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2012-09-28, 08:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I've rarely seen anyone actually play with rolled stats lower than what you could get with a 32 point buy. I'm nearly convinced that people who enjoy rolling and legitimately use the first roll they get rather than rerolling til they get awesome stats only exist in arguments on the internet.
Even in my regular group, who I've been playing with for 10 years now and is generally really good about no cheating issues, the one time we tried a regular roll 4d6, everyone came back with 50pb equivalents and all I could say was "Wow people, really?"Last edited by Seerow; 2012-09-28 at 08:52 AM.
If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-09-28, 08:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-28, 08:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-09-28, 09:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
When I ran 1e with rolled stats, we used a "best of three" system. Of course, 1e uses 4d6, arrange to taste by default, so...
When I ran WFRP2, everyone stuck with their first set, rolled in order. :) It worked really well, actually.
-O
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2012-09-28, 09:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Oh, the guy who takes what he gets definitely exists. The first 3.0 campaign I ran when the system came out was also the LAST time I used rolled stats.
At about level 8 (having started at level 1) I asked everyone what their ability rolles had been because I was noticing some imballance and didn't yet realize how horribly inballanced the entire system was.
I don't have the individual totals anymore, but the average for 6 players was slightly over 40, and that was with one guy with a 21 point character dragging the average down. I think the next lowest was a 36 and the highest was over 50.
The 21 point character was the character he'd rolled at the start of the game.
So, yeah, there's at least one guy who plays what he rolls. OTOH he's never objected to using point buy, so I guess he may not neccessarily fit under the part about enjoying rolling, maybe I'll ask him next session.
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2012-09-28, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-09-28, 11:06 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I legitimately rolled three eighteens in a row once using 4d6b3.
A really messy houserule a group I played with: If all four dice come up the same number, you can keep all four. So four fours is sixteen, not twelve, and you can get twenties or twenty-fours, but nothing in between past eighteen. So when somebody comes in with a raw score of twenty-four, things get even more messed up than usual.
Rolling dice feels more organic, rolling dice and keeping the original order feels even more organic, but in terms of balance, point buy should be the assumed default.Last edited by noparlpf; 2012-09-28 at 11:06 AM.
Jude P.
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2012-09-28, 11:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I've rarely seen anyone actually play with rolled stats lower than what you could get with a 32 point buy. I'm nearly convinced that people who enjoy rolling and legitimately use the first roll they get rather than rerolling til they get awesome stats only exist in arguments on the internet.
This sounds like healing surges !
They do make a nice tool for DMs for having some measure of daily progress, but ultimately they were just a way to escalate HP values without making the numbers ridiculous. In the games I played, very rarely were healing surges the measure of when we stopped for an extended rest, almost always it was the daily power limit. Which means healing surges could have been replaced with a simple "after every battle, regain up to 75% of your max HP" and the effect would have been the same.
In the end, healing surges look like a mechanic set to make HP a vestigial number, much like the switch to d20 rolling and point by made ability scores a vestigial number.
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2012-09-28, 11:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Thinking about this, I would like to have an (optional!) mechanic for broken limbs.
Not that these should occur on a regular basis, mind you, but for certain difficult situations it would be nice to have a lasting condition other than "death". It doesn't have to be complicated, just a set of penalties that last for a few days or until you reach a high-level cleric.Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-09-28, 12:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Jude P.
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2012-09-28, 12:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I think this is it, if you don't think your character is powerful enough and his ability scores are 14, 10, 10, 10, 10, 8 then there's a pretty obvious reason he's weak.
If your scores are 18, 16, 16, 14, 14, 12 then it's harder to explain.
That's why when I spotted a serious power imballance in 3.0 I blamed ability scores first, the one non-caster in the party also was the only guy with 21 in abilities by point purchase total.
It's only after we played with that fixed for awhile that the real problem became fairly obvious and I started looking for caster nerfs.Last edited by Doug Lampert; 2012-09-28 at 12:53 PM.
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2012-09-28, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
That sounds like it would have the exact same problems "death" has in your average D&D game; at low-levels, having a leg broken might mean causing the party to sit around in town for a week or more. At high levels, it's expending a single spell that the party cleric almost certainly has access to.
