Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[Tae_Kwon_Dan]

Just curious as to what your thoughts on the 3.5 Archmage are?

With the reduction in Spell Power it looks like a lot of the cheese went away, and it still offers full caster progression as well as special abilities making it stack up well with Wizard Levels, but a lot of the abilities don't seem keen enough for me to take it for 5 full levels.

Thoughts?

[Username17]

You can still use their spell-like ability ability to negate the time component of spellcasting. For example - you can have an instantaneous major creation several times a day.

That means that you can in one action create 15 cubic feet of Lava in an admantite cage around some poor fool - no save, no SR.

The lava is completely real and does 20 dice of damage a round to everything it is in contact with - which in this case is the victim and the cage. It will melt through the cage in somewhere between 8 and 12 rounds - during which the victim will have taken somewhere between one hundred and sixty and two hundred and forty dice of fire damage.

Did I mention no save and no SR? And all you have to do is make a Craft Check DC 20? At that level you can't even fail that on a one!

Of course, this all assumes that you actually play with that one ability as written - which I don't think anyone really does. The rest of the abilities are pretty much craptastical. The class is still miles ahead of taking 5 levels of Wizard - but Spell Focus is a junk feat now and it still wants you to take it more than once.

You'd be better off with Loremaster - which is available at a lower level, gives better abilities, and only requires you to set fire to one feat (which it promptly gives back to you within 4 levels anyway).

-Username17

[Tae_Kwon_Dan]

That's kind of what I figured, the free Arcane Reach seems somewhat okay if you're going with a funky SA, Ray specialist, but even then it's not exactly the bee's knees.

I could say maybe taking it for two levels for one or two bits of High Arcana, but only in really specific instances and if I didn't already mind blowing feats on Spell Focus or even worse Skill Focus(Spellcraft).

[Cielingcat]

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=741296

This thread is hilarious. People are running around saying that D&D can exist with its pseudo-medieval world setting despite the presence of adventurers and monsters because, get this, there are other adventurers. And that there are random groups of powerful people who have nothing better to do than keep the status quo in which random Aristocrats, not them, are in charge.

[User3]

Frank and K's Ancient Greece analogy works even better when you view characters as working their way all the way up from heroes to demigods. "Mount Olympus" is just shorthand for "adventuring on the outer planes".

[Judging__Eagle]

i've said it once and I'll say it again.


Die hard roleplayers (at least those who wish to be defined as such), are the most fvcking unimaginative and narrowminded people possible.


If you present them with something broken, they ban it.

Instead of ensuring that it's now a key element in the power cosmology of the game universe (ex. level 10+ Rogues: use UMD to become almost any Dieties Cleric-(Paladin)-Expert champions who stock Candles of Invocation, Holy Avengers and really high skill checks).

Banning is easy; integrating unusual things into a meta-society is the real storytelling challenge.

To be bloody honest, most 'roleplayers' lack a single creative bone in their body. They may have some degree of 'acting'; but being an actor, doesn't mean that you can create shit.

Oh, here's a aside:

I know that some of the people here play in Frank's D&D gaming group; can any of them give me an idea as to how he roleplays?

I'm just doing some research here.

[Digestor]

I don't get why the dude craps his pants over the notion of powerful people being above the flux of common society's laws and rules...

...that's the case now, except instead of casting planar binding or invisibility people just use their "throw money at it until it works they way you want it to" skill. Those that fail are arrested and called drug lords and mobsters, those that succeed are called Mr. President and Your Highness.

[bitnine]

Honestly, how this sounds to me is:

"Hey, I just designed my game and my setting with a level cap of 5 in my mind. But I never admitted that to myself and I forgot to apply it when I ran my game. Something must be wrong!"

In any event, this is why I like using my own characters as examples in such discussions. I carry with me the conceit that I can probably come up with stuff off the top of my head that make most "roleplayer"'s characters seem shallow and juvenile. Not that that's so hard. Most such posters I've seen are a frigging joke - "I am good at roleplaying! I am roleplaying an expert now! I don't need high stats, you powergamers!"

Seriously. You can play a frenzied berserker who is also a gripping examination of the human condition. The idea that numbers on a sheet of paper, high or low, can stop you from roleplaying is utter trash. Actually, there's a thread right here where I probably state things as clearly as I ever have.

And this is from someone who likes getting into character, portraying fluffy things, and having actual plot, themes, foreshadowing and subtexts within games.

[Cielingcat]

To be honest, I couldn't tell the so called "roleplayer's" characters apart if my life depended on it. Personality wise, anyway.

[Username17]

Actually... something is wrong with the level guidelines in the DMG. It's something we're working on along with the wealth assumptions for the Book of Gears.

Here's the short version:

• You have 4 encounters a day.
  
• Your party goes up a level every 13.3 encounters.
  .: Your party goes up a level twice every single week.

