SKR quotables

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 8:33 am

It seems like a simple fix to reduce the number of total boosts but make them recharge on a short rest instead of long rest/sleep.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 11:39 am

Foxwarrior wrote:The 15 minute workday problem might not actually be a big deal if the Boosts are so small that people don't even notice when they've run out.

Or if they're the type of things that players hoard until a boss battle comes along (like the "reroll a failed Will save" or "do X more points of damage" things suggested in the article).

brized · Post by **brized** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:46 pm

Foxwarrior wrote:The 15 minute workday problem might not actually be a big deal if the Boosts are so small that people don't even notice when they've run out.

If they're that small you might as well cut them from the game to save some character sheet real estate and player working memory requirements.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 5:26 am

The 15-minute day arises because you can fight room one, get full XP and treasure for it, go home, rest the night, come back, fight room two, get full XP and treasure for it, etc.

It's an artifact of bullshit static adventure design where there's simply zero time pressure on getting to the end of the dungeon level (or whatever) and the optimal strategy stops making any sense.

AD&D (1st) did not have that, because your XP came mostly from the treasure at the end of the level, surrounded by "easy" fights, and if you gave the guards enough time they'd just up and leave with it. Not to mention the dungeons lived and restocked their monsters, and had pseudo-mobile and infinite, low-XP, high-risk guards with the wandering monster tables so time pressure and fight avoidance was a natural part of the game.

Anything that gets rid of room-a-day dungeoneering has to come from the dungeon/reward side again. Player abilities that can't happen every round or every fight are interesting resource puzzles for players, the more powerful the better. Give them clear and strong rewards for holding those abilities for later, with poor rewards for that 15 minute stuff.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Mon Oct 06, 2014 7:29 am

tussock wrote:The 15-minute day arises because you can fight room one, get full XP and treasure for it, go home, rest the night, come back, fight room two, get full XP and treasure for it, etc. killer GMs and shounen anime weeabos have this idea that every single encounter should be a fight for your life that depletes most of your resources if you want to make it out (because drama), and this in turn conditions players to just Alpha-Strike everything and retire as soon as their survival chances drop below 80%.

Fixed that for you.

Okay, sorry, that was unfair from me, and your point still applies, it's just not the only reason for the 15-minutes workday.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Oct 06, 2014 11:39 am

tussock wrote: AD&D (1st) did not have that, because your XP came mostly from the treasure at the end of the level, surrounded by "easy" fights, and if you gave the guards enough time they'd just up and leave with it.

I don't know what to tell you. It was pretty bog-standard for a published 1E dungeon-delving module to have a room description like "this is a relatively safe room for the players to rest and recover spells in".

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Oct 06, 2014 1:16 pm

@hogarth. true. There's often one at the end of the module, after the boss fight and treasure are recovered. Longer ones put a room half way as well, after a mini-boss and their treasure.

But things like the Temple of Elemental Evil you just have to keep going back to town, despite the size, and restocking is pretty vicious (and pushes monster numbers over their original if the PCs "fail to press", with no increase in treasure).

@Dogbert. Chicken and egg. There's nothing to encourage players to press on, easy fights may as well be free XP, what else are DMs going to do but wind up the fight difficulty. Once they do, you can't push on anyway, and character development strives to survive the constant hazard (further devaluing the at-will characters with good staying power).

Not to mention how long the fight design can take in 3e, once you start toying with the options, classes and templates and modifiers stacked high, it's a bit sad when it took and hour to make and five minutes to die on round 1.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 4:54 am

Alright, for Five Moons, SKR posted what a 1st level character will look like: http://fivemoonsrpg.wordpress.com/2014/ ... ter-sheet/

Additionally, on the KS, there was posted a brief look into what some of the abilities will do (wanting each one have least 2 Boost Options):

Defending Shield (combat feat): When wearing a shield, increase your AC by +2.
Boost: Add your shield’s AC bonus (including the +2 bonus from this feat) to an adjacent ally’s AC until your next turn.
Boost: Add +5 to your AC against one attack; you can use this boost on an attack that just hit you (before damage is rolled), and if the attack roll wouldn’t hit your improved AC, the attack misses you instead.

