[waves] Hi, @JonathanHobbs

Okay, less speculative discussion: how do I run a fight with an immobile opponent?

@BESW Do they have ranged attacks?

@C.Ross I'm building him now.

Basing him on the four different Acererak NPCs, but not attached to anything mechanical.

@BESW A you have to force the party to defeat him

otherwise they'll just go around (they do that to me a lot with tree creatures with a move of 10')

He's a demi-lich who is lounging in the throne of the dead god Nerull, siphoning Nerull's power from the Raven Queen into himself to become a god.

Mooks also help keep it interesting

So they aren't going to just run away.

@BESW ah, so plenty of casteriness

@C.Ross yeah.

@C.Ross And the party will have just tried to stop a weaver from trying to taint the god-power with Far Realm influence. Depending on their degree of success, Acererak will be burping standard-type Fell Taints every round or few.

(I always have to re-name Fell Taints when I use them, or I lose at least fifteen cumulative minutes each fight to giggling.)

@BESW 4e or 3x?

4e.

Level 21.

@BESW I would be very interested in using such a variant! Also hi!

@JonathanHobbs Glad you're interested. It's just a weird idea that I'll probably never finalize, so you're welcome to it.

(I believe my profile mentions that I'm never short of overambitious ideas.)

Also hi.

@BESW Haha, that it does. Nice profile note.

'struth!

Profile note?

Or... description, whatever.

Ah, okay.

Wasn't sure if there was a technical term I'm missing.

It is an about me apparently

so whatever term you want :D

Of course!

(including but not limited to about me)

I just today went back and figured out how to not have my profile card overflow with About Me.

Haruoom.

@JonathanHobbs How's your worldbuilding coming?

@BESW Haven't worked on it in the past couple of days other than to mull stuff over in my head which isn't going anywhere without more knowledge of the elemental chaos, and I haven't been reading. :)

Not reading? Gnoooooes!

Mulling is a very important part of the creative process though.

My games have been suffering from a lack of mull.

@BESW It is, but this mulling is past the point of being productive. I need research! And I will do it RIGHT NOW

In college I would test out NPC voices while walking to class. I don't really have that opportunity here.

@JonathanHobbs Research is the fun part of world design. :)

@MartinSojka I prefer the part where I then merrily throw out all the research.

But research is important to do first.

@BESW I can invoke the author of this bit, if you want :)

@BESW But ... but ... but ... the role of the indigenous bee variants in the Sahel on the development of trans-saharean spice trade could be important somewhere!

ia. Ia. Magician, I summon thee.

heh. Perfect timing.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Thanks, I found the essays through the "Allabar" question from May of this year.

Who calth me?

@Magician Hi!

@BESW hello

Oh! also

@magician just endured running me through 21-30.

So... he should be able to give you some helpful tips on damage scaling and whatnot.

I... also may be a bit drunk

I was just throwing around ideas inspired by your Power vs Levels blog post.

Glad to see someone's reading stuff I write :)

oh, in regards to your prior thing, I may have some damage numbers based on a teleporter.

Of... more than a year ago.

3-4 times int.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Ooh, cool.

which isn't much, but better than maaaaagic missle

no guarentee of what role it'll end up being, besides "half-arsed"

trying to avoid leader.

Well, on the bright side Magic Missile Man has fifteen-second turns.

@BESW ... yes.

that's a sign that you're absolutely at the top of your form in epic...

or doing something completely wrong.

oh, I don't suppose you have a morninglord in your group?

@Magician I'm speculating about the implications/potential/ease of removing level-based numeric growth from 4e.

@BESW I've actually done that, along with a few other things

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I believe the monk plans on going radiant cheese at epic levels, but his player just left for three weeks and the Magic Missile Man is only going to be around for three weeks..

magbonch.wordpress.com/2012/03/25/4elite here we go

@Magician Oooer. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to try this any time soon (finishing up my current campaign quick as a bunny before everyone leaves, and then I'll be down to one and a half players for the foreseeable future).

@BESW Familiar circumstances. Well, removing half-level bonus is trivial

@Magician The main reason I'm inclined to try it is narrative; the level-based numerics demand that stories must move only forward and never revisit old stomping grounds, or the heroes will become bullies.

