Dark Sun returns

[mandrake]

You made a series of insults. If you're unwilling or unable to have an adult discussion, at least don't get in the way of one.

[Korwin]

if you cant handle insults you should go home...

Your DM sucks.

and you are a hypocrite

[mandrake]

I am home.

You're right though, there could be another explanation for why they failed. Bad rolls. Lack of imagination in how they used other skills, giving them penalties. I jumped to a conclusion, and one that could in fact be the case. A DM who is inflexible and doesn't reward clever gameplay is a bad one. Still, I didn't call him mentally deficient, or deride his ability to comprehend simple concepts. Hell, I didn't even say anything bad about him.

[Thymos]

Your DM sucks.

My DM was running skill challenges by RAW because he was running living forgotten realms.

That's his excuse. What's your excuse for reading a single line about that game and saying my DM sucks?

Why don't you address my previous post about why they blow, or Franks thread about why they fail instead of saying "if you have the right DM and group they aren't bad".[/list]

[Kaelik]

Morzas: It's even better than that. Arcane Power adds a level 9 daily that is basically Sleep, but replace the initial slow with immobilize, then, if they make their save against helpless at some point, they get are still slowed save ends. And even on a miss they are still immobilized save ends and then slowed save ends.

It's basically "Free win area burst" It just happens to be a be about as boring as Finger of death and no where near as interesting as things like vertigo field.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and TD:

1) Again. You can claim that 4e appeals to most of the 3e audience, and yet, all indications are that it does not, because apparently about half the people who played 3e did it because it was a fantasy game, and not a dungeon crawl with shitty combat simulation.

2) What part of skill challenges are ass but their are better out of combat systems is so hard to understand?

In 3e, you cast spells. These spells do things. Sometimes you have abilities. These abilities do things. Having abilities that effect out of combat is better than bullshit skill challenges.

Look, you may like a fake combat minigame where the DM decides "today the AC is 20 and you do 1 damage against it's HP of 5" and then you get to pick whether you attack with your red or blue or green attack.

Most people don't. And that's why skill challenges are ass, and that's why good combat games don't follow that metric.

Out of combat "challenges" in 3.5 probably didn't need to involve the entire party, and that's a good thing. If you run into a cliff and the Wizard casts mass fly, it suck that fighters still have to jump. The point is that if all the characters have abilities they can do out of combat, then when out of combat things come up, they can do stuff. This is different from picking the color with your highest AB and rolling it against the AC the DM decided.

This is also a million times better than and statement of "It's your turn, what are you going to do?" "I'm going to roll X."

First of all, it's no ones damn turn in out of combat challenges, and that's a good thing. And secondly, if your answer to what you are going to do is to roll X, that's a shitty answer no matter what X is.

This isn't new, Crissa said the same damn thing 3 pages ago, you just ignored it because you were too busy arguing your 4e talking points to even notice what she said.

[mandrake]

Your DM sucks.

My DM was running skill challenges by RAW because he was running living forgotten realms.

That's his excuse. What's your excuse for reading a single line about that game and saying my DM sucks?

Addressed in above post.

Why don't you address my previous post about why they blow, or Franks thread about why they fail instead of saying "if you have the right DM and group they aren't bad".[/list]

The idea is that people will do what makes them best. If stealth is downright superior to hide then everyone will pick stealth and no one will pick hide (unless they were confused). Now either stealth is overpowered or hide is a trap, both of which isn't the best thing for the game. What needs to be understood though is that people will do what the game encourages and rewards them for doing, in this case it's picking stealth over hide.

Hide isn't a skill?

Skill challenges encourage and reward a single player who has the highest bonus being the only person who participates rolling the same primary skill until he fails or succeeds. This is terrible and to be honest a punch in the face to anyone who likes skill systems.

If run poorly, yes. My bard can dominate a social skill challenge. If all we ever do for social skill challenges is have me talk through it and stand no chance of failing, that's not fun for anyone, so (and this is the key) we don't do that. We go around the table, and yeah, when it's my turn, we get a success. if we look like we're doing poorly, I might interject, but I don't do all the skill checks myself, because that's boring and not fun.

My experience with skill challenges was in a group that didn't understand the mechanics. They roleplayed it inventively and creatively how it's supposed to work. The result? We failed because we tried to play it in a way that would make it fun instead of just telling the bard to roll diplomacy 9 times.

I'm sorry that you failed a skill challenge. You're supposed to be able to fail skill challenges. If you don't have a chance of that, it's not a challenge.

[FatR]

If run poorly, yes. My bard can dominate a social skill challenge. If all we ever do for social skill challenges is have me talk through it and stand no chance of failing, that's not fun for anyone, so (and this is the key) we don't do that. We go around the table, and yeah, when it's my turn, we get a success. if we look like we're doing poorly, I might interject, but I don't do all the skill checks myself, because that's boring and not fun.

