TRPG General Chat

nitsua60

00:45

@LegendaryDude re: the ring of beaurocracy--have you luxuriated in the octopoid embrace of these legal postulations?

Shalvenay

hey there @nitsua60

nitsua60

hiya. How're things?

Shalvenay

thinking about an archer bard for Sunday morning...

nitsua60

a bardcher?

(there's got to be a polearm named that, come to think of it)

Shalvenay

yeah -- probably with a STR/DEX heavy build

and a seriously heavy bow to match

nitsua60

01:03

@Shalvenay today's Angry article might have some tidbits in it that you'd like, in re: the charisma-conversation of the other day:

> There is a GREAT benefit to divorcing skills and ability scores. It allows people to play to their strengths and apply their skills more creatively and it creates more options for engaging with situations. This is especially useful in social situations, where the skills are poorly defined and only characters who specialize in Charisma will ever have any options in social interaction. It allows an Intelligent character a chance to persuade with reason rather than personality or to deceive with complex verbal puzzles and doublespeak rather than personality.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 that's...a fairly sharp break from D&D's past, albeit quite a meritorious idea if you ask me (it'd move the D&D skill system closer to how Fate Core behaves AIUI vs. something more like Fate Accelerated)

and yes -- he makes a very good point about how fuzzy skills-to-ability-scores is

someone might be able to finagle small parts with ease, but couldn't hit the side of a barn with a bow

yet both of those would be DEX-based from D&D's perspective

BESW

[amused] It's only a sharp break if you ignore 4e completely.

Shalvenay

@BESW ah. how did 4e do it?

BESW

4e was pretty traditional about its skills, but for all of its defensive stats it let you use the better of two: Reflex was modified by the better of your Dex or Int; Fortitude by the better of your Str or Con; Will by the better of your Wis or Cha.

AC got to add... I can't remember, but it was conditional on not wearing too much armor and there WAS a choice.

So yeah, D&D has been comfortable with choosing from multiple ability modifiers depending on how your character does a thing for about ten years now.

nitsua60

And don't forget that it was 2e's NWPs that introduced the tying of a named skill to a single stat. (If I'm remembering correctly.) Before that it was "sometimes call for an ability check, which ability TBD through dialog."

trogdor

01:15

@BESW I believe AC was the same as Reflex

BESW

That sounds right.

(And between the two of us, Troggy is the one to trust on remembering 4e mechanics.)

trogdor

lol

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah, yeah

BESW

@nitsua60 So this is less 5e embracing a new idea, and more a gradual slope back toward D&D's roots.

nitsua60

@BESW yeah, except it's not 5e doing anything--it's Angry suggesting some tweaks that decouple skills from "assigned" stats.

BESW

01:18

Ahah.

trogdor

from what little I understand of 5e, it incorporates a lot of old ideas from the previous editions, possibly just way too much even,... because the older editions don't really all work together well

BESW

So 5e did that "we're going to ignore the cool stuff 4e toyed with and go back to a 2e/3.5e mashup for ya" thing with ability modifiers too?

trogdor

that all being said, I know hardly anything really about 5e

nitsua60

Though 5e does mention this idea in the DMG, I believe. Angry's just saying "make the default process (a) think about any relevant stat, then (b) think about any relevant skill rather than the default process being (a) identify skill--which has an assigned stat already written on your sheet--then, if you think of it (b) consider whether a different stat would actually be more suitable."

He's giving the fluidity/flexibility/reasonableness a little more prominence.

@BESW With near-zero knowledge of either 3.x or 4, I can't really confirm or deny this.

All I can say, coming from 2e straight to 5e, is: looking at the book (the art style, in particular) I thought "what the hell is this--I'm not playing WOW." Then I played and ten minutes in it felt like I hadn't missed a beat in the intervening 20-plus years.

trogdor

@nitsua60 I think he just means what he mentioned, 4e let you use one of two stats for each defence, while 3.5 always tied everything to specific single ability stats

BESW

01:24

@nitsua60 That initial "I'm not playing WOW" feeling seems to be one of the only things they imported from 4e.

nitsua60

Angry is saying: break any idea of a "default" linkage. They're nearly orthogonal, and should be independently judged every time the resolution mechanic comes up. So it sounds like that's going even further than 4e did, further than any edition. (Since the ones that did focus on judgment and flexibility that much didn't even have skills/NWPs.)

@BESW I may not have communicated that well. I mean that looking into a 5e book for the first time made me fear that I would be stepping into WOW. But then the play-experience disabused me of that fear.

I was raised on Easley and Elmore, not this guy.

