The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1196327460[/unixtime]]One seriously wonders how long he can continue to leap from failure to failure before people notice that he has tunnel vision too severe to actually make a subsystem which integrates into a complete game system.

-Username17

Look at Uwe Boll. Many of his video game movies are bad, but as long as he makes a profit, he does not care.

Dude, that 'ability' should be a maneuver anyone should be able to use, if it exists at all.

-Crissa

PS, how many Uwe Boll movies made a profit?

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1196380791[/unixtime]]Dude, that 'ability' should be a maneuver anyone should be able to use, if it exists at all.

-Crissa

PS, how many Uwe Boll movies made a profit?

Reply to P.S.: Here
and here
Although I would not be surprised if said sources were unreliable.

That German tax loop hole was closed a while ago but it only effect future movies. Boll has his already in production so they get the benefits of the loop hole. Now it seems that Canada may have the same kind of loop hole and he it start the wheel again there.

Promising to give a portion of the 'profits' isn't a big promise, in the movie business.

But trolling IMDB, the last profitable movie he seems to have had was House of the Dead with a tiny budget and what would be considered terrible profits. His movies then seem to get bigger budgets (he has three movies coming out first quarter next year, each with an estimated budget of over fifty million dollars, US) but less gross.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369226/business
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0383222/business

This was only sampling movies that actually made it to the US.

...The invisible hand should take money away from failures like this, instead of giving it to them, but that's how it seems to work.

-Crissa

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p ... 4[br]Again, second language issues are obscuring a few points.

Wizard
We know the wizard. Their focus is not more an evoker than anything else. They blast enemies while remaining in the back.
Spells are divided among at will (lesser power than a fighter’s melee attack), per encounter, per day (the really powerful stuffs, these are the most powerful abilities in the game) and rituals. Rituals cover magic item creation, and non-combat spell (divinations are prime examples).
Schools are dead, long live the implements: the orb, the staff and the wand (with others, such as the dagger, possible in later supplement). Staffs are for rays and cones, wands for long distance control, while orb stands for blasts, terrain control, and retributive and perception based effects.
Divinations, long range teleport, restorative effects (the cleric’s remove disease for example) are rituals.
Evocation and illusion is there and now they are the focus of wizardry.
Necromancy was nerfed mostly by removing save or die effects.
Transmutation was a haphazard pile of powers (according to them), and some part remains, other do not.
Echantment is nerfed to be saved for other classes (others they state that it will be the psi).
Wizards spell failure due to armor is gone (hurray!). Picking the right feats wizards can go around in heavy armor.



Feats don’t have class as a prerequisite. Race, level or skill training might be needed, but no class. You can steer your character wherever you want.
There are class training feats (Fighter training, Wizard training, Warlock training, etc.) that gives some power of that class to someone not in that class.

That last bit may be the 4E approach to multiclassing. Weird,and possibly slightly stupid, if the feats are all as weak as the four examples they've posted, stealing powers and spells from other classes would almost always be better. You'd have a pick a power that doesn't multiply your MAD issues, but with 8 classes and what looks like at least 2 attributes per class, that doesn't seem too hard.

Rituals are possibly very interesting. Particularly if long term buffs are gone, scry/teleport/kill might be a thing of the past, without actually removing scrying or teleporting. If rituals are exclusive things that take actual time, of course. (If it takes 30 minutes to scry and 30 minutes to teleport, the strategy isn't all that great anymore).

Not sure what I think of Wizards being essentially evokers/illusionists with a handful of transmutations.

Also, there is this:

There is 2 or so pages on tiers of power (heroic, paragon and epic). The important part is the paragon paths and epic destinies. They replace prestige classes. They are additional power/abilities, that you can choose once you hit 11th or 21st level. They are very much like prestige classes and battle captain, mystic theurge, weapon master, prince of knaves and cavalier are mentioned.
Epic destiny gives few but very powerful ability. Also it describes how you exit the world (seem like at level 30 you retire). You can become a demigod for example.

