TRPG General Chat

Adeptus

00:01

@KorvinStarmast I didn't know there was a "chicken of the sea" brand. It's also just a nickname for tuna.

Peter Cooper Jr.

@TheDragonOfFlame Are you familiar at all with Monstrous Races? Definitely worth the few bucks if you like ideas for turning monster races into player characters.

Mark Wells

@TheDragonOfFlame Maybe I'm not seeing it but how do you get your Eye Ray Points back?

TheDragonOfFlame

@PeterCooperJr. I have monstrous races

@MarkWells on long rests, like I said this is not edited

Ben

00:19

@NautArch will do.

Mark Wells

@TheDragonOfFlame I kind of like the concept, where you have, basically, spell slots that you can use only to upcast cantrips

Ben

@linksassin You were right. I just got here and there is too much to do, to get anything done.

linksassin

@Ben Pretty likely that it can wait till monday

Ben

Got my coffee, got my emails open, so time to sit back and wait until 5pm

Bardic Wizard

00:47

Our library is open!!!!!!!!!!

We can go in and check out books!!!!!!!!!!

Ben

Oh I can do some work-related personal tasks though... Check some stuff off my own list

@BardicWizard Woot!

Xirema

...............

Bardic Wizard

It’s been 8 months since I could get to the 600s and now I can see the new books again!

Xirema

> As DM, I'd totally let the combo work. Shadow Blade creates a simple melee weapon, and if another rule cares about that weapon's value, I'd pick a value from the list of simple melee weapons in the Player's Handbook and apply that value ad hoc to the shadowy blade. ―twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/1326925328267177984

Jerrrrrremyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Medix2

@Xirema Notably, that is prefaced with "As DM" and "I'd let it work" and what he'd personally do; without quoting any sort of rules

He does have a lot of tweets that amount to "Here's what the rules say; here's what I'd do" and others that are just "Here's what I'd do"

Ben

00:51

Xirema

@Medix2 Which I totally respect, it's just weird that they decided to adjust the rules so that RAW it doesn't work, if he's like "but as DM I'd go for it!"

Mark Wells

@Xirema As I keep having to explain, he's not the only one working on the rules.

Xirema

@MarkWells That is a valid observation.

Mark Wells

I've not actually played in a game he's run but I'm 100% sure he makes rulings that he knows aren't entirely consistent with the rules, because every GM does that.

Adeptus

01:06

@BardicWizard That reminds me... our local library has a sale on this weekend. 50c each or a bag full for $5. Time to buy too many books again!

BESW

> As DM, I'd totally let my group play another system.
-- BESW

4

Ben

@Adeptus I don't think "hoarding" and "books" work in the same sentence.

Speaking of how broken the english language is, I'm trying to think of a way to use/describe the situation "elsewhen"; i.e. "meanwhile, millions of years ago"

Glazius

@Ben You can completely hoard books, but only if they're the kind where there's a sharply limited number of copies.

Bardic Wizard

I have 9 crochet books and 3 gaming books (they got a number of books on the history of TTRPGs last year) so I’m happy

Ben

Is asking for phrases or wording suggestions on-topic for writing.se?

BESW

01:40

@Ben Is this "Meanwhile, in the past" or is it San Dimas time?

Ben

The premise is the time traveller is preparing to travel back in time, millions of years. Then we jump back, millions of years where the unsuspecting villagers are more concerned with whether or not the sabre-tooth tigers are still hunting them.

BESW

Hrm. If time doesn't flow concurrently, then in text I'd be inclined (unless I was making a joke) to avoid "meanwhile" verbiage that implies concurrent flow. Instead maybe just a section header saying when and where the upcoming scene is happening.

A visual medium can cut between two times with less implication that the times are flowing concurrently.

But textually, that's a lot harder to pull off.

I mean, in English is it.

Some languages could handle it just fine.

There's languages which conjugate time relative to the beginning of the story.

TheDragonOfFlame

02:07

@BESW not a d&d fan?

@BardicWizard Great! Meanwhile, the libraries here just closed again....

Bardic Wizard

@TheDragonOfFlame we go back to purple tier tomorrow so half the stuff open has to close and the other half has to lower capacity by 50%

BESW

Not especially, no. But also a big fan of groups using systems that produce as little friction as possible. The more a system needs to be re-written to meet a group's needs, the more I wonder if there's a different system better suited for the group. "If you can fix it, that means it was broken."

