@Novian Construct summons? Not sure which spells you're referring to. Of course, a Druid shouldn't prepare summon nature's ally even if he'll probably use it, thanks to the spontaneous summoning feature. At low levels, Greenbound Summoning is so good it's almost broken. There's another really good SNA-specific feat, can't quite remember what it is. And Druids are really easy to optimize: take Natural Spell at 6, don't forget your class features, and go to town. Druid 20's pretty optimal

the high cheese options are Fleshraker companion/wild shape (Monster Manual III, I think?), venomfire (Serpent Kingdoms), and/or Planar Shepherd (Faiths of Eberron). There's some wacky things you can do with Acorn's of Far Travel, too.

...of course, you could go all-in on the uber cheese and build the Nasty Gentleman, but that's a really bad idea if you want the game to retain any real challenge, and/or want to be invited back to the table.

blah

Morning folks!

Morning Cat :)

Good morning!

How goes life in your neck of the woods?

Pretty good - I'm thinking about how to explain FATE to a group of players who may or may not turn up tonight.

Ahh...I'd try to help, but not having played FATE....

I'm sure you'll do a great job

Thanks :)

New gaming group?

Nah, it's fill in game because one player can't make it to our regular fortnightly WFRP game. But I'm not sure about two of the players because I haven't heard their plans yet.

Ahh...cool. I am going to have to get my old gaming group together soon. I've just finished a stint at university for Teacher training, and now am traveling back to my hometown to start my teaching practicum ... which will put me back in contact with my gamer friends :)

Yay :)

It's always good to get back in touch with old friends.

Truly! I have missed gaming. I was hoping to do some while I was here in Uni, but didn't manage to find any interested parties

I've already got some ideas for what adventures I want to build

Nobody? At a university? That's surprising!

Well, I likely could have tried harder, but my group facebooks postings got no response.

Ah yeah. That is discouraging.

I was hoping to find players among the faculty I was in, but no dice. Ahh well, there was more than enough work to keep me busy in the evenings anyway

Which FATE setting were you thinking of trying out?

Homebrewing a discworld setting :D

Fun! I love homebrew!

(Even though I am too lazy to do it myself, for the most part, anymore)

Mostly it's just collecting the SRD stuff together in one document and tweaking references from Pulp to Morporkian.

The magic system is a challenge for "later" though.

Sounds like a fun challenge.

oooh Homebrew is fun.

Thankfully nobody has expressed any interest in playing a wizard though.

The last homebrew I attempted was a harry potter alteration for my nephews to RPG with

It was far from perfect, but the kids loved it so much that no one cared

Hehe

yeah, so long as it works, it's good :)

Ughh...I need coffee

I've been trying to crack a Heinlein's "World as Myth" nut for a couple years, and just laid down a foundation on a lego-based town-builder rpg sorta-kinda like Towns or Dwarf Fortress.

Just rolled out of bed and turned on the computer to check and see if my questions got any more answers/upvotes

Sounds cool Dampe!

Coffee == god.

Precisely!

Those do so sound cool Dampe.

I haven't played towns or dwarf fortress, but a lego based game sounds awesome

Anything in particular you are hoping to see get boosted Cat?

lol, well, not to self advertise, but if you have any opinions about time travel and how to game it successfullly, check out my question ;)

I was suprised, given the purposely general nature of the question, that I didn't get a bigger response. Maybe everyone thinks it is a worse idea than I do

@Cat Just think along the lines of the Sims or any small community/house management sim. In this case each player is a minifig member of the town, and the economy is based on bricks.

Interesting!

Hehe, time travel is a weird one.

Agreed. But I love stories like "Looper" and "Harry Potter" and all those old Star Trek episodes

lego weapons and armor and so on add damage or health, super simple stats and I'm shooting for limited or possible even no dice, certainly using the lego dice if need be.

I guess there are really not many rules laid out in any of the game systems I've looked at, so perhaps people are uncomfortable with not having a document to refer to ...

I was actually going to mention a game Suzerain that I heard about last night. It's a weird weird game though.

Never heard of it (unsurprisingly)

(I have only ever played one game, and talked about a handful more on RPG chat)

I'm actually looking for my next RPGing system

Neither had I. It's an almost unplayable game, but it did sound like lots of fun suzerain.info/tiki-index.php?page=Suzerain

Christmas is coming and it would be fun to get new system books as presents

Do you want something to play or to read?

To play

(though playing will involve some reading)

I'm still in a Toss-up between Pathfinder and something more rules-light/story-centered

Someone suggested Legends of Anglerre

That was probably me :P

I still have to flip through the pdf to see what it's about before I hop on board

lol, cool!

