Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Prak]

Try this url. It's somewhat short, as I didn't even finish the first section, I don't think, but I may go back to it.

[virgil]

Are there any systems with something akin to the wanted stars in GTA?

[Tannhäuser]

Are there any systems with something akin to the wanted stars in GTA?

Not a roleplaying game, but I played Mercs: Recon recently, it's a cooperative miniatures board game, and it definitely does. You're mercenaries performing very aggressive corporate espionage, and as you start killing opposing forces, the building goes on alert and security starts showing up in the elevators and different events trigger. Eventually the tracker runs out, and you switch to a tracker that spawns other mercenaries, and if that gets full you automatically lose the game.

A system like that would be interesting in a Shadowrun type game.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Player wants to play a homebrew class he came up with in a future Pathfinder adventure path I'm running. Said class has promise, but clearly written by an amateur, with contradictory rules, things that are underpowered to the point of being useless when used as intended and completely broken with the slightest bit game mastery, potential house rules show that he really doesn't understand why spellcasters own your face, and so forth.

I politely offer some constructive criticism, he over reacts to it. Makes me think the Den method of discussion might have some merit because I might as well have told him to suck a barrel of cocks.

Not really a question, just had to bitch.

[OgreBattle]

Use the rules he wrote, and make a completely better character with it than he is capable of, bonus points if it's still conceptually what he was aiming for. Mounting him to assert your dominance in front of the rest of the players is optional.

[Longes]

Use the rules he wrote, and make a completely better character with it than he is capable of, bonus points if it's still conceptually what he was aiming for. Mounting him to assert your dominance in front of the rest of the players is optional.

You forgot to suggest to shit on his chest, since the social contract is out of the window already...

[Prak]

Mounting to publicly show dominance is never optional.

Use of 3' long silicone tentacles is, however, optional.

[TiaC]

Also acceptable is forcing him to kneel and kiss your d20.

[Prak]

Was all of Gygax's writing as shitty as the intro to Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, where it's not immediately obvious that the players are supposed to be a part of the assembled squad led by the Duke?

[deaddmwalking]

Anyone ever read or know anything about World's Largest Dungeon? Is it the same thing as Biggest Damn Dungeon or what the hell ever its called? I have access to a potentially free dead tree copy, but I'm wondering if the time investment of reading through it is worth it.

Game On,
fbmf

If you can get it for free, why not? Ultimately, it's not worth buying. I did and I think it marks me as an obsessive collector with more money than sense. There's also a 'world's largest city' which is similarly disappointing.

It's hard to make a mega-dungeon interesting, but this product doesn't even try. It's more interested in cramming 'everything' in that making it fun gets cut.

Rappan Atthuk is a mega-dungeon that also can get tedious, but if you're looking for giant dungeon crawls, that's not a bad choice.

Was all of Gygax's writing as shitty as the intro to Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, where it's not immediately obvious that the players are supposed to be a part of the assembled squad led by the Duke?

Are you asking specifically about his adventures? He wrote novels, too. Paizo published one or more. Samarkand Solution iirc. I read it and it was enjoyable. It featured a fairly unconventional protagonist and was engaging.

[Prak]

His adventure writing, I suppose. He was way too into the florid prose thing, and it took me a couple reads to realize that the set up for XtBP was that the adventurers were part of the people assembled by the Grand Duke.

[Koumei]

Question 1: having used witchcraft to get NWN running on Linux (sans PRC, sadly), I keep seeing the Curst. Not Cursed, Curst. Do these assholes appear in a Monster Manual somewhere? Is there any reason why, despite apparently being undead, they suffer critical hits and are not subject to Smite Evil?

Question 2: so some people like psionics, some even like the MP system they use. Fine, whatevs. What's needed to make the Psion function at Tome level? "It's basically a caster, leave it as is"? Auto-scale the powers so people aren't trying to be SO ECONOMICAL! by firing rays of 1d6 damage every turn? Something else?

[Longes]

Curst are undead, but they don't have undead template. They are basically chaotic neutral assholes who keep resurrecting because they've been cursed.

http://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/tem ... urst.shtml

[Blicero]

I think the Curst dudes appeared in that Monstrous Compendium book, for 3E at least.

[Kaelik]

Question 1: having used witchcraft to get NWN running on Linux (sans PRC, sadly), I keep seeing the Curst. Not Cursed, Curst. Do these assholes appear in a Monster Manual somewhere? Is there any reason why, despite apparently being undead, they suffer critical hits and are not subject to Smite Evil?

Question 2: so some people like psionics, some even like the MP system they use. Fine, whatevs. What's needed to make the Psion function at Tome level? "It's basically a caster, leave it as is"? Auto-scale the powers so people aren't trying to be SO ECONOMICAL! by firing rays of 1d6 damage every turn? Something else?