Dodge Arrows (combat feat): Add +5 to your AC against projectile weapons and thrown weapons.
Boost: Add +5 to your AC against one projectile or thrown weapon attack; you can use this boost on an attack that just hit you (before damage is rolled), and if the attack roll wouldn’t hit your improved AC, the attack misses you instead.

Incredible Climbing: Add +5 to your Move rolls to climb.
Boost: Add an additional +5 to your Move roll of this type.
Boost: Double your climb speed this round.
Boost: Treat a failed check that would result in a fall as “make no progress.” Boost: You only need to use one hand to climb this round instead of two. Boost: Reroll a failed attempt to catch yourself while falling or someone else who is falling.
Boost: If you can pass the climb’s DC by taking 10, you can run up the wall a distance equal to half your speed without using your hands to climb. Boost: Use 10 feet of movement to pass 5 feet of an obstacle that is impossible for you to climb past (such as a horizontal gap or an overhang with a DC you cannot pass).

What are the issues of having "Piecemeal" armor, I was pretty sure some issue with them, but couldn't think much off-hand (fiddly can be bothersome, but default sets work).

Also, he intends to have "Social Combat" which seems to be similar to PhoneLobsters? His idea in a podcast, was basically for the negotiation to transform into a fight under a different name, sorta like how it was done in the movie Suckerpunch. It starts here at 50:11, but 51:45, looks like where he implicates how Fighters won't be as good, and may end being more like Glass Cannons (reflected in smaller HP for warrior example).

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Oct 08, 2014 7:03 pm

Piecemeal armor will always have a 'best' combination for light/heavy characters, so it's a lot of fiddly combinations that are possible but you end up with one desired result for a character concept. You'll also run into oddities like "does my centaur wear four leg armors?" "what armor slot do naga have". "the ettin has two heads but only one is wearing a helmet"

It seems like a strange direction to go in considering that 5 moons also consolidated skills into a much smaller list (it looks like 6 skills with 'background specializations' that broaden out) and removed CHA as a stat.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 2:47 am

FantasyCraft (which has already heavily invested in crunch) has a decent system for that: there are two armor tables, one for "light" and one "heavy", and they duplicate the materials. E.g. there's light ringmail and heavy ringmail, and they're basically different armors, but are thematically similar (each provides extra DR against slashing, IIRC). Then, there's a third table with two lines where you can also add light fittings or heavy fittings to each armor ("fittings" being extra bits like helmets and ankleboots) for a slight boost to DR and penalty to speed and AC (aka, slightly more armor).
That lets you quickly generate a robust set of options, while feeling like a very large set of choices. It's... quite good given that you're already using the FantasyCraft system.

Axebird · Post by **Axebird** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 4:49 am

It seems like he wants a more granular difference in armor quality, as you replace pieces gradually to improve your defenses. Of course, if entire suits of upgraded armor are easily acquired, that's totally pointless and just over-complicates things.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 8:12 am

That would make sense as a reasoning actually, I guess he might be doing that, though apparently he's said its moreso for Item Slots. Which Thankfully, he intends for items to have (interesting) abilities, as well as numbers attached to them. Though since I know he possibly intends for stat bumps to be attached to an item (3rd bottom of post)...that might make those "required" or must-haves. Even if they're not in the assumed math of the game, it means they'll make you superior than normal, but the bonuses will be so miniscule that it might not matter too much?

Axebird · Post by **Axebird** » Thu Oct 09, 2014 9:02 am

Yeah. So far, ability scores are pretty heavily reduced in value. Looking at the example character sheet, that fighter gets +6 to hit from just being a fighter and a measly +1 from ability scores (because obviously, they start out being tiny numbers). And he's planning on only having five ability score bumps come through leveling (at increments of 5).

If all of that holds true to the final product, your best ability score if you threw everything non gear-related you had into it would amount to, at the level cap, improving your bonus by approximately what a first level character starts with.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sat Oct 11, 2014 6:33 am

First off, does it matter I keep posting Five Moons crap here, or should it have its own thread? Alternatively, I can see this being necessary in the day the game goes into playtest, or comes out.

