Dungeons and Dragons (and other tabletop RPGs)

[voicedotter]

we have so far managed to get along with one of our party members using sense motive. Overall we have caused trouble in the town. Including my character accidentally shooting a crossbow bolt into both of a guys eyes while performing a trickshot. I rolled two 1's.

[clockworkmonk]

I still use the old world setting though. Might be that I simply love the factions in Mage: The Ascension

I've come to the conclusion that nMage has better villains, it's just that their hero factions are so goddamn stupid and boring that I can't bring myself to care.

I greatly prefer using the Technocracy as the heroes. People standing at the edge of reason, defending the world from the unknown and unknowable, safeguarding reality against those who wish to send society into a medieval hell.

and from there, the Tradition mages make excellent villains.

[big boss]

Wizards has a "first game kit", that includes pregen characters, a basic plot, and an adventure on their website.

It even includes an early encounter that will so kill the entire party unless they run away, play really well, or get lucky.

ok thanks i'll look into it. On a side note reading this thread is making me unsure if I actually want to play DnD, I hardly have a clue of what anyone is saying in the thread, but I'll make myself do it because i think once I know how it works I'll actually like playing.

[bigglesworth]

DnD was first published in 1974. It's had almost 40 years to develop its own jargon and idiosyncratic concepts.

However, not all RPGs are DnD! Some have very different focuses, heck, some are cheaper.

What are you looking for in a game?

[SirBryghtside]

It's actually pretty simplistic, even in the stat area. The 'feats' work more like Nu-Bethesda perks than skills, and you only have to think about the attributes occasionally. The rest of the rules are just common logic (like, if you jump off high thing you die) with numbers attached. Everything else is really determined at the DM's whim.

Note that all my knowledge comes from 3.5, I have no idea about the others.

[Chen]

old world of darkness had a rather major problem. Chiefly that the more dice you had in your pool, the more likely you were to fail. had to do with how botches and rolling 1s worked. ideally, a dice pool of about 3 was as high as you would want to go.

Unless this is something we house ruled a long time ago, you have to get no successes on any of the dice and have one of the dice be a 1 to botch a roll. The more dice you have the less likely it is that you roll absolutely no successes. Even if you fail the roll because you rolled 2 successes and 2 1s (which cancelled them), you still didn't botch. Hell on difficulty 6 if I roll 10 dice and get 9 1s and 1 7 I still don't botch. Since only 1 die has to be a success to avoid a botch, its far more likely to botch with a low pool than a high pool.

[Decker]

I'm not sure I completely understand the rules, but I would just change it slightly that you have to have more botch rolls than successes for the whole thing to count as a botch.
I'm sorry, but if you managed to get nine dice out of ten showing ones, it's a botch.

[Chen]

I'm not sure I completely understand the rules, but I would just change it slightly that you have to have more botch rolls than successes for the whole thing to count as a botch.
I'm sorry, but if you managed to get nine dice out of ten showing ones, it's a botch.

Botches are supposed to be rare and monumental failures. Not only did you fail the roll (no successes) but you rolled any number of ones while doing so. Making it failure anytime there are more 1s than the number of successes makes botches drastically more common which is probably not a good thing for the system. It also makes extremely high difficulty actions (>9), more likely to botch if you have more dice rather than less dice, which is fairly counter-intuitive (and what others were complaining about).

[Belial]

I still use the old world setting though. Might be that I simply love the factions in Mage: The Ascension

I've come to the conclusion that nMage has better villains, it's just that their hero factions are so goddamn stupid and boring that I can't bring myself to care.

I greatly prefer using the Technocracy as the heroes. People standing at the edge of reason, defending the world from the unknown and unknowable, safeguarding reality against those who wish to send society into a medieval hell.

and from there, the Tradition mages make excellent villains.

Which is I think why they were done away with. When too many people are confused about why your villain splats are villains, you aren't doing a terribly good job.

Now, using the technocracy as heroes required overlooking a looooooot of their practices and dogma, but it still happened just a whole hell of a lot.

