TRPG General Chat

BESW

10:00

Indeed. I got a lot of my rep off D&D 4e back when it was The Newest Thing.

kviiri

Kinda sad how it's the easiest to get karma with a system that's got the most experts (and probably a reasonable querent vs expert ratio as well). But then again, it's just a number.

trogdor

it is just a number to be sure

I got most of my rep off of 4e because I actually like, wanted to answer 4e questions

Urist McDorf

The kind of sad thing for me is the fact that due to most questions being really obvious to the one who knows the rules, it's often a matter of being the first to answer.

trogdor

now that those only come in at a trickle I kinda don't gain much rep, and I don't actually mind that at all

Urist McDorf

Also I still hawk 4e questions because I love answering those myself :)

trogdor

10:05

I would, but two things have happened

doppelgreener

@kviiri Well when you get reputation off questions and answers to them, and one system generates tons of questions and the rest not so much, small wonder that most of the reputation happens to be tracked against experience in that system.

trogdor

I have slowly forgotten many 4e rules I was once intimately familiar with, and there have been so few that I lost some amount of interest in hunting them to answer

Urist McDorf

I view it as a chance to refresh my knowledge

kviiri

@UristMcDorf Sort of related - I've noticed there's a very fine line between rules questions that get downvoted to oblivion for being directly answered in the books and well-received ones.

@doppelgreener Yeah, that's how it works.

Maybe it wouldn't need to work that way but I think it'd be needlessly complicated to start adjusting stuff to improve the gamification benefits for more niche systems.

trogdor

@UristMcDorf I don't have much to refresh with

I used to have PDF's of the rule books and the character builder engine and such

but I have none of that now XD

Urist McDorf

10:09

Aw

I still have the PDFs but only up to a point

trogdor

still, it might be a good thing in disguise, in a way

Urist McDorf

I don't have most of the Essentials stuff

kviiri

I sort of like answering DnD 5e questions. I have a good memory for rules I guess, but my own party doesn't exactly appreciate me reminding them of rules at every point.

trogdor

I spent a looooot of time obsessing over 4e when I had all that stuff at my disposal

doppelgreener

@kviiri That would be pretty interesting though.

kviiri

10:11

@doppelgreener Aye. Maybe someone could make it work but I think it's more of an idea to consider than readily applicable to the site :)

5e has been a really positive experience for me. I used to think I hated DnD but I've sort of found joy in it again with 5e.

We're doing it in a sort of hard way - we switch GMs every two to four sessions.

Urist McDorf

Huh.

5e has been a really negative experience for me.

I started with 3e, found salvation in 4e (me focusing on learning game design at that moment certainly helped me switch my views about the two systems), and when Next was announced I was like "hey, they're promising a modular system, cool!" and then as the playtests trickled in I realised they're just catering to the 3e (and maybe earlier editions?) audience and throwing out all the good but unpopular changes 4e made.

I'm in a 5e campaign now and it's only been moderately enjoyable despite the system, not thanks to it.

kviiri

I liked some things about 4e too, but the general slow pace of things hurt the experience a lot for me.

Urist McDorf

Well, I can agree about the slow pace but the best thing is that the designers actually tried to fix that.

kviiri

Then again, we were very inexperienced role players back in the 4e days, so the experience could be better partially because we have a far greater level of team cohesion.

Urist McDorf

They changed the numbers around so that combat is faster and that helped immensely.

kviiri

10:23

Yeah, so I've heard. The earlier monster manuals had a very fast hp growth per level compared to damage output.

Urist McDorf

Also by now there are a lot of articles on how to make combat (in 4e or other places) not about elimination, but about different objectives, which speeds it up too. Including one by "Our very own Magician".

Yep

trogdor

@UristMcDorf mm that doesn't bode well for how much I will like 5e when our group gets around to trying it XD

4e definitely had issues, to be sure

Urist McDorf

@trogdor It really doesn't. I'm playing a barbarian and there are like what, 9 choices total to make across the 20 levels?

Oh, sure.

trogdor

but I personally felt like it made major improvements compared to my 3.5 experience

Urist McDorf

Feat tax, boring magic items (and they kinda fixed that, too!), so on

trogdor

10:25

even 3.5 was fun, but it had major inter PC balance issues that made me unhappy

@UristMcDorf I remember some pretty cool magic items, to be fair

but also, maybe not quite as creative overall as some lists of 3.5 magic items

Urist McDorf

Oh, yeah, I meant in general the principle of "you have to have +X in your weapon slot at this point to stay relevant"

Right, I pick barbarian path, then if I pick totem (and I did) I have three choices to make on three different levels, and then there's the feats/ability scores on levels 4, 8, 12, 16, 20

Sans chargen, that's all

kviiri

I'm also designing my own 2-4 sessions with a very DnD-esque mindset this time around. Trying not to shoehorn epic drama into an action-heavy game isn't going to work anyway.

