D&D thread
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I've played 2nd (including "2.5" Skills & Powers/Combat & Tactics)
So have I, though I never really thought of them as “2.5” before.
5th has this "bounded accuracy" idea, where the best bonus to hit you can possibly get is around +15. (Equivalent to THAC0 5ish.) So with 5th, large numbers can eventually whittle down a high-level character.
TBH, they can in any previous edition too — one hit in twenty will cause damage, after all. You alone against a peasant army of a thousand armed with pitchforks means you’ll take about fifty times 1D6+1 damage in AD&D 2nd edition. Have fun surviving that as a level 20 fighter with at the very, very best, 223 hp — and more likely, under half that.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I've played 2nd (including "2.5" Skills & Powers/Combat & Tactics)
So have I, though I never really thought of them as “2.5” before.
5th has this "bounded accuracy" idea, where the best bonus to hit you can possibly get is around +15. (Equivalent to THAC0 5ish.) So with 5th, large numbers can eventually whittle down a high-level character.
TBH, they can in any previous edition too — one hit in twenty will cause damage, after all. You alone against a peasant army of a thousand armed with pitchforks means you’ll take about fifty times 1D6+1 damage in AD&D 2nd edition. Have fun surviving that as a level 20 fighter with at the very, very best, 223 hp — and more likely, under half that.
okay, DR 10/magic did for that.
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I got shanghaied into running a game for my roommates, my daughter, and some people they know. 3 of the 5 have very little D&D experience (which I'm counting as a blessing, because so far I've been really half-assing the combat-side of encounters in the absence of any sort of movement tracker that is not my brain), but I'm slowly getting back into the groove. It's been damn near a decade since I've run a game, but I'm starting to put some tools together as a fallback in case we lose the ability to do in-person gaming at any point.
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Buuuurn alive, demons' whore! No one will pray for you, and that's for sure! 
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
Buuuurn alive, demons' whore! No one will pray for you, and that's for sure! prays for Chorussina
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I'm pretty sure this little dragonling is actually a cat in disguise.
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Desna deliver me... they did the unwinnable bullshit again, except this time with L25 fucking goddamn dragon (that immediately casts Displacement). I mean, there's a quest that says there's a rampaging dragon in the countryside, but what am I supposed to do at L10 with it? Thankfully I can hold out (or better - haul ass) at this point, because it turns out after 3 rounds it... just gives up and flies away
(that's metagame knowledge, of course) Come on 
, stop this already...The game generally gets better, except when it pulls these toddler moves. GM is just showing he's read the bestiary codex starting from the last page.
If you want a too high level ambush, you have to make it believable. Have the party pass some skill checks to ingeniously escape, say, spot and reach some old building which the dragon doesn't want to bother with, have a high level demon appear and take it on while you escape, have the weather turn really bad... it's a fantasy setting, use your fantasy, hence the name. But nope, it just runs away.
/rant
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
I mean, there's a quest that says there's a rampaging dragon in the countryside, but what am I supposed to do at L10 with it?
As a computer gamer, I'd say stay away from the objective area.
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@PleegWat Nice try, but it's a random world map encounter.
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Always nice to see the inner
workings. Exhibit A: how the game ensures that it never fails the roll.
As if that little glowing shit had an actual chance against three folks with the Outflank feat and all sneak attacks of opportunity. Stop hitting yourself!
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Today in rolling a character: Let's go for a healer, maybe a missla (child-like race). Maybe someone who did manage to go to a proper school for it even, to have a reason to know the human language. They are also a race that hates weapons and hurting others, so that makes sense. Now, Eon is a bit special in that it has extensive background rolls. And among the ones I got was that I am wanted with a price on my head of 1000 silver. Which is... a lot of money. And I managed to get some combat experience too, despite being a class with a starting penalty to it. So now I carry weapons for self defense. And some heavier armor. And a mask. And I have apparently lived in the "underworld", knowing a smuggler and a charlatan that I can call on for help. And I have a personality (charisma) of 20 as I also got "incredibly good looks" and megalomania on top of that.
Now to write a backstory for this one. That will be... exciting.
But at least I didn't roll as bad on contacts as the professor, who can call on a whore and a bordello owner for help.
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Pages 19-20: https://annarchive.com/files/Drmg048.pdf
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@boomzilla said in D&D thread:
Pages 19-20: https://annarchive.com/files/Drmg048.pdf
Those were happier times...
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@GOG As in: you wouldn’t be sued out of existence for doing something like this?
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@Gurth As in: D&D used to be fun.
