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00:00
@doppelgreener Thanks! I would die without cheatsheets myself. :P
i can barely manage in a game as complex as D&D. i should probably try to make myself one of those.
(a while back the rules barely made sense to me and still my choices at any point are kind of overwhelming sometimes)
by the way, i linked those chat posts to dale M - the next answer - in case he wanted to riff off of anything i said in there while he's busy talking about how rules are hard. in case you want to do similar you can go right ahead.
old players very often forget how bloody difficult it is to actually wrap one's head around the rules.
don't know if it's necessary or not, so this isn't me making a suggestion or pushing it on you or anything, just offering that in case you feel it would be helpful.
00:17
@doppelgreener Most definitely. That's one of the things I had in mind when answering the previously linked questioned. Sure, 9 sessions... but that's still not that much, honestly, especially when there's time in between playing and you're trying to memorize rules as complex as any variation of D&D's.
And sometimes it's just because a player is not suited to the rules. I'm pretty decent with Pathfinder, for example, but I cannot remember Exalted rules to save my life. I feel really bad about it, but I've been honest with the GM that the rules are hard for me, and he doesn't mind. My boyfriend, on the other hand, really cannot grasp Pathfinder rules easily due to the way they're written, but he's having a far better time with 5e.
@Pixie at a point my group was tossing up D&D 3.5e vs 4e, one of my players said he much preferred 4e for the way the books were laid out
that can make a big difference too
@doppelgreener Yeah. This is actually one of the problems I have with Exalted. Everything is everywhere. The GM was pretty up front about this. He was like, "They're a mess." xD
@Pixie ouch
and i had enough trouble when Atomic Robo defined a couple of key concepts each over the course of 3 different pages (found in entirely different points in the book)
@doppelgreener For example, if you create a Lunar, you use the Lunar book. But the Lunar book will tell you something like, "Works as Solar ability of the same name. Refer to page [whatever] of Solar book." instead of reprinting the ability so you don't have to keep going back and forth between books. Things are also spread out, sometimes hidden in chapters you wouldn't expect, sort of like you mention with Atomic Robo.
@Pixie oh no
i am imagining a web of such things, with each of the Exalted types all referring to each of the other Exalted types...
"wait a minute, how does this one book refer to the other books if it came first!" "it's the revised edition."
00:30
@doppelgreener Hahaha. I haven't seen it myself, but anything's possible. :P The game is just biased toward playing Solars.
I can't help it if Lunars are way cooler. :P Actually, our party of four has only one Solar.
Haha!
OH NO. That meditation image I linked yesterday is tiny!
Here's the full(er) version:
@AlexMitan ^.
@BESW Unstar that tiny image from the sidebar please! It is 2 small to ride the star coaster.
We have two Lunars and an escaped Abyssal. It's pretty fun. xD Abyssals are Solars who are captured by death lords (I think that's what they're called but don't quote me) and forcefully turned all dark and abyssal-y. As you can tell, I am very well versed in this game's lore. :P
00:45
Ooooo.
That sounds pretty cool. <_<
I like that kind of story element. (The only other thing I know that's like that is the void Naaru captured by the Blood Elves in Warcraft.)
00:59
Ohh, I have a few more of the details now. It's not quite Solars being captured.
When an Exalted dies, their "spark" of Essence is preserved and bestowed to a new mortal. Through various events, a bunch of Essences from dead Solars got stolen and stored in something called the Jade Prison. The Deathlords found it and managed to get some of the Essences, which they corrupted and began giving them to people of their choice (not necessarily the person's choice :P) when they were close to death and enslaving the ensuing Exalts.
@BESW I totally did not know that rule was a thing. Oops.
@grubermensch that might be linked to the wrong chat message?
did you mean BESW's next one..?
No, I was referring to the Fate rule from the question.
I've totally been soaking big hits with multiple stress boxes.
01:03
yes we were doing that originally as well
@BESW which brings to mind: I recall that when you have a stack-o-mooks (like the boar stampede), you check off multiple stress boxes for each hit, and eventually the stack disperses. was that based on something from the books? would it work better with the stack-o-mooks taking consequences?
@Pixie nice thinking on their part, haha
that spark concept sounds good.
so exalted are actually uplifted mortals, not a race unto themselves?
@doppelgreener Yep, uplifted mortals.
@waxeagle brrring
01:24
@Shalvenay sorry tried to ping you in g+, but no game tonight :(
gotcha
np
01:55
OH. MY. GOD. None of the chat highlights are by @BESW or about @BESW.
We are in the end times.
He's on vacation in another country visiting people!
He'll be back.
Well that's much less exciting.
I'm currently in a game of Do.
I just fell into a sneezing whale while trying to give it a hankie.
2
user61230
Looks into sidebar; sees "I just fell into a sneezing whale while trying to give it a hankie"; pops in; stars; pops out.
02:10
@BESW We had fun with the whale. I think we ended up serenading it while shattering snot-barriers.
I've run it three or four times now.
We have Pilgrims Mighty Tree, Antsy Candle, and Wet Blanket.
@Emrakul NOOOOOOO
@SevenSidedDie This time around, the planet and its house are made of cookies.
And the whale was allergic to salt water (Wet Blanket got in trouble by crying).
We repaired the gingerbread house with whale snot.
02:29
Gross
Effective but that property value just went way down
02:55
The phrase "further enraging Melanie" was used at least once.
@doppelgreener I'm constantly revising my understanding of mook-stacking.
I think you do check off multiple stress boxes, if mooks even have those, because you effectively attack multiple targets.
("Are your mooks taking up too much space? Do conventional mook storage solutions not work for your home? Try Mook Stacking absolutely free for thirty days!")
@BESW :P
I just imagine Batman's flow combat from Arkham games when someone takes out a bunch of mooks with a single melee attack.
You get some, and you get some, and now I'll propel ten meters through the air BECAUSE I"M BATMAN and you get some.
My current approach is that mooks stack however makes it easiest for the GM to run them in the conflict, depending on the GM and the conflict.
That's the point, after all.
For me, this generally means either implementing Teamwork rules (all but one mook passes his turn so the last mook in the round gets a +1 for each of the others, but they all have separate stress boxes) or making the mook a single NPC that's just flavoured as a group.
03:06
A swarm of mooks.
Numbers only correspond to power very roughly in Fate anyway.
Hah, I remember in 3.5, when they offered crowd rules for mobs of commoners. Cityscape? Heroes of Horror? No matter. The party, level 5 and proud of it, was tracking a murderer in a city, and said murderer used magic aberrant pheromones to whip a crowd into a frenzy. "Pft," the party said, they're commoners. The party nearly died.
They have declared these rules to be Bullshit, and vowed to kill any 47th member of any group, as at 48 they become a mob.
"I fireball them, problem solved!" "Weell, they do take double damage from AoE". "Wut?"
@Magician Wait, what?
Only very vaguely related.
It was... gah, I can't even remember. It was a nasty critter that I had to retool a bit to be a perfect assassin.
03:24
So, last night we finally met Ilsensine, the Mind Virus. A lord of madness and the chief illithid deity (kiiind of). Turns out he's quite unhappy, and wants to commit suicide. By killing every sentient being in the world. More out of fear than anything, my bard soon called him a "melodramatic wanker." Then the fighting started and my bard called the Mind Virus a brainfart. The Mind Virus took 31 psychic damage. Don't piss off the bard.
@BESW That movie was NUTS
LOL at the bard
03:42
@Magician because no living things -> no illithids to worship the mind virus -> no mind virus?
Almost. No living things -> no minds to get the idea and be infected by it.
What system?
13th Age.
A continuation of a series of D&D games, this one. 3.5 -> 4e -> 13A.
Ah, gotcha.
I've been brainstorming a pathfinder campaign idea.
13th age is a third party d20 game made by the lead designers of 3.5e and 4e.
03:47
Cool.
 
