The Gaming Den

A) If you want input, you knowing what you want is useless. We need to know what you want

B) I suspect some of your problems are caused by poorly defined answers to those questions. Do you even have 6 playable roles? Why are you trying to hold advancement static and then use a system that promotes rapid change with advancement? It's very puzzling.

Articulating your reasoning from the top down would help resolve A, because then we could see it, and maybe also work out some of the issues in B.

Concerning the 50% chance thing..

At level 1, players should have a 45-55% chance of punching a monster in the face successfully, depending on how they're classed.

By level 18, players should have 5-95% chance of punching a monster in the face successfully, depending on how they're classed. The variability should be much more open (as it is in [Tome]) as you gain levels. If it's trully a complete and total "fake" gain, you might as well just rename the monsters and pretend its a new adventure.

@FV: It's nice that you think so, but this is a differing of design philosophies, and you've given me no cogent argument that tells me that I should change them thus far, while I've got some good mechanical reasons to keep the numbers there.

@cthulu: If it helps, I'll be happy to fill it out

Ghostwheel wrote:@FV: It's nice that you think so, but this is a differing of design philosophies, and you've given me no cogent argument that tells me that I should change them thus far, while I've got some good mechanical reasons to keep the numbers there.

@cthulu: If it helps, I'll be happy to fill it out

Please don't overgeneralize. What you might want is different from what I might want. That doesn't make either of our perspectives on how game design should work wrong, just different.

It's pretty clear we don;t understand what you want, so walking through that process may make it clearer what you want.

... so what about those "different tactics"?

Group name: Party

6-person party:

McDougal, a grizzled veteran who's been through a lot of battles. A fervent follower of [generic goddess of luck], he believes that only through her grace can he continue to fight.
Shtick: Secondary defender, secondary healer, secondary damage dealer, buffer (Class - Crusader)

Nellethiniar "Nancy", a young elf who's often found in a tight catsuit lined with mithral (reflavored chain shirt). A consumate "ninja", she often spies on enemies, being stealthy enough to get into places and fast enough to get out.
Shtick: Primary damage dealer, scout. (Class - Swordsage)

Gork, an orcish mercenary who loves nothing more than a good fight. He loves to try out new exotic weapons of all kinds, but always comes back to his spiked chain which he calls "Misha" and sometimes personifies her as a bloodthirsty queen.
Shtick: Zone controller, keeps enemies in place, minor buffs. (Class - Warblade)

Mellon, a half-elf is a consumate talker who enjoys to woo women and insinuate his greatness. Has a bit of a superiority complex, and talks himself up, though often enough he hides behind the others and shouts at them encouragingly from behind cover.
Shtick: Primary party buffer, keeps people alive. (Class - Grimoire Marshal)

Kindan, a dark drow often hides behind a cloak and stays in the back. Dark and meloncholy, he rarely speaks in more than growls and grunts. Having escaped from the Underdark after his house was destroyed, he fell in with the party and has travelled with them for a time. Recently he lost his hat of disguise, but has been with the others long enough for them to accept him despite his race. He's not very good at finding traps, but is strong enough to take the brunt of the blows. At a young age he was poisoned by a drider, and since then has had the ability to poison others.
Shtick: Ranged damage dealer, trapspringer, oftimes a defender if enemies get too close to Mellon. (Class - Toxinblade)

Zack is a shifter whose heritage gives him a straighter aim than any of his comrades. With his longbow at his side and the rest of the party standing between him and his enemies. He knows where to place his shots, and often goes with Nancy when scouting. He has yet to reveal to her his adoration for her sleek form, and often finds himself too shy to speak to her.
Shtick: Primary debuffer, secondary damage dealer, trapfinder. (Class - Sharpshooter)

3-person party:

Kindan, as above, but instead of hanging back he now moves forward into the frey. With his trusty longsword and shield he doesn't hit enemies for much, but forces them to instead attack him or be wracked in pain as the poison he injects into them takes its toll.
Shtick: Primary defender.

Zack - as above.
Shtick: Ranged (secondary) damage dealer, primary debuffer.

Nancy - as above.
Shtick: Primary damage dealer.

