SKR quotables

[Kaelik]

Guys... you are going crazy.

Like SKR is an idiot and all, but he is not wrong in this case.

The statement "Take 10 takes the same amount of time in game as rolling" is trivially true. He is specifically contrasting the fact that for the characters it takes just as much time but for the players it is faster, and that is why when it doesn't lose you anything it is a good thing.

[Koumei]

Uh yeah. Taking twenty takes twenty times as long, but just taking ten is the same as normal. I can't see what's so weird there unless someone misread what he wrote.

And as much as I'd like to, I can't blame him for other people reading him wrong.

[Drolyt]

I think ACOS was saying SKR listed the same thing as both a pro and con of take 10, not that what he said was literally wrong, while Laertes just said he doesn't play D&D, so he's probably confused about how take 10 works.

[Josh_Kablack]

Wow.

Did he seriously just say that characters in a fantasy game cannot sneak up on people as well as he personally snuck up on his nephew because "nonfacing"?

Sean K Reynolds's name needs to be made into an adjective. Because we use "Gygaxian" to mean bullshit lethality, but even Gygax fucking said that PCs should be given a roll to try to do "heroic" things and not that "if a semi-sedantary RPG writer can do it, then it's too good for characters in your game"

[angelfromanotherpin]

SKRewy?

[Cyberzombie]

I found this one.

He's seriously saying that a pathfinder character shouldn't do awesome stuff like Batman, but should instead be a shitty realistic dude unable to do anything special.

It always amazes me how designers can be both okay with a 10th level rogue being limited by reality in his stealth checks and also uphold the idea that it's okay for a 3rd level wizard to turn fully invisible.

[Occluded Sun]

The wizard is explicitly magic, the rogue is limited to 'mundane' skill. It's not such a weird idea.

[Drolyt]

The wizard is explicitly magic, the rogue is limited to 'mundane' skill. It's not such a weird idea.

The ranger gets hide in plain sight. They get it at a level where it doesn't remotely matter, but they get it and it is an extraordinary ability.

[CCarter]

I'd never heard of the guy before. This line alone convinced me that he's never actually played an RPG.

He was one of the "Big 3" co-authors/designers for D&D 3.0; and even a significant contributor to 3.5 (and now PF, apparently).

Which makes your observation VERY telling of his competence.

The quote there's from Reynolds? SKR is credited in the 3.0 PHB, but the lead designers were Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook and Skip Williams.

[ACOS]

The quote there's from Reynolds? SKR is credited in the 3.0 PHB, but the lead designers were Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook and Skip Williams.

Oh, you're right. I think I was confusing SKR with SW.
But the point still stands (just not quite as strong as before).

I think ACOS was saying SKR listed the same thing as both a pro and con of take 10, not that what he said was literally wrong,

Basically this.

However, after Kaelik and Koumei place extra emphasis on "in game", I might be willing to back-peddle this a bit; but only maybe, and then only by a hair.

I've literally seen a single person, in consecutive sentences, use the term "in game" to mean both "in-fiction" -and- "in a game" (i.e., "at the table").
That being said, who knows what the hell he actually meant? It wouldn't be the first time he's talked out both sides of his mouth; nor would it be the first time he demonstrated a deep lack of understanding of his own ruleset. Which he still did in that thread; but then maybe not on the Take 10 stuff (though I'm not entirely convinced).

The ranger gets hide in plain sight. They get it at a level where it doesn't remotely matter, but they get it and it is an extraordinary ability.

If you are standing in an empty room, I'll spot you every time.

EX ≈ mundane
So you can just keep your facts and evidence to yourself.

[Josh_Kablack]

The wizard is explicitly magic, the rogue is limited to 'mundane' skill. It's not such a weird idea.

Unfortuneately, this much is true. It's not weird nor unusual.

As ideas go it is merely asstastically fucktarded skullrapeshitting bad.

[Gnorman]

But the wizard has to be powerful and do everything so the rogue can know what he's not allowed to do.

[Occluded Sun]

Unfortuneately, this much is true. It's not weird nor unusual.

As ideas go it is merely asstastically fucktarded skullrapeshitting bad.

I'm not exactly satisfied with the whole "magic is a fundamentally different thing than normal reality" model, myself.

