...and yet another bunch of downvotes for no clear reason. What is the big deal with that answer? The fact that it is posted to an old question? Or the fact that I refer to my personal experience?
Really, with each downvote without a comment I start to hate the voting system more and more.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy Try leading with the answer to the question (the bit about the game the person's playing) and make the commentary about real-world parallels take less text than the direct answer.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy Well, first of all the comment about how things work in real life, even if your answer is not based on it, is going to upset someone. Trying to explain game rules by comparing them to real-world physics just does not work.
It may not be strictly fair, but when voters are asked to read the digression before they get to the meat of the answer to the problem they tend to be less charitable.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy It can sometimes be useful to open a meta question asking “How can I improve this question that is getting downvoted? What's wrong with it?”
@Baskakov_Dmitriy On the other hand, the meta and its answers would live on to help future users in your situation, should they exploring community norms on what makes Q&A well- or poorly-received.
Also, it looks like the querent is looking for a mechanical explaination of how two system feature works, and you first suggest a different strategy (which is not the one he has problems understanding, he is not looking for advice on how to use the character, he is trying to understand the rules), then you dscuss the defensive utility of the sword (and not by the rules, but introducing a "probably" and a "I would"), lastly another "I would do this". Basically, you didn't ansswer the question.
@SevenSidedDie I read it all, too. But then again, I read people's bad algebra and people's bad group theory proofs for a living. I'm clearly a masochist.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy If I'm getting downvoted, the first thing I do is check that I'm definitely answering the question in the way the querent wants, or that I'm addressing why I'm challenging the frame. (In this case, you'd notice the rules-as-written tag and the querent's focus on mechanics.)
The second thing I'd do is check to make sure I'm presenting my answer clearly and in order of relevance to the situation. (Here, discussing game mechanics before real-world experience.)
@mxyzplk This is the author of the StackApp that assists users in performing serial downvoting with a minimal number of clicks. And no, I'm not kidding.
@BESW Well, I am pretty much new to the site, so I don't know what does community tend to like and disclike. Other communities with voting systems that I joined had a guide for that. Now I got my answers and am going to do something to the question.
The problem with uncommented downvotes is that nobody can learn from it. Unless he is lazy enough not to care about some existing knowledge he already has.
A downvote is a prompt to you to take a closer look, as I outlined above.
If you're content with your post, then you're free to ignore the downvote as noise.
If someone has a useful suggestion, rest assured they WILL comment it.
People like to share opinions, there's no need to force them to. And you really don't want people to feel pressured to make comments when they don't feel they've got anything to say.
If there's no comment, they probably feel the downvote tooltip is sufficient; take that as an implied comment.
@BESW Wow, only two at "worst." Subtracting off the one I assume will always be there and that I just ascribe to cosmic noise, that's mighty-impressive.
re: downvotes -- yeah, I went through a downvote-heavy phase on this site -- trying to wrap my head around the gamist-first philosophy (I suppose that's one way to put it?) commonly used with D&D took me a while :P
@nitsua60 asking very very strange electrical questions on DIY.SE involving using junction-box-bits in ways I'm sure their designers never intended ;)
@Shalvenay but it might be worth checking how heavy... the common (three-user) reaction here seems to be "oh, I thought it'd be a lot worse than that."
@nitsua60 thank gods no. more like putting a mudring on backwards from how it's supposed to go to work around monkeys who permanently embed 3.5" octagons or pancakes into exterior walls -- good luck if you want to change that light to a receptacle, because you'll need it!
@Miniman Wow... digging deep for that one. I did not remember that JEJ was in it. Closest I was coming was him cancelling the torpedo in Hunt for Red October. "That torpedo hit its target. And I... was never here."
[Meanwhile, throws "Sneakers" in queue, as it's clearly been too long.]
The National Security Agency is always a little weird for me because I grew up with "NSA" standing for "National Spiritual Assembly." VERY different connotations.
However, I also found a very interesting houserule for dual-wielding. Would it be OK if I add it to the answer, mentioning that I know about the rules-as-written tag, but there is no such a canon rule?
@Baskakov_Dmitriy That houserule part does look a little suspect to me. "I googled this for you" isn't really relying on your expertise, unless you've got some argument as to why what you found is worth considering. Best is in the form: "I went ahead and tried this with my group, it worked well in ways." But even an argument from experience is better than "check this out" with nothing supporting it.
@Baskakov_Dmitriy You can calculate how good the houserule is?
I ask with incredulity because I have no doubt that you can calculate the impact of the houserule. But judging whether a houserule is good or not to inject into a game usually has a lot to do with usability, how it fits with theme/style, how it compares to a constellation of other existing mechanics, &c.
(Also, don't despair of people liking statistics around here. I wrote this question just so that I could write this answer. And it turns out dozens of other people liked it, too!)