They can sort of "play at Tome level" already, because they are still level 9 casters, they just don't use lower level spells, and instead use fewer higher level spells (that suck more than Wizard ones though).

If you wanted to use the existing system, just say "fuck it, if you want to play a Psion so bad, you are a Psion!" If you don't want to use the system as is, you can do something like Mister Sinister's Tome Psion, a thing you said no one would make 8 years ago, and I linked you to at that time (I was rereading old threads, so sue me).

[Koumei]

Kaelik: Thanks. Is this an instance where I should eat a crow?

And thanks Longes, though they are in fact Undead by that template. It looks like the game just went "Fuck it, no they're not, they're cursed Humanoids". Given there are enough Undead in the game as-is, I am very much okay with them being crittable.

[maglag]

Question 1: having used witchcraft to get NWN running on Linux (sans PRC, sadly), I keep seeing the Curst. Not Cursed, Curst. Do these assholes appear in a Monster Manual somewhere? Is there any reason why, despite apparently being undead, they suffer critical hits and are not subject to Smite Evil?

Question 2: so some people like psionics, some even like the MP system they use. Fine, whatevs. What's needed to make the Psion function at Tome level? "It's basically a caster, leave it as is"? Auto-scale the powers so people aren't trying to be SO ECONOMICAL! by firing rays of 1d6 damage every turn? Something else?

They can sort of "play at Tome level" already, because they are still level 9 casters, they just don't use lower level spells, and instead use fewer higher level spells (that suck more than Wizard ones though).

Psions have some key advantages:
1-Psions don't give a single shit if they're paralyzed/grappled/silenced/deafened/entangled/etc, since using a power only demands you to be able to think, not speak/move like spells.
2-Psions are kings of action abuse. Even if your powers are generally a bit worst (and in some cases they're actually better, like Vigor), a psion can easily just throw several of them every round. The basic one is Schism, 4th level, you're throwing an extra power per turn, but then there's linked power and temporal acceleration and you'll soon be taking more actions on your own than the druid pet circus or the necromancer's army. Heck, add one of the many PP recharge tricks available and there's no limit to how many actions a psion can take, point.

[Kaelik]

Question 1: having used witchcraft to get NWN running on Linux (sans PRC, sadly), I keep seeing the Curst. Not Cursed, Curst. Do these assholes appear in a Monster Manual somewhere? Is there any reason why, despite apparently being undead, they suffer critical hits and are not subject to Smite Evil?

Question 2: so some people like psionics, some even like the MP system they use. Fine, whatevs. What's needed to make the Psion function at Tome level? "It's basically a caster, leave it as is"? Auto-scale the powers so people aren't trying to be SO ECONOMICAL! by firing rays of 1d6 damage every turn? Something else?

They can sort of "play at Tome level" already, because they are still level 9 casters, they just don't use lower level spells, and instead use fewer higher level spells (that suck more than Wizard ones though).

Psions have some key advantages:
1-Psions don't give a single shit if they're paralyzed/grappled/silenced/deafened/entangled/etc, since using a power only demands you to be able to think, not speak/move like spells.
2-Psions are kings of action abuse. Even if your powers are generally a bit worst (and in some cases they're actually better, like Vigor), a psion can easily just throw several of them every round. The basic one is Schism, 4th level, you're throwing an extra power per turn, but then there's linked power and temporal acceleration and you'll soon be taking more actions on your own than the druid pet circus or the necromancer's army. Heck, add one of the many PP recharge tricks available and there's no limit to how many actions a psion can take, point.

Casting as SLAs is nice.

Link Power isn't shit, but let's be serious here, aside from that, their other shit sucks, because they just blow way too many power points and often take actions to set up.

And as for power point recharge... Just no. Sorcerers can take planeshift and Planeshift to a timeless plane mid combat for infinite spells to, but that doesn't make it not bullshit, and it's just as bullshit when Psions do it.

That's basically like arguing that no one else can Planar Bind an Efferti and threaten to beat it up if it doesn't give them a Ring of Infinite Wishes, but that you can make one yourself because you are a DweomerKeeper.

It's JaronKDumb, where you think that a specific result is fine if you use a different equally legal method for getting it, but ban the other equally legal method that has the same result.

[RedstoneOrc]

I was wondering if there was any tome expansions to tried to bring back racial classes as an option? If so I ask for a link.

If not I'd like to nominate someone more talented than me get on that, for elves and dwarves.

[Kaelik]

I was wondering if there was any tome expansions to tried to bring back racial classes as an option? If so I ask for a link.

If not I'd like to nominate someone more talented than me get on that, for elves and dwarves.

