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

[CamelCursive]

As someone who's not played any DnD outside of 5e (and got started with that rather recently, too), what is the big issue with 5e?
I assume it draws in hipsters and the RPG version of "Halo invented FPS" kiddies?

It's a good system for doing what it does, but at its core you have to understand what D&D's system has always been- A very basic combat system with a roleplaying system and other mechanics slapped onto its frame. People have seen Stranger Things and Big Bang Theory and now everyone wants to play D&D. That's not particularly a bad thing, but D&D seems to be taking a turn to start appealing to kids and basic players that will toss the books and dice in a box and forget about it after the cool trend wears off.

4th Edition was pretty terrible, because it was made entirely to appeal to morons who wanted a tabletop WoW. It was written specifically for that kind of person, and it was almost insulting to anyone who played RPG's on the tabletop.

3rd Edition wasn't awful, I'd say it's one of my favorites... but that might be nostalgia. There was just SO MUCH SHIT for 3rd Edition and the D20 system, that it was entirely possible to get the hang of that one system and play a dozen different settings. I mean, Illithids in a post-apocalyptic WW2? Could be done, easily.

D&D 5e isn't that terrible at all, it just has a somewhat annoying fanbase- basically, the guys that suddenly became experts on comic books when the Marvel movies were popular- because he had Wikipedia articles.

It's nowhere near as awful as Wrath & Glory, the newer 40k RPG. It's an RPG for people who don't really have any standards for their player group but don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. You can be an absolute idiot and play this RPG and it will all be just fine, because it was made for idiots. That, and the developers made it to try and please everyone, so naturally "everything" is there, except it's a watered-down option.

And Fantasy Flight's 40k RPG's were flawed, but they make W&G look pathetic. And while people were complaining about how 'hard' it was are objectively stupid people. You stood in the middle of the open room and got into a shootout with 5 enemies that were in cover, and you died? NO SHIT. The game's not broken, you're just fucking stupid.

While absolutely not what I'd consider a Role-Playing game, I can honestly tell you that the Doom board game is a lot of fun.

 

[PL 001]

And Fantasy Flight's 40k RPG's were flawed, but they make W&G look pathetic. And while people were complaining about how 'hard' it was are objectively stupid people. You stood in the middle of the open room and got into a shootout with 5 enemies that were in cover, and you died? NO SHIT. The game's not broken, you're just fucking stupid.

This exactly is a problem I've dealt with when it comes to the rpg trendoids/hipsters. They treat EVERY game system like it's 5e D&D, then throw a bitch fit when they get curbstomped in game.

Had a player who wanted to join in my World of Darkness Hunter game. He's a 5e D&D boy. I explained to him that WoD combat is pretty lethal, you're not just a walking sack of hit points with a healing bitch by your side like in D&D. That was cool, he wanted to try Hunter because "Supernatural is totes like Hunter!!!"

Oh boy....

He ended up trying to take down the vampire prince of the city on his first session, by himself, then chimped out when he got his ass handed to him. His big argument was "I was a bad DM because I wasn't using Advantage and Disadvantage rules from 5e!"

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

This exactly is a problem I've dealt with when it comes to the rpg trendoids/hipsters. They treat EVERY game system like it's 5e D&D, then throw a bitch fit when they get curbstomped in game.

Had a player who wanted to join in my World of Darkness Hunter game. He's a 5e D&D boy. I explained to him that WoD combat is pretty lethal, you're not just a walking sack of hit points with a healing bitch by your side like in D&D. That was cool, he wanted to try Hunter because "Supernatural is totes like Hunter!!!"

Oh boy....

He ended up trying to take down the vampire prince of the city on his first session, by himself, then chimped out when he got his ass handed to him. His big argument was "I was a bad DM because I wasn't using Advantage and Disadvantage rules from 5e!"

Well there's your problem, he fought a powerful opponent by himself. Though considering this is WoD, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference and your entire crew would've gotten their asses handed to him.

 

[PL 001]

Well there's your problem, he fought a powerful opponent by himself. Though considering this is WoD, it wouldn't have made a lick of difference and your entire crew would've gotten their asses handed to him.

For sure. The Prince wasn't even their primary antagonist, they had gleaned that information during the course of the campaign and were planning to lie low and form a future strategy. Moron just wanted "phat XP n lootz yo!" and charged off.

