Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - RedWarlock

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9 ... 32
61
One suggestion I've seen a lot is to have Favored Enemy give you general bonuses. Like "I hunt dragons, so I pick stuff that counters flying creatures, Natural Armor, and stuff with breath weapons."

That way, if you suddenly face stuff that isn't dragons, you can at least do something.
Ooh, I like that. In theory that was where the archetype split was going with the 5e ranger, broadening into general types, but they kind of lost that.

I could see it even as a configurable set of boosts based on the chosen opponent-type's qualities. Improved levels allow you to select more boosts to use at a time. (Kind of like the PF Hunter's animal focus, a switchable boost, except here it's always-on, so maybe only switchable per-day or with a non-combat 10-min-rest-type period?)

*grabs*

62
D&D 5e / Re: Unearthed Arcana - I herd u liek feet
« on: June 06, 2016, 09:01:36 PM »
I thought Ad/Disad was only for piddly +1/-2s from circumstance, e.g. flanking, high ground, etc, whereas permanent +1s are still present, as presumably they'd be accounted for on the sheet.

63
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Politics Thread v3
« on: May 17, 2016, 01:55:28 PM »
What gets me is the "if you're not with us, you're against us" BS of some people, who feel if you vote 3rd party and their preferred candidate (i.e. Hillary) doesn't win, you have in fact voted for the enemy (Trump), and obviously hate women, minorities, etc. That is such bullying BS that I don't know how to respond.

64
I would be interested to see how looks like that converted to sales, because that would most likely dictate if they expand on using MtG settings.
I suspect you're entirely right.

It also seems like MtG is pushing Zendikar into everything too. I know in 2014 they had a massive drop in sales so they stepped up their marketing for Zendikar, but we're cycling out of that block and Vampires are Innistrad's deal so someone's wires are crossed.
It's got at least half a sale off of me. I bought it on Amazon, half for the ideas/hooks, and half because I'm a freelance illustrator and I'm always interested in what they might be looking for and if it matches my style. (Not so much, right now, but meh.)

As for the vampires, they're different from the Innistrad vampires, from my wiki-ing to look up supporting details. Zendikar vamps were actually spawned from the Eldrazi, and apparently funnel the life-energy they drain from others up into the Eldrazi in some fashion.

65
Mmmm. *grudging acceptance*

66
General D&D Discussion / Re: D20srd.org acquired by BoLS Interactive
« on: April 29, 2016, 05:30:30 PM »
I'm a patreon sponsor for the d20PFSRD, so I'm on the other end. Not everybody needs to sponsor, or even most, hosting costs are negligible.

If I had the option for ads as a free viewer, or monthly sponsorship without ads on a site I used regularly, I would go monthly no problem.

67
Off Topic Fun / Re: Happy Happy Joy Joy! God knows edition.
« on: April 22, 2016, 11:59:15 PM »
I'm at Disney World!!

68
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Politics Thread v3
« on: April 22, 2016, 11:55:01 PM »
Tagging in because I respect the hell out of everyone's opinions here and I want to keep watch.


69
General D&D Discussion / Re: D20srd.org acquired by BoLS Interactive
« on: April 16, 2016, 07:59:46 PM »
Ughhhh. I just can't even, right now. Seriously? Seriously. This is the worst.

The advertising model is dying, man.  Ad blockers make the whole idea worthless. I work in advertising, I work at a newspaper,  and even after switching so that the paper is a niche product, and the website is their main deal, they are losing their shit over this.  This feels like a horrible, intrusive cash–grab.

 There are better ways.  Patreon and the like are the micropayments that Scott McCloud has been talking about for decades.

70
General D&D Discussion / Re: Popularity of 3.5E/PF over 4E/5E
« on: April 13, 2016, 10:21:28 PM »
It's also difficult to judge because user-access for PF could be repeated viewing, or rules-lookups, or even character-generating browsings.

I know when we're in the middle of the PF game I play in on alternating fridays, I probably generate about 100-300 hits myself alone, looking up spells, considering alternate retraining builds and backup character ideas, and browsing both d20pfsrd and Paizo's forums for ideas.

71
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: Chargen Houserules.
« on: April 13, 2016, 01:12:09 PM »
4d6, best 3

Edit:

By the way, this?

Quote
..this will involve random rolls (trigger warning, I guess?)

