D&D 3e/3.5e/d20The forum for conversations specifically related to the rules and procedures of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, 3.5 Edition, or any fantasy game using the d20 system or a variant thereof (commercially published or not).
They have a bad tendency to think Core and what ever there favorite campaign setting is are Balanced and it's Splat Books like ToB that mess things up.
Bonus points if the setting in question is FR.
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Originally Posted by Elixia
(he swore black white and blue that 2 bulettes were a hard rated challenge rating for us as a 4x lvl 6 party).
Well, two CR 7 critters make for EL 9 encounter, for APL 6 that's a boss fight at the very least. And that assumes CR is somewhat accurate presentation of monster difficulty, which is isn't.
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Originally Posted by Claudius Maximus
Also fixed the money issue by sacrificing a goat.
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Originally Posted by subject42
This board needs a "you're technically right but I still want to crawl into the fetal position and cry" emoticon.
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Originally Posted by Yukitsu
I define [optimization] as "the process by which one attains a build meeting all mechanical and characterization goals set out by the creator prior to its creation."
Your DM seems to like killing off your party, while you seem to like making deep characters that you expect to be around for awhile. Something's got to give.
Have a photocopy of your original character sheet.
Scratch out the name of the character on the sheet and replace it with another name.
Continue to play.
I did this with one GM to drive home the point his method of GMing sucked.
A chandelier nearly killed me the very first time I played.
The DM thought it would be fun for the party to have a wyrmling white dragon for a pet. I thought it would be fun to be said dragon. So we're raiding this abandoned temple or somesuch and I, thinking with my dragon brain, decide that I like the look of the chandelier above our heads and wish to take it to begin my personal hoard.
Being a wyrmling white dragon gives me a fly speed with absolutely terrible maneuverability. So I make to fly up to it and roll a 1 on my flight check. So I get tangled in it pretty badly, contorted in ways I'm not really sure could happen, and slowly begin asphyxiating as a result.
Our party monk tries to get me down, but he only tangles himself up in the chandelier as well. Fortunately, our combined weight was too much for the chandelier, so everything came crashing down, releasing us from the predicament.
Yes, that was my very first action in D&D ever - trying to take a chandelier and finding myself its victim.
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Originally Posted by The Giant
Fantasy literature is ONLY worthwhile for what it can tell us about the real world; everything else is petty escapism.
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Originally Posted by The Giant
No author should have to take the time to say, "This little girl ISN'T evil, folks!" in order for the reader to understand that. It should be assumed that no first graders are irredeemably Evil unless the text tells you they are.
Have a photocopy of your original character sheet.
Scratch out the name of the character on the sheet and replace it with another name.
Continue to play.
I did this with one GM to drive home the point his method of GMing sucked.
- J.
AKA the Nethack approach.
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Originally Posted by kardar233
GitP: The only place where D&D and Cantorian Set Theory combine. Also a place of madness, and small fairy cakes.
Dying is just an alternative circumstance within the game, it's bound to happen at some point. If there was no chance of death, campaign's would lose their edge.
One of my friends has such an impressive track record of carking it, he carries a folder with him to our sessions. Known amongst us as 'The Graveyard', it contains all his previous characters.
Many trees died in the progression of his DnD career.
Sounds like the OP is the problem player, not the DM.
Of course you can die on a succesful reflex save since reflex saves tend to be halve damage. 50% of a lot can still be a lot.
Two Bulettes are only CR+3, it's not like that's an encounter meant to kill you unless you get four of those in a row.
The OP could not let the Bulette be the way the DM wanted them to be, living in a pack and grazing. That's just openly hostile towards the DM and my guess is they were never meant to neccesarily be a hostile encounter until the DM was put under pressure to play the creatures as written.