Urist McDorf

Unless I want to multiclass.

trogdor

yeah, I almost feel like they could just like,... remove the scaling of magic items being needed for the game by dropping the number increase of NPC stats

Urist McDorf

If I picked berserker I'd have even less.

@trogdor Well, they did have a reason not to do that, and actually a good one on paper

Because as it is, the monster scaling is as simple as possible - take basic number, add level, voila - there's your modifier

trogdor

10:29

I liked the character building options I had in 4e, by the end of our run with the game I had made possibly close to a hundred different characters who all did different things

Urist McDorf

They moved the fiddly bits of progression to character advancement.

And that's amazing

On paper anyway

trogdor

most didn't get used, but some of them were used by either me or one of a small number of people who didn't want to make their own characters

Urist McDorf

I think it'd be better solved by having inherent bonuses be the default and having stuff like a free expertise feat built into each character.

(which is what I do for my games)

trogdor

@UristMcDorf that sounds pretty neat actually

though it sounds like, in practice, it has not worked out so well

Urist McDorf

It is. Very simple to scale monsters and challenges

You know the dmg guideline for changing a monster's level?

trogdor

10:31

@UristMcDorf oh, ok, I thought you were saying it was actually not as great as it sounds? I am confused

Urist McDorf

It's great for the GM

trogdor

ah ok

Urist McDorf

The players have to suffer through feat tax

trogdor

yeah I was thinking of it from a GM perspective

Urist McDorf

And somewhat boring magic items

trogdor

10:32

I don't have much experience as a GM, but what little I have, I still remember the hassle of scaling monsters to be level appropriate

Urist McDorf

Anyway, how to change monster of level X to level Y: Add/remove difference in levels to/from all attacks and defences. Half of that with all damage. Change hp according to type (artillery etc) and scale (standard, elite, etc)

Basically that's all.

trogdor

@UristMcDorf you mean like, the tax of "you need to put feats into better to hit and defences" right?

Urist McDorf

Yeah

trogdor

I disliked that myself

the feats that you basically more or less had to spend on boring stuff

kviiri

I don't really like the power progression in DnD to be honest.

trogdor

10:34

they were really useful feats, but not very fun feats

Urist McDorf

I liked Essentials' approach at least where they made them fun too

Each [type] expertise did a slightly different extra thing, same with improved defences

trogdor

I mean, in 4e, if you picked those feats, eventually you would be getting +3 to hit, and +3 to defences that benifited from one feat

and that was across the board, whereas some feats would give you a similar bonus but be more restricted either in class that could pick it, or when it applied, or something like that

but at least those also came with side benefits that added fun abilities and such

kviiri

Years back, before I started playing I imagined it would be like "start out as a wizard's apprentice and make your way up to Gandalf". Turns out it's like "start out as a reasonably competent mage and make your way up to a multidimensional god whose powers are still pretty much limited to magic blasting things to atoms."

Urist McDorf

@kviiri Earlier versions of DnD had something more like that I think

Remember, no such thing as DnD :)

All editions are extremely different

kviiri

Heh, right.

trogdor

10:38

yeah. as I have heard it, maybe either 1e or 2e was more like what you expected

kviiri

@UristMcDorf Makes sense to be honest, it sounds like something that could happen as a result of power creep.

trogdor

though I think I heard that 1e didn't even go as far as "Gandalf" levels of power

kviiri

Well "Gandalf" was a bit of a bad example anyway. Since he is a demigod.

trogdor

like, serious level limits or something, but this is from secondhand info from a guy who never played it so, all the grains of salt

kviiri

A demigod whose mission involves not using demigodly powers indiscriminately, but still capable of all kinds of reality warping.

trogdor

10:40

@kviiri well, he wasn't like, all powerful though

Urist McDorf

I like how 4e straight up admitted that "yeah, the PCs are bloody important"

trogdor

@UristMcDorf I liked that too

I liked that if you went up to level 30 you were a pretty important freaking part of the universe you were in

kviiri

@trogdor Yeah, and well, he had the gloves on at all times. Sauron and Saruman show what he'd been capable of without restraint.

