Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Wormy]

Lady Liberty now is a Mexican LatinX Trans DREAMer, not a joke. The Sacred Band shitshow. Blue Rose exist. Green Ronin burning its forum down because the Mods are autists trannies.

Dexterity and Presence are fucking worthless.

What happened to Dex/Pre?

And not bothered by their in house canon. We've been using our own universe for years now.

 

[Hikaru86]

What happened to Dex/Pre?

And not bothered by their in house canon. We've been using our own universe for years now.

Dexterity only affects ranged attack and two gimmick skills, Presence only affects three skills (Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion), both cost 2 points to get. Getting 2 ranks in any skills cost 1 point, Ranged Focus advantage cost 1 power per rank and gives you +1 to hit, and you have a Ranged Combat skill too. Do the math.

Meanwhile Agility gives you Dodge and Initiative. Fighting gives you Parry and Melee Attack. Stamina gives TOUHGNESS and FORTITUDE, two of the most used saves in the game. Awareness gives you WILLPOWER and a shit load of usefull perception based skills. Strength and Intellect kinda lag behind the other stats, but still wroth more points than Dexterity and Presence.

And i used my own setting, but the Brazilian RPG scene is full of Paulo Freire's cocksuckers, Che Guevarra's fags and Lula's enabblers. And we only got Power Profiles in Portuguese last year... And no other M&m 3e's book, 2nd edition in no better.

 

[Wormy]

Dexterity only affects ranged attack and two gimmick skills, Presence only affects three skills (Deception, Intimidation, Persuasion), both cost 2 points to get. Getting 2 ranks in any skills cost 1 point, Ranged Focus advantage cost 1 power per rank and gives you +1 to hit, and you have a Ranged Combat skill too. Do the math.

Tis a good point. I'll remember it for the next gun bunny I make.

Meanwhile Agility gives you Dodge and Initiative. Fighting gives you Parry and Melee Attack. Stamina gives TOUHGNESS and FORTITUDE, two of the most used saves in the game.

Better to soak than dodge in my experience.

INT Iis good for you have a skill monkey in mind, especially with Jack of All Trades advantage, but it's an investment. If I'm not giving a token 2 or 3, I'll drop 10/11 for a truly brainy skill hog.

 

[Lurking no more]

Tis a good point. I'll remember it for the next gun bunny I make.

Better to soak than dodge in my experience.

INT Iis good for you have a skill monkey in mind, especially with Jack of All Trades advantage, but it's an investment. If I'm not giving a token 2 or 3, I'll drop 10/11 for a truly brainy skill hog.

Yeah, dodging is generally worse due to it being over/under rather than having multiple degrees of failure like toughness does, as well as extra effort allowing the the defender to reroll the toughness save if he fails, while the attacker can reroll the attack check if he fails. It's not helped because of the rather silly decision to make dodging cost 2 points per rank by dividing it up, when it'd be more balanced if you just had a single reflex or dodge defense which cost 1 point, and then players could limit it to either ranged or melee attacks. Even then, I'd say toughness would be worth slightly more than reflex, but not by enough to really matter.

Now, dodging does have the advantage when dealing with nastier attacks, it's far better to just dodge an attack linked to a weaken and an affliction than it is to try and tank it, but those tend to be quite rare compared to your basic damage dealing attack.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

A question I wondered gameplay wise in both gaming and tabletop, is there a way to make fighters interesting and varied to play in a way that doesn't just make them magic knights?

 

[Wormy]

A question I wondered gameplay wise in both gaming and tabletop, is there a way to make fighters interesting and varied to play in a way that doesn't just make them magic knights?

Out of the box? Sadly not at lot really comes to mind aside from carefully dividing up your feats in 3.5, or going with the Battlemaster specialty in 5. Can't elaborate on 5 much since I don't hardely play it.

Me, I actually really like martial-support hybrids like Battlemasters but especially something like the Warlord from 4 and find it a lot more easier to make interesting than a beat stick.

 

[Corn Flakes]

A question I wondered gameplay wise in both gaming and tabletop, is there a way to make fighters interesting and varied to play in a way that doesn't just make them magic knights?

Encounter design. Let the melee characters do more than just attack every turn. Push enemies into traps and hazards, attack weak spots, use improvised weapons for more than just damage, get crits that deal more than damage, exploit variances in terrain elevation (dropping onto enemies is a timeless classic), throw explosive barrels, etc. It's harder to do in a strict grid-based system but it can be done. In short, the casters do what they do, while the fighters do all the Jackie Chan bullshit in the frontlines.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

A question I wondered gameplay wise in both gaming and tabletop, is there a way to make fighters interesting and varied to play in a way that doesn't just make them magic knights?