Outline an adventure:

The party must enter the castle of the evil king Myfil who has captured the crown prince of the country they serve, and free him while the king if occupied with a party held in honor of winning the war.
They come to the castle, show their invitation to the guard who lets them in after Nancy uses her feminine wiles much to Zack's embarassment. (20 minutes)

Within the walls of the castle, they are shown to the party where they mingle for a time and force themselves to speak with the evil king without raising his attention or awareness of their plan. Each takes some time to speak with him and some of the other courtiers. Might spend some time pumping a few for information on where the secret dungeon is located, or searching for it themselves. (40 minutes or so)

Once they enter the dungeon, they quickly head deeper into the catacombs, fighting off a number of the king's guards (30-40 minutes) and finding their way past a puzzle (20 minutes). Finally they find the warden who they can either talk their way past. However, they're not likely to do so, ending up in another fight (30-40 minutes).

Finally they reach the prince and inform him of the situation. He tells them that he's been poisoned, but one of the servants has fallen for him and will bring him the cure with a little coaxing (10 minutes). Zack is sent to call the servant and convince her to come with Kindan coming with him as a guard. While this is happening, Nancy stays with the prince, speaking to him while the others are gone. (15 minutes)

The others join back with Nancy, leading the girl--but some of the king's guards have been alerted and sent after them! Another fight ensues (30-40 minutes). They make their way out of the castle--but the king has been alerted! They escape the castle (10 minutes) before making their way outside, but are confronted by the king's right hand man, the Earl of Bount who challenges them! Alongside the prince they fight, defeating the Earl (40-60 minutes due to having to run an NPC) before escaping scott free.

Campaign:

After rescuing the prince, they return to the kingdom they serve. The war that's been waged against the evil king has changed with the recaptured prince who inspires his people to fight harder than ever, and Myfil's forces are driven back. After the war is over the characters are hailed as heroes, and spend some much-needed rest while the court wizard tries to discover what the purpose of a goblet that Myfil claimed could destroy the world is.

A season or two pass before the heroes are called once more. They learn that it is truly a world-destroying artifact, and that in less than a year an evil force will be called to the goblet and the only way to stop it is by retrieving the seven stones of Edleloth that were thought to be lost for all time--yet the goblet resonates with them, allowing the wizard to send the heroes close to them.

Thus start their adventures as the wizard sends them from one plane to another. They meet heroic figures fighting an eternal war in one planes and beings of ineffable evil in the abyss, fighting against monsters, horrors, and abominations all the way as they journey towards the respective stones, often in contact with the wizard through a sending gem he gave them (comic relief). At times they get side-tracked helping certain villages or fighting great terrors that would subjugate a whole race, but in the end they retrieve all the stones.

Their journey at an end, Kindan becomes a legend, and all know his fame and glory. He disappears for a time, yet every age there's a tale of him reappearing in resplendance and glory to destroy a mighty evil that would once more threaten the world.

Zack finally professes his love for Nancy who tells him she loved him all along; she becomes the greatest spy of all time, leaving him for years yet always coming back to him. He, on the other hand, has garnered the attention of the gods, and one day has his own portfolio and followers. Their tale is a bittersweet one, he waiting for her and having his own duties, while she flits forever amongst societies, never being held down yet always returning to him.

Base System: Grimoire d20, see design goals. Fights should be tactical in nature rather than logistical, characters are easy to challenge but hard to kill, characters can bounce back from near-death, everyone should stay towards the middle of the RNG, etc etc etc.

For example, if the party had had a wizard, he could have teleported to the McGuffins and ignored the entire adventure. This is bad and unwanted.

Note: Games should, on the whole, stick within these boundaries while going from levels 1-20. Advancement should not be very transformative, and mostly be vertical/horizontal gains in power along the same path, but not the ability to break the game in two or say, "lol, no" to the DM's story.

Math: Math has been done and works.



How's that?

Okay, so you've got characters going to the abyss and fighting abyssal spawn.

The classical balrog from Lord of the rings has wings, flies and breaths fire. It's what people think of when you say 'big evil thing from hell'

How is a party of Nancy, Gork and the shouty dude ever actually going to ever actually do anything about that guy.

Couple of different things;
A. Add lack of flying
B. Have it must come to ground level to fight
C. The DM gave characters items that allow them to fly (probably moderate under the system) knowing that they'd face a flying foe
D. Use new rules that force enemies to fall to the ground using ranged attacks (can work even on ranged touch attacks)

Shouty dude can give archer extra attacks while giving everyone temp HP in case the demon-guy tries to do anything from range. Everyone who's not bringing it down can ready attacks in case it falls down into range or ready move actions to dodge out of the way of anything it does.

