But there's a difference between a game that's supposed to be a gateway for TTRPGs and a game that's for people who don't play TTRPGs.
Like, if I were to help design a game to provoke discussion about the Chamoru identity, as I've talked about with some people, it'd be for that and part of the design would be making sure it only required tools and props that are readily accessible to the people who need to have those conversations.
Or if I were making an MLP game for that show's target audience, I'd write it assuming that the players had access to common toys and games but not specialty dice.
Getting to use lots of different dice can be fun, but having them is a barrier to entry.
@BESW Sounds like it could work well. Also, it changes the dynamic of someone with +4 defense being attacked from "abysmal chance of success" to "could actually at least be a tie".
If I have +1 bitey I could get 5 and 6, but they could get all 2's and 3's.
If decks of cards weren't somewhat more clumsy than dice, I'd be very happy to see them more in games.
People have them already, they allow for fairly complex randomization and also support "self-balancing" probability distributions for those who want it.
I think in the one game of freemarket we played we actually combined the correct amount of each suit from two standard decks, ignoring numbers, so it remotely qualifies
Yes! This boredom feels good in a way that lying in bed with fever doesn't. It's the actual boredom of having enough concentration to potentially do something, not the ill boredom between to weak to do anything but too awake to do nothing.
For me, I think the main difference is more care and more random beeps from instruments and more plastic hoses running into and out of myself in hospital. Otherwise it feels like a combination of usual illnesses for me, which I could have had at home.
> Crime and punishment. You can use Provoke to defend against physical or social attacks, provided you can dish out an appropriate dad joke for the occasion each time.
> Fangs for the memories. When you succeed with style on a vampiric draining attack, you can learn one of your target's character aspects or consequences, and place a free invoke on it instead of getting a boost.
> Punctuated presence. When using wordplay to distract people with Provoke, you are guaranteed to get the attention of everyone nearby. Success and failure just determine how well this works out for you, your imminent physical health, etc.
> Ignorance is bliss. When you fail to defend against a social effect, you can take the consequence Clueless about [blank] in your lowest consequence slot, where [blank] is the thrust of the attack. So long as you have that consequence, you have armor:2 against attacks using that subject, and +2 to defend against overcome or create advantage actions targeting you with relation to the subject (this includes overcome actions to remove the consequence).
> Ignorance is bliss. If you succeed with style in defending against a social effect, you can turn your boost into a full aspect of the form Clueless about [blank], where [blank] is the thrust of the effect, with no free invokes. For as long as you keep this aspect, effects with roughly the same thrust automatically fail against you (you defend at success without style).
Ok, tonight my players are going to try to take over Greifenfurt from within and kicking out the orcs. So far they have the following targets: take over one of the smaller north gates to get in some human freedom fighters AND kill as many of the middle command as they can as the orcs are in the local whorehouse. Then come the garrison buildings, and other gates and the city-castle in not yet determined order... Also, the little bastion on the other side of the river, which is prety much just a watchtower, a little wall, a gate and a landing for a boat. The strongest gates are the east and s…
@BESW How about members of The Order of Wen the Eternally Surprised? may they laugh ten years into the future about the pun or would that nullify the effect that had been?
@Trish Ah, Greifenfurt, fond memories - I played there once set when it was besieged by the orcs and the players went from "how much is the bounty on orc heads, again?" to "well, maybe the orcs would run this city better" in the span of a session :D
They have Marcian (who is their contact to the empire's inquisition/information agency), they know LAncorion (owner of the local whorehouse), their 'rogue' (more a stray than a proper thief) and priest of Praios (god of honesty, sun, hierarchy & godking) did kinda get Glombo Brohm, most rich person of the town, onto their side. They didn't bother to secure the second most rich family (Elfenberg) yet, but they are still at composing the letter to the rebels... they have 24 to 48 hours before the main bulk of the orcs leave..
@ACuriousMind throw them a priest of Praios that lobbies for the whores in a city to make a guild. Because Praios also is JUSTICE, and even lowly whores have rights.
@Trish That's...actually a pretty nice idea. Might do something like that, so far their encounters with the god of honesty have always been dominated by their desire to get out of there before anyone finds out about all the shady stuff they've been doing :P
Ohhh yes... you know: The year of the griffon was part of the 190-200 adventures... and that is JUST the adventures. The Geographica is ONE METER of green books. There are more...
(and that last is the 4th ed only)
hmmm, I think I make all the Angbar Sappers wear green berrets...
Today is Finland's 100th Independence day! To celebrate, might I share the second best Finnish composition: Finlandia, by Jean Sibelius. youtube.com/watch?v=F5zg_af9b8c
@eimyr There was an offical citizen initiative for changing the national anthem to Darude Sandstorm (Finlandia has often been suggested too, while occasionally treated with such reverence, is not the national anthem). It got a whopping 461 signatures (50k or more and the parliament has to give it a proper treatment).
461 flies can't be wrong I guess? But I'm not sure about 461 people.
@eimyr Good one, although I'm not sure if it can technically be called a composition since it's a folk song. (although I guess someone must've originally come up with it)
The reasoning for changing the anthem to Sandstorm was actually pretty funny: "Finns are a notoriously non-talkative people so an instrumental anthem fits us well"
also, my DM learned some hard lessons last night. BIggest was the risk in tossing out a big boss from another plane with a 15th level paladin hanging around. BANISHMENT.
