When cool stories get destroyed by raw numbers.

Stories about games that you run and/or have played in.

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Lago PARANOIA
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When cool stories get destroyed by raw numbers.

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

I'm still in a bitter, misanthropic, curmudgeonly mood after the 2014 U.S. Congressional elections. And nothing helps a bad mood quite like spreading it around.

So. In the interest of generating more hatred, does anyone care to tell their stories about the time someone tried to build a faux-awesome 'FUCK YEAR I'M GOING TO MAKE THIS WORK WITH ENTHUSIASM AND SHEER MANLINESS' type character but then got slapped down by cold reality? I don't mean stuff like dying to an orc greataxe critical (unless it's particularly amusing), I mean stuff like... well, my monk character getting a beatdown from a cleric.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Omegonthesane
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Post by Omegonthesane »

I once had to get heavy doses of GM fellatio to make a shapeshifter in 7th Sea work, as I hadn't mathhammered the dice roll before statting someone with a less than 30% chance of turning into a bear. That's more a statement that 7th Sea is shit however.

Can't think of any other examples from my own experience.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.

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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle »

One of my first 3e concepts was a kid sorcerer with a shield guardian, but that didn't work out rules wise

My first actual 3e character was a Fighter with whirlwind attack, yeah...
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Ice9
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Post by Ice9 »

My first character was also a Monk, actually an ineffective one even by Monk standards because I was using excessively defensive tactics, and probably would have met the same end as yours except that I got killed first. Killed by something that would have finished off anyone (some kind of big monster, and I ran into it while separated from the party), so it was several characters later before I realized - "In retrospect, that Monk actually sucked".


The time I had a character concept fail the most, it wasn't because of the rules per-se, but because I didn't understand how the Living Greyhawk format worked. I made a character that was pretending to be a Monk (IDK what it was with me and Monks back then), and was based on subterfuge and going outside the box. Then I found out:
1) There's not much point in subterfuge in most LG adventures.
2) Your wealth gains are standardized, so schemes to get extra money are not a character trait that works.
3) Going outside the box will often just grind the module to a halt, waste part of the limited time slot, and make the other players annoyed with you.

I might have only played that character once, at most 2-3 times. #1 and #3 are half the reason I quit organized play, although it was a couple years later before that happened.
Last edited by Ice9 on Wed Nov 05, 2014 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MisterDee
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Post by MisterDee »

I tried to build a rogue-wizard. Basically shooting for Daggerspell Mage, Unseen Seer and so on, in order to have someone with tolerable combat skills and lots of noncombat utility instead of a straight Transmutation specialist.

Didn't work out so well - I was prepared to eat the loss of a caster level or two in the long run, but I'd underestimated how miserable level 3 would be as a multiclass caster. But the real kick in the teeth was that we were playing Legacy of Fire #1.

Now, if you haven't played it, there's a custom monster called a pugwampi in it. It's technically CR 1/2, which is one of the worst jokes Paizo ever created. The thing has a small amount of DR, some SR, and forces you to roll a second time and take the worst result whenever rolling D20s.

Sure, it's a shitty monster otherwise (although the module takes great delight in placing them in areas where skill checks are required not to take damage), but it's murder on anyone who isn't a very optimized build of a traditionnal class. It'll do some damage to a fighter, it'll get murderfucked by any blaster wizard with magic missile... and it'll completely fuck over anybody else.

Particularly Dex-oriented, lowish HP characters.

But whatever - I'm useless in any Pugwampi encounter, but somehow I manage to pull my weight somewhat through the rest of the early adventure. (which probably gave me a false sense of security, and a belief my build wasn't the shitty mess it actually was.) Then we hit the final area of the module - a ruined town we're supposed to investigate.

"HAHA! This is my time to shine. I'll scout out the area with my high stealth and perception skills, and maybe get to pull some cool divination tricks."

Every. Single. Area. I elected to scout had a closet troll with massive perception in it. There was the monstrous boar (Charge out, Gores the wizard.) The giant serpent (slithers out of a hole, make a Fort save). The were-hyenas (Fuck you, take six attacks.) Somehow, my wizard survived the encounters each time, although usually through hogging the cleric's spells afterward.

It was a relief when the DM called the campaign off.
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Hicks
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Post by Hicks »

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erik
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Post by erik »

I have never played a prestige classed character in 3e/3.5. Every time I am about to get a level in a prestige class something happens and thwarts me. I've had campaigns go on permanent hiatus (x3) (actually x5 if I count the two times that I was about to get leadership and sneak in a cohort with a prestige class), characters die (lost count), but this was the worst.

I had a suave Orc Bard/Barbarian who was about to become a Dragon Disciple in 3e with an outrageously high strength, and then in one of our first combats he got feebleminded (my shitty will save further reduced by the extra penalty for technically being an arcane caster) and became the party pack-beast before dying to an illegally-statted Storm Giant Ghost in Rappan Athuk. I considered that a mercy killing as I lost my prereq (being able to cast spells) to qualify for Dragon Disciple and no cure was expected as our other casters were a Wizard and Paladin.

I think that qualifies as something where reality savagely beat down upon me without remorse, in an RPG context anywho.

As far as curses go, "never able to play a prestige class." isn't too shitty, but it felt quite frustrating at the time.
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