 

[Syaoran Li]

While absolutely not what I'd consider a Role-Playing game, I can honestly tell you that the Doom board game is a lot of fun.

I loved the Doom board game back in the day. Hell, my uncle still has the complete boxed set that he bought back in 2005 (we didn't get the expansion though)

 

[Adamska]

In honor of Chad Walker finding out about our long read-through of Sigmata, getting our first video to hit 500+ views, and another video hitting 100+ views, we decided to run the true send-off for the game, with @NIGGO KILLA taking the DM wheel.

ALSO REALITY MAY HAVE ACCIDENTALLY LINED UP WITH THE GAME GIVEN THAT THIS SHIT HAPPENED WHILE WE WERE GAMING.

 

[CamelCursive]

I loved the Doom board game back in the day. Hell, my uncle still has the complete boxed set that he bought back in 2005 (we didn't get the expansion though)

The new one very much is an entertaining group game with friends. Only downside is that it still requires one person to be the Demons, so it's not an entirely co-op experience.

This exactly is a problem I've dealt with when it comes to the rpg trendoids/hipsters. They treat EVERY game system like it's 5e D&D, then throw a bitch fit when they get curbstomped in game.

Yeah, I had someone act like something was wrong because his Marine in Deathwatch got annihilated by a mob of Genestealer Cultists with construction equipment.

Yes, you are a Space Wolf. Yes, you are an Assault Marine with a Chainsword and a Bolt Pistol, up against a bunch of dumbshit insurgent halfbreeds with rock cutters. You ran straight toward them, screaming like an idiot, and they dogpiled you. No, you cannot be resurrected. We told you, "you have to use tactics, no matter what". And the guy's whole experience in RPG's was 5e D&D.

 

[Adamska]

Yes, you are a Space Wolf. Yes, you are an Assault Marine with a Chainsword and a Bolt Pistol, up against a bunch of dumbshit insurgent halfbreeds with rock cutters. You ran straight toward them, screaming like an idiot, and they dogpiled you. No, you cannot be resurrected. We told you, "you have to use tactics, no matter what". And the guy's whole experience in RPG's was 5e D&D.

No that's not 5e retardation, that's just a moron player not used to a DM who's worth a shit.

Because honestly 5e isn't a bad system and I find it amusing that I'm seeing the shred down of it on this thread; it balances classes in a way most anyone can just plug and play, and it allows you as the DM to keep using monsters and enemies beyond the shelf-life that 3.5e would have. It also makes archery and dex fighting great again. Its bigger weaknesses are you don't tend to feel like you're getting more powerful at times, and you never quite feel like you're a master at your crafts when it comes to skill checks.

4e I'll openly admit to not being familiar with, but it's too prone to minis style gaming and it from what little I've read feels too samey when it came to the classes since they all kind of had magic and their roles blended together too much.

3.5e is a trainwreck in terms of balance, but has the most options due to its long life and massive amount of support. You also do feel like you're a master once you get skill checks so high you auto succeed at them.

2e has a variety of cool dungeons, items, and oddball bits of crunch that's fun (I love miscibility tables). But THAC0 is the devil and you have Stockholm Syndrome if you try to disagree that Attack Matrices are not AIDS incarnate.

Can't say too much on 1e given I've not played it either, but I seem to remember it had some issues akin to 2e's as well as at its heart being more of a war game. Still has great modules and play-testing though given Gary Gygax loved his fucking work. Also it's the only edition where you can punch Hastur, and that counts for something.

All editions can be bitched about; it's the players, DM, or even the group as a whole that usually are more at fault. Except 4e; fuck that edition it was awful.

 

[robobobo]

My only complaint about 4E is that it made the classes too samey. Story is that they were planning on the classes actually having some distinct mechanics, but got told they had to push the thing out the door right fucking now so those mechanics mostly got scrapped. That one thing aside though, it did a lot of things better than any of the other editions. It is the only edition of D&D without caster supremacy, since the non-casters got their own piles of special actions. It also has better combats than other editions. Yeah, it played like a strategy wargame, but there was some super cool stuff in there. First combat I was in was with a bunch of kobolds. Fucking kobolds, right? Standard 1st level fodder, boring. Except 4E kobolds can 5-foot step for free when someone moves up to them. We got our asses beat because those little fuckers were zipping all around throughout the fight, flanking people and outmaneuvering the shit out of us. And that was just a bunch of low-level nobodies, higher level monsters have whole grocery lists of special attacks and powers instead of being just a bigger pile of hit points.

