@doppelgreener I did a search and found 174 posts that mention downtime. Then I closed the door and slowly backed away, to leave that bomb for another day.
(There are only 26 actual questions in there, but I felt like it would need looking at the answer-only mentions too, to catch all the downtime-but-not-in-name questions.)
@BESW back in monday we'd have three filing cabinets with four drawers each and index cards and we STILL wouldn't be able to remember which folder you put the thing in exactly!
> The sad thing is there are some good ideas in that monument of text. Being an evil thought policeman is cool and interesting. But if nothing ever [snip] happens because everything's accounted for, that's a long game of sitting with your thumb up your [rear].
@BrianBallsun-Stanton Continuation of the post I had to censor.
> And you'd think that in D&D there are still a ton of ways to break it in half. Maybe the Old God you're getting your powers from decides your brains look delicious today. Or dragons attack and well, all your spying on salt peddlers is useless now. Though I get the feeling that all that stuff would get written out of anything this guy runs.
We concluded with a firefight on the space station being interrupted by a stray shot taking out the generators and plunging the whole ship into gravityless darkness.
He had skills like Handy Paranoia 2, Thick Skull 2, Powerful Jumping 3, and 0-G Proficient 3.
Fail-forward examples: he failed a roll to get his friend on the station to sneak him aboard. So he got aboard, but the friend was arrested and security is looking for him.
He failed on a roll to throw a shuriken to cut the wire powering the laser bars on his friend's cell... so he also blacked out that whole section of the station.
Trying to come up with an ability name for an extraordinary martial stance that allows the user to bring allies with them when they move (while not being supernatural). It's a disease-focused discipline with vermin theming, and there's already been reference to the Rat King.
The creator wants to approach the stance from a rat swarm angle, but it's at a high enough level that easy access to flying makes me want to make it about mosquitoes.
@Pureferret I've been talking with a lady who sugested me trying a different D&D character and I still have no idea of what could work for me. [hey it's me what did you expect?]
Another tool: There's a common practice to let players describe their successes and have the GM describe their failures--but I prefer to switch it up.
Players often love describing how their characters fail, and there's less chance for resentment or frustration than if the GM is describing it.
Today, he made a check to see if his beeper was bugged or trapped, and he failed miserably. I asked him how he failed, and he said that he found a poison gas cartridge... and triggered it in his own face.
My players tend to want me to describe things. I'm the center story teller and they're in large part just part of the story. They happily roleplay among themselves though in situations where it's needed.
Which is a huge challenge. I'm a programmer and very structured and logical in my thinking. I don't have much of a creative mind. But I've been able to fake it for a few years now. :P
Yeah, I usually try to make death the last option. Usually players only die if they chose to do so. Of course, if they charge a dragon head on, there are consequences. But I rarely kill a player.
Throwing a shuriken to turn off the laser grid? Ooops, you turned off power to the laser grid... and the entire rest of the space station. Enjoy your zero g.
In Pathfinder my group plans to go down into the darklands. They are in Nar-Voth already and plan to go to Orv through the Endless Gulf pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Endless_Gulf . How deep is this thing? (vertically from the "Court of Ether" in Nar-Voth to the Midnight Mountains in Orv)
@BESW yes indeedy. Had fun with the skills tree thingies, and the PCs roles grew organically out of their rolls. Rfs good for shades in the underworld who don't remember much of their original lives.
@harlandski Great! I've found that groups can have great fun without enjoying the system they're using, but it's nice when the system is encouraging the fun.
@mawimawi I don tthink any of the PF experts are on right now
@mawimawi you should post that as a question on the site though
@MadMAxJr so many bad copywriting puns have gone through my head over the last day or so over your joke campaign poster idea. Also some really nonsensical slogans like "VOTE FOR A LION! VOTE FOR ASLAN!"
So the 2 dice skills. They need to be broad right, so is it normal if they are a bit boring (we had "asking" "noticing" "dodging" "dancing") but then the 3 dice and higher is where it gets interesting "give me that" "can't catch me")
@harlandski Well, that's the thing: RFS is such a small system that anything about the appropriate breadth or depth of skills is totally up to the individual group using it.
It says that each new skill must be "a subset of what happened to you in the action," not of the action you took.
So today when my player failed a Do Anything 1 roll to avoid getting knocked unconscious with the butt of a katana, he spent an XP to get Thick Skull 2.
@BESW sure, but how did you play it (I know some of the answer to this as I read the goblin tavern scenario, in facr your main answer with the link to that was what got me onto rfs - :-)
You can do more with that 3-rank skill than its 2-rank parent, but the 2-rank parent need less narrative permission to be used so it's applicable more often.
@harlandski Yeah, RFS lends itself to silly very easily, but you can keep any tone you want just by having the group pick skills with the right flavour.
@harlandski Hmm. That question doesn't have Lasers & Feelings as an answer yet. Someone should fix that.