I did manage to find a pdf though, so that's a major step forward

That's a good start :)

Yep!

@Cat It has thus far been my experience that the more rules a game has, the easier it is to play, provided they are wisely indexed. This goes against your intuition, but having a clear way to resolve issues that would otherwise been up to the GM goes a loooooong way to making a game clear.

That assumes, of course, that the rules are clear in and of themselves.

Yeah, I am torn between rules-heavy to ease the GMing and rules-light to decrease the burden on the new players I tend to attract as gamers (my nephews, interested folks who have always wanted to try, but have never played, internet folk, etc)

@DampeS8N It doesn't have to be more rules, but there should be comprehensive rules.

I also really enjoy the collaborative storytelling aspect of gaming more than the crunch of battle rounds

Battles are great spices for a meat and potatoes story, but I can only take so many of them.

@Cat That's a false dichotomy. If you are shooting for a role and not roll playing game, the engine should fade into the background for your players. The faster you can come up with a way to resolve their desire, the faster the game goes and is to pick up.

My favorite adventures are mysteries/intrigues/ and perhaps now, time travel

Perhaps. You'll have to forgive my ignorance on the issue, as I've only ever played one game.

I guess the issue is more my memorization of the rules as a DM in order to quickly resolve their desires.

I don't play frequently enough that I remember all the little details about tripping, grapping, etc in DnD v3.5 on all occasions. It really cuts into flow when I have to look them up

@somori I disagree. If specific cases aren't presented, even if based on a core concept of rules, the GM is left to decide on their own. That might be easy, jumping over a chasm. Or it might be very hard to figure out, swimming through piles of dead gelatinous cube guts.

But, folks want to be refereed by the book.

Truly, I am just looking for ways to keep things fun for me as a novice DM.

@Cat Time travel can quickly turn into the movie primer and become totally incoherent. Be careful with it. haha

(Trying not to burn out)

Yeah, I realize it's unwise, but I am just so fascinated by the idea that I will have to try it.

(LIke a moth to a flame, lol)

I think the key to time travel is to focus on the players so you can change the world around them as they travel.

Basically Hand-E-Foot's answer.

Mmm... I liked his answer.

@Cat I dove into DMing D&D 4E without even reading the player's handbook and only half of the DM's Guide. Being able to look things up as the come, or specifically avoiding things you didn't read up on yet is entirely a viable way to get into it. Saturday will be our 9th session and we've picked up most of it as we've gone.

I guess my players haven't really expressed annoyance with my looking up stuff, but it annoys me!

Neat solution to the grandfather paradox and allows the players to have an effect on the world.

Yeah. I like it for its simplicity.

I may even vote it as best answer, eventually.

There is however, some fun in the issues raised in the second answer

Like how players can realize they are trying to do something forbidden by Time when certain actions become impossible.

Makes them stop and think, why?

I like those kinds of moments.

Unfortunately, I may not be clever enough to create such a fun conundrum

Suzerain had Fate step in and change stuff around you to prevent your important changes.

But it sounds hilarious

Maybe you should include Suzerain as an answer or comment, somori!

I'm sure other people would appreciate the resource

For instance, if your mission was to kill someone in New York, you could just step up to him and push him into a car. Except that Fate would intervene and cause the car to swerve.

Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I was referring to

I'd have to try and explain it properly first. Need more coffee before I can do that :P

Understood! :D

I'm going to have to get dressed and make my way over to starbucks in the next half hour

Then, it's on to my essay

Last piece of business before I begin my week's vacation

(and move home)

There is a second part to that bit about fate though - since your job was to make those changes, you got pushed back through time again and have to kill this guy while there's a car crash happening.

Sounds like you've got a busy day ahead!

Busy enough.

But not busy enough to keep me from procrastinating .... lol

It's a sociology of education essay

I hate reflective essays like that, since I was brought up as a scientist.

The reflective b.s. was beat out of me.

An entire assigned 8 pages of reflecting on the course and what I've learned from it, sigh...

Why can't you think about it objectively? You had goals for the course. Hopefully all of which you've achieved. Have you achieved them all, if not why not and if you did, what you used to do it.

unfortunately the questions to answer for the reflective essay are assigned. And the answers are supposed to be subjective.

(if I'm understanding you correctly)

Anyway, I'll somehow manage to b.s. my way through it, but I hate this kind of stuff.

I am not a navel gazer.

was bored so I just made this dampes8n.com type in "roll" to the command line.