Well, arguably the first tome, and certainly the (second, third? I can't remember, but Tome of Fiends) do. Because undead and demons are powerful races that you can take racial classes in for 20 levels.

On the other hand... elves are not a racial class that makes any sense. There is no elf, anywhere in the game, who is level 20 or even a level 10 character who doesn't have 20 or 10 class levels.

Elven racial class never made sense, but to the extent that it did at all, it was when no one else could be a fucking archer that casts spells. As long as Cleric exists, that doesn't make sense.

There are three different versions of Tome Dragons, because Dragons are a 1-20 race. Obviously mine is the best and you should use that, but there is a reason there are three different Tome Dragon attempts and zero Tome Elf attempts.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I was wondering if there was any tome expansions to tried to bring back racial classes as an option? If so I ask for a link.

If not I'd like to nominate someone more talented than me get on that, for elves and dwarves.

I've used the Tome Soulborn as a racial Elf class, I found it met a lot of player expectations for such a thing. But you really have to explain what you would want from such classes. The classic Elf racial class would just be an Eldritch Knight, but nowadays expectations could be for a wire-fu badass like movie Legolas or a telepathic tree-shaper like Redlance. Similarly, the classic Dwarf class is just a Fighter with the Dwarf racial abilities, but expectations for a Dwarf class could be all over the place: axe savant, magic miner, beardomancer, etc.

[Prak]

So, there's a kickstarter for a new Conan rpg. It uses a "2d20 system," where you roll two d20s, and are trying to roll as low as possible.

Is this as shitty a resolution mechanic as it sounds? There's a video of Conan being played on the linked page, and I guess the John Carter and Mutant Chronicles 3rd ed. use the same system.

[Blicero]

So, there's a kickstarter for a new Conan rpg. It uses a "2d20 system," where you roll two d20s, and are trying to roll as low as possible.

Is this as shitty a resolution mechanic as it sounds? There's a video of Conan being played on the linked page, and I guess the John Carter and Mutant Chronicles 3rd ed. use the same system.

This is what I found looking at the Infinity kickstarter page:

The 2d20 system is a dynamic, narrative system, designed to produce varied and interesting results from dramatic and action-packed situations. Characters roll two d20s, attempting to roll as low as possible on each one – the more dice that roll low, the more successes the character scores.

Tasks will require one or more successes to be successful, and any successes scored beyond that minimum become Momentum, which can be spent to achieve a variety of advantageous effects. However, this can come at a cost: characters who wish to succeed can push their luck, rolling extra d20s to boost their chances of success and the Momentum they generate. However, each extra d20 comes from the character’s resources – such as ammunition – or adds to a pool of Heat that represents all the things that can go wrong in a mission, which the GM can spend to complicate adventures and scenarios and make the characters’ lives interesting.

Based on those paragraphs, I am still not totally sure how the resolution mechanic works. But I do not see why "roll two d20s" is systemically flawed.

[Judging__Eagle]

Re: World Largest Dungeon; specifically the infinite Darkmantles that will:

[*]Cast Darkness (and if your MC is a moron, they will think it's "totally black, 50-100% miss chanzes"; not "a room with no lights on, 20% miss chance onlee"

[*]Try to grapple the lead/end party member

My group found that the best solution was to cast Grease on the PCs who were grappled; making them impossible to be successfully grappled, and strangled. Insisting that you use the "actual" rules for Darkness, not the imagination of the MC/Referee; also helps. The "ideal" solution that the players have found is to "win initiative" and "one-shot every Darkmantle" in the rooms where there is more than one Darkmantle waiting around like an Orc with a pie in a 10'x10' room.

Really; the Ogre in the 3 linked rooms was more of a danger to every group I've personally known that's tried to play WLD (It's actually killed a specific player's PC at least three separate attempts to play through this region; 2/3 of which were on a crit).

[angelfromanotherpin]

Generally speaking, 'roll low' systems tend to be mechanically inelegant for a variety of reasons. This looks like a dice pool system with a baseline very small pool and roll under instead of over TN, and 'low as possible' strongly suggests it's a variable-TN dicepool game which is also very questionable (unless the parameters are tightly controlled) because the values of an extra die or a TN modifier become emergent properties which is extremely hard to design around coherently. It really looks like it is at best aping the flaws of either CoC-style roll-under or 1e Vampire dicepools; and I am confident they could have managed both.

Also, gimmicky dice mechanics are highly suspect from the word go, because they have a distinct tendency to be gimmicky for their own sake and not because they produce the results anyone expects or wants. There are a some well-explored and very solid dice mechanics which work quite well for most anything anyone could reasonably want (Elennsar need not apply), and anyone pitching something besides those had better have a very compelling argument.