TRPG General Chat

AncientSwordRage

12:55 AM

@ThomasMarkov ooof

Hot RPG Questions

4:12 AM

4

Q: Would a vampire behind a Wall of Force be damaged by magically produced Sunlight?

I'm researching ahead of the (potentially) final battle in Curse of Strahd (as the DM) One of the tactics the party is discussing is trapping Strahd in a wall of force, and then exposing him to the sunlight shed from the sunsword. Per the Sunblade description The sword’s luminous blade emits bri...

BESW

4:43 AM

@AncientSwordRage I feel like you have to work harder to justify claims of intentionally unbalanced design, in a system that assigns a challenge rating to each monster which is supposed to tell you "how great a threat the monster is."

I've got no beef with somebody saying that for their own group, the effect of the system is desirable. But claims of intentionality which actively oppose the text, need to be defended rigorously.

(And to be clear, I'm absolutely okay with the idea that D&D fibs about itself! I just think that it needs to be shown.)

Glazius

5:03 AM

- this edition of D&D was focus-tested to be a D&D that felt like D&D to people

- however, what people experience as D&D is more memes and tall tales than the game itself

- "the GM had this hard encounter but we smoked it"/"the GM said this was a warmup but the whole party wiped" are common stories about D&D

- therefore, this edition of D&D is designed so that its monster challenge rating when applied as instructed creates those stories

BESW

Sep 5 at 11:11, by BESW

The other day I saw somebody saying that D&D does a poor job of emulating genres and settings because it's designed to emulate itself, and I think that's a useful way to approach any attempt to understand its position in the hobby as well.

Bardic Wizard

5:59 AM

This was in the latest Knitty magazine: Xorn, a pattern for a knitted cowl based on the d&d monster Xorn. I personally think it looks really cool and it’s actually the designer’s first published design (which is awesome cause it’s a great idea)

4

Hot RPG Questions

6:15 AM

8

Q: Can a prisoner invite a vampire into his cell?

In my adventurer a vampire wants to free a prisoner from a prison. And maybe kill the guard of the city watch, whose office is right above the prison in the same building. Can the prisoner invite the vampire into the prison, if there is a window in his cell? Forbiddance: The vampire can't enter ...

dnd-5e vampire

AncientSwordRage

9:06 AM

@BESW yeah that's true, I appreciate the sentiment however poorly worded it might be

BESW

I think it'd be more effective if it didn't invoke intent at all, really. Invoking legitimacy via design intent is... sketchy, especially for D&D which has a history of poor intent when intent is known.

Better, perhaps, to just stick with what is, and what works for the writer and their friends, than to make some claim that they've uncovered a Truth About D&D.

AncientSwordRage

I think D&D feels built on flimsy truisms though, I don't blame them for thinking they uncovered a false one

AncientSwordRage

10:23 AM

@HotRPGQuestions needs more details, close vote?

Are you the player or the dungeon master? Is either of the prisoner or vampire a PC? As it's currently phrased this is more of a ELL question, but knowing those details will allow us to answer for your game specifically. — AncientSwordRage 1 min ago

It sounds like they are the DM, but I've used "my adventure" to mean "the adventure I'm a player in", and I've definitely seen it used by non-native speaks to mean the same thing as well.

Hot RPG Questions

2:05 PM

1

Q: How do Spirit Shroud and Green-flame Blade interact?

Spirit Shroud Says: any attack you make deals 1d8 extra damage when you hit a creature within 10 feet of you. Green-flame blade Says: On a hit, the target suffers the weapon attack’s normal effects, and you can cause green fire to leap from the target to a different creature of your choice tha...

dnd-5e spells combat

Akixkisu

2:51 PM

@AncientSwordRage The whole framing is odd, and some of it plain incorrect, are the encounter designs they bring up interesting?

Looking more into the post; that is some aggressive marketing for a 10$ encounter list.

