Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 4:08 am
This looks good. I get that it'll be ages before it's in a playable state, but so far it looks solid, and if it does get completed, I'll probably want to try running it at some point.
But there are ponies. They look like this:nockermensch wrote:I misread the thread title as Fortresses and Friends and then got disappointed by the absence of ponies.
Honestly, I'd assumed most people here who are kicking around a fantasy heartbreaker are doing the same thing. The one I've been jotting down brainstorming notes is pulling from various threads over the last four years or so from here. The one I attempted eight years ago did the same thing, then.Kaelik wrote: But honestly, everything Mistborn says is something he learned from the hundreds of threads we already discussed game design here, so it shouldn't be surprising that it has a fair amount of overlap. But yes, it has Tiers, like we discussed as being something that should happen in every fighter thread, and Black Forest, it has four stats, because we've bitched about how Con sucks and the mental stats are dumb several times over for more than a decade, and it has a damage system/condition track that borrows a lot from CAN and SAME. Because of course it does, because we've been talking about game design for over a decade on this forum, and sure as fuck some of it was going to end up in here.
I suppose you could always read the thread... Or not, whatever.Orion wrote:--Why perpetuate this 3-18 charade? Why not just let abilities run from +4 to -4?
1) all the conditions end on a KO. To the extent that Panicked is a KO, blinded is too for enemies who rely on sight (usually more prevalent than ones not immune to fear).Orion wrote:--What is the point of HP boxes if there's an "injury" condition track? Why not either make every attack do conditions and only conditions (with some conditions being KO's), or every attack do both "stress" and conditions, or have every condition contribute toward a "KO Threshold" while it's in effect?
Survival Tier is about going out and struggling to get the money to be able to keep living in your Fortress (or going it without if you want to, I guess).Orion wrote:--"Survival Tier" is a weird name for a tier that appears to assume that you have access to a fortress to shelter in and that there's a half a tier worth of people who suck worse than you.
I'm going to go out on a limb, and say that if you think Slaads, Devils, Demons, and Inevitables are stupidest monsters in 3e, then Fortresses and Fiends isn't for you.Orion wrote:with the weirdest and stupidest monsters from 3rd edition
Where the fuck are you getting this from? No really. Where in the thing that says PC levels are 3-18 did you decide that levels 8-18 didn't exist. Now, right away, the part where you think lower level Fiends don't exist is weird on a number of levels, because they do, but, the game clearly has levels 3-18 listed as the playspace.Orion wrote:at levels way too low to even interact with them?
...
The primary design will create level 3-7 character
So basically, you were going to complain about the setting no matter what was in it? I mean, I guess that's good to know, but I'm not sure how that helps your argument. You seem to simultaneously not understand the setting, and at the same time hate everything it could possibly ever be (which is everything, because you don't understand it) and that really puts your criticism in a weird as fuck place.Orion wrote:--So the setting is Points of Light, except possibly also Points of Darkness, because the Fortresses may or may not produce vitally important resources, fuck it, who knows? You can exchange stuff for other stuff at fortresses except for the ones that kill you on sight or exist only to take your stuff, which is most of them.
1) If you can read at all, you would know that your primary stat probably won't be adding to attack at all.Orion wrote:--Your primary stat will add to the "attack" and "damage" rolls that are actually your "do stuff to enemies" rolls. You will max it out, because obviously. You can choose to have one primary stat, or, if you hate yourself, to have 2 primary stats instead.
Wholly shit, what year are we in? Ignoring for the moment that you have not the faintest clue what any prestige class abilities do, are we seriously in a universe where you are going to get mad that throwing a dart at a board and deciding that the elementalist turns into a vampire doesn't create equally as powerful a character as picking a vampire ninja? Yes, some monsters will be slightly better for some classes than others. Of course, frankly, when you are talking about 5-10 out of 50-75 or so prestige classes, that's really not a big deal to me. Vampire Ninja will be balanced against other ninja options, but will have abilities that would even help a warrior, and they will progress casting, so yeah, they are probably not going to be taken by Wizards looking for their SFV or Dragon Sorcerers, but if they are, it's not the end of the fucking world.Orion wrote:--The mandatory prestige classes will be locked to specific base classes, except they're not. The transforming monsters are special prestige classes that will presumably be stapled on any base class for a mix of stupid good and just plain stupid results. Other prestige classes will sometimes be open to more one class also, making them either secretly several entirely separate classes with the same name, or stupid as per above.
Again, I can only question why you don't read the thread. Obviously the monsters are going to be rewritten, since hey, when you look at them, last I checked they all have 6 stats. I specifically said they have to be rewritten. But if someones going to ask for a list of the names of things that PCs are going to be fighting at certain levels like Grek, then of fucking course I'm going to refer him to the names of existing things, because the names will probably be the same.Orion wrote:--You're re-writing all the spells, but importing all the D&D monsters defined by their lists of spell-like abilities.
Actually, that's not it. Since races don't effect stats, level for attack does nothing to change racial determinism at all.MGuy wrote:In one of the race threads( don't remember the name) Lago claimed he was against racial determinism and at some point the idea that level should eventually render attributes useless was introduced. That's probably where the attributes into level idea came from.