Urist McDorf

Didn't even pretend to simulate another type of game like 3e did

trogdor

@kviiri fair enough

I think I just mean, the level of power he actually used

kviiri

10:41

Yeah

trogdor

that was a decent mage level power without being ridiculous

and at times he used it pretty creatively

kviiri

@trogdor It's cool in a way, but it's not just the power level that bothers me. I don't really get that much kicks from roleplaying a godlike cosmic being if my agency is still limited to punching things most of the time.

trogdor

"I need to sneak up on my own friends and not hurt them or let them hurt me, how about I blind them temporarily till I can explain myself?"

@kviiri that is also fair enough

personally, 4e scratched my tactical combat itch

and because of the group I am in, we still all managed to make our own role playing opportunities and make it about more than just punching stuff (and other various forms of violence that eventually boil down to the same thing)

kviiri

I like that aspect of 4e too. The only major flaw with the combat is the ridiculously high hp thing, which I've heard was fixed in later Monster Manuals.

Urist McDorf

Anyway, @trogdor, about your earlier comment on the disbalance in the party - I think it's still there in 5e from what I've played of it

Maybe less han in 3e but casters still rule

trogdor

10:44

ugh

I hated that

Urist McDorf

@kviiri It did. Also upped damage.

kviiri

Gandalf is a cool character - he's got tons of hard power, but his main mission is to use soft power - diplomatically bind the nations of Men, Dwarves and Elves together to fight Sauron.

Urist McDorf

@trogdor Me too.

trogdor

"I wanna be a fighter",...... "wow wizard, why the ^*$$&$ are you just basically better than me except in hit points?"

and heck, technically in terms of raw power, wizard wasn't even at the top, just as a flat base class druid was ridiculous

I am sure with certain builds other classes may have been better, but I am talking about just on the basis of like, starting features and such

they had full casting capabilities, and still got to shape shift into useful animal forms too

plus an animal companion too,... right?

or at least an option for one,.... possibly in place of another feature option?

looks like it is just thrown in XD

Urist McDorf

Yep.

My hate for 3e stems from many things

trogdor

10:51

and don't get me wrong, I liked playing a druid, but I also felt like it had just,... too many base features that dis incentivized playing some of the other classes

Urist McDorf

But the quadratic wizard, linear fighter is the main

kviiri

Yeah

Urist McDorf

It's just... unfair.

trogdor

it was indeed yeah

kviiri

It's easier to justify a wizard becoming god-tier in-universe than a "mere" fighter, though.

trogdor

10:52

now if druid had all that stuff and a lot of other classes had some level of equivilency, that would have been really great

kviiri

Then again, if the universe comes to your way trying to make a game good, don't listen to it.

Urist McDorf

Nah, you just need to accept that martial powers have a supernatural tint to them as well in-universe

trogdor

yeah

kviiri

@UristMcDorf Aye.

Urist McDorf

If you're a fighter then blocking fireballs with a sword strike should not be unrealistic.

Heck, Link did it.

kviiri

10:53

I'm playing Bard for the first time. I always hated the class before but have liked it a lot this time around.

trogdor

the way I think of it is that if a fighter is living in a world with literall mages and major magic in it, and that fighter is supposed to be desitined to be one of his/her age's hero's,.... just accept that they are supernaturally good at fighting

instead of wielding magic the way a wizard does, they are just touched by magic in the thing(s) that they are good at doing

Urist McDorf

Yeah, pretty much.

4e's bard is fun. It's the only class that's not limited to one multiclass feat.

trogdor

that was definitely a nice touch yeah

Urist McDorf

Instead, the 4e bard can spend all of its feat slots on multiclass feats.

It was amazing.

trogdor

I didn't really want to make a multiclass based character, but the fact that the option existed was great

I mean, multiple multiclass based

Urist McDorf

10:56

Yeah. It's neat for making weird combinations of feats, paragon paths, stuff like that.

trogdor

I did make some multiclass choices that were integral to characters, but not any that needed more than one class's multiclass feats

Urist McDorf

Especially if you are a half-lafe.

Er.

Elf.

I don't know what happened there.

trogdor

I wonder what a half lafe would look like

I might also not want to know XD

@UristMcDorf it happens to the best of us

Urist McDorf

Apparently it's a diminutive of a name.

So I'll only ask "vertical or horizontal"?

BESW

it's also a town.

trogdor

10:58

@BESW so half of a town? or is half even in the town name too?

or is that just the name in one language for town?

