I am entirely unsure on how to respond to Mitharlic's answer. It's marvellous, but it's explaining the entirety of how to read attack powers, and I wonder if it should be in its own question or something.
since the question was just "there's this bit that says Wisdom vs Will, what's that mean?"
I am entirely unsure on how to respond to Mitharlic's answer. It's marvellous, but it's explaining the entirety of how to read attack powers, and I wonder if it should be in its own question or something.
That conversation occurred just above
I'm thinking of leaving a comment acknowledging it's a very good explanation but he appears to be responding to an awful lot the question isn't about, and suggesting he create a new self-answered question about it or something
@JonathanHobbs eh, leave it be. It's ok to go above and beyond on a question like that where the asker is obviously new to the system. It would be condescending in other contexts, but it's ok in this one.
More AP. This time there is a firebird, and a troll, and it's kind of a comical session but also there is some really snazzy character development, I think.
@Lord_Gareth Can you send me a link to that play-by-post thing about the doctor? I'd like to look at it again but can't figure out how to find it using the chat search.
Also, if you wanted to read the scene with Karlan it is here: http://plothook.net/RPG/showthread.php?t=22616 <-And, as always, I am accepting writing critique (I'm Prince of Knives)
@BESW My wife's telling me about a Stargate fanfic set in, like, 2050. All the (human) kids make fun of the one kid whose name is Dylan or Dave or something instead of a trendy Jaffa-style name.
Anyone have a good link for how to create NPC mentors in RPGs? Particularly when the mentor is a story objective or character in his/her own way rather than just the behind-the-scenes quest giver?
(I will also accept you expounding on it here, extemporaneously.)
So, I've got two major examples from two different campaigns.
One may be a bit less relephant, but I think it's useful.
I ran an all-evil 3.5 campaign (I've found periodic short evil campaigns to be a good pressure valve for certain kinds of groups). I've had trouble with evil PCs in the past, so I laid down a specific context for the campaign.
The party would be the evil henchmen of a powerful NPC villain in a stereotypical D&D storyline.
They started out as the level 10 henchmen of a level 20 warlock, with his own goals, power base, and resources, and a history of fighting with a group of "player-character-like" NPCs based on players I'd had in the past.
Their relationship to their boss was central to the campaign's conceits, and his attitude toward them shifted over the course of the game in accordance with their actions. He provided them with motive, quests, items, and so forth.
So, what made him a mentor rather than just, like, their boss?
I think that's one thing I kinda don't get outside of a "The mentor is a guy who's training you out of pure altruism / basically being a parent to you" context. Like, how to make a mentor who's self-motivated but also actively interested in training and teaching and shaping the protagonist(s).
@AlexP Lord Moloch wanted good minions. He sent them into dynamic, actively-changing situations and expected them to understand his goals well enough that they could think on their feet, taking advantage of opportunities and adapting to problems as they arose without reporting back to him every five minutes for new orders.
He wanted minions he could trust to make good decisions in his interests. In fact, part of the background was that he had a massive army of mindless automatons... but raising them to intelligence was too difficult. The overall goal of the campaign was to create intelligent artifacts.
@Problematic Oh noes! Only the awesome power of DRIFT RACING can save you now. Please list the three characteristics you have that are similar to Vin Diesel's.
@AlexP Well, he was an abusive villain. He shamed and abused them, gave praise randomly and not always deservedly, threw them into situations where they had to learn or die, and berated them for failing to know about motives he hadn't explained.
@Problematic You have chosen wisely! You may roll Goggles to save yourself from the crash, or use Overdeveloped Sense of Drama to declare that your actual speed is 10 miles per hour.
...and then they discovered that if a hound archon dies in that kind of situation and then is resurrected by an evil character, he's likely to decline the offer of coming back to life.
@BESW In our evil D&D game, a party member got killed by ghouls in the first encounter. So I asked the player and we totally agreed to bring her back kinda... wrong (some Heroes of Horror feat / prestige class / template / whatever thing).
Again, D&D 3.5. The party was level 2, and I wanted to give them something epic-feeling yet level-appropriate.
They went to the adventurers' club to look at the want ads, and selected an escort mission because they wanted to travel.
...and because the name signed at the bottom of the ad was one of my old PCs, who they liked very much.
To cut the backstory short, a crotchety old wizard had accidentally gotten blessed by Rikkiki, the Squirrel God.
Nobody ever asks Rikkiki for blessings, because he has a very narrow view of the world. The poor wizard got the Midas Touch, except instead of everything he touched turning to gold... it turned to acorns.
Unable to prepare spells without turning his books to nuts, a mid-level wizard needed escorting to the Grove of Squirrels in order to plead with Rikkiki.
So they traveled with him (as a spell-less mid-level wizard, the escort mission wasn't that bad, fought bad guys, negotiated with a squirrel god, and when he got the curse lifted he teleported them to the city of their choice before he headed home.
They enjoyed it very much, not least because he was a PC they'd enjoyed in previous games.
So the next time they had an arcane question, they went to ask him about it.
It was the start of a beautiful friendship; they were actually friends, and asked favors of each other. He gave them discounted spellcasting and item-making, and passed interesting quests their way. They brought interesting magical things for him to look at, gave him accounts of the things they learned on their adventures, and so forth.
He was an exposition dump, a source of humor and drama, and gave them good advice about the things they'd run into.
@Problematic Naw. He's an old PC. D&D ethos says that he has to invent 1d4 spells that all have his name on them, which are around in the campaign forever.
Also his name must either be the player's name rearranged funny or a pun. Unless you are Gary, in which case you can also plunder folk talkes and stuff.
@AlexP "Alexander Theon," named for the Library of Alexandria and one of its most famous librarians.
Anyway, after ten or twelve levels of adventuring with Alexander serving as the only real home base they'd established (he lived in the most interesting-but-safe city, too), the party failed to keep a really nasty demon from crossing over into the prime world... but they did manage to tick it off royally.
So they hied home to Alexander to ask what to do next, because they were seriously worried: the demon was supposedly the lieutenant of a legendary witch who they'd thought was long gone, but if the demon was back...
@BESW I gotta run off to do childcare-related things. Feel free to continue the story, since I'll gladly read the rest of it in chat backlog (maybe leave me an @ so I can track it back easiily).
I'm tired of 3.5, and wish them to switch to something else. But, that's the game we're currently playing, so I have to just deal with it so I can enjoy family time.
You... might be able to make a case for 3.5 not being the best system for whatever goals their game has.
I mean, I dunno what the purpose of going to level 65 is, but a deliberately-constructed character can pick up most of the auto-win buttons before they hit 21.
Doubt it. I've told the DM, and everyone else in the group, how I feel about it, and made cases for switching to something other than 3.5, however he's stubborn as hell.
It comes down to the fact that he doesn't want to feel like all the books he bought for 3.5 will go to waste. He wants to "get his money's worth".
It looks like a survey of what each person wants, but it's actually a collaborative tool: the group only gets one sheet and works together to fill out a mutual manifesto.
In fact, it's better if the players don't spend a lot of time looking the questions over alone, because they're likely to settle into ideas about what they "must" have in the game.
I spent many years as a 3.5 GM before I was in a position to consider trying other systems. We had a lot of fun, but it was always an uphill struggle against the system that I wasn't even aware of most of the time.