@BESW In fairness, key villains could also level up, and occasional bullying of goblins is fun. But yeah, the power growth gets stupid with active adventuring

@Magician My original DMing experiences in 3.5 have led me to sketch out NPCs and locations but not outfit them with mechanics until the party gets there, so I can have every place be the appropriate level in relation to the PCs.

There are exceptions of course, especially in more sandbox-oriented campaigns, but...

@BESW Pretty much my experience, too. Which does mean that the whole world is on a treadmill, and ruins the whole point of levels

Unrelated to the present discussion, but I just found an interesting tidbit in the description of the fundamental planes of 4e:

> Although the fundamental planes are infinite, the known astral dominions and elemental realms lie within a finite distance of each other. If a traveler journeys through a fundamental plane into the trackless reaches outside the known dominions and realms, sooner or later he or she comes to the divine dominions or elemental kingdoms of different mortal worlds. Such a journey would be unthinkably long, and it would undoubtedly be easier to find or create a portal to reach them.

(Manual of the Planes, p7)

@JonathanHobbs "Different mortal worlds"?

Huh, I haven't seen references to Multiverse in 4e, interesting

Does this mean I can walk from Eberron to the Forgotten Realms?

Because, umm.... Epic Destiny "Dark Wanderer":

> Dark Road (24th level): You can walk to any destination you desire in a single, uninterrupted 24-hour period of walking. No matter how distant the location, or how many planes separate you from it, you reach the destination 24 hours after you begin, finding shortcuts, portals, or other modes of transport previously unknown to you.

> You do not require any rest, food, or water during this travel, except to recharge powers and regain healing surges. During your journey, you are safe from hazards, attacks, and other dangers.

@BESW Either alternate earths, or different planets altogether, which means the struggle between the gods and primordials might well only be a relatively tiny skirmish in this speck of the galaxy.

Only if your DM allows it. But this gives him license to.

> You can choose to be accompanied by a number of characters equal to 5 + your Wisdom modifier, all of whom share the benefit of this class feature.

"Let's blow this popsicle stand, guys! I hear it's Gungan hunting season on Naboo."

@BESW GM's discretion. You know how 4e is, just laying the basic foundations for fun stuff.

@JonathanHobbs Of course. I'm just boggled; I haven't seen anything that open-ended since the 3.5 Endless Stair.

hrmmm

@BESW Endless Stair? Oh my.

@JonathanHobbs It Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin.

@BESW how much does he like... choice?

is it just not rolling? or does he want simple, too?

@BrianBallsun-Stanton My diceless player? He ran a lazy hybrid warlord/shaman with a half-dozen different circumstantial healing bonuses.

Computer programmer.

@BESW so fiddly is cool...

just no dice.

4e... may not be the system for him.

Yeah. Given that he's only using it for two weeks, maybe not too fiddly. But hit me.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton One of the reasons we abandoned 3.5 was that he broke grappling to the point where he had to retire the character; it trivialized every fight I didn't deliberately make him useless for.

Not that it's hard to break grappling if you're willing to endure the minigame.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I was impressed to be able to create even one character that could go attackless, much less two or three different builds. Regardless of effectiveness, I think my experience with this player more than anything else I've seen demonstrates how silly it is when people attack 4e for classes being "all the same" and "not allowing customization."

@BESW Grappling is something I dread encountering in the Pathfinder game I'll be playing. I don't want to make my character brokenly good by paying any particular attention to my grappling ability, but I want to at least have some decent ability to defend against it or use it sometimes. But anyone who is going to use grappling for their primary means of dealing with me is probably going to be someone I stand no chance against.

Just because the moment I enter grappling, it's their super fantastic grapple checks vs my average ones, and everything else is now irrelevant!

I swear, I think 3.5/PF has this idea that making something complicated is a way to balance its power.

Security by obscurity!

@JonathanHobbs ....yes.

@BESW how does he feel about dailies that have a token attack?

@BESW This is a real term for a real practice in the software world, which also never works against anyone with any level of determination to break your security.