Breaking out of Scientific Magic Systems, Pt. 2, addressing this in an interesting way. Most cultures that had a belief in things we'd call 'magic' had it be an essential part of everyday existence, if in an unnoticed way most of the time. The idea that it's a violation of the natural order is relatively new - maybe because we developed a strong idea of 'natural order' in the first place, I dunno.

Further, I admit that I'm not nearly as interested in 'realism' was I once was, to a large part because I've recognized that most people don't want to go around doing realistic things in an RPG. They want reality in games in the same way they want reality in movies - not really. And they'll put up with unreality in things they aren't interested in so they can get it where they do care.

[Drolyt]

The wizard is explicitly magic, the rogue is limited to 'mundane' skill. It's not such a weird idea.

Unfortuneately, this much is true. It's not weird nor unusual.

As ideas go it is merely asstastically fucktarded skullrapeshitting bad.

I think you guys are missing the point here. A lot of players don't want fighters or rogues to do explicitly magical things like flying unaided, but that isn't even what SKR is saying. The vast majority of players are completely fine with fighters or rogues doing explicitly unrealistic things as long as they are things an action movie character can do, and might as well be supernatural stealth certainly falls into that category. Some players reject this and insist on limiting mundane characters to things that are possible in the real world even though they are adventuring with wizards and druids. That is stupid, but it is still not SKR's position. What SKR is actually saying is that rogues aren't even allowed to do what they can actually do in real life because there are no facing rules and SKR completely fails his "grasp abstraction" check and thinks that means all characters have 360 degree vision. I can't even put into words how mind numbingly stupid that is, but that is his actual position.

[ishy]

EX ≈ mundane

I strenuously disagree.

Extraordinary abilities are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics. They are not something that just anyone can do or even learn to do without extensive training.

Don't think EX abilities are mundane at all.

It always amazes me how designers can be both okay with a 10th level rogue being limited by reality in his stealth checks and also uphold the idea that it's okay for a 3rd level wizard to turn fully invisible.

Because their might be other design goals you're trying to hit, while not caring at all about balance.
Good example of this would be SKR saying that in his opinion bows were better in real life, thus should be better in game as well.

Personally I believe balance is very important. You can forgo balance in some type of games, but a fantasy game, meant to be played for long periods of times is not one of those.

[hogarth]

The mundane aspects of the game have to try model mundane reality, otherwise the player has no frame of reference to understand what they can do without magic. Using the "it's magic" (aka "a wizard did it") is a cheesy excuse to cover weak game design.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha are you fucking kidding me

I agree with the sentiment in this respect:

Complaining that an adventurer in D&D/Pathfinder can't do something that's easy for a regular Joe in real life is a strong criticism.

Complaining that an adventurer in D&D/Pathfinder can't survive a nuclear bomb by hiding inside a refrigerator is a weak criticism.

[brized]

If you are standing in an empty room, I'll spot you every time.

This is such bullshit. If you have any time before the viewer comes into the room, you turn away, squat down, curl into a ball, and stay totally still. If the lighting conditions aren't perfect, or your clothing blends in at all with the surroundings, you probably won't be spotted, even if the viewer looks directly at you. Hell, last week I was standing and wasn't spotted by someone 5 ft. away just because most my clothing blended in with the lighting and wall paint. I wasn't even trying. There's a book on how to to not get spotted in these and very similar conditions, when security guards are looking for trespassers. Similar techniques are taught in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training. Soldiers, urban explorers, penetration testers, and others successfully use these techniques daily. Stealth is not as hard as people think it is, as long as you understand human psychology and the limits of our perception and attention.

Hide in Plain Sight isn't really an (Ex) ability; it should have been built into the basic stealth system of 3.X.

[Leress]

If you are standing in an empty room, I'll spot you every time.

*Raises Hand* What there is no light in the room?

[Josh_Kablack]

What SKR is actually saying is that rogues aren't even allowed to do what they can actually do in real life because there are no facing rules and SKR completely fails his "grasp abstraction" check and thinks that means all characters have 360 degree vision. I can't even put into words how mind numbingly stupid that is, but that is his actual position.

Hence my above call to coin a new word out of his name for describing positions of approximately equal stupidity. "SKRewed " does seem like a good fit.

[ACOS]

Hence my above call to coin a new word out of his name for describing positions of approximately equal stupidity. "SKRewed " does seem like a good fit.

I second this motion.

All in favor?

[zugschef]

Hide in Plain Sight isn't really an (Ex) ability; it should have been built into the basic stealth system of 3.X.