BESW

Lafe, Arkansas

Lafe is a town in Greene County, Arkansas on Crowley's Ridge. The population was 458 at the 2010 census, up from 385 at the 2000 census. == History == The first settler of Lafe was Mr. Herman Toelken, a German immigrant who had been living in New Haven, Missouri, and was seeking new opportunities in an unsettled area. Toelken began cutting railroad ties for the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern (later Missouri Pacific) railroad in order to save enough money to purchase land and send for his family. When Mr. Toelken was settled he began advertising in a Minneapolis German newspaper seeking other...

trogdor

ah ok

fair enough

BESW

And oh, look, it's founded by a Mr. Toelken.

Urist McDorf

Ha

trogdor

XD

Urist McDorf

11:09

Oh jeez

0

Q: What are the limits to repeating a move in DungeonWorld?

As far as I'm informed, you could just repeat a move until you get the desired effect, since there is no cooldown or mana.

I like that that's the entirety of the question.

"Cooldown and mana"

BESW

Your paradigm, let me shift it.

trogdor

lol

"yeah, I wanna press the same button over and over forever, thanks bye"

kviiri

Running combats can be challenging in DW unless the GM's got a good idea why the players can't just Hack and Slash everything.

BESW

11:28

Or even better, why it's okay if they do.

trogdor

that too, I mean, I feel I came off as a little insulting there

but at the same time,... mentioning a lack of mana and cooldowns doesn't say to me that a lot of thought was put into what it would be like to spam the move in the long run

kviiri

I feel that if that was a DnD question, it would've been downvoted to oblivion already for "did you even open the Player's Handbook!?"

Urist McDorf

Well, in DnD there really are no limits to the MBA

:)

kviiri

Well I mean a similar "right there in the book" question.

Patta

Well, if you only look at certain moves and don't know stuff like "the gm makes a move if you fail a roll", I can see where the confusion comes from...

doppelgreener

11:43

@kviiri part of why I think it's different in this circumstance is that players are not expected to be familiar with all of the game's mechanics in Dungeon World, and the confusion from just staring at the sheet is understandable. they just see "oh, i can do this and if i succeed things happen and if i miss nothing happens."

kviiri

@doppelgreener Yeah, true. Not everyone's expected to read the core rulebook I guess.

Urist McDorf

Yeah, pretty much.

BESW

It's one of DW's selling points, actually.

kviiri

Yeah

BESW

Only the GM has to be proficient with anything not on the character/move sheets.

trogdor

11:48

yeah, but that can also get confusing

kviiri

The sheets should have the two basic rules on them! 1) To do it, do it and 2) If you do it, you do it.

trogdor

like what Greener said, the PC's might not at first know that certain failures would trigger things from the GM's side

which isn't, in my opinion, and ideal patch of missing info

doppelgreener

If I understand & remember correctly, a miss in Dungeon World means the GM makes a hard move. Hard moves necessarily change the circumstances and push the story. Is that right?

kviiri

That's right.

Well, it doesn't exactly have to be a hard move, but usually that's appropriate for a miss.

And the GM gets to make those moves at other times too. Mainly when people are sort of waiting for something to happen :)

I really should give DW another shot one of these days.

Urist McDorf

Does the GM have to announce he's making a such and such move?

kviiri

11:57

@UristMcDorf No, and indeed the GM shouldn't (per the rules).

Urist McDorf

Oh, okay. My next question would've been "If he doesn't have to do it, can it be beneficial or would it disrupt the flow?"

Thanks.

Patta

@kviiri yea, I feel you. DW is an awesome game... Maybe one day I will get an online game together or something :D

But before that happens, my list of games I want to try has to actually shrink and not keep on growing....

doppelgreener

@kviiri I added a little bit describing what this means for the player imagining they can stand there going "I try to bend bars. Ok, I try to bend them again. Ok, I try to bend them again." Such a player may be coming from D&D or computer RPGs where trying the same move over and over to smash bars all day until it's boring is totally valid.

kviiri

@doppelgreener Righto.

@Patta I've only played a few times. My first GM and half of the players were lazy bums, so we played really small games with most of the players absent a few times and then dropped the campaign. I tried to arrange for a game GM'ing myself, but we had to postpone the second session one time too many and everyone lost interest.

trogdor

yeah, I felt personally that the one DW system I tried didn't quite explain how the system worked adequately

I get that it was assuming the people playing it had prior DW experience,.... but that seems like a sub optimal assumption to make

kviiri

12:04

DW hits a fairly bad spot for me these days: I love Apocalypse World as a narrative, light and tense drama game, and Dungeons and Dragons as a fantasy hack and slash. Dungeon World is sort of between, but I feel it doesn't really work as well as either of its main inspirations.