[clockworkmonk]

But which faction didn't have serious issues in practice in Mage? the Traditions had their own serious issues dealing with internal troubles. And White Wolf went out of their way to make both the Traditions and the Technocracy playable as the heroes. Mainly based on the technocracy guide book.

besides, what fun would it be if the organization you worked for wasn't bat-shittingly corrupt, especially if you worked with the Syndicate in Pentex.

[Scuttlemutt]

I don't mean to interrupt this convo but I do have a question about DnD 4e... To what extent should a DM be able to veto the use of PCs abilities? I've heard flying mounts is often an issue because it pretty much removes time as a factor from any long journey, but I've recently seen an issue where the party Wizard got frustrated after the DM "overruled" his new Lv15 daily spell "Slumber of the Winter Court". For those not familiar, the effect goes like this; If the power hits, the targets need to make a saving throw at the end of their next turn. If they fail the saving throw, they fall unconscious for 1d4 hours. There's no damage at all, otherwise. Arguably that is a pretty powerful spell, but is it right for the DM to outright go "You can't use this"? Especially since the creatures that start showing up (high end paragon) are also getting pretty nasty.

[hendusoone]

I don't think it's right for the DM to veto a power like that, unless he provides a very good reason that makes sense in the context of your game's world. I mean, it's a daily - those are supposed to be very powerful, and with a regular load of 4 or 5 (or even 6, but that's getting a bit crazy, especially if they are relatively high-level) encounters in a day (without an extended rest), it's only really going to help in one of the encounters, especially since it's a Wizard. See PHB page 158, in the Daily and Utility Spells section, where it says "You begin knowing two daily spells, one of which you can use on any given day." So, a wizard can't blast out all of the daily powers he knows in a single day. Just one.

If the DM wanted to limit use of the power, the correct way to do it would be to provide a mix of 4-6 good encounters in a day where a number of the monsters have a high save against that spell.


But ultimately, the DM is the one running the game. He's got the final say on what is and isn't allowed. If you want to continue playing with him as the DM, it may be necessary to put up with crap like that.

[Gelsamel]

Just yet another problem with vancian magic, but the DM can get around it as long as they build their game world properly. But it's a problem of the game system to unintentionally require so much work from the DM.

[Yakk]

The DM probably doesn't know the right response to that.

Each monster does a heal check on themselves. This heal check gives them a save, and failing it does not trigger the after effects.

The DC to grant a save is 15. At level 15 with 12 wisdom, you have a +8, so you have a 80% chance of succeeding.

You then make a save, for a 55% chance to shrug off the effect. If this happens, you are no longer dazed, and get a move and a minor action back.

If that fails, you get another save at the end of your round.

Between the two of them, a normal monster has a 80.3% chance of not falling unconscious (and just losing a turn). So the power is slightly stronger than a burst 2 stun effect, but only slightly.

Monsters that do fall unconscious can be woken up via damage from their allies (ie, an allied monster can pick up an improved weapon. Level+5 (including CA) vs defence-5 has a pretty good chance of landing for 1d4+strength damage, waking up the target. (Coup is always optional).

Now, add in some save penalties, and it gets stronger. Fortunately, most save penalties only apply to the first save, so you can get that over with by the self-heal check.

Odds are that the DM didn't work this out as an option, and just didn't want to think about the problem, and/or simply doesn't trust the 4e game designers to know what they are doing. It is also possible the DM is just on a power trip. Context is lacking!

[Chen]

Just yet another problem with vancian magic, but the DM can get around it as long as they build their game world properly. But it's a problem of the game system to unintentionally require so much work from the DM.

The DM needs to know how to make encounters. The system involves fighting 4 (I think) combats between extended rests. This means resource management is a part of the game. You don't blow all your daily abilities in the first fight. If you do, sure it will be a cakewalk. And then you'll be screwed later. The spell doesn't even sound that broken. Yakk points out good ways to add saves and you can always wake someone up with damage.