Ah, yes, grapling. I still remember my first session as a monk in 3.5, joining an established campaign as they were about to have a boss fight. It was a wizard, who would fly around, invisible, casting spells at us. It would have, that is, if I hadn't grappled the poor bugger in the first round, and held him down as the others kicked his head in...

@Magician I think my next game is going to be either DFRPG or a single-player 4e campaign. Do you think 4elite has particular advantages or disadvantages in a single-player setting?

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Reluctantly he acknowledges that sometimes their Effect line is worth it.

@JonathanHobbs Yeah, I'm aware of it. Used it myself.

@BESW 4elite plays identical to 4e - that was the intention. Which means it doesn't do single player thing very well, as 4e operates on the party level

Alphanumeric ciphers using a fictional base 5 numeral system are trivial, but get one massive geek points.

Oh my god oh my god @BESW I decided I wanted to lead my players into the elemental chaos in later levels and I just realised how I want their first scene there to go.

To this music for emotion:

@Magician Yup. Not looking forward to trying to balance that, though the player feels he can compensate with PC design. Some warden build.

solo 4e works

run a party :)

solitare 4e works

be unemployed in the middle of nowhere

They'll walk out of a portal onto a stony ledge on a great mountain. The first thing they see before them is a streak of lightning running through the sky before them like a river. It leads their eyes upwards to a sky of swirling lava and rock (considering the region they're entering)... and then they realise, standing there staring upwards, that is not the sky, that is the ground.

I think we'll probably go DFRPG. It's a player with really strong narrative sensibilities but very quiet socially, and I think a solo DFRPG would be amazing to run for him.

::wince::

oh gods. a magic missle charger.

this is... wrong.

the horned helm... doesnt provide for "extra" damage

it's damage.

and a roll

@JonathanHobbs I'm sorry, that's really awesome and I think it'll be great... but I keep hearing Within You instead of the music you sent when I imagine it.

@BESW What is Within You?

Oh, from the Labyrinth?

I'll listen to it now

Oh my god it is from that scene.

You see why your scene makes me think of it.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton ..............

@BESW now if I can only remember how to channel it through a melee...

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Shadar-Kai get a feat.

there's stuff for invoker and sorcerer

okay. Now to figure out how to get this running properly

so that the damage... doesn't completely blow

Oh, @Magician I'd just like to say thank you for answering that question about Allabar in May.

@BESW my pleasure :)

How did that encounter go?

@Magician Haven't run it yet, but within a couple months. I'm starting prep for it now.

My campaign takes place in the wars between Arkhosia and Bael Turath, and I'm going to have the "mysterious explosion" that destroyed Vor Kragal (the city at the heart of the Turathi war machine, thus pulling the empire's teeth) be the sudden arrival of Allabar.

The party will shove him back into the Far Realm, but the city is collateral damage.

It'll be the second-to-last fight in the campaign, at level 30.

Cool. And the last one?

@Magician Every five levels or so we take a break from being good guys and spend a level running separate Evil PCs on the Turathi side.

For the final battle, the group will run both good and evil PCs in a vs battle. The evil PCs are trying to kill the dragonpope of Arkhosia, with the help of a devil. The good PCs are trying to stop them.

So will the players be running both sides simultaneously?

@Magician Yup! We've done it once already in a lower-stakes setting.

Because the good PCs will be coming straight off the Allabar fight (short rest, nothing more before the dragonpope teleports them in) and the evil PCs are fresh, the dragonpope will almost certainly die. But his death will give his allies the effect of an extended rest so they can then take vengeance for his death.

I'll just be running the dragonpope and the devil, and overseeing terrain and hazards.

[I would just like to take this moment to say thank you to the 4e concept team for giving me the opportunity to run a campaign with a dragonpope.]

@BESW what the what?

Hehehe, dragonpope. Is that an official term?

@waxeagle Well, it's not entirely as the concept team intended.

In the official materials, Arkhosia is usually portrayed as an empire run by a dragon emperor called the Golden One.

That makes no sense to me; D&D dragons are egoist loners and won't ever subjugate themselves to another dragon.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton you can't make a damage roll where there isn't one

@waxeagle +1d6 damage.