3 hours later…
06:30
Is anyone here that's into D&D 3.5e?
(and awake)
Nope and nope, but ask regardless.
I have a proposed relatively-simple fix for Truenamers and want to run it by anyone aware of that class's problems.
Do tell. I recall reading about its problems recently.
Presuming that like Pathfinder your skill ranks are capped by HD instead of HD+3, at any time, you can add half of your combined ranks in any two of the following skills to all Truespeak checks: Knowledge (Arcana), Knowledge (Religion), or Knowledge (The Planes).
For example, a Lvl 20 Truenamer with 20 ranks in Truespeak, KnowArc, KnowRel, and KnowPlanes can get a +20 to all Truespeak checks.
14
Q: What is wrong with the Truenamer?

Pro756I have seen a lot of people say that the Truenamer does not work (such as this answer placing Truenamer at the bottom tier) or that it's terrible. As far as I can read and see, though, it seems to be very strong as a caster type. At low levels it doesn't much more or less then a low level wizard...

(for context)
06:38
Morning
@Pureferret Mine now. Greetings. Yes.
@Magician wu?
@Pureferret I've been stealing mornings from people careless enough to offer them. Is... a silly in-joke, I guess.
@Magician fiend!
In effect, by putting ranks in any two of those skills, they can add them and then cut the total in half to make up for the fact that the Truespeak DC increases at +2 per level while your ability to make checks only increases by +1 normally.
06:42
@EmrysTernal There's still the DCs increasing with usage, though.
That only applies to the same ability on the same target.
If you use a different utterance or a different target, the DC stays the same.
"Each time you succeed, the DC of that particular utterance increases by 2". Is that incorrect? Seems to say the target doesn't matter.
Ah. It seems I was mistaken.
As far as fixes go, it's simple and will help, but won't fix the deeper issues. It's also a bit of a skill point tax, but eh. You might as well declare the DC goes up by 1 with level, not 2.
That said, it wouldn't be amiss to make the law of resistance only apply when used against the same target
06:46
Even trickier to keep track of!
True. Hm.
Yeah it'd be simpler to just make it go up by +1.
I guess the +2/level is there to account for magic items or feats you might take to improve the skill. But it's just annoying to keep up with that.
So if you decrease the scaling, and perhaps the resistance scaling too, it'll be easier to make a functional non-optimized truenamer.
The Law of Sequence could have a simple fix where each later use ends the prior one.
Instead of requiring you to wait
I'm not even sure why you need it with Law of Resistance on hand.
There is a homebrew replacement for the Truenamer that is fairly well regarded. Search for "the way words work". It was made by one of the RPG forums (Giants In The Playground?)
06:51
The purpose of the Law of Sequence is so you can't at-will give the effects to everyone at all times.
@EmrysTernal But doesn't Law of Resistance already do that by incrementing DCs each time you use the same ability?
The purpose of the Law of Resistance is similar, but fills a different purpose: to make it harder to apply it to the SAME target multiple times.
Which is your houserule/interpretation :). As written, spamming an ability increases DC each time, making it impossible to just use it at-will.
That's not the point.
Law of Sequence forbids multiple concurrent uses of an ability, Law of Resistance discourages it. Their functionality overlaps significantly.
06:55
The point is that because it can be used at-will and truename effects bypass many of the faults of spellcasters, it has to be limited in a specific way.
relevant to this 'fixing the truenamer' business is that some of the giants in the playground folks apparently attempted the very same
2
Q: What tier is The Way Words Work's version of the Truenamer in?

ShalvenayThe D&D 3.5e's original Truenamer is considered so badly broken it's nearly unusable, and in the Tier system, it gets pegged at tier 6 or 7, i.e. it is the lowest of the low. However, the folks on the Giant in the Playground forums have rewritten the class in an attempt to mold the Truenamer int...

As for my houserule/interpretation, you might be right, but unlike most players I have special training that enables me to get a better educated guess at the original author's design intent.
Anyway
When I look at the Law of Resistance, I can say that the point was to be flavorful but prevent a Truenamer from being able to spam endlessly with no penalty.
As for the Law of Sequence, I can say that the point was to prevent the same effect from affecting more than one target at once.
Those are entirely different balancing factors.
I disagree with having to wait via the Law of Sequence, as that puts the flavor of the Law of Sequence above what's reasonable and within precedent.
You can retain the goal of the Law of Sequence without unnecessarily burdening the player.
By simply making a new version of the same utterance end the one that came prior.
With zero memory of actual abilities of the Truenamer, I still don't think there needs to be a hard limitation on the number of concurrently running instances of the same ability. But that's beside the point. If you like the Law of Sequence, keep it, by all means.
Likewise, as precedent, spellcasters can end a dismissable ongoing effect at-will as a standard action. Oddly, truenamers don't seem to get a similar ability.
07:25
In short:

The Law of Resistance only increases the Truespeak DC by +1 for each subsequent successful utterance. Resting for 1 hour removes these DC increases. The Law of Sequence does not stop you from using the same utterance before a currently-running instance of it ends, but successfully speaking the utterance again ends the running instance of that utterance. In addition, you can dismiss any ongoing utterance of yours with a duration outright as a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. Dismissing an utterance does not require a Truespeak check, but you must mee
@EmrysTernal Seems reasonable. Is it safe to assume your group is not going to cheese the Truenaming skill, like described in the answer to the TWWW question?
Well no, and even if they did, it woudn't matter anywhere near as much (at least not in my game).
I use the Bell Curve Rolls variant with optional Variable Modifiers. Additionally, the number of encounters per day is double to quadruple what is normal for a typical game. However, that's just me.
And really, the big problem with cheese is that they almost always rely on prestige classes, and almost no GM that I've seen runs PrCs as they were actually intended.
That is, with gravitas, thoughtful placement in the world, and requiring narrative forethought for entering them on the part of the player.
The same goes for multiclassing really, although that's less suspect.
If all GMs were to put that kind of basic minimum effort into thinking about the role of PrCs in their game world and in the story of the PC that wants into it, most forms of cheese would die.
Most PrCs are freakin' GUILDS. Guilds almost never walk up to someone and say "We've heard of you and are impressed with your efforts, would you like the key to our clubhouse?"
Instead, most GM's apparently react to "Oh we just leveled up? I'm taking a level of Paragnostic Assembly" with "okay".
It's that kind of GM laziness that makes me bang my head against a brick wall.
Basically, it infuriates me that there are a million statements on Theoretical Optimization of players for various things, but almost nothing about how a GM can work with a PC to make their entry into a PrC take place over time.
 
