Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Largo833
One thing in particular that bugs me about this- for the vast majority of the DMs I've seen override rules based on what they consider realistic, they ONLY seem to do it in ways that hurt the PCs and never in ways that play out in their favor. I feel like a lot of DMs who block player actions this way don't even care about realism- they're just looking for an excuse to say "no" to the players and limit their options.
Right. But here's the thing: the point of having realism in games is to enrich the game. It's not about telling people that they can't have nice things that they want. It's about making sure that the game design gives people more cool things to do, while making those cool things cooler than they would be otherwise. And it's one thing to decide that, under the circumstances, you can't handle something realistically without the game being impractical to play or impossible to balance. It's a very different thing to not even try.
Take 3e's rapid reload feat as an example. This is a realism problem. The reason it's a realism problem is not that I, or anyone else I know of, is unwilling to suspend disbelief and accept that this is a thing that people might be able to do in a world of elves, wizards and dragons.
It's a realism problem because there was never a need to negate the crossbow's limitations in order to make them effective. With a bit of effort, they could have provided build options centred around devastating sniper attacks that deal massive damage in a single shot, enabling crossbow fans to be effective while letting them use something that actually behaves how one might expect a crossbow to behave.
You are going to have to do quite a bit of convincing if you want me to accept that a realistic approach to crossbows is worse than having a hack designer cough up a hack feat that does literally nothing except let you pretend that your crossbow is a bow.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lesser_minion
Right. But here's the thing: the point of having realism in games is to enrich the game. It's not about telling people that they can't have nice things that they want. It's about making sure that the game design gives people more cool things to do, while making those cool things cooler than they would be otherwise. And it's one thing to decide that, under the circumstances, you can't handle something realistically without the game being impractical to play or impossible to balance. It's a very different thing to not even try.
Take 3e's rapid reload feat as an example. This is a realism problem. The reason it's a realism problem is not that I, or anyone else I know of, is unwilling to suspend disbelief and accept that this is a thing that people might be able to do in a world of elves, wizards and dragons.
It's a realism problem because there was never a need to negate the crossbow's limitations in order to make them effective. With a bit of effort, they could have provided build options centred around devastating sniper attacks that deal massive damage in a single shot, enabling crossbow fans to be effective while letting them use something that actually behaves how one might expect a crossbow to behave.
You are going to have to do quite a bit of convincing if you want me to accept that a realistic approach to crossbows is worse than having a hack designer cough up a hack feat that does literally nothing except let you pretend that your crossbow is a bow.
can you run that by me again? i'm afraid i don't understand. you're saying that the "rapid reload" is a problem because it suspends realism or needlessly reinforces it? historically, the crossbow always had a bit of a problem reloading quickly. the fire rate was paltry next to a trained archer, but learning the crossbow didn't take 10 years of daily training. people had stirrups, winches, slings, cranks, the works to mitigate the long reload time of the crossbow.
... you want a quick shot crossbow, you make it pump-action with a magazine, nerf-gun style. would it realistically be able to hit as hard as a siege crossbow? no. blame a gnome on the design and boom, you're good to go! realism probably went out the window, but at least you've got a quick-shot crossbow. you may not be legolas, but imagine you tie a few bolts together and you've got a medieval-fantastic shotgun. for those times you want to play the expendables in dnd.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Guizonde
for those times you want to play the expendables in dnd.
Which is the BEST kind of dnd. Only with a lot more comedy.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bashhammer
Which is the BEST kind of dnd. Only with a lot more comedy.
played in a campaign like that. 3 old guys, a teenage girl, in a post-apocalyptic world using a hybrid of dark heresy and whfrp. we got good at one-liners. we also got good at utterly devastating anything in our way.
"what did you feel when you murdered the druglord?"
"recoil."
"here's something medicinal for you!" *throws molotov cocktail made out of moonshine*
*gets attacked by a group of velociraptors* *deadpan* "talk about a crappy day."
"you *pistol whip* don't *leg sweep* hit *curb stomp* my *dislocate shoulder* dogs!! *execution*"
"oh, this has got to die..."