My advice: look at yourself, talk to the DM about how you feel about his playstyle (because that's always helpful) and give him the room to actually DM instead of having to deal with your negative mindset.
i understand that dying is part of the game and without it there no sense of danger BUT as a past dm and my one of my fellow players and current DM of a different group would say 'dying should be a punishment for stupid player decisions, like setting off a trap without looking or disarming or picking a fight with a monster who's obliviously much too tough' our 'deaths' have not been because WE made stupid mistakes but because the DM DIDNT MANAGED HIS ENCOUNTERS! when a player rolls a 17+ adds his BAB and finds out it a missed attack THATS red light! unless its a boss or i 'have to lose battle' (which suck) and its just a random encounter that is completely unbalanced. in our mindset if we cant take on the wildlife, what hope in hell do we have against the boss of this campaign?
on top of this the DM has said on several occasions said were not the main characters, one of his NPC's is and were just in the way (or more than likely his pawns) something me and the other players told was him the wrong way of going about it. since this is makes us feel as useful as a chocolate hammer.
anyway, thinking on it. i think if i ever get back to a gaming session i'm taking a new tact. Play off the characters strengths and NOT taking the dm's lead. for example. that 110ft rope bridge was a trap encounter over a bottomless . everyone in our group either has -2, 0 or 2 on acrobatics, i'll tell them not to cross and find another route. that would be more tactical.
i understand that dying is part of the game and without it there no sense of danger BUT as a past dm and my one of my fellow players and current DM of a different group would say 'dying should be a punishment for stupid player decisions, like setting off a trap without looking or disarming or picking a fight with a monster who's obliviously much too tough' our 'deaths' have not been because WE made stupid mistakes but because the DM DIDNT MANAGED HIS ENCOUNTERS! when a player rolls a 17+ adds his BAB and finds out it a missed attack THATS red light! unless its a boss or i 'have to lose battle' (which suck) and its just a random encounter that is completely unbalanced. in our mindset if we cant take on the wildlife, what hope in hell do we have against the boss of this campaign?
on top of this the DM has said on several occasions said were not the main characters, one of his NPC's is and were just in the way (or more than likely his pawns) something me and the other players told was him the wrong way of going about it. since this is makes us feel as useful as a chocolate hammer.
anyway, thinking on it. i think if i ever get back to a gaming session i'm taking a new tact. Play off the characters strengths and NOT taking the dm's lead. for example. that 110ft rope bridge was a trap encounter over a bottomless . everyone in our group either has -2, 0 or 2 on acrobatics, i'll tell them not to cross and find another route. that would be more tactical.
Oooh, a DMPC who hogs the spotlight and treat PCs like his lackeys. And he admits it outright. I think we can conclusively say that your DM is definitely Doing It WrongTM.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kardar233
GitP: The only place where D&D and Cantorian Set Theory combine. Also a place of madness, and small fairy cakes.
Sounds like the OP is the problem player, not the DM.
Of course you can die on a succesful reflex save since reflex saves tend to be halve damage. 50% of a lot can still be a lot.
Two Bulettes are only CR+3, it's not like that's an encounter meant to kill you unless you get four of those in a row.
The OP could not let the Bulette be the way the DM wanted them to be, living in a pack and grazing. That's just openly hostile towards the DM and my guess is they were never meant to neccesarily be a hostile encounter until the DM was put under pressure to play the creatures as written.
My advice: look at yourself, talk to the DM about how you feel about his playstyle (because that's always helpful) and give him the room to actually DM instead of having to deal with your negative mindset.
but hey, maybe your right and i'm just not cut out for this game any longer i should put to rest this 5yr hobby and find another :/ always wanted to get my own blue deck for magic the gathering!
on top of this the DM has said on several occasions said were not the main characters, one of his NPC's is and were just in the way (or more than likely his pawns) something me and the other players told was him the wrong way of going about it. since this is makes us feel as useful as a chocolate hammer.
Well, I have to admire his honesty in saying that. That said, I'd tell him to have fun with his NPC's adventures, WITHOUT ME.
Jeez, the worst DM experience I ever had in D&D was when we were gathering information about odd things happening around the area and everyone said "The island off the coast has been strange as of late." I tried to tell my DM newfoundland is always like it, it's not strange at all. Kidding! About the newfoundland part anyway. It was pretty justifiable as well.