(This attitude is, of course, antithetical to Wizards' need to present D&D as universal/generic in order to keep its audience large enough to turn Hasbro-level profits.)

TheDragonOfFlame

@BESW I honestly agree: the only reason I play d&d is because no one else plays anything else, it is wayyy harder to get a non d&d game going than a d&d game

Bardic Wizard

@TheDragonOfFlame same. It’s frustrating, which is why in the last couple months I have been pushing non-d&d stuff when we’re missing players, since it’s not like there’s anything else to do

BESW

Yeah, when I see statements like He does have a lot of tweets that amount to "Here's what the rules say; here's what I'd do" it just makes me think about how much work it takes to make one system seem like it's good for everybody.

TheDragonOfFlame

02:19

@BardicWizard I run for a d&d group and I said “I was wondering if y’all might be interested in playing sci-fi rpg” and they said “I didn’t know you could do sci fi in d&d” and I said “it’s not d&d” and they didn’t reply...

Bardic Wizard

@TheDragonOfFlame oof. That’s not good

TheDragonOfFlame

We have fun playing d&d and it’s not like it’s a bad game, it is one of the easiest to understand rpgs with the clearest rules (in basic things) but I’d like to play other games too

*that I have found

@BESW I believe you have said in the past, so am I correct in guessing lady blackbird and fate are your preferred systems? Or am I confusing you with someone else

BESW

They're certainly major touchstones for me and my groups.

TheDragonOfFlame

Also is Lady Blackbird even a system or is it a one shot (I can’t find where to buy it or anything)

BESW

Download Lady Blackbird for free here. It's a self-contained system/adventure/campaign.

TheDragonOfFlame

02:27

Sweet thanks

I love learning new systems

BESW

The other items on the page are similarly self-contained modules using variations on the same system and taking place in roughly the same setting.

TheDragonOfFlame

cool

BESW

If you feel that D&D has clear, easy-to-understand rules, I think LB may blow you out of the water.

TheDragonOfFlame

By easy to understand I mean as far as mechanics based systems made for combat go

though I will admit my sampling is fairly narrow, I know only like 8 different systems, and only like 3 well

BESW

My friends also enjoy games like Honey Heist, Space Goblins!, Golden Sky Stories, InSpectres, Bubblegumshoe, Terrorsaur, Together Among the Stars...

TheDragonOfFlame

02:31

thats a lot wow

BESW

My profile lists the systems I've played at least one session of, without ranking or preference.

TheDragonOfFlame

Bruh

lol that’s a lot

Medix2

@BESW Time to add three more games to my "Need to read and then tell people about these" list

TheDragonOfFlame

though I’ve only played ttrpgs for a little under 2 years

BESW

@TheDragonOfFlame I've been playing TRPGs for about fifteen years and in the first seven of them I played exactly three sessions that weren't D&D or a very close variant. Then I went "PLAY ALL THE GAMES!" and haven't looked back.

TheDragonOfFlame

02:34

@BESW nice you’ve been playing ttrpgs my whole life lol

BESW

I'd probably have doubled that list in the last year or two if I wasn't struggling with other drains on my availability.

My "want to play" list is massive.

@Medix2 Oh, also Cozy Town. Cozy Town is fun.

TheDragonOfFlame

how do you manage all those? Do you ever do a long running campaign?

Bardic Wizard

@BESW like @TheDragonOfFlame that’s most of my life

BESW

@TheDragonOfFlame In my D&D phase I mostly ran campaigns that lasted between two and eight months (coinciding with semesters and vacations in college). Then I started playing with campaign structures, and for many years we'd have one or two long-running campaigns that we'd play when enough people showed up, and otherwise we'd play one-shot sessions with whoever was around.

Medix2

@BESW You'll probably be happy to hear I haven't played D&D or Pathfinder for a while and have instead found fun with Microscope, Honey Heist, Lasers and Feelings, Fireborn, and Mutant City Blues. That said... I should probably look into their business practices and community engagement...

TheDragonOfFlame

02:39

@BESW two months! I have a campaign that started a year and a half ago, we are a bit over halfway done

BESW

My last long campaign was a custom setting using the Atomic Robo rules, and it lasted... two, two and a half years? before our group calibration went wonky and real life started getting in the way at the same time.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW got any ones that you might recommend?