"it's gonna take a bit of killing, that." *cycles sniper rifle*
"we getting breakfast afterwards?"
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Guizonde
can you run that by me again? i'm afraid i don't understand. you're saying that the "rapid reload" is a problem because it suspends realism or needlessly reinforces it? historically, the crossbow always had a bit of a problem reloading quickly. the fire rate was paltry next to a trained archer, but learning the crossbow didn't take 10 years of daily training. people had stirrups, winches, slings, cranks, the works to mitigate the long reload time of the crossbow.
You seem to be looking at it from a DM perspective, rather than a design perspective.
In 3e, the advantage of a bow is that you can use it in a full attack (full attacks, of course, are an example of a different sort of realism problem, but that's a rant for later), whereas a crossbow has to be reloaded as a move or full-round action after every shot. Crossbows are more likely to land critical hits and have some situational advantages (e.g., you can use a crossbow while prone), but you cannot normally attack with one more than once per round, so they're substantially weaker.
The designers of 3.5 decided to partially balance this by making a feat that lets you reload some crossbows (only light crossbows, which don't grant any more damage than bows) as a free action. This isn't realistic, but that's not automatically a bad thing, as long as tables get something good as a result. But they don't: they just get an opportunity to waste a feat making their crossbow into a slightly weaker bow.
The 'realistic' approach to solving this problem would have been to keep the rate of fire limitation and devise a way to make crossbows good regardless. For example, the ranged weapons tree could branch off into a "machine guns" tree for people who want to just pepper everything in sight with arrows, and a "sniper" tree for crossbow wielders and others who want to delete an enemy with a single shot.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lesser_minion
You seem to be looking at it from a DM perspective, rather than a design perspective.
In 3e, the advantage of a bow is that you can use it in a full attack (full attacks, of course, are an example of a different sort of realism problem, but that's a rant for later), whereas a crossbow has to be reloaded as a move or full-round action after every shot. Crossbows are more likely to land critical hits and have some situational advantages (e.g., you can use a crossbow while prone), but you cannot normally attack with one more than once per round, so they're substantially weaker.
The designers of 3.5 decided to partially balance this by making a feat that lets you reload some crossbows (only light crossbows, which don't grant any more damage than bows) as a free action. This isn't realistic, but that's not automatically a bad thing, as long as tables get something good as a result. But they don't: they just get an opportunity to waste a feat making their crossbow into a slightly weaker bow.
The 'realistic' approach to solving this problem would have been to keep the rate of fire limitation and devise a way to make crossbows good regardless. For example, the ranged weapons tree could branch off into a "machine guns" tree for people who want to just pepper everything in sight with arrows, and a "sniper" tree for crossbow wielders and others who want to delete an enemy with a single shot.
that makes a lot of sense, and i understand your griping much better. i'd never seen it that way, probably because i never favored ranged builds with any characters before. thinking about it, didn't pf try and pull off something similar to your suggestion for ranger favored weapons? i remember seeing both a bow and a crossbow feat pool on the pfsrd.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Mine is when people take umbrage at a GM who bans options for flavor reasons. I do this harshly. I see Pathfinder as a giant, super cool red toolbox with, like, a bajillion drawers like my grandpa used to have, and I don't see why I would ever come anywhere close to wanting to use all those tools on the same project. This is especially true of spellcasters. If I'm running the Occult Adventures classes, I don't really need Arcane casters outside of the Witch, and I don't need Clerics or Oracles or spellcasting Rangers. I like my spellcasting flavor within a campaign restricted to a particular focus or two. As to particular spells, I will never not ban teleportation and resurrection. I'm always up front about what is and isn't allowed, of course.
My other one is when people rail about railroading, without contextualizing it. What would be railroading in one game isn't necessarily so in another. For example, I love the idea of 20th Century Pathfinder, but the traditional adventuring style doesn't really fit with a country like 1960s America. You'd think the government would have figured out a way to handle monsters a long time ago, and that they'd be all over keeping dangerous mages under control (in fact, I assume that the people who can send kids to mage schools are usually people with wealth [and if you don't learn the underlying principles of spellcasting by puberty, you will never be a competent mage, so your childhood background is vital], and people with wealth are also the politician class, which means even in a democracy, the government itself is full of mages). Certainly wouldn't want a bunch of uber-powerful vigilantes running around doing whatever they want for money and fame, and enforcing their own moral code.
