The Gaming Den

Note that a spear adds +2 damage on a crit.

Also, what about abort actions? They might help serve as a limiter, swinging things the other way.

Also, what about abort actions? They might help serve as a limiter, swinging things the other way.

What about them? All they effectively let you do is spend your move action to get hit about two thirds as often. Makes people who aren't archers feel like idiots, but what else is new?

By the way, what the fuck is up with Defense Rolls? This is literally all it says about the completely all important armor penalty to defense rolls:

If you wear restrictive armor or carry a great deal of weight, you may suffer an equipment penalty to your Defense.

And that penalty would be...?

This is why I can't give you REAL HARD MATH, because I don't have real inputs. Apparently wearing restrictive armor "may" give you a penalty to your defense rolls. But I have no idea what that penalty may or may not be. So I can't tell you what a chance to hit actually is.

Note that a spear adds +2 damage on a crit.

What? The author assured me that there were no critical hits, and that "relative degree" replaced all that. So much so that Rogues have been nerfed so hard that they simply don't exist as a class. A Barbarian's Rage is worth as much to hit at first level as a 3rd level Rogue's Sneak Attack, and it comes with a damage boost on top of that. I don't even know how I would find a critical bonus for spears.

The whole "relative degree" thing is so far out in space land that I don't really know what to say. People have huge numbers of hit points at first level and they do an ass tonne of damage at first level, but beyond that hit point progression basically does not exist and damage bonuses are totally incomprehensible. The author has some sort of formula by which damage bonuses are converted to other things that are not remotely the same size, or even the same size relative to other things. And that is why an average of 14 points of sneak attack damage is converted into +5 to-hit and +2 damage, while an extra 14 points of fire damage is converted to +0 to-hit and +5 damage. What. The. Fuck?

-Username17

The problem still comes down to mechanical analysis won't fix your problem which is that you're not willing to follow through on killing your players when they ignore your giant flashing "Don't fight this, it will kill you" signs.

There's no real difference in making a game where a d8+5 can one-shot PC's, so they usually face off against a d4+2, and a game where 8d6+20 can one-shot PC's, so they usually face off against a d8+5. You're just fucking with the numbers and pretending that will fix your problem with player assumptions and your own lack of enough huevos to follow through on threats.

The rules are bad because the combat maneuvers are actively worse than pure stabination, and the attack/damage system requires that you ignore or rewrite vast swaths of the monster manual. But your actual problem isn't something the game can fix.

Comments the Proposed Rule Changes:
E6 is fairly reasonable. You should stick with it. Grim-N-Gritty, not so much.

The 'Grim-N-Gritty' rules are so poorly written that they actively make it more difficult to persue the objectives which you have stated to be your goal than if you hadn't seen them and had, instead, just made up houserules on the spot. If you want, I could try my hand at writing up some rules which actually do the things that the 'Grim-N-Gritty' rules attempt to do, but I can't promise that my attempt will be 100% better in all aspects. Just most of them.

Here's a basic outline of what I'd try to do.

Every player plays an organization, not a single individual character. Your average PC group at level one would consist of a Watch agent, a Kulthas retainer, A Keecha retainer and a reformed raider-turned mercenary. At level 6, your party is a Watch sub-commander, a Kulthas noble, a Keecha noble and the head of a small mercenary company along with a stable of about three dozen level one guys who follow them and are personally subject to the main character's orders.

Each player assigns one of his NPCs to be his main character's lieutenant and to be his backup. When his character dies, or has to spend two weeks on bed rest after getting his face ripped off only to come back with a hellacious scar, the lieutenant takes over and becomes that player's main character for the intern. At higher levels, he gets some other assorted hangers on, like a doctor or a Silver Hilt witch-finder and they come along with the party to do stuff or hang back that the base or whatever.

As the DM, you are to not pull punches. If the dice say "someone dies" then someone dies. This could be one of the extras, or this could be a main character. And, if the character dies, well, that's tragic but the player isn't out of the game yet and there's still time for his comrades-in-arms to have his revenge.

Character generation would be fairly standardized and streamlined. Each player has the same basic template of a character (That being a PHB fighter that gets 1 feat per level) who is then modified by organizational templates to give them piles of additional skills, excellent equipment, tracking abilities, rage or psionic powers or whatever. And all of a given player's characters all have the same build, for ease of use reasons.

Combat-wise, I need more imput here. What is it that you want to have a usual combat look like? I'm probably going to end up keeping in armour-as-soak and the increased average damage, but I will probably not be keeping RE or any of the wounding rules or the specific mechanics of the combat maneuvers.