This is hilarious.

72
General D&D Discussion / Re: Gaming April Fool's Day Links
« on: April 01, 2016, 06:00:59 PM »
To start us off, Dreamscarred Press releases a PWYW product, April Augmented.

And Path of War errata, which surprisingly seems serious from the looks of it.
That Warlord errata, tho.

HAH! Oh jeeze. That's the joke. I know DSP does a lot of crossover material between their supplement lines, so I didn't catch it.

73
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Politics Thread v2
« on: March 09, 2016, 01:30:07 PM »
You're in Michigan too? (Where around? Could always use more gaming friends!)

I dragged my BF out of bed yesterday morning so we could go vote before I had to get into work. Even if we lost Oakland County to Clinton, I feel proud to have contributed.

I've got a good feeling about this, hopefully we see something fruitful from the upset.

74
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: February 27, 2016, 12:40:34 AM »
John, "The Fighter"

John is a traditionalist. He usually likes to play the Tank, the Defender, the axis around which the party pivots. That role isn't directly provided, but can be created, though a combo of short-range Control and Combat toughness.   

He selects the Soldier background. Among the skills lists, proficiencies, and other benefits, it sets up a list of starter feats which he has improved access to, reducing or eliminating their prerequisites.

Strength: 17 (+3) Melee damage, Brawn check
Agility: 14 (+2) Melee attack, Dodge check
Endurance: 16 (+3) Starting base HP, +HP per character level
Intellect: 10 (+0) Starting base Skill pts, +SkPts per character level, Ranged damage
Perception: 15 (+2) Ranged attack, Spot check
Charisma: 10 (+0) Will check

A starting character gets three feats, at least one of which must be a starter feat. He selects Combat Strike and Bodyguard, the Skirmisher and Defender starter feats, plus Battle Rage, a non-starter feat that acts as a gatekey into the Rage powerset, one of a few class-neutral ability trees. This lets him play like the 4e Berserker, defending for his allies, dealing decent damage, then blowing his top and raging out when he needs to pull some extra damage out of his back pocket.

I won’t go into the specifics of all his powers (mostly because I don’t have them written up much yet) but generally, the levels in Skirmisher and Defender each grant skill points to be spent on powers that match appropriate keywords/schools. (This is in addition to the base-level skill points every character gets, which get Int-modified.) The number themselves could change, and almost certainly will, since there are also powers and non-skill abilities granted to them with the class levels, which per-level variances in skill points are intended to fill the dead or low-benefit levels.

So, something to note is that characters start as 0-level characters, with their starter feats, plus starter skill points (equal to their Int score) and beginning HP, equal to their End score, as well as the benefits of their Background. They choose which class/path they then take levels of.

So, later in his character's life, he's got 6 levels in Defender, plus 3 levels in Skirmisher.

For hit points, he’s got maxes set by Defender levels, since class-based HP contributions overlap rather than stack. HP resets on a long rest, unless the character has a Sick/Injured/Poisoned condition, in which case they gain or roll the number in parentheses:
  • Start: End score in starting HP and negative HP (half of End score)
  • 1st level: 3 + End mod, plus 6 Defender HP (better of 1d10 and 1d8, mininum End mod)
  • 2nd level: 3 + End mod, plus 6 Defender HP (better of 1d10 and 1d8, mininum End mod)
  • 3rd level: 3 + End mod, plus 6 Defender HP (better of 1d10 and 1d8, mininum End mod)
  • 4th level: 3 + End mod, plus 6 Defender HP (1d10, mininum End mod)
  • 5th level: 3 + End mod, plus 6 Defender HP (1d10, mininum End mod)
  • 6th level: 3 + End mod, plus 6 Defender HP (1d10, mininum End mod)
So, with the 16 Endurance above (not counting ability improvements, for now), that comes to 88 total (non-injured).

For skill points, this grants him:
  • Start: Int score, free spend
  • 1st level: 5 + Int mod, free spend, plus 2 Defender skill pts, 2 Skirmisher skill pts
  • 2nd level: 5 + Int mod, free spend, plus 2 Defender skill pts, 2 Skirmisher skill pts
  • 3rd level: 5 + Int mod, free spend, plus 2 Defender skill pts, 2 Skirmisher skill pts
  • 4th level: 5 + Int mod, free spend, plus 2 Defender skill pts
  • 5th level: 5 + Int mod, free spend, plus 2 Defender skill pts
  • 6th level: 5 + Int mod, free spend, plus 2 Defender skill pts
So with the 10 int listed above (not counting ability improvements, which likely wouldn’t go to Int anyhow), 40 free-spend points, 12 Defender-skill points, and 6 Skirmisher-skill points.

