TRPG General Chat

goodguy5

01:20

Wait a second. Does thirsting blade let you attack twice with haste?

Hot RPG Questions

2

Q: Does Thirsting Blade Stack With Twinned Blades?

Does Twinned Blades from the Compendium of Forgotten Secrets: Awakening stack with Thirsting Blade? Twinned Blades says both weapons are pact weapons, and Thirsting Blade affects my pact weapon. So can I make 4 attacks in a turn with these two invocations using plus 1 from Improved Pact Weapon a...

goodguy5

Nah, nevermind. It's the same verbiage as extra attack. Seemed different for a second

bobble

01:42

anyone else missing their rep notifications?

(achievements-dialog missing upvote notification for me)

BESW

02:26

Crowdfunding: The Station: A ZiMo TTRPG by Pidj Sorensen. Collaborate to answer prompts about a station, a long-awaited train and the people around them. A GMless worldbuilding prompt game.

2

BESW

02:46

Pidj is great at making things that are both comfortable and bittersweet, and is a talented art director. Highly recommend.

AncientSwordRage

03:02

3

Q: Missing reputation notification

I'm missing a reputation notification again; this is on Meta as well as Lit (picture above). What's happening?

bug reputation notifications achievements-dialog

In case anybody else noticed

TheDragonOfFlame

7

Q: Is Gloom Stalker overpowered?

Sharpshooter is considerered to be among the most overpowered feats in D&D 5e. Its gross damage boost is even more disgusting when one has a consistent source for Advantage. Gloom Stalker has the following feature at level 3: UMBRAL SIGHT (...) While in darkness, you are invisible to any creatur...

dnd-5e optimization balance ranger vision-and-light

Honestly my solution to gloom stalker is just turning the lights on

not all the time, don’t want to ruin the build, but occasionally an enemy will cast daylight perhaps

and most rooms in dungeons are lit in my games, I mean people don’t walk around in the dark even if they have darkvision

so the gloomstalker has to first shoot all the lanterns, which is still feasible and I find balances the subclass

AncientSwordRage

I think this is a good take. It would be like asking "Is Pikachu overpowered because it always 1-hit KOs Gyarados with Thunder?" Well, no, you just picked an opponent that is maximally weak to Pikachu. — Thomas Markov 8 hours ago

😅

TheDragonOfFlame

03:18

True

I think the problem comes from the people who only ever run either night ambushes or dungeon crawls in cave systems

which to be honest used to be me 😅

BESW

04:18

One of the big challenges re: "balance" in D&D is that usefulness is situational but D&D doesn't give players a lot of ways to control their context, so the only situation which can be relied on in most campaigns is "combat." Anything that's not just generically useful in combat has its usefulness fluctuate wildly depending on the GM's choices.

And that's when "balance" isn't just a subjective mess, which it often is; Quinn Murphy might say that D&D is a system without user empathy.

@GroodytheHobgoblin The trick to "balance" questions on RPG.SE is, "balance" means something different to everybody. Part of asking a really good balance question is explaining what "balance" means for your particular group/campaign goals. That is, to answer this question: "What part of the experience of the game at your table are you trying to change, and why, with this rule?"

Just within the narrow category of "combat balance," for example...

Balance can mean using mechanics to manage the spotlight so everybody gets time to feel useful (does out-of-combat usefulness redeem in-combat obscurity?);
or balance might be about keeping fights interesting by making sure they aren't too long or too short (what is "too long" or "too short" for your group? How can you tell?);
or it could be about making sure the players will win the fights while keeping them feeling like they could die at any moment;
or giving them a fighting chance but there's still a reasonable likelihood (20%? 50%?) of character death?

Once you know what kind of equilibrium your table wants, then you can start to evaluate if a particular feature or choice disrupts that equilibrium (is "overpowered" or "underpowered")

goodguy5

04:42

Can a fighter/Eldritch Knight cast spells between attacks?

No, but I don't have it in me to type up an answer

BESW

07:48

"Extensibility vs. Completeness Design" by bankuei on Deeper in the Game

The Lonely Path Of Justice by Justin Joyce. Fight back against corruptive forces of oppression as transforming motorcyclists!

BESW

12:15

The Potato King by Evlyn. A ttrpg horror adventure

Justice Ramin Arman wrote a twitter thread about how the Gallup Q12 survey can be applied to TRPGs.

John Bannister asks on twitter "what are the zines I should definitely be backing in ZiMo?"

