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

[Ghostse]

Every game I've played has at least one person doing this. It's always different degrees of how bad it is but there's always at least one. Christ, I'll admit to doing it too years ago, (I'll take my lashings) but I've posted before that I think there's this issue with D&D that encounters can feel so swingy that people would rather err on the side of making some OP reddit build that's streamlined for X than just make one that feels Fun™ but also has poor stats or wrong feats or whatever.

On the face of it, I don't mind people rolling up with characters that got some help from the internet to be a little more effective. I also don't mind "hey, I read this broken build would you mind doing a one shot or set up some encounters so I can see how it plays?" in small doses.

What bothers me is instead of having a interesting, non-meme idea for a character concept and using the internet to realize that character in the game system, they instead read these reddit posts and just bring a sack of numbers and mechanics.

Also I care to point out a point you bring up:
While its the minority of playes that do this shit, one Reddit Munchkin with a meme build ruins the game for 4 to 6 other people, so it doesn't take that many to shit up a lot of games.

This is insane to me. As a DM/GM I am thrilled when players don't spent 20 fucking minutes debating something. Obviously you don't want PCs just Leeroy Jenkinsing their way through things all the time or having one guy do something the party doesn't want, but this is such an open and shut case that I cannot wrap my head around a DM not being excited at rolling with the decision.

I am fairly sure the guy got his rocks off by seeing everyone stew over trying to unravel his brilliant plans, so when I just hacked apart his gordian knot it robbed him of that thrill; and again, I KNOW it was a trap of some sort (from some other stuff he did + the trope) but I just didn't see any point in trying to work it over for an hour to work out an answer that couldn't be worked out. If It was the bad choice we could deal with it when it happened.

Our evil character (its PF there has to be at least one evil character in the party) had wanted to basically extort the demon. Which on the face of it I wasn't opposed to and would have twisted my paladin's motivations to be "well, evil is cleaning itself", except even if he won the debate it was going to be 2 fucking hours of "what do we ask it for" and "how do we word it carefully" Which, again, I would have been in favor of if it hadn't been that shit for 2 and half sessions.
The other good character wanted to leave the Demon to suffer, and I think was influenced by the neutral wizard who basically wanted the Big Bad's demonic juicer for himself. And of course the chaotic-retard gnome rogue who just wanted to torture something.

Feels like some Machiavellian nerd shit.

Not to turn this into livejournal, but that was a massive fucking mess.
Its only Machiavellian if Machiavelli was an under employed stoner manchild. The plan was pretty much
1) Seduce and fuck the girl my friend/roommate is making moves to marry
2) ???
3) Continue to have cheap rent forever

The guy also didn't get why everyone in the social group was mad at him; Im ean hadn't he correctly shown she was a zero-morals whore by fucking her on the regular for the past year? He was doing his friend a favor if you think about it.

It was 3 people, one of them only occassionally played PF with the group, in 2 story apartment.
He had the smaller bedroom in a 3 bedroom apartment, and only paid like 1/4 the rent, thus could live in a MUCH nicer place than his 24-hours a week part time would have let him live otherwise. The girlfriend was also only marginally employed. anyway it worked out that while the Player Roomate was working his 9-5 the DM would fuck the G/F (who didn't play in the PathFinder game).

the real kicker was the ending. So apparently the GM got pissed he was being painted as the bad guy with all their mutuals, and then with no warning moved out to parts unknown. And when the now-single player, and the other roommate went to talk to the landlord to ammend the lease the Landlord was "Wait, how are you guys going to afford rent with that guy gone?"; cue "WTF" from the only two people with real jobs.
DM had been collecting rent money, but not always paying rent. He'd go and cry to the landlord about cut hours, etc. and get extensions to pay, or offer to pay his balance when it was christmas, etc. I guess he said he'd lost his job and hadn't paid anything more than very token ammounts to stave off eviction for about ~6 months.
So in addition to having fucked the girl of a guy he'd been friends with for like 15 years, he left said friend and another mutual friend on the hook for something like $6,000 in back rent (the landlord was enough of a bro to waive all the penalties/fees once he got the whole story)

To paraphrase workfriend "he's such a piece of shit you skip right over being mad and loop around to being almost impressed"

 

[AnOminous]

Also I care to point out a point you bring up:
While its the minority of playes that do this shit, one Reddit Munchkin with a meme build ruins the game for 4 to 6 other people, so it doesn't take that many to shit up a lot of games.

