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

[Road Work Ahead]

Does this mean:

• You bring your HP up to 50%, or
• you add 50% of your HP to the HP you already have, without exceeding your max HP?

The latter.

A couple other changes @King Dead didn't mention.

• Haste now gives an entire second action, not just an extra attack.
• Shove is now a bonus action for everyone.

 

[EleventySeven]

If anyone is interested/looking for a game, we have a slot or two open in a Pathfinder 1e game on Mondays 12 pm to 3 pm cst. We're in the middle of running the Hell's Vengeance adventure path so the campaign is all about being evil counter-revolutionaries. Right now, we have an cavalier inquisitor, a rogue sorcerer, and a fighter, and they've just hit level nine in this game. Ask any questions if you have them and I'll get back to you asap.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'd be curious to know what specific changes people want to use.

I already spot one. We house ruled potions as a bonus action long ago. A half rule might be cover. It's not house ruled out, but nobody uses it.

Getting rid of grapple and just having throw is one I'm stealing.

Leveled spells can be cast with both your action and bonus action

What does this mean? Two spells per turn?

Bonus to attack rolls if you have the high ground, penalty if on low ground (probably hard to port to tabletop)

Not really. I include verticality when I can. Players love flying leaps from balconies, or I troll them with crossbow men shooting from upstairs windows.

• Haste now gives an entire second action, not just an extra attack.
• Shove is now a bonus action for everyone.

These sound really bad.

Haste was broken in PF1 and I'm glad for the nerf. It's still a go-to buff for my players, along with heroism.
Shove as a bonus sounds broken. I'm imagining a fighter opening with a shove, and then getting advantage on his many attacks. Edit: I was thinking of trip.

If it's not broken, I can see this being a fun addition. One thing I like about PF2 is the stacking attack penalties mean players will sometimes opt for a weaker attack which has a lower penalty.

 

[Shidoen]

What was the edgiest player and/or dm character you guys had to deal with?

 

[Judge Dredd]

What was the edgiest player and/or dm character you guys had to deal with?

HEMA guy hands down. He played a generic loner rogue once, and his current character has dead parents I think? I'm not sure as I tuned out his convoluted character backstory at this point. Though a normally good player did play a typical tragic reluctant hero once and held a session hostage until he was allowed to give his character lore info dump. He seems to have learned from that though and usually plays highly sociable characters these days.


While I'm on the subject of HEMA guy, he came up with a doozy recently. Having an attribute at 20 should make you immune to failure for all rolls tied to it. What I think he should do is not make a one trick pony, because when your highly specific specialty comes up, sods law will make you nat 1 that roll.

 

[Shidoen]

HEMA guy hands down. He played a generic loner rogue once, and his current character has dead parents I think? I'm not sure as I tuned out his convoluted character backstory at this point. Though a normally good player did play a typical tragic reluctant hero once and held a session hostage until he was allowed to give his character lore info dump. He seems to have learned from that though and usually plays highly sociable characters these days.


While I'm on the subject of HEMA guy, he came up with a doozy recently. Having an attribute at 20 should make you immune to failure for all rolls tied to it. What I think he should do is not make a one trick pony, because when your highly specific specialty comes up, sods law will make you nat 1 that roll.

I never dealt with overtly edgy characters except that one sorcerer guy, he made this mustache twirl classical villain but then it turned into a goblin rape scenario and the DM had to tell him to knock it off. In my case I like writing edgy, grim dark, or dark fantasy characters but I never make my self insert or player character edgy.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

What was the edgiest player and/or dm character you guys had to deal with?

We had a guy whose first character was a ranger whose "animal" companion was a "buck-broken" orc slave named Clarence.

 

[AnOminous]

What was the edgiest player and/or dm character you guys had to deal with?

I never really played with any Whizzard GMs or other autists who had to introduce weird fetishes, but my pick would be nearly any PC in a Stormbringer campaign. Melnibonean and Pan Tangian cultures are basically sick and degenerate and based on sadism, so characters from either of those places (the most powerful and therefore most chosen characters) would generally be Chaos-worshipping psychopaths who all hated each other.

I would also as a GM have very uncharacteristic NPCs in games like Ringworld, for instance an occasionally outright schizophrenic Puppeteer who was also insanely courageous and a Kzin who venerated human culture and would constantly quote Shakespeare. I'd throw characters like this into the mix just to see what would happen.

One of the funniest things was the party including two of these NPCs crash-landed on the Ringworld (no big deal thanks to the indestructible GP hull) and despite the fact I had a whole scenario mapped out, once this happened, instead of actually going out and exploring, the players instead just stayed put and conspired against each other for months.

 

[Snekposter]

I think I've just found a villain for my next campaign.