So currently he did another podcast, casual in nature it brought up notables, like this part. Also, he further talks about some stuff from the First Level PC that was posted. I was gravely disappointed to find that the Cold Weapon ability is actually really crummy, even if it's probably 1st level, still seems really crappy. Also, the "Peasant-Fantasy" fans, do they LIKE Low levels being Rocket-tag super deadly with super small pools of HP?

The Playtest materials supposed to be released in December, with apparently the playtest starts in January-February. Should I find it a mode of concern that he's leaving some things to the magical playtest? Such as justification of CON as a stat, Fighters having such low Social/Mental HP and/or Resource?

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:25 pm

So, here's some Rogue Powers, and a Chat Transcript Q&A on the game, followers of the blog thing pretty much didn't learn that much, I'll highlight them below.

[Rogue] Stunts

Other commitments ate into my design time this weekend, so I don't have the wizard prototype character sheet ready. To tide you over, here are a few stunts to look at, which are inspired by rogue and ninja abilities in Pathfinder. (Apologies in advance for how these are formatted, I have limited options in the kickstarter interface.)

Evasion: If an effect lets you try a Reflex resist roll to take less damage, and you pass the roll, divide the damage you’re supposed to take by 2. You can’t use this ability if you’re wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or if you are helpless.

Boost: Until your next turn, you can use evasion even if you’re wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or if you are helpless.
Boost: Until your next turn, you can use evasion even if you failed the Reflex resist roll to take less damage.
Boost: Choose one adjacent ally. Until your next turn, that ally can use your evasion ability. The ally can spend their boosts on evasion boosts.

Instant Stealth: Add +5 to your Sneak checks. This increases to +10 if you do not move from your square.

Boost: You turn invisible for 1 round per level (as if using the Invisibility spell).
Boost: Hide one adjacent ally using your Sneak check until your next turn. If the ally is ever more than 5 feet away, they no longer use your Sneak check.
Boost: Add +10 to your Sense checks to notice hidden and invisible creatures.
Boost: You can move at full speed without taking a penalty on your Sneak checks.

Light Steps: Add +5 to your Sneak checks when moving. Creatures cannot use tremorsense to pinpoint your location.

Boost: Ignore difficult terrain for the next 20 feet.
Boost: Walk up to 20 feet across water, oil, slippery surface, or any solid object incapable of supporting your weight (such as a string or slender vine) as if it were solid ground. Taking damage while moving this way ends the effect (you may spend another boost to continue this movement despite damage from that source).
Boost: Move up to 20 feet without activating location-based mechanical traps (such as pressure plates and trip wires).

Poisoner: You are trained in how to create and use poison, and you cannot accidentally poison yourself when applying poison to a weapon or trap.

Boost: The attack you just made doesn’t use up the poison on your weapon.
Boost: Until your next turn, you can apply poison to a weapon as a move action instead of a standard action.
Boost: Until your next turn, you can apply poison to up to 5 ammunition as a free action instead of a standard action.
Boost: Increase the DC of the poisoned weapon you just hit with by +2. You can use this boost even if your opponent has already passed its resist roll, and if the resist roll wouldn’t pass this improved DC, the opponent fails the resist roll.
Boost: Add +5 to your resist roll against poisons.

Slow Metabolism: You can automatically slow your body’s metabolism. You can hold your breath for twice as long as normal before needing to try a CON check (four times your CON). When you are poisoned, treat the poison’s frequency as twice normal (so a poison that has you try a resist roll once per round instead has you try every other round).

Boost: Hold your breath for 1 minute without trying a CON check.
Boost: Delay a poison’s onset time by 1 minute.
Boost: Delay one ongoing poison resist roll by 1 minute (even if this means that would be after the poison is supposed to end).

Smoke Bomb: You can throw a smoke bomb up to 20 feet as a move action, which fills a 10-foot cube and lasts 1 round. You can choose the color of the smoke (black, blue, gray, green, orange, red, white, or yellow).