TheDragonOfFlame

i love campaign play

You get to know the characters and everything, it’s great

Bardic Wizard

@BESW that’s a long time. The longest campaign by time spanned that i was involved with is/was with my cousins, and started with the d&d5e starter set and the basic rules, all the way back... 5 years ago, but we’ve never been able to get more than one or two sessions per visit in so it’s not the longest in terms of time played

TheDragonOfFlame

@BESW where do you find all of these systems, out of curiosity

BESW

02:49

Sundown, Wanderhome, Balikbayan: Returning Home, Pasión de las Pasiones, Trophy Dark, War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus, BOLT, Wretched & Alone, this discord has ghosts in it, Bell Songs, i'm sorry did you say street magic, Graffiti Speak, the Planted TRPGs series, the Mnemonic series, Michtim: Fluffy Adventures...
I suspect I play We Are But Worms pretty regularly without noticing.

@BardicWizard Until the last year or two, I've been lucky to have a pretty regular once-a-week schedule for most of my time playing TRPGs.

Although part of being able to do that meant getting a large pool of friends and playing games which didn't put pressure on any of them to show up every time. So there was usually enough people every week but it wasn't always the same people.

Which is an excellent way to play a lot of one-shots and experiment with new systems!

For long-form campaigns in that style, we used episodic structures like an ensemble TV show: every week was a self-contained story, and continuity was about it happening in the same world and having recurring characters as well as guest characters.

@TheDragonOfFlame All over the place. At first it was mostly "Hey I like [tv/book thing], I wonder if there's a game?" and googling. Through that, and through paying attention to non-D&D posts in rpg.se, I started to get a sense of where else I could look to just find out about the cool stuff that exists.

I found larger indie companies like Evil Hat when they did big publicity pushes for major products like the Dresden Files RPG.

Then I decided I wanted to make a deliberate effort to find games by marginalized creators who don't have access to even the minimal publishing infrastructure of a company like Evil Hat. I did a lot of googling and asking around and I'd run into one or two here and there but I couldn't find a solid "in" for a while.

TheDragonOfFlame

I’m sad because I don’t have money to buy 10 rpgs

BESW

Then I followed POC in TTRPGs on Twitter a couple years ago. They re-tweet all kinds of indie and marginalized industry talent. It absolutely overwhelmed my feeds, but it gave me a "drink from the firehose" glimpse into those communities. I followed the accounts which piqued my interest, particularly those from near my regional areas, and unfollowed POC in TTRPGs because that's just too much.

From there it was a matter of listening and tuning my feeds.

@TheDragonOfFlame I like free stuff!

I'm big on paying creators, but when they're willing to make stuff available for tips, I'm not gonna complain.

TheDragonOfFlame

@BESW Same but I’ve been goOgling most of the ones you mentioned and non of them are in my price range

Bardic Wizard

@TheDragonOfFlame high school, huh? I’m the same way. I do a lot of begging old games off my dad

BESW

@TheDragonOfFlame [rummages]

TheDragonOfFlame

03:00

@BardicWizard lol

@BardicWizard partly “saving for university” partly oop I don’t have a credit card I can’t buy online stuff

Though I can buy drivethrurpg stuff because I sold some stuff on that site so I got some credit

BESW

Wanderhome free playkit

Bardic Wizard

@TheDragonOfFlame I don’t have a credit card either and my allowance currently covers my expenses with regards to yarn and that’s about it

TheDragonOfFlame

@BardicWizard I do have a (sort of) job that brings in about 20$ a month (Canadian dollars though so only like 15 American lol)

BESW

Trophy SRD

TheDragonOfFlame

@BESW thank you

BESW

03:05

A lot of stuff on itch.io has "community copies" which you can decide if you qualify for. They're a limited number of free copies of the game, and a new community copy is added every time somebody buys the game at full price.

TheDragonOfFlame

Sadly for some reason my computer refuses to open itch.io

BESW

I get a lot of my games through sale bundles or backing them on Kickstarter.

MikeQ

DriveThruRPG has most of the fate rules and modules for free (listed as "pay what you want"), at least last time I checked

BESW

Yeah, that's one reason I've spent so much time in Fate; it's got a LOT of free material.

TheDragonOfFlame

@BESW I am a little bit confused simply because isn’t Fate supposed to be a catch all system, so if you play that, why play all these others? Is it simply for the fun of learning a new system or are they significantly different?

BESW

03:08

The "worlds of adventure" are great setting/campaign modules.

