time.

I would rather pay standard gold price for goods and have that feat available wherever else I want it

@doppelgreener XP costs were the only reason I didn't roll characters with familliars

@doppelgreener Quite true, which is something I generally try to avoid if possible.