Damn right! Skill challenges explicitly encourage you to do things that are boring and not fun. So, why the fvck you continue to defend them?

[mandrake]

How did you get that? Every game to some degree encourages you to do something that's boring if mechanical advantage is all you want. Being the biggest baddest thing at the table isn't the best way of playing any game, if you have more than one player. Trying to outdo each other in that makes the game less fun for the DM, and any player not currently involved in/winning the power struggle.

[violence in the media]

Shouldn't you try to fix those situations when you discover them? Don't you want the mechanics to incentivize the behavior you actually want represented at the table?

[Thymos]

I was just using "hide" and "stealth" to be the names of generic abilities or skills not tied to a singular system.

If we compare 4e stealth to 3.x hide though then stealth is better.

The idea behind good mechanics is that they encourage you to be inventive, not just spam the die 9 times and such. Skill challenges, by your own admittance, punish you for that by making you more likely to fail.

This is why we criticize them. We want interactive inventive skill use that encourages the whole party to participate. Skill challenges don't facilitate this, they reward the party who let's the bard roll diplomacy 9 times. That is exactly why skill challenges are hated.

[mandrake]

To what degree? Should I, in playing epic 3.0 (as I did) have a wizard whose turn takes up 7-8 times the time of anyone else, simple because I can time stop and cast several spells?

The first concern in looking over what rules you might be exploiting is "what is more fun for the whole group?". As a group, everyone participating is more fun, so that's the optimal way to do it, even if we fail.

I was just using "hide" and "stealth" to be the names of generic abilities or skills not tied to a singular system.

If we compare 4e stealth to 3.x hide though then stealth is better.

I'm sorry, I don't understand the point of comparing the two skills?

The idea behind good mechanics is that they encourage you to be inventive, not just spam the die 9 times and such. Skill challenges, by your own admittance, punish you for that by making you more likely to fail.

This is why we criticize them. We want interactive inventive skill use that encourages the whole party to participate. Skill challenges don't facilitate this, they reward the party who let's the bard roll diplomacy 9 times. That is exactly why skill challenges are hated.

So you hate them because a character who is optimized for a specific task is more likely to succeed at that task? I can see thinking that the rules don't work as well as you'd like, so you adjust them, but I think the framework is useful for D&D even if you don't like the mechanics as written. It's at least a starting point for D&D to have that kind of system, which it lacked previously.[/i]

[Thymos]

The first concern in looking over what rules you might be exploiting is "what is more fun for the whole group?". As a group, everyone participating is more fun, so that's the optimal way to do it, even if we fail.

A concern in making rules is "what is more fun for the whole group". At this stage it's important to make sure that the rules don't punish people for participating and doing what is more fun.

Your defending your group not doing the optimal decision. No one I can see is even addressing that. We're all criticizing skill challenges for making you more likely to fail if you do that.

It's a little perplexing to see this continued defense of skill challenges.

So you hate them because a character who is optimized for a specific task is more likely to succeed at that task?

No, I hate them because if the barbarian tries to help out his Bard buddy he hurts his chances of succeeding (I'm not talking about aid another when I say help).

Skill challenges could have been many different things. They didn't have to have pooled failures, which is what makes it best that no one tries to help the Bard.

[mandrake]

It's not punishing to have everyone participate. How... how is that punishing? Yes, I suppose you're more likely to fail, in that you then have a chance to fail. Having a chance to fail makes the game more fun. otherwise it's much more magical tea party in feeling.

[Username17]

Which is perfectly reasonable. Yes, rituals are not hugely useful. This is entirely intentional because, guess what, if you could use them for free all the time you would. And this is bad. Why is this bad?

Because it means you cannot make rituals which are actually useful, because then they'll be used all the time and make that character overpowered because they now have a huge number of out of combat abilities in addition to their incombat abilities. There isn't really any compensation here for anyone else.

Rituals have a few purposes.

1) Convenience. The teleportation rituals and tenser's floating disc are good examples of this.
2) Gap fillers. If you don't have someone with trained Theivery, you can have knock and open locks. It sucks, but you can do it.
3) "We're stuck, help!" Divinations, mostly. Arguably gap fillers and this are the same thing.
4) Story effects. Stuff like scrying, water breathing, sending, ect.

Thing is, these are all useful to have around in the game; however, these effects have some power behind them, and as such a simple feat or class feature is insufficient payment. So they have a gp cost to prevent them from being spammed. Divinations in particular should have a monetary cost, because it makes people think before they use them - more or less, if you can solve it without spending money on a ritual, you'll want to do so, so they're "get a hint" lines. Gap fillers could be eliminated entirely, but I think they prefer for people not to have issues if they put a locked door in a dungeon (though, frankly, there are other solutions).