Actually... when my other DM announced he had a house rule that PrCs don't give you extra attacks per round when your BaB would qualify you for it was pretty bad too. I was a single class cleric then, so it didn't matter to me, but the Paladin who had all his levels changed to Blackguard was pretty confused when his number of attacks per round actually went down. Everyone but the DM was new to D&D at the time, so no one argued until I looked it up and told him that it was pretty unfair he told us to suck it up. Eventually we convinced him of otherwise but... still. He's a great DM though, really good at making stories and not restricting us to one particular track.
Anyway, just thought I'd share that. It was lame on your DM's part to kill off the guy who made his successful reflex, and he should re-evalute his DMing techniques.
oh and the rope bridge, it was 110 long, snapped in the middle, the dwarf clung on and hit the wall. splat!
110 ft long bridge, snaps in half, Dwarf holds on to rope = 50 ft of falling damage, ie 5D6 lethal damage unless he makes a successful DC15 Jump or Tumble check, in that case it's 3D6 lethal and 1D6 nonlethal damage.
yeah, he is DMPCing, that part i can deal with. the NPC 'who's the hero' isn't in the player group but sending us on errands more or less. though the current campaign is completely rotating around the DMPC backstory.
I've dealt the the 'hot girl' situation before. and me as a girl gamer, it got ugly, fast.
the things is, the DM is a cool guy, the campaigns are cool, awesome plots, its just he never does his homework. i know a DM should be able to ad-lib a situation for when something a player/s does surprises you, but i get the feeling this whole campaign has been ad-libbed. hmmm. he's a great mate but doesn't like to be corrected.
anyway, i'm going to drop it. i'm just being whiny ;)
Oriental Adventures game. BBEG comes out, our second time meeting him. My Samurai, who was not the party face, greeted him along with the party face, and said "So, we meet again for the very first time." Because it was the second time they'd met the BBEG. the whole group though I'd done the Space balls quote! (So Lone Star, We Meet Again, for the first time, for the last time!)
Later in that game, the party was having a rematch with one of the BBEG's Leutinets, who had managed to fight the party to a stand still and retreat before. The Dm was using a system where he was making you roll normal attack and damage, then if you hit and did damage, you rolled a D100 to determine what part of the body you hit, with different rules for the amount of damage vs. the location. I'd hit for 6+str mod damage in the first fight too the guys wrist with my off hand short sword (Wakazashi.).
So, before we start fighting, I'm asking him questions that relate to the individual sub-plots (Everyone in the group had one or two of these's as per DM's rules at character creation.) Bad guy get's impatient and so right before we start my Samurai throws in a forceful "One, Final, Question then, before we begin."
The bad guy, annoyed says "What?!"
My Samurai: "How's the wrist?"
I though it was a great way to go into a fight that we knew we had to fight too the death anyway. After all, we knew it was gonna be a death match, so we had nothing to lose by making him angry right at the start.
I know, it's not quite the tavern story, but it was amusing.
Let me yell you one story, op. I don't know if you still want stories or what, but let me tell you.
I somehow feel your pain, but not, one of my players feel your pain. I can even ask him to post here about his problem.
You see, I'm the DM. We play 3.P, going the P route, but we use a lot of reworked rules, my reworked classes and such things. My setting in online for more than 7 years now, and my campaigns are long (one year and a half being the sweet spot), full of rp and drama, spiked with pulp action.
Because I like whole sessions with no combat encounters, most action is pulp. So this action is HARD action: I prefer to make a single challenging, pulp, dramatic encounter than two random encounters. Because of that, the sense of challenge and victory is very big, fitting with great heroes, but people know every time they draw their character weapons, they may not survive (specially because the world isn't designed around them. It's a sandboxy world).
The players mostly know that their "personal adventures", and by that I mean the one who don't advance campaign plot, but character plot, are mostly leveled, but the world isn't. So it's dangerous. And if the player don't take care of his char... well... let's talk about this friend, Cilon.
Cilon has a problem as player: He must play weird charaters. Not classes or feats, or weird races: His characters must be weird in the world. However, he really cares about his characters, or so it seems, because he writes the full "100 questions about your char" for the first session (I only ask it for the third session onward. It's the rule of "three sessions to decide about the char, change anything or leave it, no hard feeling"). He is very invested.