That's always been my general rule. If it's fun and creative, I like it. If you're trying to play a TTRPG like some vidya JRPG, and it's ruining it for everyone else, it's gone. And so is the player if they can't get their shit together and quit munching it up.

I luckily never actually had to do that because everyone was there to have fun, not be total autists (or at least be fun autists).

 

[Judge Dredd]

The big problem with all of those theorycrafted builds is that they run right into a brick wall the minute it comes into an actual game and especially in a campaign. Most of them require a character to be at least 12th level and most of them assume that every combat will be very similar to every other combat. Every single time someone who has played a character from 1 to whatever level is going to mudhole stomp whatever over-engineered guy with a cool trick up his sleave.

Exactly what I said (though I get a bunch of negative stickers for saying so).

It doesn't even have to be pvp or that fancy either. A guy with a crossbow leaning out of a window is a trick I've used before and it instantly cripples melee based one trick ponies and people trying to play it like a MMO. It's such an obvious trick that any half wit bandit or mage would use.

In a recent haunted house one shot I ran for Halloween, I had to talk a guy out of playing an alchemist, as fire bombs in a dusty old house isn't the best idea.

I don't mind people rolling up with characters that got some help from the internet to be a little more effective. I also don't mind "hey, I read this broken build would you mind doing a one shot or set up some encounters so I can see how it plays?" in small doses.

What bothers me is instead of having a interesting, non-meme idea for a character concept and using the internet to realize that character in the game system, they instead read these reddit posts and just bring a sack of numbers and mechanics.

I never got it to the table, but I really wanted to do the duel crossbow fighter build I heard about for 5e. I wanted to run it as a fantasy version of this. (Skip to 40 seconds)

I'm a forever DM, so I likely will never get to now. Though a hellgate london game is very tempting.

 

[The Ugly One]

The cool two handed max damage fighter/barbarian is going to lose against the fighter that invested a tiny bit into a good longbow and has a potion of fly he found 5 levels ago.

If I had a nickel for every time an "optimized" fighter stood around scratching his ass for an entire combat because he didn't even carry a longbow, I'd have at least a dollar or two.

I never got it to the table, but I really wanted to do the duel crossbow fighter build I heard about for 5e.

You can't do dual crossbows in 5e because crossbows don't have auto-loading cartridges. There's a feat that everyone misinterprets as letting you dual-wield crossbows that simply allows you to make an additional attack with a bonus action, using the crossbow you're already carrying.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

In a recent haunted house one shot I ran for Halloween, I had to talk a guy out of playing an alchemist, as fire bombs in a dusty old house isn't the best idea

In the very first RPG session I ever played, the party decided to torch a ship that they were supposed to be looting because the resistance belowdeck was too fierce. After it sank, one of the players used a magical water breathing device to recover a small percentage of the loot. I really appreciated the DM rolling with the idea, especially after the session ended and she unrolled the three maps of parts of the ship we hadn't bothered with. She had some PDF blown up and printed at Staples, but the fun we had was worth more than the $15 or whatever she had paid.

 

[Rend Me Asunder]

In the very first RPG session I ever played, the party decided to torch a ship that they were supposed to be looting because the resistance belowdeck was too fierce. After it sank, one of the players used a magical water breathing device to recover a small percentage of the loot. I really appreciated the DM rolling with the idea, especially after the session ended and she unrolled the three maps of parts of the ship we hadn't bothered with. She had some PDF blown up and printed at Staples, but the fun we had was worth more than the $15 or whatever she had paid.

