Id say you really only need 3 players (unless you like to use lots of minions in your xp budget) not that a controller isn't always helpful but its probably the role you can most do without
They're playing 3.0 now and despite using all the characters even if someone's missing they don't like to play when it's 2+me. Once one of them said there's not enough different opinions
it's not the number of characters, is te number of people contributing to the story.
@AlexP Want to know the really depressing part? The website asks where you're from, and after I've said "Australia", the price was set at $17,645. Probably AUD, which translates to 16,321 USD.
"This collection contains plastic, resin and metal miniatures. These kits comes supplied unpainted and require assembly - we recommend using Citadel Plastic Glue, Citadel Super Glue and Citadel Paints... and you're going to need lots!"
I just wrote up one of our best sessions (here). It was all crazy and dreamlike. We've decided that the real art to doing dreams in games is crazy use of "pulling" narration and being absolutely brazen with scene changes.
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Also even-more-aggressive-than-usual reincorporation, I suppose.
Basically just take out the narrative glue that holds scenes together and run full speed ahead and get through like three-four session's worth of stuff in one go, in the dream.
I though just presenting that quote was sufficient, yes.
Skills are tricky to get right. Looking at their numbers, we get that they cap out at +6, and abilities at +5. Which means that a high-level rogue that specializes in lockpicking has a modifier of +11, whereas a low-level drunken dwarf can manage about -1. Which means that while there will be tasks entirely outside of the dwarf's capabilities, your average lock of DC 15 will still be pose a potential problem to the rogue, while being surmountable by the dwarf.
And seeing as it is solved with a single goblin die roll, i'm not sure there's enough of a sense of advancement. At least in combat you can do more damage and pretend that's epic.
Sigh. It's curious, how I'm highly critical of any Next updates, while just shrugging at a simple skill implementation of 13th Age. Probably because 13th Age, while absolutely a D&D game at heart, does not pretend to be the D&D game. I can easily play it as is.
I'm putting together a list of options for Ben to try to get the mess off his mat.
Caution--most of these might also remove the grid lines. Simple Green--careful, the stuff is powerful and should be diluted. Mess Master (florist's chemical). Draw on the permanent line with something you know you can erase, then erase *that* as normal. Sometimes the permanent line comes with it. Rubbing alcohol, a soft toothbrush, and a strong arm. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers have a good rep for this. Tearful supplications to the Mat God, accompanied by cruel sacrifices of metal d4s (his greatest foe).
Shaenon Garrity is looking for someone to help with her Comic Press site: Okay, I need to hire someone to fix this website’s problems. If you’re VERY proficient in ComicPress and want to save me from myself, please email me.
@AlexP I've mentioned the Buffy episode Restless, right?
I gotta go mail money to the feds, buy eighteen gallons of water, and maybe pick up some glue.
@Magician So, I'm reading that article. (More fool me.)
> I like that I can create a cleric with a high Dexterity, pick leather armor and a ranged weapon, take skills that improve checks dealing with stealth, survival, and perception, and play an outdoorsy tracker and hunter who feels much different compared to a traditional, mace and chainmail cleric.
And then...
> The expert bonus is important to ensure that rogues are the best at finding traps, rangers excel in surviving outdoors, and bards are the best at performance. We'll use it selectively in design to ensure that classes that are experts in certain areas can live up to that billing.
A survival package would include bonuses/expertise/proficiency/whatever with the requisite survival skills, some nature-related features like trackless step, the ability to never be lost, and a handful of appropriate spells/spell-like/supernatural abilities.
It would be distinct from a "hunter" package, which would give tracking and investigative abilities/bonuses, some kind of sneak-attack-like damage bonuses, and proficiency/expertise/whatever with ranged weapons.
Taken together you'd get something like a ranger. But if you take the Hunter package with the soldier package (teamwork, discipline, intimidation, abilities to fight multiple enemies) you'd get a battlefield archer, maybe a bow for hire or the veteran of a war.
I think I'd have it be a three-package deal at chargen. Packages would all be designed to have roughly equal mechanical balance.
Alternately, there'd be "skill," "utility," and "conflict" packages and a character would choose one of each.
