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00:00 - 15:0015:00 - 00:00

15:00
Waka Waka this morning. That and La La La, the FIFA songs. Always get me fired up.
I like Waka Waka.
@johnp what Im saying is there are newer, simpler systems that retain that "D&D feel"
such as D&D 5e
or Dungeon World
Dungeon World is available for free
and 5e basic is available for free
@johnp yeah never liked her music but I can concur with that stement
I played a little in 3.5, wasn't impressed, but that could have been the group.
Ah, Pathfinder is basically 3.5 with the serial numbers filed off...
@johnp yeah than you probably dont wanna be using PF
15:05
That's what I'm coming to find out.
as metool said its basically 3.75 as a little people refer to it
But, I do like it in the gaming group that I am in currently.
Oh, and I guess I am a little invested, the wife got me the players manual and the gamemaster guide for xmas.
15:07
brb work calls
15:26
So, I guess back to the basic question - What's a good primer to understand the mechanics of creating/running encounters?
Awesome. Love the writeup in the "Start the music" box.
Ah, ok. Light dawns. So instead of THAC0 and +/- for how far off from 0 you are, you add up all your bonuses for AC, and then you have to roll that or higher on your attack + bonuses.
So an AC of 24, means you have to roll D20+bonuses of 24 or higher.
correct
@TimB - What are you doing slumming over here? :p
I get around ;)
I'm running an online pathfinder game atm, it's not bad
generate your character here: myth-weavers.com
15:57
correct
and it will work out your attack bonuses, etc for you
@johnp yeah basically everything is trying to meet or exceed a threshhold
so for saving throws
your trying to meed the DC as determined by the trap/spell
most stuff is roll D20 - add bonuses, try and beat a target (the DC)
so attack is D20+ attack vs AC
trip is D20+ CMB vs their CMD
skill is D20+skill vs difficulty of task
save is D20+save vs DC of what you are saving against
Nice.
@TimB - What are the times for the online game? And what level chars?
16:05
@TimB - I don't see a char gen? Just an npc one.
what do you mean?
as in details of the player characters? That's at the start of the ooc thread
most games happen around 18:00 gmt give or take. Usually wednesday and saturday although we don't do 2 games every week. Sessions tend to fill up but you're welcome to join the campaign, I just can't promise you'd get into every session.
I wasn't saying generate your character specifically for joining my campaign btw (although I can see how it read that way)
I meant if you use that website to generate your character then it does a lot of the working out for you
You linked myth-weavers as a char gen location, I thought there was a gen tool. What level character(s)? I can create a char and join when I can, if that would be allowable.
applies your skill bonuses, works out CMD, etc
here's an example of one of my player's characters: myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=62037
you just create a login on the site then tell it you want to generate a pathfinder character sheet
Ah, gr0k. They've got a GM discussion area too, I need that. Typical 1st level, or should I make a higher level?
for joining the campaign its level 3 characters - we're playing E6 and a few other house rules though so you should read the first few posts on each of the recruitment, OOC and IC threads and see if you're still interested
16:12
aight.
Ok, so let me see if I get this. 6 characters, all 1st level. APL = 1, for a challenging encounter, it would be CR of 2.
That gives me 600 xp to play with, so whatever group of monsters I come up with, needs to have an XP award of 600 or less for defeating it.
So an Akata (400 xp) and two Mandrill (100 xp each) would be a CR 2 encounter.
@JohnP you can go higher its just more challenging
also be warned that XP budget alone wont stop you from making an overpowered encounter
@JoshuaAslanSmith - Noted.
some monster abilities or spellcaster spells can decimate a party or the specific party makeup you face,
its more like cooking than baking, season to taste as it were
True, I was just checking the basic understanding.
hey gotcha, just wanted to remind you is all
16:26
If you have a group with all non magic weapons and throw a creature they can't hit at them, it might prove to be a problem.
Or a fun challenge
depending on your level of evil
Best advice I can give is to start off with a few simple easy encounters (no special powers, no fancy environments, easy CR) and then build it up over time
not fun for the party
start adding monsters with powers, or spellcasting, or whatever. Start adding difficult terrain or props, traps etc
but only introduce new concepts one at a time
@JoshuaAslanSmith They did ok. They did have a cleric who channeled the non-corporeal unliving to 'death' while the rest held off the earth elementals though.
16:50
@TimB - The first adventure (maybe the first two) will be pregenned 1st level PF modules. I will probably have a couple more seasoned players, but at least two players will be basically complete n00blets.
17:02
Can a lich control their fear aura?
17:55
@JohnP "Not unreasonable" is my answer while I poke around for my bestiary.
If you're the GM, you're free to make the call that they can, and it wouldn't have a particularly exciting impact.
@Metool - What I was thinking was in one part of the early adventures, showing them the lich and engaging a conversation, i.e. "You are my early warning system", but it's hard to do that when you have an entire party gibbering in fear.
They will all be 1st level.
Oh, absolutely.
I was thinking of this epic scene where they walk in on the lich doing the soul imprison thing of one of the world's great heroes, talk, warn, THEN turn on the fear as he portals out.