Now that said, there are more broken abilities available (especially if you compare to the overall power level of some abilities) so I personally have no problem allowing a DM to ban spells/abilities. I mostly play 3.5 where its much more of an issue, but even in 4th it seems reasonable for some abilities.

[Belial]

I don't mean to interrupt this convo but I do have a question about DnD 4e... To what extent should a DM be able to veto the use of PCs abilities? I've heard flying mounts is often an issue because it pretty much removes time as a factor from any long journey, but I've recently seen an issue where the party Wizard got frustrated after the DM "overruled" his new Lv15 daily spell "Slumber of the Winter Court". For those not familiar, the effect goes like this; If the power hits, the targets need to make a saving throw at the end of their next turn. If they fail the saving throw, they fall unconscious for 1d4 hours. There's no damage at all, otherwise. Arguably that is a pretty powerful spell, but is it right for the DM to outright go "You can't use this"? Especially since the creatures that start showing up (high end paragon) are also getting pretty nasty.

The correct choice was to not let the player take the spell in the first place. If the DM considers the spell broken, they can just declare that it doesn't exist in their world (or that the player can't find anyone to teach it), and that is perfectly valid (unless they declare so many spells verboten that a particular class no longer has a decent selection). Once the player has been allowed to take the spell, however, you're absolutely right that simply declaring that they're not allowed to use it is dirty pool, especially if there's absolutely no in-character reason given, and the only out-of-character reason is "it would be too easy".

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, I'm just thinking.. at Level 15, anything that requires a save is going to play out as "There's a respectable chance it'll work" or "Are you kidding? The creature doesn't even notice, that's how high it's saves are" with most things falling in the latter camp, it being up to player knowledge, both meta and in-game, to determine the best spell for the job. Which is why Wizards are so powerful, due to their large bag of trickses as compared to other classes and such....


So yeah, what Belial said. It's ridiculous to let someone take a power if you don't plan on letting them use it.

What hendusoone said (and you may not have picked up on). If there's a sufficiently good reason (You were in an Aura of Caffination. Sleep effects always fail) then... alright then. Make that clearer as to why it failed, or at least frame it correctly - not "You can't do that" but "Alright, you do it.. and nothing happens, which is downright freaky. You know the spell went off, but you also know that they didn't even have to save". Also, the bit about arranging fights in such a way that the players are likely to have already blown that spell before the Big Fight.

And what Yakk said. There's gobs of ways around sleep effects that reasonably intelligent creatures (Read : 10 Int, or 6-8 Int if there's a history of dealing with them or specific instructions or what have you) that they can use to turn the powerful Sleep 1d4 Hours! spell into a Sleep for.. like, a round, and then be kinda groggy for a round which doesn't actually have in-game effects! spell, which is.. significantly less impressive.

[Belial]

Bear in mind that he's describing a 4e power, so the idea of making active saves against powers has changed kindof a lot.

[SecondTalon]

Yeah, it's armor class now. Same principle, though, da? If you've only got a +10 to your attack and the critter has a 50 defense, you know you're only hitting on a 1-in-20 shot.

[Yakk]

For the most part, that is handled in 4e via solo monster mechanics.

Ie, instead of meeting a level 30 critter at level 15, you'd run into a level 21 solo. Same XP value, way more HP, higher damage per hit, less accuracy, and you can connect on lower than a natural 20 if you pull off bonuses. (And if you are fighting a level 30 solo at level 15, you simply lose -- many level 30+ solos cannot be affected by any pre-epic opponents)

[Belial]

True story.

But yeah, in summation, if:

1. The power isn't working for an in-character reason, the DM needs to make that clear either subtly or directly.
2. It's not working because the DM thinks the power is broken, they need to ban it and let the player pick a new one.
3. It's not working because it will break this particular encounter or story but is fine otherwise, the DM needs to come up with an in character reason why it's not working (or engineer a situation that forces the player to use it up before the encounter).

The danger of that third one is that if you in-character nullify the power in every encounter, you frustrate the everloving shit out of your players. If you find yourself having to take your players' toys away in every single encounter, or even the majority of them, you need to question whether you actually wanted option 2, or whether you need to be setting up different encounters.

