Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tack]

"I whisk them"
Woah.

Also, Mage party much?

[Shook]

At that particular point, yes. One combat mage, one face/mage hybrid and one adept, so the mundanes in our team (including me, the socially ret- uh, crippled rigger, which was a personality i picked because it was easiest for me to reproduce at first) were actually outnumbered. Right now we only have one mage who's an unfittingly innocent 16 year old bodyguard, played by the same guy as Penrose. Scary thing is that this kid is actually fairly competent in spite of his incredible naivete. :v

[SOLDIER First]

blep

[Parsely]

SO, time for a tale from Shadowrun. This happened some sessions ago, but it's definitely still worth mentioning. Spoiler because minor wall of text. Also maybe not for the very faint of heart, but come on, we're in the dorf fortress forums, none of us have that issue. :v

Spoiler: The Dude Omelette (click to show/hide)

It all started off with us kind of botching a conversation a guy to whom some debt was owned. He was first of all stabbed in the thigh with deadly poison, dragged into an alley and had his soul pulled from his body and abandoned in the astral plane. Had he been a mage, this wouldn't have been a problem for him, but he was not a mage, so without a way back into his body, his soul dissipated and he died. That's just how it STARTED.

Then, this guy had a dead mans trigger of some sort that resulted in the trashing of one particular characters "store", and the torturing of possibly the only individual this character (Penrose) cared for besides himself (Manny), which left Manny astoundingly close to death and also without much of a soul left due to essence drain. Penrose is a horrifying sociopath with moths for a face who has turned a guy to goo (with a spell) and scooped him down a storm drain. He was now angry, and looking for the people who did this to Manny.

We ended up finding a local hideout for a bunch of gangers who knew these people, and that particular conversation ended with one guy having much of his skin magically peeled off (Flay Touch is one of Penrose's many talents), a few more guys knocked out, one of the knocked out guys infected with a nasty magical pestilence and thrown into the hideout (Penrose again), and most of the inside of the hideout being incinerated in a gargantuan fireball cast by our combat mage (... Burns). We capture the leader alive, get some info, and abandon him in the woods after a comparatively mild beating.

Having pursued the info and infiltrated the hideout of the runner team responsible for Manny's torture and doing some more legwork (which isn't particularly horrifying), we finally get a chance to intercept the other runners, and a very brief conflict ensued. Their tanky troll was one-shotted by a lightning-infused staff jammed through his neck by our overspecialized melee character (Dove, who was switched out soon after), their speedy street sam was gunned down rather quickly from multiple sources, and the face and decker were both immobilized by a magical binding spell. We bring them back to the trashed store, and after a quick interrogation, the real fun starts:

There is a spell, called Turn to Goo, which does exactly that; on a successful cast that isn't resisted, the victim is turned into unconscious goo for as long as the spell is sustained. Penrose has this spell. He also has two tied up runners who are related to the ones wronging him, and one basin. This moment had been hinted to previously by him saying "i'm going to make an omelette". So, he goops both runners, gets them into the basin, and in the players own words, "... And then i whisk them". Once they were properly mixed, he cancelled the spells. The GM was a peculiar mix of horrified and stumped, because he had no idea what that'd actually do in terms of mechanics. After a break for him to read up, he settled for us hearing horrible screaming and a meaty explosion, so he didn't have to describe the lovecraftian horror that probably ensued. That marked the end of Penrose's rampage, for he had gotten his revenge. :v

Jeebus.

[Oneir]

My least favorite parts are when he brags about how lethal the game used to be.

...OK, yeah, definitely not going to spend my time watching that if that's what he's going to go with. Seconding all that's been said about excessive lethality being an iffy aspect of the hobby at best, but can I just point out nothing stops him from playing a more lethal game? Complaining that other people are playing in a way they enjoy is so completely snobbish.

[Rolan7]

Oh, yeah.  And he's pretty obnoxious about it, though he's clearly playing that up for comedy.

The main thing that actually worried me, as someone potentially being in a 5e game soon, was the advantage system.  Also elements of the class system.  Basically things that seemed over-simplified.  I'd give timestamps if I had them, so I'll summarize:
the entire advantage system vs modifiers, wtf
Wizards casting in full plate with a 1 level fighter dip

I'm also worried about the abundance of useful and deadly cantrips, but I'm almost sold.  Almost.

