@ObliviousSage Yeah, that makes sense. Twig has been consistently updating twice a week though, for the last year that I've read it. I think you're safe.
Thank you for being a sounding board for my ideas about RAW last night, @doppelgreener. KRyan helped me shore them up and make sure I'm not totally off my rocker.
(I was conflating optimisation with RAW a few times.)
@BESW yeah, reading up on your convo now. I feel like we've been making a lot of progress on this issue the past couple of weeks (hopefully it sticks), really appreciate everything your doing on this subject.
Our chat about hermeneutics was probably the catalyst for my ability to make that answer, so thanks for that.
It's one of those things where folks who are familiar with lens-switching and folks who aren't have a hard time figuring out that's where the mismatch lies.
So the idea that we need to call out RAW as explicitly a critical lens made everything else start to click into place.
@JonathanCresswellCressy Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.
@doppelgreener IMO: it's bad on the low end because monsters aren't threatening. It's bad on the high end because it raises the odds of a TPK to unacceptable heights.
@BESW Exactly that, can you stack free invokes with a fate point invoke.
Another one was to do with whether free invoke of a consequence gives a fate point to the target, but the non-bolded part of your quote answers that one as well.
I'm not sure if another, much more involved question is a good fit. Probably. "How can I design an adventure that utilizes compels to their fullest?"
We rarely have significant compels in our typical games, maybe one or two per game. We compel more often than that, even self-comple, but in the end they often lack teeth.
And at first I thought this was due to our D&D background, but we've been using Fate for a bit, and it's still not a thing that comes naturally.
That's about how it works for my game too, except for certain particularly fraught sessions.
However, I have found that the best way to get a lot of compels is to not start with complications.
The session begins with a straightforward line from "We're here" to "Our goal is accomplished," and then you start opening up with compels to create the reasons it'll take all session or multiple sessions to achieve it.
"It's a quick, easy trip down the coast to deliver this cargo... or it WOULD be, but you're Wanted by the Greencoats and darn your luck they just happen to own that stretch of coast."
"To avoid the Greencoats you're taking a longer route through the Many Isles? That's great, but they're known for their Capricious weather and a storm is brewing."
"Oh, how lucky you have a sea witch on board. Too bad he's Always halfway down a bottle and when he hiccoughs during the simple weather spell it runs you aground."
Hrrrrm. I think we often handle the second type of event as just... stuff happens. There's a storm brewing, because I thought about it in advance and it seemed like a fun thing to do.
I guess, for me the difference is in how unfortunate a timing something is. For instance, the party is at a pirate settlement in our game right now. There was a bar fight on their second day there, just because I thought it'd be fun. I think, had they been involved in something at the time, I'd make it a compel instead: Everyone's a Pirate, wouldn't it be terrible if you got interrupted by a bar fight.
@Magician Free invokes never turn into fate points. The only thing that generates a new fate point is a compel, iirc.
@BESW I plan for an upcoming session to involve several compels. The adventure itself will be one of them.
I have some logs to study to teach me more about compels.
@Emrakul freeform is great. Better if they're just two people in a remote cabin in the woods and nobody else is there and neither of them burped.
There's a story floating around about a couple who caught a burglar, because one of them told a joke and heard a laugh come from upstairs.
user61230
6:18 AM
@doppelgreener Iunno, I actually like it better.
user61230
It's a pretty organic thing to happen in the middle of a tavern. Two people are having a moment, and it's, pretty crudely interrupted by someone burping.
The Bombay assassin has also made me realize that hey, George might be part Bombay. He looks quite a bit like one. Also, he'd absolutely be an assassin.
I've met some purebreds, although most of my experience is with cats who show clear traits of a certain breed or family but can't be confirmed because they were strays.
Mama, one we have currently, might be part Maine Coon, looking at her. As opposed to Snuggles's occasional ferocity, though, she's an utter angel. A very nervous cat, and a bit odd, but friendly and sweet.
I guess one thing that makes personality traits hard for me to pin on their breeds is the fact that they are, of course, all going to be different from each other in some way
and other factors like nurture conditions and such
but I suppose a lot of that is my lack of all that much experience with that kind of thing
I have to move when I hear that version of Ghost Fight. I can't hold still. I had it playing while I was getting ready one day during Magfest, so I was like... dancing in a bathroom while dressed as the evil doctor from Hatoful Boyfriend.
I have 5e, and I was hoping to have a couple friends over who have played pathfinder and do Mines of Phandelver with them. My question is, are there some websites I could give them that would state the major differences between 5e and pathfinder? I'd appreciate your help.
@Zachiel I flagged it for mod attention like @pixie suggested.
> this is a Pathfinder vs 5e question, but got closed as a duplicate of a 3.5e vs 5e question. As comments are pointing out, please re-close this as a duplicate of our Pathfinder vs 5e comparison question: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/53766/…
That is, can someone who played Dawn of Worlds before tell me whether there are any rules bits enhancing or enforcing player interaction beyond mutual destruction, consistent style and God's personality?
Went to a society game here today (thus the mention of Dawn of Worlds), and looking forward to Empire LRP after I come back at Easter and prpping things for that.
Nothing really ongoing right now.
Nothing to be planned before I settle down back in Europe in four or in my new job in about 12 weeks
@eimyr In Dawn of Worlds, each player is a god who, on their turn, gets to create or manipulate some part of the world, like terrain or a species or an avatar.
The party was level 4, the dragon was adapted from a 3e adventure and it had hover despite being too small for having it under 3.5e rules. It used the cloud of debris to go undetected and pepper the party with breath and singling out lone enemies. The battle took place in a courtyard.
Here's something I learnt from experience: don't let the party toss the grapple-fighter into the air so he can pin the flying dragon and make it fall into the path of an oncoming boulder.