BESW

I've been told Monster of the Week is particularly bad at explaining certain crucial PbtA concepts, yeah.

trogdor

ah

it is nice if that is as bad as it gets towards those explainations

BESW

And as I've mentioned before, PbtA doesn't work for me because it's designed to force me to do things I'd already do on my own and doesn't encourage stuff I want help doing.

trogdor

though I would still have liked it if they made more effort there regardless XD

@BESW yeah, I get all that, I just mean that an explanation to the players that even the small stuff they do has consequences that the GM will likely enforce,... seems like the least that should be done by the system/subsystems

it is great if most of the adaptations other than Monster of the Week do a better job than it did though

doppelgreener

@BESW PbtA is intimidating for me because of all the moves I'd have to mentally ingest and keep available if I'm GMing.

BESW

12:10

Very much so.

I could do it, if it would benefit me noticeably.

trogdor

and I even did still really like Monster of the Week,.... but my main criticism of it stands, IE the not explaining core system ideas

BESW

But it's just mechanising what I'd do anyway, so it's adding MORE work and getting in the way of my flow without any useful benefit.

Patta

@BESW I don't really get what you're saying. Are you speaking from a GM perspective, or from a player perspective?

trogdor

@BESW it does seem like a really useful setup for people who don't do that stuff automatically already though :)

BESW

@Patta Both, but mostly as GM.

trogdor

12:13

as long as it is not confusing them, at least

BESW

It would've been paradigm-shifting if I'd gone straight from D&D to DW, but I didn't.

trogdor

yeah, we kinda spoiled that with Fate

which isn't necessarily bad

BESW

Fate has its own weird learning curve, but it's a lot more forgiving of totally missing the point.

trogdor

I feel like we skipped some not-quite-necessary-for-us steps along the way to shift our paradigms

Patta

OK, I think I can see what you mean now. I made the big mistake of thinking "I am a fairly experienced DM, why do I need rules/mechanics for the things I wanna do?" and tried DW without all of that. It was horrible. I can see people not liking that.

BESW

12:17

I look at every set of RPG mechanics as a little manifesto declaring best practices for a certain kind of desired outcome. Broadly speaking every game says "If you follow [rule] you'll get [effect] which we think is worthwhile."

DW is more explicit about being a best-practices manifesto than most games, but it's pretty much only for the GM.

kviiri

@doppelgreener I've found the moves are stuff I'd usually do anyway, myself.

But there are ones whose value I'd neglect otherwise, like foreshadowing future badness.

Patta

12:42

I personally like that you (as in "the GM") are required to have something happen when the players fail. You are forced to react, automatically preventing things like "I try to bend the bars. Fail. I try again."

kviiri

If it's an obstacle that can be surmounted by repeatedly trying again and again with no pressure from time or enemies, it's not worth rolling over.

Then again, a proper failure can create interesting twists...

Patta

Yea, sure, but some games want you to roll even in such a situation

DW forces me to at least make it interesting if I fall back into old habits

kviiri

Yeah.

Patta

(Compare that to stuff like The Dark Eye, which is terrible for things like that. And this is probably the only time you will ever see me admit that something about TDE is terrible, as I love that game)

nitsua60

13:41

I feel like every DW answer--at least, to all the questions I've asked--can start with the phrase "you seem to have misunderstood one of the fundamental rules...." (I.e. +1 to @kviiri)

2

Patta

yea, it's really easy to do that. Especially as a player.

nitsua60

13:58

@Shalvenay probably--we-all should touch base in Discord, methinks.

@Adeptus I often recommend the quintet, as the only thing I've read that might make me actually want to play a cleric.

A GM recently asked me for recommendations on what to read to learn, organically, some FR lore. I handed him the Cleric Quintet, the Dark Elf Trilogy (Homeland/Exile/Sojourn--I think that's what the trilogy was named), the first Moonshae trilogy (wherein we see the in-universe explanation for the owlbear! Spoiler: it's not "a wizard did it"!), and an Elminster trilogy.

What'd I miss?

(Besides, yanno, everything published after 1992.)

CTWind

@nitsua60 I was going to say, I've only read the Brimstone Angels series of lorebooks :-P

nitsua60

Which are...?