Average damage is just one tiny part of "good." Does it clash with the thematic feel of the rest of the game? Does it add unnecessary complexity to the resolution mechanics? Is it furthering the game's ethos goals?
@Baskakov_Dmitriy I think there's probably a lot more (in most games) that would go into evaluating whether a houserule is good or bad, whether it's worth recommending. But again, I've zero experience with these games, so maybe I'm way off base. (So I'll shut up about it.)
eg, say what you will about 3.5's grapple mechanic in terms of power and balance, its relative complexity makes it a poor rule alongside the other combat mechanics of the system.
And while DFRPG's Laws of Magic are pretty well balanced and feed the aesthetics of the setting, they create major conflict with the intended interplay of agency between player and GM.
@BESW 1) Depends on what is this game for you. Really, there are probably even more points of view on VtM than there are GMs (Storytellers). 2) Not more than any other way to have more actions per turn (splitting dicepools, which is even harder to calculate and Celereity)
I don't know about D&D grapple rules, nor anything about "DFRPG's Laws of Magic"
There's no amount of armchair analysis which can substitute for experience with a thing at the table, and what many people on the Stack object to is not the statistical analysis of a mechanic, but the idea that statistical analysis can fully replace play experience when judging a game element.
If you say something like "The numbers on this house rule seem to check out, but I haven't played with it myself," that's great. If you say, "The numbers on this house rule seem to check out, so it's a good rule," that's... less great.
@Adeptus DFRPG magic is a bit overcomplicated, yeah. And the Laws of Magic have nothing to do with that system!
The Laws of Magic are more along the lines of, "If you misuse magic you'll get a magical hit squad after you."
On an entirely different note, space crystals.
THIS JUST IN MAMMAL SCIENTISTS APPROXIMATELY SIXTY-FIVE MILLION YEARS BEHIND THE CURVE https://mic.com/articles/150768/space-crystals-frosterite-rocky-planets#.ZNp61UMre FILE UNDER NO DUH
@Baskakov_Dmitriy That does seem an improvement to me. (One last nitpick: I'd probably strike the phrase "on the Internet." Given that you link it, it's clear that it's an internet resource.)
(And, if you're curious, this is no more scrutiny than I give my own posts. Even my simplest of rules clarifications usually get a half-dozen or so self-edits by the time I'm done.)
@Baskakov_Dmitriy If you're liking imaginary internet points, you can do worse than reading the rules of a game that's complex, poorly organized, and spreads things over many volumes. And then having them on hand at all times. =)
@nitsua60 My equal second-highest game tag is Pathfinder. Which I've never played. But, the rules are all online, and it's based off D&D3.5, so I'm able to interpret the rules.
I am asking this because I was just banned from chat and I have no idea why.
Maybe someone can explain this to me? These are all my statements in the chat.
@BESW You mentioned legal digital tools to search 5e spells for keywords. What did you refer to?
@BESW ? No, I am wondering what ...
@Miniman I didn't seen anything specifically objectionable myself, beyond a refusal to accept any responsibility for the recent history of drama and a rather condescending tone when engaged on the subject. Upvoted because this Q is asked without the blame-casting.
I thought so. Putting 3 up, so that there's something to read.
Hm. They've changed their order upon posting. Weird.
Ah, that's because one of them had been published already, before being taken back as a draft. Eh, whatever.
Hmmmm. Not sure if I like the current theme after all. It only has widgets in the footer of the page. That's not optimal for navigation.
Switched to the "default" wordpress theme and I think I like it better. Thoughts?
The only issue being, its header is 1200 × 280 pixels, because of course it is. I'm currently cropping the image, but maybe BESW can adjust it if he's got the time?
I guess we could use a "confession user", to relay anecdotes and optionally mask authorship. But we'll deal with that if and when the need actually arises.
hmm, so what should I call it,... I feel like "my accidental TPK(s)" but I don't know if that is too generic/stealing the name from someone in the future XD
@nitsua60 O'Brien would have been fine by me. Even if I must admit Jimmy Fallon and several female singers singing silly songs while impersonating (other) famous singers is slowly taking the place of Fan Corrections in my life
Well, despite you not being really interested in D&D I might enlighten you on that, just to have you better understand the context. Melee combat in D&D 3.5e is usually pretty simple. Position yourself in the right spot, then start swinging your weapon. You roll once to hit (d20 + modifiers, must equal the enemy "armor value" at least), once to damage (dice depending on your weapon + modifiers). Grappling someone is uaually a pretty effective tactic if you're confident you can win, because it prevents the enemy from making a lot of things, but (unless a character specializes in it) it is rar…
It reduces "roll one die, then perhaps another die or dice" for an attack to, at minimum, "roll two or more dice, then perhaps another die or dice for each of those rolls," with special rules for some of those rolls that never get used otherwise.