BESW

@nitsua60 Yes, pretty much that. A lot of people rejected 4e out of hand as "tabletop WoW" without giving it much of a chance.

Tubey faire, one of 4e's great mechanical innovations WAS superficially WoWlike.

nitsua60

@BESW Couple that with its reputation as one of the best tactical-minis games out there....

BESW

But it was less "WoW as D&D" and more "Tome of Battle as D&D."

nitsua60

@BESW whasthis?

BESW

01:36

Toward the end of 3.5e, Wizards released a splatbook that was seriously experimental. It provided a set of martial-flavoured classes with a new mechanical overlay comparable to but not actually based on spellcasting: each class had a series of powers they could use, but had to follow rules for refreshing them after each use. The rules for refreshing them gave each class its flavour.

And picking from lists for the powers as you leveled up, not unlike spell picking, let you customise the class to your liking.

It was a significant blow to the wizard/fighter power imbalance plaguing 3.5, and everybody I knew hated it.

nitsua60

@BESW at-will, encounters, dailies?

BESW

No, more like "use a black power to refresh a red power" or "when you've used all your powers, pick three to refresh." But looking back, it's very clearly the first tentative step toward 4e's universal refreshing-powers mechanic.

They were thinking about how to make martial classes awesome without making them casters, and poking new mechanics which blurred the lines between magic and skill to make everybody more pulpy.

To my mind, Tome of Battle was the first public playtest of 4e, sadly shackled by the constraints of an older system.

And if that's true, looking at Tome of Battle indicates "WoW-like" was not a 4e design principle.

If anything, WoW stole Tome's use-a-power-to-refresh-a-power gimmick for some of its later classes.

But I think it's all just convergent design.

JuneShores

Plenty of games have been using cool-down mechanics for decades, too.

BESW

Aye. Visibility counts for a lot.

And I admittedly get a little ruffled that D&D 4e gets so often ignored and forgotten when people talk about the progression of D&D design. It's a fascinating blip.

nitsua60

@daze413 I'm with you, I think, on the mute-player question. I feel like some edits have gotten out over their skis, as it were, given we haven't heard from OP yet. (cc: @mxyzplk ?)

BESW

01:45

Whatever one feels about its goals, 4e was a game with clear design goals that it met head-on and didn't get distracted by side quests or the temptation to be all things for all people.

daze413

@nitsua60 Yeah, it's kinda gotten all over the place :/

Shalvenay

hey there @daze413

daze413

@Shalvenay heya! Phew, hectic night last night at work. How're things over there?

Shalvenay

OK here

is there some way you want us to notate our characters for Sunday btw?

or is that up to me?

trogdor

@BESW I hate that people use that as an excuse to dislike 4e and never try it, just for the record

daze413

01:50

@Shalvenay Do you mean if I wanted to see your character sheets?

Shalvenay

@daze413 yeah, partly

trogdor

obviously, 4e has its own mechanical flaws, but so does literally every edition ever

BESW

@trogdor I'm also fond of "I played the pre-pub adventure and it didn't have enough customisation choices so 4e is like WoW because you don't get to choose your abilities."

daze413

@Shalvenay no, I don't need to see it. It's not going to be a lasting campaign, anyway :) How are you keeping, anyhow?

trogdor

@BESW lol

nitsua60

01:52

@trogdor HERETIC!

Jul 28 '16 at 3:26, by Adeptus

@Miniman But D&D 105e isn't real D&D... The last real D&D was 102.7e

trogdor

@nitsua60 and proud of it too

BESW

(Yes, I've actually seen people judge a game's span of customisation options off its pre-pub material... from a company famous for constantly releasing expansion material to supplement the primary release.)

Shalvenay

@daze413 I wasn't sure :)

trogdor

if this is heresy I don't want to be devout

nitsua60

(spoken like a true heretic)

=D

Shalvenay

01:54

@daze413 but it seems like I can just dig up the form fillable PDFs, or maybe give Myth-Weavers another chance

daze413

@Shalvenay just use whatever is comfortable for you. Piece of paper? App? Myth-weavers?

Shalvenay

@daze413 if you can throw me the link to the latter please?

nitsua60

@daze413 I've got an index card with a line down the middle. #old-school-ftw

daze413

@Shalvenay myth-weavers.com/sheets

@nitsua60 what's the line for?

nitsua60

Two characters, remember?

=)

trogdor

01:55

@nitsua60 heretics are people too :P

daze413

@nitsua60 ah! I though it was to do something... else? Idk heh

trogdor

some might forget, the word only has horrible meaning because people decided to give it horrible meaning

nitsua60

@trogdor heretics are people too?

