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

[Abella]

What system? Did you let your players know you wanted to stay at low levels before they started to play?

Yeah, I tried to put emphasis on this so that they wouldn’t be surprised when they reached the level cap.

If you advertised the campaign as such and they accepted it, then you're not being unreasonable. If you sprung it on them, then you're the asshole.

Personally, if I'm going for a 5-level spread campaign I'd go from level 3 to level 8. Levels 1 and 2 are basically just padding to let newbies come to grips with simplified versions of their characters.

I’ll probably have to try that next campaign. 1-3 is pretty much developing your PC. I just don’t want to have to worry about encounters being too easy.

What system? Did you let your players know you wanted to stay at low levels before they started to play?

5e D&D and I let them know before they even rolled up characters.

 

[anti SJW]

If they knew before hand that it was going to be a low level game than it's on them.

 

[anti SJW]

Publisher, yes, Paizo fully pozzed.
System, other than woke injection from Paizo, nothing really bad provided you like Pathfinder and want to deal with the warts of D&D in space.

I know Pazio is as woke, if not more woke than WOTC. But I also know how to keep the woke stuff out.

 

[The Ugly One]

Dex adds damage to range/finesse weapons, but focusing on Dex means you're going to be doing less melee damage than you will with a bow because there are no two-handed finesse weapons that synergize with Great Weapon Mastery. As a result, he's going to have to choose between focusing on defense/tanking or focusing on damage. Add to the fact that once the melee Dex Battlemaster is out of superiority dice in the encounter, all he has left to do is swing his weapon because any other useful grapple/shove/pin/pull is going to require an Athletics check, which he will be terrible at because he's going to have a substandard Str. As for Dex Barbarians, they get no bonus damage from range, will be using a one-handed weapon, and will not benefit from the reckless attack feature, making this an even more terrible choice.

It sounds good on paper until the Str Fighter gets a belt of giant strength and Skill Experts his Athletics. I keep seeing this process repeat itself in my group. They go heavy defense Dex and it works at the low levels, but eventually it reaches a point in the game where the enemy attack bonuses outpace your AC unless you have a Monty Haul DM. And then later game you're doing subpar damage while taking large amounts of damage and you're essentially dead weight that absorbs cleric spell slots every turn. Dex is severely overrated in melee combat unless you're a rogue or eldritch knight.

The most annoying thing about a Dex barbarian is the player constantly reminding everyone else in the party, "I don't really do a lot of damage." It's as annoying a Rogue without proficiency in Stealth.

 

[Emperor Julian]

I know Pazio is as woke, if not more woke than WOTC. But I also know how to keep the woke stuff out.

Its actually pretty straightforward. I find if i Just remove anything that makes the games look like adventure zone or critical roll then I'm good. Maybe if they found some way to bake it into mechanics it'd be an issue..

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

The most annoying thing about a Dex barbarian is the player constantly reminding everyone else in the party, "I don't really do a lot of damage." It's as annoying a Rogue without proficiency in Stealth.

By contrast, the Str Archer works really fucking good.

 

[Corn Flakes]

By contrast, the Str Archer works really fucking good.

In 5e? I'm genuinely curious about how that build works. I've played a STR throwing weapon specialist and it was a good amount of fun, but a Strength Archer is news to me.

 

[Adamska]

In 5e? I'm genuinely curious about how that build works. I've played a STR throwing weapon specialist and it was a good amount of fun, but a Strength Archer is news to me.

It's a throwback to composite bows, which worked with STR on attacks due to drawstrength requirements if I'm remembering right.

 

[Snekposter]

It's a throwback to composite bows, which worked with STR on attacks due to drawstrength requirements if I'm remembering right.

Yep. In PF1e a composite bow would be made to a given Str modifier, and get str bonuses to damage as a result assuming the wielder had enough strength. Very nasty at high levels, especially a composite longbow.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Yep. In PF1e a composite bow would be made to a given Str modifier, and get str bonuses to damage as a result assuming the wielder had enough strength. Very nasty at high levels, especially a composite longbow.