To celebrate 20,011 questions, I say we go find twelve old game-recs to close!
=D

CTWind

Brimstone Angels started somewhere in the 2010s, IIRC. Set in the 4e times originally (~100 years after spellplague) and slowly has the transition to 5e. Centers around a tiefling Infernal Pact warlock. Not the star book series of the Sundering but has some touches on it. Centers heavily around activity of the 9 Hells/Asmodeus/Azuth.

nitsua60

What's the spellplague?

(Seriously--not just playing dumb.)

Is this one of those "we changed the rules, so we [TSR/WotC] are going to make you [Ed] write a book or three to make it all make sense in-universe" things?

CTWind

The spellplague? Yes. :-P

diego

14:13

@nitsua60 Basically, it was the big edition changing cataclysm that explains why magic is completely different now

CTWind

Big magical catastrophe that occurred when Mystra died- weave broke apart, magic heavily changed, rituals required to do a lot of old basic spells

nitsua60

so, 3.x --> 4 = spellplague?

CTWind

Blue fire spread across the world, pockets of it remained, some people became Spellscarred when exposed to it, a lot of magic users died.

Yeah

Urist McDorf

Not just spellplague, I think the world also has a gigantic rift

Going to the underdark

nitsua60

Yeah, I saw that on a map.

Urist McDorf

14:15

It's pretty cool.

nitsua60

What's the "time of troubles"? (Or was that a DL thing I'm cross-remembering?)

Urist McDorf

It's basically a bit of a postapocalypse scenario

Patta

Is that rift still there in 5e?

Urist McDorf

Spellscarred basically means you're a mutie.

nitsua60

@UristMcDorf As in mutant, or silent?

diego

14:16

@nitsua60 I think that was 2e -> 3e but I'm not 100% sure

Urist McDorf

inb4 "we don't use the m word here"

@nitsua60 The former.

It can give you cool powers (like teleportation) or it might make you a horrible abomination.

CTWind

The Sundering is the 4e -> 5e event though I know very little about it

Urist McDorf

For PCs that took the appropriate character options, usually the former but also some of the latter.

Also Neverwinter got dunked I think

That part's explored in the separate CS book and the MMO

nitsua60

And yet, through all this, Hillsfar has always "just kicked out the non-humans."

Miniman

4

A: Edition transitions in the Forgotten Realms

You've found them all. The Forgotten Realms was first published for AD&D 1st edition. When 2nd edition came out, the change in spells and available classes was explained through the Godswar aka The Time of Troubles. The introduction of D&D 3e was exceptional in that there was no overarching, gl...

Urist McDorf

14:25

I honestly liked the whole Spellplague thing. It's cool.

Funnily enough, 4e's "official" worldbuilding has been the most for me out of the editions.

The Spellplague, the Elemental Chaos, the Dawn War...

Funnily because I've heard people say that 4e's fluff is the worst.

Miniman

I think the problem with global cataclysms that change the way the world works on a fundamental level is that after the first one, it starts to seem a bit obvious.

CTWind

@kviiri I'm going to be disappointed at the missed opportunity if question #40k is not a WH40K question.

@Miniman I wonder how many systems have had the causation in the opposite direction- they decided to make a new ruleset because they had something worldchanging happen in lore.

Miniman

@CTWind I'm going to guess not many.

nitsua60

@Miniman ooh, tanks!

CTWind

Probably single digits, and that digit may be 0. :-P

I suppose if its an RPG that's a companion to a preexisting setting it's more likely.

Maybe Mistborn? Did that get a new system for the Wax & Wayne series times?

nitsua60

14:44

Ooh, widely-divergent answers, verging on gm-technique. It'll be interesting to see how this goes =)

Urist McDorf

I'm on your side, myself.

kviiri

Same here.

CTWind

Me too, though I've had GMs that would heavily debate your answer as it applies to knowledge of spells.

nitsua60

@CTWind I dunno--if your fighter grew up in a world where fully half of characters in stories/family reunions/local histories could cast spells, they'd probably know the range of a fireball. The same way I have junior-high students who know ridiculous information about modern military aircraft.

kviiri

We discussed a similar issue with fall damage and standing in a fire, of all things.

CTWind

14:59

@nitsua60 I don't disagree; I like characters to have the metaknowledge level of "Oh shoot, Jimmy got petrified- only a powerful caster can Restore him, we need to find one!"

kviiri

Having lived in the DnD universe for decades, I assume even the dumbest DnD characters would have an intuition that "falling from that height means getting hurt roughly this much" where this the actual amount of damage rolled.

@nitsua60 Isn't magic supposed to be fairly rare, to the point where most people have never seen a spell being cast, in most DnD settings?

