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Whipstitch
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Post by Whipstitch » Sat Jan 28, 2012 10:37 am

Prak: Like I said, I don't mind the direction the art style has taken over the years and in any case the appropriateness of competing styles is completely subjective, when it comes right down to it. But that doesn't change that the shift has been made and I certainly don't find it surprising that people compare some of the art to comic books given that some of these illustrators also do comic book covers. The overlap on the Venn diagram is anything but trivial and it often shows in the art, particularly in bits of the costume design-- they're pulling a lot of things from the same bag of tricks, essentially.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Jan 28, 2012 4:40 pm

The lack of playtesting of higher levels, while hardly surprising, is really damning for the whole modularity thing. The modularity is going to break down really severely when people start trading the entire RNG for the ability to participate in the adventure.
Now to an extent, Monte is right when he says that people bitching about the game "breaking down" often as not just mean that the game is changing. As one of the principle writers of 3e, I'm sure he wanted to punch a lot of people in the mouth when they told him that the game breaks down around 8th level because everyone uses Haste. If everyone needs something and everyone has it, then the game isn't broken. It's just different. But let's be honest here: a few levels after that the game literally breaks down. With like demon armies and infinite power loops and shit. So while I'm not entirely unsympathetic to his position, he's still wrong.
But the primary issue is that what a level system is for is one of two things:

- It tells you that players of X level can handle an enemy with an AC of 34 (or whatever). 4e is actually fairly good about these sorts of numeric benchmarks until high levels are reached.
- It tells you that players of X level can handle a mission where the goal is floating in the air (or whatever). 3e is actually fairly good about giving out ability benchmarks.

But if each individual player chooses whether to trade numeric bonuses for new options on a case by case basis, as is apparently the case with their horse shit 5e plans, then by definition the party can't be hitting numeric benchmarks or ability benchmarks. The raw numbers fighter can't do anything at all to get into The Inverted Tower and the guy who isn't the raw numbers guy can't even hit an opponent that is supposed to challenge Mr. Bonus.
It's just a non starter. And if anyone had spent even five minutes wargaming it at higher levels they would know that. Yes, you can theoretically have a situation where one person takes Weapon Focus and gets +1 to-hit and another person takes Spring Attack and can make their attack in the middle of their movement and have that be semi-balanced. But you can't do that 20 times, because that's the entire RNG.
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Previn
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Post by Previn » Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:20 pm

ENworld has collection of info about 5e so far here.
Some interesting points:
- Vancian magic is core, for wizards and clerics at least
- Fireball does a base 5d6, and more if you use it with a higher slot.
- When a fighter goes up a level, they can trade the bonus to hit for an ability instead
- 'common' and 'uncommon' classes ??
- Psion and wild talents exist
- Ritual are in
- 3.x style multiclassing
- Magic items are not part of the balanced core math and not expected
- No power sources
- Starting class list will be everything that's been in a first PHB style book[/url]
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fectin
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Post by fectin » Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:31 pm

...that actually sounds like something that could be good.
I even think that the fighter could be workable. My confidence that it actually will be good is low, but it could work.
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Prak
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Post by Prak » Sat Jan 28, 2012 5:34 pm

Wow, you mean they still haven't gotten tired of sucking Vance's cock? That's a shame.
Psion in, cool, rituals, *shrugs* unless it means that every powerful spell is a ritual and there is little to no reason to play a high level caster/you have to invest different character creation resources to be a necromancer, I find it hard to care.
Magic items not being core, or part of the "balanced math" worries me, on several levels.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.

> Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.

> FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
> You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.

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ishy
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Post by ishy » Sat Jan 28, 2012 6:11 pm

So fireball damage never increases unless you put it in a higher spell slot? Similiar to psionic augments?

> Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game

> Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.

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Seerow
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Post by Seerow » Sat Jan 28, 2012 6:46 pm

> ishy wrote:So fireball damage never increases unless you put it in a higher spell slot? Similiar to psionic augments?

