The Gaming Den

OgreBattle wrote:Are there any RPG's where you roleplay as Black people in a Black majority setting?

I dont know one.

Bonus points if there's a social mechanic to encourage you to play up certain Black archtypes (like honor in an oriental setting).

The nearest I know has mechanic (=stat boni) to play certain types of charakters. But those might should be considered racist...

Almaz wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:Bonus points if there's a social mechanic to encourage you to play up certain Black archtypes (like honor in an oriental setting).

What would you say those are, tho'?

Seriously, there is literally no way that such a game isn't racist as shit.

Well, there's this...


I don't know whether it encourages "black archetypes," but I'll bet that's what classes are based on.

Kaelik wrote:Seriously, there is literally no way that such a game isn't racist as shit.

I try to keep an open mind to any possibility. Given infinite time, yadda yadda. Prak's find confirms the far more likely event though.

Almaz wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:Bonus points if there's a social mechanic to encourage you to play up certain Black archtypes (like honor in an oriental setting).

What would you say those are, tho'?

In an "honor" vs "corruption" paradigm... "Street Cred" vs "Sellout" for an urban black hip hop setting. So instead of a rokugan courtier who is secretly corrupted by the shadowlands, you have a New York rapper who is secretly a snitch for the NYPD.

And then throw in some stats for katanas so you can play as Ghost Dog.

Honestly, if you're going for that, you'd want something like grimy (doing real hood shit) vs. shining (making enough money to get up out the hood).

Can you make an attack of opportunity with a weapon you aren't threatening with? For example, someone moves by the rogue while they wield a dagger. Can the rogue make an AoO with their foot? If the rogue wasn't wielding the dagger, they wouldn't be threatening their space and thus there'd have been no AoO to make.

I'm going to say no. The idea behind a threatened square is that you're threatening it with a particular weapon. it's the entire drawback to reach weapons.

Zaranthan wrote:I'm going to say no. The idea behind a threatened square is that you're threatening it with a particular weapon. it's the entire drawback to reach weapons.

Reach weapons aren't really a good example, because you can't actually attack in the regions they don't threaten, whereas the untrained pugilist can most certainly attack someone adjacent to them even while they're not threatening the space around them.

This is a really irritating adjudication, because the rules almost have your expectations covered. Either emergently or explicitly, they dis-include all of the weapons that don't threaten from being used to make an AoO. Ranged weapons don't threaten, and explicitly can't be used to make an AoO. An uncast spell doesn't threaten, but you can't cast a spell except as a discrete action. A weapon that isn't threatening because of inappropriate reach (like a lance, when you're threatening with armor spikes, or visa-versa) can't be used, because... it just can't be used to make the attack against a person at that distance at all. And an untrained fist-fighter, who doesn't threaten, is ordinarily covered by a rule in the Combat section of the PHB, under the list of standard actions, which says: "An unarmed character can’t take attacks of opportunity."

That last rule fails to cover the edge case you've presented, which is that, factually, a person who is not unarmed can still make an unarmed strike. That said, it's still a pretty clear mandate to preclude someone from engaging in your bring-a-fist-to-a-knife-fight strategy, and there's even a tortured interpretation that, in the moment you make an unarmed strike, you are operating as an unarmed combatant.

Here's my real outlook, though: The rules are incredibly fucking inelegant and the editors should be ashamed of themselves. They separately define the list of "weapons that threaten" and "weapons that can't be used for an AoO," with the apparent intention that the second list be an exhaustive inverse of the first. That's horseshit! Write one list, and a direct correlation in place of the second! "You can only make an attack of opportunity using a weapon you threaten with." There, I fixed it, it took me literally two seconds to come up with, and I didn't have to scatter a half-dozen piecemeal mechanics over as many nonconsecutive pages to make it work. Set theory, motherfuckers!

Uh... Eikre, no they don't.

To take an AoO you have to threaten the square. Threatening is defined by being able to make an attack on your turn. Absent explicit exemptions such as ranged weapons and unarmed strikes (presumably because they don't want you to start an AoO chain).