[Yakk]

Now, there are a few other things that could have gone wrong.

4e is designed such that creatures know the effects of the powers that attack them. Or at least they act as if they know. So someone hit by that spell knows that they are in danger of immediately falling asleep unless they shake it off quickly, and if they don't they'll be down for hours (and it is the middle of a combat).

Even a creature that is "dumb" will understand that the wizard over there did something to it, and it is groggy and in danger of falling asleep and it doesn't make any sense and it needs to wake up and it is pissed off about it and zzz#$#@$@$#
NO CARRIER

[Vaniver]

Yeah, it's armor class now. Same principle, though, da? If you've only got a +10 to your attack and the critter has a 50 defense, you know you're only hitting on a 1-in-20 shot.

That's the Int vs. Will part of the spell. Then there's a 45% chance that the creature fails its save (20% chance for solos), and then it's out of the combat. With the Orb of Imposition, both of those numbers are significantly higher- maybe 70% and 45%. (Against an on-level solo you have a ~50% chance to hit, so the properly specialized wizard has a ~20% chance to end boss fights after a single round.) For Sleep, the 1st level variety, the unconsciousness is save ends- and so the sleep spell knocks out an average of .25 solo rounds if it hits (assuming a 80% chance to save).

Yakk- where do you see that failed saves from the Heal check don't trigger the effect? Is that from errata?

[Chen]

Yakk- where do you see that failed saves from the Heal check don't trigger the effect? Is that from errata?

I seem to recall that any save you gain during a round (whether by power or heal check) won't trigger the "first unsuccessful save" effects and the like. I have a feeling it was in errata but it might be in the second player's handbook.

[Yakk]

Failed Saving Throw

Sometimes an effect changes as a target fails saving throws against it. The new effect, specified in a “First Failed Saving Throw” or a “Second Failed Saving Throw” entry, takes effect after the target fails a saving throw against the previous effect at the end of the target’s turn. The effect doesn’t change if the creature fails a saving throw against it at a time other than the end of its turn.

Effects that grant saving throws would otherwise be bad against a number of powers.

I think this clarification was published in PHB2, as well as in Dragon magazine.

On top of that, a number of powers who grant save penalties now only grant them against the first save against the power.

This makes "grant a save" using heal an even more effective option (relatively), as it eats up the certain-to-fail save roll.

With a -10 penalty on the first save, a solo has a 30% chance to save on the "grant-a-save" action, then an 80% on the next, summing to 86%. Minions nearby can also attempt to grant a save (and what solo lacks minions?) even at the risk of themselves falling asleep. On top of that, MM3 style solos tend to have ways to defend against daze type conditions (like saving early).

[clockworkmonk]

so my friend is adapting first edition modules (think temple of elemental evil) for pathfinder, and I am excited.

Also picked up some spelljammer stuff and as always it tempts me with its silly awesome fun.

[voicedotter]

Has anyone here heard of Boxcar Joe the Magical Hobo or Old Man Henderson?

[Belial]

Osiris Christ, WotC, I stuck with you all the way through 4th edition. It even won me over, despite reservations. But you're already working on 5e now?

What. The Hell.

[SecondTalon]

Just found one article on it, may seek out more. So far, what I read sounded neat - re-hiring Monty Cook, asking fans for input.

They're shooting for a 2018 release, right? Because that's how long it'll take to tabulate the most-requested items, come up with mechanics for them and then tweak them until they're balanced.

Players will get their first chance to play-test the proposed changes this month at the Dungeons & Dragons Experience convention – running January 26-29 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

They're releasing the final product in June and at this point are just arguing over cover designs, aren't they?

[Chen]

Just found one article on it, may seek out more. So far, what I read sounded neat - re-hiring Monty Cook, asking fans for input.

They're shooting for a 2018 release, right? Because that's how long it'll take to tabulate the most-requested items, come up with mechanics for them and then tweak them until they're balanced.