So if you actually played by those guidelines, you're damned right something is off! The characters can't accomplish anything of lasting value because people can go from 1st level to casting 9th level spells inside of two months.

By the advancement guidelines given to us in the DMG, the entire world is essentially destroyed and rebuilt every 60 days. There is no "society" because it takes less time to go up in level until a problem no longer matters than it does to hold town meetings and brainstorm issues.

-Username17

[shau]

I prefer this [counturl=47]one.[/counturl]

[Cielingcat]

I couldn't even read that thread. My eyes just glossed over after the first few replies...

[Hey_I_Can_Chan]

So if you actually played by those guidelines, you're damned right something is off! The characters can't accomplish anything of lasting value because people can go from 1st level to casting 9th level spells inside of two months.

When I was running my Realms game that was the conceit I used. The vast majority of people are shlubs. Those that aren't shlubs are adventurers. The vast majority of adventurers die within about 2-4 months after achiving vast power over time and space and then biting off more than they can chew.

The high-level adventurers are the status quo because they bit off more than they could chew and lived.

The paradigm seemed believable to both me and my players.

[RandomCasualty]

1173315661[/unixtime]]
Here's the short version:

• You have 4 encounters a day.
  
• Your party goes up a level every 13.3 encounters.
  .: Your party goes up a level twice every single week.

Well, the assumption here is that you're constantly adventuring. Weeks, months or even years can pass between each adventure. Also if you really got attacked every day four times, there wouldn't ever be any magic items, since wizards couldn't finish them due to interruptions.

[Essence]

But there's no need for adventuring wizards to make magic items. That's what the retirees are for.

[the_taken]

1173315661[/unixtime]]Here's the short version:

• You have 4 encounters a day.
  
• Your party goes up a level every 13.3 encounters.
  .: Your party goes up a level twice every single week.

Wow. Facilitating DBZ style training much?
"You have one year to become level nine thousand."

But how would you have characters level up?

Having 300 level apropriate encounters is alot of fighting. Imagine how many orcs you'd need to fight to get there. Genocide, man.

XP+/day? "How will you defeat the lich king?" "I'm going to hide in my basement 'till I can cast Planar Binding!"

DM specified XP awards. Arbitrarily at his discretion. You level up when the DM decides your characters have learned enough from their battles to achieve the next level of power.
At this point, why bother with XP at all? Magic Item creation?

[IbanezNinja]

I tried reading the second thread but I couldn't do it.

It filled me with sadness.

[MrWaeseL]

Those people in the second thread sure don't think D&D is a cooperative storytelling game.

[Cielingcat]

So what, exactly, are they saying? It sounds like a CO version of some of the "it's OK to ban things" debates, but I honestly can't bear to read the whole thing.

[Username17]

1173412398[/unixtime]]So what, exactly, are they saying? It sounds like a CO version of some of the "it's OK to ban things" debates, but I honestly can't bear to read the whole thing.

OK I'm going to be trying very hard to be objective here. But recall that this isn't new for Caelic - he actually makes this same argument about everything. He used it against the Wish and the Word, he used it for his legendary tirade about how you don't have the right to min/max - and soon. It's a consistent theme, and Caelic sticks to it like glue.

Here's the core conceit:

1. 
   
2. The DM is always right.
   
3. Fvck you.

Or to put it in slightly more favorable terms:

The DM controls the story in the same way that a painter paints a portrait or a writer composes a novel. The players interact with this essentially completework of fiction in the same way that they might play Baldur's Gate or Final Fantasy - by passing tests which allow them to see the next cut scene until the story is complete or failing those tests and having the game end.

---

From this ideal, Caelic is easily able to argue against the very idea of character optimization. After all, as a player you shouldn't have the opportunity to choose a path for a character unless the DM has already written that choice into the story as an available test.

And bizzarely, there are people who support him as an "artist" because he has the vision to... tell everyone what their characters are allowed to do, what they are allowed to know, and what they are allowed to be.

---

Honestly, I'm not sure what the point of Caelic's games are. I understand that if everyone agrees to play teenage mutants and another person wants to play a fairy princess that you have a problem of communication. But Caelic is saying that he seriously won't play unless everyone agrees to play in a unique campaign setting where elves aren't available as PCs and only he knows what prestige classes are even available and much of the material for the area exists only in his mind and won't be shared.

I wouldn't agree to that, and I don't know many people who would. So I'm not really sure where he finds people to tell that particular story with. Are there people who are so uncreative that they will play a cooperative storytelling game in which one of the ground rules is that they are allowed virtually no input? Apparently the answer is yes.

-Username17

[dbb]

1173413826[/unixtime]]
The DM controls the story in the same way that a painter paints a portrait or a writer composes a novel. The players interact with this essentially completework of fiction in the same way that they might play Baldur's Gate or Final Fantasy - by passing tests which allow them to see the next cut scene until the story is complete or failing those tests and having the game end.