Now, he’s got a bit more XP he’s gained, and decides to expand on his damage capacity, and go for a little supernatural flair. Expanding on his Battle Rage, using it as a prerequisite he couldn’t bypass, and stepping outside his Soldier background, he takes Elemental Fury, one of the possible starter feats for the Berserker class, which uses supernatural power to enhance combat ability. Elemental Fury also requires a [Pact] feat, such as Storm Pact, granting a connection to elemental spirits, which can be expanded on for other possible elemental abilities in the future. (If a character had started with the right background, that pact would have come free as a perk.)

He takes two levels of Berserker. This adds those two levels’ worth of skill points, plus the Berserker class features, which naturally extend from the martial skillset but add supernatural power into the mix, as opposed to spellcasters, which use a different resource-management system.

Any questions on this, before I go on? I can add more details as I figure them out, a challenge method actually really helps me develop details as I'm forced to commit to them. I’ll get into spellcasters' mechanics on the last two. Next up, the Thief, who is a bit less obvious.

75
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: February 23, 2016, 06:10:35 PM »
Haven't forgotten about this, just busy at work. (I'm a graphic designer, in my spare time between jobs at my desk, I fiddle with mechanics for Rule of Three.)

Let's see what I can get started:

First, some terms of note  (additional terms as of 3/6/16 in red):
  • Class: This is a combat path, specifically. (Tempted to rename the concept to ‘Path’ for ease of confusion, maybe later.) Class levels gestalt/overlap, rather than stack. Each class has a Starter Feat that is required to enter. This feat is typically some core ability of the class, what it does uniquely, like an Evoker’s Energy Blast, or the Skirmisher’s Power Strike (which is a combo of Power Attack and Sneak Attack).
  • Background: This is somewhat a merge of the 4e-style backgrounds/themes, and a traditional class as 3e players would understand it. Background determines magical power source, and makes it easier to advance into certain classes by bypassing (most) prerequisites for thematically-linked Starter feats.
  • Skills: This is how non-combat portions of the game are handled. The skill system is low-number, fairly abstract, and includes power-source/magical skills (Arcana, Faith, Demonology) as well as craft skills (Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Engineering), and social-handling (Negotiation, Leadership, Deception).
  • Powers: Much like 4e, combat spells, manuevers, and combat skill checks/skill tricks have all been consolidated into powers, which are purchased with skill points. Aside from attacks, anything that needs a check/check-against uses the 4 core checks(aka saves), Brawn (Strength), Dodge (Agility), Spot (Perception), and Will (Charisma).
  • Boon: In place of circumstance bonuses and other temporary modifiers, we have Boons. Boons add an extra d20 to a roll, taking the best roll. Boons stack up to 3 times, beyond which they’re ignored for a roll. All players are told to bring 4 d20 for rolling activities.
  • Burden: Penalty counterpart to Boons, cancelling them out. These also stack up to 3 at most, though calculate cancellations before you check against the cap.
  • Favor and Scourge: The higher-end counterpart to Boons/Burdens, Favor and Scourge are flat YES/NO conditions, akin to True Strike’s +20. Having both Favor and Scourge cancel each other out. They also interact with Boons/Burdens, in that you can use three Boons to cancel a Scourge, and three Burdens to cancel a Favor. (Doesn’t work the other way, though. You can’t add three Boons together to make Favor.)
  • Combat Dice: All classes use the same base combat bonus progression (equal to half level), with other ways of showing some classes being more martially capable than others. One such is Combat Dice, which can be added to any attack roll as a Boon, and refresh at the end of turn, but can also be spent on other weapon-centric abilities, like parries, shielding allies, and bonus attacks.
  • Martial Bonus: Another distinguisher for the Martial classes is a Martial bonus that bumps the attack progression to 1:1 for Martial classes, but can be swapped off (like Power Attack) for some unique number bonus to that class. (For instance, the Defender’s bonus goes to Defense, the Skirmisher’s bonus helps bypass armor DR, and the Leader’s bonus is the foundation of a Marshal-style bonus for allies.) Each class provides a different type of bonus swap, but the main bonus overlaps with other classes, meaning that you could take three different martial classes, and turn two bonuses to their swap secondaries, and leave one to the main purpose.
  • Actions: Each character has 3 main actions per turn, Standard, Move, and Verbal, plus a Quick (aka Swift/Minor) action.
  • Immediate Actions: An Immediate action is usually described as an Immediate Move, Immediate Quick, etc. These actions consume the action of a character's upcoming turn, in exchange for allowing them to do something extra right now. Effectively, this extend's 3.5e's Swift/Immediate shared concept into any kind of action.
  • Surge: Representing innate daily capacity for combat and energy, Surges (mentioned earlier) are a combination of 4e Healing Surges and 3.5e action points. By default, they can be spent freely to recover 1/4 of one's total HP per surge while out of combat. You regain one surge at the end of any short rest (which requires an accompanying combat to trigger), you recover half of the total after a camp rest, and all of them at the end of a full rest (IE, after the end of an 'adventure'). Each class level grants an average of two surges (some more, some less) and these gains compound rather than overlap when multiclassing. Surges are also at the heart of most rechargeable-per-encounter or limited-use abilities (typically in the fashion of spend a surge out-of-combat to recharge a single-use power), and select skill usages and rituals can recover more than the base one per rest.