I'm pretty sure the "tweak them until they're balanced" part doesn't actually happen, so that'll save some time.

[Vaniver]

Hm. I liked 4e when it was 3 books, but was not pleased by the bloat that followed. I don't particularly mind the idea of starting over with just the base, especially if they've made a few improvements, but it's not clear to me what improvements they would make. Redoing monster progression / stats? Altering the action economy a bit?

[Yakk]

Well, the most recent 4e book was quite solid (Feywild) compared to previous ones.

--

Some of the articles (blatantly talking about 5e before the announcement) have been quite interesting.

To handle bloat, they are talking about having modular "power ups" on characters. Instead of balancing for a party of 5 level 3 characters, you'd have balance for a party of 5 level 3 characters with 3 optional modules added.

This will give them design space to add content like "Themes", "Magic equipment", "Artifacts", "Blessings", "Grandmaster trainings", "Subclasses" modularly to a character -- or campaign.

Instead of the 4e hack where you get inherent bonuses for not having Magic Equipment in the campaign, the baseline 5e could have no such equipment presumed -- with a modular campaign option where it is slotted in, and the impact on encounter balance is accounted for on the DM's side.

I thought that was neat, if they could pull it off.

[Jonesthe Spy]

4th Ed left me totally cold, never been slightly interested in playing it. I still play 3.5 with friends and have been checking out Pathfinder, which seems to have a lot of things going for it without being a complete rewrite.

I'm curious about 5th - could be good, could be horrible. The thing I'd like to see most is a return to the versatility of the 3.x rules but with more balance between the spellcasters vs non-spellcasters.

[Vaniver]

I thought that was neat, if they could pull it off.

That actually does sound super neat, especially if it's not "we expect you to have three bonuses" but "this is how much you should up the difficulty for each additional bonus."

[Woopate]

If they release before 2015, they'll have a shorter dev cycle than for Skyrim (from release of respective franchise's previous version). And if they're doing promos at the end of the month, shorter by A LOT. Somehow I don't feel that's right for a pen and paper game where the cost of the core books could buy several video games. I understand that new game systems don't take THAT long to develop, but such a short time "in the wild" means they probably did not release the splatbooks they could have for 4th ed.

Near the end of 3.5, the splatbooks were getting pretty light on content, as I'm not in the 4th edition scene, so I have to ask, has anyone noticed a likewise trend with 4.0 recently?

I'm about ready to retire 3.5 rules, so if 5th edition does not move towards a higher dependance on peripherals (minis, randomized booster packs of cards with abilities, computer dependance, or subscription services etc.)(and I am aware that these CAN add to the fun, I just dislike them being presented as the reason FOR the fun), then I'll likely migrate.

[Chen]

When we played 4th, I found the monster's manual needed to have ways to change monsters for different skill levels of players. The default monsters got crushed by a party that took optimized abilities, even if just from the base book. I understand they needed to do that so that a suggested encounter didn't destroy a party if they choose more suboptimal skills. Clearly we could (and did) modify things like monster HP and the damage they dealt to try and balance that, but it would have been nice if these bonuses were built in and tested professionally (since sometimes we overbuffed or still underbuffed something). If this new modular design philosophy is true, it does sound like its moving in that direction which is a good thing.

I'd like to also see a little bit more balance in ability choices. I recall some levels had clearly sub-par options compared to the rest e.g., one wizard level of abilities had a fire pure damage aoe spell and some sort of earth grasp aoe. The average damage increase by taking the fire one was I believe 2 points (total), whereas the earth one did less damage but immobilized creatures as well. While not strictly worse, it was almost unthinkable to take the fire spell over the earth one.

[Vaniver]

When we played 4th, I found the monster's manual needed to have ways to change monsters for different skill levels of players. The default monsters got crushed by a party that took optimized abilities, even if just from the base book. I understand they needed to do that so that a suggested encounter didn't destroy a party if they choose more suboptimal skills. Clearly we could (and did) modify things like monster HP and the damage they dealt to try and balance that, but it would have been nice if these bonuses were built in and tested professionally (since sometimes we overbuffed or still underbuffed something). If this new modular design philosophy is true, it does sound like its moving in that direction which is a good thing.