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@boomzilla
Those are invalid because they are completely self-contradictory. Each of those represents opposite ends of a single axis.
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@HardwareGeek But valid at the same time, because we all know people who fit the descriptions.
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I don’t think you can plot those on the Alignment Chart:
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
I don’t think you can plot those on the Alignment Chart:
Use inventive shapes of plot.
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@Carnage What do you mean you cannot print on four-dimensional surfaces? What am I paying you for?
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@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Carnage What do you mean you cannot print on four-dimensional surfaces? What am I paying you for?
You could always just bend the surface that the chart is printed on too. All in the chaotic style of doing things.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@boomzilla
Those are invalid because they are completely self-contradictory. Each of those represents opposite ends of a single axis.So...what you're saying is that you could call them...Invalid D&D Alignments?
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I took some time off from gaming because I had a newborn, and my wife was not sleeping well. (She both has a hard time falling asleep, and wakes every time the baby makes a noise, which is frequently.) I told my gaming group to continue on without me, since it would be a few months before I thought I could rejoin. And we were only 2-3 sessions from finishing Storm King's Thunder, too!
My gaming group promptly disintegrated. The GM tried to schedule a session, twice, but didn't get a result. Apparently, I was the glue that held us together? (Edit: or maybe just the last straw?)
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@PotatoEngineer That's unfortunate, but in my (limited first-hand, and observation of my son's groups) experience, very common. It seems like loss of any person, or even just a temporary schedule conflict, may be an unrecoverable disruption to the group's critical mass.
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@PotatoEngineer Mine did as well, but due to Covid. Last time we played was late February 2020, just before the virus hit our shores. Attempts to revive it (more than once) during non-virus-peak times all failed to a large degree due to — in my opinion — one of the members being almost unhealthily obsessed with playing things safe (not just in this, but in life in general). And because she’s married to another of the players, that means two of them won’t play out of six of us. Couple this to various other medical- and scheduling-related reasons of a few of the remaining players, and nothing has happened at all in our group for almost two years now.
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@HardwareGeek Yeah, it's a five-person group: GM plus four players. Maybe three players just feels like too few. And I played a Druid, the most mechanically-complicated 5E class, so nobody really wanted to take over my character.
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
Maybe three players just feels like too few.
That is a remark some of the players in my group have made too. I, who 25+ years ago played in a group that had two members including me, don’t see the problem, but I guess if you grew up with RPG groups of about four to six people on average, three is too few to play?
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@Gurth Two is a company, three is a crowd.
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@Gurth The GM mentioned that one particular player seemed disinterested. So maybe the player was just getting bored with the group, and took this as the final straw. And, of course, once you have half the players missing, it's difficult to persuade the remaining half to play.
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@PotatoEngineer Yep, that fits with my experience. When one can’t make it, the group usually plays anyway, when two can’t it’s often a toss-up, and with more than two missing the rest says “I think I’ll go do something else too.” And that’s just for the (supposedly) weekly game, if a couple of players quit the group it gets really difficult.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
if a couple of players quit the group it gets really difficult.
In my limited experience, it's been the DM that's quit. No matter how big or enthusiastic the group is, if nobody is willing to take over as DM, the group is dead.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@Gurth said in D&D thread:
if a couple of players quit the group it gets really difficult.
In my limited experience, it's been the DM that's quit. No matter how big or enthusiastic the group is, if nobody's is willing to take over as DM, the group is dead.
This is the group I created by offering to DM. I ran a canned campaign (Out of the Abyss), and then said I wasn't going to run another one; one of the players stepped up to run Storm King, and now, apparently, it's falling apart. I'm glad someone else was willing to DM; I find it to be more work than fun.
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@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I'm glad someone else was willing to DM; I find it to be more work than fun.
I would have been willing, but I have so little experience, I barely know what I'm doing as a player, much less a DM.
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You've forgotten militant neutral.
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@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
You've forgotten militant neutral.
And greens. Everywhere, everywhen, there's greens.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I'm glad someone else was willing to DM; I find it to be more work than fun.
I would have been willing, but I have so little experience, I barely know what I'm doing as a player, much less a DM.
Go ahead and give it a shot. All DMs start somewhere. Get the players to help you with the rules, and concern yourself more with running the game. I highly recommend buying a published campaign for your first game, so you don't have to learn how to run and write a game at the same time.
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@HardwareGeek said in D&D thread:
In my limited experience, it's been the DM that's quit. No matter how big or enthusiastic the group is, if nobody is willing to take over as DM, the group is dead.