AncientSwordRage

13:11

How does the stack like self-answered "How do I make a character like <person from fiction>?"

AncientSwordRage

13:35

Or more like "how do I model this trait, but in RPG?"

So it would be something like : How to make a Fate character that is unkillable like Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty?

And then the answer would be: Make them take consequences like superman

BESW

12

Q: Character build for Gandalf in D&D3.5?

In my groups next campaign I am hoping to be a PC instead of the DM and I want to play a character who is like Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I began looking at options; he would probably be a bard, but what race would he be? I want him to be proficient with a sword, and he sh...

dnd-3.5e character-creation

AncientSwordRage

Hmm

BESW

> This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance.

AncientSwordRage

Yeah I saw ...

I knew I'd remembered something about them not being ok

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Or you could make them *proof, or any of a number of other ways depending on the specific fiction (I'm not familiar with Rick's immortality).

Aug 21 '19 at 9:27, by BESW

> Inconveniently immortal. When you are killed, you come back to life when another player character has a revealing character moment.

Mar 15 '17 at 4:22, by BESW

> Life Model Decoy. When you are killed, no matter how definitively, you re-appear after the party's next significant milestone with no memory of the adventure in which you died.

Aug 25 '15 at 0:50, by BESW

> Wounds & Death: While in a moving vehicle, you cannot be killed. That is the inherent power of the Car Wizards. It doesn’t matter how that car is moving—tumbling over a cliff, flipping around mid-air, speeding while on fire—all that matters is that it’s moving. So if the rules say you’re killed, then either you’re not in a car anymore (maybe thrown clear) or the car you’re in stopped (perhaps suddenly into a semi).

AncientSwordRage

13:49

@BESW oooooooooohhh

@BESW it boils down to always (and I mean always) having planned ahead

BESW

Okay, but does this mean he never experiences serious setbacks, losses, injuries? Or does it only kick in when mortal peril is involved?

And does he appear to die but then turn out to be fine later, or is the death obviously averted instantly?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW yes, but they mostly effect other people

BESW

One of the secrets underlying the Superman approach to immortality is, Fate doesn't have death mechanics. No mechanic ever says "and then you die," death is entirely in the realm of one option within "decide what the mechanic's outcome looks like narratively."

So I guess the ultimate question for Rick is, is Not Dying a way to break a rule by ignoring when the mechanics say he should experience an extreme outcome and he just doesn't, or is Not Dying simply striking one option off the list of extreme outcomes he might experience?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW both happen in the series

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad phone number in body, bad phone number in title, blacklisted username (290): +27603483377 NEED URGENT BLACK MAGIC INSTANT DEATH SPELL TO KILL ENEMY‭ by Mama Bashirah‭ on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose @ThomasMarkov @linksassin)

BESW

14:00

Okay, then I'd model it as an aspect like More prepared than Batman and most of the time it's a narrative permission to flavor actions, but fate points can be spent for declarations and bonuses as required.

If there's particular fate spends that I think are iconic I'd turn them into stunts. Laserproof, maybe?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I think this is it?

@BESW that sounds perfect

But I'd like to keep the consequences effecting his family part too...

BESW

What I'm doing here is thinking about how there's one narrative truth (overprepared) that sounds like it's got a LOT of different effects (avoid serious consequences, have the right tool for the job, trivialize lethal obstacles, etc). And something that's always true tends to be an aspect, unless it is only ever an active benefit (that's a stunt).

Aspects can be used to key off into stunts and other effects. Hrm.

AncientSwordRage

Another aspect is that he avoids making difficult decisions

BESW

Now, one cool thing about Fate is that you can make up nonsensically imbalanced and unfair mechanics if the group buys into it and wants the effect. Based on my understanding of the show, a Rick and Morty table would probably want something like...

AncientSwordRage

Hover for spoiler

BESW

14:11

> The eye of the storm Because I am a magnet for misery and disaster, all other PCs get a second set of consequence slots which I can use to absorb stress directed at me (the PC's players still get to define the consequences themselves).

This is based on a principle I learned from the 1985 Doctor Who RPG: it's totally okay to have one PC who's an outsized influence on the plot and the fate of the other PCs, if that's the game everybody's signed up for.

AncientSwordRage

This would work, but for the fact he often goes looking for trouble

Someone_Evil

@AncientSwordRage IIRC they can work when they're asking for how to emulate a reasonably well defined set of powers within a system. That both can fall apart is the character's set of powers isn't well enough defined (which I don't think Superman is. The clarification question would be "what aspects of superman is important to you?") or there's too much freeform for answers (slipping into homebrew this for me territory).