Glad as I am to see PrCs hit the shitcan, not sure what these will mean. If you get free benefits from picking one, than not picking one will always be stupid. But, of course, if its just another talent tree to pick from instead of your class, it isn't that great. Will definitely have to see the implementation.

Math Time!

OK, you're a Paladin, and you're level 6. You move up and smite a Spine Devil with your greatsword. Your rogue ally gets an AC buff for one lousy turn, and I don't even pretend to care. The important part is that right now, you roll to hit.

You roll a d20 and add +6 (your level) and +4 (Your Charisma Mod) and +2 (Your Weapon Bonus). You could easily have more than that if you had "combat advantage" from some source or another. Or any of a number of bonuses from items or bard songs or whatever. But let's assume for the moment that you aren't doing any of that. You need to roll a six to hit. In the hands of an actual min/maxxer you will need a 2 (natty 1 always misses).

So 75% of the time, your attack goes off for full damage. One in 20 it actually does double damage, but at this point I don't even pretend to care. Let's assume that the blow lands normally, because it is extremely likely to do so. You now dish out approximate 2d6 (weapon) + 6 (level) + 2 (strength) + 2 (weapon) doubled with an additional 4 on top of that for your Charisma. So you dish out 38 damage on a smite, which has a 75% chance of working. Assuming you can't figure out how to get any passive to-hit or damage bonuses at all (which I find unlikely).

The Spine Devil has 47 hit points. As I understand it, an average opening attack by a paladin using his first level burst damage attack will drop the preview Spine Devil to 9 hit points on the first round of combat.

So... yeah. Combat looks like it is about 2 rounds long and direct damage seems like a very good option. The lack of save-or-dies means fuck-all because the damage to hit point output seems to look a lot more like AD&D. Fear the Magic Missile I suppose.

-Username17

Thats pretty much right, though the level based stuff will actually be level/2 (Though there will be a class based bonus to BAB at first level of an unknown amount, based on class). I hope they have the brains to cut most, if not all, of the passive hit & damage bonuses. With shitloads of per encounter abilties, they'd stack up fast. I suspect thats why that first smite gives an AC bonus rather than inflicts a penalty on the target- you can pile them up and not care about anything the target does.

You might have to drag it out to 3 rounds, simply because there will be as many spined devils as there are party members in a 'balanced' encounter, and that ~25% chance will accumulate a bit.

The AC buff actually matters a little bit, since if the encounter based stuff is roughly equal, some portion of the spined devils will survive the first round and counter attack. Then you finish them off with normal/at will attacks and clean up the dead. Cuts down on the use any healing resources (however those work).

I have a feeling Solo monsters are going to suck, even with the changes and reactive abilities they get. When its 5 on 5, you can easily kill half, but you still have to deal with the remainder. At 5 on one, you've got a big bad monster thats suffering under the drawbacks of 5 different encounter based abilities by the end of the first round. I can't see that going well.

Make it a multi-segment monster, ala Grandia or some Final Fantasy bosses. Let's take the dragon as an example.

You have the Dragon Head, Dragon Body (including tail and back legs), 2 arms and 2 wings. Each is a different monster, complete with actions per round and special abilities. They're all attached, of course. Now, the head is the scariest part, but the body can cast healing, protective, and even raise dead spells on the head, and has three rounds to act after the head dies (after 3 rounds, the rest also dies).

On the other hand, the body is just the annoying healer, with lots of HP and a tail attack, but if it dies, everything else dies after one round (and they can't resurrect the body).

The wings will batter you about and let it fly, pissing you off while they're there. They have crappy HP, so you can clip them easily, but that's a round spent not attacking the head/body. The arms are also going to hurt you in the meantime, too.

This works well for the big monsters. It's just an idea of what they *could* do.

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1196636820[/unixtime]]So... yeah. Combat looks like it is about 2 rounds long and direct damage seems like a very good option. The lack of save-or-dies means fuck-all because the damage to hit point output seems to look a lot more like AD&D. Fear the Magic Missile I suppose.

