The Gaming Den

koz wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:I'm going to request the D20 Immortals Handbook and its accompanying Bestiary. You know, the one where size categories go up to "bigger than the universe" and are legitimately monsters with 680d1000 Hit Dice.

I too would like to see this.

WTF
1 gebraucht ab EUR 2.493,21
While I'm shoked someone wants over 2K Euros, I'm confused about those 21 Cents...

Amazon automatic pricing algorithm. Some sellers have it set up for their inventory, automatically raises the price a few cents over the highest price of the book - except when two or more sellers are offering the book, it gets into a bidding war and prices spiral into the stratosphere.

maglag wrote:That review also seems to miss the most OP maneuver in the whole book: White Raven Tactics. A 3rd level boost (aka swift action at 5th level) that gives an extra turn to an ally at the cost of just -1 initiative. Yes, full turn and they get to do whatever they want.

And you can arguably use it in yourself over and over as long as you don't mind sinking yourself in minus infinite initiative. Which is hardly a problem when nobody else gonna's get another round.

On the other hand, it's low level enough that you can turn it into a cheap magic item for the same effect. Sigh. Even when fighters get nice things, they're given in a way that casters can easily snatch them and throw the fighter away.

If someone does the OSSR of this they need to point out that the Bo9S errata clarified that you don't count as your own ally for ANY maneuvers from this school, and thus can't use them on yourself, especially not White Raven Tactics.

Korwin wrote:

koz wrote:

hyzmarca wrote:I'm going to request the D20 Immortals Handbook and its accompanying Bestiary. You know, the one where size categories go up to "bigger than the universe" and are legitimately monsters with 680d1000 Hit Dice.

I too would like to see this.

WTF
1 gebraucht ab EUR 2.493,21
While I'm shoked someone wants over 2K Euros, I'm confused about those 21 Cents...

Currently: 1 gebraucht ab EUR 3.559,36

Definitely throwing in a vote for 3E's Manual of the Planes to get the OSSR treatment.

Longes wrote:

Korwin wrote:

koz wrote:
I too would like to see this.

WTF
1 gebraucht ab EUR 2.493,21
While I'm shoked someone wants over 2K Euros, I'm confused about those 21 Cents...

Currently: 1 gebraucht ab EUR 3.559,36

1 gebraucht ab EUR 9.138,14

How high can it go? Place your bets!

I don't know this has been done or requested but both Complete Warrior and "Sword and Fist" need the den's OSSR treatment. Neither had the power creep required to keep mundanes up to stuff verses their competition.

At the time Sword and Fist at least supplied things for Fightanmans to do and was a big improvement over core state of affairs, There's tons of gems in there. It wasn't enough power creep, but about the only thing that would have sufficed would be saying "set the +1 BAB classes and monks on fire and rewrite them with thematic bard equivalent casting".

I think Lago has done a rage semi-review of Complete Warrior, long before we were doing OSSRs. It was heavily featured as part of his top 10 most hated 3.5 books list.

I fondly remember the Ninja of the Crescent Moon. Would punch out the throat of flat-footed enemies to auto-silence them which is pretty much one of the most effective anti-caster mundane tricks I saw short of just one-hit kill, could replicate Invisibility, Gaseous Form and Ethereal Jaunt (and hypnotic pattern but nobody cared about that detail), blindsight, a bunch of extras, all with full Bab and full sneak attack progression (that only works against flat-footed dudes). Not too shabby. One could see it was the prototype for the basic ninja class in 3.5.

Didn't that book also have a bow of truestrike: one shot a round got true strike effect?

I was pretty cheap for the effect too.

maglag wrote:I fondly remember the Ninja of the Crescent Moon. Would punch out the throat of flat-footed enemies to auto-silence them which is pretty much one of the most effective anti-caster mundane tricks I saw short of just one-hit kill, could replicate Invisibility, Gaseous Form and Ethereal Jaunt (and hypnotic pattern but nobody cared about that detail), blindsight, a bunch of extras, all with full Bab and full sneak attack progression (that only works against flat-footed dudes). Not too shabby. One could see it was the prototype for the basic ninja class in 3.5.

Yeah always wanted to play one. Was there a way to enter that class at level 6 though? The requirements were...

Base Attack Bonus: +6
Skills: Move Silently 10 ranks , Hide 10 ranks
Feats: Improved Unarmed Strike , Deflect Arrows , Quick Draw
Other: Evasion class feature, must contact Crescent Moon leadership.

All the abilities come out super late though, I had the vague idea at the time that playing a wizard or cleric gave me all those powers a lot faster.

Level 7 was earliest due to 10 skill rank reqs. And 7 is really easy to do.

I'm playing in a 3e campaign starting tomorrow so I've been boning back up on all the goodness that was 3e. Decided to play an Assassin (we are starting level 5, so next level). I'm planning to go all 10 assassin but could see being NotCM instead at some point since I'm already using imp unarmed attack.

edit: I could be convinced into co-OSSRing Sword and Fist for team nostalgia as I mostly have fond memories of it. It was a warm and magical time where I wasn't yet full of rage at shitty prestige class requirements ruining the middle levels of the game, and naïvely considered things unbalanced if they made a core class obsolete.