The problem in my eyes is there is no benefit to a party to carry around a fighter with a broken-sword arm. I could imagine some sort of Hackmaster "honor" system to give a player who wrapped his arm and weapon together with a splint (-3 penalty to attack and damage rolls) an incentive to keep fighting.
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2012-09-28, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
These statements puzzle me, because I've seen plenty of threads like this in the GitP 3e subforum. "Help! How can I make a playable character out of these terrible stats?"
Yep, I concluded long ago that healing surges would have worked a lot better if they were the only Daily resource in the game. So that's (basically) how my own system works ...
I vote non-optional. Since this is the other thing that always bugged me about 4e healing surges.
Nitpick: hydras can lose limbs by RAW too.You can call me Draz.
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2012-09-28, 01:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-09-28, 02:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
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2012-09-28, 02:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
4 encounters per day
13.3 encounters per level
20 levels
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266 encounters per 20 levels
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66.5 days from 1-20
For every level past 1, the PCs need a day to return to market and buy new stuff. 85.5 days.
For every level past 1, the PCs need to find, prepare for, and travel to a new level-appropriate location. 104.5 days at a minimum.
Taking no downtime and never stopping to heal, it takes almost four months, not two weeks, to reach 20th level.
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2012-09-28, 02:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Nah, Kurald absolutely has a point that PCs gain levels much too quickly (for my personal taste), but my point is that it's not due to a lack of "enforced" downtime (after all, there are ways of slowing down PCs from "leveling" quickly if you really want to).
If the only thing stopping the PCs from leaving town is a cleric who can cast level 4 spells (or whatever), then all you're going to accomplish (if the concern is the rate at PCs level) is levels 1 to X being a slog, and X to 20 being (relatively) brisk, unless all of a sudden broken bones get replaced with "mystical curses" that require either a week's rest or a 7th level spell. And at that point, I wonder why the system is fighting me so hard to stay in town instead of adventuring like I want to.
So... make sitting in town valuable. Not "make a Profession check to gain a meager amount of gold" valuable, I mean "holding up in town for a week grants the party their level in temporary hit points and an action point" valuable.
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2012-09-28, 02:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
Ars Magica wizards usually gain power far faster by sitting in their lab studying than by adventuring so this can be done (the more recent editions may have changed this some).
I'd be a lot happier if 4th edition healing surges recovered 1/week rather than all overnight and were the only non-encounter resource (that feels a lot more like toughing through a moderately nasty cut or bruise to me). But, yeah, you can provide carrots as well as sticks. If you could TRAIN in skills and languages, even if it were VERY SLOW, that would be one way to make a carrot.
Backgrounds are mostly things you can in theory learn in the current playtest, but there aren't any rules for getting more, maybe if you spend three years apprenticed to an X you add a background as an X.
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2012-09-28, 05:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-28, 06:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
You're making it sound like an extended downtime to heal injuries is notable problem in game with fluid passing of time. If nothing important is happening, a GM can say "okay, so a week passed by, where are you going next?" So injuries don't actually eat up valuable play time.
This is a point where decrying verisimilitude makes no sense whatsoever. There's no need for the PCs to be able to be active non-stop when vast spans of time are easily handwaved, so if it's logical for them to take a long time to get together, it's all right. There's nothing wrong with the operative unit of time being days, months or years in-game, rather than seconds, rounds or turns.
Usually, when recovery from injuries would seriously hinder PCs, it's in a situation where it's a valid plotpoint in itself! Let's say your example of a swordsman with broken arm happens in the middle of an attack - now the choice whether to keep him with the group or take the time to evacuate him becomes an important factor in how things will advance from that point on.
Let me talk about a campaign I ran for year and a half. It was very old school, with each resources, from Hitpoints to food, hirelings, money and wages were meticulously tracked. Due to the rules used for these, sometimes the PCs had to wait for in-game days, weeks or months in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do as their ship was being fixed at the dock etc.
And it was fine. It didn't detract from enjoyability of the game, because going over these details took about five minutes of real time. Most of the actual playtime was used for the interesting stuff, like looting dungeons or big fights.
