TRPG General Chat

BESW

18:35

Can we just have a whole series with Paul McGann please?

Tweeted by cathoderaytube on November 14, 2013 at 5:49 PM

2

RedRiderX

@BESW I want this.

But I guess there is the audio stuff right?

BESW

Zagreus gave me a D&D plot seed for a campaign a couple years ago.

Mar 1 at 0:50, by BESW

> Zagreus sits inside your head,
> Zagreus lives among the dead,
> Zagreus sees you in your bed,
> And eats you when you're sleeping.

wax eagle

hiya @Gameboon

Gameboon

yo

BESW

@Gameboon hi!

Gameboon

18:49

I feel overwhelmed by the greetings :P Usually I come here, ask a question for inspiration about stuff regarding d&d, and leave again :P.

wax eagle

just happened to see a new face when I popped back to this tab :)

Gameboon

Hmm, I've been wondering about a somewhat nerfed version of the 'Deck of Many Things', anyone got any ideas for that? It's for a sidequest for a cleric of Olidammara, and the party lvl is just below 9 at the moment.

BESW

Take the Rod of Wonder as inspiration, perhaps.

Gameboon

hmm, isn't that the thing that uses a dice roll with absurd effects?

BESW

Yes.

Gameboon

18:54

I'll look into that.

BESW

Or make a d% list of 0th-level spells.

Draw a card, get a funny smell for an hour.

Gameboon

Hmmm....

Some of the wonder things are pretty nice for a nerfed deck as well, like reducing someone to half height.

Thanks for the tip.

wax eagle

@Gameboon you could look into the 4e domt

Gameboon

4e domt?

wax eagle

the 4e deck of many things.

Gameboon

18:59

aaaah

wax eagle

I'm looking at it now to see if it's game breaking

none of the paragon tier results are game breaking

some of them might require the PC who draws to have a backup character for a period.

Joshua Aslan Smith

hello my peoples

hahaha

the deck of many things is playing with fire

yes

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, I've heard stories. The 4e one seems to be toned down keeping with the overall spirit of 4e

the one thing it definitely is capable of doing in 4e is hijacking the plot pretty dramatically

BESW

I once drew the "dread wraith" card from a 3.5 deck.

However, since I was playing a hound archon at the time, it was unable to attack me because of my permanent protection aura.

Since anyone other than myself who attacked it would get a wraith of their own auto-spawning, they used it to farm XP.

Gameboon

I can't find the 4e domt right now, but I'll look into it later. As long as it isn't game-breaking I'd say its good. The character will be forced to draw from the deck (needs to find the deck and draw from it, as payback for some divine intervention from Olidammara), and perhaps it will disappear after being used to avoid any more deck-misuse.

BESW

19:13

I'm fond of 4e's artifact-vanishing mechanics.

wax eagle

@Gameboon the 4e one only allow for one draw, you get to choose a certain number of cards on your draw based on your concordance with the deck

but you only get to use 1

base concordance allows for a straight draw.

Gameboon

Ah, only 1 use? That's perfect.

wax eagle

yep

Joshua Aslan Smith

yep

its very balanced

you could go chasing after it dragonball z style, but your DM should make that be another big ol quest

BESW

Artifacts in 4e have a tendency to vanish either when they feel their purpose with your party is concluded, or when they decide you're just not right for them.

Gameboon

19:17

At the moment the party will finish their main quest, and I'm not sure how the party ...uhm...makeup will change, but I'm assuming this deck will be the first thing they will chase after.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yep

basically all 4e artifacts vanish as described, a good number of them reappear somewhere else after vanishing

BESW

And they often leave loot behind if they were happy about the parting.

"Huzzah, I helped you defeat a terrible evil! Have a nice pile of gold, I'm off to help someone else defeat terrible evil now."

Joshua Aslan Smith

Ive toyed with artifacts, but havent given them out, its a good way to do a season 2/3 kind of rotating spotlight for PCs to get some backstory or character development

a party full of artifacts is asking for trouble

BESW

I like party artifacts.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw which do you mean

BESW

19:21

There's several banners that give all allies in 20 ft. a bonus--like healing everyone for a small amount any time anyone in the area heals.