And that's why I don't make pretty maps anymore, they never get used lmao

 

[Rapier Ape]

And that's why I don't make pretty maps anymore, they never get used lmao

A giant Chessex grid and wet erase markers has done me solid for 12 years.

If I had a nickel for every time an "optimized" fighter stood around scratching his ass for an entire combat because he didn't even carry a longbow, I'd have at least a dollar or two.

Oddly enough one of the girls at the table has so far only played a fighter specializing in bows in a few different systems. Bows and knives. Which is really bad in DQ3e because arrows screw up target movement. Missiles actually have to be removed if they're piercing damage. They also do damage when being extracted. She wasn't aware of this during character creation.

 

[AnOminous]

A giant Chessex grid and wet erase markers has done me solid for 12 years.

I used to use graph paper for dungeons and hex paper for outdoors.

 

[Sayer of the N-Word]

And that's why I don't make pretty maps anymore, they never get used lmao

You just have to keep them in your already overstuffed DM bag/suitcase in anticipation of the day when the players suddenly decide to take a cruise, an opportunity which canny/thrifty DMs will make comes up quite often. A dragon is terrorizing the village? He's also begun pestering ships in the harbor. Players want to travel to another plane? Well, wouldn't you know it, the wizard NPC happens to have a magical galleon that can sail the seas between worlds. Crossing a vast desert? Turns out that the only way to do it is to float down a narrow river.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

If I had a nickel for every time an "optimized" fighter stood around scratching his ass for an entire combat because he didn't even carry a longbow, I'd have at least a dollar or two.


You can't do dual crossbows in 5e because crossbows don't have auto-loading cartridges. There's a feat that everyone misinterprets as letting you dual-wield crossbows that simply allows you to make an additional attack with a bonus action, using the crossbow you're already carrying.

Except you are wrong.



Hand Crossbows have the light property and can be dual wielded. Crossbow expert not only allows you to make the bonus action attack with the offhand hand crossbow, but allows you to ignore the loading property. Is this fucking retarded? Yes. Is it valid within the rules? Also yes.

 

[The Ugly One]

Hand Crossbows have the light property and can be dual wielded. Crossbow expert not only allows you to make the bonus action attack with the offhand hand crossbow, but allows you to ignore the loading property.

No, munchkin child, it is YOU who are wrong. The requirement to have a free hand belongs to the Ammunition property, not to the Loading property:

Ammunition: You can use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from the weapon. Each time you attack with the weapon, you expend one piece of ammunition. Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack (you need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon).

The feat removes the Loading property, but not the Ammunition property. Loading only affects firing speed. Another one-handed ranged weapon with Ammunition, but not Loading, is a sling. You cannot usefully wield a sling with a shield, or a dagger in the other hand, or try to dual-wield it, because you cannot use your penis to pop sling stones from your satchel into a sling. The Ammunition property requires a free hand.

Enjoy prison.

Spoiler: Official clarification from a long time ago

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/sac/sage-advice-compendium

 

[X Prime]

The guy also didn't get why everyone in the social group was mad at him; Im ean hadn't he correctly shown she was a zero-morals whore by fucking her on the regular for the past year? He was doing his friend a favor if you think about it.

Something something, autists never understanding that both sides of an adulterous relationship are often scum, something something.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

No, munchkin child, it is YOU who are wrong. The requirement to have a free hand belongs to the Ammunition property, not to the Loading property:

Ammunition: You can use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from the weapon. Each time you attack with the weapon, you expend one piece of ammunition. Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack (you need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon).

The feat removes the Loading property, but not the Ammunition property. Loading only affects firing speed. Another one-handed ranged weapon with Ammunition, but not Loading, is a sling. You cannot usefully wield a sling with a shield, or a dagger in the other hand, or try to dual-wield it, because you cannot use your penis to pop sling stones from your satchel into a sling. The Ammunition property requires a free hand.

Enjoy prison.

Spoiler: Official clarification from a long time ago

View attachment 8105479

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/sac/sage-advice-compendium

God bless you, I never thought to look at the bolts themselves. It's not an issue that has ever come up in our group because the consensus is that dual wielding hand cross bows is mega gay.

