melee with a backup ranged option is probably simpler for new players -- ranged-first chars tend to have trouble when they get into melee-only situations
@Fibericon ah, sorry, I thought I'd mentioned it to you before. it's a Toreador who works nights flying cargo jets -- real nice-guy-next-door type (if you were to pidgeonhole him into D&D alignments, he'd be Lawful Good), treats flying airplanes as an art form of sorts
That's pretty cool. My dude's art quirk is that he doesn't consider an existing piece to be art. Paintings, statues, etc are the corpses of art. The act of creating them is art.
He's technically chaotic evil, but he's kept on a tight leash by his retainer ghoul, because he constantly seeks her approval. It lets me play CE without being a thorn in everyone's side.
one of the big things I'm not sure about though is if a vampire in VtM could live without having to consume human blood. (Crew Resource Management is hard enough without your co-pilot worrying about getting bit!)
Probably the most evil random thing I've done is fire a pistol blindly into a crowd of people as they were running. I had one die and botched, so they were all okay.
Don't some vampire bars have distilled vitae? Carry around a flask of it.
what concerns would you have with me taking said Flying Toreador to an actual Vampire game? (my thinking is that some Storytellers would find him not grimdark enough)
@Fibericon he has enough seniority, I'd think, to swing some time off (although rrrrriiinnnnggg "Must be crew scheduling...." would be a good way to disengage in case RL intervenes on the session :)
Having tried to do character development before, I feel reasonably comfortable saying that if you're subtle about it, no one will notice. You want to be dropping clues like crazy.
Or just tell everyone, but that's probably not a suggestion that's going to do well here.
I like how my group is so incredibly bizarre that I tend to show up with some of the hardest questions. Whether ripping off your face to remove a cursed mask would work, how to change probabilities that in some circumstances exceed 100%, and now this. Hehehe.
@Shalvenay We like worldbuilding, secrets, lovecraftian horror, storytelling, and candles. This would be excellent to pull off and we generally let difficulty and minmaxing take a backseat to the former category. Questions?
Still, always fun to saunter into chat and see people brainstorming about what I ask. It's fun to use your brain sometimes.
@Papayaman1000 well, BESW's definitely into his storytelling and lovecraftian horror (and to some extent worldbuilding too, but dunno on the candles man)...and he's the one (even more than me) who would much rather have your group in on what's happening to your character, so they can add onto it
whereas, I'm the worldbuilder who enjoys smashing things together in strange ways :P
I want to do a 3d rendering of a dragon getting the ol' scrub-a-dub-dub from a couple of ramp workers, while a bunch of the Aviation.SE regulars look on from various vantage points
(just as an example of me smashing things together in strange ways. another one would be the 3.5e dungeon I keep around -- "electropunk magitech smashup" is the genre it's in)
Ooh. That sounds fun. Anyways, the LGC is operational... "Western Cyberpunk Fantasy Shonen Comedy" is the result for the 5 genre test. And that sound fnuk'n amazing.
Okay, let's do it. I have a ballpark idea of what you want, I think. It's the over 100% stuff that breaks the question. When you say probability > 100%, you mean something that can't fail, and that has "headroom" to not fail, right?
Headroom, buffer space, slack space, anything like that.
My goal is to ensure that the character who needs a nat. 20 to succeed still has a scrap of chance, while the one who would auto-succeed twice over before the dice come into play isn't affected.
Okay, good. Here's the part that probably matters. Anything that is 100% (automatic success) should.... Map exactly to 50%? Always map to something less than 100% but greater than or equal to 50%? Or is it possible to be so freaking awesome in some cases that you still end up with 100%?
For example, if a creature needed a crit on a d20 before the debuff, then after they'd need a crit on a d40. Likewise, if they need a 2 on a d20, it becomes a 22 on a d40.
In other words, add x to the dc, (dx) then roll a d2x.
@BESW yes, there is. I'm confident one of the solutions posted is what what @Papayaman1000 wants. I want to edit the question so it matches the answer.
Okay, so think about a DC10 and an Amulet of Insane God Power +100. That will never fail. That's, I dunno, something like 550% (I am dying inside, typing that) chance of success.
Should that map to another automatic success? Or something else?
Target DC 10 on a d20+10 roll gives 100% success. Target DC 10 on a d20+20 roll gives 100% success. Reducing the probability by half would give them both 50% success. Reducing the variable by half would give 75% and 100% respectively.
The tough goal is that we can't just slice the bonus in half, because that +15 on a dc35 should still have a chance of success, but the +70 should have no chance of failure.
Yeah, the problem here has been that you keep talking about the mechanism in order to try explaining the goal, when the mechanism as it stands is flawed in attaining the goal.
I will meditate on this, mainly because I am tired and don't want to make a mistake, but I am pretty sure that the d20 with a coin flip to subtract 20 from the result is the correct answer.
Which is actually the one Jasper put down that you accepted.
@Papayaman1000 The problem is, you're asking a mathematical question and being imprecise while doing so. Like "crit on a d40." There's no such thing, because in the game you're talking about "crit" is a defined term, and it's defined w.r.t. d20. So you've got an idea in your head of how this-all is supposed to work, but you're not expressing it clearly, then you're railing against those who try to help.