2 hours later…
09:47
I definitely see the flaw in that Emrys. For example, in the forgotten realms campaign setting Red Wizards are a huge evil order of mages who pool their magic power to advance their plots, taking a level in red wizard would kind of be impossible without knowledge of how to utilize that spell pool or entry via some kind of Red Wizard contact or instruction.
I don't understand why this edit was approved. There is no below 0 HP and they're not unconscious and stable when they do drop to 0 HP. Unless that's part of the starter kit?
those are definitely the 4E rules for dieing, I don't know what 5E's rules are, but that answer contains the 4E ones
save for that it doesn't mention the fact that if you drop below - 1/4th your max hp you auto die
I don't know if that means they added 4E death rules into that 5E starter kit or not but I wouldn't be too exceptionally surprised
10:16
Hmm, You're right. How do you revert an edit?
Actually now that I look at it there is one exception to the rule
@Sandwich Go into the edit history scroll down to the revision you want it to revert to and click rollback
If the person attacking you chooses to knock you out rather than kill you when dealing damage higher than your remaining hit points you're still alive, but at 0 hit points
also. looks like it says that if they receive half their life in damage they die, which I don't think was in 4E, unless I remember that part wrong
but the rest of it is still surprisingly similar
There we go, I think I did that right.
Oops, got the wrong revision, there we go.
Sorry about that guys, I'm new to this and I'm kind of learning
I hit more than 2k karma just answering stuff, this is my first step into the administrative side of stack exchange
11:07
@trogdor negative bloodied killed you outright
Hows your morning thusfar Wax
@waxeagle the way the answer was worded seemed like it was an auto kill if you took all that damage at once
I may very easily have just misread that
@trogdor in 5e? yeah if you take a hit that takes you to negative max hp in one go you're dead
ok, so I must just have mis-remembered the amount of damage it takes to kill you in 4E
it has been a couple years now XD
I think I prefer the pathfinder iteration of the death and dying rules
Being able to take damage up to your constitution in negative hit points makes sense
11:14
I was fine with the 4E ones
Since your Constitution is a numerical identifier for how hardy you are
It doesn't make sense that something with 44 con would have the same death threshold than something with 10 con
It also gives larger creatures with higher cons more leeway in stabilizing
to be honest, it wasn't too hard to kill PC's in 4E, I did it a few times without trying to
to be fair though, if your PC's in 4E were really trying hard and using the right builds, they could tear through level appropriate encounters like a dragons flames through a single piece of paper.
I don't like the way powers were structured in 4E
Too exploitable
especially if they co-ordinated builds
I think it had to do with a lot more than powers honestly
said powers worked really well with the right feats and magic items
D&D 4e a.k.a "D&D: superpowers" as my group liked to call it
11:20
and even certain paragon paths were possibly exploitable.
I really did love 4E for a while, but it certainly had it's own special flaws that made it a chore to DM for
BESW had to stop after running us through one campaign of it, and I actually never finished my campaign of it at all
by the time my campaign stopped, our group had at least one PC who was strictly built to neuter opponents so they couldn't hit anything, and I was crippled with the idea that I had already killed a staggering number of PC's
I say at least one because he was technically working with a defender as well, so hitting anyone but the guy with the most hp and defense was practically impossible, and even hitting him was pretty hard
It was reaaaally exploitable
I just stuck to 3.5 when 4 came out for the most part
isn't 3.5 equally exploitable?
it kinda is
Yeah but you have to know A LOT about 3.5 to exploit it
it just sticks more to exploiting spells
11:28
Craft Contingent Spell for the most part
you kinda had to dig a bit to exploit 4E too, to be fair
Craft Contingent spell for Mages, Divine Metamagic for Clerics
You could pull off some pretty decent gish builds as well that weren't that bad either
and I personally was at least happy that 4E didn't keep the idea that the only viable choice in terms of class was spell caster or suck master.
Pathfinder fixed a lot of Suck master classes
good to hear
I really am not sure what some of the people making classes in 3.5 were thinking
there were some cool classes that at least worked, and then there were,... abominations that truly should not have existed, simply because they did jack all
11:32
Have you looked at this Q/A Trogdor?
http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/1/differences-between-dd-3-5-and-pathfinder
@trogdor I found that the way powers worked, it pretty much framed all classes as spellcasters, just without actually calling them that
Pathfinder has so much better exp progression
Guess it depends on the fluff
@Wibbs I can see how you would feel that way
Instead of having to calculate encounter levels and party levels and then divide amounts and whatnot theres numbers that each monster is worth and you just add them up and divide by N
Thats so much better than 3.5
Not to mention they did a few things and fixed Flurry of Fail with monk