I'm not really seeing how having a wizard (with the dreaded teleport) would have changed the adventure and overall campaign you outlined. In the first case it looks to me like an adventure that could easily happen at level 2 or 3, and I cannot see it happening at or after level 9 when teleport actually comes online. As far as the collection of McGuffins out in the planes goes, well you're in the planes which can be nigh infinite (or actually infinite) so regular teleport isn't going to help. At level 13 when greater teleport comes online you still have to have some description of where you're going or the places where these stones are are huge warded sites specifically because the guardians don't want people popping in to say hi and take their stuff.

I'll be honest, if it's a game where the players don't have powers that give them fairly extensive narrative capability then I'm not interested in playing. That said I can manage to make myself believe that others are. But even with the flowsheet up I still don't know what kind of feedback you're actually looking for.

I picked the 3 melee focused characters for a reason - do they all have ranged attacks as well?

As I've said, it's fine that you're not interested in playing. However, many people get great enjoyment from the sort of games that I've described. And despite our design goals differing, I hope we can see that each of our views is still right for us, and neither is objectively bad, and can constructively critique and help each other to get the system to do what we want

As for feedback, whatever comes to mind. If it's perfect, then I can move on to the next thing until the whole system has been through the grinder and does what I'd like it to do. If anyone wants to use it they're welcome to, and I'd like to hear about any experiences and how people have felt it played and how they think it could be improved. If not, then at most I can enjoy playing with it in my group.

In my tabletop group, before I joined the DM was thinking of quitting. The CR system was all over the place, there was no good way to design encounters, and everything sucked hard as far as mechanics go. He tells me that Grimoire is basically a godsend since he can run whatever he likes within the constrains of the system, which makes it a lot easier for him to DM, and still keeps it fun for the players.

@cthulu: Ranged touch attacks with a bow will still hit (using the new Ground special attack), since the enemies at the level when they're facing something like that will have a touch AC that's around 10 less than their regular AC. Thus, at the very least, the swordsage (who's dex-based) will almost certainly hit, potentially with multiple attacks or even more if she's twf-ing slings. And since all weapons can be made magical to fit on the RNG at a moment's notice, they'll still be able to hit the demon.

I have no idea what the fuck the ground special attack is, nor do I care, we're talking CONCEPTS here

So lets go back to your six concepts

Guy 1: Tough, Healer, Deals Damage, Buffs

Guy 2: Stealth, DPS

Guy 3: Melee range AoE lock down.

Guy 4: Buffs

Guy 5: Ranged DPS, Debuffer, Tough

Guy 6: Ranged Debuffs, Ranged DPS, Stealthy, Trap Finder

Okay, from this we can see you have MASSIVE problems with class differentiation.

* Parties of Guys 1-4 straight up lose to horse archers. Is this intentional?

* Why do guy 5 and 6 both exist? Both are ranged DPS that lay down debuff effects (Assuming that 'pinning shot' is much the same as using 'paralyzing posion' on some guy that isn't standing next you). Being tough isn't an ability when you use a ranged weapon that means most of D&D will attack something else, and by else we mean closer.

* Guy 4 seems amazingly bad. Everyone else has like a handful of things they can do whereas he just buffs while hiding beyond a rock. Frank's Marshall class is actually quite tough and can hit things with his sword as well.. I suggest you add this to the character.

* If you do this, guy 1 is totally redundant and a waste of print space.

* Guy 2 is just a clone of guy 6 except that guy 2 uses swords instead of a bow. This MIGHT warrant a second character concept, but needs some definition.

Finally, you need to tell me what these guys look like at the start and the end of their progression. Currently it seems like you want them to be exactly the same except with bigger numbers, but still re-use D&D monsters. This does not work.

What level are the horse archers? Are the characters level 1? Sure, they'll die. If they're any higher, then they have the damage to A. take down the horses using bows in one round, or B. ignore the pitiful attack rolls and damage and laugh as they waltz away without looking back.

#5 is actually a defender-type who can be done as a warlock-type... except he isn't. There's no debuff there, just that enemies take damage if they don't damage him after he's used his abilities on them. The class is just flexible enough to play it like that.

#6 is a true debuffer, making called shots and aiming at foes to fuel his abilities.

#4 is actually amazingly good, without being worth more to bigger parties or less to smaller parties. As long as there's at least one other guy around, he's amazing. And he should be--that's what he specced in. That's not to say he can't fight on his own if you give him the right stats (and he's very VAD), so he can play either way. I simply fleshed that one out as a straight buffer.

