@NautArch For sure. I think the answer is very clear. I tried to take a bit of a different approach to try to directly address what appears to be his confusion point.
Reading through the rules, I could actually see where he is coming from from a very strict RAW perspective. But I do not find that logic convincing. It is very clear to me (and to at least several others) how this was supposed to be read.
@BESW For sure, but it is a VERY strict reading. And that is acceptable, but it also seems very contrary to intent and allows for generous helpings of cheese apparently
And while there's certainly room for optimization, it's actually hard to make stuff so over- or under-powered that some people feel useless compared to others.
I'm deliberately sub-optimizing my Invoker for flavor, and I still feel awesome, while another player is considering two-fisting rods on his warlock and that's definitely cheesy but it won't overshadow me at all.
Even if I optimized my Invoker for frost cheese--which is one of the best kinds of cheese--half the point of it would be that all my teammates could benefit from my cheese as well with a very minor addition to their builds, which is unlikely to break or change any of their own build goals.
Frostcheese is where a controller --the group of classes which specialize in multi-target attacks and enemy debuffing-- finds a way for their attacks to deal cold damage and a feat which says whenever they deal cold damage the target gets "vulnerable cold 5" until the end of their next turn (meaning that the target takes an extra 5 cold damage every time it takes any cold damage).
Then everyone in the party finds a way to deal cold damage (a cold weapon/implement, usually) and takes a low-level feat which gives them combat advantage (+2 to attacks) with cold attacks against targets with vulnerability to cold.
The controller uses low-damage wide-target attacks to inflict vulnerability, and the rest of the party gets +2 to hit and +5 to damage on every target the controller hits.
And then each PC can chain off into whatever features their class/race build has to take advantage of combat advantage, which is plentiful and diverse.
(Another thing I love about 4e is that it heavily encourages players to engage in party synergy, without forcing players to lock into particular choices in order to get that synergy.)
@Rubiksmoose 4e's got a lot going for it, but ever since they discontinued their online subscription support it's a lot harder to really dig into what makes it cool. Overall, I'd recommend 13th Age as the D&D system for people to learn, even though it technically isn't.
Yeah, I never thought I'd go back to D&D, but I'm not GMing and I'm in a group that I'll play just about anything with and they're at least as aware of D&D's inherent flaws as I am so we can groan and avoid.
The Radiant Mafia deals more damage, but is a little harder to branch out of into other builds (because Frostcheese grants CA, and that's so easy to take advantage of in all kinds of builds).
Yeah--to really take advantage of radiant vulnerability, pretty much the only option is to invest in multi-target attacks so you can proc the vulnerability bonus to damage multiple times a round.
Which is also good for Frostcheese, but less so because Lasting Frost grants vuln 5 while Morninglord grants vuln 10... while Lasting Frost also grants CA, which is easy to exploit for all kinds of tricks.
So if you don't have a multiattack build available, it's harder to take full advantage of the Radiant Mafia, while everybody can find a way to exploit Frostcheese.
@doppelgreener apropos of our conversation a while back--at least I think it was you: I heard a review from someone in posession of the PF2e beta today. It sounds like 5.5, not 3.785, if you get my drift.
@trogdor There actually was mention of some things in PF2e that the reviewer attributed to being good ideas from 4e, but I don't know that edition well enough at all to evaluate the claim myself.
I think it was less because Paizo thought 4e was garbage, as that Paizo saw an opportunity to fill the niche for a "living" 3.5-like that Wizards created by making 4e so dramatically different a significant number of players were reluctant to make the jump.
@goodguy5 Yeah, but you have to file (on paper) a form (4506-A) to obtain a copy of someone's exemption application. That's both more info than I need (I just want verification of the exempt status) and way more work than I want to do =)
Oh, nvm.
@goodguy5 That's not quite it. Because that tells me the organization is a charity, but not under which part of the code they qualify. It's actually important because the form I'm trying to fill out is different if the organization's a 501(c)(3) vs. (c)(4) or (c)(6).