Do you want to see people mostly hanging back and shooting things with crossbows? Using their organization-specific combat styles and equipment? Charging into meele? Using dirty fighting tactics?

---

Comments the Setting Fluff:

The fact that joining the Institution and then succesfully escaping, which is apparently rare, is the only way to get psionic powers and not be a mindslave at the same time means that it is pretty unreasonable to expect there to be any more than one player playing a psion in the same game. This makes me sad. You should make psionic talent reasonably common and simply have the Institute claim the best and the brightest psions to be their mindslaves. Then have anyone who doesn't make the cut get trained by a noble house or something.

The Seneschal is basically a direct rip from The Patrician from Discworld. Which really isn't the place to get source material for grimdark games. Also, I'm not really seeing the point of having an all-powerful NPC that runs the whole city and pawns everyone who tries to get in his way. Why not have the city run off a council of the noble houses?

The fact that the noble houses all have their own reputation where one is "fightery" and one is "sneaky" and one is "rich" or whatever is also a bit of an overdone trope, really. You could really do something a tad more creative here and, at the same time give the single huge city that the game apparently revolves around a bit more fleshing out by dividing the city into a set of administrative districts (call them Wards or Warrens or Quarters or something like that) and have each of the noble houses given their own district to oversee:

-The Blood Games are a pretty amusing idea and you should run with it. Put Kulthas in charge of the district with the huge stadium that they do that in and have the Kulthas go around enslaving people and buying unwanted children to be raised as pit slaves. It could be awesome.
-Keecha should seriously be the group that gets the vast, vast majority of the non-Institute quality psionicists as recomended above. They should also own the land around the Institute and generally work closely with them to do stuff.
-Gildas oversees the merchantile district, the banks, markets and all of the places where money is spend. They should have piles and piles of mercenaries, as suggested, but also the best access to the Academy where people are trained to become tradesmen.
-Denthor is problematic. There is a Thieves Guild in the setting already as well as a bunch of street gangs. Denthor needs to do somethin g else. I recomend these people be the rangers and the people who administer the farmlands outside the city but not out as far as the Wastes.
-Carork should be unified with the Silver Hilt. Silver Hilt followers should totally be created by the Carorks as part of a deal with their evil eldrich overlords that allows them to continue doing arcane magic without being stomped on. Because they totally would, you cannot keep that sort of thing a secret. Also, drop the whole Bioshock ripoff thing that the Silver Hilt has going on with the little girls and the giant metal guardians.

The Watch is perfectly fine as is, as is the Resistance, with the possible exception of Geist, who I personally think has a retarded name.

The Clergy of the Old Gods does not add much to the setting, really. The Divine power source should seriously just be dropped as a possible part of the story. It's ok, really.

The Steamwrights are not written up. When they are, they probably should be folded into some noble house or another.

The Runners are a terrible idea, as is Spinster, Nelsat, Zu'uk and any other level 7+ character in an E6 setting. If the Runners cannot exist as an organization without people with Jesus-like powers turning up to save their asses and maintain the status quo of their existance, they shouldn't exist as such. Fold them into the Rangers/Denthor or something.

Thieve's Guild is fine as is. Gangs should be more loyal or not be a valid PC background if you use the suggestions outlined in the mechanics part of this post. Raiders are also fine. Also, your NPCs for the Gangs are both too high level. Seriously, nobody needs to be above level 6 and even that's supposed to be Epic with a capital Epic and a free scoop of ice cream. Gang leaders are not Epic enough.

Rangers should be folded into Denthor as mentioned before, just to give Denthor something to do. Also, your magical omniscient-about-plots-in-the-Wastes elf named Ulthas who has twice the class levels of any possible PC character did not pass by unnoticed.

Your misc. cults of evil are all nifty, except as noted otherwise.

The head monk of the Monks of Hedonism does not need to be an individual that can defeat the entire party in a fight with ease. Really. Nor does the Painbearer or Fang. In fact, nobody does unless that is one of their defining character traits.

Fang deserves special notice: In an E6 setting, a level 11 full caster should seriously be able to rip the setting in half. The fact that he hates all cities and that cities still exist is a contradiction. He'd either destroy all cities, or get anihilated by the Exalted or whoever is really in charge of this setting. Also, you should specify that his followers are almost certainly not druids, since even a low level druid is crazy-overpowered in E6

The fact that the Reverend Mother of the Sisterhood of the Shield is a level 12 character in an E6 setting means that all male PCs and any male nobles should be dead. Seriously, she's level 12, she would, according to DnD rules be able to whoop an entire compound of guards. Also Jahla's my-pedophilic-rapist-made-my-vagina-venomous-to-all-men background is creepy and disgusting and not in a good way at all. I would strongly consider dropping that and pretending you never wrote it.