The default threaten rules cover reach weapons. Ranged weapons are only ever going to be covered by an exception because they are an exception. The unarmed attacks exception is explicitly an exception, and it avoids provoking AoOs back and forth. So yes, you can still be a dumbfuck and provoke and AoO to attack for less damage than your weapon. I have no idea why you would, but you can, because the designers didn't see this specific dumb decision coming.

The rules are not particularly inelegant. They cover with the minimal number of exceptions the complete playspace.

I'm sort of thinking about swapping out my shitty artificer for a paladin to change things up a bit for the group and myself.

Is there a viable way to build a paladin, or paladin-esque, character who ends conflicts without killing? It's not really a necessity, but it would be nice to have "Paladin" on my sheet, and be able to punish the monks that force children to fight to the death/kill children without killing the monks themselves (since that's ever so slightly hypocritical).

Obviously in a game where there's another power structure, you could go the "subdue and turn over" route, but when you're fighting the power structure itself, something else is needed. The first thing that comes to mind is someway to send the evildoers directly to The Forces Of Good for punishment, but the Gate ability that requires gets rather away from being a paladin.

The problem there is that Paladins are not particularly good. You don't get good spells for this sort of thing at all. You can't sedate people. You don't even get Use Rope. The closest would actually just be a good aligned cleric who happens to like Stone Shape and Hold Person spells and carries a lot of mannacles.

Yeah, "Playing a paladin but writing 'cleric' on my character sheet" is what I was leaning towards.

Prak wrote:The first thing that comes to mind is someway to send the evildoers directly to The Forces Of Good for punishment, but the Gate ability that requires gets rather away from being a paladin.

There's also the Last Judgment spell in BoED which has a similar effect while being a lot more paladin-y in flavor: "Reciting a list of the targets’ evil deeds, you call down the judgment of the heavens upon their heads. Creatures that fail their saving throw are struck dead and bodily transported to the appropriate Lower Plane to suffer their eternal punishment. Creatures that succeed nevertheless take 3d6 points of temporary Wisdom damage as guilt for their misdeeds overwhelms their minds." It's an 8th level cleric spell and hits CL/2 targets at once.

Barring that, you could try focusing on spells like Sanctify the Wicked or Geas/Quest to try to redeem evil people instead of killing them outright. At what level will this character start, do you want to not ever kill anyone or just not kill these monks you mentioned, and how many enemies do you tend to face at one time in your average encounter?

Well, if I do switch characters, my current character is level 6. My basic line of though when I think of paladin is that killing is an absolute last resort. Killing for survival is fine, but killing needlessly is at least debatably, if not outright, evil.

The campaign is about a tournament full of child contestants who must pass three tests, and anyone who doesn't is killed. The last child standing gets the power to kill gods, the second place child (however that works precisely) gains the power of a god.

I like the idea of playing a paladin, but when I first thought about swapping for one, I realized that the way my ethics go, he'd basically have to stop the tournament or die trying, and so discarded the idea. But thinking about it, well, that could be interesting, and better than my current character who is an artificer and basically disrupts the game by creating super items. I'd only swap for the disruptive paladin if the other players were cool with it.

The paladin's first goal is to not kill anyone, ever. But he's not Batman/Superman level stupid where he won't kill people who need killing, and would kill if he could protect others by doing so. I have no clue how many I might face at once, but it's likely a sizable number.

Kaelik wrote:So yes, you can still be a dumbfuck and provoke and AoO to attack for less damage than your weapon. I have no idea why you would, but you can, because the designers didn't see this specific dumb decision coming.

Unarmed attacks are also how you initiate a grapple or trip. I'm not grasping at straws, here. One of the explicit purposes of the AoO mechanic is to offer combatants a chance to prevent their opponents from brazenly passing them at arm's length. And, while free hits are certainly a deterrent, they aren't actually a means of stopping an opponent unless you can drop them in one fell blow. Trips and grapples, on the other hand, will physically preclude a guy from proceeding, and ruin his fucking turn.