OgreBattle wrote: Yeah always wanted to play one. Was there a way to enter that class at level 6 though? The requirements were...

Base Attack Bonus: +6
Skills: Move Silently 10 ranks , Hide 10 ranks
Feats: Improved Unarmed Strike , Deflect Arrows , Quick Draw
Other: Evasion class feature, must contact Crescent Moon leadership.

All the abilities come out super late though, I had the vague idea at the time that playing a wizard or cleric gave me all those powers a lot faster.

As Erik noted, the ranks alone push it back to level 7.

The BAB requirement means that a straight monk won't qualify until level 8. So, the fastest way to get there is to take two levels of a class that gets you Evasion (Rogue works, but Monk gets you two of those feats and is obviously thematic), and then five levels of something with full BAB and Hide and Move Silently as class skills, like Ranger.

Now, I don't remember how cross classing skills works in 3.0. If it's like 3.5, once you have a skill as a class skill, your max ranks each level are calculated as if it's a class skill, but you have to pay double price per rank if it's cross classed at that current class level. So, you could take levels in something like Fighter instead of Ranger, but you have to pay extra to keep those Hide and Move Silently ranks up.

Also, you don't get dinged for your BAB a second time on a 3/4 class until level 5, so your split could also look something like Monk 3/Ranger 4 or Monk 4/Ranger 3.

Not an OSSR, exactly, but I'd like to see a series of reviews of notable (or infamous) magic systems. Beyond Vancian, obvs.

I'd do it myself but I only have limited cognitive power, and right now it's all going towards keeping Prak from starting a religion.

Fantasy Flight's Rogue Trader RPG

Not an OSSR, exactly, but I'd like to see a series of reviews of notable (or infamous) magic systems. Beyond Vancian, obvs.

Riddle of Steel had something that was pretty much "roll a pool to alter reality, grow X older" that was meant to be stupidly imbalanced, only glanced at it though.

I wasn't thinking strictly RPG stuff, either. There are some fantasy books that have magic systems worth a discussion. The Ethshar series and the Thomas Covenant books were ones I had in mind, and neither have had RPGs yet.

A lot of books have magic systems that work fine in fiction but are completely unacceptable for games. Take The Long Price: A few times a generation, one of their mages attempts a spell, with a likely result of horrible death, and a possible result of a passive-aggressively suicidal slave with fiat-level global-scale superpowers. The novels that setup produces are pretty good, but that would be a nightmare at the table. I think the best-case scenario would be everyone playing a mage who has already succeeded in summoning their god-slave, but the power involved is so vast the only people who could oppose them would be each other, and their conflicts would be like VTM Antediluvian pissing matches. The books have compelling conflicts about love triangles, and the limits of coercion, and the suicidal manipulations of the god-slaves, but none of those really make for an adventure game.

Ethshar's warlockry is another good example: the more you use your warlockry, the more powerful it becomes, and the less time before your character is removed from the game in an event not meaningfully distinct from death. So your character has a power schedule of 'yes' and an expiration date. But expiration dates are a terrible balancing factor, because when the character expires, it's not like the player doesn't get a new character.

Additionally, the magic systems of a game are required to be stable over a certain minimum time and space continuum, while in a novel series they very much aren't and in fact the rediscovery of X magical capability is often a major reason why the narrative is occurring at all. Wheel of Time is a good example, where discoveries unearthed throughout the novels totally destabilize the world but the implications don't really matter within the timeframe of the novels because everything that happens post-Last Battle is irrelevant.

OgreBattle wrote:Fantasy Flight's Rogue Trader RPG

Seconded.

Josh_Kablack wrote:How do we not have an OSSR for WW's Street Fighter game yet?

I know I mentioned before that someone should review it, but I might take a shot next time I feel like getting my drink on. After all, I covered Ninjas & Superspies (TM), so I can continue the martial arts theme.

Bonus points: SFRPG is less bad than N&S (as far as the basic combat system goes). And also less bad than most White Wolf games (SHOTS FIRED).

I don't have the DMG (which presumably covers the standard ST book shit, and Ler Dritt, the fighting style of Lord VegaM. Bison), but I have the core book and the player's guide (which adds some extra rules for becoming a master or running an arena, rules for managers and crew, animal hybrids, elemental-infused people, cyborgs, and a few extra fighting styles). So that's most of the stuff.

I'm feeling a bit froggy and I could do another Dragonmech sourcebook review. Do people want the Steam Warriors book (which is a ton of gear and Steamborg-related PrCs) or do they want Second Age of Walkers (which is Core Rulebook, part 2).

Mirage

@Maxus
don't care, cool with both of these.

Maxus wrote:I'm feeling a bit froggy and I could do another Dragonmech sourcebook review. Do people want the Steam Warriors book (which is a ton of gear and Steamborg-related PrCs) or do they want Second Age of Walkers (which is Core Rulebook, part 2).

Steam Warriors

momothefiddler wrote:

Maxus wrote:I'm feeling a bit froggy and I could do another Dragonmech sourcebook review. Do people want the Steam Warriors book (which is a ton of gear and Steamborg-related PrCs) or do they want Second Age of Walkers (which is Core Rulebook, part 2).

Steam Warriors

Works for me. I'll get started on it.