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[Kagus]

Sounds like a convoluted way to avoid using Distant Spell metamagic.

Just at more than three times the range and while potentially being in a completely different room from the target, and without using sorcery points (except for the room trick, in one variation). Yeah.


...actually, come to think of it, Distant Spell doesn't appear to place any additional targeting modifiers on the spell, it just increases the range to 30'. And the Touch-range spells I looked at didn't actually have any wording about being able to see the target. So, by that metric, you absolutely can just Distant Spell straight through a solid brick wall.

[Cthulhu]

If somebody at my table said his quasit could use touch attacks without breaking invisibility cause technically he's making the attack, I would slap him so hard his birth certificate disappears.

I would say no to 90% of the RAW speculation in this thread on principle.  And that's assuming I was somehow persuaded to run D&D 5e again when honestly I'd rather not play at all than run another D&D game.

In other news, there's a D&D game coming out in June.  According to the description it's an action RPG set in "the world of dungeons and dragons," which isn't even english.  What is the world of dungeons and dragons? D&D is a set of rules for adding structure to improv roleplaying.  When you have an action RPG that doesn't use the D&D ruleset, what about it is D&D aside from the words on the box?  I'm just being a pedantic dick now, it's set in forgotten realms of course, and for all I know the game will turn out good.  It's just a thing that bugs me because I'm a pedantic dick.  I was the same way about the D&D movie.  It's just a generic fantasy movie with D&D on it.  This is just vermintide with D&D on it.  I dunno.  I'm elderly.

So this post isn't entirely negative, I really really really want to play Runequest but looking at it I have no idea how to actually run a game.  Like it doesn't feel suited to D&D style adventuring and there's this really well-established history and lore that you're smack in the middle of, feels like the PCs should be a part of that but difficult, how do you have your PCs take part in a war between demigods without being overshadowed.  Challenging.  Need to see if they've published any more adventures, there's a few adventures for older versions but they're really strange.

Glorantha though is just a top tier setting.  It blows every D&D setting out of the water, nothing compares.  Bronze-age setting, super high fantasy but not in the awful kitchen-sink style of D&D but very natural feeling, there's an entire book detailing the history of the world and all the myths which are super interesting, was created by a cultural anthropologist and IRL shaman so the cosmology and lore feels authentic in a way no other setting does. 

The trickster god learned the secret of death while traveling through hell, and went around showing it to people as a prank, bringing death into the world.  Orlanth, the chief god, punished him by cutting him into pieces, but he put himself back together.  As a result his priests can pull their body parts off and control them remotely, and if you pay them they'll teach you how to do it too.  Later he was making his severed dick chase a lady around when Orlanth pulled him into a quest, and he had to leave it behind.  He was attacked by a demon with vagina dentata but survived because he left his dick at home.

When the male gods left to fight the gods war the earth goddess was left alone and pregnant.  The troll god of death attacked her and struck her belly with the axe whose head is death, but when he pulled it free the head was gone.  Her unborn baby climbed out of the wound wielding death and went on a rampage, becoming the goddess of revenge.  She's also the goddess of alcohol cause she likes to drink when she's not beating the shit out of anyone who was mean to her mom.

It's all wonderful.  It is the best RPG setting bar none, and just from an RPG standpoint a world where every competent adult can do full-on wizard shit without the setting turning into gonzo "magic as technology" nonsense is really fun. 

[Kagus]

If somebody at my table said his quasit could use touch attacks without breaking invisibility cause technically he's making the attack, I would slap him so hard his birth certificate disappears.

And I view that as needlessly hostile.

Again, this is a matter of trying to make sure we're all playing the same game. What's painfully obvious to you may not be that way for someone else. This includes whatever we presume the intentions behind the written rules are. Obviously, using Lucky to turn disadvantage into super-advantage isn't intended behavior. ...except that it specifically was intended by the developers.

So outright attacking someone for reading the rules and trying to interpret them, because clearly they're explicitly being malicious and are just trying to game the system instead of following the obvious norm, strikes me as kind of hostile and unconducive to creative play.

You could just say that "No, the reaction of delivering a spell ("delivery" not being detailed anywhere else in the book to my knowledge) also breaks invisibility(fiat)/counts as an attack(interpretation)". And that's fine (in addition to covering attack-less touch spells such as Cure Wounds). But aggressively punching someone down because they thought they'd found a useful interaction is just going to discourage people from trying to do anything outside of whatever railroad they think you've intended.