I am certainly doing significant rewrites of the object system. One thing I'm considering is having hardness scale with thickness (capped of course), in addition to HP per thickness. But yes, I see what you mean about having different materials take different kinds of damage, a brief outline of common materials interactions could be helpful, I'd have to take a closer look to see what differences I can see to be worth classifying. But yeah, I think there is a fair amount of improvement to be made in object classification and interaction.Sigil wrote:I have another question based on my own musings on fantasy heartbreakers. Since you're rewriting the system from scratch, how do you feel about the rules in 3e/3.5 for objects (hardness, etc)? They become largely meaningless at higher levels, but I've always found them to be lacking enough information, to just be somewhat contradictory to actual experience at low levels where it might be legit important if you're able to break a door/wall/McGuffin using physical strength or damage, and to just be weird (sonic damage ignores hardness for objects, regardless of material type, etc).
I feel like by expanding the base rules that cover interaction with objects to 1 to 2 pages, you could provide rules that covered broad classes of materials (wood, stone, flesh, bone/chitin, metal, crystal, etc) and provide a table that showed what types of damage were or were not effective against material. It might also be helpful to provide a set of modifiers to represent the objects construction (solid, layered, mesh, etc). You could provide a chart that listed common hardnesses and hit point value for different materials so that you could quickly figure out how an attack affects an item.
This is extremely nitpicky, but I felt it was worth asking since you're going to be rewriting all the systems.
That's not true, things can be both good and bad, most everything is, in that poison is a matter of dosage, though a few things are bad at any level. There's quite wide ranges of where most things are noticeably good and then later with more they become toxic, like water.PhoneLobster wrote:I don't understand why Kaelik thinks it is bad to have attributes effect attack bonus specifically and exclusively (for more than a little while, still WTF) but fine for them to effect damage output and "other stuff".
I mean, either variable attribute based bonuses are good... or they are bad. If they are both at once... we need a rational explanation for that or at the very least some idea of where and why the fuck he thinks he is drawing that line. Which we don't have.
I don't necessarily think hardness needs to scale with with thickness, but HP should scale more appreciably for walls than it does in stock d20. You can feasibly hew through a wall as long as you have a harder tool, but it does take a significant amount of time. A "reinforced masonry" wall that's a foot thick could believably have thousands of hp for a 5 foot segment, but as listed has a measly 180 hp and 8 hardness, meaning a level 1 guy with 18 strength and a greatclub would, on average, get through it in about 9 minutes (51.42 rounds).Kaelik wrote: I am certainly doing significant rewrites of the object system. One thing I'm considering is having hardness scale with thickness (capped of course), in addition to HP per thickness. But yes, I see what you mean about having different materials take different kinds of damage, a brief outline of common materials interactions could be helpful, I'd have to take a closer look to see what differences I can see to be worth classifying. But yeah, I think there is a fair amount of improvement to be made in object classification and interaction.
I DID say they can be both... with a rational explanation as to the drawing of the line.tussock wrote:That's not true, things can be both good and bad,
I don't know, considering that he has done things like specifically declared an actual intention to deliberately gimp anyone who combines "Half Fiend" with "Caster", and considering he has a plan to implement racial/monster classes, which I remind everyone IS the worst idea in D&D, I think there ARE some foundational goals and methods that are worth attacking right now.MGuy wrote:I really don't see the reason to froth at the mouth over what's in this thread
I'm not that surprised by it. There was at least one fiend class in the Tomes (that I can recall) so it's not new. I'm not one for Monsters being Classes but it's not a concept that was deemed unacceptable in all cases.PhoneLobster wrote:I don't know, considering that he has done things like specifically declared an actual intention to deliberately gimp anyone who combines "Half Fiend" with "Caster", and considering he has a plan to implement racial/monster classes, which I remind everyone IS the worst idea in D&D, I think there ARE some foundational goals and methods that are worth attacking right now.MGuy wrote:I really don't see the reason to froth at the mouth over what's in this thread
No amount of finalized numbers fixes explicitly and deliberately sticking the middle finger up at half fiend wizards for no reason as a day one design goal.
Almost NO idea, however stupid has failed to have it's supporters on the den. Sometimes prominent ones in their worst moments of irrational contrariness. Monster classes however have failed to ever have any coherent defense put forward and have been arguably one of the biggest monumental failures of D&D, and specifically the biggest failure to learn from from the edition of D&D that Kaelik is working from as his inspiration. Generally when improving on a thing you do not simply repeat it's greatest failures or worse, as it looks like, double down on them.MGuy wrote:... it's not a concept that was deemed unacceptable in all cases.
Aside from mine? Who knows. But the point is this is supposed to be progress and that is right at the TOP of the fucking progress agenda. The player masses don't give a shit about your minor spell description tweaks, THEY want newer better options for the roles they can play.OgreBattle wrote:So what is a game that's done "PC's can play as monster and adventure alongside classed humanoids" adequately?
One or both of the 3E DMGs show a black and white picture of stone work with iron straps affixed to the outside.Sigil wrote: Edit: Of note, when I google "Reinforced Masonry" I mostly get images of brickwork with steel rods inserted vertically through the wall, they're pretty much all modern images, but I did assume that the the SRD was probably referring to something similar.