Sounds like.
It seems like they got the exact wrong ideas of what is broken with a wizard even now.
Every comparison I've seen of them talking about a wizard vs a warrior so far has been about how much damage they do, not so much about the utilities.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Jan 28, 2012 6:49 pm

> - When a fighter goes up a level, they can trade the bonus to hit for an ability instead

Yep. Called it. Train wreck is a-coming. Watch how implosive that shit gets at high level. Broken RNG and Option Paralysis out of the same leveling mechanic.
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Seerow
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Post by Seerow » Sat Jan 28, 2012 6:54 pm

It's really kind of sad even. Because thinking about it, I think they could have made their given design goals work with a similar system, simply by making it so you don't ever have to actively choose to learn the ability.
What I mean is, imagine if you have power attack as an ability you can use at any time without a feat. As long as it is an option the GM is allowing, you may choose to trade hit for damage at any point in game. If you want to play boring, you just ignore it. If you want a little more ability, you pull out power attack.
A whole system of trade offs built around this where you can tack on new effects by taking a penalty to hit or damage for that one attack, while likely not going to be balanced in any way, could have been a pretty cool way to handle things and let two identical fighters each choose the level of complexity they want to use.
But by forcing them to prespend hit/damage to pick up the options, they become less versatile. Now if they run into something with higher defenses than they can hit, they can't just put back those options and be able to hit. So you run into the RNG problems frank described.
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ishy
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Post by ishy » Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:14 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote: Basically, without even having seen the product, hell without the product even being in a playtestable state, I can tell you that the two best characters are the battlefield control wizard and the one-trick-pony swordsman. Because it's a necessary result of their complexity dial bullshit.
> -Username17

The I can't hit swordsman could be overpowered too ^^.
As in, trades away all his damage and attack to try and only take 'options' that boost his allies.

> Gary Gygax wrote:The player’s path to role-playing mastery begins with a thorough understanding of the rules of the game

> Bigode wrote:I wouldn't normally make that blanket of a suggestion, but you seem to deserve it: scroll through the entire forum, read anything that looks interesting in term of design experience, then come back.

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Parthenon
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Post by Parthenon » Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:21 pm

The thing is, having a fighter class that swaps attack bonus for more abilities could actually work fine. If they always had various abilities and their attack increased as fast as everyone elses, but on top of that had two extra +1s or abilities slowly increasing to six by max level then you have a more powerful simple fighter who mostly just attacks stuff or a fighter just as good as attacking as anyone else but with six more abilities.
6 on a d20 is a third of the RNG which is really powerful but not necessarily game breaking.
You could even split up attack and damage, and have at level 1 choose either an extra +1 to hit or an ability, then at level 2 either +5 to damage or an ability. At level 3 you'd always get an ability, and after that the pattern repeats itself.

The thing I don't get is where some PCs have skill ranks and others don't. Does that mean that the 'simple' PC merely has to describe what he's doing and the originality and idea with a basic die roll decides like people such as shadzar would recommend, while the 'complex' PC has to perform a skill challenge or use an ability to bypass the challenge? Can these PCs even play together?

> Rodney Thompson wrote:a version of D&D where players can simply play anything they want, ignoring concepts like role and function when putting together their party.

So, they are ignoring everything to do with the 4e class system's roles?
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Previn
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Post by Previn » Sat Jan 28, 2012 8:31 pm

Ok, been doing more digging and this is what I have for the 5e fighter:
You get the equivalent of BAB increases, damage increases, and some abilities as you level automatically. You can exchange your bab/damage for more abilities, getting possibly more than 1 ability at a time. You can also trade out your level abilities for 'more complex but not more powerful' ones.
I don't any of us thing trading out hit for abilities is going to work out well, or that there is a reason to trade out for more complex abilities if they offer no advantages. Examples so far have been trading out damage/bab for the ability to move people, better ability to defend your allies, and AoE. Which is curious since I'd expect all of those to be directly effected by your ability to hit an opponent.
Now, it's apparently not BAB every level so maybe we're looking at something like 2 BAB every 3 levels, and you give up 1 BAB to get say bullrush. I could see that working on a very limited scale.
Anyways, further down the leveling line : High level play is admittedly not tested, but they're looking to allow you to trade in several lower level abilities for a higher level on.
So, at this point, you've got what looks like 3-4 options/choices at each level just for combat, some of which seem to be traps, and they're trying to keep character creation at 30 minutes for new players, or 15 minutes for experienced players.
I am reminded of the 4e hype before we actually saw what 4e was.
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No Big Deal
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Post by No Big Deal » Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:17 am