So, when he entered the group for the first time, the last campaign was already on. He made a fire genasi sorcerer elementalist that was very very freaky for the setting. He died on that session, after not taking care with yuan-tis full attacks.
Next he makes a Captain (custom class, using Cavalier from PF and more abilities so it doesn't suck, similar from marshal + cleric's channel energy but giving temporary hit-point). A nice character, hard-nosed seargent, from the roman-like xenophobic land of humans. The character was normal, but being from there was the "wow, how strange!" part. Before his third session , the party decided to go to another plane (level 6), and were slaugthered.
So, next campaign comes, and he's going to play from level one. He decides to make a character that won't be the fighter type. He makes a high elf bard. No combat ability at all, and serious personality problems. He abandons it on the first session.
Next, he is going to make an Agraken (a custom race, similar to Red XIII's race from Final Fantasy 7), but instead of the usual brave, strong, druidic and children of nature agraken that the race is, he is making a freak of nature, that grew on jail as experiment for crazy scientists and that was psychic because of that. Freaky nice concept. He tries to chew fights too hard, forgets to use his defensive abilities and well, is chewed alive, on the 5th.
Next character! A tiefling artificer. He is professor in one university. Besides being an urbane, accepted, and educated tiefling (freak enought), he doesn't have one arm, but has a mechanical arm in the place. The character is not freak enough, he abandons it before the third session. In these three sessions he died almost seven times. Seven.
Next character: A high elf scout. Quick, slim, agile! With a VERY intense backstory, betrayal, working with elven assassins, being an evil guy and having a change of heart when the world almost ended. Also with SERIOUS psychological problems. Stoned by a medusa on the 6th session.
Next character: A hobgoblin artificer, that is a freak for her race, since she is against the effort of war, ran from her home, isn't a wizard and all. Besides that, she acts as a freak, thinks it's a genius, and is an attention whore. It is someone you would call "unpleasant and too much strange", as all his chars. And guess what? First session she almost dies because of a fort save. Later he almost died from disease, from an orc chieftain, etc etc. Cilon likes that char a lot, but he's got another on the back of his mind. Just in case.
And this could lead you to believe my campaigns are slaughterhouses, or that the player is jaded and don't want to create deep characters? But he is not any of these. He is deeply invested in his char life, and is really expending resources on making his character able to survive. Now he understands that if he doesnt take care of himself, with his d6, the world isn't going to not attack him.
So, we like to rp, we like drama, he is on his 5th character in the campaign (the campaign is on level 7 now), and for the first time he actually leveled up his char (instead of dying, the party leveling, and his next char being leveled too). So keep going. Death my happens, but if you like to rp, keep going.
And learn with your mistakes. And if you don't make mistakes, so learn the DM mistakes and AVOID THEM LIKE THE PLAGUE.
Edit: Or come and play my game. Of course, if you live in my country. In my state. In my city. But you get the idea. You may leave the game, but never the hobby ho!
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Commander Shepard defends the Earth thanks to Vrythas.
Egopad
Spoiler
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Originally Posted by Quietus
Excuse me while I go make a Coolest Game Ever trophy for you.
metahuman: 'hows the wrist?' niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice, reminds me of my rogue from the last set of campaigns. she was cocky too.
Dibasket: wow, those are weird characters. i mean play detailed one myself but never that 'out there'. i would love to join but i'm in the UK. Though i know what you mean about looking after your characters. in future I think try and steer the party clear of stealth and acrobatic checks since these are our worst qualities and ones that are causing us most harm :)
Man, I'm a writer looking to DM a campaign in the Not Too Distant Future. Guess I better work on my improv, or plan for pretty much everything.
This is *never* the best way to go, in my experience. Don't waste time planning for everything, because you'll end up with at least ~75% of your planning time going to waste. Instead, think of cool encounters. For example, I have a group I play with in real life, playing characters exploring uncharted ruins and slowly learning about the horrors that happened there - and will happen again. Part of this involved them exploring what is now a wetlands/swamp, which used to be a bustling city. My notes consisted more or less of :
- Illusions over the entire place, make it look like it's still there. 100% perfect illusions of the last day this city experienced.