So, this campaign setting has player characters working for the government. They are the people dispatched to handle monsters and spellcasters that are too powerful for the local authorities to handle. With such a setup, the PCs logically cannot decide where and when to serve. Something happens, the PCs commanding officer tells them something happened and to go down there and handle it. This would be horrifically railroading in most games, but here, it makes logical sense. Can't really have the cops/special agents deciding for themselves when and where to deal with threats, which by extension means the players kind of can't choose whether or not to bite on a story hook. Now, if the players want to go to a specific place or do a specific type of adventure, they could ask me out of character between sessions, and I could maybe have that be the next thing the commanding officer sends them, but in character, I kind of have to railroad them.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
Mine is when people take umbrage at a GM who bans options for flavor reasons. I do this harshly. I see Pathfinder as a giant, super cool red toolbox with, like, a bajillion drawers like my grandpa used to have, and I don't see why I would ever come anywhere close to wanting to use all those tools on the same project. This is especially true of spellcasters. If I'm running the Occult Adventures classes, I don't really need Arcane casters outside of the Witch, and I don't need Clerics or Oracles or spellcasting Rangers. I like my spellcasting flavor within a campaign restricted to a particular focus or two. As to particular spells, I will never not ban teleportation and resurrection. I'm always up front about what is and isn't allowed, of course.
Some/many people look at "Pathfinder" as the game that they're going to be playing, in the same way that they'd be playing Monopoly or Texas Holdem or Munchkin. When you say you'll be using Pathfinder rules, they hear "We're going to be playing Pathfinder", and don't understand why (from their perception) you've taped over the Park Place and Boardwalk spots, or removed the Aces from the card deck, or whatever. For them, the setting is secondary to the game they're going to be playing.
Personally, I think your toolbox approach is the better approach, starting with setting and then seeing which parts of the system fit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
My other one is when people rail about railroading, without contextualizing it. What would be railroading in one game isn't necessarily so in another. For example, I love the idea of 20th Century Pathfinder, but the traditional adventuring style doesn't really fit with a country like 1960s America. You'd think the government would have figured out a way to handle monsters a long time ago, and that they'd be all over keeping dangerous mages under control (in fact, I assume that the people who can send kids to mage schools are usually people with wealth [and if you don't learn the underlying principles of spellcasting by puberty, you will never be a competent mage, so your childhood background is vital], and people with wealth are also the politician class, which means even in a democracy, the government itself is full of mages). Certainly wouldn't want a bunch of uber-powerful vigilantes running around doing whatever they want for money and fame, and enforcing their own moral code.
So, this campaign setting has player characters working for the government. They are the people dispatched to handle monsters and spellcasters that are too powerful for the local authorities to handle. With such a setup, the PCs logically cannot decide where and when to serve. Something happens, the PCs commanding officer tells them something happened and to go down there and handle it. This would be horrifically railroading in most games, but here, it makes logical sense. Can't really have the cops/special agents deciding for themselves when and where to deal with threats, which by extension means the players kind of can't choose whether or not to bite on a story hook. Now, if the players want to go to a specific place or do a specific type of adventure, they could ask me out of character between sessions, and I could maybe have that be the next thing the commanding officer sends them, but in character, I kind of have to railroad them.
That's not really railroading, that's something that flows from the in-"fiction" circumstances.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
Can't really have the cops/special agents deciding for themselves when and where to deal with threats, which by extension means the players kind of can't choose whether or not to bite on a story hook. Now, if the players want to go to a specific place or do a specific type of adventure, they could ask me out of character between sessions, and I could maybe have that be the next thing the commanding officer sends them, but in character, I kind of have to railroad them.
Have you ever watched Homeland, or the Wire? The cops/special agents do have a certain amount of push within the organisation, and when they don't, they can often find ways to work around orders.