Urist McDorf

@kviiri "Having lived in the DnD universe for decades, I assume <...>" - oh snap

kviiri

@UristMcDorf Oh, I seem to have accidentally made a hilarious little mistake there! Pardon me, English is not my first language :P

(for those who're wondering, it's Common)

4

Urist McDorf

I wish I could star a few messages at once.

So it's less out-of-context.

nitsua60

May 10 '16 at 21:56, by BESW

Try to star only one or two representative lines from a conversation, please.

kviiri

15:08

I could've edited my original message but I felt it would've ruined the pacing of the joke :(

nitsua60

Just star the one you think will catch people's eye--they can back-follow it to the amusing/intriguing conversation =)

That way we end up with eight or ten good links in the star board, not just two or three (because there are three-each from three conversations).

Urist McDorf

Fair enough.

I meant as in "star a series of messages to be shown as a singular entity on the side board"

Either way, @kviiri, thanks for the joke, it really brightened up my evening :)

kviiri

^^

nitsua60

@UristMcDorf yeah, that would be nice

doppelgreener

@BESW Possibly in your department: a question about handling player character death for storytelling, just below.

Also in general wow, this is kind of a superb question.

2

Q: How should I handle killing (or not) this character?

So I've been playing with the same group for a long time and they aren't the smartest which has led to the loss of many PCs in this D&D game. Only one has survived this entire time. His name is Blognark and the entire party loves him (including me). I however want to create an antagonist that th...

dnd-5e character-death story

KorvinStarmast

15:15

@KRyan *When you lead with “If you want to make your players work for this...” the only follow-up I would consider acceptable is “...you are wrong.” * Do you always try to piss people off by preaching at them, or is this just a bad day for you?

kviiri

@doppelgreener This one got good answers really fast.

doppelgreener

@kviiri Yes it did!

nitsua60

yeah, @bloodcinder drawing a distinction between emergent and planned deaths is spot-on.

kviiri

@nitsua60 My thoughts exactly, I'd like a second upvote to pass around.

nitsua60

@kviiri It's one I might star to come back and bounty an answer, but then I go look at my starred questions and have no idea why they starred them. feature-request: sticky-notes to self on starred questions.

doppelgreener

15:21

@nitsua60 Haha! I get that too sometimes. "Did I star this to bounty it, or to answer it, or edit something in it, or for my own reference..?"

Anne Aunyme

15:31

I find this question pretty hard to answer without falling in the bad side of subjectivity. I don't think it is impossible, though.

doppelgreener

15:43

@AnneAunyme I agree

KorvinStarmast

@doppelgreener I think that question is both too subjective and now well written. While I like bloodcinder's answer, this seems to me to be an XY problem. The other players are either unlucky or bad, and this one player is either lucky/good. (Or a bit of each). The DM ASSUMES that killing off Brognark solves his problem.

Anne Aunyme

Or maybe he just asks if it can be a good thing to do

but yeah, it's difficult to tell

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast I didn't read into it an attempt to solve Brognark being powerful.

Anne Aunyme

so what is the problem exactly?

the problem asked in this question

doppelgreener

@AnneAunyme He's trying to create an antagonist the players will hate and is mulling over killing a character to inspire that hatred.

Adam

15:50

@doppelgreener agreed. That was the tone I got as well

Anne Aunyme

@doppelgreener: I think the link "I need to create a hated opponent" -> "Brognark must die" is at least not obvious

and at most just wrong

Adam

@AnneAunyme I feel the link "He said Brognark is strong -> Brognark must die" was jumping the gun on what the question was asking

Anne Aunyme

what do you mean exactly?

(sorry, I don't understand "jumping the gun", I'm not a native English speaker)

(and who is "He" here?)

Adam

@AnneAunyme I mean, it sounds like there was some confusion that the problem was an overpowered PC and the question was about killing him to solve the balance issue. And we've seen so many of those questions pop up that some people saw the words "...react to his super powerful character dying" and immediately assumed that balance was the problem, even though in reality it wasn't.

He being Evan, the querent.

doppelgreener

@AnneAunyme jumping the gun is to act before the appropriate time (it refers to a false start in a running race by a runner going before the starting gun is fired) but i think in this case it's the incorrect idiom and "jumping to conclusions" is more appropriate

Adam

15:56

@doppelgreener That is indeed, more appropriate. Curse my incorrect choices :p

Anne Aunyme

I will go to bed less stupid tonight :)

Adam

I'm just thinking people might be distracted by the "super powerful" description Evan threw in there, which caused some of us to assume that this was a balance issue

Anne Aunyme

it seems so, I agree.