I would say: if you don't want the dragon to curbstomp the players it's harder. Anyone can drop an ancient dragon onto a battlefield and make it hover out of range spewing fire.
Unless you have spellcasters in the party. Bloody killjoys.
Alright, so this is an Adult White Dragon and he is in his lair, so he gets lair actions. He has a couple of scrags (water trolls) that can come to his aid. He has been aware that danger was close for a couple of days. The party includes a monk, necromancer (wizard), a swordsong (bard/rogue), and a fighter
Realistically? An intelligent, wealthy creature who has advanced knowledge that powerful, crafty enemies are coming to kill it? Is going to stuff that lair with traps and move to his winter home for a while.
he could, I suppose, destroy the floor of his nest, which means the adventurers fall into freezing cold water inhabited not by a dragon, but by those aquatic trolls
This is kinda the problem with D&D's vision of dragons. They tend to be wealthy enough and smart enough that their combat powers shouldn't ever matter.
But D&D has a combat-forward ethos, so GMs find reasons to ignore that and make it happen anyway.
Reason number one: ego. A big enough ego will send a dragon out to fight mano-a-mano even though he knows it's dumb.
I don't think this group would whine. I think if it was cinematic enough, they'd consider a TPK a lot of fun. Another note, they started this adventure with new level 8 characters, so they're not time-invested into them
I always thought it could be fun to convince players that they are entering a dragons' lair with loads of signs outside like "BEWER OF DARGON", but actually it is some dude's dog called dargon and the owner can't spell
@DavidWilkins I have a story idea. These players are clearly going for it. Cool. Let them battle the water trolls first with every intention to obliterate them. Then, the trolls capture the PCs and bring bound and gagged to the dragon for feasting. The dragon eats them.
@eimyr The dragon then replaces them with hired doppelgangers who continue to adventure as normal, but according to the dragon's agendas: taking out potential rivals, retrieving coveted treasure troves, etc.
Also, it's this dragon's habit to eat adventurers alive for shits and giggles. There are half-digested adventurer bones everywhere and his belly is full of deteriorated, but cool loot, if they are willing to look hard enough.
Acid and frost damage all around
You could even have "traps", as in sphincter muscles, glands or slippery slopes with pools of acid. Enemies in the Inside Dungeon are mostly parasites, Frost Elementals and undead.
I'm fond of the extreme logical conclusion Dragons of the Cuyahoga took with this premise.
In that setting, dragons are extremely powerful, nigh-immortal loners, each one superior to any individual non-dragon being in the world. They consider themselves sovereign nations.
But humans and elves and other lesser folks banded together to create villages, and cities, and eventually nations of their own, with armies that could defeat a single dragon.
So dragons saw that their physical power was no longer sufficient, and looked at what other kinds of power they could wield to influence nations. They discovered wealth.
Running across young dragons at level 5 just screams jumping the shark to me.
In (one of) my current campaign(s) dragon's aren't even extant. But historical knowledge of them and natural-scientific remnants remind everyone that they were here, they were in charge, and who knows where they are now?
A dragon in Cleveland can move armies in Colombia, destroy businesses in Egypt, and pass laws in China. Their physical power is still awesome, but they wield whatever power their rivals understand and respond to most readily.
(Notably, dragons are pretty much only in Cleveland, because Ohio is the only state which recognises them as citizens. They incorporate in Ohio and their corporations act on their behalf in the wider world. This becomes a plot point when a dragon dies.)
The premise is "In 1991, a portal opened in the middle of a football game and elves walked out of it. Ten years later, a political news reporter is assigned to investigate the death of the most important dragon in the city."
I'm not familiar with 5e's rules on that kind of thing, but if a dragon can't wear a ring, he can buy a scroll or wand or hire someone to cast it on him.
A dragon that's lived to adulthood has probably learnt the reason it's unkillable is that it's got all these awesome resources to draw on.
If it ignores its resources, it becomes less dragony and more killable.
@MoonLight Hi! You'll need at least 20 rep on any one Stack Exchange site before you can type in chat rooms, but you're welcome to hang out until then.
Good question. This is a printed adventure, and I don't think it spells out this specific dragon's motive, but it does mention his mate being in mourning
A dragon's goal is usually to attain more treasure, and once the hoard is legendary enough it can do that by killing the morons that come to raid the treasure and taking theirs.
Dragons need to eat, though. Which is why you'll often find a dragon's lair surrounded by goblins and kobolds.
Either as a food source or as food providers to the dragon
a strange magical beasts are being sighted terrorising the village
Weird maned griffon and an eerie striped pestilence bringer.
PCs are requested to slay these foul beasts at the request of local clergy and then confess their sins to be cleansed of satanic influence.
A week later, local liege lord is still looking for his lioness and zebra that escaped from his renowned bestiary.
The church claims innocence. Eyes turn towards ignorant PCs, who now have to choose - collect a reward for slaying the spawn of satan and summon his lordship's wrath or pretend to not do anything and maintain plausible deniability.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but Polish language pronunciation is a) very simple, each syllable has just one universal non-idiomatic pronunciation, much like in French b) still incredibly difficult, unless you learnt it from infancy
Unlike in English, where one can possibly get rid of the foreign accent or tech oneself a different accent if a native speaker, it's impossible in Polish.
(The first line, with 4 words was used in the late medieval to distinguish Polish ethnic group from non-poles living within the Crown, supposedly with mixed effect)
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
I have 5e, and I was hoping to have a couple friends over who have played pathfinder and do Mines of Phandelver with them. My question is, are there some websites I could give them that would state the major differences between 5e and pathfinder? I'd appreciate your help.