Isn't extra damage, therefore damage roll

is fiddly, but extra damage is always indicated as extra

(at which point, I throw dice at me)

you can't make a damage roll where there isn't damage

this is very much a "if you want to go to all this trouble to make a silly character, eeeh?"

So I redesigned Arkhosia as a federation of states, each ruled by a single dragon that has decided that the state's wealth, happiness, and prestige are its 'treasure.'

The Golden One is the ruler of one of the smallest states, but is also the psychopomp of Bahamut--meaning that he is the spiritual guide of Arkhosia's faithful, and has dominion over their souls' fates.

In effect, he's the Pope: temporal ruler of a small nation and spiritual ruler of a vast international multitude.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton gotcha. But no "on hit" effects, only damage roll additions

@waxeagle yes

which... is suboptimal

yeah, no thief mc wizzy here

I'm tempted to go to a teleporting build instead.

@waxeagle thought of that, discarded :)

I handwave the canon "Golden One is the emperor of an empire" stuff as being misunderstandings after 2000+ years.

like... pocket protector could also work

@waxeagle Magic Missile neither hits nor rolls damage, which makes nearly every feat and item in the game useless. The helmet adds a damage roll, which means that suddenly feats and items are useful!

but being an invisible pixie paladin... one must have standards... somewhere?

even if they're hiding?

@BESW Fair. And playing around with how history was misunderstood by descendants is fun!

@BrianBallsun-Stanton We've already got a pixie rogue riding a paladin in the Evil Interludes...

@Magician Yes!

Anyway, that's why there's a dragonpope.

And history says the Golden One was killed almost simultaneously with the fall of Vor Kragal, and I want my party to be involved in both events.

It's been very weird to run a campaign where everyone knows the end result of the story already; it's just finding out how the party was involved in events that's keeping it interesting, so I'm extra-challenged to make it engaging.

@BESW yes, vanguard weapon as an implement might work too...

hrmmmmm

3*int damage on teleport

4*int with magic missle

@BrianBallsun-Stanton that's non-trivial

@waxeagle it's... not bad?

In epic... it's a waste of time, but... not bad

@BrianBallsun-Stanton yeah

I mean... if there was a morninglord around... that's one thing

I was experimenting with a scout this weekend, got him to around .45-.50 just about everywhere (still working on the L30 one)

nice?

I'm sorry, but this is the image I'm getting of magic missile charging:

@BESW yes.

it's actually remarkably hard to employ the charge chassis in this sense.

(I swear, I only put ponies in the channel when it's relevant.)

...mostly...

"Deal +1d8 damage on any successful charge."

ooookay, now we're cooking with... slightly less sucky propane?

@BrianBallsun-Stanton As compared to most other diceless builds just being... what, unusually hard?

@BESW yes

okay, so let's start with the "correct" answer

the correct answer is a battlemind with brutal barrage

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Bwahahahahaha... [wipes tears from eyes]

where it quite literally doesn't matter if you hit or not

you do conmod damage

but that does "technically" require the die to hit the table

which I understand is verboten, even if meaningless

(it's easily the most fun of what I'm proposing, but ... whatever)

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Reeeally rather avoid it if at all possible.

yep

going from first principles here

@BESW I present thee a Permit to Post Ponies. Partake in this perpetual privilege persistently, it pleases me.

The poor guy left our group for three months and his first d20 on returning was a 1.

@JonathanHobbs +1, alliteration modifier.

@BESW see... there are ways to provide rerolls and multiattacks and a basic knowledge of statistics, and a dice tower?

but... well.

I saw him spend two months at the bottom of every initiative board.

@BESW yes? There are solutions to these problems

@JonathanHobbs Fastest upstar I've ever seen.

Oh wow. :)

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I think he's just tired of being surprised when he's reminded that d20s have double-digit numbers on them.

@BESW so, personally? I'd invert the die

his rolls are now "21-die"

@BrianBallsun-Stanton ....lol.

@BESW it's been proposed... for me

I'm pretty sure his d20s would catch on quick.

Ayup. The curse of Eep, Brian's old character, is a thing. It haunts people.

@BESW perception is reality :)

Anyway, he's in college on the mainland pretty permanently now, he's just visiting us for the winter break.