But if you're okay with that and your players are okay with that, then, well, it works for you. It wouldn't work for me. I'm the kind who casts Light (coloring it red) on a coconut and then uses Catapult to launch it into the air as a signal flare (if we don't have someone with a bow on hand).


Glorantha is the shit. I'll always just automatically associate it with KoDP rather than the RPG though, due to what I was exposed to first. "No, don't bang the pretty naked forest lady. Do not bang the pretty naked forest lady. ...You fucking fucks, I told you not to bang the pretty naked forest lady, now you've got thorny vines coming out of your earholes."

KoDP might actually be a good place to look for inspiration on RPG adventures, come to think of it.  Just look at the hero quests. Mortals learn the old myths and stories, and then enter the realm of the gods to reenact them. You're dealing with very powerful forces, but by adhering to the histories and methods of the gods you can prevail (with notable effect, both in the sense of personal growth and in the sense of political weight with the various tribes).

[Cthulhu]

My actions seem extreme but it's important to realize I'm not a person, I'm a complicated rube goldberg machine made out of string and cardboard gears by a mad scientist for purpose of boiling water and then launching it at people.

Heroquesting is cool and it definitely has a place in an adventure, though the actual RPGs (there's two, runequest and a more rules-light storygame called heroquest) treat heroquesting a bit differently.  It's treated vaguely as to whether or not what you're doing is "real."  Like the story of orlanth freeing water from the dragon might be traveling into the Godtime, or it might just be guys in costumes fighting a giant puppet made out of leather and feathers and stuff.  I like to think it's a bit of both, with the power of the tribe's belief and fidelity of their reenactment blurring the boundaries between the real world and the godtime, with the extreme end being your orlanth finds himself actually battling the dragon.

I dunno if I could make a whole campaign out of heroquesting though, but it's certainly an angle.

[scriver]

A real shaman or a fake ass new wave shaman though

[Kagus]

I dunno if I could make a whole campaign out of heroquesting though, but it's certainly an angle.

Nah, don't know if I'd go that far... But it is a useful tool and stepping stone for letting the characters play with the "big boys" in a sense, if you feel like that's a good path to take.

Could theoretically just have the players be part of a clan and progressing from minor misadventures around on the tula, to raids against neighboring clans, to more concerted war efforts against rival clans, to eventually taking part in working to unite the clans and the more far-reaching adventures that can open up.

Heck, if you're feeling spicy, have the party be nobles on the clan ring! Then they can be called upon to deal with situations befitting their specialties, to be important (and therefore sought out/targeted) members of clan life, and to give advice to the chief on weighty matters... While still allowing them some measure of free reign to pursue their own objectives.

Advising the chief also means that players can lean fully into whatever single-minded harebrained characters they're playing as, without it necessarily leading to utter and immediate catastrophe since there's still a bureaucratic link above them interpreting their input. The chief still makes the final decision, but they get to feel like they were included in the process.

A real shaman or a fake ass new wave shaman though

As ancestral enemy to Faralinthor and all that is corrupted by his salty influence, I would strike down his wet presence if this were the case!

[scriver]

Hehe you know what I mean

It's better this way though

[Cthulhu]

I think honestly I'd probably end up running an exalted game, which is kind of similar to the Glorantha RPG "historic moment" in that it's superpowered demigods doing crazy shit.

A three kingdoms type of scenario would be fun, probably set in An-Teng, which is a wealthy and apparently subservient satrapy with multiple ruling families and lots of secret royal plots to overthrow dragonblooded rule. 

One of the dragonblooded houses gets wind of the traitor plots and exterminates most of the rulership, the remainder break into factions controlling various small parts of the map.  While House X (probably the big mercantile house) is trying to burn them out one of the smaller houses makes their own play for control of the region, leading to an early flashpoint in the slow-rolling collapse of the empire.  The satrapy dissolves into a big multipolar clusterfuck of warring factions.  Lunars take advantage to start bringing down imperial rule on the outskirts, maybe a couple other weird factions, and then the players come in and get to play around in this sandbox, try to further destabilize imperial control or join with the lunars or carve our their own enlightened principality moving into a more strategic war campaign to control the entire area.

[Iduno]

Ok, so I'm trying to brainstorm a stupid Call of Cthulu/similar one-shot, even though I don't play that game.

Here's what I've got.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The players are investigating a cult (as you do) who are going to be summoning some type of Eldrich being. The players get on the same train.
The wheels of steel are turning, starting the trip from New York to San Fransisco.
Some of the other passengers begin to make increasingly cryptic comments to them like "we'll be there for you" and "Happiness is just around the corner".
If the PCs are still stuck, they are given an invitation with a time, car number, and the words "we like to party" written on it.
At the height of the party, one passenger after another starts going through the window of the train. Everybody's jumping.
The Venga Bus is coming, if they don't stop the ritual suicides.