Campaign Seed: Abyssal Cleansing

The world of Shattered Haven is filled with unreasonable jerks. No matter which faction you work for, things are likely to suck. Fortunately, there are some areas hellish enough that relatively few people are there. You could try taking a posse of relatively non-jerk homies into the wasteland and play Mad Max as you slowly accumulate knowledge and wacky magical mutations.

In addition to the transition from crazy dogmatic jerks to crazy survivalist jerks (who might be more reasonable if you are useful to each other) there are a bunch of sealed fiends that want to bust out of confinement. It is faintly possible that after they get free and conquer the world, it will be a vaguely more pleasant place. And presently, the demons are in position of sufficient weakness that they might be willing to deal with mortals in good faith for as long as, once again, you are useful to each other. If nothing else, maybe demons will be happier living in a dystopia than mortals. Perhaps you could get promoted to an entry in the monster manual around CR 7+.

So go ahead and ditch the cities, then try freeing a demon lord. After all, can things really get all that much worse?

Ghostwheel wrote:I don't think so--first of all, we have martial adepts allowed, so that takes care of it partially, and then there are rogues and the like who are going to have half-decent bonuses on attack rolls (+5 at 3rd level when flanking) making Mobility and/or Advanced Called Shot especially yummy for them. Alternatively you could use a glaive and use called shots when not in reach or the like. There are ways to make them work--especially when you're 4 people against a single foe, and you all attempt to blind/stun that one foe, for example.

You'd have to be a retard to play a rogue. Two reasons

A) It doesn't actually give you any more defence, but wearing light armour drops your DR. So you die instantly in a fight. Add 4 to the ogre's DPR.. yeah, it's not pretty.

B) It doesn't actually give you any more attack, in your hypothetical level 3 situation a barbarian gets the same attack bonus for raging.. he doesn't even need a flank. If he DOES have a flank, he hits even harder.

C) As frank points out, playing a rogue in an E6 environment where they have taken sneak attack out the back and set it on fire just indicates that you are a moron.

D) A minotaur actually has like a 40-45% chance of killing you in one round.

Collating my thoughts, I'm, leaning towards dumping GnG entirely and rewriting something similar from scratch that's a lot more readable without some of the original author's retardedness. Perhaps just keep the HP, defense, and armor-as-DR, as well as bring in my revision of the rogue, monk, soulknife, and the like (they don't suck as much under E6).

Grek: Thank you very much for giving the fluff a read-through! Some of your ideas are really spot on, and I'll definitely be changing the material and incorporating them in. For others I'll probably be keeping things as-is, since they jive with me more, but the commentary is definitely appreciated! I'd sincerely like help with rewriting it, and perhaps revising my goals--perhaps it's "okay" for PCs to die once every 20 fights or so.

Also as far as the NPCs are concerned, I wrote up the organizations before deciding on E6, so I'll probably be dialing them back--or simply say that over 6 is just how many extra feats they have under E6.

And what, you didn't like the vagina dentata mutation?
It's a folk tale that appears in a number of cultures

Grek wrote:Also Jahla's my-pedophilic-rapist-made-my-vagina-venomous-to-all-men background is creepy and disgusting and not in a good way at all. I would strongly consider dropping that and pretending you never wrote it.

Haven't you heard? Rape Is The New Dead Parents.

Hadn't seen the trope, but in this case I think it's a good way to engender a hate in all things man-folk. Plus this isn't a deep character or fanfic, just a quick summary if the Sisters are going to be part of a campaign as one of the reasons that they're so fanatical against the male population

I'm glad to see that this thread is becoming productive.

Zinegata wrote:I'm glad to see that this thread is becoming productive.

I know right, he took the advice he was given at the beginning, of fucking lighting his rules on fire. Because they suck.

Progress is made.

Found the ignore button ^_^

Kaelik wrote: I know right, he took the advice he was given at the beginning, of fucking lighting his rules on fire. Because they suck.

Really, I think it is better to be amicable and cooperative with new people that want help with whatever random project they're writing. I mean, hell, I got Eleaneasor to act pretty reasonable just by going along with his roller coaster of crazy and steering it off into something more sane.

Edit: Not to say that Ghostwheel here is crazy. He just wants to do something ridiculously difficult in making DnD into a low-magic, low-power setting. I can respect that.

Grek wrote: Edit: Not to say that Ghostwheel here is crazy. He just wants to do something ridiculously difficult in making DnD into a low-magic, low-power setting. I can respect that.