Joshua Aslan Smith

Are those artifacts or just wondrous?

I thought most of the banners were simply wondrous

BESW

Yeah, and there's one artifact banner.

And there's another artifact that has some lovely defensive features... and the ability to magically be passed to whoever needs it, as an interrupt action triggered by them needing it.

Joshua Aslan Smith

2 artifact banners

and 6 wondrous

BESW

Some of the Wondrous Figurines are party artifacts, like the elephant.

Joshua Aslan Smith

indeed

wow that standard of eternal battle has some harsh concordance stuff

BESW

19:24

I think I used the Arkhosian one.

Gameboon

On a different note, they are looking for a CG magical weapon to beat some evil guy, but I was thinking of giving the weapon a drawback like: 'make a DC x wisdom check' or the weapon changes shape to a different type of weapon. It will be used in their boss battle so I'm not sure if this would be the right way to go about it, and nto sure about the DC.

BESW

One of our PCs had been given a Banner of Healing by a grateful NPC ghost, and when the player had to leave island the character died and his spirit turned the banner into an artifact.

@Gameboon Could make the weapon useless, which would mean nobody wants to use it.

How about this:

Joshua Aslan Smith

dice mechanics slow things down and thats a great way for anyone whos not a fighter (I.E. their cup runneth over with proficiencies) to be nerfed

BESW

You can turn the weapon into whatever weapon you like at the beginning of any day, but whenever you fail a Will save for any reason the weapon's enchantment changes.

(Total enchantment value remains constant, but it might go from flaming to electric to keen, and so forth.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

hmm yeah thats nice

BESW

19:28

No extra dice rolls, no sudden inability to use the weapon, but still shifting and random.

Gameboon

Hmm, would keep the random spirit alive, indeed.

It's time for me to check the list of possible weapon enchantments.

Magic Item Compendium has a nice list, no?

BESW

You have to make the players want things, and giving them a chance to become useless can rarely be offset by any level of reward.

I think so.

I once managed to design a successful "blessed with suck/cursed with awesome" combo that the player actually wanted to keep.

wax eagle

@BESW meet our vorpal boomerang sword...

none of us are going to use it.

BESW

@waxeagle That's nothing compared to the fleshgrinding backstabbing sword.

Zehir's Greed was a curse on tomb robbers.

> You gain training in Bluff, Stealth, and Thievery. When you use one of these skills, you gain a cumulative +1 bonus to Bluff, Stealth, and Thievery, and a cumulative -1 penalty to all other skills.

> You can use the Greedy Hands encounter power a number of times per encounter equal to the current "stage" of the curse.

> At the end of every extended rest, make a Constitution check. You may choose to fail this check.

> 20 or lower: The stage of the curse increases by one.

> 21 to 24: No change.

Gameboon

Alrighty, I'm done for now I think. Thanks for the tips and help!

BESW

19:35

> 25 or higher: You may decrease the stage of the curse by one.

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol

BESW

> If you are subject to the Remove Affliction ritual, you can choose to decrease the curse's stage by one instead of the ritual's normal effect. If you do, the ritual's caster takes a penalty equal to the curse's stage to all checks made as part of the ritual.

(The Greedy Hands encounter power used a Thievery check to deal massive damage and create a ruby of commensurate value.)

A cursed character would quickly become insanely good at thievery, but utterly incapable of even the simplest non-thievery task.

I think the guy who got cursed reached over +/-30 in about two sessions before he decided to quit.

(The DCs are tailored for a mid paragon group; I'd raise or lower them based on the party's level.)

It dangles massive damage and insane wealth gain in front of the player, and puts all the choices firmly in his hands.

Joshua Aslan Smith

roll20 need a better LFG forum/ability

its just a big ol list which you can't search (you can search the whole forum at once but not a subforum

BESW

We can't all be Stack Exchange.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I know and I know the forum is like the least money part of roll20

LitheOhm

19:47

"Teach your kids to game week," is that just a thing DriveThruRPG is doing or is it bigger than that?

wax eagle

@LitheOhm my research suggests it's just a drive thru thing

LitheOhm

Same here

wax eagle

cool concept though

LitheOhm

It is :)

Joshua Aslan Smith

hmmm maybe I should be LFGing on a different site, sadly dungeonworld only has an official G communities and nothing else

I sometimes wish we had forums aspect to rpg.se to set things up like lfgs

LitheOhm

19:55

FAE is on the gaming with kids list

Joshua Aslan Smith

yep saw that

wax eagle

more meta drama re: sys-req questions...maybe it will build momentum and they'll go bye bye.