This makes guy #1 not-redundant. Plus they do different things that don't/rarely overlap.

Guy #2 is a swordsage (less debuffs, more damage, melee, higher AC, no prep needed, gets all maneuvers back with an action). Guy #6 is a sharphooster (completely different play paradigm, aim at people for a longer time to be more powerful, focus more on debuffs, be best when OTHERS are flanking your target, and so on.

If you want what they look like at the start and end of their progressions, I could just link you to the classes, though I wanted to save those for spotlights :-3

I actually don't see how this is "tactical" at all. In the design specs at the beginning you stress that characters get to make choices and stuff, but apparently none of the PCs actually have any ability to manipulate the environment except by bypassing traps. The characters are literally teleported from battlefield to battlefield by an NPC like they were characters in Diablo II.

Why, and for that matter, how is this a Role Playing Game? The players do not appear to have any agency at all, and abilities that provide the players with agency are specifically frowned upon as "ruining" the game.

-Username17

It's tactical because even small shifts on the RNG can make a big difference. Flanking and position matters a lot, as does action denial and any terrain that's present. If you go from hitting 50% of the time to 60% of the time--one might say that's a very small shift, only 10%. But when you look at the relative change, it's a 20%, which means an average 20% increase in damage which can be incredibly meaningful over two or more attacks, especially for multiple characters.

As for why it's an RPG... for the same reason that virtually every RPG is an RPG. Even the humble magical tea party is an RPG. The fact that you can destroy worlds by flooding them with shadows, create black holes, teleport halfway across the world, scry-and-die enemies, ruin encounters with a single action, or drop an enemy in the abyss does not make an RPG. An RPG is about stories, and the choices a character makes. I think you're arguing that because a character has no world-changing abilities they don't make any real "choices", but this is far from true--it simply makes their choice be on a far smaller scale, but not one that's any less meaningful. It's their choice to follow this or that NPC, to investigate what they want, to do what they want within the world, and to go wherever their feet might take them. Lots of stories involve folk with no magical powers making meaningful choices, one example being the Song of Ice and Fire series. Just because they can't teleport across the world doesn't make the choices of the characters in that series any less meaningful, or any less interesting.

Perhaps I've been giving bad examples of a railroaded game--but a good game involves choices that are meaningful. And those can be done without world-changing abilities.

Your examples give us:

• Characters whose only abilities are combat or trap related.
• Characters whose abilities are apparently quite limited even in the context of combat. Of the six characters listed, only two of them specify that they can even engage in ranged combat.
• An adventure path where there are no player generated paths, and no choices for any of the PCs at apparently any point.
• An adventure which is 100% solved by NPC intervention where the only contribution the PCs have to it is to fight the monsters that show up to try to stop the NPCs from solving all the problems.

So serious question: why are the PCs even there? Why not just play a tactical wargame where the players moved around soldiers whose backstory was that they were being sent in by the DM-penis-extension wizard?

-Username17

I suppose if you put anything in the worst of lights, it can sound bad. In that case, there is no reason and you shouldn't play this game because you wouldn't enjoy it ^_^

That said, I and a number of people enjoy playing under these rules. Under a different light, it's a much more enjoyable game than the mary sue-filled wizard level where casters say, "No, you", where encounters are decided for the most part by logistics than actual in-battle decisions, and by the actions on the very first round of combat that debilitate enemies to the point where the encounter is a cakewalk.

As someone who enjoys classes out of Weeaboo Book of Fightan Magik, I find these kinds of games and combats boring and unplayable at high levels--or even at lower levels, especially when color spray/glitterdust/etc are used. Of course, YMMV--but again, that's not a bad thing. You've got your design philosophy, and despite the fact that it differs strongly from mine, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes me a little sad that you can't see things from my point of view, but I understand that the paradigm presented here, the same one which inundates the grimoire system, contradicts the one you believe is the best/most fun. And that's okay.

I don't have a problem with people wanting to play at a lower power level where individual sword cuts matter and shit. That's not my concern. My concern is that your sample adventure requires plane shift to solve or even interact with and none of your player characters can provide it or have any meaningful expectation of acquiring it save by having the DM come down with a literal Deus Ex Machina to give it to them.

If the PCs need Plane Shift then the PCs need to have Planeshift. That's how Chekhov's Gun works.