Ok, so maybe not epic.
19:02
@JohnP Next thing I think of is that he has a long-duration spell effect that sort of bends space around him for magical effects, which also has the side effect of effectively preventing spells with the "Close" spell range from being cast through it.
19:41
@Metool - That might be a good thing to keep in the pocket. I don't imagine that any 1st level chars will have anything that will do anything more than upset him mightily. :p
As fun as grease is.
20:10
I keep having the scene from the mummy running through my head where Imhotep floats the boy in front of him.
20:20
From the "really out of ideas" section of DC comics - Matter-Eater Lad and Calorie Queen from the planet Bismoll.
 
3 hours later…
23:11
@JohnP -- ...why do people see it as a bad thing when I propose character concepts that make say, werewolves, liches, or vampires as mundane as your cube-mate at work? (because that's another habit I have, especially in universes where there are crazy-fantastical things floating around -- I like to see them through a mundane lens)
in particular, I have a player at my 2e "table" who believes that the notion of a natural lycanthrope paladin is absurd
@Shalvenay Is it possible that their objection is actually that it's unbalanced?
@Miniman -- no, I'd be willing to adjust for balance concerns
(although I suspect this concept would be more at home in 3.x, where Paladins are known to be a bit on the wimpy side anyway)
23:30
@Shalvenay This is a clue to the precepts of their world. Narratives have laws just as binding as physics, and breaking them shatters disbelief just as much. In some worlds, the supernatural is inherently non-mundane, and normalising a supernatural creature is as absurd and contradictory as suggesting that garlic will neutralise magnetism.
In other worlds, of course, it's well within the narrative bounds to do so (and in Ars Magica, garlic does neutralise lodestones).
@Shalvenay There's more than one kind of balance. If a player told me they wanted to be a half-dragon but were happy to use the stats of a human to keep it balanced, I'd still be concerned about the narrative impact of a half-dragon on the game, especially compared to other players who went with more 'regular' races.
See also: overshadowing.
When one of my players reacts to a suggestion about the world in a really strong way that I didn't expect, I take it as a clue that our mental constructs of the shared world aren't as similar as I thought they were, and I need to dig in and find out what the differences are.
Robo RPG Best Fate game (ever?), best core rulebook 2014, and best new name of 2014. High praise! http://diehardgamefan.com/2015/01/12/diehard-gamefans-2014-tabletop-gaming-awards/
(Interesting to see that, again, D&D 5e consumers are talked about as players of all previous editions except 4e.)
@BESW The writer specifically calls himself out as not liking 4e, so it's not too surprising.
@Miniman Yes, and apparently that means he's not going to talk about anyone else liking 4e either. If it were just this one guy I wouldn't point it out, but it's the latest entry in a trend that started with Wizards' early press releases and continues: minimising, ignoring, or even ridiculing the idea that 5e might maybe want to appeal to people who like 4e.
@BESW Well, in the case of WOTC the reasoning is pretty obvious - 4e drove a lot of people away, and they're trying to bring those people back, so pretending 4e didn't exist is part of their marketing strategy.
My guess would be that they think 4e fans will continue to play 4e, so they're focusing on winning back their previous audience.
(Most particularly trying to take a chunk of Pathfinder's market share.)
23:46
I find it rather fascinating that for a system so obviously designed to reunite disparate player groups under a single banner, the only was they thought they could do it was to ignore and dismiss the loyal audience they already had at the time.
Note: I'm not attempting to defend or justify this, just trying to give an explanation for my perceptions of their choices.
"Let's get back all the people who used to give us money, by ignoring the people who give us money now" seems... sub-optimal.
oh, @BESW -- I think a large chunk of my character's persistent social skills trouble comes from context -- she basically believes she's in a combat or near-combat context all the time
@BESW It's a fairly normal thing in marketing though. The focus is generally on acquiring new customers, because the majority of loyal customers will stick with the products they like anyway.
In this case, the "new customers" for WOTC are actually former customers, but the principle stays the same.
@Miniman Ah, yes. That worked so well for moving from 3.5 to 4e.
23:49
@BESW In a sense, it did. A lot of people stuck with 3.5, particularly if you count the ones who went to PF.
Note: Obviously, this is all entirely unqualified opinion.
@Miniman And now they're trying to recover from losing their customers to another similar product which they abandoned by... abandoning their current product. I get the reasoning, I just think it displays a great deal of failure to learn from the past.
@BESW Yep, I noticed the inconsistency as I was writing. It's possible (maybe even likely) that I'm just flat wrong here.
so -- I just thought of how to make an elf's head spin oh, about a million RPMs...
send him to train dispatcher school. straight out of whatever passes for Elven secondary school
Yeah, their problem was people felt abandoned and betrayed and stopped buying the books or wanting to associate with new editions.
So their solution is to try to get the people feeling abandoned and betrayed... by abandoning their current customers and giving them something that hearkens back to editions a good portion of them probably happily moved away from.
Heh, maybe D&D 6e will be a sequel to 4e and they'll keep alternating between their customer bases. (Enormous false dichotomy present here).
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