On the plus side its a lot easier to double everyone's hit points if you want longer fights. Trying to get longer fights with SoDs is more work.

Draco_Argentum at [unixtime wrote:1196652689[/unixtime]]Trying to get longer fights with SoDs is more work.

Status tracks you need to get pushed down instead of genuine SoDs right off the bat.

Man I've really got to work on that Generic D&D re-write Ckafrica and I, and others, were brainstorming on.

Pretty sure you just proved my point there.

Which one is that, Calibron? I've probably read it or even participated in but there's so many here -_-

Another alternative is something like Fate points you can spend to ignore an effect that would kill or disable you. Feel free to give them out on a per day, per encounter or per level basis.

It isn't hard to make SoD's be less immediate, you just have to be willing to actually make SoD'd be less immediate instead of standing their smugly telling everyone what a terrible mechanic they are.

-------
Sigma
It's the one that took over the thread that Crissa started about giving everyone spell lists.

Frank wrote:That is the single most terrifying thing about 4th edition. It seems to be genuinely written with the idea that the world map is filled with green dots that you can trade with and get quests from and red dots which will attack you

I agree... it seems every time I get a whiff of 4E, it smells like WoW cooking in the background.

How ironic. WoW comes along and almost kills tabeltop, so the geniuses at WotC decide, "Hey, I know... let's remove everything from our game that makes it better than WoW, and add everything that makes WoW suck!"

Yahzi at [unixtime wrote:1196831375[/unixtime]]

Frank wrote:That is the single most terrifying thing about 4th edition. It seems to be genuinely written with the idea that the world map is filled with green dots that you can trade with and get quests from and red dots which will attack you

I agree... it seems every time I get a whiff of 4E, it smells like WoW cooking in the background.

How ironic. WoW comes along and almost kills tabeltop, so the geniuses at WotC decide, "Hey, I know... let's remove everything from our game that makes it better than WoW, and add everything that makes WoW suck!"

Well I don't know. I don't really consider it necessarily a bad move to insert some encounters that you can't get through with diplomacy.

Talking should work sometimes and shouldn't work other times. I'm really fine with that. Writing down a DC of "convince the spined devil of anything" is frankly retarded. I don't want social skill mind control. DCs are going to obviously be based on what you're saying and what you're trying to accomplish. That means that effectively you're just going to have to ad hoc it.

Convincing the devil is going to be a lot easier if you offer to hire it to turn on its leader (who it hates anyway) than it would be if you asked it nicely to let you by because you're a paladin and hero to the people. There's just no way to incorporate all that shit into a rule mechanic, it's a point where the DM just has to decide on a DC based on what he knows of the creature.

Most of the time rules for roleplaying are pointless anyway. They tend to be too abstract and useless for everything, unless you're looking for the rules to let you be the almighty diplomancer who can break every encounter just by talking. And honestly, that archetype blows. Sure, some situations should be resolved by talking, some may even have to be resolved by talking, but having every single encounter end where the enemy is now your friend is incredibly lame. It's like playing the Seasame Street RPG where you make friends with everyone and don't kill anybody.

I hope 4E has social skills that aren't all powerful. Some NPCs really should just be "red dots" that are gonna fuck you up regardless of what you say or do.

What happens when you cast Charm Monster on it?

How does it communicate with its bosses?

This is a roleplaying game, and how are we supposed to make stories when all the story parts have been torn out of the figures?

If I want to play Hero Clicks, I can play that.

-Crissa

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1196975928[/unixtime]]
This is a roleplaying game...

I think the key sentiment here is precisely this. It's a roleplaying game, and we want to encourage people to roleplay (which is talking, mostly, unless you're LARPing).

When you win every encounter, combat or otherwise, by saying "I use diplomacy," and roll a d20, it's not roleplaying anymore.

Charm/dominate effects do the same thing, and I dislike them twice as much because they can be used on the players. Nothing's more frustrating to a player than taking away control of his character.