[Cthulhu]

That doesn't really give us much to go on.  COC design principles aren't much different from D&D stuff, though the focus on mystery can be tough.  I'd do the same thing I do with D&D adventures, especially less combat-focused ones, and start with a timeline of what will happen if the players never show up, from whatever point their plot starts to its completion with whatever bad shit going down.  Once you've got that you can start to figure out what levers the players have to interact with the situation and what you need to flesh out in more detail.

[Jimmy]

I think I want to try doing an Innsmouth-style scenario for my players to investigate in their Pathfinder game. Since the entire campaign is in a port city metropolis, I'll probably have it set in the surrounding suburbs outside the city walls.

I'll need to come up with art and NPC details though, since it'll be more investigation and less monster-slaying. I'll have to give COC a look-through to see what they've got available that I can adapt.

[Kagus]

That doesn't really give us much to go on.  COC design principles aren't much different from D&D stuff, though the focus on mystery can be tough.  I'd do the same thing I do with D&D adventures, especially less combat-focused ones, and start with a timeline of what will happen if the players never show up, from whatever point their plot starts to its completion with whatever bad shit going down.  Once you've got that you can start to figure out what levers the players have to interact with the situation and what you need to flesh out in more detail.

We like to party
We like, we like to party
We like to party
We like, we like to party
We like to party
We like, we like to party
We like to party...


And if we're talking settings, I've had an idea for a short campaign/sideline where the party gets wrapped up in a good ol' classic murder mystery.

Big estate house, fancy gala affair, lots of high (and otherwise) society guests, the works. The party gets brought on as extra security or something. Then, suddenly, a gruesome corpse is discovered, brutally killed! The estate gets locked down until the perpetrator can be brought to justice!

Paranoia and claustrophobia run rampant amongst the guests, fueling old feuds and rivalries. More bodies start appearing, and arguments and accusations run rampant. The clock is ticking to find the killer before the guests turn upon one another in desperation like the cornered animals they are.


...except, if one were to speak with the dead spirit of the first victim, the party would learn that they're just a massive klutz and just managed to accidentally kill themselves in spectacularly gory fashion. All the other bodies are the various guests trying to 1) Capitalize on the situation to settle some old scores, or 2) Fix the problem themselves.

[Cthulhu]

I've always had an idea in the back of my head for a legend of the five rings one-shot where the players get premade characters.  They're in the winter court of a lion clan lord when he's murdered, and the goal is to find the killer.  I'd imply without stating outright that one of the players is the murderer, and each player's character would have a set of motivations and secret goals (e.g. the lion clan bushi is having a secret affair with his liege's daughter.  The scorpion clan shugenja has seen them meeting at night and knows about the affair, etc.) designed to make them mistrust each other.  The actual murderer is an NPC, and the goal of the scenario is to have a hamlet-style social breakdown leading to everyone dying at the end.

[Kagus]

Five Rings, the game where you need at least two books to figure out who your character is and how he feels about stuff... I get the feeling I'd like to try playing it someday, the dice system intrigues me. ...but hoo-ee, that's some heavy lore and etiquette, boy.


So, question... Illusionist Wizard and his sling-wielding buddy. Illusionist casts Creation, making a stone sling bullet. He gives it to his buddy, who pops it into the sling.

Next turn, Illusionist readies an action, and slingy whips the bullet at someone naughty.

When the bullet has crossed (Half? Most? Whatever seems reasonable) the distance to its target, Illusionist uses his readied action, which is to take his subclass ability Malleable Illusions and change the nature of the sling bullet per the boundaries of the Creation spell. It is now a 5'x5'x5' solid block of Adamantine (or whatever else you might wish to change it into). Does the object maintain its momentum, turning into an obliterating cannonball, or does the momentum reset because the spell got "refreshed" and it just drops to the ground?


Alternatively, just make a nice wreath for someone, have them put it on, and then turn it into a giant crushing weight of death. Or give a pea to a flying familiar.

[Egan_BW]

Object retains its kinetic energy between transformations, turning from a fast moving pebble into a relatively slow moving boulder which deals around the same amount of damage, maybe a little less due to a wider surface area.

Of course, this just means that you should get the barbarian or whoever's strongest to yeet a lead bowling ball as hard as she can, and then convert it into a very thin and light 5' wide monomolecular obsidian blade which is now moving extremely fast.