These aren't nonsense tactics, or even difficult to anticipate. It is entirely reasonable that a player would want to stick out their foot or tackle a guy to keep them from getting at a vulnerable ally. Those are true-to-life tactics. What's nonsense is that the ordinary restrictions on preforming those maneuvers empty-handed are arbitrarily lifted when you're holding a fucking letter opener.

Actually, come to think of it, there IS another melee weapon that doesn't threaten; the whip. It has reach, too. You could be serving some double-fucked exceptions with it if you had a lance, I guess... Actually, that really wouldn't be so stupid for a beastmaster NPC. Monster fucks everyone up, rider trips everyone to facilitate the fucking, and it all makes perfect aesthetic sense.

Prak wrote:Is there a viable way to build a paladin, or paladin-esque, character who ends conflicts without killing? It's not really a necessity, but it would be nice to have "Paladin" on my sheet, and be able to punish the monks that force children to fight to the death/kill children without killing the monks themselves (since that's ever so slightly hypocritical).

A merciful weapon + diplomacy would be the simple approach.

Eikre wrote:Unarmed attacks are also how you initiate a grapple or trip. I'm not grasping at straws, here. One of the explicit purposes of the AoO mechanic is to offer combatants a chance to prevent their opponents from brazenly passing them at arm's length. And, while free hits are certainly a deterrent, they aren't actually a means of stopping an opponent unless you can drop them in one fell blow. Trips and grapples, on the other hand, will physically preclude a guy from proceeding, and ruin his fucking turn.

The inability to make a trip or grapple attempt as an AoO has nothing to do with not threatening with unarmed strikes. The relevant question is if you even can. There are weapons that can be used to trip, but whether or not it is or was supposed to be legal to use them to trip as an AoO is anyone's fucking guess.

An AoO is a single melee attack. Grappling almost certainly cannot be done on an AoO because it isn't a single melee attack. Trip arguably isn't, but arguably is. Whether you can use them on an AoO is completely unrelated to the question of whether you can attempt to punch someone while holding a sword as they run by you.

OgreBattle wrote:Are there any RPG's where you roleplay as Black people in a Black majority setting?

Bonus points if there's a social mechanic to encourage you to play up certain Black archtypes (like honor in an oriental setting).

.


http://paizo.com/products/btpy7vha?Nyam ... Adventures

In the Land of the Overpower,
The Jaws of the Lion
Are the Only Reward
For the Unwary.

Nyambe is a vast land of exotic creatures and wide expanses, where ancestral orishas cry for brave warriors to carve out the hearts of foul mchawi wizards, and where dragon-blooded sei sorcerers once joined the fierce Amazons of Nibomay in the bloody Rebelling Time to win their freedom. This campaign setting for the OGL System brings together high fantasy and African myth, legend, and history.

Nyambe: African Adventures includes:
Twelve new human cultures and six variant non-human races, like the brown-skinned, tailed Wakyambi elves who meddle in the affairs of men from the depths of the blda Rainforest
New PC class variants and prestige classes change druids into n'anga shamen who worship the natural orisha spirits and are as comfortable in the skin of a panther as in humanoid form
New skills and feats like Ancestral Blessing, Drum Dancer, Elephant Warrior, and Fire Blood are the heritage of every Nyamban, as well as new weapons, armor, and equipment designed for a climate where the heat of the vast savannah is more dangerous than an enemy's spear
Mortals who honor the spirit orisha are granted new spells and domains such as Darkness, Exile, Fertility, Lightning, and Plague
Mad mchawi wizards contemplate the contents of mojuba bags to prepare their ominous spells, and new magic items like zombi powder turn fallen warriors into true zombis that keep a hideous memory of their former lives; ritual masks let the wearer become an orisha, and vodou nkisi statues hurl powerful curses at those who dare to use them
Creatures never before seen by the men of the tamed north prowl these lands... and ravenous beasts of the jungle and desert are only the beginning of the danger that awaits those who walk the continent of Nyambe!