I'm more and more coming around to the side that diplomacy shouldn't be a skill at all. The game takes personal (as in the player's) skill to play, and there's no reason that should be limited to the battle mat. If you're not good at or willing to do a lot of accounting, don't play a wizard. If you can't make a coherent argument, don't play a bard.

Edit: Removed a really bad and unintentional pun.

On the other hand, some people just don't want to play magical tea party. Its a valid play-style, but quite often I don't want to sit through two fat guys playing out both sides of 'seduce the barmaid'. Its fucking creepy. 'I try to seduce the barmaid and I rolled a 21 on the diplomacy check' 'Ok, she goes upstairs with you' is pretty much the limit of what I want to deal with.

Roleplaying is seriously independent of the system. You can have fantasy story-telling hour without a ruleset at all- I've done it myself and it can be fun. But if you want to do serious RP, you totally can. The story of Kraggath, Scourge of the North and Lillia the White Sorceress (and company) can seriously happen at the table, and it doesn't matter if you're playing D&D, Amber or fucking Heroquest.

Light or minimal role-playing isn't wrongbadfun.

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1196978327[/unixtime]]magical tea party.

+2 teacup of warmth
Herbal infusion of dragon chasing ifyaknowwhatimean
Teapot of Majesty +5

I am so close to now writing that as an actual game. There'd be tea-pouring rolls, spells to enhance your brewing ability, all kinds of etiquette abilities... it'd be awesome. Maybe even some random encounters for a serious "What the fuck?" aspect. Like, the smell of the tea lures dogs/bears/giant wasps/faeries/mind flayers.

quite often I don't want to sit through two fat guys playing out both sides of 'seduce the barmaid'. Its fucking creepy.

Agreed. Online games for the win. I'll never have to know what the other players look like.

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1196985735[/unixtime]]

Agreed. Online games for the win. I'll never have to know what the other players look like.

Or you could do what many married gamers do and "RP" with their spouse. However, do what's best for you and your group.

Well, I like online gaming anyway due to not actually knowing anyone over here. Seriously, my friends in this area include:

The guys who run the GW store

Yeah. So it's my only option.

Look, if roleplaying is separate from the system, or even the setting, it isn't a roleplaying game.

And there's enough non-role-playing-games out there that I don't want another.

If characters can't communicate - and are only red dots - then where's the story coming from? It might as well be magical tea party.

There is no mechanical difference from needing a 20 to open a dialog and a 20 to put the red dot to its knees (assuming it has any). But there is a big difference in the type of game we're playing if the prior option is not in the system.

-Crissa

No, there isn't. Thats a personal limitation, sorry. Many older RPGs (older d&d incarnations included) didn't have shit for social interaction rules. I don't mean they had poor social interaction rules, I mean they didn't exist at all. Same with a lot of other crap. 1e didn't have grappling rules until Unearthed Arcana. That didn't mean you couldn't wrestle or grapple someone before that book was printed, it just meant the DM had to resolve it by pulling something out of his ass. Social interaction was the same thing. It was resolved by the DM making a judgement call. Maybe based on how well you handled your end, maybe on what served his plot, maybe on a random die roll; but he fucking handled it (quality of arbitration, as always, was up in the air)

Communication was purely dialogue between players and the DM. As was the story. There is a reason why many rpgs start their 'What is an RPG?' introduction by referencing kids playing 'Cops and Robbers'. The rules get inserted to stop the fights over whether or not someone got hit, not to establish the setting, premise or story.

But a lack of social rules never meant characters couldn't communicate, let alone that players couldn't role-play. It just meant the game designers left that up to the players and GM to handle. Like a lot of other stuff. There is a reason a lot of grognard's felt that 3e was dumbed down for morons and involved a lot of hand holding. This 'if it isn't in the rules, you can't do it' thing was a big part of that.

Yes, there are. People roleplay to Warcraft, they roleplay to Axis and Allies, and they roleplay tea party.

None of those are roleplaying games.

And their designers won't argue with me.

-Crissa