@MrJinPengyou I've got to agree with Duncan Matheson. Those suits of armor could be at the bottom of the ocean in a vacuum-sealed vault and most of my characters would be suspicious.
When a character (I mean the in-game character, not the player) makes bad decisions, there should definitely be in-game consequences that have an effect on the character. I'm not trying to punish the player, but these consequences should:
Preserve the fun of the game.
Push the story forward.
No...
A healthy dose of Skeptical GM's "Are you sure?" will go a long way to making sure the player knows that he's getting his character into something that may not be salvageable.
Fun is fine, but fun that you think will have only minor consequences is a different thing from Dwarf Fortress Fun.
My first session, a player decided to pick up a whore.
I stared him straight in the eyes, shook out my (at the time shoulder length) hair, put on a sultry but world-weary smile, and flirted him into submission.
It was a lot of fun, and definitely an establishing moment for the group: The GM is crazy and will roll with what what we do... so be sure it's something we want to do!
For some strange reason, my two latest characters have turned out to be enormous man-sluts. Only one by design. And, of course, he fails at it. Turns out, compliments beat sleaziness every time.
FFS, I hate it when a player comes along with a reasonable character concept (here: Somebody who has magic potential, but doesn't know it yet) which fits the world and its history quite nicely (here: Shadowrun's Earth), but the system simply refuses to support it (here: Shadowrun 3) ... :/
Off to make some house rules ... if anyone has quick ideas how to make it work (... or why I shouldn't), I'm all ears.
SR4 has "Latent Awakening", but it doesn't quite fit (it's cheap, the same as being an adept in fact, but leaves the decision of what kind of magic the char will have to the GM).
So I'm left with either "make an adept as far as chargen goes, but with different in-world effects" or "use alternative point-based chargen and create an advantage."
If your character concept makes sense for it, you can buy character-creation features mid-play by spending the right amount of bennies right then, and lowering your bennie recharge cap appropriately.
Heh, turns out it would be like dropping a GURPS char with about 60 points into a group with 100. Not unworkable, but the "gimped" one will need a pretty solid niche to not feel useless.
Yeah, the bennies or boosts from unspent points would have to be commensurate.
FATE makes it work because the stunts you get from spending points are balanced at "roughly +2 bonus in limited circumstance X," which is exactly the bonus on the bennies that you get from unspent points.
So you either get a +2 on every Athletics roll to move from one zone to another, or you get a Fate point you can spend to get a single +2 on just about anything (refreshes every session).
The basic idea would then to get the character some magical "cocoon" (magical resistance of various sorts to the max or nearly so) to somewhat compensate (I can then make sure it matters in terms of what happens in the game ...), which then "breaks" when the char discovers her potential. Maybe a few extra generic "luck points", just to be sure. It could work without replacing the whole system, I think.
Flavor it however you like, so long as they get a limited and generic but still roughly equivalent power boost, which is eroded and lost as they actually spend the points.
I think theory has an important place in most RPG groups; it's a powerful tool for self-analysis so that you can figure out what gameplay, style, and system are a match for the group's needs.
@Undreren Part of the problem for me is that I know I could just stomp the PCs into dust - after all, as a GM I have nearly limitless resources. So it's important I actually limit myself to the same rules the other players are using.
@BrianBallsun-Stanton There's been a dearth of "Welcome to the site, please remember to use subjective-question guidelines" in your absence, if that counts.
My players value system balance and the presence of rules to fall back on, but really appreciate a system where the balance and rules are robust and transparent enough that we can wave our hands vigorously when we want to.
We didn't find 4e battles repetitive, but that may have been because I was breaking myself to make them unique and interesting.
But my group enjoys feeling like there are rules in place to help ensure equal contribution and agency; we don't feel competent to take that responsibility entirely upon ourselves.
Aye. 3.5 did nothing to try ensuring the equal agency that my group likes; it achieved some other goals very admirably, but my group eventually decided that its priorities were not ours.
@Undreren I don't mean balance, really. A three hundred years old dragon will still have a few decades (at least) of a jump start on the "resource gathering" front on nearly any PC group. He'll just still be limited in what he can actually gather. No sudden army of undead without actually getting those dead bodies from somewhere and paying for the magical upkeep of them. :D
(It helps if the system is upfront about what that experience is; this is a major failing of D&D, as it has delusions of being able to support any desired experience.)
Without significant exposure to other RPG systems, it was very easy to think that the houserules we imposed on D&D in an attempt to bend it into something shaped like what we wanted was the right and only way to go.
The fact we were able to force D&D to in some way resemble the game we wanted to play indicated to us that it was indeed that game... until we had context and other systems to compare it to.
Even then, it was a long time coming to the realization that 4e --while a system that chafed us much less sharply-- was still D&D in some core sense that meant we would have to beat it into submission too, if we were to get the kind of experience we wanted.