@doppelgreener group resources were getting somewhat drained going into the boss battle (none of us knew there was a boss coming up..we just fought 3 6-horned dinosaur things, about 8 fiends and two phase/time shifting creatures). It immediately hit, grappled (with restrained condition), and confused about half the party.
And was at least invulnerable to slashing damage (some sort of blob-like creature)
I missed on both my bludgeoning attacks, so don't know if those would have worked.
but next turn, I just turned to the DM and said "You are not welcome on my plane. GO HOME"
DM also realized that giving me a reach weapon the same time I get a pegasus makes encounters difficult for him. Only the boss had reach, so I could just go in and wreck house with impunity. Although I did drop off it so I could go in close to be able to use my Sentinel reaction (which he conveniently didn't give me a chance to use by attacking me rather than the ally i was protecting)
@Alphaeus nope, not at all. Just don't think he accounted for my actions. The weapon was one he provided the last battle (a +3 halberd), but the pegasus came from Xanathar's FInd Greater Steed. He didn't know that was happening.
I just realized in-game that I could combine the two against a creature with only 5' reach.
but the pegasus flying 10' off the ground prevented that.
he under delivers on XP normally, so not a huge hit. Our 5 person party got 5k XP each for all of that (3 6-horned dinosaurs, the 9 fiends, two time shifting creatures and the big boss)
In one campaign I'm in right now the DM is somewhat annoyed because I'm under Improved Invisibility, shrouded in deeper darkness, have a 60ft perfect fly speed, and have a 480,000 cu. ft blasting spell spewing from my fingertips, PLUS at will Greater Teleport.
Plus my DCs/CL are greater than anything the opponents can dispel/counter.
At least we're getting good XP, though
I'm also helping the other players max out the XP they get from their encounters by weakening their opponents (we all get individual XP right now)
I, personally, avoid standard XP awards
I award levels by my using milestone-type campaign styles
And then in games like DnD 3.5e that use XP for crafting treat XP like a variant of money, replacing some of the gold normally gained from treasure with XP
@NautArch Reach is also ridiculously underestimated. Whips, for example, are astoundingly powerful weapons, particularly when used wisely (whip symbionts are some of the best weapons in DnD 3.5e, IMO)
@doppelgreener that I did. ALthough said ally also refuses to prepare Revivify because "he doesn't plan for failure". This being said after I revivified him two sessions ago after a power word kill.
@Alphaeus I love the milestone idea. Levelling/tracking levels is fun, but i'd rather not be dependent on that and would rather it fit in with the story. Especially if XP levels are being altered artifically anyway.
@Alphaeus And I have learned this immensely. I'm currently about 20k below level 16, but when I do and I can combined GWM, Polearm Master, Sentinel and my Vengeance Pally ability to reduce speed to 0 after i connect on an opportunity attack, it's gonna be sweet on the battlefield.
@Alphaeus if they dno't have reach I can just come in, attack, back off, make them approach, get in my reach, take the opportunity attack for coming into my reach, reduce their speed to 0. rinse/repeat.
@Alphaeus well, the boss had reach. But all the minions leading up to it did not.
the fiends were nasty, but the dinosaurs were dealing big damage when they got a chance. I just didn't really give them a chance.
I came in smiting hard.
first guy i dropped about 60 damage on with two attacks and then it got hit by lightning to take it out. Moved onto the next ones and we took them out next round. The fiends were more difficult because there were more of them, but I whittled themd own quickly with bigger smites - taking out 2-3/turn.
a first level smite for me is my weapon damage (either 2d6+2, D12+1, D10+3) and then for the fiends i'm dropping 4d8 radiant for a 1st level smite (2d8 standard, 1d8 improved smite, 1d8 for the fiend) - and i'm almost always going GWM for an additional +10.
in this case, flying and staying 10' was the optimal choice - but it easily could have failed.
the first creature i did it on took a 'reach' attack he didn't have, and i think the DM realized it was a bad idea and didn't do it again. But in turn, I got down off my steed later so that he didn't feel I was taking too much advantage.
See, on a different note, I might toss something like a group of Cerebliths (away from books, might be misspelled) at you. On first contact, however, it'd look like you'd be fighting a group of elves.
Then you might realize the elves have been killed and taken over by the demons
suddenly smiting is more useful against them
Darn it...that's not the demon I mean.
Anyhow, there IS one I mean that can take over dead bodies
I'm kinda concerned why the husband came back so soon after talking to this guy. My head decided that Dr. Whathisface must use blackmail or something. "Get back with your wife or I shall le stabbu you"
It's all variants on "my lover left me and my life fell apart but everything's great now that a witch doctor brainwashed my lover into returning." ...though every now and then it's "You can be a vampire, ask me how!" and that's at least different?
Pun-Pun is the name given to an infamously ridiculous but-the-rules-say-I-can character build that exploits an unintended potential infinitely repeatable loop to make a very low-level creature with arbitrarily high capacities.
@MikeQ ah. D&D 5e -- I'm in a RL campaign with some friends/acquaintances. (the palahack idea was originally Nitsua's tho -- it's a name for a Ftr1/Clr many build, using Light or perhaps Life domain)
@HeyICanChan I saw what you wrote about command word items in Pathfinder. If a GM houseruled that command word activation was a free or swift action, how do you think that would affect game balance? Could that have any disastrous consequences?
