Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[OgreBattle]

40k meta was warped by marines being the standard so ap4 5 6 was usually worthless. In a discussion on here about making a better not40k skirmish game one of the goals was not to have people win or lose based on list selection but actual gameplay. So for example you could have better armor penetration at short range so a point blank lasgun could do well vs power armor but be ineffective at standard range. WW2 tank warfare was like that.

Rules for enfilade Fire was also mentioned, so good positioning can increase firepower

[deaddmwalking]

In general, rules that negate an opponent's ability are NOT GOOD.

For example, if your opponent has Fire Resistance 30 and your fire spells are just SO FIREY that they ignore Fire Resistance completely, that's generally bad.

It also promotes an 'arms race' where the opponent gets the initial ability, then the ability that it ISN'T negated and so on ad nauseam.

[K]

When I switched from kill XP to a "one level per three sessions", I found that players were less bloodthirsty.

Still greedy as fuck though, since escaped enemies meant less loot.

[Prak]

Is there a genre term for games like Snake Oil, Cards Against Humanity, etc? Like Word Association Game, or something?

[erik]

Is there a genre term for games like Snake Oil, Cards Against Humanity, etc? Like Word Association Game, or something?

Wikipedia describes apples to apples as a “card-matching/answer-judging party game”. Sounds on the mark.

[Prak]

Gotcha. That stretches enough for the thing I'm working on even though it's more voting than judging. Thanks.

[OgreBattle]

Was there ever a feat based magic system for D&D3e? Like treating magic proficiency the way you treat weapon proficiency to some degree.

Hicks Mage TOME spheres comes to mind as functionally similar.

[Eikre]

Yeah, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed/Evolved was mostly predicated on delivering a reconsidered Vancian system and spell proficiency was one of the inclusions.

I can't offer any raving review about the product but it achieve the fantasy heartbreaker gold-standard of delivering essentially a full alternate third edition player's manual.

[Aryxbez]

Forgive my ignorance, I recall reading awhile back that Pun-Pun wasn't actually Legal by RAW, but I can't quite fine the posts/threads that prove this in detail. Could anyone provide me with where this was said by Frank or whomever it was?

[Username17]

Forgive my ignorance, I recall reading awhile back that Pun-Pun wasn't actually Legal by RAW, but I can't quite fine the posts/threads that prove this in detail. Could anyone provide me with where this was said by Frank or whomever it was?

The infinite strength increases part is raw. It's slow and shitty compared to Artificer Skill Dance where you use your total UMD bonus to calculate your bonus to your UMD bonus and ratchet your UMD to arbitrarily high numbers and use those to give yourself unlimited charges on your bonus providing staff and also give yourself arbitrarily high bonuses to all other skills and stats and saves and shit. But it is raw. You fuck with the way size changing is defined and then repeatedly set your strength to your own strength plus a constant and in a few months you have a strength score of several hundred and break everything in the game that can be broken by having a strength score of several hundred. Or you go into hibernation for a few years and come back with a strength score of a couple thousand. Whatevers.

The "all the abilities" part is just straight wishful thinking. The Sarrukh's ability granting ability comes with a list of abilities it can grant and they are all bullshit. Like "you get a small bonus to escape artist checks because you are slimy" type bullshit. There is absolutely no reason to believe it can give you magic immunity or epic spellcasting or alter reality or fucking any of the other bullshit that Pun-Pun enthusiasts rant about.

There are actual things in the game that have guidelines that explicitly include doing incredibly broken things. The Spell-Like Ability of Wishing for expensive magic items thing, for example. That gives a very large cost and then provides a way to get the effect without having to pay the cost. That's a real loophole. Or the Epic Spellcasting thing where you can easily layer enough "limitations" on your game breaking permanent buff spell that you only ever have to cast once that it's free but none of those limitations really matter because you cast it during downtime. That's a real loophole too.

But the Pun-Pun "all the abilities" trick isn't a real loophole. That fucking ability granting ability has half a page of examples to show you how it works and the Pun-Pun tirade requires us to ignore all of that.

It is exactly on the level of "The rules say I can make new feats, so I took a feat that gives me +1000 to all my stats and the ability to cast every spell in the game." I mean sure, if you can convince your DM that such a feat is in any way equal to weapon focus, then be my guest. But if min/maxing is to have any standards at all, such bullshit should be met with eyerolls.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

edit: Ninja'd

Forgive my ignorance, I recall reading awhile back that Pun-Pun wasn't actually Legal by RAW, but I can't quite fine the posts/threads that prove this in detail. Could anyone provide me with where this was said by Frank or whomever it was?

Pun Pun is effectively two different schemes. The scheme where he slowly generates uncapped physical stat boosts is RAW. The scheme where he slowly acquires a wide range of busted abilities is not.