Sorry, got kicked off the website and chat DampeS

Dont' know if the site was down or my internet was just sucking ...

I had some trouble getting on the site earlier

Must have been SE then

I guess I can stop being pissed off at my ISP

How's life with you Phil?

not too bad. Suffering GM withdrawal from having to stop two of my longer term games, so looking at ways of starting a new group or two up at the moment

@Cat same here

@mxyzplk: added what experiences I had to offer; it's hardly an ideal answer by those guidelines, but it's the best I can offer. This is kind of a weird case for those guielines, I think – after all, one can only play in an "absolute beginner" group at most once (and most don't), so I don't think we're going to get many answers that have exact experiences that match, and those that do are just going to be "well the first game I played went like this."

@Phil: what systems?

Savage Worlds - looking at 1 or 2 of either Deadlands, 50 Fathoms or Hellfrost

Already running a War of the Dead game every other week

neat, heh, I don't know either system

heard of SW though

Deadlands is alternate wild west with horror and steampunk

50 fathoms is fantasy pirating

Hellfrost is norse/saxon influenced fantasy

@Cat, of course I can :)

There you go. Do they help?

Bah...Keep getting kicked out of chat and then not being able to find the page again

That sucks.

@Cat chat.stackexchange.com :)

and if you really want to get hyper about it, remember that this is room 11. :) :)

Yeah, it's not the address, it's the lookup that seems to not be working

I'm not a net nerd, so I don't exactly know why a page can be "not found" when it clearly exists

Anyway, it's working for now :)

@Cat usually has to do with a net connection or dns problem

That's the same problem I had earlier :/ I think there's something going wrong closer to SE than to us.

Mmm...anyway, it's annoying!

Yeah, Phil said the same.

Yeah, I just walked to the shops to give it time to sort out.

I went to get a starbucks, lol

(coffee, that is)

mmmm, starbucks.

It was heavenly! :)

Hrmm...need to think of a few more good rpg questions so that I can break the 1000 rep mark!

Damn you, I want one now - and the nearest one is a 30 min round trip away :P

It's hard to come up with questions when you're not playing though

Oops, sorry ;)

I hear that. I'll keep an eye out and try to give you some cool answers too :)

Thanks! I love getting answers!!

Maybe if I browse the legends of Anglerre this afternoon, I'll find some new ones.

@somori: You know FATE pretty well, right? I think FATE's a good answer to the "absolute beginner" RPG question, but I only have experience with the Dresden Files FATE-RPG

Not for him - he's specifically asked for tactical combat.

I don't have any experience with FATE and absolute beginners either.

mm

well, do you know any other good "ready-made" FATE-system RPGs?

there was a comment that FATE is more of a kit to create a game than it is a gam

game*

FATE itself is just a system.

and yes, he wants tactics, but tactics+(newbie friendly) doesn't really exist

at least, as far as I know

Spirit of the Century is a Pulp game, Legends of Anglerre is fantasy and Starblazer Adventures is Space Opera

so I think the best an answer can do is point out some tactical RPGs, and some newbie-friendly RPGs, and let him pick

Man I wish I was better at tactics

I think I needed to play more group WOW or something while I was into that.

It is one of my big weaknesses as a DM

That's why I went with how he could lead people from no knowledge to the base understanding of how 4E works.

I dunno, 4E's still pretty involved

I haven't played 4E, but from descriptions of "tracking status" etc, it doesn't look Newb-friendly to me.

@Cat it's not too bad, and if you play with essentials characters only the status tracking reduces dramatically

(at least on the PC applied status side)

Huh, didn't realize there was a range of char choices that way

I really should try the game sometime. More people need to rpg so I don't have to DM every game I'm in!

If you were anywhere near Nottingham I'd happily run a game for you. I want more games too, dammit.

Thanks somori :)

I appreciate the moral support.

@Cat there are some pretty significant paradigm shifts between the PHB series of characters and the ones that came out later

And yeah, there is a wide range of choices, from "who do I stab?" to "how can I apply status effects to every one of these enemies and then zap all of my status effectees?"

Mmm...sounds like it from the little info I've gotten.

I'd be terrified to DM such a technical game though. Tactics are my achilles heel. I guess it's a matter of having experienced it first hand.

I loved my warden in big battles. Lots of things to think about and choose between while letting the Avenger nuke the leader.

@Cat if you use prebuilt stuff (and there is a lot of it out there for free or free with DDI) it's not too bad. Sure a lot of the time you're PCs will make mincemeat, but it will be fun

Does the game play slower than 3.5, eg

?