@TheDragonOfFlame You can fish in Final Fantasy so why would you play Animal Crossing?

MikeQ

Fate is a catch-most for storytelling, but it's not a turing machine. It doesn't simulate the breath of gameplay mechanics, so it doesn't quite support certain gameplay niches, such as turn-based tactics, resource economy, system mastery, or grid-based battlemaps.

BESW

Fate is not a catch-all system. It's generic on some axes but not on others.

TheDragonOfFlame

Ok 👍

BESW

D&D claims that you can use it to play horror games or political thrillers but it's not exactly capable of that.

TheDragonOfFlame

technically it is, but it isn’t very good

MikeQ

03:12

D&D can simulate horror and political intrigue in the same way that sawdust can be edible

3

TheDragonOfFlame

like you could hide scary monsters around corners and use horror variant rules, but it won’t be scary

BESW

Some of the things that I love about Fate, like the way its dice make characters hypercompetent but its point system gives them dramatic failures independent of the dice system, are actually pretty awful for certain kinds of games I like to play.

And like we've said before, Fate only works to the extent that the group has a shared vision of the game's tone, theme, and setting, because Fate doesn't do much/any work to create or support that.

So when we want to play a game that we're struggling with calibration on, Fate's a terrible choice.

MikeQ

Yeah, Fate doesn't really have system mastery. You can learn the framework but there's not much to master. Factors like how well you know your players, and how well everyone has communicated their expectations about the game, and how invested the players are in the story, are more important to the game's functionality.

TheDragonOfFlame

It does seem like there would be overlap though

like who need 10 horror themed games

MikeQ

Horror comes in many flavors! Why stop at 10?

TheDragonOfFlame

03:16

Really?

Bardic Wizard

@TheDragonOfFlame anyone who specializes in horror.... so not me

TheDragonOfFlame

Ok

BESW

"Horror" is a category so big it's almost meaningless.

MikeQ

The real horror is the friends you make along the way.

TheDragonOfFlame

this is quite confusing

BESW

03:17

Even the most basic dissection of the "genre" breaks it down into the ratios of dread (building fear of something unknown), terror (suddenly an unexpected thing happens), and gore (dwelling on the details of something uncomfortable) that the story uses.

TheDragonOfFlame

learning new rpgs is difficult and I tend to get them mixed up in my head

BESW

"Cthulhu" horror tends to focus on dread and gore with very little terror; most slasher films like to use dread and terror building up to moments of gore; zombie films are often terror and gore with very little dread.

TheDragonOfFlame

Alright. Horror isn’t really my genre but I get that

BESW

Cthulhu Dark is designed for building dread interspersed with moments of terror, but it's got no support for gore.

It'd make for a terrible zombie game.

TheDragonOfFlame

It seems to me the Cthulhu dark rule system is so vague it could work for any type of non combat game

Bardic Wizard

03:22

@BESW which is good for me. I do not like gore

MikeQ

@BESW I suspect there's a fourth factor, which measures how well the characters with agency can mitigate or resist the horror

TheDragonOfFlame

@MikeQ this. Definitely this. This is why horror in d&d does not work

BESW

@MikeQ That's a different axis! Often called something like pulpiness, it's the sliding scale of "does a shotgun help?"

TheDragonOfFlame

You can’t do horror in d&d because the players are super powerful

BESW

You can absolutely do high-pulp horror where the heroes are blasting away at the nasties, but "Cthulhu" type horror in particular doesn't handle it well. If you give something hit points, you've made it killable. This is actually a bit of advice in the Call of Cthulhu manual: don't give something hp if you want it to seem unstoppable. Even if it IS mechanically unstoppable, giving it hit points gives the players a way to grab onto its scale and power.

Notice that Cthulhu Dark makes players hypercompetent at everything except direct physical confrontation with the monsters.

If they try that, they just die.

But think of, for example, the movie Aliens. It's indisputably both a horror film AND an action film.

TheDragonOfFlame

03:27

@BESW Which, IMO is what makes horror scary

MikeQ

Alien is a horror film. Aliens is a gory action film.

TheDragonOfFlame

I have never been scared by horror movies with competent main characters

helplessness is terrifying

BESW

I mean, we could talk about how the Xenomorph in Alien is defeated by a woman exercising agency over her environment, and she would've defeated it before it killed more than one person except that the other people in the film were obstructing her agency.