Boost: The smoke lasts 1 minute.
Boost: Creatures in the area must pass a Fort save or be staggered while they remain in the smoke plus the round after that.
Boost: Add one vial of inhaled poison to the smoke, affecting anyone who breathes it within the next round.
Boost: Delay the explosion of your smoke bomb by up to 1 minute.

In Smoke Bomb ability, isn't this kinda one of those "disassociated mechanics" that people rave about being bad? His argument of it as follows:

SKR wrote:It’s a magical world. No-gp-cost spell components are a needless bookkeeping time-waster. If you get rid of the M component of Color Spray, there’s no reason Smoke Bomb should have a material component, either.

[19:53] <~Dan> It almost sounds like Five Moons makes the PCs into something akin to fantasy superheroes.

...
[19:55] <+seankreynolds> Dan: Considering that by the time they’re 6th level, D&D characters are basically low-powered superheroes, yes, that’s not surprising. And I’ve played the heck out of the old FASERIP Marvel Super Heroes game to see the fun in letting people have at-will powers and “power stunts.”

Another example that shows some rather interesting realization on his part, in line with his 180 turn he did back on Su/Ex tags. That said, that Marvel thing seems to be more his source of inspiration than 4th edition (as he's apparently played few sessions, and never read 4th Psionics).

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:33 pm

Aryxbez wrote:In Smoke Bomb ability, isn't this kinda one of those "disassociated mechanics" that people rave about being bad?

"Dissociated mechanic" is just a code phrase for "that fluff sounds stupid to me".

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:41 pm

Aryxbez wrote:In Smoke Bomb ability, isn't this kinda one of those "disassociated mechanics" that people rave about being bad?

Yeah, if you don't know IC why smoke bombs don't cost you anything it's dissociated.

If it's just that "the cost of smoke bombs is not within materiality" that's no more dissociated than ammo rolls.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:55 pm

hogarth wrote:
Aryxbez wrote:In Smoke Bomb ability, isn't this kinda one of those "disassociated mechanics" that people rave about being bad?
"Dissociated mechanic" is just a code phrase for "that fluff sounds stupid to me".

Dissociated mechanic can be used incorrectly to refer to fluff people don't like, but in my experience that use is exclusively limited to idiots like hogarth.

But the correct use is to refer to mechanics that do match fluff, this is absurdly stupidly obviously a thing.

An entry in your class that says "Jumpmasters are known to just jump of cliffs whenever, because they can totally just live from falling from any height" followed by an ability "DR/1 against falling damage" is obviously dissociated I look forward to hogarth refusing to respond to this point because he would have to admit that his blanket assertion was wrong, that dissociated mechanics are a thing that can exist, and that he personally just loves fapping to fighters so much that he is willing to settle for once a day fighter abilities so that he can talk about how manly his burly fighter is but still compete with a Wizard, and also he can't imagine a better designed game that doesn't suck in this specific way.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:58 pm

hogarth wrote:
Aryxbez wrote:In Smoke Bomb ability, isn't this kinda one of those "disassociated mechanics" that people rave about being bad?
"Dissociated mechanic" is just a code phrase for "that fluff sounds stupid to me".

Well, it's when the explanation is entirely gameist and not fluff-based at all. If there is no in-character reason given for why things work that way, then it's dissociated. If there is an in-character reason given for why things work the way they work and you think that explanation is retarded, then that's something else. "Retarded" is probably what you're reaching for.

So far, I see an entirely game-balance argument for not having material components for thrown smoke bombs. If that's all there is, that's dissociated. If there's some half-assed spiel about how ninjas can scrounge together a certain number of smoke bombs every day out of whatever is lying around and those lose potency when they make new ones... then it's not dissociated. It's not dissociated because in-character it actually is supposed to work the way the game mechanics say it does. It's still probably retarded though.

-Username17

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 6:08 pm

Well Frank posted, so now Hogarth will never admit that dissociated mechanics could even possibly exist. Because the only thing harder than hogarth admitting fault is hogarth agreeing with Frank about anything.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 6:20 pm

So, we are still arguing about what a "disassociated mechanic" actually is.