That's not the same as not being spotted in an empty room, though. It means that you suddenly vanish by hiding while being observed. But I agree that this should be, too, part of the skill and not a class feature.

[Insomniac]

Ah, SKR Quotables. Like Lunchables, except they give you erectile dysfunction and dysentery.

This is the one that made me lose my shit. Since the Monk's Flurry of Blows is mechanically identical to Two Weapon Fighting, SKR said that in his "clarification" that Monks could not use one weapon to Flurry with all their attacks and would have to buy separately enchanted weaponry, which is some of the most expensive shit in the game.

It seems as if he reached that insane conclusion purely out of spite because he hates Monks and Rogues and only kept them in as legacy options.

It made no sense and spawned a 200 reply thread. The "clarification"

SKR shat this out of his mouth...

I just double-checked with Jason, and my statement is correct. Flurry works like TWF. You can't pick your best weapon and use it for all of your flurry attacks.
We're really talking about two different situations. Say we have a monk15 doing a flurry of blows. His attack sequence is +13/+13/+8/+8/+3/+3.
1) If all of his potential attacks are identical (for example, all he's doing are unarmed strikes and none of his unarmed strikes are enhanced by magic fang or any other effect that would give it a different attack bonus or damage value, it doesn't matter if you justify all six of those as punches, all six as headbutts, all six as kicks, or three as kicks and three as punches, or punch kick knee elbow elbow headbutt, because those attacks are identical in terms of attack and damage. That's what the "any combination" text in the flurry rule means--the difference between the attacks is just flavor and has no game effect, so you can use them in any combination because what you call it has no effect on the dice.
(Just like if you have a TWF fighter using two identical +1 short swords with identical attack and damage bonuses, it doesn't really matter for each individual attack if he's using the left shortsword or the right shortsword, declaring it doesn't affect the dice, he can roll all his attack dice at the same time and doesn't have to call them out separately.)
2) If even one of the monk's potential attack forms is not identical to the others, such as using a special monk weapon with an attack bonus or damage different than his unarmed strike, or having magic fang on one hand but not any other body part, now the order and identity of each attack matters, and you have to specify what you're attacking with and you have to abide by the TWF rules because your decisions affect the die rolls. In other words that monk15 is actually making attacks with two weapons, one with a main attack bonus of +13 and iteratives at +8/+3, and another with a main attack bonus of +13 and iteratives at +8/+3. So if you have a +5 sai in your left hand and a normal sai in your right hand, you can't say you're using the +5 sai for all six of your attacks, you're doing +13/+8/+3 with the left hand (adding the sai's +5 enhancement bonus, of course) and +13/+8/+3 with the right hand.
Jason says that in this situation, the "any combination" text means you can swap in a regular unarmed strike in place of any of those attacks (though that's not clear in the text). (Doing so affects the attack and damage rolls for that attack, of course.) So you could swap out your left-hand +8 attack for an unarmed strike such as a kick or elbow (losing the +5 enhancement bonus to that attack because you're not actually using the +5 sai to make that attack), swap out all of the right-hand sai attacks for unarmed strikes, and so on, but you're still abiding by the TWF setup in that you have a series of attacks with one weapon and a series of attacks with your other weapon.
TLDR: (1) Flurry is based on TWF. (2) If all your attacks are identical, declaring which weapon is which is pure flavor and doesn't affect the dice, so go ahead an call them whatever you want. (3) If even one of your attacks is different than the others, you have to follow the TWF rules when flurrying; you can't just declare all of your flurry of blows attacks to be your best weapon because you can't do that with TWF.

[zugschef]

This might be the worst rules interpretation I've ever read.

[Insomniac]

Did you see the part where he said Magic Fang wouldn't apply to every Monk Flurry attack so somebody must flurry exclusively with their left hand if that is the Magic Fanged one and even doing something as simple as getting caught up in the heat of the moment and saying "Shoezen kicks the villain then punches him!" could result in gargantuan negative to-hit penalties?

Awesome!

[nockermensch]

That... That don't actually make sense, even considering the pathfinder monk using a different flurry of blows rule.

Part of the text for it says:

A monk applies his full Strength bonus to his damage rolls for all successful attacks made with flurry of blows, whether the attacks are made with an off-hand or with a weapon wielded in both hands.

Just that already tells you that FoB doesn't work like TWF. SKR works, however, are like WTF.