It's a bit beyond that. He wants players to think they are going to lose their characters and behave timidly in response without actually losing their characters. This fails on several levels:

• If players do not actually lose characters they will not rationally believe that they are going to in the future either and behave accordingly.
• If players did think that they were going to lose characters on a regular basis, they would not in fact play timidly. When characters are thought of as temporary, they are treated as disposable, and players would become even more aggressive and fearless than ever.

Rational Expectations plus Nihilism causes the stated reasons for transforming it into a low-power game in the first place non sequitur.

-Username17

Kaelik wrote:

Zinegata wrote:I'm glad to see that this thread is becoming productive.

I know right, he took the advice he was given at the beginning, of fucking lighting his rules on fire. Because they suck.

Progress is made.

I'm actually referring to the fact that sane people in the Den have emerged and are trying to work with the guy.

Instead of being assholes who accuse him of fishing for praise.

Really Kaelik, you were a dick who stated outright lies about Ghostwheel. That makes you a lying shit regardless of the problems in Ghostwheel's system. That's all there is to it.

So why don't you help everyone for once by leaving the guy and the people helping him alone?

Zine, Zine, Zine.

You might notice that the game-related comments Kaelik made were right.

So stop trolling. Contribute something to the thread or don't. Like you said, it was becoming productive... throwing around shit is not going to help anybody.

For Valor wrote:Zine, Zine, Zine.

You might notice that the game-related comments Kaelik made were right.

He actually literally can't notice that. He is incapable of understanding the concept of "correct" and "incorrect."

Everything is always equally as valid to him, which is why he concern trolls about tone all the time.

For Valor wrote:Zine, Zine, Zine.

You might notice that the game-related comments Kaelik made were right.

So stop trolling. Contribute something to the thread or don't. Like you said, it was becoming productive... throwing around shit is not going to help anybody.

I did say they were right, actually. Several times. So why don't you tell Kaelik to shut up instead of attributing the trolling to me?

This...

Zinegata wrote:Really Kaelik, you were a dick who stated outright lies about Ghostwheel. That makes you a lying shit regardless of the problems in Ghostwheel's system. That's all there is to it.

... is not trolling?

I'm sorry, I believe there's a TINY bit of disparity in our opinions, Zine. I wasn't saying "YOU FUCKER YOU HATE KAELIK WTF" or "YOU NEVER AGREE WITH KAELIK WTF".

I was pointing out the fact that obvious troll is obvious and insinuated that I'd like to keep this thread functioning. Please just don't bicker. With Kaelik OR me.

I'm sorry, I believe there's a TINY bit of disparity in our opinions, Zine. I wasn't saying "YOU FUCKER YOU HATE KAELIK WTF" or "YOU NEVER AGREE WITH KAELIK WTF".

Hey!

You implied that I didn't notice that the game-related comments Kaelik made were right.

I did. In fact I concede several times that Kaelik was right. Once by name even.

I'm not looking to pick a fight, but at least give credit where credit's due .

I was pointing out the fact that obvious troll is obvious and insinuated that I'd like to keep this thread functioning. Please just don't bicker. With Kaelik OR me.

I don't intend to pick a fight. But really, the reason why this thread was shit earlier isn't because the OP was being obstinate.

It was because ubernoob was making comments without having read the whole system (he didn't even know the psions were the game's big bad), and that people were dogpiling on the OP. Kaelik in particular was particularly foul because he stated several times that the OP was just fishing for praise... when he demonstrably wasn't.

So when I say "I'm glad the thread is now productive", Kaelik knows damn well that he was part of the problem. And his reply was just him starting more trolling. Why do you think Ghostwheel put him on Ignore?

But yes, you're absolutely right. I'm not feeding any more trolls in this thread.

Reply to, or indeed reading the posts of Zinegata is a good way to derail threads. Do not do it.

-Username17

Post deleted as per request.

FrankTrollman wrote:He wants players to think they are going to lose their characters and behave timidly in response without actually losing their characters.

I've proposed a way to make it so that people can just suddenly die and that not ruin the game. Do you see any problems with the proposal?

Grek wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:He wants players to think they are going to lose their characters and behave timidly in response without actually losing their characters.

I've proposed a way to make it so that people can just suddenly die and that not ruin the game. Do you see any problems with the proposal?

The backup approach leads to Paranoia.

Which is fun, but doesn't actually do what you want. Because you have to cook up a bunch of characters they are fairly faceless and you are more incentivised to rambo.

Not really. The Paranoia situation occurs when you have replacemends and the replacement is exactly like your original character is. If you give the character a mandate to make their named followers distinct, and make them a level lower, than people will be generally unwilling to let their main character die, as they'll feel an actual loss and loose a level for a while.