You'll have to use search to find my prior comments, but here:

The Guy What Coined the Term wrote: Four years ago, in an effort to understand why I found so many of the design decisions in the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons antithetical to what I wanted from a roleplaying game, I wrote an essay about “Dissociated Mechanics”. At the time, I was still struggling to both define and come to grips with what that concept meant. I was also, simultaneously, quantifying and explaining my reaction to 4th Edition

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:08 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
hogarth wrote:
Aryxbez wrote:In Smoke Bomb ability, isn't this kinda one of those "disassociated mechanics" that people rave about being bad?
"Dissociated mechanic" is just a code phrase for "that fluff sounds stupid to me".
Well, it's when the explanation is entirely gameist and not fluff-based at all. If there is no in-character reason given for why things work that way, then it's dissociated. If there is an in-character reason given for why things work the way they work and you think that explanation is retarded, then that's something else. "Retarded" is probably what you're reaching for.

I don't know what to tell you. For any mechanic X describing activity Y, you can ask the question "why can't I do Y without using mechanic X?" and the answer will ultimately be "because that's the way the game is built" -- which is an entirely "gamist" answer.

And yet people will start keep insisting that (for example) "Why can't a fighter use ability Y more than once a day?" is because of badwrongfun dissociated mechanics and "Why can't a magic-user use ability Y more than once a day?" is not, even though the answer to both is the same: "Because the (meta)physics of D&D-land are fucked up compared to the real world."

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Oct 18, 2014 7:22 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:So, we are still arguing about what a "disassociated mechanic" actually is.

You'll have to use search to find my prior comments, but here:

The Guy What Coined the Term wrote: Four years ago, in an effort to understand why I found so many of the design decisions in the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons antithetical to what I wanted from a roleplaying game, I wrote an essay about “Dissociated Mechanics”. At the time, I was still struggling to both define and come to grips with what that concept meant. I was also, simultaneously, quantifying and explaining my reaction to 4th Edition

Good thing we are speaking a "dead language" like Latin and there is absolutely no way at all that a word which was coined years ago by someone who wasn't 100% sure what they were going for could have been completely defined by subsequent discussion and use....

Look Josh. Disassociated mechanics being used in the sense described by people in this thread who aren't hogarth is a simple way of saying a specific thing that does not have any other simple ways to refer to it. It even actually kind of naturally points towards it's current definition since the mechanics are not associated to the fluff, so it is a better word for the concept than GARBARGARWARGARBARGAL.

I don't know why you have a huge hard on for getting mad when people try to talk about a specific concept, but maybe... don't be so mad about it?

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:03 am

hogarth wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:
hogarth wrote: "Dissociated mechanic" is just a code phrase for "that fluff sounds stupid to me".
Well, it's when the explanation is entirely gameist and not fluff-based at all. If there is no in-character reason given for why things work that way, then it's dissociated. If there is an in-character reason given for why things work the way they work and you think that explanation is retarded, then that's something else. "Retarded" is probably what you're reaching for.
I don't know what to tell you. For any mechanic X describing activity Y, you can ask the question "why can't I do Y without using mechanic X?" and the answer will ultimately be "because that's the way the game is built" -- which is an entirely "gamist" answer.

And yet people will start keep insisting that (for example) "Why can't a fighter use ability Y more than once a day?" is because of badwrongfun dissociated mechanics and "Why can't a magic-user use ability Y more than once a day?" is not, even though the answer to both is the same: "Because the (meta)physics of D&D-land are fucked up compared to the real world."

The metaphysics of D&D give no justification whatsoever for daily Fighter abilities and every justification needed for daily Wizard abilities. The 4E Fighter has ability restrictions which are not reflected in the fluff text in any way. Comparing that to "why can't we play a different game?" is profoundly dishonest.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Oct 19, 2014 5:13 am

Omegonthesane wrote: The metaphysics of D&D give no justification whatsoever for daily Fighter abilities and every justification needed for daily Wizard abilities..

Which edition of D&D do you think this applies to?