The Gaming Den

You are amazing! Thanks a lot!

Should I drop by and point out that yet again when confronted with a pointlessly opaque and complex basic roll mechanic proposal it is yet again something someone is interested in... despite themselves having no idea what the fuck it does . Not being interested in something that you don't yet under...

If a re-roll is worse, does the new result stand? That's the plan, atm. If it does, using tables is very problematic because of the element of player judgement that shows up in the middle of the process. That's the problem I ran into. There may not even be a solution to my problem, but I wanted to ...

I am pondering the idea whether I should use 4d6 with individual die rerolls for my homebrew system, meaning the players roll 4d6 and can reroll a number of individual dice up to their skill level (max 4). So far, so good. But I cannot for the life of me figure out, how to calculate the changed prob...

I don't get what you're saying here. When opposing someone else players don't necessarily need to know what their chance of success really is. You don't 'need' to know when casting spells vs a target's save, you don't need to know it when making an attack, and you shouldn't know it when a surprise ...

Oh for fucks sake. YES. The "major inconvenience" of a monster you cannot defeat is NOT something that should happen because someone failed a star trek trivia check. Except that no one other than you ever claimed that the monster cannot be defeated without a successfull check. I certainly...

In opposed skill rolls like Spot vs Hide, there would still be tension because you wouldn't know the outcome until you tried. That is true, but it brings its entire own sack of problems with it: players need to be able to judge the likely outcome of an attempted action. Without it, no informed deci...

zugschef wrote:What happens if you'd replace every die roll in dnd 3.x with a constant 10?

Absolute determinism? Utter lack of dramatic interactions? Frustration (especially in combat)?

MGuy wrote:Tell me how that is not an objective action resolution that does not require GM fuckery.

See the edit to my post. You must have been typing this, while I edited my post.

So there is no point in investing in the lockpicking skill after you hit +18? Having content that players can't interact with / can't interact with just yet, can be an amazing thing. If say your level 1 PCs want to influence the queen, but they can't do that directly through diplomacy yet, they hav...

*snip* due to double post

So you clearly agree that knowledge skills in D&D or anything like it are bullshit skills. As I said before: I am not going to contest you on this. .. but hey there is a mystery monster hunt game of indeterminate rules and structure that maybe they might be important. Exactly, and you can't sim...

Dice don't get to matter unless they generate outcomes that matter. You are right back to claiming that knowledge checks can matter... But we know that knowledge checks either don't matter or they result in "you failed a star trek trivia check GAME OVER!". So are you arguing that the roll...

Jason... Kaelik isn't making a strawman. Here let me put it in other terms. Dice do certain things. Primarily you use dice because there is a disagreement between what the players want to do and what the GM is having happen. At least that's the point outside of combat. What people are telling you a...

This continues to not in any fucking imaginable way be an argument for dice granting agency. And it shouldn't, because you built a giant strawman out of "dice granting agency". In your inability to stop raging you keep failing to realize that the point is not about the dice, but about hav...

He was specifically talking about desigining encounters after he knows what abilities his players have. And creating encounters based on those abilities, so no previous player choices don't matter in this specific case. That's only one very specific interpretation of what he wrote and I hardly doub...

The problem with his argument is that it is wrong. Deaddmwalking claims he wants players to choose what they'd like to do, but instead of actually allowing his players to choose, he lets his whims as a DM and the dice gods decide what they can and can't do. That is only true if all you look at are ...

One of the rotating GMs in my Pathfinder group wants to replace D20s. He's asking about whether we should go to 3d6, 2d10, or 1d12+1d8. It sounds kind of stupid to me, but I took a survey statistics class ten years ago and barely scraped out a C, so if someone who is good at math wants to explain h...

Dude, stop digging. I'm willing to concede that I'm not a materials scientist, archer, or archaic weapons specialist. But I am a medical doctor. I know a potentially lethal penetrating injury when I see one. You linked to a video that proved non-composite bows are capable of inflicting a lethal inj...

Dude, stop digging. I'm willing to concede that I'm not a materials scientist, archer, or archaic weapons specialist. But I am a medical doctor. I know a potentially lethal penetrating injury when I see one. You linked to a video that proved non-composite bows are capable of inflicting a lethal inj...

Your broader point that bows are a battlefield weapon that accomplishes things through the weight of large numbers of small hits and rare criticals is generally true. However, you severely undermine your point by linking to a video of someone using a bow noticeably smaller than a longbow and gettin...

Only the second video plays in Europe, but the one you labeled as "longbows" shows a man very obviously not using a longbow but shooting through padded armor with the much smaller bow he was using at short range with direct fire. I have honestly no idea what point you were trying to make,...

And if it is the "realistic" approach to weapons and armor in an RPG, prepare to be mocked. Out of curiosity: why is that? Realistic weapons and armor certainly don't fit every setting. probably not most fantasy settings, but to dismiss them as a mechanical option all together? Large pull...

You're half right about bucklers, yes you can use them to defend your entire upper body, as I said. However that does not change the fact that they do not afford you any passive defense you have to actively parry every strike with a buckler... This is the main point where we disagree. You don't sim...

I disagree, the example of a round shield I gave is, generally sized at "about half as large as a man" while a buckler, for instance is "a little larger than a clenched fist" while it is true you parry with both and can parry, most of, the attacks with a buckler you can with a f...