FrankTrollman wrote:Imagine a system where a Wizard could prepare a limited number of spells each day and learned more powerful spells later in their career. I know, crazy, right? In such a system, the 15th level Wizard is going to generally speaking prepare the spells they got more recently, and the spells they learned as a 3rd or 5th level character are not going to make the cut.
Are you retarded? If a 15th level Wizard filled his spell slots with Evocation spells for the first 7 spell levels and then, at 15th level, got a badass 8th level Divination spell then that Wizard is still very much an Evocation Wizard. He is a Wizard that would use Evocation all the time and be an "Evocation Guy" except for when using his biggest move.
Using 3E Wizards as a snarky example is insane because it is exactly against your argument. If Thor has dozens of daily abilities that do depend on him having a hammer and a couple better high level abilities that don't he will still care whether or not he has that hammer. You are still in the boat of choosing whether your latest abilities obviate your earlier choices or don't and D&D Wizards don't stop using their 3rd or 5th level spell choices when they suddenly get 8th level ones. Your example Thor modeled as a D&D Wizard who can only use his early powers if he has a hammer would always fucking use a hammer and never ever use a bow.
I didn't use the 3e Wizard. I presented a Wizard that is different from the 3e Wizard in an important way: he doesn't have a completely arbitrary requirement to prepare a number of lower level bullshit abilities. And because it lacks that requirement, we can presume that those lower level abilities are not normally prepared in lieu of level appropriate abilities.
Then I asked you a fucking question: Would that be "lame?"
For games which have a lot of Greyhawking and concept upgrading like D&D, I don't see how you could have a game which has weapon specialization and satisfying treasure drops.
In fact, we had this argument about 2-3 years ago on these boards. The gist of it is that single-weapon fappery (whether it's to a style or to a single specific piece of gear) completely destroys the coolness of discovery and acquisition. YMMV on whether this is an appropriate design goal of D&D, but you can either have that or the idea of being wedded to a specific subset of weapons. 3E and 4E D&D tried to have it both ways and the results were utterly laughable.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Are you proposing to make all ability sets cycle out? If your spell slots cycle out and so to do your feats and class features and such then that would work and, no, not be lame. I do still think you are then in an area of putting lots more time and work into solving that problem than it deserves. Its a plausible level up mechanic to say that when people level up from Agent Tier to Hero Tier they completely rewrite their character and what they were before doesn't matter but I dont know if that solution is better than the problem its solving.
DSMatticus wrote:Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I am filled with an unfathomable hatred.
Dean wrote:I do still think you are then in an area of putting lots more time and work into solving that problem than it deserves.
Having your powers completely cycle out with no takes-backsies is much easier to balance than having a clear stacking progression where wizards care about their 1st and 2nd and 3rd level spell slots. I can understand if someone wants to do it the latter way, but it's a lot more work than just setting things up so that people are incentivized to only use their highest-level crap.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Dean, do you need a laxative or are you being this dense intentionally? Here's the example:
Our theoretical Wizard alternative gets spell slots for six spells a day. Each of those six spell slots can hold any spell he knows. At first level, he knows Burning Hands and Magic Missile, making him very much an Evocations specialist. He doubles down on that plan at level 2 by taking Shocking Grasp and Dawnburst. But at level 3 he decides to go with Detect Thoughts and Scorching Ray as his spells learned.
Why does his spells prepared list most days look like Scorching Ray x4, Detect Thoughts x2? Hint: It's not because he is no longer able to cast Magic Missile, or because he's been rebuilt as a Evoker/Diviner hybrid.
Yeah, Thor has this thing where there's a guy from Asgard named Thor Odinson, who has an iconic hammer. But in a very real way the heroic identity (and much of the power) of Thor is bound to the hammer and whoever currently wields it is Thor - the Asgardian is merely the iconic wielder. I don't know of any RPG where the result of the fighter losing his artifact weapon is the player switching to playing whoever finds the weapon next because the real character is the weapon.
schpeelah wrote: I don't know of any RPG where the result of the fighter losing his artifact weapon is the player switching to playing whoever finds the weapon next because the real character is the weapon.
I can see "stranger with burning eyes" Tome class as a starting point for a sentient weapon class.
K wrote:
At SCA events, I've seen even the very best fighters routinely taken out by three very unskilled people coordinating attacks against them. It's actually such a fun-killer that there seems to be an unspoken honor code against it.
Hell, I once personally defeated an actual Olympic saber fencer in a 3-on-3 battle. (For the record, I don't have any depth perception and thus was a terrible saber fencer.)
That being said, I'll start trusting people's opinions about bows in particular when they've actually had arrows fired at them from 100 feet away. I've done this and found that dodging even a volley of arrows is easy enough easy to do it even accidentally at the ranges that RPGs like DnD would like you to think are effective. I mean, has no one wondered why sport archery is against either stationary or moving objects that are completely predictable?
As far as I'm concerned, Green Arrow and Legolas have magic powers that make people around them very stupid and to stand very still so that they can be shot with arrows.
...thus this means Demon's Souls is the most realistic sword n' bow fantasy game with getting clobbered by gang attacks and bows being terrible when your opponent is aware of you.
By the way, how did the best fighter fare against two inexperienced people trying to coordinate against him?
Last edited by OgreBattle on Wed Feb 04, 2015 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
OgreBattle wrote:
I can see "stranger with burning eyes" Tome class as a starting point for a sentient weapon class.
The thing is, Mjolnir is not sentient. Think about it this way: your level 12 Wizard got killed or retired or whatever, and your new character picked up his spellbook and vowed to carry on the legacy, instantly becoming a level 12 Wizard with the same spells (but possibly changing whatever else is in the build).
Krusk wrote:Comic book thor has been using an axe recently, not the hammer fwiw
Isn't that because they've given the hammer to 'Female Thor'?
Well yeah theres that one. Girl thor has the hammer and traditional thor has an axe. There is also the time travel storys they just wrapped up. With young thor and his axe. And old thor with a sword too.