Or "heretics are people too?"

trogdor

heresy is just a word for not practicing the same beliefs as you XD

daze413

Oh, man, the myth-weavers sheets really throws me back... Looking at all the characters I made for play-by-post

trogdor

01:57

@nitsua60 I don't understand the difference between those two

nitsua60

In my religion it's usually "heretics were people. Before the burning."

daze413

But I don't miss play-by-post one bit :/ too slow

@nitsua60 You know he's a heretic because he burns juuust right

trogdor

@nitsua60 well, yes, because they were burned for, gasp shock, not believing the same thing

certainly a horrible practice

nitsua60

(what's the net-term for "laugh out loud, but really uncomfortably, because joking about your religion having a multi-millennium history of burning/quartering/twisting/drowning anyone they didn't like is actually kinda horrifying"?)

Ahh, got it:
STAHP

daze413

@trogdor Yeah, thankfully we, as a society, have grown past that. Now, we just condemn people for using the wrong pronoun. hehe

Shalvenay

02:00

so...I was reading the question about lycanthropes being executed on nonmagical guillotines...

trogdor

@daze413 we still have a long way to go, for sure

Shalvenay

and it brought to mind a much more powerful, yet still mundane, source of massive damage...a turbofan engine

trogdor

@nitsua60 it's ok though,

nitsua60

@Shalvenay kinda reminds me of drowning witches in nonmagical water.

daze413

@Shalvenay i, personally, say to not be able to kill them... Otherwise my world's ordeals would make no sense.

Shalvenay

02:00

(CFM56 does oh, 30k RPMs at idle)

trogdor

it isn't like you were even around to participate or stop it at the time

Shalvenay

and will happily mincemeat anything fleshy it ingests

nitsua60

@trogdor you don't know me!

=)

trogdor

@nitsua60 lol

nitsua60

@trogdor (no, I believe it's "STAHP")

=)

daze413

02:02

@Shalvenay who's to say lycanthrope meat is fleshy?

Shalvenay

@daze413 well, they'll also shred not-so-fleshy things too

(not that the engine won't need a trip to the shop afterwards, but short of rocks, FOD generally doesn't survive a trip through a jet engine intact)

daze413

@Shalvenay clearly, modern machines are magic. But wait! Don't modern steels have some silver in them?

Shalvenay

@daze413 nah, we aren't even talking steel for the blades, we're talking titanium alloy xD

steel's too dang heavy for the app

daze413

@Shalvenay well, clearly, titanium would bypass resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage... right?

nitsua60

@daze413 The best ones are grown single crystals, meters long. Not a single atom of impurity in the whole thing.

BESW

02:05

If werewolves are like vampires, they may be made of marble.

daze413

@BESW or diamonds, depending on the author, amirite?

nitsua60

The metallurgy behind modern aircraft engines is jaw-dropping.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 no doubt

nitsua60

On other news, I have a call coming up tomorrow to serve as a job-reference for a former colleague. Their work was good, really good in some ways. When they could produce. For reasons of disability, though, they were occasionally out of commission for weeks, and everyone else would have to pick up the ball.
I've spoken to a few lawyers and have a good handle on what I can and cannot say, but I'm still dreading the call.

Shalvenay

@daze413 well, haha -- I'd actually say that titanium is the closest IRL thing to mithril

mxyzplk

02:07

@nitsua60 I agree and have reverted the edit.

The OP can say which question they really have; editing in this case is an exercise in guessing.

nitsua60

"Exercise in Guessing" would be a good name for the next thing @BESW's going to say has a good name.

WB.SE, perhaps.

trogdor

@nitsua60 mind blown

nitsua60

@trogdor Yeah, I didn't realize it at first, but you can really just keep falling through that one.

trogdor

@nitsua60 it is a thing

my mind is too blown to explain it properly

Shalvenay

Rolls-Royce Trent 900 Bird Ingestion Test

►

see the slowmo at the end

@daze413 I actually think it may be a case of "resistance just isn't enough to overcome the sheer volume of hits/s"

it's the difference between Drizzt slashing away at you with his two swords at a swing-a-couple-of-seconds pace and an industrial food processor chopping you to bits with two equally sized blades spinning at thousands of RPM, hitting you a hundred times in a single second's span

daze413

02:28

@Shalvenay This is why you shouldn't play DnD in the modern world setting.