(I've already contacted the organization; I was just wondering if I could suss it out myself.)
@Shalvenay The last time I did that it was to try to amend a form on which I'd certified, under pain of perjury, that my wife was a felon. She's not. And according to multiple layers of IRS employees I can't amend that form, I just have to hope it never comes up.
But it disqualifies her for a credit we already weren't eligible for. So setting the record straight wouldn't actually change any of the numbers, and the IRS won't let you amend for $0. So there it is.
(I have been messing with 5e builds for so long that I assume we would all put a 16 in the prime stat. Just goes to show how the Pt Buy min maxers have influenced me).
@Shalvenay D&D 3.5. Epic-level confrontation with a sorcereress. She commands the fighter to give her his weapon, which she then disintegrates in front of him.
The party sorcerer uses his turn to conjure another weapon for the fighter, but it's not nearly as cool. (They'd geared up with stuff specifically tuned to overcome the sorceress's defenses.)
That was the fight during which the tarrasque was eating the pyramid tomb they were fighting in, and an army of gnomes and pirates and catfolk was fighting an army of orc were-crocodiles outside.
@Shalvenay The risk reward payoff is this: if you command the leader to "grovel" and he does, Nadarr and Blud can attack with advantage. but if he saves, nothing happens.
@KorvinStarmast (speaking as a player, here, not your GM) I feel like it'd depend on initiative. If you call giving your two allies advantage roughly equivalent to giving them 1.5 attacks vs. their usual 1, then it's a wash. So, does an advantaged attack from an L2 paladin or barbarian "count" more or less than 1.5 attacks?
I see your idea, I am not sure how to make it stick/work with reasonably chances for success. Lets do a few more emails, as I am intrigued by your line of reasoning.
@BESW Lasers and feelings hack: use brains and brawn, and instead of captain darcy becoming locked up in the sick bay, your father's gone and become a half-worm demigod (sigh, typical) so it's down to you to sort this mess out.
@doppelgreener When you roll exactly your number, you experience a Shortening of the Way and gain insight beyond space and time. Ask the GM a question and they’ll answer you honestly.
I've discovered two things: That in the D&D game I'm playing, a kingdom-ending dragon wants to burn my house because he's emotionally scarred, and that the people that write the Pathfinder APs really expect you to murderhobo your way through ALL THE THINGS
Have you read Ursula Vernon's "Clocktaur Wars" novels? They're most excellently RPG-ish, with some biting commentary about murder-hobos and fallen paladins.
I... didn't know those were even a thing. MY librarian who is a big Ursual Vernon fan and makes sure that her library has all the Hamster Princess (?) books has never even mentioned this.
@Frezak They were just published in the last half-year or so! Clockwork Boys is part one, and The Wonder Engine is part two.
The main character is a ninja accountant.
There are carnivorous tattoos and gnolls gnoles and a realistic depiction of what it's like for unpracticed people to ride a horse all day for many days.
Also a fallen paladin who is a delightful deconstruction of why the fallen paladin trope reflects a fundamental failure of storytellers to understand how religions work.
@doppelgreener I'm trying to rebuild the empire of Bael Turath, and when the dragon that ruined ARkhosia, the empire that was fighting BT found out that I was fixing the empire that tortured him for a few centuries (for some dumb reason) found out, he told me he'd feel obligated to wipe out my house and all the houses in the region. He was also a little boy talking in the veing of "golly gosh, mister" at the time.
@BESW Ninja Accountants? Sounds like SKin Horse. Unless those were just Mystic Monk Accountants
@Frezak Her specialty is sneaking into someone else's business and doctoring their books so they get arrested for tax fraud, and her client can take over their business.
Oh, man. Yeah, that sounds cool. I'm running mine after the War Of Ruin, but before the next big Empire (NErath?). THe main plot is some horrible weapons are loose. (The sky is being assimilated by a Far Realm entity/weapon)
All the astrologers are insane and there are crazy eyeball cultists everywhere. It turns out that there are ALWAYS cultists.
