@Catofdoom2 the 96th attack with a longswort would statistically kill the phoenix without any healing, counting every 20th attack as a crit... With healing the 80th attack at the end of round 20 will have gotten the phoenix down to 189 HP, so... over the thumb even counting for crits... the 212th attack in round 53 will kill the regenerating phenix.
@Catofdoom2 but please not. That is anything but balance testing - just a calculation how long the grind would be. If you give me average damages for what you expect your adventurers to do in damage, I could tell you the expected length.
@Someone_Evil similar but not quite. I'm pretty sure it was Naut's answer but I could be wrong. The Q was about some item from ADD or 3.5 that they tried to transalte into 5E and it granted an AC bonus, and they were asking why that was too strong. The A had a bunch of breakdowns about how and why that was busted
@Catofdoom2 for example, even gong from Longswords with d8 to a weapon with d10 damage cuts our 4 people slog down to 31 rounds, Atack #124 will kill it. That's 58.5% of the total combat length compared to longswords.
@MikeQ implementing that would make it actually hard to simulate. I cut like a half dozen corners in how I estimate the survivability there. How many rounds would you consider a good combat length? 15-20 should be an epic length combat in my opinion.
okay, they'd most likely have one human fighter using a great sword, one elf wizard using burning hands and magic missiles, as well as an elf ranger using a rapier, and then a goliath baribran (we'll pretend it has the ability that makes both 19 and 20 crits) also using a greataxe @Trish
@Trish From games I've participated in, I find that players (not the characters, but human players) usually tire out after 5-8 rounds of combat in D&D-like games. Personally I aim for 3-6 rounds for most encounters.
Either the regeneration is too good or the HP pool to good, unless the players have some bonus on thei r damage... a few +1 or such would tremendously change the picture...
let me give the barbarian a +5 on damage, the fighter +4, the ranger +3, and we are down to 11 rounds.
@Trish For modeling purposes, I assume no advantage or disadvantage or crits, just try to calculate based on average chance to hit, average damage per hit.
@MikeQ I just assume every attack to hit and every 20th is a crit for simplicity, and use the average damage for any attack (including the double on crit)
@Someone_Evil good point! multiple attacs would increase our expected damage by some factors.
@Catofdoom2 with the damage values you gave me, we're down to 18 rounds and less already, but that is a combat of atrition that still would kill any group. Real balancing only can begin once we know for sure that the goroup even has some fighting chance. But so far, the regeneraton appears to make it a slog.
@Catofdoom2 better, but how much necrotic damage can your players deliver? Is one of the weapons wielded able to deal necrotic damage? or does the caster have it?
@BESW I know nothing about how the system works, outside of that it seems to be used to facilitate mysteries. I was wondering if the system, and specifically Trail, was written in such a way that using Chaosium modules from CoC would be possible
It seems like it's mostly narrative, and a story can obviously translate pretty easily. I just didn't know how mechanical it is.
I'm considering picking it up, but I'm wanted to get some more information first
@Catofdoom2 No regen, a 2d6, 1d12, 1d8 and 3d6 damage dealer would manage a kill in round 11 if they always hit. Better but still a little high... what bonus on damage might be expected? could the fighter, Ranger and barbarian possibly manage 2 attacks a round?
@G.Moylan Hmm. It should work pretty well. The big challenge in adapting an adventure is going to be in deciding what clues are necessary and what information is extra.
Trail's big divergence lies in this: if you have the appropriate investigation skill and you're looking in the right place, you will automatically find the minimum information needed to continue the story. The game never grinds to a halt because a failed roll means a crucial clue got missed.
Rolling dice and spending points is for getting extra info that makes it easier to solve the mystery, and for non-investigation actions.
@BESW Interesting. It seems strong knowledge of the adventure would be required (and is assumed if we're getting ready to run it). So as long as one remained mindful of how clues lead to each other then it seem slik eit should work out
I haven't actually run a Trail game; my experience with Gumshoe is in Bubblegumshoe (teenage sleuthing with a focus on neighborhood relationships) and Cthulhu Confidential (a Trail adaptation for one-on-one gaming).
"From Call To Trail" (part 1) (part 2), article by Robin D. Laws.