Drive by comment @BESW - had a look at Lasers & Feelings. It is remarkably close to what we played, but I think I would have remembered the Lasers & Feelings name and mechanic. Looks like hilarious fun though - and a stroke of genius boiling space opera down to "lasers & feelings"!
> D&D Player Packs: As a player you may want to have access to all your Characters Class information when offline from your Dungeon Master. These packs allow you to get just the info you need!
@waxeagle, Seems to indicate the $3 ones are just for offline access.
If this is the case, I really don't understand why people don't like the pricing of the 5E modules.
For a group of 6 players + DM, we have three books to keep the pace up. Here you pay the price of one and a half book, but you get to give all players access simultaneously.
@William'MindWorX'Mariager that's helpful. No one has ever liked the idea of needing to rebuy books they've paid for though (was a common discussion when TDT had the license)
if you're coming to it fresh, it's not too bad. But when you've already got a couple hundred in the system, having to pay a license fee to FG and then book fees on top is hefty
@William'MindWorX'Mariager I have the only PHB for 4e in our group (and possibly only DMG, I think the DM bought MM1 at some point so we have 2 of those for some reason), but I also pay for DDI, which is more useful than any of the dead tree books excepting the RC
@JoshuaAslanSmith there are a few rules bits that DDI didn't manage to get that are in the RC (moveable zones dagnabit). But yeah, generally the compendium is better
Whirlwind is a level 11 ability.
You can use your action to make a
melee attack against any number of creatures within 5
feet of you, with a separate attack roll for each target.
At level 11 you would have two attacks available during a normal action so you would need to have at least...
it has more to do with tone than anything else, I guess I just get super annoyed about assumptions about editions that people have zero experience with based on previous editions
wouldve figured 3.5 to 4e had shown why thats a bad idea
Ive self-deleted comments Ive posted like that because Ive realized yeah Im being an arm chair general in a system I have no mastery in and I should just get my nose out
yeah, whirlwind does seem weak against higher level foes, but it looks good for mowing down CR 1 and lower baddies...the question then becomes how often do you see CR 1 baddies at L11+ (system design indicates it shouldn't be uncommon, but I'm curious about reality)
@JoshuaAslanSmith that's...way less than interesting. Is Volley a one off spell vs whirlwind being an encounter long thing or are they both every turn if you want them?
Im not sure if he wants a straight math answer assuming fully optimal outcomes or something else like tactically viable(which is based on all those factors we just mentioned)
I mean it's like... is attacking multiple opponents at range better than attacking multiple opponents in melee? Yeah, I suppose, if you have a bow and you're not surrounded in melee combat?
@Theik exactly. They are, fundamentally, similar powers, the number of possible targets differs, the number of likely targets is probably fairly close...they do about the same thing
@Theik yes. There is a chance that we can tease out an objective answer here, but I don't think it's very likely. Things get wonky in optimization spaces when you have to deal with multiple targets
Even if you can map out exactly how many targets you could potentially hit with each skill, that is still not an actual answer, cause if all you have is a shortbow and a giant axe of flaming doom, you're not going to be vollying, that's for certain.
So my wizard can suit up in plate armor and arm himself with a longsword. Even if the armor interferes with casting some spells, I'll still cast cantrips unhindered, right?
the reason to dip for proficiency and go heavy armor is you could spend that feat on war caster instead and be able to cast spells while holding a shield
and not spend time bumping dex up and focus on INT
@RobertF @waxeagle I guess it depends of if wax lets you do somatic stuff with your material hand if so, then yeah no issues at all
also warcaster has a lot of other nice bennies you might like a wizard
W a r C a s t e r Prerequisite: The ability to cast at least one spell You have practiced casting spells in the midst of combat, learning techniques that grant you the following benefits: • You have advantage on Constitution saving throws that you make to maintain your concentration on a spell when you take damage. • You can perform the somatic components o f spells even when you have weapons or a shield in one or both hands. • When a hostile creature’s movement provokes an opportunity attack from you, you can use your reaction
BTW For the first game for his tabletop RPG show on Youtube, Wil Wheaton has revealed he'll be using a customized game rules & setting. It borrows from the Dragon Age RPG but set in a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy world (Wheaton described the setting as a cross between the film Heavy Metal and Thundarr the Barbarian).
its a generic system that the company who made the DA rpg rules was sort of planning on making anyway and he got them to let him sort of debut it in some form on his upcoming side-show
still feels like a big ol' huge missed opportunity in terms of other systems he couldve run
Plus there are already loads of videos on Youtube of people playing D&D & reviewing D&D. There are lots of fantasy themed RPGs with easy rules, but some of them are very obscure or more popular in Europe than the US (Tunnels & Trolls, Advanced Fighting Fantasy, etc.).
@doppelgreener Regarding your comment on meta, I've seen a few examples of a user submitting a modified version of their question as a new question, and in all the ones I can recall, Brian has said "no, don't do that".
Whirlwind is a level 11 ability.
You can use your action to make a
melee attack against any number of creatures within 5
feet of you, with a separate attack roll for each target.
At level 11 you would have two attacks available during a normal action so you would need to have at least...