I haven't played it yet either, but RPGBOT has a few articles up about it, one of which details major rules changes for the game. I dunno exactly what people are looking to backport, but here are a few of the bigger ones I see:

• Applying critical failure/success rules to skill checks in addition to attack rolls (no additional effects, just auto fail/success)
• Removal of tool proficiencies because nobody uses them anyway, Sleight of Hand now covering lockpicking and disarming traps
• No ability score requirements for multiclassing (likely due to the lowered level cap and forced point buy)
• Hard limit of two short rests per long rest, short rests restore half max HP instead of spending hit dice
• Heavy armor has no strength requirement to avoid speed penalties (likely changed so you don't have characters lagging behind)
• Weapons have special attacks that can be used once per short rest
• Heavy weapons can be used by Small characters without penalty
• Potions can be chugged as a bonus action
• Initiative is d4+DEX instead of d20+DEX
• No cover rules, though attacks still require LoS
• Bonus to attack rolls if you have the high ground, penalty if on low ground (probably hard to port to tabletop)
• Can swap prepared spells at any time out of combat
• All spell components outside of costly materials are ignored (which is basically what everyone does anyway), though being silenced still stops spellcasting
• Leveled spells can be cast with both your action and bonus action

I could maybe see some of these being usable in tabletop, but many are changes that make more sense in a video game format. I'd be curious to know what specific changes people want to use.

About the only stuff I really see being fun are the potion stuff. Tool proficiencies are interesting, but the weapon and armor stuff exists for a reason, inasmuch as heavy armor is remotely viable in 5e considering the disadvantages in weight, cost, and lack of scaling.

 

[You gain Brouzouf]

What was the edgiest player and/or dm character you guys had to deal with?

A few years ago I was preparing to run a short campaign with a small group of friends in 5e.
It was going to be a two or three session dungeon crawl through some completely trap infested ancient ruins.

One of them went with the idea of being a small orphan child who investigated ancient ruins in order to scavenge items and make a living.
After hearing this, another friend came to me and told me his genius idea for a character. He thought it'd be great if he was the guy that made this orphan an orphan, which, on it's own is not bad.
The part where it crossed a line was when he went into autistic detail about how he mutilated the parents and had been stalking this child, waiting for the moment to finish the job.
His goal was to try and kill the entire party, which I made very clear would be a thing he could do by abusing any of the traps in one of the first rooms they'd be likely to enter, but he didn't care.
He went on to explain that his character's backstory was that he was nihilistic and his goal was to inflict the most amount of suffering he possibly could on the world and he'd gladly kill himself if it also meant he could make someone else suffer.

So he wanted to run a nihilistic, child murdering, edgelord, who wanted to kill everyone else and had no self preservation instincts in an instant kill trap laten dungeon.

The way I dealt with this was by telling him "no" which he did not appreciate and bitched about it for quite a while.
He eventually came back with a different character who was thankfully not another edgelord but he wanted to play an Eldritch Knight but he also wanted a bunch of magic items from the artificer class which still wasn't officially out at the time.
In this character's backstory he just threw in some line about "oh yeah they have an artificer friend who gave them all these magic items".
I once again told him no and explained that if I let him do this I'd need to let everyone have off screen artificer friends who just make magic items especially for them. I also explained that if one of the remaining two players who was still working on their characters wanted to play artificer, someone else just awarding themselves a bunch of magic items which are meant to be main features of the artificer class would kind of ruin what was supposed to make the class special for those other players.
He actually threw a bitch fit and tried personally insulting me over being told that he wasn't allowed to just have 5 more magic items than everyone else.

He is now an ex-friend but that's unrelated to this, though I'm sure you could imagine why that may be.

 

[Ghostse]

I can't think of any particularly hot edgelord stories off the top of my head. I guess because usually I stop the edgelording before it starts and if they managed to slip through the filter they are quickly banhammered the minute they go edgy.
But again In my games I kill any NPCs the party tries to torture, I shutdown min-max out the gate, and NPCs eventually refuse to deal with you if you're an asshat. Any edgelords at my table tend to get very quickly get get bored and leave.

 

[derpherp2]

The latter.

A couple other changes @King Dead didn't mention.

• Haste now gives an entire second action, not just an extra attack.
• Shove is now a bonus action for everyone.

It's not just haste, ANYthing that gives you an extra action is now a full action.
Also thief gets a bonus.... bonus action.
These changes do make 5e less of a slog, but it doesn't fix the ass that is lvl 1-5. Nor the issue with how linear your classes are.

 

[King Dead]

What was the edgiest player and/or dm character you guys had to deal with?

No real edgelord stories myself because I've only played with one group of friends and we're all mature enough not to be edgy weirdos.

I guess the closest would be from my original DM, his old wizard character that he graduated to DMPC. Not only was he a level 20 wizard with the broken Lore Master subclass, he'd gone on to do at least another century's worth of adventuring, racking up a bunch of epic boons on top of that, and also had access to every spell in the game through a homebrew ritual he'd found, which he basically used to create his own library realm that I'm sure I brought up before. He did actually do the math on all of this and figured out how long it would take to do everything, so I'll give him credit for that. By the end of it, he looked like this psychopathic gnome weirdo with horns and black eyes and the hands of a solar and a balor.