In 3.5, not unless you ban magic users outright or just have a party that lacks them. Otherwise, no. And even then, fighters are probably the most boring martial class, and the weakest (beaten only by the absolutely terrible Samurai class). Do yourself a favor; get the Book of Weeaboo Fighting Magic, and have the fighter player use a class out of that. You will both get so much more out of it.

in Pathfinder, fighters aren't nearly as terrible since they have more to them and actual class features, and "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" isn't as bad. So fighters are, in my experience, at least more viable.

4.0 is basically a video game, so I had fun playing a fighter in that because its built that way. Still, a caster will probably outshine it.

Haven't really played 5.0 outside the playtest, so can't really tell you that one.

 

[Pendulous Dong]

Haven't really played 5.0 outside the playtest, so can't really tell you that one.

The level of magic bullshit in 5e is second only to 3.5. Not a fun nonmagical martial class to be found.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Encounter design. Let the melee characters do more than just attack every turn. Push enemies into traps and hazards, attack weak spots, use improvised weapons for more than just damage, get crits that deal more than damage, exploit variances in terrain elevation (dropping onto enemies is a timeless classic), throw explosive barrels, etc. It's harder to do in a strict grid-based system but it can be done. In short, the casters do what they do, while the fighters do all the Jackie Chan bullshit in the frontlines.

An interesting idea, though the problem is that it creates the "boss room" issue where an area is especially out of place to accomodate a fight happening there.

You'd think that in a fantasy setting there will be fighting styles especially developed to counter magic users with how strong they are.

 

[Corn Flakes]

An interesting idea, though the problem is that it creates the "boss room" issue where an area is especially out of place to accomodate a fight happening there.

That's why I said it's harder to do it with grid-based combat, because most of those feature large rooms full of fuck-all, and nobody wants to have to deal with difficult terrain. If you're using theater of the mind, it's much easier to justify clutter and room geometry that the melee guys could make use of in a pinch.

It's the difference between "oh, there's a ladder but it's 20ft away so I don't have enough movement to pick it up, go back to my starting position, and then use it to block the orcs from advancing past. Nevermind that plan, then. I'll just attack instead;" and "hey, GM! Is there a ladder or a long plank of wood I could pick up and shove against the orcs to try to knock them off balance?". Of course, it depends on the GM, but it works for us.

You'd think that in a fantasy setting there will be fighting styles especially developed to counter magic users with how strong they are.

Yes. It's called "I attack". Unless the GM allows for more than just "I attack", that's all a melee character without magic items can do to a spellcaster, because that attack roll is the abstraction of 6 seconds of whatever the fuck the character was doing. Every fighting style, flashy or basic, gets boiled down to that single roll. Or 2 rolls at level 5, 3 rolls at 11, etc. Even the vaunted Mage Slayer feat only really gives you a bonus to break concentration, advantage on saves vs spells cast literally in melee with you, and the ability to do an opportunity attack against someone casting in melee with you.

Spellcasters were meant to be balanced by their fragility and limited resources. They could be worn down by throwing multiple encounters at them and forcing them to spend their spell slots (while the martials could keep on fighting so long as their much more substantial HP reserves held). They also sucked at earlier levels so their power at later levels was seen as a reward for the player's persistence. But with 5e introducing at-will damaging cantrips and making resting such an accessible action by comparison, good luck with any of that.

 

[Steinercard]

So, Slashers Bully the World of Darkness starts next week, the line up for characters is Jason Voorhees, Micheal Myers, Leatherface, and Chucky (had to homebrew that one a bit.) It isn't meant to be super serious. Just a bit of fun and seeing if we can get away with it with the rules provided.

In addition I got into AI generated art. Ended up customizing my own version of Stable Diffusion and was asked to generate portraits for another upcoming game I'm running. A Savage Worlds Pathfinder game set in a 1800's ish gothic horror world inspired by Ravenloft, Castlevania and HP Lovecraft. I was told what the characters should look like and let the AI get to work. Let me show you what we have so far.


Dorn: Dhampire Ranger


Crack addled Ron Weasley Kane: Human Sorcerer


Shanoa: Half-Elf Paladin

I used Waifu Diffusion to generate the pictures. My characters looked at the pictures and it gave them several ideas for roleplaying which was cool. Stuff like Magic being addictive and taking a toll like hardcore drugs. So Sorcerers slowly lose their minds to addiction to fight the darkness. Which will be an interesting thing for Kane's player to roleplay. With magic users in this world occupying a similar place as middle class doctors, and therapists would in our world. Experimenting with magic in weird ways that don't always go well.

 

[Midwit]

The level of magic bullshit in 5e is second only to 3.5. Not a fun nonmagical martial class to be found.

I played a fighter in the one 5e game I was part of, and in my experience the fun stops around level 10. The magic users could fling around their spells and shit and all I can do is swing an axe three times a turn so I just got bored playing him since I didn't really have much else to do. If I were to propose a fix to the issue it would be to do away with some sacred cows and give the fighter far more bonuses than they currently do when they level up because if a wizard can sling fireballs and summon his own fighters then my fighting-man should be able to his own crazy bullshit too.