Ah, right. It makes a lot more sense in Pathfinder and 3.5e. I remember way back in the pre-4e days one of the guys in the group somehow went around with a Large bow (it wasn't a complex build, I just don't remember what he did). These days we joke about how he did Dark Souls bows before Dark Souls was a thing.

 

[Fag Albert]

Has anyone here ever played Marvel FASERIP? I'm usually not someone for supers games, but the system is quickly becoming one of my favorites to play.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

In 5e? I'm genuinely curious about how that build works. I've played a STR throwing weapon specialist and it was a good amount of fun, but a Strength Archer is news to me.

The only good thing to come out Dragon Heist.

 

[The Ugly One]

I played a Champion Fighter with both high STR and DEX who took both the Great Weapon and Archery fighting styles. That was a pretty fun character.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

I played a Champion Fighter with both high STR and DEX who took both the Great Weapon and Archery fighting styles. That was a pretty fun character.

I thought champion looked meh on paper. In practice it's pretty fucking rad, especially if you go half-orc.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Yep. In PF1e a composite bow would be made to a given Str modifier, and get str bonuses to damage as a result assuming the wielder had enough strength. Very nasty at high levels, especially a composite longbow.

I love composite bows in PF1e. Whenever I end up playing a martial I always end up splurging on one once my primary stuff was all bought. There was always that one combat where some dickhead enemy decides it's going to checkmate the party by standing up on a tall thing or flying around. Then they find out that a full base attack and a +5 or so to damage doesn't need any extra feats to be really dangerous.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The HEMA guy has been at it again.

First he said rogues shouldn't wear leather armour because they wouldn't have the dexterity to do all the rogue things rogues do. This is coming from a guy that a week prior was complaining that he should be able to do acrobatics unhindered in full plate.

The real fun was when he got into an argument with the DM and two players about skeletons. He says they're too agile. They have no muscles, so they should be jerky and slow. People had to explain skeletons are animated by necrotic energy and have more in common with marionettes.

What's great though is that we encounter neither rogues or skeletons. We were talking about things tangentially related and he just went off.

I want to hear about the cosmologies in the games y'all run/play in. Do you use "the great wheel" or something else? I've never delved enough into the cosmology of other systems beyond OWoD or D&D and I'm working on a basic write up of the setting I'm using since the outer planes are more conceptual and are based around a specific deity or mini-pantheon rather than outright alignments, and the players are going to need to know this sort of stuff if they ever decide to try plane-shifting.

I don't bother because players don't read them. I used to think it was me being an arsehole for not wanting to read 20 pages of autistic fake timelines about kings and border disputes and so on, but it turns out no one reads the backstories I write either.

So with my TTRPG group I'm going to start running Starfinder. Anyone else run it? Any issues with the system? I've played 3.5 and Pathfinder first edition alot so i think I can get it down.

I have.

First, I want to mention the positive. The space battle rules sound complex, counter intuitive, and confusing on paper, but after a couple of turns as written they work really well. Basically, everyone chooses a seat, and then you go through the phases in order.

Keep the abstracted ship cost system. It's a hard separation between space dollars and ship parts. One of the books says 1bp = 100,000 credits, but if the players accept they can't do that, you won't break the economy by selling ship parts for gear.

I like Abadar Corp. There's other fun lore if you're willing to read or watch YouTube videos. The Maple Table has some good lore round ups.


Now the cons. You have to put some hard restrictions on hacking to make it clear what can and can't be hacked. I had a hacker who kept trying to hack everything from security cameras to guns.

I remember some confusion with the rules for the drone character. So you might want to double and triple check that if someone plays the drone class.

There's a lot of maths at times and it really slows the game down. Standard DM procedure for me is only break out the rule book on edge cases, and just make a judgement and read the rules later if I can't find the rule straight away.


I ran Against the Aeon Throne. I don't know if the balance issues were just that adventure path or if it's a problem with the game as a whole, but the difficulty spikes are massive, so if you don't have a full min-maxed party expect them to get fucked over hard.