I made a couple of threads over Enworld to get an idea of what other people think and... they can't find ANY flaws with the concept of 5e...
But on topic, I'm kinda with the general consensus: cool concept, execution will suck. I kind of wonder though, why do they keep doing this to themselves? Twice now they've made the mistake of releasing an edition before it was even close to finished, then creating a total clusterfuck by trying to do the work they should have done before release afterwards. I wonder if well see editions starting to be 3-4 years apart with each one hoping to cover for the mistakes of the last, but getting rushed through production and ending in its own fuckup.
My big gripe with the system is actually their stated intent to have orcs be a threat in higher levels. This seems like its going to sharply constrain damage output, which constrains monster power, which leads to really disappointing high level fights. That's not even getting into the "Horizontal or vertical advancement issue."
At this point my big hope is that this edition is just a smokescreen designed to do something while they work on a functional edition. That's pretty sad for a product that doesn't even exist yet.
Last edited by No Big Deal on Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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fectin
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Post by fectin » Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:34 am

An orc is green, humanoid, and brutish.
Fighting things that are green, humaniod and brutish at various levels, and calling them each orcs is not even difficult.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:31 am

The concept is making the "basic" Orc meaningful. Not in making "some kind of Orc" meaningful. Now meaningfulness doesn't entail that it has a snowball's chance in hell against you, it just means that it being on the board is something you don't want to ignore. The basic Orc could still have to come in groups of 40-400 to seriously threaten your party, so long as each one was independently meaningful - however small that meaning actually was.
All that is required to meet that design goal is to have the attack bonuses and defenses scale slowly if at all. Your basic Orc could have meaning at 20th level if ACs didn't rise. Even if players had a thousand hit points and Orcs did like 8 damage, they'd still be something you cared about if they could hit. It's a trivially easy design goal.
Which they flubbed anyway because they committed themselves to the "basic" fighter who just gets numbers and has attack bonuses going up every level. So going with an Original D&D AC paradigm where all the defense numbers are in a tight range at all levels isn't even possible.
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CapnTthePirateG
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Post by CapnTthePirateG » Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:34 am

Did anyone else notice they were balancing "win combat" effects like charm person against damage per round?
Am I the only one who sees this ending badly?

> OgreBattle wrote:"And thus the denizens learned that hating Shadzar was the only thing they had in common, and with him gone they turned their venom upon each other"
> -Sarpadian Empires, vol. I

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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:48 am

> CapnTthePirateG wrote:Did anyone else notice they were balancing "win combat" effects like charm person against damage per round?
> Am I the only one who sees this ending badly?

1) Yes
2) No
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:40 am

Why should the 'basic' orc unit always be meaningful through the magic of linear addition anyway? What is actually so important about the orc that a 16th level character should be fighting any, even if it's six hundred of them?

> Parthenon wrote:The thing is, having a fighter class that swaps attack bonus for more abilities could actually work fine. If they always had various abilities and their attack increased as fast as everyone elses, but on top of that had two extra +1s or abilities slowly increasing to six by max level then you have a more powerful simple fighter who mostly just attacks stuff or a fighter just as good as attacking as anyone else but with six more abilities.

This just plain doesn't work. We tried it in 4E D&D. The Tiefling Firelord Wizard, despite easily being the best multi-target damage dealer in the game, is still inferior to their enchanter counterpart even after brutal nerfing. The Prime Punisher Ranger is just plain not as good as the Hammer Bros. Ranger (where a Ranger accepts a significantly lower attack and damage bonus but slows + dazes + attack penalty + push + prones a target on every attack) despite being recognized as a top-tier striker.
I honestly doubt that it's even possible to find a sweet spot for horizontal/vertical tradeoff. The biggest issue is that clever players can always find ways to recycle horizontal advancement into vertical advancement -- for example, a 4E D&D paragon-tier ranger combining Staggering Strike (push) + Rushing Cleats (More Push) + Hobbling Strike (Slow) + Heavy Blade Opportunity (use Twin Strike on an opportunity attack) + Repel Charge (gain an opportunity attack when a foe charges you) suddenly gets a large number of extra attacks through that setup.
I am instantly repulsed by this idea of attacks trade-offs because it's way too easy for people to have their cake and eat it, too.