If tactical combat isn't something you desire, throw D&D in the basket. Don't use a system that is 95% about combat, if you are looking for the remaining 5%
Dogs in the Vineyard was too nebulous and relied too heavily on players understanding a strange and convoluted conflict resolution system (it was mechanically quite elegant, but in practice made little to no sense to us); My Life With Master was a neat and efficient system for achieving an experience none of us wanted.
FATE caters to the mechanically-minded "WoW raider" mentality in some of my group, in that optimization and crunch can be found and created according to each players' taste without stepping on the toes of others who might not want as much crunch.
It places emphasis on the character-exploration RP that we've always found to be the most compelling parts of the RPG experience, and is transparent enough that we feel like we'll be able to throw out the rulebook any time the mechanics get in the way.... but the mechanics are there when we want them, and robust enough to adapt to any situation.
Perhaps we'll run into walls in FATE that don't fit our desired experience, and we'll move along to something else. At the moment it seems pretty much perfect... but so did 4e when we started.
@Undreren I mean mechanics in the general "rules that determine the bounds of possible actions in a given context, and provide a concrete method for resolving them."
@Rob It's good stuff...hmmm I wonder if my parents can get that in Zim :)... I grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey the other night, that's some good stuff, very smooth
Part of character creation is writing a short blurb about your character's first adventure, which is supposed to be the PC's first encounter with the supernatural if his backstory doesn't have him already familiar with it.
That is, each PC is intended to start play "clued in" about the supernatural to some extent.
@BESW well, it should increase the stress by a significant factor. And skepticism should be tagged and invoked regularly at the beginning, but might age away
I'm thinking about a single mental stress attack at the start of the first overtly supernatural conflict, a powerful one based on the refresh spent by the most powerful creature in the conflict.
I had the strangest conversation the other day about forging a sword out of iron in Blood. We figured out it would take no less than a "!@#$ton" and no more than a "whole hell of alot".....Which is alot.
but theoretically it is possible.
problems being you need something with relativly high blood iron content and a method of extracting said iron. as well as alot of the something your extracting blood from.
this is why you find something with greater iron content.
too many men needed, also making a sword of human blood is kinda frowned upon as it involves murdering humans.
or theft of large ammounts of blood.
animals can be sustained. killing off a few each generation and letting a few more reproduce. although you would need a large animal with high Blood Iron content. that also is capable of sustaining population.
it would also be simpler to make a shortsword or dagger perhapse even a Jitte or Tanto. But Jitte and Tanto are lame.
Don't forget that you actually need more iron than is in the final product: drippings, evaporation, spatter, etc., and then at the end you need to sharpen the thing.
I Miss my large Starmetal Heavy Mace, with a feindslaying crystal... was able to do 9d6 per hit to extraplanar evil demons. simple yet effective magic mace.
@Ben-Jamin As I said, focusing resources on special effects that occur on a critical, when one can only manage a 15-20 threat range, is a trap, and I think answers should indicate those when they come up. I think suggesting such options without such warnings is wrong.
@Ben-Jamin Ultimately, how anyone votes is 100% their own prerogative; I commented only because I know I dislike getting anonymously downvoted. C.Ross has seen my comment, and decided he disagreed with me. That's fine. My downvote remains because of what I prioritize in an answer; he is aware of it and that's what matters.
@KRyan Metamagic never seemed worth it to me. The effects are generally worse than actually using spells in whatever higher level the enhanced spells take up.
Stealth is one of those mechanics, however, where --if you do it right-- only the truly paranoid will be using one of those workarounds when you show up.
Draconic Template
Seems kind of pointless on a Dragonfire Adept. Just saying. It’s much better than Half-dragon, but Dragonfire Adepts get most of the benefits of Draconic anyway by virtue of their class features. Yes, you don’t have the natural weapons, but your dragon breath is bet...
@Jonn_Underwood because from the very beginning, the characters are potentially incredibly uneven, due to nothing they've done aside from having lucky rolls once
I agree that mechanically it's probably true, but 3.5's class balance is so uneven already that it's a case of closing the barn door after the horses have left.
I know my groups have found a certain primal joy in stat-rolling, and both 3.5 and 4e delineate high and low boundaries past which stats must be re-rolled.
When a character (I mean the in-game character, not the player) makes bad decisions, there should definitely be in-game consequences that have an effect on the character. I'm not trying to punish the player, but these consequences should:
Preserve the fun of the game.
Push the story forward.
No...
Draconic Template
Seems kind of pointless on a Dragonfire Adept. Just saying. It’s much better than Half-dragon, but Dragonfire Adepts get most of the benefits of Draconic anyway by virtue of their class features. Yes, you don’t have the natural weapons, but your dragon breath is bet...