AncientSwordRage

@Akixkisu I haven't looked into it, and I don't think I'd be the best judge? I may have just been sucked in by the Reddit post 😅

@Akixkisu oooh I didn't even see the price tag

Akixkisu

Seems like it paid off for them though.

AncientSwordRage

@Akixkisu must have done

Akixkisu

For a specific fan product ~230 sales at 10$ is well above what you can expect.

MikeQ

3:18 PM

Ah yes the old "my players outsmarted me, therefore the system is at fault"

Akixkisu

Seems more like: I really want to play 3.5e but somehow everyone wants to play 5e, guess I will try to make 5e into 3.5e.

Their better bagman just t1 6d6+4 kills one of your level 3 party members and if that doesn't work blinks to the etheral plane.

Which they call 4/5 spicy.

Dragging the party member with them.

TheDragonOfFlame

3:34 PM

Any idea which stack exchange would be best for asking whether or not a modified pistol could shoot wooden bullets?

Or do any of you know?

Akixkisu

But hey, they get a DC against the automatically imposed freightening condition at the end of their turn.

TheDragonOfFlame

I’m thinking like vampire hunters shooting wooden stakes.

Akixkisu

@TheDragonOfFlame world building

TheDragonOfFlame

@Akixkisu who doesn’t love getting TPK’d by a homebrew monster?

One time a couple of my players went down in a fight against a homebrew monster and I got accused of cheating

because I made the monster too hard pr something

Shalvenay

@TheDragonOfFlame yeah, that's best dealt with on WB.SE

vicky_molokh- unsilence Monica

3:51 PM

Wooden bullet

Wooden bullets are wooden projectiles designed to be fired from a gun. They are intended to be used as less lethal weapons for crowd control by enforcing pain compliance at a distance. They have been known to raise large welts or bruises on their targets. == History of use == During the Second World War, some German troops were equipped with wooden bullets, while British troops were trained with wooden bullets to avoid the cost of metal bullets. Wooden bullets were also used by British troops in Hong Kong. During a 2014 protest in Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown, the police fired...

In GURPS Monster Hunters, these do half damage and have halved ranges (similar to plastic/rubber), but can trigger heart wood vulnerabilities or special effects on vampires (if they penetrate deep enough).

SmokeDetector

4:30 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (251): Analyzing a homebrew casting mechanism by lily dawson on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose @ThomasMarkov)

AncientSwordRage

5:27 PM

@Akixkisu I get their point though, and I think of you want players to be more tactical and have to avoid getting hit by multiple enemies, and the players like that play... Then why not?

7 hours ago, by AncientSwordRage

It sounds like they are the DM, but I've used "my adventure" to mean "the adventure I'm a player in", and I've definitely seen it used by non-native speaks to mean the same thing as well.

Anybody have a view on that Q?

Akixkisu

5:57 PM

@AncientSwordRage I think the view is distorted to a degree but not invalid. They make good points about some things like the 2 vampire encounter - it is easier than 1 vampire and a bunch of spawns. But they do so along with some pretty weird claims about the system, most of which the system does well or addresses with optional rules or material (death saves for NPC is an optional rule etc.). The bagman is an encounter design space, and they used that design space but then complained about it.

@AncientSwordRage remove from hnq, would be what I would do.

It would be a much better question with more details in it.

But we can service it.

@AncientSwordRage To expand on that - I think they also make interesting things that some groups are going to like a lot, but I feel like they would have enjoyed it much more if they kept playing 3.5e instead of 5e from a stance of what these systems do well.

If that better bagman killed my level 3 character we better have talked a lot about campaign expectations that adjust them away from the baseline of that 5e is. If we did that, and I was up for a horror-game, then I'd think that was a good use of the design space that the bagman offers - because that kind of encounter sounds terrifying.