Horror can even just be about jump scares and deliciously gruesome special effects without any sense of danger to the main characters at all. It's a massively wide label for a thousand different variations on "scary," and it's as diverse as there are ways to scare someone.

I can't wait to see the new Candyman because I don't think that franchise ever really understood that its core terror was the incompetent and out of her depth white woman getting Black people killed because she just had to advance her career by explaining how wrong their fears were.

Yes, they covered Tony Todd with live bees and yeeted him out of a window, but the special effects weren't the reason it sticks. The script's accidental exposure of economic and racial bigotry were what gave it power.

MikeQ

Apparently Jordan Peele wrote the 2021 version, so I'd bet it will address those issues in some depth

BESW

Aye, hence my excitement.

The previous two sequels were lackluster-to-cringe, thematically

The original Candyman film is... fascinating? It's a solid film from a craft perspective, and quite a mess from a thematic perspective--which is more understandable but also worse the more you learn about its production.

But yeah, horror analysis is wild. There's a LOT of scholarship that's been done on it and most of it is just trying to come up with categories to describe existing horror material and then explain why those categories make it horror.

For my money, there's a lot of craft technique to making horror work but its content boils down to "Here is a thing that scares me, let me share what that's like."

If you're not making horror about something that scares you, it's limp and tepid because you aren't tapping into the scary. Then it's a matter of the skill to actually convey "what it's like."

A major reason why I like horror even though I'm pretty squishy, is that intimacy of the creator sharing their fears with me.

Bardic Wizard

04:12

@BESW something something fear of chupacabras...

MikeQ

I wonder if there's a good TTRPG system for horror comedy, where the player characters' actions indirectly control the tone, such as oppressively dark versus lighthearted

TheDragonOfFlame

04:23

Does anyone know any good steam punk systems that could be used for mystery (or mystery systems that could be used for steampunk)

Glazius

04:59

Is Dishonored steampunk?

(If Dishonored is steampunk, there's a bluecoat investigation squad module, "Flame Without Shadow", for Blades in the Dark: bladesinthedark.com/blades-supplements )

TheDragonOfFlame

the type of steampunk im thinking of is the stereotypical flying cities, big steam powerd machines, etc. idk if thats clear

BESW

05:18

@TheDragonOfFlame Gumshoe's a good bet for long-form investigation campaigns.

"Steampunk" tends to be an aesthetic rather than having any influence on theme or pacing, and generally those are what systems influence.

@MikeQ InSpectres comes to mind as a comedy that'd easily tip into horror if you wanted it to.

V2Blast

05:35

So many systems I need to check out :)

MikeQ

08:13

Could be normal. Comments on questions are usually used to ask for clarification, or to link to similar posts. Once they're not needed anymore, they tend to get cleaned up.

Comments aren't typically meant for extended discussion, so a discussion thread will either get deleted or a moderator will create a dedicated chat room for it.

If it was moved to a side room, there should be a comment with a link that mentions continuing the discussion in chat. Otherwise the most likely explanation is that the comments got deleted for whatever reason.

Yes but I can't speak for everyone here. Those words are different. And meta decisions aren't decided by majority per se, it's more like... the upvotes and downvotes to meta answers are (in theory) a reflection of the opinions of site users who are active enough to care about the question. Also, "consensus" doesn't always mean that the decision is unanimous, just a general agreement.

As for word definitions, "consensus" doesn't always mean that the decision is unanimous, just a general agreement. But that's not an American thing. Plenty of active site users aren't American.

V2Blast

08:37

@user-024673 I've edited my comment below the initial set of deleted back-and-forth comments on your answer to explain why those were deleted. (I had initially considered explicitly explaining the removal, but I had decided against it as I hoped it'd be clear why such comments would be deleted.) The last few comments were deleted by another mod for the same reason.

Even if we're more lenient on meta than on the main site, excessively hostile arguments are almost always inappropriate. If you feel another comment is engaging in such behavior (or trying to provoke you to do the same), just flag it and move on.

@user-024673 Also, I think the definition of "consensus" being invoked here is "general agreement" or "generally accepted opinion"

@user-024673 ...Okay?

Dictionary.com actually specifically gives "majority of opinion" as its primary definition.

MikeQ

I don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to agree to a policy decision. There are so many users. No way they'd all agree to one thing. There's not a specific number of votes needed for a meta answer to be considered "the agreed-upon" answer.