Re: What is your "Fight Me" thread?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lesser_minion
Right. But here's the thing: the point of having realism in games is to enrich the game.
Realism is all well and nice, I suppose. But at some point, one must realize that this is a GAME. Some of the rules are abstractions (Armor Clas and Hit Points come to mind) that exist the way they do to streamline the game so it can be FUN.
I'm not going to tell you how you should or should not play. But ask your players if they think your rules changes are fun, and listen to them. The only wrong way to play D&D/PF is one in which your players are not having fun.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
Mine is when people take umbrage at a GM who bans options for flavor reasons. I do this harshly. I see Pathfinder as a giant, super cool red toolbox with, like, a bajillion drawers like my grandpa used to have, and I don't see why I would ever come anywhere close to wanting to use all those tools on the same project. This is especially true of spellcasters. If I'm running the Occult Adventures classes, I don't really need Arcane casters outside of the Witch, and I don't need Clerics or Oracles or spellcasting Rangers. I like my spellcasting flavor within a campaign restricted to a particular focus or two. As to particular spells, I will never not ban teleportation and resurrection. I'm always up front about what is and isn't allowed, of course.
The bolded part, to me, is THE single most important element of any house rules in a game.
My only question is this: If you were running a game wherin you had restricted certain options, let's say classes, due to flavor reasons. And you had a player who had a concept for one of those restricted classes...and his backstory and character concept just blew you out of the water with its originality, and left plenty of meaty plot hooks for you, the DM to work with. Would you consider an exception?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Roxxy
My other one is when people rail about railroading, without contextualizing it. What would be railroading in one game isn't necessarily so in another. For example, I love the idea of 20th Century Pathfinder, but the traditional adventuring style doesn't really fit with a country like 1960s America. You'd think the government would have figured out a way to handle monsters a long time ago, and that they'd be all over keeping dangerous mages under control (in fact, I assume that the people who can send kids to mage schools are usually people with wealth [and if you don't learn the underlying principles of spellcasting by puberty, you will never be a competent mage, so your childhood background is vital], and people with wealth are also the politician class, which means even in a democracy, the government itself is full of mages). Certainly wouldn't want a bunch of uber-powerful vigilantes running around doing whatever they want for money and fame, and enforcing their own moral code.
So, this campaign setting has player characters working for the government. They are the people dispatched to handle monsters and spellcasters that are too powerful for the local authorities to handle. With such a setup, the PCs logically cannot decide where and when to serve. Something happens, the PCs commanding officer tells them something happened and to go down there and handle it. This would be horrifically railroading in most games, but here, it makes logical sense. Can't really have the cops/special agents deciding for themselves when and where to deal with threats, which by extension means the players kind of can't choose whether or not to bite on a story hook. Now, if the players want to go to a specific place or do a specific type of adventure, they could ask me out of character between sessions, and I could maybe have that be the next thing the commanding officer sends them, but in character, I kind of have to railroad them.
2 things: One, I agree about Railroading and how context is necessary. Then again, I have had players who were so used to pre-published modules from their last DM that after having a short mini-campaign where they had been given total freedom, LITERALLY asked me for the next game to be a railroad plotline.
And two: If you like the 20th century PF idea, you should check out Maximum Xcrawl. Xcrawl was a 3.0 setting about D&D stuff being true in our modern world, and had been all thru history. It radically changed history, and in modern times, dungeon crawls are done as televised Pay-Per-View events. The setting was never updated to 3.5, but they recently released Maximum Xcrawl, which updated it to Pathfinder. There's a great system for patronage, modern wealth trappings, and so on. And, of course, all those PPV dungeon crawls need to be stocked with monsters, so one campaign option would be to be professional monster ranchers, with specific missions to capture certain monsters ALIVE. Or they could work for a specific DJ (Dungeon Judge, the guys who, in-game, make the dungeons) and have a diplomatic mission to get an orc or hobgoblin tribe to agree to participate. Or maybe a monster gets loose in a populated city, and they have to eliminate it. Lots of options, I have the book and love it. Check it out. Also, all that old 3.0 Xcrawl material is still great fluff.