Actually if the question is "How do I make the nasty guy really hated by the PCs?" it may have already been answered somewhere

Adam

@AnneAunyme Indeed it has:

http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/584/how-do-i-create-a-great-fantasy-villain-that-inspires-the-party-to-rally-against

doppelgreener

@AnneAunyme Good point! I dug and found a veritable trove of questions on the topic.

KorvinStarmast

16:14

@doppelgreener Which argues that this question is a dupe of one of those? Maybe?

Adam

@KorvinStarmast I think that the question would need significant edits to get it open again in any capacity. I sounds like the core problem has been addressed many times. I'd bet money that if the hold on it were opened by some edit, that it would be quickly marked as a dupe and then closed.

doppelgreener

@KorvinStarmast i don't think so, but it does mean advice is plentiful

Urist McDorf

@Baskakov_Dmitriy In regards to your question, I'd say 4e :)

Each character has two or three at-wills granted by their class, and they're strong enough to not be a bad choice for when a more specialised power is not suitable.

At-wills being abilities that you can use as much as you want, actions permitting.

Plus the wizard has a bunch of extra cantrips, of a utility nature. Plus you can take a feat that gives you some psionic "cantrips" to use.

doppelgreener

17:56

@ObliviousSage Hey btw, did you know that [3dprinting.se] in a comment will magically become a link to the 3D Printing site? (Same for any [*.se] where the * is the subdomain, plus [meta.se].)

SevenSidedDie

18:06

@nitsua60 The Time of Troubles was the 1e → 2e change. As silly as it seems today, I guess they thought the changes between the two AD&Ds were big enough they needed some fiction to justify it. (Fun fact: the concept of “dead magic zones” was invented for that story arc.)

BlackVegetable

@SevenSidedDie WOW! I never knew that.

kviiri

18:21

I never quite got why they need to incorporate cataclysmic events to make up for differences between editions.

Urist McDorf

@kviiri A new player coming to the game might be confused by "hey, they did X in the books, why can't I do X?"

kviiri

May be a matter of taste, but I find it less intensive on my suspension of disbelief that "it's the same world fundamentally, but we just represent it a bit differently in this edition" versus "well this weird thing happened that caused everything to change!"

@UristMcDorf Huh, right. I hadn't given this any thought to be honest, but yeah, that's a reason.

Not necessarily the reason but well.

SevenSidedDie

@kviiri Back then there was no separation between rules and fluff, so that model wasn't applicable — i.e., the changes weren't just representing the same world differently. So when they changed the rules, it would have been very confusing to their existing customers if the worlds stayed the same.

Fun fact: separation of fluff and rules was invented for D&D 3rd edition.

kviiri

Huh, I didn't know that.

BlackVegetable

Was that fun fact a special rule set apart by a cataclysm?

SevenSidedDie

18:26

@BlackVegetable Ironically, there was no cataclysm in the Realms for the 2e → 3e transition. :)

They just… rewrote things. Including the cosmology.

BlackVegetable

Ah, the Great Retcon, I remember it fondl-- what where we talking about? The cake is a lie?

kviiri

I claim not to be a huge fan of DnD cosmology, but I can't help including the coolest bits in my games.

Feywild and Shadowfell are among my favorites

/me dodges attacks by anti-4e hordes :)

SevenSidedDie

(This is one of the reasons Dungeon World is one of my favourite “D&Ds”; it preserves the direct 1:1 relationship between rules and the world they represent that AD&D had. Fun fact: Dungeon World's other parent, the one that's not Apocalypse World, is specifically AD&D rather than some other D&D edition.)

Adam

@kviiri same here. I just have all of my games set in Fantasyland and then take what I like the most from whatever other settings I choose.

CTWind

I do love the Feywild. Also have an odd affinity for Bytopia.

SevenSidedDie

18:35

@kviiri My only objection to the Feywild and Shadowfell is that they were shoehorned into settings that didn't already have/need them. Other than that, they're great ideas. :)

Urist McDorf

18:48

@kviiri Me too, though I like the Elemental Chaos much more.

I mean

They took the boring planes of boring

"It's literally fire everywhere. Fun, isn't it?"

And mashed them into a place where acid rivers flow through the air while a storm of frost lightning strikes them

And stuff like that

kviiri

I'm particularly averse to alignment-coded planes. It feels weird enough to force individual people on that 3x3 field, much more so to force entire worlds into them.

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