I've played in a couple of games run by someone who pretty much meets this description (names will be withheld to protect the guilty). And some people actually do enjoy this style of play. It eventually drove me so crazy that I could no longer handle it, even though the alternative was no gaming at all, and now I would rather cut my own eyes out with a broken bottle than play in another game run by the person in question.

The hell of it is, he was actually a very good storyteller (small "s", White Wolf fans) -- I think he'd make a fine author of non-interactive fiction. But as for why someone would play in this kind of game, I can offer two reasons:

1> Disbelief.

It actually took me quite a long time to figure out that it wasn't just the particular setting for a game that happened to make it feel intensely circumscribed. Go ahead and make fun of my epic lack of perceptiveness, but I actually had trouble realizing that this is what the guy was doing, thanks to a mixture of lack of self-confidence, and the opinions of everybody else around.

2> Desperation.

It was that or no gaming at all. It took a while for "no gaming at all" to win.

Oh, and a third semi-reason: for some people this is actually the style of gaming they grew up with, and they just don't know any differently. I think of it as being the middle phase of gaming evolution (between the really old-school view, where an RPG was actually a game where the DM played against the players; and the "cooperative storytelling" view popular currently).

--d.

[Username17]

By the way, there is now officially a funnier thing on the internets than that:

Here.

Just when you think that the people on the Wizard's Boards make the funniest stuff, the people on wizards.com go for the win.

-Username17

[bitnine]

1173459590[/unixtime]]Just when you think that the people on the Wizard's Boards make the funniest stuff, the people on wizards.com go for the win.

I looked at the title, pictured what they would say, and quite honestly couldn't bring myself to read the article. After reading this gem, I would not be surprised if they actually advised defecating on a player anytime a DM has difficulty in designing encounters or runs into his own failings.

[Judging__Eagle]

1173459590[/unixtime]]By the way, there is now officially a funnier thing on the internets than that:

Here.

Just when you think that the people on the Wizard's Boards make the funniest stuff, the people on wizards.com go for the win.

-Username17

I mean, holy shit!

The Wizard has 22 AC! At level 12! Taht's unpossimable!

The barbarian can deal 25 points of damage a hit! OMG!

He also has an Ac of 28; none of of the CR 8-13 creatures who can hit AC 30-48 are of any use!

The Ranger, who has "extra attacks with a bow" feats built into his class has the audacity to have more than the normal 2 attacks a round at lvl 12!


-----

Yeah, bad DM; much worse advice.

Seriously, the artcile should talk about how those PCs are underpowered and playing nice with the DM and his horribly utilized NPCs or under CR monsters.

It should then go on to talk about what sort of challenges represent level 10+ play and the fact that you can't use level 1-5 tactics at levels 10-15.

Aka, beat the poster in the face; with a shark.



-----


[Edit]

Bitnine, yeah, that article only proves to me that while James Nelson-Brown knows what he's talking about; he fvcking copped out at the end, with this bit of text:

Your real goal probably should be to get rid of it. Some people may say this is a cop-out or lazy DMing, but you've already tried to play fair while the players have not. They are exploiting a rules loophole (the fact that the adamantine rule does not discriminate between types and sizes of items it chops through). Maybe it's time for you to fight dirty. Next time out, I'll show you how.

The problem with the bolded stuff is that Adamantine doesn't need to differentiate between sizes.

Damage dealt to an object creates inches worth of holes at a time. That is, every type of material has an HP listed per inch of thickness; so one could assume that if they deal a certain amount of damage, that they'll break a hole of a certain depth.

So, the size of an object only matters if you have limited time.

With unlimited time you can power attack with an adamantine weapon and bust through anything that you want to.

Also, a wizard could simply glue on a few dozen arcane-marked pieces of paper and bust a door that way.

[User3]

1173465390[/unixtime]]

1173459590[/unixtime]]By the way, there is now officially a funnier thing on the internets than that:

Here.

Just when you think that the people on the Wizard's Boards make the funniest stuff, the people on wizards.com go for the win.

-Username17

I mean, holy shit!

The Wizard has 22 AC! At level 12! Taht's unpossimable!

The barbarian can deal 25 points of damage a hit! OMG!

He also has an Ac of 28; none of of the CR 8-13 creatures who can hit AC 30-48 are of any use!

The Ranger, who has "extra attacks with a bow" feats built into his class has the audacity to have more than the normal 2 attacks a round at lvl 12!


-----

Yeah, bad DM; much worse advice.

Seriously, the artcile should talk about how those PCs are underpowered and playing nice with the DM and his horribly utilized NPCs or under CR monsters.

It should then go on to talk about what sort of challenges represent level 10+ play and the fact that you can't use level 1-5 tactics at levels 10-15.

Aka, beat the poster in the face; with a shark.

I couldn't help myself, that article was awful. http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=806173