On the other hand, when the PCs were in a hurry and in-game time became meaningful, the fact they actually had to think of how long things would take caused my players to become much more invested in the game! I don't think they would've spent as much time constructing an undead-powered flying machine, or thought of hiring a weather forecaster, if the time it actually took to do things hadn't had a major impact on in-game events."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
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2012-09-28, 06:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
If the only consequence to an injury is a DM pressing the fast-forward button, then I fail to see the reason why a game should give out temporary penalties, especially ones that dramatically effect low-level parties more than higher-level ones.
To be clear: I'm not railing against the idea of downtime. I like downtime! In the 4e Planescape game I'm running, there's going to be plenty of downtime for players to do some pre-research about quests, create relationships with NPCs, and even make a little jink performing some odd jobs.
What I'm railing against is a system where downtime happens because a random dice roll slapped some long-term penalty on a character, whose cure is to hole up in a tavern for a week. Why exactly do I want that in my game?
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2012-09-28, 07:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
This. This right here is what you don't get.
Injuries do have consequences. When the PCs are in a hurry, they become plotpoints unto themselves, affecting which actions are optimal, or even possible. When the PCs are not in a hurry, the time they spent healing is easily glossed over, taking up minimal playtime - but this doesn't mean consequences don't happen! If the PCs spend a number of days healing, logically the game world moves on - which can entirely change the scenario they are facing.
As for why you'd want dice to tell that? The sole reason random elements are included in a game is to create uncertainty of the outcome. Whether the penalty caused by injury is tactical (loss of immediate options) or strategical (loss of time), it's assumed that when you roll a die, you are willing to allow it to shape the course of in-game events. You are willing to be surprised.
There are two main reasons why you would not want that: either you don't want the game rules to interfere with a pre-planned vision, or you are not interested with playing out/dealing with consequences of passage of time.
It's also good to remember that loss of HP is a temporary penalty given out by the game. Amount of HP you have left has both direct and indirect effects on your tactical and strategical performance - the latter is less apparent in newer edition, because regaining HP is so fast, but in editions where it could take days to recover in full, it was a big deal."It's the fate of all things under the sky,
to grow old and wither and die."
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2012-09-28, 08:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
No, like I wrote, I want a system for serious injuries to give characters a different status level between "totally fine" and "dead". And also like I wrote, I do not want these to be commonplace, so making them the standard result of a crit is out of the question.
And finally like I wrote, I'm okay with downtime between adventures (for a variety of reasons) so I don't find it a concern that serious injuries may cause downtime between adventures.Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
"I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums. I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that." -- ChubbyRain
Crystal Shard Studios - Freeware games designed by Kurald and others!
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2012-09-28, 08:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
This only works when you're using a plot that has a time limit to it, like "Save the princess before she gets eaten by the dragon" or "Stop the evil cult before they complete the ritual to summon Cthulhu."
If your campaign centers around something the PCs can well afford to take their time with, like "Explore the jungles of Xen'drik and find hidden treasure", this falls apart entirely.
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2012-09-28, 08:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
But it clearly still has applications. I've played games where it would matter and games where it wouldn't. Likewise, I've played games where psionics matter and games where psionics don't. I've also played games where the rules for griffins matter and games where they don't.
My point is, there's no reason to exclude a mechanic that works well just because it doesn't apply to every game.Jude P.
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2012-09-28, 09:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-28, 09:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-09-28, 10:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
If the consequence is "you guys spend a week sipping margaritas while Jorgen's whiplash is healed /handwave" then there is no consequence. And if the alternative is that you punish the players for choosing to fight hurt, or punish the players for waiting for the wizard's concussion to heal, then I propose that you haven't given them a choice at all (or if you rather, you've given them two bad choices).
If you want to give them temporary penalties until they have the option to rest (assuming they're under a time limit), I guess so?
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2012-09-28, 10:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.
I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that. -- ChubbyRain
Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.
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2012-09-29, 02:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting
The application is broader than you think.
Lets take your "jungle exploration" example. Say, the party encounters a wandering tribe of whatever and make some dealings with them. Shortly thereafter, they get in a particularly tough fight with some other hostile jungle inhabitants where several party members sustain (lasting) injuries. Unable to continue, they break for their base camp and rest for a couple of days. But when they are up and running again, the tribe they have befriended may have moved on (as it is common with a wandering tribe) and any open dealings can not be concluded.
As long as your adventure contains intelligent agents other then the party, the passage of time will have consequences sooner or later.