In my group it’s the GM who really wants to play.
But you’re right: even back when we played every week, pretty much any one player could pass and we would continue, but if the GM couldn’t make it, the rest gave up too for that week. I mean, they could just get together to play something else, like a boardgame or something, but even after suggesting that several times, they never did.
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I'm glad someone else was willing to DM; I find it to be more work than fun.
I like being the GM, but I wouldn’t mind playing too. I think it’s been over ten years since I have at all, though.
@PotatoEngineer said in D&D thread:
I highly recommend buying a published campaign for your first game, so you don't have to learn how to run and write a game at the same time.
That has always been my advice too. As an inexperienced GM, you’re far better off letting someone else make up the first couple of adventures you run. That way, you only have to do some homework to get a story that should work, and can easily look up the bits you’re not sure about, rather than having to keep the one you made yourself straight as well as doing the same with the rules.
It’s also good advice if you’re an experienced GM who is not that familiar with the current game’s setting. In this case, if you make up your own adventures right away, chances are they will feel like adventures for whichever other game you are used to running, instead of for the game you’re actually playing. Using a pre-written adventure avoids that and at the same time, gives you a good idea of what goes on in typical adventures for this game.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
Using a pre-written adventure avoids that and at the same time, gives you a good idea of what goes on in typical adventures for this game.
Fair, but I'd still advise merely stealing heavily from one over following it particularly closely - your group may not even let you stay on track if the rails are too tight.
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@Gribnit Well, yes — players can and do get pre-written adventures derailed. Part of the skill of being a GM is steering them back to the plot without being too obvious about it. Another part is to run with it and improvise if they seem to insist on going somewhere else.
When some years ago, I ran some, IIRC, Deadlands in the game club I’m still technically a member of, one of the players remarked that what he liked about my GMing style was that I
never say, “No, you can’t do that.”
Unlike, apparently, the GMs he was used to. It really has to be obviously physically impossible, or a really stupid move that nobody with half a gramme of sense would even contemplate, for me to say a player can’t do (or try) something. Instead, I tell them to roll the dice :)
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@Gribnit Well, yes — players can and do get pre-written adventures derailed. Part of the skill of being a GM is steering them back to the plot without being too obvious about it. Another part is to run with it and improvise if they seem to insist on going somewhere else.
When some years ago, I ran some, IIRC, Deadlands in the game club I’m still technically a member of, one of the players remarked that what he liked about my GMing style was that I
never say, “No, you can’t do that.”
Unlike, apparently, the GMs he was used to. It really has to be obviously physically impossible, or a really stupid move that nobody with half a gramme of sense would even contemplate, for me to say a player can’t do (or try) something. Instead, I tell them to roll the dice :)
Hopefully you at least gave them an evil cackle proportional to how stupid the thing they were doing was.
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@izzion No, not really, I think. I just let them try, with a huge (but normally invisible) penalty if necessary, and if it is a really stupid move, I hope things go hilariously wrong. They often do, and then the players learn something :)
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@izzion said in D&D thread:
@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@Gribnit Well, yes — players can and do get pre-written adventures derailed. Part of the skill of being a GM is steering them back to the plot without being too obvious about it. Another part is to run with it and improvise if they seem to insist on going somewhere else.
When some years ago, I ran some, IIRC, Deadlands in the game club I’m still technically a member of, one of the players remarked that what he liked about my GMing style was that I
never say, “No, you can’t do that.”
Unlike, apparently, the GMs he was used to. It really has to be obviously physically impossible, or a really stupid move that nobody with half a gramme of sense would even contemplate, for me to say a player can’t do (or try) something. Instead, I tell them to roll the dice :)
Hopefully you at least gave them an evil cackle proportional to how stupid the thing they were doing was.
Cackle is OTT. (N=stupid)d4 d20 rolls with no change of expression is a better form.
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(xdy)dzorxd(ydz)?
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@PleegWat the former. The available dice prohibit the latter outside of @error_bot usages.
Please adjust per what you intended your notation to represent. If it represents derivatives it is a different d entirely. If the d operator is eagerly vs lazily applied it also seems to mess with the precedence
?
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@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
Cackle is OTT. (N=stupid)d4 d20 rolls with no change of expression is a better form.
Far better to let the players roll some kind of test that’s sure to fail, than for the GM to roll some dice in secret, though.
This works better if you’re playing a game in which, as I think I’ve talked about before in this thread, you can apply modifiers to the difficulty without the players needing to be told about them.