To make a ranger, you'd take the Survival skill package, the Tracker utility package, and the Archer conflict package.
For a druid, it might be the Survival skill package, the Nature Friend utility package (animal companion, talking to plants, and so forth), and a primal or divine conflict package.
Or it could be survival skills, primal spellcasting utility, and wildshape conflict.
skill/utility/conflict packages would initially restrict the combination possibilities, but would provide great opportunity for making packages in later releases.
Easy way to make things like skill and attack mechanics into snap-on modules divorced from the core ruleset: the core ruleset just has things like "expertise" and "proficiency," which are numerically undefined. Each module says what "expertise" means for its particular mechanics.
If a package gives "proficiency with bows," one package will define it as granting a +5 bonus to attacks and a +1d6 on damage; another will define it as having a better BaB when using a bow and being able to use your Wis or Dex modifier to damage, whichever is better.
Yanno, I'm increasingly thinking that their core system should be inspired by the Chameleon PrC.
So I'm imagining the core ruleset being a set of mix-and-match specialty packages: pick one each from the Skills, Utility, and Conflict package options to define what your character is good at.
And then the group chooses a set of rule modules that define what "being good at a thing" means mechanically.
So a character with the Survival/Tracker/Soldier packages would have the same basic concept and set of "what I'm good at" regardless of the modules the game uses, but he'd play differently depending on whether the modules chosen were more like 4e, or 3.5, or whatever--and you could choose to use a 4e conflict module with a 3.5 skill module.
@InbarRose Or the GM chooses.
But yeah, if I were making this game I'd encourage a Same Page Tool-like approach to module choice.
Taking the Soldier conflict package would give you Excellent Toughness, and the conflict module chosen would determine if that was represented with 4e-like flat hp, or 3.5 die-based hp, or d20 Modern's wounds/vitality system, or something else entirely.
The package/module concept makes room for continued release of extra content, which is crucial to the D&D marketing strategy, and allows for inter-IP licensing opportunities as they release a set of Transformers packages or a Magic: the Gathering spellcasting module.
With this model, it would be possible to almost literally allow people to continue playing their D&D Edition of Choice in D&D Next, simply by releasing a set of packages and modules which mimic that edition's mechanics.
it removes the cohesive feel of the game- by making it modular, you lose a "core" element. the game is expecting to become esoteric and differing across every group that plays it... maybe they want a similar experience/
@InbarRose Well, yes. But that's what the DDN's stated goal is.
And I do think it's a major problem which will fragment the community.
But if you're going to do it... this is how I'd make it work.
> We want a game that rises above differences of play styles, campaign settings, and editions, one that takes the fundamental essence of D&D and brings it to the forefront of the game. In short, we want a game that is as simple or complex as you please, its action focused on combat, intrigue, and exploration as you desire. We want a game that is unmistakably D&D, but one that can easily become your D&D, the game that you want to run and play.
So far as I can tell, Wizards has noticed that the RPG community is moving away from monolithic brand-adherence to a few systems which try to satisfy every playstyle. The market is now populated by a plethora of systems, each dedicated to providing a specific game experience so that a group can choose the system best suited to its desires.
But Wizards can't turn D&D into a niche system; they rely on their monolithic status to bring in the money needed for Hasbro to consider D&D worth not shutting down.
So D&D Next is the compromise: a monolithic brand that tries to also cater to every niche market.
It's an awful idea, and I think they know it, but they're backed into a corner by the fact that the RPG community isn't interested in their business model but Hasbro needs them to keep it.
If they could succeed on the concept it'd be brilliant and noble and awe-inspiring. But they don't have the chops; Wizards's D&D team has an established history of only being competent when focused on a very very narrow range of gameplay goals to the exclusion of all else.
The more they try to integrate multiple styles or approaches, the lower the quality of balance and playtesting.
@InbarRose Oh, sure. But the D&D Next playtest has shown a backward trend from the advances they made in 4e.
And I don't mean that they're going back to older traditions of mechanic. That's part of the D&D Next goals, so it's fine.
But the playtest seemed scatterbrained, unfocused, and like they had to re-learn all the basic gamedev elements that they'd learned in 3.5 and leveraged in 4e.