It's just wankery about how Serpent Kingdoms allows the gaining of "an ability", and then gives examples like "slippery skin" for a who-gives-a-fuck bonus to Escape Artist checks. But since it doesn't have extremely specific limits, dumbasses claim that they could take abilities like at-will Gate or some shit. Because apparently they could totally convince their DMs at home that that is equivalent to having slippery skin. It's just stupid. It is actually more retarded than the people who want use activated True Strike on their swords for 1800 gp that grants +20 to-hit on every attack. It would be like asking for a use activated belt of Miracle for 1800 gp on the grounds that the item creation costs are open ended and the DM can raise or lower the costs of an item.

• Manipulate Form does not tell you what the parameters of the Spell-Like Abilities it can grant are.
• Therefore, any (Sp) it grants requires a house rule to allow the parameters of that ability.
• House rules are made by the DM, not the player.
• So getting any Spell-Like Ability at all requires you to convince the DM that the (Sp) ability in question is one that Manipulate Form should be able to grant.
• The sample abilities that Manipulate Form references are all zero-level bullshit, so good fucking luck convincing any actual DM to house-rule in a Spell-Like Ability parameter stronger than the starting (Sp)s of Gnomes.

[Hiram McDaniels]

Are there any RPGs out there where phase based combat actually works well?

I mean games where your round is broken into a declaration phase/move phase/execution phase/etc.?

[OgreBattle]

Are there any RPGs out there where phase based combat actually works well?

I mean games where your round is broken into a declaration phase/move phase/execution phase/etc.?

After Sundown ver.1 does that

I haven't played it but Shinobigami has initiative and 'positioning' combined in the 'velocity system':

Here's a look at how range and initiative works in Shinobigami, called the "Velocity System" because it's a game about super fast ninjas.


Here it is in English: http://www.shinobigami.com/files/eng_battlefield.pdf

When combat happens you choose what velocity you want to fight at. Actions are done from highest to lowest. Attack range is also measured by velocity spaces, so if you're at velocity 5 and have a range 1 attack you can hit a velocity 4 or 6 guy.

The drawback to higher velocities is it increases your chance to fumble. Actions in Shinobigami are done with a 2d6, you fumble if you roll under the listed velocity number. Fumbling makes you easier to hit by other players.

Some actions can increase or decrease a character's velocity, so if you're at v7 somebody can knock you 'out of bounds' into v7 (thematically I think it means you've left the battlefield), if you're at v1 you can get knocked to v0. I'm not exactly sure what happens when you're out of bounds.

Combat ends when every player has taken one action so you don't worry about back and forth repositioning. Oh yeah you can do multiple actions in that one round, the slower you are the more you can do.

I figure this would also work well as a chase minigame in other games, the goal being to reach v7 (you escape, catch up) or knock antagonists to v0 (they're caught, unable to pursue) Or a 3D combat game like Gundam, space/aircraft battles.

More complexity could be added with another row, but too much and you defeat the purpose of the velocity track.

Each character only gets one action for the encounter though and is about emulating the chapter of a manga, episode of an anime etc. than "this is what I did in this six second segment"

[Prak]

Do we have one single thread talking about how to do Mooks in, say, D&D? I've been replaying Darksiders, which was the main inspiration for my post-apocalyptic D&D setting, and it makes me want to incorporate that Darksiders/GoW style finisher thing, so I'm curious to look at previous discussions.

However, my first brainstorming basically says "when a creature has fewer hp than you have HD, you can take a (std, full, w/e) action to just autokill it and do a quick description of how."

[OgreBattle]

Do we have one single thread talking about how to do Mooks in, say, D&D?

The old 4e discussion threads mention it here and there.
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49704

You mean having mooks die easily without fiddly hp tracking right? I like how warhammer skirmish games do rolls to wound and removing w1 models, but that's not using a hp system.

As this is a time saving measure to plow through hordes the method shouldn't involve extra rolls or more book keeping. Some ideas that come to mind for when you're X levels above your foes are...

-If your attack leaves the target with X0 hp left, they die instead.

-If your attack bloodies (they drop below 1/2 HP) them, they die. If they are already bloodied and you hit them they die.

-Do maximized damage vs foes, so whirling greataxes and fireballs plow through gobbos

----

If we want to go past D&Disms then there's the old Combat Asomething Number system: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49594

I like hitboxes more than hit points and figure that's the way forward for tabletop gaming as it's easy to tell when a dragon is as equally injured as a donkey and having a set number of hit boxes lets you do gradients of injury without recalculating for everyone's different hp total.

A lot of games do 10 hit boxes, but I figure you could go down to 5.

[Prak]

I guess I was sort of thinking about it in a way similar to CAN systems, except looking at hp compared to HD, and otherwise I was just thinking about it as a tack on for D&D. So basically, a 1st level character doesn't get to pull off finishers, but at 2nd level, they can pull off a finisher against anything down to 1 hp, and it's really only useful for the auto-hit and the flavorful takedown that can be a lot of fun.