Joshua Aslan Smith

true

BESW

@waxeagle What, more? Where?

All I see is yesterday's drama.

wax eagle

@BESW I had missed that

so it's new to me :)

BESW

20:07

Ah.

I believe that the next Tweet to Campaign By in the tumblr queue is as-yet-unseen by this chat. So that'll be a treat.

wax eagle

ooh fun :)

Joshua Aslan Smith

WHAT DRAMA

I MUST KNOW

wax eagle

2

Q: Why exactly was my answer deleted?

The question I answered is What's a good system for many (6+) players? My answer, deleted by a mod, read: Personally, I'd go for Warhammer Fantasy RP, either the first or the second edition. (I have no experience with the third one, but that might suit you as well.) It's grim, dark ...

discussion

things get heated in the comments under mxy's answer...

not very heated given it's still SE, but it's a bit harsher than I'm used to reading around here.

BESW

Our drama is SF&F's casual friendly chat.

[hands out tie-dyed shirts and Dylan albums]

wax eagle

I'm curious about how many flags we get...I bet it's less than 10 a week

BESW

20:12

I've made four in the last two weeks, just by myself.

Not An Answer x3 and Too Chatty x1.

And 19 last month.

Phil

I make them as and when - I would guess an average of 1 or 2 a week

BESW

One was Spam and one was Obsolete, though.

Joshua Aslan Smith

catchin up on this drama

BESW

@Phil I think this page should work for you.

wax eagle

1 this week for me, 4 this month.

Phil

20:15

Hmmm, not as many as I thought :o)

wax eagle

@Phil you can see your helpful flags on your profile

BESW

@waxeagle And clicking that number leads him to the page I linked him.

wax eagle

@BESW yep

BESW

I have 145 helpful flags out of 159 flags total.

And one disputed "Very Low Quality" flag, which amuses me.

Joshua Aslan Smith

hmm

interesting I have 1 comment declined flagged

BESW

20:23

Looks like I have a 92% acceptance rate on comment flags and an 86% rate on post flags.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I flagged foo bar's comment on this question of mine

4

Q: Runepriest Game Aid?

Does anyone know of any game aids for playing a runepriest. I'm not talking about a character creation or tips-n-tricks guide, but rather something I could print out for a member of my party who will be playing a runepriest from now on in the campaign. The class seems pretty complicated to run an...

dnd-4e game-aids runepriest

wax eagle

amusingly it was an answer at first

Joshua Aslan Smith

yes

that might be why it was declined it got moved to a comment somehow

and my response comment may have been a comment on his answer

I see the point about the DRAMA question and the need to say I have actual experience with xyz but I agree that there are some rough hands all around about these things

also deletion warnings go out and then things happen sometimes within hours which I think is frankly a really short time for this kind of site

BESW

Aye, usually there's more of a grace period.

But a 13k+ citizen answering a question that is both tagged and commented as having particular answer requirements probably shouldn't need the warning in the first place.

That comment goes on every sys-rec question ever.

Joshua Aslan Smith

true but I do think the mods get a siege mentality which I understand being someone who works in IT support but at the same time its not always justified

BESW

20:31

Ayuh.

Joshua Aslan Smith

on that note I will leave said place of work to go home

BESW

In this case, I think that particular post got caught in the fire of all the other more obviously speculative posts.

Joshua Aslan Smith

have a good day/night/appropriate part of the 24 cycle of which you are in

BESW

ttfn, I must go as well.

Aaron

21:04

I didn't know Dunken Donuts had a drive through.

RedRiderX

@Aaron More like Drunken Donuts.

And I'm sure that they'll be sharing that story with quite a few people.

user61230

23:07

Apparently Wolfram|Alpha converts (length)^2 to the unit (adult male cougar's home range)!?

user61230

Reminds me of a game where all the measurements were in totally absurd units based on the King's body.

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