- Illusions caused by Aboleth, which will want the players to do some work for it if it can contact them. Aboleth has an artifact the players want, and will swap it for this work.
- Aboleth has an enslaved ethergaunt that it's forcing to do repair work to make the city actually look the way the illusions do
- HD/size advanced Assassin vine under a half-repaired bridge
- Shambling mound with two levels of Totemist to make it more of a threat
- Skum that were originally the inhabitants of the town the aboleth saved
- Chuul
Those were the situations I had planned. I could plunk any of them at any point; I dropped hints regarding bridges at both ends of the ruined city, I described how the illusion seemed to be in place where the city once stood, so the ground began at their knees or hips while they stood in the muck. I dropped the skum in mingling with the illusionary crowd (hide checks, which the players easily beat), so the players could see them. They never encountered the aboleth's enslaved ethergaunt, but they did find the aboleth itself, after following the skum into a watery cave. I used the shambling mound as a "random" encounter, which went fairly well since the guy playing an archer has a shocking bow. I never used the chuul, at least not against the party.
Beyond these things, I plan for what information I want to drop, and what my goals are. For this, I had..
- What exactly happened here? (Illusion shows this, aboleth can tell them)
- Where do they need to go from here? (They now know what wiped this place out/can try scrying, aboleth can tell them through ethergaunt's knowledge where the rest of them are)
- Enhance rivalry with other party (Find other dead monsters, find evidence of how the other party operates, possibly give an option to save rival party/have them save PCs)
And then I just plan for those situations above. Clearly I need to know exactly what happened, as that's being put on display as a city-wide piece of installation art. I need to know what the aboleth knows (almost everything, via questioning his ethergaunt slave). I need to have the stats ready for the opposing party, and for the planned encounters. Beyond those things? I ad-lib.
I wanted to make the players have to chase the skum, so I had them retreat into a watery hole in the ground that led to underground caves. They had no way of knowing what was down there, so they had to work to get water breathing and the ability to talk to things before they chased after. That also let me present the illusionary battle before they questioned the aboleth, which was much better. I didn't plan for them to specifically examine one of the homes that was rebuilt, and decided on the fly that not only was the building recreated, but every item present in the illusion. The players seemed first creeped out by the fact that everything was unnaturally perfect, and then moreso when they started finding art that wasn't as good beneath the illusion, and coins that were clear forgeries. All off the top of my head, because it was interesting at the time.
... And all of this is going wildly off-topic. So, with no further asides, I return you to your regularly scheduled thread.
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RAW < Rule of funny < Rule of cool < Rule of Fun
You know it's true.
110 ft long bridge, snaps in half, Dwarf holds on to rope = 50 ft of falling damage, ie 5D6 lethal damage unless he makes a successful DC15 Jump or Tumble check, in that case it's 3D6 lethal and 1D6 nonlethal damage.
Hey folks, it's time for another edition of "Greenish talks out of his arse while failing basic physics and geometry":
Assuming the rope bridge is perfectly level and in 45° angle from the offending canyon wall, and the bridge snaps in straight middle, and the dwarf holds on the the very end, he'll actually describe about 85' long arc to the wall, with acceleration I imagine is not noticeably less than that from a free fall.
Whether falling rules apply to collisions in what is essentially a horizontal trajectory in the point of impact is a different matter, of course.
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Spoiler
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Originally Posted by Claudius Maximus
Also fixed the money issue by sacrificing a goat.
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Originally Posted by subject42
This board needs a "you're technically right but I still want to crawl into the fetal position and cry" emoticon.
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Originally Posted by Yukitsu
I define [optimization] as "the process by which one attains a build meeting all mechanical and characterization goals set out by the creator prior to its creation."
Whether falling rules apply to collisions in what is essentially a horizontal trajectory in the point of impact is a different matter, of course.
Worth noting; There's a couple of flying monsters that can snatch a creature, then throw them. I want to say the roc can do this, but that's talking out of MY ass. In those cases, they're called out as doing damage based on the greater of the distance traveled, horizontal or vertical.