@somori wardens are soo much fun

@Cat haven't played 3.5 but yes.

combat is incredibly slow. Rounds can take up to 45 minutes depending on the group, character construction and how well your PCs know the characters and how prepared the DM is

Lol, my attention span is likely too ADHD for that game then ;)

So they are. Especially when they are amoral walking plants. Asking a bandit "So what are you going to do after you kill your hostage?" really set the tone of that game.

I should time my average encounter length to see how they compare

@Cat well, if you DM, or play a defender it's all right, you have to stay focused

Maybe we're fighting that much anyway.

@Cat we just hit paragon (L11), and 1 encounter consumes nearly a whole session for us right now. (well, we don't get started right away, and we've been ending early, but still)

I tend to abbreviate combats once they cease to be interesting - just a grind to finish off the enemy.

But I think if I more effectively used tactics, I could spread it out a bit and make things more interesting for everyone involved.

Wow -that is a long encounter.

@Cat we've been heading that direction too.

@Cat ~2-2.5 hrs for a fairly normal combat

Yeah, see, that's too long for me.

At least as the DM.

I would estimate my longest battles last about 45 mins right now

(and I might be overestimating)

I think the key way to play tactically comes down to paying attention to more resources than hit points. Resources like terrain, line of sight, available magic, traps and so on.

3.5 and 4e both make pretty big deals about resource management, yeah

anyway, bye all

Yeah, I try to consider these factors when designing my encounters, but am really jeuvenile about using them to my advantage when actually running the encounter

See ya!

laters K :)

Juvenile is an odd word to see there :P Why do you say that?

I think I need more experience playing with someone who is a tactical master

Undeveloped?

Immature, game-wise?

Sorry, bad word choice.

My English has been affected by the fact I've lived abroad so much

(not that I do now)

I may be reading it differently then. Juvenile sounds more like penis-jokes than not being confident in the skill.

lol

That would make battle interesting, if not tactical ;)

No, I tend to go light on the penis jokes, being the only woman in my gaming group

Probably wise :P That could get ridiculous fast!

tactical dick-jokes...now there is an idea.

hahaha

In a system with social conflict rules, that might actually work out well in certain situations.

the next time I run an encounter, that is going to be going through me head

:P

I'm Dming this weekend. It's going to come up

lol

Glad I could help ;)

Wow.... D&D Next Hill Dwarves are tough little buggers!

extra con plus a hit die bonus is certainly nothing to sneeze at

I really need to run the numbers on this version of the playtest.

Certainly isn't. If the d12 hit dice barbarian turns up, that could be a bit crazy.

2d6 hit dice per level seems a bit wonky with the hit dice healing mechanic

Heh, this is the first one I'm looking at.

I don't think thats' worth a recalc at this point.

wizzy gets an extra round of life, rogue gets an extra round. or so (both rogue and wizard are now out of range of a single crit death from a L1 goblin)

Yay! No more killer housecats!

Also, I'm noting average damage has been added to the monster document (it's rounded down so no half HP damage)

Nice to see the lists of properties in the magic items chapter - lets more flavour info in there than strict combat utility.

@somori I haven't looked as hard at this iteration as the previous ones, as I'm not planning to DM a session with this anytime soon

I'm not likely to either... but it looks like a good direction they're going in.

@somori I like it so far. much simpler and faster (at low levels at least, than 4e is)

mmmm, less powers, more flavour and better balance than 3.x.

@somori and intuitive stuff instead of flat bonuses for the most part

(ie advantage/disadvantage)

That was quite cool.

<3 was stewing on a question concept from last night and formulating how to ask it, but already found it asked :D I love this site

@LitheOhm :)

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/15637/… love it!!!! Really love SevenSidedDie's comment on the accepted answer, too. Very analytical.

@LitheOhm :)

@LitheOhm d7 didn't comment on the accepted answer? do you mean on the question?

@KRyan Conjure Ice Beast. Pretty much Summon Monster or SNA with the Ice Beast template. From Frostburn

@Novian Ahh, right. IIRC, you get the beasts from a lower-level SNA though, which is kind of bad. Not sure what Ice Beast does

Changes Type to Construct(Cold) and changes stats to more fit construct as well as Contruct Traits and A Special Ability off a list in the template.

if works exactly like SNA

exept

when summoning creatures of lower levels

its Flat ammounts instead of 1dX

that's much better then

sounds solid

and cannot be used to summon fire creatures

they have vulnerability Fire

in a way

weird chat error

sounds solid

isn't there an Arctic Priest or something that lets a Druid spontaneously cast CIB instead of SNA?