I'd like to also see a little bit more balance in ability choices. I recall some levels had clearly sub-par options compared to the rest e.g., one wizard level of abilities had a fire pure damage aoe spell and some sort of earth grasp aoe. The average damage increase by taking the fire one was I believe 2 points (total), whereas the earth one did less damage but immobilized creatures as well. While not strictly worse, it was almost unthinkable to take the fire spell over the earth one.

4e felt remarkably better at this than 3.5. The sorts of 4e characters my friends would build were about 20-50% better than ones chosen at random / for thematic purposes; in 3.5, it would be more like 400% better. (And that's assuming they just made a Frenzied Berserker, not something like Pun-Pun.) The tradeoff between immobilization and 2 points of damage is pretty close to balanced, especially when you look at the 3.5 spell list for comparison. (What do you mean Phantom Trap isn't as useful as Glitterdust?)

[Gelsamel]

And then there is stuff like Storm Sorc + Admix Thunder Blazing Starfall + Resounding Thunder

[Chen]

4e felt remarkably better at this than 3.5. The sorts of 4e characters my friends would build were about 20-50% better than ones chosen at random / for thematic purposes; in 3.5, it would be more like 400% better. (And that's assuming they just made a Frenzied Berserker, not something like Pun-Pun.) The tradeoff between immobilization and 2 points of damage is pretty close to balanced, especially when you look at the 3.5 spell list for comparison. (What do you mean Phantom Trap isn't as useful as Glitterdust?)

Oh no doubt about this. There were much bigger character imbalances in 3.5. 2 damage vs immobilization is balanced compared to 3.5 but it certainly isn't a worthwhile trade if you're looking at 4th alone. An AOE status effect tends to be more useful than AOE damage unless you're talking about minions. The change in power level as a monster takes damage tends to be far less important than just plain out killing monsters. AOE status effects let the rest of the group just focus down other monsters which makes the whole encounter easier.

I may find it worse since I had a lot of experience with 3.5 and already realized the CR system was a joke. We never went by it and routinely had to increase monster HP by significant amounts or encounters were just breezed through. Since I haven't played a lot of 4th I had assumed they rebalanced monsters in a better way. But going by the suggested encounters STILL just lead to players destroying the opposition with little trouble. I recall a recommended encounter of 3 skeleton warrior things, some minions and a beholder. I had to double the beholder's hit points AND add another beholder (at normal hp) before the encounter was even a bit challenging. Also I don't know if in general we're doing something wrong, but I found there was almost NO risk of player death in 4th. Players were durable and monsters didn't do enough damage. Now intelligent monsters could focus fire, but for a lot of encounters this would mean playing the monsters smarter than they are. For those were the monsters are generally dumb and/or instinctive there seemed very little player risk.

[Ixtellor]

So all my old (physically) friends sent me the news about the new edition, and they seem jazzed.

I am curious how people other than teenagers have the time to enjoy the game.
Between work, family (damn wife), responsibility of maintaining a home/cars/other, I don't see how any adult would have the time.

Especially when you factor in that older players tend to enjoy the role playing and less hack n slash aspects of the game. It would take my group 3 hours just to buy equipment.

I realize we could cut a lot of stuff out: Me "I buy a longsword" DM "you have a longsword subtract X gold". But then you sacrifice immersion in your character and the 'world' of DnD.

Most of my favorite Top Secret (James Bond DnD) Sessions never actually resulted in even getting to the adventure. (covering up dead hookers and killing drug dealers seemed to take precedents over national security.) And that shit takes a lot of time.
The DM has to adjust to the parties unwillingness to go on their adventure..... just rambling now.

Seems like DnD is the domain of singles and people with low effort jobs. (ie teenagers)
I say this as an enthusiast nerd who spent the ages of 10-25 playing the game.