V2Blast

@user-024673 My response of "Okay...?" is because I don't interpret "generally agree" as either "anything above 50%" or "100%"

but rather, some non-specific value in the middle

@user-024673 Sure. Also keep in mind that the stuff on which there has been "general consensus" can have votes change over time

That said, many of the things that have become policy as a result of "general consensus" happened before I was a mod, so I can't really speak to how past mod teams interpreted "consensus" or what part of that range they felt was sufficient

Yeah

Language is weird. :P

BESW

09:16

@V2Blast Given that the entire sum of people participating in meta is a fraction of mainsite superusers, which in turn are a fraction of active mainsite users, the very notion of "majority" is doing a LOT of work.

But it's the system we've been given, we can't change the tools from within the structure.

V2Blast

09:44

@BESW Also true

Hot RPG Questions

2

Q: Glyph of Warding detecting race?

Can a glyph of warding be set to activate if a creature of a specific humanoid race touches it? For example, could a glyph of warding be set to activate if a changeling touches it, as a way to detect a disguised changeling?

BESW

@HotRPGQuestions In 3.5 I think the general rule was that a spell trigger couldn't rely on any quality that a failed skill check would be unable to detect (unless the spell specifically overcame such a requirement).

Carcer

10:02

@BESW 3.5e's glyph of warding has a specific list of qualities that you can refer to in a trigger

BESW

Aye, glyph got a lot of exceptions and sometimes they got really nitpicky.

Broadly speaking glyph followed another 3.5 principle: magic wins.

Carcer

but yeah, contingency for instance just has the guidance that: "The conditions needed to bring the spell into effect must be clear, although they can be general."

(and a DM get-out clause which says that if the conditions are particularly complex the spell might just fail)

BESW

> Glyphs respond to invisible creatures normally .... Mislead, polymorph, and nondetection (and similar magical effects) can fool a glyph, though nonmagical disguises and the like can’t.

3.5 generally felt like any magic trumped all non-magic, with a few memorable exceptions that tended to be out of reach of all but the most aggressive specialists. (I had a level 30 character who could use Bluff, and nothing but Bluff, to fool alignment and mind-reading spells.)

Carcer

quadratic wizards etc.

BESW

(All attempts to read their thoughts just got the Knight2King theory, because it was that kind of table.)

Yeah. Another thing I really appreciated about 4e was that it just completely ignored all notions that some power sources were inherently superior to others.

(Which Fate is even more aggressive about!)

I much prefer epic fantasy where "I have muscles, a sword, and a particularly good motivation" or "I tell stories REALLY well" gives you just as much agency as "I stole and ate a magic rock" or "I read books so hard I broke reality."

(Does 5e have the "I ate a magic rock" character option? That was hilarious.)

AncientSwordRage

10:17

@BESW I love this thought

BESW

It even threw out "psionics are SO WEIRD that they don't interact with magic," which always just felt. aggressively unnecessary.

AncientSwordRage

Latest MTG set has an ogre who breaks time just by punching really hard, she's a wizard, but it's just flavoured as literally breaking time with punches

@BESW oh yeah I didn't like that, but it sort of made flavour sense to an extent?

BESW

@AncientSwordRage ...so Superboy is a wizard?

@AncientSwordRage 4e made psionics weird by dramatically revising the way its mechanics drove player choices in combat, not by forcing gameplay to grind to a halt because you had to pull out the subsystems and make multiple rolls to see if anything happened at all.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW maybe? I didn't know that was a super boy thing

BESW

Most classes in 4e, you had powers you could use as often as you liked; slightly stronger powers you could use once per fight; and very strong powers you could use once per day. Psionic powers were all the "as often as you like" kind, but you got points you could spend (which restore daily) on any power at any time to pump it up to "per encounter" or "daily" strength depending on how many points you used.

AncientSwordRage

10:23

@BESW 5e could do that

BESW

AncientSwordRage

they recently made a subclass for monks that rather than using up ki points, you get a number tied to your level for some stuff, then once you go beyond you can spend ki points

that would have been great mechanic for several other subclasses that are already published

MikeQ

@BESW This is from the same multiverse as the Flash, so it's not as ridiculous as it should be

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Amusingly in 4e monks used psionic powers but were the only psionic class to NOT use power points.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW wut

BESW

10:28

Instead every power was divided into pairs of powers, an attack and a move, and you couldn't use powers from different pairs in the same turn (unless you spend an action point).