 

[The Ugly One]

God bless you, I never thought to look at the bolts themselves.

"Ammunition" is a crossbow property, not a bolt property. There is a table on page 149 of weapons and their properties, which are themselves defined on page 146-147.

The funny thing about 5e is that when it launched, they Mearls said, "Oh yeah, we're totally not using keywords any more, because you guys hated the clarity and directness of 4e so much! It's all natural language!" Except 5e is actually full of keywords. They're just not in bold and don't have symbols associated with them so that the 3.x loyalists would cut it with the histrionics, so the sperglords just found new things to shriek with rage about. Meanwhile, you had a lot of confusion like yours because people didn't realize they were reading keywords.

The other very silly thing is the "Light" property adds virtually zero practical utility to the hand cbow. I guess you could use it as an offhand weapon for a non-proficient Improvised attack. All the fighting rules for Light weapons are for Light melee weapons. There are no particular rules whatsoever for Light ranged weapons. and that includes the Crossbow Expert feat.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

"Ammunition" is a crossbow property, not a bolt property. There is a table on page 149 of weapons and their properties, which are themselves defined on page 146-147.

The funny thing about 5e is that when it launched, they Mearls said, "Oh yeah, we're totally not using keywords any more, because you guys hated the clarity and directness of 4e so much! It's all natural language!" Except 5e is actually full of keywords. They're just not in bold and don't have symbols associated with them so that the 3.x loyalists would cut it with the histrionics, so the sperglords just found new things to shriek with rage about. Meanwhile, you had a lot of confusion like yours because people didn't realize they were reading keywords.

The other very silly thing is the "Light" property adds virtually zero practical utility to the hand cbow. I guess you could use it as an offhand weapon for a non-proficient Improvised attack. All the fighting rules for Light weapons are for Light melee weapons. There are no particular rules whatsoever for Light ranged weapons. and that includes the Crossbow Expert feat.

Which is pretty dumb of them. I grant keywords can feel like you're being spoon-fed mechanics at times, but it does help clarify things. Does X ability/item/spell have Y keyword? If yes, then A; if no, then B.

 

[The Ugly One]

Which is pretty dumb of them. I grant keywords can feel like you're being spoon-fed mechanics at times, but it does help clarify things. Does X ability/item/spell have Y keyword? If yes, then A; if no, then B.

The problem is that everyone who posts about RPGs online is a massively autistic retard who should never be listened to by anyone for any reason.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

The problem is that everyone who posts about RPGs online is a massively autistic retard who should never be listened to by anyone for any reason.

Does that include us?

 

[Ghostse]

The funny thing about 5e is that when it launched, they Mearls said, "Oh yeah, we're totally not using keywords any more, because you guys hated the clarity and directness of 4e so much! It's all natural language!" Except 5e is actually full of keywords. They're just not in bold and don't have symbols associated with them so that the 3.x loyalists would cut it with the histrionics, so the sperglords just found new things to shriek with rage about. Meanwhile, you had a lot of confusion like yours because people didn't realize they were reading keywords.

Mad soyjak: Keywords
Ecstatic soyjak: Keyswords, Japan Properties

Which is
A) one of the things I hated about 5e, namely it took some of 4e systems and just made them worse.
B) Because its "natural language" they are not always careful and consistent with usage especially as the line went on.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I don't mind keywords and tags. The problem is not doing them right. Ditto with natural language.

Pathfinder 2 is really bad for this. Nested tags and conditions that sometimes loop back on each other. When I look up a keyword or description, and it just says "see X", they failed. When ever other spell or item is buried in tags, they failed.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

As part of our long-running group's tradition of running holiday one-shots regardless of system, our GM last night ran a Golarion/Ravenloft crossover Halloween episode. We went through the realms of a few different obscure Darklords via magic train. Three of us independently decided to play paladins, two of them paladins of Iomedae. My paladin in particular entirely failed to endear himself to Harkon Lukas by saying "Hey, weren't you retconned to be a black woman?"