11:36
many things, in my experience, could be improvements to 3.5
Pathfinder is the best thing that happened to 3.5
not to say it wasn't fun, but I was definitely sick of non spell caster classes automatically being underpowered without serious work, for example.
Just like these white lifesavers are the best thing thats happened in breathmint based technology
Someone at Lifesavers has ranks in Craft ( Breathmint )
Very Niche skill
Not a lot of people back then needed or cared about breathmints
12:08
Morning
@Magician
Brave.
lol
it isn't bravery, it must be MADNESS
This isn't madness. THIS. IS. STACKEXCHANGE.
12:14
lol
Anyone want to test something for me real quick in a google spreadsheet?
Sure
What do you need?
I have a process for putting together skeletons for a game. Right now it is just in google spreadsheet so I could get the process down. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/…
I see the sheet, it looks fine. What are you trying to get it to do?
12:25
@Sandwich It all works (as far as I can tell.) Just want to make sure the process isn't too confusing.
Hm, I'm not familiar with the system the sheet is using so I can't really comment more on the functionality Aaron
What I can tell is that each type of racial bone has different stats
And it just adds those stats from the alternate sheet
Ok.
It seems like its functioning fine
I don't see any problems
Cool. I wasn't to worried about functionality. I wanted to make sure the actual process of making the skeleton made sense. This is going to be a major feature of the video game.
ANONYMOUS PYTHON OOOOUT
12:34
see ya
I just left the sheet
I'm not actually leaving
Oh.
12:54
@waxeagle sorry about last night, I responded maybe because Holly had a super stressful day and I didnt know if Id be able to help her calm down in time for the game, but then ended up being able to play but only knowing that around 8pm. Hopefully we can all get together and continue next week.
If I asked the stack something like "What's a balanced/interesting way to make an Artificer-like character in Fate?", would it get closed as subjective or something?
Its something we might be able to do but you would need a LOT of detail and requirements
especially since artificer has many different versions across editions
Also your goal would need to be heavily defined
In.. in Fate... does anyone even take previous Fate editions into account?
balanced/interesting is a bad goal for SE users to work toward as both of those are very subjective
@AlexMitan Im saying there are different artificers in D&D
@AlexMitan he means between different D&D editions
13:07
Yeah, but I'm talking about Fate RPG
but you are talking about replicating a class that has multiple versions into another game
He wants this sort of... mechanomage..thingy
Yeah, I should inquire further
so you would need to nail down specifically what about your specific idea of artificer does, what is core to the character
what he is trying to say is that you need to make it clear exactly what you mean by artificer
@AlexMitan ah yeah your player, not you should probably post it
13:08
..hmm, yeah, true
Ok, but what about a warlock, a 5e Old One warlock being replicated as an idea in Fate
I have a whole page of backstory about what the character has, acts and wants
basically SE while a great way to get help and communication functions like a software design team and to get good output you need good input and that means lots of specifications and information to achieve results.
So firstly are you playing Fate Acclerated or just regulare Fate?
Accelerated
preparing for it
I'll have the session somewhere next month but I've been manically reading about Fate in every way and everywhere I can
two of the players have a very good idea of what they want to be, one of them wanting a Warlock of some sort
like an Old One 5e warlock
The main thing would be his familiar... his summon
if I treated it as an individual character he'd basically be a bit overpowered, with two turns per turn
I believe this summon could/would be an aspect
Im not a super fate expert though, the person you really wanna talk to is @besw who is probably asleep right now (he lives way out in guam)
BESW is currently in South Carolina.
@besw THIS IS MADNESS
13:17
Not sure how it works in Core Rules, but in Strands of Fate, you can model it as an Advantage. It would cost quite a bit of starting Advantage Points, but it would essentially give a character a whole new stress track, and a way to do things he normally wouldn't be able to do cause, hey, familiar. Or, as @JoshuaAslanSmith suggests, Aspect.
conference?
But not around as much as usual because visiting.
Family & friends.
Also, hullo everyone.
And talk to @Pixie about pet mechanics in Fate.
Id imagine that his/her familiar would be around all the time, hence having it represented in 1 or 2 aspects to trigger it would make sense
in general from other systems as well doing things with/as the pet uses your turn is a nice way to balance pets vs characters without pets
13:19
As for the artificer bit... yeah, gonna have to know more about the story before we can talk mechanics.
What does "artificer" mean for the player? How does his artificing help solve problems?
Ive also seen legendary/magical weapons modeled as aspects to keep them balanced because they are part of that characters identity and approach
Oh damn I've got to go
Thank you very much everyone
I'll check everything when I come back
Thank you, see you around!
 