Requires use of a Dungeons & Dragons Core Book.

Written by Chris Dolunt.

OgreBattle wrote:Are there any RPG's where you roleplay as Black people in a Black majority setting?

Bonus points if there's a social mechanic to encourage you to play up certain Black archtypes (like honor in an oriental setting).

.

Spears of the Dawn
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110 ... f-the-Dawn

In the marketplace, flame-tongued griots recall the glories of dead heroes to set the people ablaze against their undying Eternal foes. In the palace, mighty warriors stride among pillars of carved ebony and bright jewels. Beneath the earth, daring adventurers plumb the mines of ancient kings, veins of gold shining in the flickering torchlight. And in the forest, masked ngangas utter the sorceries of their ancestors to break the bleak curses that witches have hurled upon their people.

Spears of the Dawn is an African-inspired game built with the free, award-winning Stars Without Number system. Within this book you will find all the tools needed for adventuring in the wild and brooding Three Lands, where the bones of ancient Obas rest uneasy in cities of stone and blighted memory. Dare the tombs of the bitter Eternal and the courts of leopard-mantled kings to find the wealth of a new world!

I know nothing about this or Stars Without Number, other than it is a "fantasy Africa" thing.

Kaelik wrote:The inability to make a trip or grapple attempt as an AoO has nothing to do with not threatening with unarmed strikes. The relevant question is if you even can. There are weapons that can be used to trip, but whether or not it is or was supposed to be legal to use them to trip as an AoO is anyone's fucking guess.

An AoO is a single melee attack. Grappling almost certainly cannot be done on an AoO because it isn't a single melee attack. Trip arguably isn't, but arguably is. Whether you can use them on an AoO is completely unrelated to the question of whether you can attempt to punch someone while holding a sword as they run by you.

For fuck's sake, Kaelik, this is some remedial level shit. Look on page 141 of the PHB, footnote 7, which concerns disarming, tripping, and grappling: "These attack forms substitute for a melee attack, not an action. As melee attacks, they can be used once in an attack or charge action, one or more times in a full attack action, or even as an attack of opportunity."

Eikre wrote:

Kaelik wrote:The inability to make a trip or grapple attempt as an AoO has nothing to do with not threatening with unarmed strikes. The relevant question is if you even can. There are weapons that can be used to trip, but whether or not it is or was supposed to be legal to use them to trip as an AoO is anyone's fucking guess.

An AoO is a single melee attack. Grappling almost certainly cannot be done on an AoO because it isn't a single melee attack. Trip arguably isn't, but arguably is. Whether you can use them on an AoO is completely unrelated to the question of whether you can attempt to punch someone while holding a sword as they run by you.

For fuck's sake, Kaelik, this is some remedial level shit. Look on page 141 of the PHB, footnote 7, which concerns disarming, tripping, and grappling: "These attack forms substitute for a melee attack, not an action. As melee attacks, they can be used once in an attack or charge action, one or more times in a full attack action, or even as an attack of opportunity."

Look, sometimes someone doesn't care enough about an issue to root around for an actual PHB, and they just use the SRD which is sometimes extremely poorly laid out. Get over yourself, if there is an express fucking statement that you can trip as an AoO then the original question was dumb for a completely different reason, and you are still wrong about how the system has too many exceptions.

Okay, so your argument really isn't that I'm incorrect, it's just that I'm whiny, and that Virgil is also an idiot because he started a discussion about a novel idiosyncrasy?

If you're just trying to express your distaste for pedantry, then you can consider your complaint duly fucking noted. Christ. It's not like I'm holding people captive at my game table to split hairs about this shit.

This is a forum about game design. A substantive part of good design is in its composition. That bit, right there, where you overlooked the rule I ended up citing? It's completely understandable, and it's not like I think you're dumb for it; your oversight was the product of a ruleset that, while actually very good and complete, could still do with another editorial once-over.