As for self-answered, I think you'd run the risk of it being read as "look at how clever I am. Give rep". Which I suppose the majority would actually be ok with if it were sufficiently clever

AncientSwordRage

@Someone_Evil that's a fair point

@BESW one insight I've just had is he can never solve problems he causes...

Yeah I think that's consistent

@Someone_Evil so I thought it was well defined, but after this conversation I'm less certain

Someone_Evil

14:35

I'll preface that I have limited experience with both Fate, Rick and Morty and Superman, but my understanding is that you have virtually no limit on how to implement a specific stunt. If the querent needs help on how to build stunts in general, that's probably a workable, but for the last step they'd be better served by a space where they can frolic in a plethora of responses

AncientSwordRage

@Someone_Evil like chat?

frolics

Someone_Evil

I sometimes use that phrase when pointing out that a question type might be off topic here but better suited to a forum or chat, yes.

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Okay, that's an interesting wrinkle in the Fate competency system.

I'd model that as the player committing to consistent self-compels.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW can the Faye system reward self-conpels/disincentivise the opposite?

BESW

Although that would be weird because it might not always be clear about where one compel left off and another was needed... maybe something more broad. hrm.

Normally self-compels are just the same as others once they're activated, it's just a difference in who thinks it up at the table.

AncientSwordRage

14:46

@Someone_Evil it's a good phrase

@BESW interesting

As an example, he once made a love potion that worked too well. Every attempt to solve the issues it caused worse problems

BESW

> Physicist, foil thyself When you self-compel to be unable to solve a problem you've created, in addition to the usual fate point you also get a boost on the problem's main aspect.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW ahh ok... I think I understand, but that seems to be all downside mechanically?

BESW

Well, it's messy. And that's part of the point here: Fate's quite willing to re-jigger the balance wherever it needs to be for the story, and Rick's story is that his problem aspects are the only thing more powerful than he is. By giving Rick's player extra boosts on the problem aspect, the player retains control while Rick loses it.

The stunt says, stripped of narrative, "when you self-compel in a certain way, you get a boost also." Which is mechanically good. But it adds a narrative-level wrinkle that the player can only use those boosts to make the story more dramatic, not less.

AncientSwordRage

Ahhhh I missed that you get the boost, not the problem itself

BESW

It's one of my favorite tricks, really: give the player more goodies to use against their own character. The player knows where their line is better than anyone else, and so is able to walk right up to it if they're in total control.

AncientSwordRage

14:55

Makes me want to try and make my current D&D character in fate now...

@BESW that does sound like a fun trick

BESW

Fate already has it baked into the system: that's what consequences and conceding are.

When a PC is in combat, every round they stay the player had the choice to have them walk away on their own terms by conceding. And when the PC takes too much stress, the player has the choice to give control over to the opponent by losing, or to trade long-term complications on their own terms (consequences) for staying in this fight.

The genius of the consequence is that within the game world the PC is having something unpleasant done to them in a way they can't control; but at the table taking a consequence is one of the most agency-stuffed moments a player can inhabit.

This is a basic principle I'm trying to use more and more: the less control the PC has, the more control the PC's player should have.

For example, when Troggy's character was kidnapped and replaced by a shapeshifting villain, that was Troggy's choice and I handed Troggy the villain's sheet and had him play her the whole time she was pretending to be his character.

On a more prosaic level, it's "the person who lost the roll describes the fallout for losing."

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Am i using my high level spells wrong?

I have only been playing D&D 5e since September, I play a 5th level wizard. My warlock party member constantly berates me for using spell slots in encounters and says I need to "understand action economy." I have read so many articles on action economy and none say anything about saving spell sl...

dnd-5e spellcasting problem-players action-economy tactics

5

Q: Old thing-like race from D&D 3.5e?

I once watched a very interesting video about a race of beings which come from another dimension and seek to gain control over other dimensions through possessing hosts and bring more of their kind to the plant/world. The unique thing about them is that one being is actually like hundreds of smal...

dnd-3.5e monsters content-identification

AncientSwordRage

Pangalactic talks about making minimaps screen reader friendly, and when not to (Twitter link)

@BESW that's excellent

trogdor

21:48

@BESW I absolutely loved that whole experience just for the record

XD

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