@Magician I accidentally 'borrowed' a d20 from a rarely-appearing player, and discovered that it hates the one player with the most dice luck.

It works fine for him, but when I roll it, it's rolls are regularly higher and crits unusually often.

But only against him. It's docile against all the other players.

I have no reason this should make any sense, and I fully welcome accusations of observational bias, but... there it is.

Hehe. Dice know the truth.

Twilight Sparkle speaks for me.

So when a player asks me for a diceless build, I'm tickled to oblige him.

As I think I've said before here, this group enjoys creating challenging, interesting PCs and likes it when they are mechanically superior, but are also quite happy to run a subpar PC build if it's fun or strange enough.

I'm the guy who asked about mechanics for a blind PC.

In our recent game, it was revealed that the party wizard may or may not have been brainwashed from birth into, well, joining the party as a double agent. It was also an encounter in which shadows of PCs came alive and attacked them. In that encounter, the wizard (alleged double agent) accidentally critted the cleric into oblivion (not an exaggeration, he was banished), and in general hit the party with every AoE.

His shadow, however, missed the party members it targetted, and instead hit the bad guys. The shadow was a triple agent.

@Magician All of this.

After a run-in with nerras that mirrored the party, the fighter spent the rest of his time with the group constantly double-checking that everyone was real.

hrmmm. "attack power granted through a multiclass feat"

I don't think I can helf shennanagans with that

...helf?

half-elf

the normal choice of trivial cheese

@BrianBallsun-Stanton OF COURSE.

I am silly.

it's amazingly hard to use a helf in this scenario

@BrianBallsun-Stanton I don't think my party has ever used one.

if we could use a bladesinger, well, "hit" ... bah

We seem to be more of the "elaborate cantilevers" school of unusual mechanics.

Hybrids, multiclassing, feats to give access to powers...

In at least one case, all three.

@BrianBallsun-Stanton does hunter's quarry specify hit?

@waxeagle I agree with your analysis of Pain to Pleasure, but the OP says something about taking damage on the secondary attack that has been errata'd out. Maybe address that too?

@waxeagle yep

@waxeagle Yes.

@BESW looking, will have to dig the article back out of my phone :(

My current MMM build is ranger/wizard hybrid with a feat to give him a hunter at-will, and hunter's quarry is one of the cards I just tell the guy to toss aside.

@BESW paragon multiclass :)

but yeah, it's 1am

time to sleep

@BESW what about hunter|wizzy? make RBA against each target adjacent to primary?

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Ta!

@waxeagle That's exactly what we've got.

@BESW gotcha

missed the hunter at-will part

There's just no hybrid hunter, so had to go roundabout with hybrid ranger and a feat to replace the ranger at-will with a hunter one.

(Rapid Shot. Yesssss.)

@BESW ah

But to use rapid shot with MM you need a weaplement, which drops us further down the Silly PC Tricks rabbit hole.

I should go to bed soon too.

@BESW implement prof cross bow?

Moonbow Dedicate at the moment.

@BESW gotcha, that fills up the PP right?

@waxeagle It's a feat.

or was that a cleric PP I'm remembering?

Not sure.

@BESW I think there is a moonbow dedicate based cleric path

ah, any channel divinity, bow proficient, sehanine worshipping character

arrow of the moonbow

not really helpful to your search though

morning. Hows things.

@Novian aight

Sigb....Mutants and Masterminds is sometimes so open and unlimited and then it reminds you that Your idea is impossible and you should go home.

Its kinda like the concept of "An open Sandbox"

yes a sandbox is explorable but it invariably has endpoints.

its never "Open"

eh...One must persevere.

Ive broken the system once. I can do it again.

@Novian I like to play humans in such genres (like Lex Luthor or Batman), but that tends to break the systems quite badly when I insist that, no, I'm not going into a social event with my full set of equipment and a power suit on or anywhere nearby, in fact.

My idea was much to complex as it needed a blend of mecha and normal hero to work that wasnt possible.

not without an insane starting level.

making each subsystem its own 4 point Device and having a minimum of 8 or so devices.

almost all of them part of the characters body

Smaller robotic characters I can do. With great and terrible efficiency that when used properly can blow to hell any Non-Immune Target in a few rounds.