I intuit that the game developers were crafting a system where "threatening" with a weapon was the first stage of making an attack of opportunity with that weapon. But that's not what they published. What they published is a system where "threatening" is a relationship that you either have or do not have with a particular square depending on the weapons you're holding, and that attacks of opportunity are awarded based on that binary relationship, but separately evaluated for applicability.

Is this a trifling difference? Yeah, of fucking course it is. Literally everyone is capable of eliding the difference and having a perfectly good time playing the game. I know! Our little shitfit here has not been revelatory, in this regard. But my interest is in the illustration of how connoting the rules isn't the same as actually writing them down, and the reason I care is because I think that the practiced eye which identifies these quibbling little idiosyncrasies is also the rigor which prevents a prospective developer from making their own compositional errors. The results end up being better in action and easier to learn, and presumably that's something we care about, around here.

Eikre wrote:Okay, so your argument really isn't that I'm incorrect, it's just that I'm whiny, and that Virgil is also an idiot because he started a discussion about a novel idiosyncrasy?

No, my argument is that you are completely full of shit and every single thing you said in this post:

Eikre wrote:This is a really irritating adjudication, because the rules almost have your expectations covered. Either emergently or explicitly, they dis-include all of the weapons that don't threaten from being used to make an AoO. Ranged weapons don't threaten, and explicitly can't be used to make an AoO. An uncast spell doesn't threaten, but you can't cast a spell except as a discrete action. A weapon that isn't threatening because of inappropriate reach (like a lance, when you're threatening with armor spikes, or visa-versa) can't be used, because... it just can't be used to make the attack against a person at that distance at all. And an untrained fist-fighter, who doesn't threaten, is ordinarily covered by a rule in the Combat section of the PHB, under the list of standard actions, which says: "An unarmed character can’t take attacks of opportunity."

That last rule fails to cover the edge case you've presented, which is that, factually, a person who is not unarmed can still make an unarmed strike. That said, it's still a pretty clear mandate to preclude someone from engaging in your bring-a-fist-to-a-knife-fight strategy, and there's even a tortured interpretation that, in the moment you make an unarmed strike, you are operating as an unarmed combatant.

Here's my real outlook, though: The rules are incredibly fucking inelegant and the editors should be ashamed of themselves. They separately define the list of "weapons that threaten" and "weapons that can't be used for an AoO," with the apparent intention that the second list be an exhaustive inverse of the first. That's horseshit! Write one list, and a direct correlation in place of the second! "You can only make an attack of opportunity using a weapon you threaten with." There, I fixed it, it took me literally two seconds to come up with, and I didn't have to scatter a half-dozen piecemeal mechanics over as many nonconsecutive pages to make it work. Set theory, motherfuckers!

is both wrong and stupid.

And that Virgil asked a question to which the answer is "Yes. And the rules expressly state that, so who fucking cares, this isn't an idiosyncrasy."

Eikre wrote:your oversight was the product of a ruleset that, while actually very good and complete, could still do with another editorial once-over.

It was a product of the layout on the SRD, if that table was two pages up right next to the other one, or in the other section, the one labeled "special attacks", then no one would miss it.

Eikre wrote:Is this a trifling difference? Yeah, of fucking course it is. Literally everyone is capable of eliding the difference and having a perfectly good time playing the game. I know! Our little shitfit here has not been revelatory, in this regard. But my interest is in the illustration of how connoting the rules isn't the same as actually writing them down, and the reason I care is because I think that the practiced eye which identifies these quibbling little idiosyncrasies is also the rigor which prevents a prospective developer from making their own compositional errors. The results end up being better in action and easier to learn, and presumably that's something we care about, around here.

Look you fucking idiot, you aren't the one true game designer looking into this. Your position is basically nonsense from step one because you believe that the rules that explicitly stated you can fucking grapple as AoO really meant to only let you grapple with all those grappling weapons.

Guess what, the special actions in the Tomes have the exact same fucking language, but they have it written in the actual header for the actions, instead of in a table, no one would miss it, and it is on the same page with the special actions.