But thinking about it, the number should probably be somewhat different, since I'm kind of looking at this as a finisher, rather than necessarily a mook rule (though I'd use it for both cases), and if the opponent has to have hp below your HD, it's mostly only good for the auto hit, since you don't get a damage advantage until you're past 10th level (ie, a 5th level character can take out a 5hp opponent with a normal attack just as easily as with a finisher, and so there's little incentive to use it).

So maybe a rule like "when an opponent has hp equal to or less than their per level max (ie, a d8 HD, 12 Con creature with 9hp is a legal target for a finisher)" would be better. But then that gets into an interesting situation where you have 1st level characters allowed to "finisher" level appropriate challenges in round 1.

I'm not looking to make a whole new ruleset here, I just want people to be able to pull off the "press O" finisher moves of God of War et al. in my D&D games.

[mlangsdorf]

If you don't want first level characters using finishers against level appropriate challenges, just say it's an ability that unlocks at level 2.

I think it would be fair to let to 1st level characters use finishers against very low tier enemies, though. I would think the game experience would be improved by letting the fighter auto-cleave a pair of kobolds each round with a suitably dramatic description.

[Thaluikhain]

The old Exile computer games had the assassination skill, taking points in that gave you a chance to deal extra damage to enemies of low level each time you damaged them with a melee weapon, though not sure of the exact maths.

Got me thinking, though, instead of having a finishing move that you use per se, you get your chance of a critical hit each time you roll, but instead of needing a natural 20 or whatever, it's based on the difference between your level and theirs? So, a lvl3 PC attacking a lvl3 enemy gets one on a 20, a 19-20 attacking a lvl2, and a 18-20 attacking a lvl1?

[Longes]

What games and campaigns are there that have PCs manage domains and stuff? Pathfinder's Kingmaker, Ars Magica, Houses of the Blooded, Game of Thrones. Anything else?

My friend is trying to make elder-level gameplay in Vampire the Masquerade and needs inspiration.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Pendragon (Book of the Estate)
GURPS (Low Tech Companion series)
Reign

[Blicero]

ACKS
An Echo, Resounding (I think)

[Mask_De_H]

When we talk about Masquerades, I'm always confused if it's a complete denial of the supernatural's existence, an omerta "no snitching" rule on your fellow supernaturals, or both. VtM seemed to flip-flop between the two and AS seems to push the former.

[Username17]

When we talk about Masquerades, I'm always confused if it's a complete denial of the supernatural's existence, an omerta "no snitching" rule on your fellow supernaturals, or both. VtM seemed to flip-flop between the two and AS seems to push the former.

Masquerades are difficult concepts and lots of authors don't seem to understand how they work. See: Mage: All of it, for an example of something where the core premises of the authors writing about the masquerade are absolute gibberish.

The core issue is that a super majority of people believe in the supernatural but secular society is still structured as if no one does. So the vast majority of people believe in angels, but asking for any public funding, military deployment, or legal action based on angels being actual things that exist makes you a crazy person that is roundly mocked.

So within a masquerade, every vampire has a Renfield. Every demon has a Faust. Telling any number of individuals that there are really ghosts and wizards is not a breach of the masquerade. Breaching the masquerade is doing anything that allows or invites supernatural creatures and events to be discussed in the public sphere.

You can even go on TV and demonstrate your powers, as long as it's on Ghosthuntets or Sick Sad World or some other entertainment show rather than the evening news.

[maglag]

The core issue is that a super majority of people believe in the supernatural but secular society is still structured as if no one does. So the vast majority of people believe in angels, but asking for any public funding, military deployment, or legal action based on angels being actual things that exist makes you a crazy person that is roundly mocked.

Do you solemnly swear that you are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god?

Also pretty sure there's a bunch of wars going on right now where one of the sides leaders claims god is on their side and that gets them fresh recruits and money instead of being taken to the closest asylum.

[Kaelik]

The core issue is that a super majority of people believe in the supernatural but secular society is still structured as if no one does. So the vast majority of people believe in angels, but asking for any public funding, military deployment, or legal action based on angels being actual things that exist makes you a crazy person that is roundly mocked.

Do you solemnly swear that you are telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god?

I mean.... that doesn't matter?

1) Literally no one trusts you more because you swear to god.
2) There are straight up no god versions of the same affirmation, and they function identically.

Religious people really hate to be told this, but when you swear or affirm it's literally just a legal invocation of perjury flavored with one word and like, maybe a book, but usually not even that, for your personal crazy beliefs.

Literally no part of the legal system requires anyone to believe in a god, or changes in any way if one or all participants don't believe. Judges absolutely are not any under delusions that swearing to god is any different than a pinky promise.