Spellcasters were meant to be balanced by their fragility and limited resources.

I think the main thing that fucked balance is the removal of casting time as a limitation, so now there's no way to interrupt a magic user before they blow up half the board.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

in Pathfinder, fighters aren't nearly as terrible since they have more to them and actual class features, and "linear warriors, quadratic wizards" isn't as bad. So fighters are, in my experience, at least more viable.

4.0 is basically a video game, so I had fun playing a fighter in that because its built that way. Still, a caster will probably outshine it.

Haven't really played 5.0 outside the playtest, so can't really tell you that one.

Maybe in PF2, but PF1's fighter still suffers from the same issues 3E's did; they're just straight up overshadowed not just by casters but by other martials like the brawler and cavalier.

The armor and weapon training stuff isn't bad, but it builds very slowly, and fighters are still beholden to the problem that is full attack.

 

[Judge Dredd]

there's a LOT of inertia and brand recognition still in for normies to spend their money on it for years before they wise up. they're normies after all, otherwise they wouldn't play something like 5e to begin with.

I doubt that. Star Wars is already losing money. No one cares about capeshit any more. My own player pool has dried up as they move on to other things like Dark Tide and catching up with Armored Core.

Basically, yes. The original was that the civil war had ground to a halt and that the dire circumstances had forced the CSA to end slavery. But it became unacceptable and not-safe-spacey for the CSA to continue to exist in any form, the writer made a bunch of statements about how "the table wasn't welcoming" to black players or whatever so retconning the story was preferable to causing them discomfort. It seems to me that if I was black and went to play Deadlands and the other people at the table broke out grey caps and white hoods and started whistling Dixieland, the problem is the players rather than the setting, but that's just me.

I was never into Deadlands (I don't like westerns) but in the foreword to Hell on Earth (the mad max setting) they say that when they made Deadlands they originally planned to blow up the setting, but then it was smash hit and they didn't want to destroy their money printer.

Something I've gathered from watching a bunch of grognard old school DnD videos recently is that before WotC (and even after) the approach to DnD from it's creators was just to wing it and do whatever, and not even the original creators play RAW. I'm guessing SW is the same way. If they meant what they said in Hell on Earth, then they bend the setting whatever way they think will keep the goose laying golden eyes.

It really feels like a rot that's eating away at storytelling across the board nowadays. If you show some kind of social ill or moral wrong, then people act like you're endorsing it by having it in a product you're selling, even if it's explicitly performed by the villains whom you're supposed to hate.

Lefty stories are full of thinly veiled parody's of Trump, gamergate, nazis, etc. But that implies the presence of a veil. When a right winger that wears a red cap turns up, I know I can turn off my brain and enjoy some shit tier writing.

This is what the faggots and trannies who have colonized the hobby want.

And grognards too. There's no end to the complaining about classes not being balanced, or certain races being sub optimal. Just today I saw a YouTube video complaining that Fighters in 5e are worthless because Paladins can do everything Fighters can and cast spells. They want every class to be a grey mush that has no advantage over another.

And as we saw with the pigfarmers argument a while back, old school players hate the idea of heroic anything. Every adventure had better have a >60% mortality rate or you're playing it wrong.

A question I wondered gameplay wise in both gaming and tabletop, is there a way to make fighters interesting and varied to play in a way that doesn't just make them magic knights?

You might not want to. Iirc 5e was going to make all martials have Battle Master like mechanics, but that put off players who wanted to wade in and roll dice without using their brain.

Terrain has already been mentioned. They don't have to be boss rooms. One of my more memorable encounters took place on a large flight of stairs. It was difficult terrain to walk up (but not down) and one of the bad guys pushed a pram with a baby in down the stairs. Put some tables in the room for them to leap from for advantage. Simple things like that is all it takes.

Also, to make fighters (and other classes) use non-standard tactics, have enemies that have non-standard resistances. Maybe enemies have to be staked so the fighter has to pin them down, or have it be a charmed ally so they resort to non-lethal tactics.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

In 3.X and PF1 I added more armor.

Armor is made for protection on the battlefield. D&D assumes a magical world, which means any kingdom worth its salt is going to try to develop armor that slightly counters magic.

I added in armors that could only be worn by Paladins and Fighters, requiring the Super Heavy Armor Feat, which Fighters and Paladins got for free.

It had better AC, gave them a DR, and, of course, bonuses to deflecting spells.

Then I added exotic metals and stuff like "dwarven alchemical steel" and stuff like that.

Of course, I'd also limited magic users by 'max spells per level in traveling spellbook' as well as a few other things.

One thing I did that had some players walk away, is that different classes moved up on the PF1 leveling chart different. Casters were largely on the "slow progression" XP chart.