1 hour later…
14:26
@JoshuaAslanSmith or me, maybe trogdor too
besw and i have both spent similarly enormous amounts of time examining fate
he just tends to beat me to the questions 8)
15:04
@JoshuaAslanSmith THIS IS SPARTA SOUTH CAROLINA!
hmm I guess ive returne dto lurk
 
1 hour later…
16:09
Yeah, there are plenty of Fate experts hanging around here.
17:00
I'm not one of them X3
Just D&d here
And a bit of Maid
Maid is a really silly system
 
4 hours later…
20:46
@AlexMitan On pets in Fate: I can't give you something tried and true because I haven't gotten to play Fate much myself, but I've been thinking about similar topics lately.
@Sandwich Which is what makes it so fun. :P
(Scratch the summoner bit, I somehow managed to think of the wrong game.)
21:19
Also, if we're discussing converting D&Dish classes to Fate, I haven't used this, but it exists and has good reviews.
21:35
@Pixie Good catch!
22:17
Anyone know of a pathfinder effect/spell/ability to where you can possess someone's shadow?
22:37
Wonderful D&D session tonight. Characters wandered around a town in search for a cure to an impending threat, I got the opportunity to RP s many different NPCs. Enervating halflings! Dwarves with prejudices against elves! Priests with prejudices againts adventurers! Meddling merchants! Amulet peddlers! And the list goes on!

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