But no-one can see the horrible sky monster because it feeds on the sight of itself. So the sky is just blue and blank. At some point they'll get to see it and the sky for miles will just be... I dunno, basically a Gibbering Mouther with more eyes and less.. mouths.
@Frezak I had a lot of fun setting up Bael Turath as an oppressive pro-human empire ruled by tieflings who believed they were still humans, and Arkhosia as a loose federation of dragon-ruled nation-states united by worship of Bahamut. The party was a "Mission Impossible" style black ops team working for Arkhosia, doing things that were technically against the rules of war laid down by Bahamut so as to give the nation-states plausible deniabilty.
We started out in a half-orc nation that was caught between the two superpowers, just as it was about to be invaded--because BT's prosperity was based on terraforming and agricultural magics that needed to be fueled by blood, so they had to either be constantly at war or start sacrificing their own... or the sea would cover the land, the crops would fail, the volcanoes would reactivate, etc.
If I remember correctly, we used one of our Evil Interludes (once or twice a tier we'd spend a level playing a similar party working for Bael Turath) to establish the cult that supported him, and then later on we had to dismantle the cult and confront Zebukiel.
Because he was a dragon and Bael Turath had swallowed its own propaganda?
That's one of the most interesting things about the whole history, in my opinion: Bael Turath is obviously evil, but its propaganda machine was so much more successful than Arkhosia's that even hundreds of years later Nerath's policy on dragonborn and tieflings is based directly on the anti-dragon, pro-tiefling propaganda of Bael Turath.
Which is, in turn, fueled by tieflings originally being the result of desperate, fearful humans making bad deals to save their kingdoms from unspecified boogeymen in the wilderness.
I never did much with Nerath, but if I'd had the opportunity I would've drawn heavily on Eberron material for its aesthetic.
Most of that 4E game I'm in has the theme of People Trying To Do Right, But Resulting In Evil. WHich is basically what happened to BT. The head honcho was being pressured into doing the evil pact thing to get a leg up on the approaching horrors.
Even though, realistically, humans are probably the Worst Species. Given that every other species gets cool stuff, humans are just... Humans. The dragonborn are living magical sprayers! With giant teeth!
Are there any prominent settings that give humans other special traits over other sapient species than being "a baseline" or "the masters of their own fate"?
@kviiri Yes, well. This gets into some allegorical ground that most mainstream fantasy --especially D&D-like stuff-- desperately doesn't want to actually explore because if you poke these fantasy staples with a stick, centuries of real-world racism fall out.
7th Sea is actually quite interesting in the race/nation department. The book makes it very clear that Théan culture is not obsessed with race: nationality is defined by where one is born and raised, so culture before blood.
(And my pet theory for D&D is that there's no such thing as a human. They're just half-dwarf and half-elf but both the dwarves and the elves are too embarrassed to tell them.)
However, nationalities play a very big part. Every nation has their own style of magic that's implied to be simply impossible for outsiders to learn. The Montaignians tear open bleeding portals in the cosmic fabric, the Eisen do good ol-fashioned witchcraft, the Ussurans work with old ladies who resemble Hags except they're not all evil, and so on.
I played in a short game using the 4E system, but it was sci-fi and everyone was just a kind of space elf. Even the minotaur. He was a big elf with horns.
@BESW No idea. It seems a bit weird to me to give an important role to nationality while downplaying or even stomping out the role of genetic heritage.
(One horror game was made extra-tense by the players' decision to have one PC speak German; one German and Tibetan; one English and Tibetan; and one only English; all the NPCs spoke only Tibetan. In another group that choice might have made it slow and dull, but for us it was an excellent mood-builder and was exploited to create paranoia appropriate to the game's horror themes.)
Because nationality != race, anyone who speaks a nation's language can make an effort to pass off as a local. Everyone knows a bit of Old Théan (a Latin/Lingua Franca analogue) but I think you'd get suspicious looks for being a foreigner - particularly if the other nation has a reason for suspicion like a war.
@BESW Sounds cool
I hope this 7th Sea game is the one where "knowing a language" is finally a significant thing in our tables.