Or at least NERF the hell outta them,

then disintegrate what little is left in the poor remaining shell.

My M&M Characters sometimes only fit the good Description in that as long as they have something to accomplish they work with a group and only for as long as it takes to fix their problem.

although I did set myself up once by not shutting my damn mouth.

I reasoned that that version of that character was a stolen experimental Human Augmentation Technology developed by another character I had created a while ago and that my next character was a slightly different model that was the 32nd of said mass produced models out of 35 and was the only one to have been Defective and escape, thus becoming a hero.

the bad guy had forced the Character who had developed the technology to mass produce it. and I ended up with 34 enemies to cut down which were all slighly different despite being mass produced.

I had a neat advantage.

I could Mimic any power I didnt have that they did.

and since they were all based on the original model they were weak in defense(Exept for 35. he was a tank.)

It was a complex story.

I nearly got us all killed with that stunt.

Sounds like it, yes. Also very ... specific. Not sure if I could pull that off as a GM without putting all kinds of twists into it.

He did.

making the 34 models of that particular character all slightly different.

No, I meant ... thinking "What would I do with 30+ nearly identical, intelligent people under my control? Let's see which scams I can pull off ..."

and at the same time I had provided a valuable weapon to him. The characters left arm configuration(A device essentially grafted to that arm.) was a Cannon Capable of inflicting stat damage as a contagion. among other things.

......We never faced all of them at once but it was still hard.

I was one of two character completely immune to the stat damage.

the gun itself still hurt.

And your character was never replaced with one of your clones? :)

I made sure to be distinctive and repaint myself.

That's ... not very effective. :)

...it is when you gm never thinks to repaint his to match mine.

Cant replace with a clone who's armor is much different.

Expecially when the armor is part of the body and cannot be removed.

Its hell going through magnets though.

He did manage to keep my Gun arm out of the fray once by keeping that arm magnetized and me suspended in midair. I just threw my sword. killed a grunt and shouted obscenities the entire fight.

I can think of a dozen of ways to mimic that, depending on the resources available. :D That's why I said I don't think I could pull off the "you have 34 clones, but only ever fight one of them at once, and there's never any unfair situation you get forced in" part. :)

My first idea would be to drop about 20 of them at you at once - as a distraction. If you die, that's a nice bonus, but not necessary for the bigger plan.

we fought em in pairs or small groups but 30+ would be impossible with all the stat drain and offensive power. they might die if I had remembered to tell the party my characters weakness.

Electromagnetic Pulses.

Half of the others commit horrible crimes in your and your group's name.

And the others act as back-up.

All at the same time. :)

and I would Deal with that as it came.

the way Inazuma always did.

With Concentrated and Directed Nuclear Energy

...umm. My Desktop just did soemthing weird.

Why is my taskbar on the side of my screen.

See ... my players learn rather quickly that if there's a fair and balanced fight, somebody (most likely them) made a horrible mistake. Also, they tend to keep "strategic retreat" as a valid option open.

@Novian You can left-click and drag it there, or to any other side or to the top or bottom.

Phew.

I was confused.

never done that before. and Im good with computers.

...this could be useful...

Unlikely. I only ever had to "fix" it for people, never saw anybody actually use it.

Hell if I felt like it I could turn the entirety of the last 3 Characters Ive made into a story arc. they already had interconnected origins and backstories.

@MartinSojka then why did Microsoft think it a good idea?

@Novian Microsoft. They are crazy.

eh sometimes they produce useful stuff.

Windows XP was alright.

7 isnt too bad. but it aint perfect

Hi @Martin!

Writer's Chat going on now in The Overlook. Come chat about reading, writing, whatever you fancy.

Now I'm off again! Bye.

and then a Line shaped mellee that causes the character to end up and the end of the attack line.

Im thinking Strike(Area Line) Flaw (Limited Distance) /Linked/ Teleport Flaw(Specified Endpoint) Flaw Linear.

@Novian hey! I know a great site where you ask questions like that!

;-)

anyone else excited about hats?

... no?

They're useful, sure. It's just that I have my one fedora, and don't need more. :)

@MartinSojka but hats.... they are coming.