I read an article/blog or something about the new D&D and it was about how they wanted to try to focus on the root of roleplaying game. By encouraging roleplay, using something they called "action points" (i think)... anyway.. it has a small segment there about how they want to introduce story hooks of the characters past and origin story into the creation/mechanics of the game or something
After a year of playtesting there is no sense that a ruleset had solidified, or even really advanced in concept. The very last playtest they released was "Hey, what if we drop skills entirely?" and the learning was "People don't like that."
That is not the kind of experiment you want to see in the last playtest set, if you want to feel like the devs are competent and have a vision of the game.
@InbarRose Heh. Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space, nearly every game based on the Fate engine, and even Pathfinder have been working with those concepts for five to ten years now.
But Wizards wants to reinvent the wheel.
I guess that's the fundamental problem I'm seeing with D&D Next: it feels like they've forgotten their hard-earned learning, and are trying to replicate the success of other games without actually studying what those game devs learned.
Seven years ago they could be pretentious. Now, when their tightest, most mechanically sound system drove half their client base into the arms of a competitor and small-company non-serialized games are an increasingly significant presence in the market...
And they can't lean on Magic sales, because Hasbro is looking at each IP's income individually.
@InbarRose Any time someone talks about using mechanics to enforce roleplaying, they're liable to insult half the RPG community by saying or implying that what we're doing isn't RP.
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This is different from using mechanics to encourage a particular gamestyle or play experience, because it's not assuming that the experience is the One True RPG Way.
@JonathanHobbs You're in time for another installment of BESW Laments the Tragic Decline of an Institution, While Making Merciless Fun of Them Too.
In pathfinder; a shadowdancer acquires the ability to hide while being observed.
A shadowdancer can use the Stealth skill even while being observed. As
long as she is within 10 feet of an area of dim light, a shadowdancer
can hide herself from view in the open without anything to actually...
Well, you know, in moderation it's a good upper-torso workout, with respiratory benefits. Clinical studies indicate therapeutic effects as well, but the FDA hasn't signed off on that yet.
You just gotta be careful not to overdo it, or you could crack a rib or miss the hero coming up behind for the sucker-punch off the railless causeway over the vat of acid.
@Rob It's your message, you probably have some added rights. It's like comments: you can always comment on your questions and answer, even without having 50 in reputation
Remus I like too; the horrors making everyone it marks turn themselves into a version of itself. Of course, this will probably require surgery, a rack....
I couldn't for the life of me find a rules quote on why rages don't end when knocked out in 4e, but I could find a forum entry with plaguescarred saying so which is pretty legit, but not legit enough for the site i think
@Metool there are some utilities I think that provide it. And maybe some of the rages do. I think some of them come with damage resistance or a bundle of temp hit points
Last week I learned a thing: the pages describing our privileges are editable. Meta Stack Overflow hosts the master copies which get copied to all network sites. You can suggest edits, and 20k users can edit freely.
"In Devil May Cry, leaping in the air and firing the pistols to keep yourself airborne is a strategy noted in the manual." My justification for having a weapon that grants a bonus to Acrobatics.
@alexp its standard practices many places to just take em all out at once because then you don't have to have 2 surgerys if the other set becomes a problem. I had the same thing done to me. The only issues iwth the bottom 2 is they have to stitch your gums back together and its weird for a little bit
My 4e group might never see the light, I have a guy who I know who now wants to DM a PbC. He's never been able to DM anything for more than three sessions. Once because we were unable to meet al 8 of us at the same time, once because we spent the first evening creating characters he had to prepare in advance and then nobody wanted to go on, once because "you're too powerful, I don't know how to challenge you guys" and one because "I ran out of inspiration"
@Zachiel they want to DM our game? If we are doing a scheduled game I am available after 4pm - 8pm (It's 12:30 here now. I never was good with time zones so not sure what to tell you.)
In pathfinder; a shadowdancer acquires the ability to hide while being observed.
A shadowdancer can use the Stealth skill even while being observed. As
long as she is within 10 feet of an area of dim light, a shadowdancer
can hide herself from view in the open without anything to actually...