[rummages]

It was a kinda cool tactic thing.

AncientSwordRage

it kind feels like it's hinting at various martial arts moves following one from the other, whilst still being fairly open

BESW

Yeah, that was pretty much what they were doing.

You could pair one part of a "discipline" with non-discipline powers, but they usually had powerful synergy if you could set up the situation right.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW did you manage to rummage?

trogdor

rummage?

oh

Monks

BESW

trogdor

10:34

they were super weird in the context of what 4e was yeah

AncientSwordRage

@MikeQ I feel like flour is a better analogy, because it's possible but you need to add a lot more and then bake it for it to be edible

BESW

Monks also had flurry of blows, which was a subclass specialization you chose at character creation and granted a once-per-round free action that you could trigger after hitting with an attack. For example:

AncientSwordRage

@BESW nice

BESW

AncientSwordRage

these are really cool

BESW

10:35

Flurry of Blows was not an attack, so it dealt its damage automagically but didn't benefit from features which added bonuses to attacks.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW hmmm seems like it made you make interesting choices

BESW

Notice that they also neatly eliminated the "unarmed strike" complexity by just baking damage sizes into the attack powers, as if a monk's attack were a spell.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW 4E, everything's a spell? Always has been

BESW

Well, specifically like a 4e non-weapon effect.

In 4e, classes which wield weapons have powers like this:

AncientSwordRage

I love how 4E uses [w]

BESW

10:38

Exactly!

trogdor

technically not everything is a spell

XD

but everything is a power and in some ways you can say it's the same thing I guess

AncientSwordRage

I'm sorry @trogdor, but I think you are also a spell, you just didn't realise

BESW

Monks don't have a weapon, they have an implement like spellcasters do: it serves the function of weapon as "magic thing that grants magic bonuses to my attacks," but doesn't provide dice to define the damage of the attack.

trogdor

@AncientSwordRage oh god oh no I'm a spell now whoops

2

XD

BESW

Implement-using powers have their own dice size baked into the attack text, rather than using [W].

(Though, some of the most potentially confusing/exploitable parts of 4e circle around monk implements, because they have some strangely worded special cases to try and give monks access to effects that are normally only applicable to weapons.)

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, monks get lots of really interesting tactical choices, even compared to most other 4e classes, which is saying something because "interesting tactical choices" is the system's middle name.

AncientSwordRage

10:42

@BESW yup

BESW

Fourth "Interesting Tactical Choices" Edition.

That kind of play structure, interesting tactical choices forced by well-considered system complexity, is what Troggy and I miss about the game.

Well, that and just seeing how many squares of push you can add to a fighter's attacks.

trogdor

XD

BESW

(The answer, by the way, is "more than BESW's map grid is wide, but not as many as the map is long.")

trogdor

I do know I could have given that fighter even more squares of push with a flail

well technically it would have been slide

but it would have been more of it and for the slide bits he would have had more choice about just where to put them

but by then using a hammer was a part of his character

BESW

Slide > Push

trogdor

10:46

yes

the slide would have mostly been the flail it wouldn't have transmuted all push into slide

but it would have been more points and those extra points would have been slide

I have noooo idea if you would have ruled he could use the slide at whatever point in the attack he wanted or not XD

BESW

4e later did something even more experimental by dramatically reducing complexity in a series of new classes. Every class used the baseline "basic attack" (1d20+attack mods, [W] + damage mods, no extra features), and their class-specific powers and abilities were things like "make a basic attack and move" or "make three basic attacks against different targets" and so forth: all of them just building on the shared unit, rather than each inventing their own baselines.

A lot of those classes were great! Some of them were arguably the worst in the whole edition (though Seeker still exists, so Vampire only qualifies as Worst Class by virtue of being hands-down better in every way as a multiclass feat than as a full class).

trogdor

yeah

I don't know, someone was on something when they designed the Vampire class

BESW

Seeker would've been at least a reasonable class if they'd just given it access to hard control.

Vampire would've needed a complete overhaul to start being playable, but Seeker just needed somebody to go in with Sharpie and write ~~slow~~ daze and ~~prone~~ stun on the power cards.

trogdor

11:02

XD

BESW

Which is a shame because Seeker's flavor was SO GOOD. I still love a lot of the individual pieces of 4e's worldbuilding, divorced from their D&D context.

Hot RPG Questions

7

Q: Can a druid use Wild Shape in mid-air to survive being dropped?