@RollingFeles That's one big selling point of Pathfinder. "We've made grapple rules simple". They've also made grapple rules so that the chances of actually winning a grapple decrease as you level up, which I don't personally like...
@Zachiel I've only played 5e. My DM started with GURPS and switched to 5e (at this point I've joined the game) and he always stressed convinience of this edition. I know that 5e is made to have more fluent gameplay and it really is. Grapple in 5e is just one skill contest. But I feel that it's not that useful in 5e. What advantages grapple granted in 3.5e ?
@RollingFeles You could stop the opponent from speaking (which is needed to cast some spells), he can't move except by slowly moving the whole grapple, he can only use small weapons, plus you share the same square so area spells who hit one must also hit the other, you can try to immobilize your opponent so your allies can stab him better...
yaeh, one full round to produce a material component for a spell from your pouch is insane.
@BESW Funnily enough, having a lot of ranks in escape artist and being able to escape a grapple far too easily is still not enough to win against a grappler, because he can basically keep you from going anywhere and just the act of grabbing you again deals damage.
The character pictured in my avatar has both freedom of movement and lots of escape artist modifiers, because being a contortionist extraordinnaire was pretty much the character concept.
That's interesting. 5e just forbids target's movement and allow grappler to move with his victim. There were two more or less fun application of the grapple by my fighter. First: I grappled and threw bandit into acid pit. Second: I jumped at griffon and grappled it(sticked my maul handle in it's beak) and it couldn't fly.
@RollingFeles 3.5 is the poster child for the problems with an exception-based rule system that's designed to have an ever-expanding list of exceptions, not all of which are intended to work together but all of which are supposed to be able to work together.
I asked a question at
Incorporeal Creatures and solid creatures
And a mod closed it as "too broad". It clearly is not too broad and there is already an answer to it and a comment lead me to a book that can answer it even better and completely in a short space, but I can't even put that answer t...
@BESW I ultimately came to like that you can be immune to grappling, for it avoids my character being grappled. This also drives me to never play grapplers, reducing my options. D&D has reduced my options to the point where I have problems finding characters I want to play that might also work - but I still haven't found a way to avoid things like force damage.
At the same time this whole "a rule that completely bypasses all others" is haunting me in 4e as well. Ways to always get combat advantage, ways to ignore fire immunity and resistance, ways to ignore provoking opportunity attacks...
I do agree with that and this is one of the biggest reasons why I like 4e. Also, no need to give lots of magical stuff to the enemies in order to make them challenging, just to have the heroes loot the corpses.
Still, I think this could be drawn further. Monster attacks need to have more "targets only enemies" AoEs and more "Effect:" lines.
Aye, one thing I appreciate 4e for is priming me for Fate's correlation of power to the individual rather than the individual's stuff.
@Zachiel Well, and that's where you and I differ drastically in our use of 4e. My eagerness to design custom enemies with custom powers means my 4e games DID have a lot of Effect: lines and peculiar targeting parameters.
I have noticed that most monster encounters in the adventures I'm running rely on showcasing nasty comboes, like "this monter immobilizes, this monster does things to immobilized characters" - then both get assigned to the "Hit:" line of attacks that are unlikely to hit reliably.
(@RollingFeles In 3.5 and 4e, the "feat tax" is a feat that everyone agrees all PCs really must take in order to meet baseline effectiveness criteria, and should probably have been baked into the PC's base features instead of forcing you to waste a feat slot on them.)
(late-period 4e tried to fix this by introducing new feats which gave a variety of extra benefits, so instead of everyone taking the feat that gave a +1 to attack, now they had to choose between a selection of feats that gave +1 to attack AND something special depending on their weapon or spell type or whatever.)
(it was a clumsy fix, but an appreciated one that added to the pre-game play of chargen.)
The thing that sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable is that combat system limits abilities. I'm fighter and I want to hit this creature knee. If I hit it with my maul it would hurt a lot and creature will fall prone. But if I'm not using maneuver, I can't do that.
Games like Fate or Danger Patrol or Lady Blackbird encourage freeform "called shots" and similar narrative details, rewarding them mechanically--especially when they match your character's qualities and resources.
Talking about Lady Blackbird, @BESW, have I told you that I played a V:tM hack of it and that I really liked it? (Well, part of it was because I really liked one of the pregens, but still.)
I am asking this because I was just banned from chat and I have no idea why.
Maybe someone can explain this to me? These are all my statements in the chat.
@BESW You mentioned legal digital tools to search 5e spells for keywords. What did you refer to?
@BESW ? No, I am wondering what ...
I asked a question at
Incorporeal Creatures and solid creatures
And a mod closed it as "too broad". It clearly is not too broad and there is already an answer to it and a comment lead me to a book that can answer it even better and completely in a short space, but I can't even put that answer t...