The only reason he wasn't an edgelord was that the character (and the player, now that I think about it) had a severe case of ADD and would just go wander off places, and at all other times he was just hanging out in his library reading. So despite being grossly overpowered, he was easily distracted and generally just wanted to be left alone with his books. He figured in a couple of our backstories, but we never actually met him in the campaign proper despite the search for him being the primary focus. We never did finish the campaign either, so to this day I still don't know where he actually was all this time (the closest I got was "somewhere in Faerun").

 

[2LtMashengo]

We had a guy whose first character was a ranger whose "animal" companion was a "buck-broken" orc slave named Clarence.

I do declare, Mr. Beauregard, that greenskin is absolutely beggin' for a breakin'.

 

[Corn Flakes]

He went on to explain that his character's backstory (...)

In this character's backstory (...)

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why D&D 1e had it right and backstories should be 10 words or less. Particularly if you're starting at level 1. By itself, limiting backstories to "you're just starting out, write around that" cuts out a ton of edgelordery because most of these people get their kicks out of shocking others. Remove their entry point and most of them will lose interest before they find a single innocent peasant to murder for frivolous reasons.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I never really played with any Whizzard GMs or other autists who had to introduce weird fetishes, but my pick would be nearly any PC in a Stormbringer campaign.

On that front, I have a couple of stories.

One was a puzzle dungeon based on weight. PCs having to make themselves heavy to weigh down a pressure plate, lite to float across a gap, etc. The DM was a fan of Alice in Wonderland and seemed to be going for that kind of vibe. He seemed to enjoy describing the characters getting fat to the point they couldn't move or expanding like balloons. I didn't mind too much as I've seen worse.


But when it comes to modules, I've had to do some heavy edits on some. In one adventure, the PCs start as a wedding "with two grooms". These weren't even NPCs the players would know, so I cut it and just made the occasion a festival instead.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why D&D 1e had it right and backstories should be 10 words or less. Particularly if you're starting at level 1. By itself, limiting backstories to "you're just starting out, write around that" cuts out a ton of edgelordery because most of these people get their kicks out of shocking others. Remove their entry point and most of them will lose interest before they find a single innocent peasant to murder for frivolous reasons.

You've got it backwards. You encourage people to make backstories to catch the edgelords early, making it possible to nip them in the bud before they do something edge lordy in-game.

 

[Corn Flakes]

You've got it backwards. You encourage people to make backstories to catch the edgelords early, making it possible to nip them in the bud before they do something edge lordy in-game.

Believe me, edgelords are going to be bitching your ear off if you don't allow them to make their edgy backstory to begin with. Either way, it's very easy to spot them. Humor them at your own peril.

But when it comes to modules, I've had to do some heavy edits on some. In one adventure, the PCs start as a wedding "with two grooms". These weren't even NPCs the players would know, so I cut it and just made the occasion a festival instead.

This sort of "progressive" set dressing annoys me to no end. Some of it is even written well on occasion, but so much of that shit is written so transparently to fulfill the writer's kinks I just lump them in with all the other Magical Realms out there.

For people who bitch about "fetishization" of "queer bodies", these assholes sure do love obviously fetishizing everything "queer" out there.

 

[AnOminous]

Believe me, edgelords are going to be bitching your ear off if you don't allow them to make their edgy backstory to begin with. Either way, it's very easy to spot them. Humor them at your own peril.

I pretty much don't want that kind of player around anyway so it usually isn't an issue. Most of the people I played with were friends outside of the game so it didn't come up much. Also if someone has a super-edgelordy background history involving all kinds of heinous acts, I'd be okay, well, you'll be killed on sight by any law enforcement and nobody will sell you anything either, so don't even think of going into any towns, and they'd generally calm down.

And then if they did that shit anyway, they'd immediately get swarmed by the town guard and cut down.

Also as a general rule, if someone is going to be in a party, it has to be someone who would make sense for the others to associate with and not just kill.

Case in point of one of my own rather edgelordy character. I had a slimy, backstabbing weasel character everyone hated and wanted to kill. Why didn't they? Because I knew the location of the treasure. Why didn't they just torture me? Because the paladin said not to. What happened when an NPC blurted out the location of the treasure?

Guess.

Anyway the point is that if you're going to play an edgelord character, you'd best be ready to accept edgelord consequences.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

These sound really bad.

Haste was broken in PF1 and I'm glad for the nerf. It's still a go-to buff for my players, along with heroism.
Shove as a bonus sounds broken. I'm imagining a fighter opening with a shove, and then getting advantage on his many attacks. Edit: I was thinking of trip.

If it's not broken, I can see this being a fun addition. One thing I like about PF2 is the stacking attack penalties mean players will sometimes opt for a weaker attack which has a lower penalty.

3.0 Haste was worse as it DID give the full standard action. At least PF1 brought that shit back down to one extra attack with a full attack.