Wow, lots to read. And they converted Masks!? good grief. I may just have to pick this up. I was looking at Call, but there's so much fiddly math that it felt like madness was setting in before I'd even played.
If the kind of game you want has a strong investigative focus on pre-made mysteries, Gumshoe is hard to beat--though there are a lot of variations on it and honestly the original Trail is starting a look a little clunky in my opinion, but that's only by comparison. I'm spoilt by newer iterations.
The core dice-rolling in Gumshoe is: roll 1d6 vs a target set by the GM. Each skill's rating gives it a pool of that many points which you can spend to increase your die roll if it's too low, and the pool refreshes periodically (between adventures for investigation skills, every day for other skills).
You can also spend skill points to just have things happen, Fate-style, in some circumstances, or to add bonus effects to a successful roll.
This means the system is super simple (1d6 vs target, spend to improve) but also strategic (you have a limited supply of "make me awesome" points, spend them wisely).
Trail does still have a lot of the same sanist problems that plague most unexamined adaptations of Lovecraft's legacy, so keep an eye out for that.
Yeah there's a fine line between "You're 'crazy'" and "you've seen stuff I can't comprehend and when you talk about it I can't possibly fathom what you're telling me"
Cthulhu Dark's revision replaced "Sanity" with "Insight," which helped a bit. I tend to go further and in games where such things need a mechanic, it's "Fear" or "Cool."
But games like Trail insist on using things like "homicidal mania" or "multiple personality disorder" as fallout for losing too much "sanity" and I don't think I can rehabilitate that so I just cut it out entirely.
My Sixth Edition of CoC has many pages on real-life mental health diagnoses and complains that modern terminology "lacks the color and flavor of the language of earlier eras."
Yikes. 7th doesn't do that, to my knowledge. There are many changes from 6 to 7, so it seems, and handling of the subject matter seems to be one of them, though it isn't perfect
Cthulhu Dark's mechanic works so much better just because it's so much more abstracted. It works for Scooby and Shaggy noping out of a scary scene, just as much as someone trying to hack off a friend's arm because they think the friend's hand has been contaminated with an otherworldly infection.
But then, CD is designed for one-shot play.
Cthulhu Confidential has some of the same problems as Trail in this regard but it's a lot easier to yeet them: it imposes fallout conditions that are specific to the narrative, from "I owe the mob" or "I've been shot" to "I see colors that don't exist." Some fallout goes away on its own over time (only lasts to the end of the adventure), some persists until you remove it, and some will make your character unplayable if you don't resolve it by the end of the adventure.
Again, by abstracting the mechanics they let you choose your narrative impact.
Unlike D&D, systems like Gumshoe often iterate on themselves through adventures that introduce and use new mechanics, rather than by releasing independent books of new rules.
They're tuned for horror-style play, with the success/failure rates and such. I could modify it through trial and error but if I had that kind of time/energy I'd be making a system for one of my own games.
For BGS/YK, I'd like to have the system design work done for me.
(There's a "how to do Bubblegumshoe with this" page in the back of Cthulhu Confidential, for example, but it's very superficial and is basically just a skill table. It doesn't even tell me how to port relationships, which are the main adaptation of the Bubblegumshoe engine.)
So, I spent a day's worth of brainpower writing in a dozen words what I could have said with fifty words in a few minutes but didn't have the space and it would have wrecked the pacing.
...yet another reason why per-word rates for writing are trash.
I attended several periods in school, took an hours-long AP test, and now I have to somehow get up and do a boatload of homework and I don't want to :(
@AncientSwordRage [sigh] The QRTs are attracting people who insist that actually since the GM is the final authority at the table (!) there is no onus on the game developers to provide them with any tools or support.
"This table saw doesn't need a blade guard or a push stick, just a label telling the carpenter that it's sharp."
My character has the lowest health in our party (I mean he is even lower than the Artificer of the party I am a Fighter) so I was wondering if there was any magic items that increase max health. I am more so looking for one that increases this health permenantly.
My character has the lowest health in our party (I mean he is even lower than the Artificer of the party I am a Fighter) so I was wondering if there was any magic items that increase max health. I am more so looking for one that increases this health permenantly.