Related to that, gear is closely tied to level. It's easy to end up a situation where a guy needs a nat 18+ to hit anything. That or we played it wrong.

 

[Ghostse]

The HEMA guy has been at it again.

This again is where the actual HEMA/History spergs and Munchkins justifying their munchkinnery separate.

He shouldn't be bitching about Skeletons and Rogue armor if he's arguing he should be able to star in cirque de soleil in full plate.

I don't bother because players don't read them. I used to think it was me being an arsehole for not wanting to read 20 pages of autistic fake timelines about kings and border disputes and so on, but it turns out no one reads the backstories I write either.

I write one but don't expect my players to read it, or at least not read the whole thing. If you don't have a silmarillion, your world won't be consistent. OF course I give no shits for one-shots and mega dungeons.

I give the players the Sunday School overview, with just the big andrelevant bits, and then give them access to a meatier summary. The rest of the information I trickle out to them as we play if it becomes relevant. I also leave large bits of high-level summarized events that I can fill the details in on later, and plenty of room to expand on later.
I also usually have a "Official" version and a "Real" version where the Gods put out one version of events but the reality was often different. (Sometimes the Sun God didn't make a noble sacrifice for creation, the gods murdered one of their own and used the corpse to fuel the day star.)

I make my cosmologies modular, plug-and-play bits so you really only write up one and then just modify it for the world you want to run. Change up the gods, swap relationships a bit. Honestly it usually takes me longer to name the deities than to rework their histories.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I write one but don't expect my players to read it, or at least not read the whole thing. If you don't have a silmarillion, your world won't be consistent. OF course I give no shits for one-shots and mega dungeons.

This is why I'm an advocate for the Lazy Dungeon Master idea of a campaign one pager. If you can't fit the essential campaign lore on one page, then there's too much. And to clear, this doesn't mean you have to fit all the world info on one page. Just what the players need to know to make their characters and start playing the game.

I go even further and limit it to a paragraph and a bullet point list of key facts. Some players don't even read that, but if you're too lazy to read what amounts to a forum post before embarking on a 80 hour game, then that's on you.

 

[The Ugly One]

I thought champion looked meh on paper. In practice it's pretty fucking rad, especially if you go half-orc.

It wasn't part of the original 5e design. The core conceit of the Battle Master was going to be in every melee character originally, but during play testing, Mearls found there is actually a very large contingent of players who want zero resource management with their Fighter. They want to grab a big sword, kill things, and just not ever be bad at it, the way it was in AD&D.

 

[Brain Problems]

This is why I'm an advocate for the Lazy Dungeon Master idea of a campaign one pager. If you can't fit the essential campaign lore on one page, then there's too much. And to clear, this doesn't mean you have to fit all the world info on one page. Just what the players need to know to make their characters and start playing the game.

I go even further and limit it to a paragraph and a bullet point list of key facts. Some players don't even read that, but if you're too lazy to read what amounts to a forum post before embarking on a 80 hour game, then that's on you.

I think it's important to have the framework of the world around you and the big characters/NPCs/areas etc and the proper set ups/incidents/hooks and then you just let the bumper cars go. Players appreciate world building and don't need autistic productivity destroying GRR Martin style obsessions but good God do they notice when you haven't thought things through enough. Like Goatse is saying, for one shots and simple dungeons you don't need it (but doesn't hurt to have) but for your bigger game it is noticed instantly, at least by people like me.

I just find that what kills me is when you get bogged down in 1980s IF game "guess the designer's logic" or "read his mind" because it can happen that you forget that as the designer you're privy to all this knowledge and backgrounds and implicitly understand things are happening and why but if you don't make it clear for retards like me, I'm going to be stumbling around and accidentally sticking my finger in metaphorical sockets because you didn't establish the lore necessary for me not to.

tl;dr - If there's shit that's dependent on world building as a DM you better be damn sure you've been clear beforehand or else it's fuckin frustrating