One more thing I did, just to see how everyone took it, was I included the old 1E/2E "Max Class Level by Race for PC's" which stopped a lot of the faggy "half drow half dragon half elf half dwarf half vampire" stupid shit I saw, since your max class level by race was determined by the lowest race rather than the top. You could go up for exceptional stats (by your primary stat bonus) in levels to get past the cap, but that was it.

Another nasty thing was laying down another rule chunk from 1E.

Non-martial characters could get a maximum hit die of 10. For casters 11th level would be 10+1hp, where for non-caster non-martials it was 10+2 hp.

Con bonuses for non-martials tapped out at +2 unless the racial bonuses were +2 or +4, then it tapped out at +3/+4 respectively.

Martials (and rogues) were the ONLY ones who got more than 1 attack, and I dropped it to +3/+1 for martials (extra attack every other round till +5, then scaled up), +5/+1 for rogue style. Wizards and casters were shit out of luck.

I also added casting time where casters had to proclaim at the start of the round what they were casting and until 7th level had to proclaim their target creature or area at the beginning of the round. (Improved Initiative for casters became suddenly important) Their init turn was what they would normally get PLUS the level of the spell. They were casting from the beginning of the round till their modified initiative and could only take a single 5-foot step if it had a somatic component. If they got hit, it was a concentration check.

I also added back in opposing schools of magic.

The last thing I always did was I flat out let them know "No, you don't get to pick a random spell out of the book when you level up and have your character pull it out of their ass." That got some screaming, but fuck those people, they can find a different game.

Lastly, I reintroduced "training", which meant time spent (3 days per level, 1,000 gp per level) and made guild and fraternal/sorority membership suddenly a huge deal, since it could reduce the cost and training time.

It's amazing how much the game changes when power has a cost.

And as we saw with the pigfarmers argument a while back, old school players hate the idea of heroic anything. Every adventure had better have a >60% mortality rate or you're playing it wrong.

What's funny, is with all the limitations I put in, all the adjustments I did...

...those same faggots called me a power gamer because I let the players be heroic even with all the adjustments to 3.X.

"They should all start as dirt farmers with no teeth and enjoy fucking pigs! Because that's how the medieval world is!"

I had cool backgrounds and shit, because I always assumed the PC's had a certain 'spark' that NPC's didn't that let them rise in power so quickly.

I also had some of those old grognards try to tell me back in the early 2000's that having a celebration for the party members at a small town they saved every year was stupid and dumb.

Then ENWorld did a poll and most of those grognards who insist everyone start as Dugger the Shit Digger had either never actually played D&D or hadn't played in years. Those that did play admitted they had a problem keeping players.

I know, flat out, that I could promise everyone I was going to slap the above shit down on a PF1 campaign, with limiting the classes and races to the Core Book Only until we got used to each other and we learned each others gaming habits, with a stat block of 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 3 points to move around, announce there will be a mixture of dungeon crawl, hex crawl, exploration, urban adventures, and role playing, they'll want to take notes. I could say there's going to be slavery, racism, nationalism, sexism, and even different sub-races racism, then tell them that the world has suffered the collapse of the Great Empires only 50 years ago and the whole world is still grinding down into a Dark Age...

And I'd have plenty of people who wanted in.

Especially when I say some shit like "And the Gods have decided that the mortals can change the fate of their world. That means you, the players, can stave off the Dark Age with your PC's."

People like a challenge and this whole shit of turning characters into big gray blobs where the player is the biggest and the grayist and the blobbiest and all conflict is thinly veiled progressive bullshit with no real conflict fucking pisses me off.

 

[anti SJW]

Killed my first Player Character running Pathfinder 2E today. Abomination vaults, they are still only on the second level. The PCs are all third level characters. The cleric decides to wander off by Herself, without telling the others. Takes an elvator all by Herself to the next level down, this is as the other PCs are getting into combat with something else.
The cleric opens the door to the first door She goes to, finds a ghoul 2 levels higher then Her, Ghoul hits Her, she crit fails Her paralysis save. No one else around to help. I ruled She was done.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Killed my first Player Character running Pathfinder 2E today. Abomination vaults, they are still only on the second level. The PCs are all third level characters. The cleric decides to wander off by Herself, without telling the others. Takes an elvator all by Herself to the next level down, this is as the other PCs are getting into combat with something else.
The cleric opens the door to the first door She goes to, finds a ghoul 2 levels higher then Her, Ghoul hits Her, she crit fails Her paralysis save. No one else around to help. I ruled She was done.

That's straight out of the old 1E DMG, man.

Good to see the spirit of "The ghouls ate your ass" still lives.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Yep. Sometimes you just have to say: "sorry dude, you're dead".

As my first DM used to say, back in the late Cretaceous: there's no saving throw for stupidity.

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

If they didn't want to find out, etc.