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RAW < Rule of funny < Rule of cool < Rule of Fun
You know it's true.
Whenever you're in Brazil come and join us, it's a great group: We play on the beach, drinking from coconuts, the men wear bermuda shorts and sunglasses and the girls must play in thong bikinis (I banned the normal bikinis, since they were broken).
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Commander Shepard defends the Earth thanks to Vrythas.
Egopad
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quietus
Excuse me while I go make a Coolest Game Ever trophy for you.
Whenever you're in Brazil come and join us, it's a great group: We play on the beach, drinking from coconuts, the men wear bermuda shorts and sunglasses and the girls must play in thong bikinis (I banned the normal bikinis, since they were broken).
Excuse me while I go make a Coolest Game Ever trophy for you.
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RAW < Rule of funny < Rule of cool < Rule of Fun
You know it's true.
Worth noting; There's a couple of flying monsters that can snatch a creature, then throw them. I want to say the roc can do this, but that's talking out of MY ass. In those cases, they're called out as doing damage based on the greater of the distance traveled, horizontal or vertical.
Ok this is interesting, just splitballing. so you have the fall at 50ft horizonal and 50ft vertical, if they only take the greater fall damage of the 2 (H or V) that would be 50ft right? so that means ............. oh I've gone crossed eyed.
but dnd on the beach? exotic! the best i did was in a tent in wales :/ nice weather thou.
Hey folks, it's time for another edition of "Greenish talks out of his arse while failing basic physics and geometry":
Assuming the rope bridge is perfectly level and in 45° angle from the offending canyon wall, and the bridge snaps in straight middle, and the dwarf holds on the the very end, he'll actually describe about 85' long arc to the wall, with acceleration I imagine is not noticeably less than that from a free fall.
Whether falling rules apply to collisions in what is essentially a horizontal trajectory in the point of impact is a different matter, of course.
Using this math, a character would die from riding a gently inclined water slide. :-)
It's the energy that matters. Falling from 50 feet causes 5d6 of damage. The character fell 50(55)feet , the only difference the rope gives is that it adjusts the direction of the fall. ( also, it makes the fall a lot cooler )
Ok this is interesting, just splitballing. so you have the fall at 50ft horizonal and 50ft vertical, if they only take the greater fall damage of the 2 (H or V) that would be 50ft right? so that means ............. oh I've gone crossed eyed.
but dnd on the beach? exotic! the best i did was in a tent in wales :/ nice weather thou.
That's entirely correct. Physics and its stupid hypotenuse can go suck an egg, I guess?
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RAW < Rule of funny < Rule of cool < Rule of Fun
You know it's true.
i've DM'ed before myself in a homebrew. before the campaign even started i had a map, marked with city, landmarks, terrian and a list of monster, races and aniamals that lived there. all core NPC had stat block, personalities and motives. some animals even had migration patterns!! then dropped my players bang in the middle to go nuts! much fun! at one point they got lost and one of the migration paths actually saved them as a hunting party was there to rescue them (after a 2 weeks and numerous failed survival checks, thank god that made good endurance ones ...).
Any advice on how to start going about doing this? I'm trying to work out a sandbox game for my group, but I've never done anything like that before, and it's hitting me as a very daunting task.
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If something doesn't work, hit it.
If it still doesn't work, hit it harder.
That's entirely correct. Physics and its stupid hypotenuse can go suck an egg, I guess?
pfffffffffffffft i did GCSE maths 10 years ago, i only remembered that stuff to past the test. my maths suck, i blame my lazy brain. and so why do i play characters where i have to roll and add up lots of d6's ... the mental excerise i suppose
That's entirely correct. Physics and its stupid hypotenuse can go suck an egg, I guess?
I have no idea what the rules say about rope-dangling falling damage, but it seems to me that the rules are actually in line with the real world physics in this case. ;-)
You should only take damage as if you fell 50 feet, ie 5D6, or a measly 17 hp damage. Less splat and more urgh, I'd say. ;-)
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Re: Starting to lose the will to play...
Fiction Editor for 
Guess I better work on my improv, or plan for pretty much everything.