AncientSwordRage

6:27 PM

@Akixkisu from what I remember there was a lot in 3.5e that didn't work for some people, besides just encounters. I can see why they might prefer a heavily altered 5e vs. 3.5e

@Akixkisu I flagged for closure, but I think the stack is slow today

Akixkisu

@AncientSwordRage sure, they can alter that and that is valid, but it is not a 5e failing and that is why it is weird framing (among other points).

AncientSwordRage

@Akixkisu definitely a framing but I think if 5e doesn't work as advertised I can see why they have that complaint

Akixkisu

@AncientSwordRage It does work, they are using that exact design space.

AncientSwordRage

6:49 PM

@Akixkisu I guess it works for you, but not them? And by the sounds of that Reddit thread they aren't alone in wanting to tweak things

Akixkisu

7:01 PM

@AncientSwordRage They are already tweaking within system parameters.

Like I said, the way they critic is weird and not all too accurate, but what they do and want is valid.

For instance, one thing that 5e doesn't do well is offer those intricate tables for everything that 3.5e has. That extends to encounter tables, and 5e puts a lot of that onus to do these encounter well on the gm.

And by offering those 70 encounters with usage guidance, they are doing something that a lot of people want.

AncientSwordRage

8:06 PM

@Akixkisu I think that is a sort of 'failure by design' though? It makes out that you can run XYZ encounters to challenge players but then doesn't back up that claim with actual support for the DMs whether that's intricate tables or something else.

Similar to how it makes a bold claim about the three pillars of gaming, but has vastly different levels of detail in each system and how to run those parts of the game, so you can either say the game fails to support Social and Exploration parts of the game (as well as it supports combat), or you can accept that the claim is false.

Neither of those is a failure of players/DMs

Akixkisu

9:13 PM

@AncientSwordRage There are chapters and chapters of text about encounter design featuring great information, and then we have even more guidance in adventures. The op presents a misleading example about what a deadly encounter is and plays that up. A deadly encounter is not a lethal encounter but one with a significant risk of defeat. Defeat is not even death in many cases - it is especially not an encounter designed to tpk.

@AncientSwordRage 5e lacks support in the exploration "pillar", but I think it handles systems about social encounters competently, but we have fewer resources in adventures that empower the dm with good examples.

So we can say if those are the pillars, then it doesn't do a good job at frequently equipping dms with good examples of social encounters even when the system is competent, and that exploration is bare bones, and even worse if you don't have access to Ghosts of Saltmarsh in particular.

The op even uses the bagman from the Ravenloft design space, clearly enchanted by what is offered, but what that creature didn't have was a statblock.

So the op gave it a statblock.

Do we have badly designed abilities? Plenty, but we also have great designs.

Does every creature need more abilities that go beyond there statblock? No, but we can homebrew more if we want.

The DMG spends so much time on how to make encounters interesting, and I think it does a competent job.

If you read all of the and apply nothing to your encounter table, then you end up in boring situations. I think questions like this on clearly showcases how to make something interesting by the book rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/147367/…

And applying that comes with experience.

You don't get that by reading a phenomenal system.

You get that by playing at the table and utilising options, and different systems equip you with different tools to do that.

Some better than others and some more suitable to a particular situation than others.

Akixkisu

9:43 PM

5e had the advantage that it doesn't run into 3.5e's design space of solutions to a problem that are more complicated than the problem itself.

And a lot of people really like those messy subsystem that do a lot of neat stuff while cluttering and resulting in nightmarish table rolling and rules checking cross-checking. I do too, they can be super fun. 5e wants fewer of them, and more things that you can quickly do at the table.

(Though I would play 2e which is good at many of the things that I want in those kinds of games, and I can design those rules myself - that is half of the fun. I rather deal with thaco, than with 3.5e clutter-nightmares)

5e is a streamlined design, a lot of people want to add complicated subsystems to that. You can do that, but it is not a failure of the system.

Akixkisu

11:28 PM

Or maybe they want to play 4e instead with its granular and precise encounter design and leave out the clutter of 3.5 and the whimsicalness of 2e.

Transcript for