Since this a D&D derivative, we’ll have four characters, fighter, thief, cleric, wizard.

I’ll write up each one in a separate post. Feel free to post reactions/observations to the above while I'm working them up.

76
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Politics Thread v2
« on: February 13, 2016, 05:22:55 PM »
So you can be sorry for a person's death AND relieved he's not in a position to ruin the country with his rulings anymore, right?

http://www.kvia.com/news/breaking-surpreme-court-justice-scalia-dies-during-hunting-trip-in-marfa/37981652

77
D&D 5e / Re: Unearthed Arcana : Psionics V0.2
« on: February 01, 2016, 03:28:16 PM »
Problem #2: Ten-level classes? Why? You're forced to multiclass, which goes against the spirit of 5e.
That's just because it's still in testing, they're going to publish as full 20-levels when they're done.

Didn't look too deeply, but I like it. I'd be curious what the direct changes are versus the prior version.

78
Game Design / Re: New system: Designing party roles from the ground up
« on: February 01, 2016, 01:15:42 PM »
I don't have one right now, but I could write something up. What kind of situations should it cover?

79
Off Topic Fun / Re: The Politics Thread v2
« on: January 31, 2016, 04:36:49 PM »
Last I heard, Sanders was presenting himself as a 'libertarian'--which used to be a synonym for anarchist and now means something closer to 'we pretend to be against government coercion but really we just want to be the ones in charge.' What political label best matches his actions is another matter entirely.

Point being, there's easily more support in this country for racist nationalism than for someone daring to suggest that capitolism might not be the absolute best thing ever.
Yeah, way off there. He's presenting himself as a Democratic Socialist. Libertarians are off on the conservative side (in the 'less government is best so we can do what we want', so I see where you're saying anarchist), while Democratic Socialism very liberal. From a google search: "Democratic socialism is a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy with social ownership of the means of production." His arguments, from what I've read, have been primarily that government structure SHOULD exist, and should spread its resources to serve all of the people, rather than acting in favor of corporations and the high-finance elite.

I'm in favor of the guy, but I'm not exactly a rabid follower like some I've seen. There's going to be over-zealous assholes in any political or social group, who take the ideals too far or to the wrong conclusion. You just have to work to temper their enthusiasm into more useful, positive angles.

80
Off Topic Fun / Re: WTF News Stories v2
« on: January 26, 2016, 10:59:22 PM »
http://www.fox2detroit.com/news/local-news/82584838-story

What the ever-living fuck. I know that intersection, I drive through that area on that road to work every morning.

There are people in my area who have a lot of multitasking confidence behind the wheel, and a few who don't deserve such confidence. I'm one of the good ones, I'd like to think, learned from my mother, but I know better than to look at GD porn on the road.

I just.. I dunno..

Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 7 8 9 ... 32