> CapnPirateG wrote:Did anyone else notice they were balancing "win combat" effects like charm person against damage per round?
> Am I the only one who sees this ending badly?

It doesn't need to end badly. I mean, it can't work in a system like D&D where they wank to critical existence failure but we have quite a few systems in existence where charm person was balanced against DPR. Shadowrun for example.
Being able to pull this off alongside critical existence failure without doing something stupid like giving Charm Person a 75% miss chance would be so almost impossible that it'd be impressive.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle » Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:47 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:The concept is making the "basic" Orc meaningful. Not in making "some kind of Orc" meaningful. Now meaningfulness doesn't entail that it has a snowball's chance in hell against you, it just means that it being on the board is something you don't want to ignore. The basic Orc could still have to come in groups of 40-400 to seriously threaten your party, so long as each one was independently meaningful - however small that meaning actually was.

I wonder if a Warhammer type of balance could be worked from there. A Chaos Lord can destroy any orc grunt, but fighting a score of them by himself presents some risk.
There's also 'combat resolution' rules, so perhaps a rule for overwhelming mob attacks could apply?

> Lago PARANOIA wrote: I am instantly repulsed by this idea of attacks trade-offs because it's way too easy for people to have their cake and eat it, too.

But the people who want a 'simple Fighter', do they really care? It's like on the PF boards when you show somebody how to use a wizard, they talk about how they aren't min/maxers and their fireball wizard is perfectly balanced with their Fighter.

> It doesn't need to end badly. I mean, it can't work in a system like D&D where they wank to critical existence failure but we have quite a few systems in existence where charm person was balanced against DPR. Shadowrun for example.
> Being able to pull this off alongside critical existence failure without doing something stupid like giving Charm Person a 75% miss chance would be so almost impossible that it'd be impressive.

How does Shadowrun balance it and why can't it be done in D&D?
I haven't played SR but I know the basics of the system (die pool)
Last edited by OgreBattle on Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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CatharzGodfoot
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Post by CatharzGodfoot » Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:20 pm

Frank's resolution system for TNE was a to-hit roll of 1d20 + Attribute Vs an AC of something like 8+Attribute followed by a soak roll of 3d6+level+attribute Vs damage of something like 12+level+attribute, with a lookup table to determine the effects of unsoaked damage.
The result is a system where attack and AC bonuses scale very slowly, so characters never foll off the RNG. Since even 0 damage can have an effect, mooks are still meaningful.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
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Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Sun Jan 29, 2012 5:13 pm

> OgreBattle wrote: How does Shadowrun balance it and why can't it be done in D&D?