 

[CamelCursive]

No that's not 5e exceptionalism, that's just a moron player not used to a DM who's worth a shit.

Because honestly 5e isn't a bad system and I find it amusing that I'm seeing the shred down of it on this thread...

Oh, I am certain. It's the edition that's come out and Stranger Things has drawn in all the Trendsters, so that's why the blame is getting laid at 5e's feet.

Sadly I had some experience with Trendsters playing D&D, and I can honestly say that the worst thing about them- the thing I fucking hate the most about them is that they don't enjoy D&D, they enjoy D&D Ironically. Everything is some kind of cliche trope or joke, and it's almost like they're desperately trying to imitate the most cliche version of whatever they're playing.

We had one join us for Curse of Strahd and I can't tell you how annoying it is when someone just puts zero thought into a character, and seems to want to play nothing more than an absurdity. I'm not asking for some edgelord or seven paragraphs of character background. I'm asking for you to show up with a decent mini that represents your character (I don't give a shit if it's painted, or not completely accurate). I'm asking you to do things with your character relative to the setting and the character. I'm fine with a bit of humor here and there to break the tension, but if every turn you're just trying to do the most fucking absurd silly shit that you can do- fuck off. And if you're the only person that thinks it's funny, it's probably not funny.

Fortunately, we have a DM that will straight up toss peoples' character sheets in the trash and tell them to fuck off.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

I mentioned earlier that I looked up the Battlemaster archetype for Fighters and I really start to like it more and more.
The maneuvers seem like a lot of fun to use during the game, Disarming Attack, Goading Attack (Or Menacing Attack, if you prefer) and Feinting seem pretty neat as a start, but there's so many other awesome abilities, such as Rallying others, the Trip attack and so on. "Champion" really pales in comparison.

One thing that came to my mind:

Say I play a Battlemaster/Rogue mix and I use the Feinting maneuver, that means I spend my Bonus Action to feint, which will give me an advantage for my next attack and a d8 bonus damage, wouldn't this also mean I get sneak attack (ie: +1d6) from me being a rogue when using a Finesse Weapon?
This seems pretty damn neat, tbh. When using a Rapier, that would be 2d8+1d6+(bonus). On average 12-13 damage.

Should my dwarven Fighter bite the dust, I think I'll go for a Battlemaster/Rogue with a Greatsword (with Great Weapon Mastery) and a Rapier as backup with a buckler, a Breastplate armor and fancy, fabulous haberdashery.
So essentially, this guy:

Fuck, I am really hyped for that concept now... poor dwarven warrior, I fear he's not long for this world...

 

[Memento Malum]

Say I play a Battlemaster/Rogue mix and I use the Feinting maneuver, that means I spend my Bonus Action to feint, which will give me an advantage for my next attack and a d8 bonus damage, wouldn't this also mean I get sneak attack (ie: +1d6) from me being a rogue when using a Finesse Weapon?
This seems pretty damn neat, tbh. When using a Rapier, that would be 2d8+1d6+(bonus). On average 12-13 damage.

Should my dwarven Fighter bite the dust, I think I'll go for a Battlemaster/Rogue with a Greatsword (with Great Weapon Mastery) and a Rapier as backup with a buckler, a Breastplate armor and fancy, fabulous haberdashery.

The Feint maneuver should work fine as you spelled it out. For the Greatsword fighter though, I don't know if I'd do that with a Rogue splash since Sneak Attack can't proc off the Greatsword hit and the rogue hitdie is less than ideal for a frontline fighter. 5e is very easy-going when it comes to suboptimal builds so it shouldn't be an issue, if you really like the concept.

All the TTRPG gaming I've played has been 5e since no one else in my group wants to learn a new system, with one guy going so far as to homebrew an entire modern day system off the 5e chassis without magic and leaning heavily on firearms rather than learn a new system. I want to play in that, if only to see how bad it ends up being.

Honestly my biggest complaint with 5e is the feat system, with 2 feats in particular being notably more powerful than the others (Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter), and an overall dearth of feats to choose from in general.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The Feint maneuver should work fine as you spelled it out. For the Greatsword fighter though, I don't know if I'd do that with a Rogue splash since Sneak Attack can't proc off the Greatsword hit and the rogue hitdie is less than ideal for a frontline fighter. 5e is very easy-going when it comes to suboptimal builds so it shouldn't be an issue, if you really like the concept.