Shalvenay

@daze413 hahaha

never mind that 9 out of 10 dragons hate that Ernst Mach guy :P

(the 10th wasn't available for survey because he made a crater)

daze413

(1) The GM is pretty harsh. (2) gameplay sucks, why am I starting at pre-level 1? (3) But I want more strength but dont want to lift weights :(

Shalvenay

watches Drizzt skulk around for a while, only to find him skulking onto an airport airside...and try to sneak by the airplane making full power engine runs

daze413

@Shalvenay I really want to play out of the abyss again, I wanna pull that scene where you see Drizzt in a hallucinatory fungi-induced fever dream. My players will scream like fangirls

Shalvenay

@daze413 personally -- I'd rather watch a pillar of fire come screaming out of the sky and park itself dead-center-bullseye on the deck of a seemingly ghost ship ;)

either that, or see the look on Drizzt's face when he's tracking some fell beast through the deep snows of the legendary Donner Pass, and looks up to see the real king of the pass tearing through the snows right at him...;) (with me driving it of course...say hello to something called a rotary snowplow)

Rotary snowplow

A rotary snowplow is a piece of railroad snow removal equipment with a large circular set of blades on its front end that rotate to cut through the snow on the track ahead of it. The precursor to the rotary snowplow was the wedge snowplow. == History == The rotary was invented by Toronto, Ontario, Canada dentist J.W. Elliot in 1869. He never built a working model or prototype, although he wanted to. Orange Jull of Orangeville, Ontario, expanded on Elliot's design, building working models he tested with sand. During the winter of 1883–1884, Jull contracted with the Leslie Brothers of Toronto to...

daze413

02:46

looks like a purple worm

Shalvenay

@daze413 yeah, kinda :P a mechanical purple worm that chews up concrete-hard snow ten feet deep and spits it out in giant rooster tails ;)

daze413

mental note about taming purple wormlings to clear out snow...

Shalvenay

@daze413 for SUnday's game -- do you mind if I use one of the half-elf skill proficiencies for a weapon proficiency instead?

@daze413 haha -- it's not like most wagon roads have the kind of snow clearance needs Donner Pass demands these days

daze413

@Shalvenay So swap out a skill for a weapon prof?... What sort of weapon?

Shalvenay

@daze413 longbow

daze413

02:53

@Shalvenay dont you already get longbow? But, yeah, sure

Shalvenay

@daze413 nope, half-elves don't get elf weapon profs

daze413

@Shalvenay what if it's white dragon ice huh?

Shalvenay

@daze413 haha. then it might be needed ;)

Miniman

@Shalvenay There's actually a half-elf variant in SCAG that does exactly this.

Shalvenay

@Miniman what does it swap out?

daze413

03:03

i think it was a skill?

Shalvenay

does it give you all the elf weapon profs or just some?

Miniman

@Shalvenay Skill Versatility for Elf weapon Training, Keen Senses, Fleet of Foot, Mask of the Wild, Cantrip, Drow Magic, or a swim speed.

Shalvenay

@Miniman ah

daze413

so the two skills for the Elf weapon training

Miniman

Yep.

Ben

06:13

So... my life has been made complete.

I have a PC in my D&D game I've been playing. A Fighter named Doug Ironhands. He is, basically a tank.

Our DM is actually in the army; cavalry, more specifically.

And now, there is an actual tank, named Doug Ironhands.

4

daze413

06:31

@Ben That's awesome! :D Is it an M1 Abrams?

or more like a water tank?

Ben

Oh man I wish it was an Abram's! Hahaha

I think it's a T-80

daze413

@Ben still cool

Ben

Correction - just confirmed. It is an M1A1 Abrams

daze413

no more or no less cool :D

Ben

Haha. I'm pretty chuffed

daze413

11:34

How does one handle spells in roll for shoes? Does the system not allow magic?

Miniman

11:59

@daze413 You use your Do Anything 1 to try to use magic.

Then, if you get a 6, you might gain the skill Do Magic 2.

Depending on the type of magic you use, you might then specialise into Conjure Beer 3.

Basically, it handles magic the same way it handles everything.

That's kinda the point.

As a side note, having an entirely different set of rules for magic is very much a D&D thing, not a universal thing.

daze413

12:29

@Miniman Ah, I guess it's just alien to me, this system.

So, basically, everyone is a spellcaster if they want to be?

Miniman

Everyone is anything they want to be.

daze413

Thing is, what if the player just says: "I melt his brain with my magic." With a do anything 1.

^ that can happen?

Miniman

Then, if they succeed, that happens. But remember, the GM decides how difficult something is.

daze413

So, basing off Ilmari's answer, 3 d6s... for a brain melt task.

Miniman

As an example, I played a spellcaster in a RFS game in chat here.

(Although my favourite skill was Taking the Credit 3, by a long shot.)

Shalvenay