Our group is all relatively new to D&D. Let's say that an aarakocra picks up a dragonborn druid, and carries her up to an altitude of 125 feet. It would take her ~2.5 seconds to hit the ground when she's dropped. Would she have enough time to use Wild Shape during the fall to turn into something ...

dnd-5e druid wild-shape falling

BESW

@HotRPGQuestions "Don't think of an elephant, don't think of an elephant..."

Seeker, for those curious:

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I'm certain the group I briefly played with managed to weaponise push

like some ability did damage based on squares slide/pulled/pushed

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Troggy made a fighter whose every attack (hit or miss, including opportunity attacks) pushed something like at least three squares, up to eight or more, dropped the target prone, and reduced the target's speed to 2.

AncientSwordRage

11:14

@BESW It's Vivien Reid

BESW

(And, being fighter, also marked them.)

AncientSwordRage

@BESW amazing

BESW

It was a "get away from my friends and cry in the corner" build.

Since, yanno. A fighter gets to take a swing at everyone who tries to attack the fighter's friends.

trogdor

it did push further if the attack hit

AncientSwordRage

BESW

11:17

We also had a character who used all his actions to give other characters extra actions. If you knocked him prone during a fight he wouldn't waste the move action to get up because he could use it to reposition someone else.

"You, make a charge and then attack three times."
"But it's not my turn!"
"I GAVE YOU AN ORDER, SOLDIER."

If he had an opportunity attack against an enemy, he'd use it to have the ranger shoot the enemy.

AncientSwordRage

Battlemaster (?) had big Kamina vibes: "Don't believe in yourself, believe in me who believes in you"

trogdor

lol

BESW

This guy was a hybrid warlord/shaman, because no single class in 4e had enough "tell other people what to do" powers to fill every power slot.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW warlord is what I was looking for

trogdor

ok yeah I was going to say

you probably meant warlord

BESW

11:22

Yeah, warlord was a great example of 4e's "Eh, you don't need magic to be impossibly awesome" attitude.

AncientSwordRage

Shall we just rename this chat to "4e Nostalgia chat"

trogdor

no XD

BESW

"You're a healing class."
"But I'm using martial power. I have the magical power of shouting orders at people and stabbing things."
"Shout RUB DIRT ON IT at the wounded, then."

Heh. I would love to play a campaign that had this kind of enthusiasm for gonzo empowerment, but without the system complexity or setting toxicity.

I think War of Ashes might fit the bill?

AncientSwordRage

frantic googling

BESW

Think "Muppets do Game of Thrones."

trogdor

11:29

it's also Fate of Agaptus

XD

I really want to try that

BESW

War of Ashes: Fate of Agaptus is a high-complexity Fate system/setting about epic fantasy adventure in a world of exaggeratedly narrow-minded factions.

4

AncientSwordRage

sounds great

BESW

You've still got my book, right Troggy?

trogdor

yes

wait

do you mean a physical copy or just the digital?

BESW

Physical, and no, here it is.

I think it's Sundown you've got my hardcopy of?

trogdor

11:38

ah ok yeah I don't XD

yes

I do have that

yeah I have the Sundown book for sure

it's sitting on my nightstand

I should read it more but I keep forgetting or remembering but not having any energy to crunch the stuff in the book

BESW

War of Ashes is unusual because it's an epic fantasy that tries to detox itself of the racist/ableist/sanist/exoticist elements of its influences. I don't know how well it does in some areas but it's making a visible effort and I appreciate that?

trogdor

I mean

the people in it still have preconceptions about each other?

BESW

Yeah, and I'm cool with that.

trogdor

fair enough

BESW

There's a big difference between "the world contains bigotry" and "real-world prejudices are just fact in this fantasy."

trogdor

11:44

ah

yeah

fair enough

RevenantBacon

13:28

@BESW Sanist?

I am unfamiliar with that term

trogdor

it's prejudice against mental illness

or more aptly I guess people with mental illness

or you know maybe diagnosed conditions or your preferred term

Thomas Markov

@RevenantBacon Why did you vote to reopen that post?

Its an exact duplicate and OP said it answered their question.

Medix2

13:52

I added two more dupe targets to it anyway. The answers at them all don't agree, but oh well

Thomas Markov

Answers dont have to agree

The user can go find the most helpful answer on one of the targets.

Medix2

Agreed, just thought it was kinda funny where the votes happen to be

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