@Papayaman1000 In the game most discussed (currently) on site, "crit" is often 20 on a d20, but not always, because it's a defined term with its own rules. So you've imported very popular terminology to mean something other than what it means in its most-popular usages. But you don't make that explicit.
@Papayaman1000 sorry to be the one that tells you, but it's probably just local lingo in your area / web zone. Here in my real world area, a crit is a 20 on a d20 (even if in the game it's a 20 on a subset of d20 rolls)
If you're going to point to your being a theoretical mathematician as some sort of credibility, you should follow the best practices in that field. When you're discussing some idea that's not well-defined, don't just use nearby words and hope everyone will magically grok your understanding; define some terms precisely, then use those terms consistently. Don't call your idea of 120% success "probability;" name it something else.
@Zachiel Whereas at my tables "crit" stands for "whatever it takes to make a critical hit in the game currently being played." So sometimes it's 20-on-20, sometimes it's more than that (5e champion fighter or assassin, anyone?), sometimes it's the successful hit roll after the threatened crit. And lots of times the term just isn't used, 'cause there are no crits in Microscope =)
Anyone got ideas how well Dungeon World works with unstable groups?
I'll probably take it to the Board Games Cafe tomorrow, because one person there looked at my flyer and asked about D&D (I said “Not gonna do that one, but…”) – and in case that goes to “I LIKE IT! ANOTHER!”, I'd like to start in a way that supports a fluctuating group.
Definitely tell us about these things: the situation you'll be running the game in (regular game with irregular attendance at a game shop), what you're concerned about (that DW may not work well), the research you've done so far (or whether it's been hard to find anything) and issues you're aware of that are giving you that concern.
I get quite a few search results for “attendance”, with adjectives “fluctuating”, “irregular”, “fluid”, (“variable-size group”, “missing players”), “patchy”, “spotty” (of an individual), “flexible”, “varying”, “variable”, “low” (of individual players”. “Variable” seems to be frequent, “regular” is often negated and “irregular” appears a few times.
I'm starting a role playing game group, and I expect (and specified in my “looking for group” ad) that people will be attending irregularly.
In particular, I am very much going to run it at a local games cafe (taking the “host” job of me, leaving me as organizer and at least initial GM), which m...
@Shalvenay Nice. Yesterday my wife and I went climbing together for the first time since our oldest was born. An excellent way to celebrate ten years' partnership =)
@Shalvenay OTOH, we were climbing indoors; it's different enough from the outdoor climbing that's been my mainstay these last eight years that I'm reminded of a greener quote:
that is the feeling of muscles saying "DEAR BODY PILOT: WHAT WAS THAT EVEN EARLIER. HOW. WHY. PLEASE EXPLAIN. WILL MAKE PREPARATIONS FOR NEXT TIME. YOURS FOREVER LITERALLY, XOXO, MUSCLES."
@Shalvenay Would that be the same table as last time? PFS?
I have that play by forum starting in a while - we need to find a place now that eimyr can't be part of the game anymore (and I might explore the idea of using discord, as doppelgreener suggested), but good (bad?) news is that the guy who wrote the adventure pointed me to a guy who has a lot of experience DMing it online, and now this second guy wants to spectate.
Second, I really should buy a silver weapon for my character since we're going to fight lycans and we know it, but that would need me to get in touch with a gamemaster and ask him to create me the item, and I don't know if I really want to bother them.
Even if not bothering them will probably get me a "you knew you were going against lycans, why didn't you prepare?"
If that happens, I swear I will link the DM to this conversation XD
@Zachiel at least your character doesn't have to worry about being overrun by frolicking werewolf puppies xD
@Zachiel we'll see how some of the campaigns I'm in go re: lycans, though
@Zachiel also, why would a silvered weapon be a mandatory custom-create sort of thing? you'd think such things would be available on a semi-regular basis if lycanthropy is non-exotic in your world
@Shalvenay Well, we have all sorts of weapons available as items in our database, each in regular, masterwork and five progressively more magical versions. Adding new versions of each weapon for each special material (silver, cold iron and adamantium are the most common ones) would be a tedious job since the DB is not object-oriented, so only the specific weapons that one asks for are implemented. Not many users chose a heavy warpick as their weapon (not many worship my same god).
Most often, the weapons are not implemented at all. You just buy a regular weapon and the DM adds a note by hand in the notes field for the specific item.
@Shalvenay I tried to have someone who wanted to open a similar site design an item system that could handle this, but I got told "have you got any idea of how bad your design is for comuptational speed and number of operations?"
Our game has two kinds of items: some like shields, armors and weapons can be customized by adding special properties to them, all other items only have a single version (or if there are several versions, they have been implemented as separate items, e.g. bracers of armor +1 to +8 are 8 different items)
So, where should I stop preparing RPG theory stuff for the RPG session I'm going to do tomorrow? Playbooks and rules sheets and some scribbling paper and dice, sure. Index cards and notebook, sure. Big black pen for X card, yep. Same Page Tool with tick mark spaces? A social contract reminder, stating @BESW's core rules of “(1) Don't let harm happen (2) Have fun, unless 1 (3) Play the game you decided to play unless 1 or 2”?