dunno

yeah, chat errors galore

the fire vulnerability is a problem of course

yup

there's an Imbue Summoning feat that lets you apply a buff to creatures as you summon them

and My GM is aware of the spells effect and limitation

and is ok

so you could apply a fire-res spell to them when you summon them

If I had a Casting yes

Dont think my list of prayed for spells has one on it right now

well, ok, but that can change daily

ended session in the middle of an in game day

yep

presumably you don't have Imbue Summoning anyway

so it would have to wait until you get to take a new feat anyhow

Imbue Summoning?

something like that

there's a feat, it lets you apply a buff to creatures you summon while summoning them

so you can get the fire-res on them right away

Im thinking about asking My Gm to let me switch a feat as I was Dumb enough to take Eschew Materials for some odd reason

WHY DID I DO IT

heh, oh

it's +1 spell level though

that makes it a bit less desirable

QQ Metamagic

makes sense, but that's still a steep price

dndtools.eu/feats/players-handbook-ii--80/…

id need 3 feats

I kinda didnt do feats correctly

because I was going for some other concept then switched

ah

well

hoping I can Talk My GM into letting change the 2 feats Ive got to more Reflect it

Maybe Bribe him with cheetos

Never underestimate the Bribe

Augment Summoning can get out of hand

small Bonuses always tend to

@Novian: this handbook may have useful ideas for you

huh, I got accepted for that absolute beginner question...

I kinda feel like I didn't deserve that

I don't think my answer's all that good

well I Facebooked him a Polite Sincere Request to change my Feats.

Lets hope he is in a cloud 9 mood

@Novian that's one of the really nice things about 4e, one retrain/level :)

Oh good all Summon Spells have the same Duration

I should Mention that.

Even though Its 3.5e were doing

it can still be used for a point

bbiab

??

be back in a bit?

ah

some acronyms escape me

I'm really not sure ... just guessing

I'm used to brb

@KRyan ah, yes

@Cat that's it

One Acronym that is probably simple is plaguing me. I mean Im a resonably tech saavy guy but Acronyms in the tech industry are so numerous I dont have time to memorized them and textspeech.

Ikr

wtf does that mean

@Novian I know right

.....

......I feel Dumb

welp gotta go

lol. I didn't know it either, @Novian

me neither

gotta go

cya later

later!

Is it possible to manually link related questions? Is there a rep minimum needed to do this?

(or is all the linking done by the system itself?)

@Cat ? what do you mean?

If someone asks a question that is similar to but not a duplicate of a previous question you've asked, is there a way to tag it so that your question comes up as a "linked" or related question in the sidebar?

@Cat just add a comment with the link

And that will bring it up in the sidebar?

Or the sidebar contents are automated?

Oops -gotta go. Gonna be late for my gym class!

@Cat: the sidebar automatically includes any other question that is linked to from question, comment, or answer

@Cat sidebar is automated

ello Wax Eagle, KRyan Im back

@Novian kk

Hows everyone doing

@mxyzplk: I have every intention of editing my answer to get closer to the guidelines, but I don't have time right now

@Novian all right. Still trying to figure out how to do good subtle foreshadowing without giving too much away.

Wait, other people in RPG.SX chat room? o.0

@Canageek it's been a busy few weeks in here :)

@waxeagle Cool. I've been trying to answer more questions. People liked one of them so much I hit rep cap, and that is addicting.

@Canageek :)

Alright does anyone know of any concievable way to get a Feat like Spell Focus for free?

I like Free stuff

I know the answer to weapon proficiency is to either not use it or sink a feat into it

Cant hit crap with a scythe at my level

I suppose though I dont really Need A Scythe

@Novian How on earth would you get a free feat? That would be horribly unbalancing, and if possible, everyone would do it

Yes Im sure.

Still it would be Nice

Perhapse ill take I level or two Dip In wizard or something.

Who Knows?

Maybe Ill be allowed to switch my feats

So that I wont be crippled or have to change character concept

I did ask Nicely and gave valid and sincere reasoning

@Phill.Zitt: Monks are bad at grappling (mediocre BAB, ability score issues, no access to size increases), and typically spending that long removing a single enemy from combat is not a particularly impressive use of actions.

@Novian: the trick with Scythes is to use them to Coup de Grace; auto-crit is scary on an x4 weapon. If you don't have Martial Weapon Proficiency, you probably have bad BAB and wouldn't be very good at swinging at standing opponents anyway.

@Novian /agree with KRyan, scythe is best for when you have some way to guarantee a crit