[Shook]

(Dis)advantage actually works quite well, since it quite significantly shifts the odds towards the side of the advantage. You'll be fairly confident in doing a roll with advantage (unless the target number is fucking high), and you'll be fairly reluctant to roll with disadvantage. As a bonus, with advantage, you have a greater chance of a nat 20 and lower chance of nat 1, and hey, who doesn't like more crits? :v (also the cantrips are delicious, just saying)

In all honesty though, as iconic as the d20 is for tabletop roleplaying, i'm actually not that big a fan of it in action. It's satisfying to roll, and nailing a 20 is always awesome, but i don't like the flat distribution of results; a seasoned veteran has as high a risk of a natural 1 as a complete rookie. That's also partly why i like the advantage system, since it messes with the otherwise flat probability curve. In a group i once played in (Cypher system, also d20-based), we actually ended up switching to 2d10 instead, which i found more enjoyable even though there were fewer exceptional results. It did make their appearance all the more exciting, however. :v

I thinkkkkkkkkkkk the "pool of d6's" system that Shadowrun uses is my favourite so far. If you're unfamiliar with it, here's the short version: Roll all your d6's for that skill test, count 5's and 6's as hits. If your hits meet a certain threshold (sometimes dictated by an opposed roll), you succeed. If more than half your dice are 1's, it's a glitch. If you get a glitch with no successes, it's a critical glitch. Modifiers are generally handled as dicepool bonuses or penalties. What i like about this is that your risk of glitches scales with your dicepool, so that a rookie is MUCH more likely to fuck up than a veteran, and i like this because IT MAKES SENSE.

[Jimmy]

I'm opposite side of the d20 opinion curve. A high level character doing the thing they do best is likely gonna do it really, really well. At that level, however, there should still be a chance of failure. No risk means no glory in winning, after all. 5% chance isn't too high, and as a DM I often give out rewards that let someone reroll a critical failure. Still, I think the risk is balanced.

[GiglameshDespair]

Oh, yeah.  And he's pretty obnoxious about it, though he's clearly playing that up for comedy.

The main thing that actually worried me, as someone potentially being in a 5e game soon, was the advantage system.  Also elements of the class system.  Basically things that seemed over-simplified.  I'd give timestamps if I had them, so I'll summarize:
the entire advantage system vs modifiers, wtf
Wizards casting in full plate with a 1 level fighter dip

I'm also worried about the abundance of useful and deadly cantrips, but I'm almost sold.  Almost.

Sure, if the wizard is willing to put stats in str, otherwise useless, and miss out on their capstone ability.

[Cthulhu]

5e is the 2e AD&D of the Wizards era.  TSR/Wizards, spooked by moms'/grogs' reaction to AD&D/4e, produce a bland, sterilized version that nobody could possibly hate because it doesn't have the balls to do anything someone might hate.

I like 5e, but only because there's nothing notable about it.  My biggest complaint is that it goes too far into GM fiat.  I have lots of story-driven rules-lite games I can play, Wizards.  I play D&D for crunchy grid-map combat.

[Criptfeind]

I still put 5e pretty dang far into the mechanical side of the mechanical-non mechanical rpg axis. Some things like advantage might be slightly more squishy then previous versions (kinda.) but on the whole I'm not sure I'd call it anything close to a rules-lite game. When someone says rules lite I think something like Nobilis.

[Rolan7]

Sure, if the wizard is willing to put stats in str, otherwise useless, and miss out on their capstone ability.

Why strength?  Carrying capacity?
My group did point out that most wizards prioritize dexterity for their ranged touch attacks, so they tend to be dodgy like rogues instead of "tanky" like fighters (and armor does jack against magic, in particular).

Still though, if casting in full plate isn't worth one level, kinda sounds like armor is pointless.
You also get +2 proficiency, a fighting style (+2 to ranged attacks, for example), and an extra "second wind" well of 1d10 HP.  And a d10 HD, though wizards apparently get d6 now... pah.

The wizard capstone, IF you lose it by being capped at 20 or something, is... two bonus 3rd level castings per day?  wowzers

[Cthulhu]

I think the silliest stat nonsense in RPGs has always been weak archers.  Bruh, have you ever pulled back a bow?  Have you ever done it 20+ times in the middle of a battle?

Legolas should be jacked.

[MrRoboto75]

I dunno.  If a wizard regularly needs full plate armor, he might be doing something wrong.

Besides, spells like mage armor and shield exist, which is at least as good as chain.

[Rolan7]

That is true, and has unlimited dex modifier.
Also I figured out what Giglamesh meant about strength - heavy armors have strength levels!  Full plate slows you down considerably if you don't have 15 strength.  So, yeah.

I dunno.  If a wizard regularly needs full plate armor, he might be doing something wrong.

Besides, spells like mage armor and shield exist, which is at least as good as chain.

Heh yeah, but good archers in DND do add their strength bonus to arrows (if the bow is designed for their bonus).
I did have a compound bow as a child that was pretty easy to draw (and especially hold), though that involved pulleys and had equally pitiful force.  Fun for a child to do short-range target shooting, but faaaaar too light to hunt with.

Also jeez I happened to see Fighter level 2, their "action surge".  Extra action (refilled by short rest), which includes spellcasting.  Doesn't help survivability as much as level 1 but still, nice.

I'm not complaining, actually, I like that spellswords/battlecasters/etc are actually reasonably possible in this.