-Username17

In the end, it'll rest on the DM to provide them a way should he want to run a planar campaign. They might be portals, along with the ability to find them, an item that allows characters to plane shift, a friendly NPC, or a subtle knife which lets them cut through the doors between planes. Any of these can be used--but the primary point is that the base players won't have these tools starting out so that they'll be able to just planeshift away from the whole campaign or derail a story.

I hope that kinda makes sense? *headtilt*

If the players are plane shifting away from the story, your story kinda sucks.

Could be; but replace that with any other way to derail the plot. That might be scrying and teleporting to the McGuffin, going ethereal and bypassing the infiltration of the dungeon, using Commune to discover the identity of the killer, or any other number of ways to ignore plot points. That was just one example, but there are a ton others.

Ghostwheel wrote: I hope that kinda makes sense? *headtilt*

Not really, no.

You intend to not give the players the tools they need because you are afraid the players will use those tools to break the story. So instead, you intend that you (the DM) will use all the tools the players need on their behalf.

If you don't trust the players to use the tools they need to complete the adventure to complete the adventure, why are you playing with them?

-Username17

Because many of the tools can make the story meaningless, and I don't think that DMs should have to use super-special-awesome precautions that make the players' abilities meaningless to hold together a story. If a player gets something awesome, they should be able to use it. One should not be required as a DM to create a place that can't be teleported to if players have the ability to teleport, should not disable the ability of players to find out who the killer is via Commune or Contact Other Plane if they get it, or render any of their other hard-earned abilities meaningless just to keep a story intact.

And that's often what it comes down to when players gain such abilities. Why investigate for an object when the wizard can just cast Locate Object? Because it's warded against locating? At that point you just said "screw you, you can't have that ability" to the player and it becomes meaningless, sometimes leading to frustration on both sides of the table. I prefer to skip that completely by simply keeping those tools on the DM's side so he can give them to players as they need them, and so that then they can use them freely, rather than giving them the chance to do so and then snatching it away from them.

Edit: Actually, let me expand on this. I find that this is often one of the most common response of DMs who encounter wizard-level abilities--the only way often to deal with them is to give enemies immunity to the ability, making the ability meaningless and giving the player the middle finger. Does a player use illusions, glitterdust, or the like to make an encounter meaningless? Suddenly almost every foe is blind. Does mirror image or displacement make casters impossible to hit? Why, suddenly there are dispels all over the place and anti-magic fields abound. Basically, to every spell there's a counter, even if it's, "You find an anti-magic field within this whole dungeon," and I've seen it happen to frustrated DMs time and again in a number of games I've been in. This is one of the biggest things I want to stop, by not giving PCs abilities that absolutely frustrate the DM in the first place, and make them feel as though the characters are never in any danger and don't feel challenged at all.

Of course, another counter is to give enemies similar abilities--but then it all comes down to who goes first, and one of the PCs is likely to die if they fail that save against the beholder's disintegration effect or if the entire party happens to roll low against the mind flayer's mind blast. And that's not much fun either--at least for me, though again, YMMV. Thus, both sides lose the ability to end encounters in one round, and instead gain the ability to meaningfully damage the other side with chances changing according to circumstances and in-battle decisions.

Because many of the tools can make the story meaningless

Then you need a better story.

If you insist on running stories where the players need to dimension hop, you need to let the players have the ability to do that. If you refuse to allow the players to have the ability to dimension hop, you need to tell stories that do not require dimensional transport.

Full fucking stop. Do not pass go. Do not make shitty excuses. If you are telling stories that require the players to have access to certain tools, they need to have those tools. If you want to tell stories that revolve around specific tools not being available, they also need to not be required.

No one is saying that you need to allow D&D characters to hack computers. We're saying that if you want to tell stories where the players need computers hacked, you have to let the players hack computers. This is probably the most basic identity of cooperative storytelling. Any requirement you make of the players of an ability that they do not have is by very definition unfair. And a shitty thing to do.

-Username17

Which is why the DM is going to give the players tools as they need them. If the players don't get planehopping tools, they're obviously not going to go on a planar adventure. If players need the tools, then they'll get them, or else the adventure obviously won't go anywhere--I think that's obvious. If the players want to, they can talk to their DM who can always insert something in to allow for that. It's very easy to talk and give something, but it's frustrating and hard on both sides of the screen for players to have an ability and for DMs to tell players that they can't use it.

After all, why journey to the temple of the flame which holds the most sacred fire of Dislun which is a direct copy of the most primal of flames when you can get it simply by planeshifting to the elemental plane of fire and scooping some of that up?