Cheap chopstick bowls for each player's set of dice, which helps reduce dice-fidgeting (and thus dice dropping), and a wooden salad bowl for rolling in.
@BESW Ideally, at some point I will find people to play the serious stuff with starting from the group I now collect. But until I know them, I won't drop Montsegur or Dog eat Dog or Shock or things like that on them!
There's at least two kinds of easily confusable questions here though:
I hear the DMG has rules for X. I don't have the DMG. What are the rules for X?
Are there rules for X? What are they?
#1 is a deeply problematic question that asks us to engage in violating copyright: the person should buy...
@BESW sort-of in this case. the PHB chapter on combat is rather scattershot re: the things someone'd need to know for their first combat encounter, so it probably would be good to have a bite-sized summary answer for this question.
@Shalvenay I would think the expert answer to this would be to describe where it's found in each of Starter Set rules, Player's Basic Rules, SRD, PHB; along with which is easiest to follow/most complete/&c.
I assume there's "I tried reading the bleeping rules but they make no sense" lurking back there, but I may be projecting that, rather than reading it =)
@BESW i am also very interested in Nitsua60's comment
@FrankHilary Do you have Lost Mine from the Starter Set, or did you get your hands on it in some other way? If from the Starter Set, there's a second "Beginner's Rulebook" in there where chapter 2 covers combat rules. (I have to give my kids dinner right now, but if nobody else's been by in an hour I'll grab my copy of the beginner's rulebook and quote you the relevant portions.) — nitsua6028 mins ago
Hm. Time travel hypothesis: the earth is traveling around the sun, which is traveling around the galaxy center, which is itself traveling through space somehow. (It's thought that the foucault pendulum can measure all of this.) Also, the earth wobbles metres in its orbit. The hardest part of time travel is ensuring you land in a useful position, specifically on the earth (and not in the cold void of space) and not 2m underground or in a wall.
@Miniman you may have a point re: initiative -- OAs are weird though because you can't really talk about reactions without talking about either OAs or readied actions as those are the two "mundane" reactions in 5e
@BESW, what do you think about the following explanation sentences on The Three Laws of Gaming?
1 - A gamer must not harm others, or through inaction allow others to come to harm. Or themself! Use appropriate techniques (X-Card), Speak up, Take a Break, and Remember this is a voluntary thing and you can always just leave or ask someone to leave if the game is bad for you. 2 - A gamer must ensure the enjoyment of others, unless doing so would violate the First Law. Enjoyment comes in many forms, but we are doing this for (some definition of) fun. Remember what wasn’t fun and give feedback, Speak up, and Remember we can always do something else that is more enjoyable.
@doppelgreener I've always imagined there's a really steep portion of the PE vs. timespace-location curve that helps shunt people into an appropriate landing area. Kinda like I can jump from my roof onto a trampoline and might hit it, might miss and hit the ground, but am exceedingly unlikely to end up below the original surface.
@Shalvenay The appropriate page numbers from the Starter Set Beginner's Rules, if you want them, are 11-12 for attack resolution, 12-13 for damage. If you do out them in, I'd recommend editing your headers to be something like Hack and slash (SS 11-12, PBR 73-74, PHB 193-195); three reference sources would be a loot to keep looking back and forth for which is which.
what I'm saying is that people who aren't already exposed to reading writing that uses footnotes/endnotes will be confused, and even some folks who are would treat their use as too pretentious for online discourse
One pseudo-footnote on the same screen is fine. The problem is more that they are structurally not footnotes, you cannot just jump there and then back to where you before if that needs scrolling.
OTOH, I assume (though I don't know--any experts here?) that ocular+screen is already less speedy than ocular+printed page in hand, so that would mitigate the "loss" factor?
And unless you scroll with PgUp/PgDown, the look of the page changes. If you read something on a single physical page, the location you started from looks similar (is the same as) where you want to continue reading.
You'll note, of course: nowhere have I contested the assertion that they're too pretentious for online discourse =)
@SevenSidedDie I'm tempted to re-title this question something like "How do hit dice factor into attacks?" It's got the title of the question you just answered about LMoP, but it's not really that question, it seems to me. What do you think?
@Anaphory Only point I'd make is that "come to harm" sounds like physical damage, but in reality the first priority is to ensure everyone feels safe -- which is also about feeling comfortable with the people around them and their environment, feeling not unduly confronted by the subject matter, ensuring they do not feel bullied or harmfully pressured or so on.
I would riff off the first law's structure but with terminology more appropriate, such as:
> A gamer must ensure the comfort and safety of others, and must not through inaction allow compromise to others' comfort and safety.
There's at least two kinds of easily confusable questions here though:
I hear the DMG has rules for X. I don't have the DMG. What are the rules for X?
Are there rules for X? What are they?
#1 is a deeply problematic question that asks us to engage in violating copyright: the person should buy...