In Shadowrun, taking vanilla damage leaves you more susceptible to spells. Getting hit by a spell also makes you more susceptible to vanilla damage. Furthermore, spells are not 'all or nothing' in that system, either. They have a varying degree of success and because of the previous factors partially succeeding on a spell can set up a better effect on the same spell.
A setup wouldn't work for D&D as imagined for several reasons. I mean, it's not insurmountable or impossible but it'd require a significant overhaul of the game and a degree of talent I haven't seen from any of the game designers.
[*] D&D uses critical existence failure. That is, as long as you have one hit point left you fight at more-or-less full effectiveness. This is actually an understandable paradigm in a game where you're expected to fight constantly, retreat is costly, and you can turn around your fortunes with one lucky crit. Unfortunately, aside from making charm/DPR non-overlapping critical existence failure causes some other problems which I will be happy to mention if you ask.
[*] D&D uses a relatively high hit rate for spells. Which is also understandable, because it's frustrating to use an attack repeatedly and have it fail on you. I've played early 4E D&D and let me tell you nothing enrages players like whiffling 3 attacks in a row, which is pretty much going to happen to someone even if you set the hit rate at 50%.
[*] Spells often do not have a varying degree of success in D&D dependent on defender competence. If someone casts Charm Person on you, you either resist it or they don't. For save-or-dies, any spell or effect for that matter that happened before the save-or-die may as well have not happened. So if a fighter chews through 95% of a stone giant's hit points but then the wizard manages to land a Suggestion, in D&D the fighter wasted their time.
So those are your problems. In order to fix the non-overlappingness of DPR and Save-or-Dies, you need:
[*] Some way to get rid of Critical Existence Failure. You don't need to implement Shadowrun's Death Spiral system; Combat Advantage Number works just fine.
[*] To rewrite save-or-dies such that there's a varying degree of success to them. You can either implement linear penalties like in Shadowrun or you can have separate status effects in such spells. You need about three of them in order to make the system meaningful.
[*] You need to have at least 3 discrete penalty-imposing states for taking health damage. Something like 'Wounded', 'Bloodied', and 'Non-Bloodied'. Having two penalty-imposing states gives too much of a damage range in which DPR would be wasted.
The problem is that in order to do that you cannot have D&D's double/triple-digit per level increasing hit point system. I mean, you COULD but asking players to calculate percentages and then keep track of when double-digit subtraction drops below these percentages at a gaming table is much too clunky. If you had a fixed or semi-fixed system like (once again) Shadowrun it'd be quite workable. If you absolutely can't do that then you need to put the damage state schedules at some recognizable multiple, like a third rounded to the nearest tens digit, though that's still too overly clunky.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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CapnTthePirateG
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Post by CapnTthePirateG » Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:07 pm

http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31749 ... cores.html
Do you like magic tea party?

> OgreBattle wrote:"And thus the denizens learned that hating Shadzar was the only thing they had in common, and with him gone they turned their venom upon each other"
> -Sarpadian Empires, vol. I

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Previn
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Post by Previn » Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:45 pm

> CapnTthePirateG wrote:http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31749 ... cores.html
> Do you like magic tea party?

...at least there won't be skill challenges?
Maybe this will work, it seems like a neat idea like Aspects or Stunts from Fate, and I want to like it.... but I can't help feeling this going to be a train wreak.
I'm envisioning Gyxaian trap by passing, bad DMs ruining the game for players because they can't effectively improvise and just less player agency all around.
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Mask_De_H
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Post by Mask_De_H » Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:51 pm

Okay, trying to run that through the Dipshit to English translator (god I wish Monte would stop saying words) it seems something like this:
All skill checks are ability score checks. If a player wants, they can take skills to enhance the checks. Certain things (left to Mister Cavern fiat) don't need rolls. There is an "advantage" which basically means MTP it and might work like stunting in Exalted or whatever.
Classes give stat bonuses.
Feats give you At-Will powers (like Reserve magic feats) or they give you shit like Toughness. Balance!
Themes are the bastard love children of kits and 4e backgrounds + themes. Certain race types might end up here, too.
Ability boosters might be back, and there might be ability score hard caps (like 18/00? I don't know 2e very well.)
The one kinda smart thing Monte said is that they're making weapon categories instead of specific weapons. Aiming for sword guy to be able to pick up an axe and be good with it.
Alternate casting styles.
Positive and negative race mods, but only on a +1 basis
Less scaling, so tighter RNG and more focus on ability mods/powers and tricks.
Grid mode in the book, powers flagged with being useful for gridded combat.
Rob joked about wanting Skill Challenges to die in a fire. Then floated MTP.
There's enough here to make something workable, so it's going to be fun watching how they fuck it up. And 4rries are crying about ability score rolling coming back, when point buy is also still an option.
Last edited by Mask_De_H on Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.

> K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.

> Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.

> Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sun Jan 29, 2012 9:00 pm

> CapnTthePirateG wrote:http://www.enworld.org/forum/news/31749 ... cores.html
> Do you like magic tea party?

My favorite part is this one:

> Rob: Right now, Cha is linked to saves for fear and charm effects. However, if you describe it well, you could use different stat.

Seriously? Seriously? Magic Teaparty to determine whether we use good stats or shitty stats to defend against enemy spells?
What the fuck?!
-Username17
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