There were scenes like one PC wrestling the other to the ground and apparently trying to saw his arm off, screaming "I'm doing this to save your life!" in a language the subdued PC understood but nobody else did.
The plot was inspired by the lost Doctor Who story "The Abominable Snowmen," so a malevolent being of pure thought from the universe before the Big Bang was trying to possess someone in order to make its will manifest in this universe.
And the hapless PC with the offending limb had picked up the focus the Great Intelligence was using to perform the possession.
There must be a guild of architects who make all these booby trapped fantasy fortresses.
“This week, we’re discussing spike rooms. When, where, and how sharp?”
#krull
rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/119342/… is this on-topic? I can get RPG experts being good with probability math or dice physics, but this doesn't seem like we're the right people to ask.
@BESW Oh, neat. I like how much one can mess with 4E to make insane weird fights. Which is pretty important to make the Solos-as-written not just.... rubbish. Or irritating.
Well, many things.... but lets start with simple keywords first: Icons, One Unique Thing, the Setting, the way Skills work, how "saves" work, and how streamlined using abilities during combat has become.
@SPavel It's really +1 !
@SPavel The Wizard ain't what he used to be. And there are far more Orcs than I remember. ;-)
I would say that it's very much like I am making an action hero. I have all these cool abilities that I can play round with. (I have taken to printing out ability cards, so its almost like a card game too) And I can easily switch out my abilities to match how I want to play without feeling like I am making bad choices, because unlike other games, I can always change my entire load-out with no real penalties. which is nice.
@doppelgreener That's tricky, because in making a youthful, distraught, ill-advised deal for DARK POWERS, he was tricked into assuming the identity of a Turathi noble. Problem is, so were a bunch of other tieflings, who are therefore also technically him. It's weird. The plot was to get these people to re-open the devil-land gate under the city. It didn't work, but now there are various people who all share the same name and count as each other for the purposes of magic. It's a mess.
@Magician Exactly what I noticed. I misread it when I first took it - and I have always been struggling between reserving my daily spell till I need to buff myself for defense - and wanting to shoot it at enemies all the time.
I am really enjoying the cyclic spells, and the permanent spells.
still only level 1 though.
We only played about 6 hours of the game over 2 sessions.
took a while to get the group to all synchronize on the time of the sessions and the game we wanted to play......
But 13th age is really fun and simple, and I want to play more of it!
I am playing one of a pair of dark-elf twins, I am a Wizard, the other is a Warrior (Fighter?) His One Unique Thing is "The nicest Drow you will ever meet" Which makes the game really fun. Note, this does not mean he is "nice" he is just the nicest drow. He will rob you with a smile, and kill you with a kiss. He will be very polite when he stabs you and apologize for getting your blood everywhere. He is so courteous and nice about everything, very honest, when guards catch him they let him go..
"Because it's just his day job, not like he is a real criminal"
I mean, there's also my own first impressions of 13th Age, if you're interested. I think I came off a bit more critical there than I actually am, but eh.
> In a broader sense, 13th Age is an opinionated game, in the sense that the designers are very clear about what they are trying to do and what they think is cool about D&D, and it oozes from every page.
This is very good, I like a game that has an intent.
>13th Age also basically removes the non-magical shopping mini-game of previous editions, where you figure out how many coils of rope you can buy or whether it is advantageous to use a falchion or a glaive-guisarme
@InbarRose Not really the most elegant solution if the intent is to curb metagaming, because that triggers an instinctive response of trying to guess what the GM rolled.
I once used the AngryGM time tracking system. Feel free to search as many times as you like, but every time you do, something Nasty is liable to happen as a result of taking too long. (that is, every search roll counts as Time Passing...)
@Rubiksmoose I like the body (giggidy), though I could still go for a cleanup of the title. Though titles don't always have to be 100% of the question. it's probably fine.
@Rubiksmoose I like it, maybe even be overly prescriptive in the last sentence with "Answers that are not based on table experience are not valid." But that may be overboard.