Well, the Rogue multiclass is just to add a little bit of versatility (possibly leaving it at level 1 for most of the time, only slowly upgrading to 3 and leaving it at that), the main focus would be the Fighter role. But the moment I had to sneak or fall back on my backup weapon, it would be a great boon. Admittedly, for the most part, it would be more of a little gadget, so chances are, it wouldn't be the best or most efficient choice, but it seems like a fun little addition to the Fighter role.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Not gonna lie, I always kind of preferred the style of AD&D over the newer editions of D&D, even though I started playing RPG's with D&D 3.5 and I still enjoy 3.5/Pathfinder 1E.

The one main detriment of AD&D are the Attack Matrix/THAC0 rules.

Fortunately, there are a few OSR games that clone the old editions for the most part, but offer the newer AC system since it's familiar to newer players and is honestly a lot better than the old combat rules.

One of the earliest OSR games was OSRIC, a retro-clone of AD&D 1E that offered both the traditional Attack Matrix rules and the newer ascending AC rules.

4E sucked in every way imaginable and 5E is a good easy system that has helped revitalize the RPG hobby for now, but I'm in agreement that 5E has some of the worst fans.

I know of Castles & Crusades, which was a retro-clone using the 3E mechanics in a 1E style, but I haven't checked it out yet.

Since 5E also has an OGL, I'm wondering if anyone has done an AD&D clone with modified 5E-inspired mechanics?

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

All the TTRPG gaming I've played has been 5e since no one else in my group wants to learn a new system, with one guy going so far as to homebrew an entire modern day system off the 5e chassis without magic and leaning heavily on firearms rather than learn a new system. I want to play in that, if only to see how bad it ends up being.

Just show him this and his head will explode.

 

[Memento Malum]

Just show him this and his head will explode.

Thanks for this, maybe I can talk him out of just stripping 5e down to pure martials and adding poorly thought out ranged weapons for all classes.

 

[thx1138]

The one main detriment of AD&D are the Attack Matrix/THAC0 rules.

Thing is, THAC-0 doesn't work beyond certain to-hit rolls, it's always best to use the matrix. And if you know that last round, with your 18/98 STR, and your +2 longsword, an 8 hit the hill giant, then it will no matter what, unless the hill giants have a cleric/witch-doctor/shaman who can throw Curse or Protection from Good, or chant or prayer against you. And then it's only a reduction by +1 or +2 at worst.

tl;dr ignore thaco, use the charts, they're there and they're easy.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Thing is, THAC-0 doesn't work beyond certain to-hit rolls, it's always best to use the matrix. And if you know that last round, with your 18/98 STR, and your +2 longsword, an 8 hit the hill giant, then it will no matter what, unless the hill giants have a cleric/witch-doctor/shaman who can throw Curse or Protection from Good, or chant or prayer against you. And then it's only a reduction by +1 or +2 at worst.

tl;dr ignore thaco, use the charts, they're there and they're easy.

I'm not opposed to using the charts from 1E, but it takes getting adjusted to if you're mostly familiar with the newer ascending AC.

 

[thx1138]

I'm not opposed to using the charts from 1E, but it takes getting adjusted to if you're mostly familiar with the newer ascending AC.

I get that; I looked high and low for reasons why armor class started low as good and went to high = bad, and the closest I could come was an interview or something with Gygax saying it came from an Avalon Hill game about age-of-sail warships, along with early iron clad ships, where "1st grade armor" was better than "2nd grade armor" which was better than "3rd grade armor". It was one of those things I'd meant to ask him the 1 or 2 times I saw him at Gen Con back in the day but never remembered to.

It was the "way things were done" and switching to going up for better armor class seemed weird and clunky to me.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

So, quick question regarding "Great Weapons Fighting":

When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the two-handed or versatile property for you to gain this benefit.

Does this mean any damage die I roll or only for those from the weapon itself?
IE: When I get a bonus die on the damage roll from -say- being a Battle Master and using a Superiority Die, do I get to reroll that die, too, if it's a 1 or 2?
I guess it's ambiguous, but I doubt this would be the case, but the way it is written could be argued either way, I think.