But here's the deal: that's exactly the reasoning that made 4e such an incredibly shitty game. The fact that this reasoning is allowed into the design theater at all is why 4e is a game I don't want to play.

Role Playing is a cooperative storytelling game. The experience, indeed the purpose of showing up to the table at all is merely to contribute to the story. To add my perspective and my ideas to the direction the story takes. If I'm not doing that, there's no reason for me to sit down at the table. I can just... stay home and hear the highlights from someone else.

So if your design paradigm is telling me that constantly contributing to the story is a problem, then seriously fuck your design! 4e gives out mechanical advantages for not attempting to affect the story. It gives out benefits for people to sit out of skill challenges, it gives permanent wealth penalties for anyone who attempts to direct the story with rituals every time they do anything. The game wants me to b a passive observer in 80% of the skill challenges and it wants me to be a passive observer 100% of the rest of the time.

That's horrible. That's... not even worth playing. You shouldn't be trying to prevent me from "spamming action" you should be trying to get me to contribute more. Every past edition of D&D has suggested giving out small amounts of XP as an incentive for people to get involved. 4e is the first edition that has given out specific and large incentives to shut the fuck up.

If I want to be a passive observer, I'll go to the movies.

-Username17

[mandrake]

it gives permanent wealth penalties for anyone who attempts to direct the story with rituals every time they do anything.

This is simply wrong. If D&D were in fact a computer game, in which there could be no increase or decrease in the amount of money given then it would be true. However, there's a DM. A human person who can adjust this. In addition, using the ritual is trading one form of power (wealth) for another (information, tactical advantage, etc).

[mandrake]

One more thing: if the skill challenge isn't a challenge, if your character doing all the rolling has a higher bonus than the DC (or close enough) then it isn't a challenge, and it's not worth XP, any more than a level 10 character killing a kobold would be. It's a risk/reward thing. If there's no risk, you shouldn't be rewarded.

[Username17]

it gives permanent wealth penalties for anyone who attempts to direct the story with rituals every time they do anything.

This is simply wrong. If D&D were in fact a computer game, in which there could be no increase or decrease in the amount of money given then it would be true. However, there's a DM. A human person who can adjust this. In addition, using the ritual is trading one form of power (wealth) for another (information, tactical advantage, etc).

What the fuck?

You're talking 3rd edition rules. Under 3rd edition rules, characters are supposed to get bonuses in wealth piles if they spend a lot of money to conform to wealth by level. A lot of people complained about that, including me, but it was there. In 4e the explicit guidelines are to not replace the lost wealth. Saying that it is "simply wrong" to say that 4e's guidelines are the ones written in its books is crazy talk. You sir, talk crazy.

Under 4e guidelines, which in your second section you immediately defend (right after having denied them), the player has the choice of permanently harming themselves to have an immediate effect on the direction of the story. That's what the ritual rules are. That's the design standard. That's what "effects longer than a combat should have a permanent cost" means.

It's bad. It's bad because it gives people mechanical advantage for not interacting with the story. For sitting back and waiting for stuff to happen. It's counter immersive.

-Username17

[Voss]

If the DCs are such that you auto-pass, the DCs need to be higher. Its really that simple. It isn't that charisma guy with trained diplomacy automatically succeeds, its that he has a much higher chance than everyone else, there is no point for anyone else to chime in. You've demonstrated a situation where participation = failure.

If run poorly, yes. My bard can dominate a social skill challenge. If all we ever do for social skill challenges is have me talk through it and stand no chance of failing, that's not fun for anyone, so (and this is the key) we don't do that. We go around the table, and yeah, when it's my turn, we get a success. if we look like we're doing poorly, I might interject, but I don't do all the skill checks myself, because that's boring and not fun.

This is incredibly bad. Your group is going out its way to hobble itself because the system is fundamentally flawed. This isn't encouraging role-playing or anything else, its simply passively accepting an assrape by a fundamentally flawed mechanic.


mandrake, there are two points that you seem to be fundamentally missing,
one, on rituals, is that you can almost always accomplish the ritual effect (if, indeed the ritual effect matters at all) some other way that doesn't cost money. If, to use a simple example, Knock costs money and picking a lock (or hacking down the door) doesn't, Knock is always inferior to the other options.

Second, 'the DM can fix the failed system,' which is what you have started arguing, isn't a good answer. In fact, its the first indication that the system has serious problems, and you should go find a system that actually works. Yes, you can fix it yourself. And perhaps you have less trouble house-ruling 4e into an acceptable state than you do with another system. But it is not an endorsement for the default state of the game. A jury rigged gremlin will never be a porsche.

[violence in the media]

it gives permanent wealth penalties for anyone who attempts to direct the story with rituals every time they do anything.

This is simply wrong. If D&D were in fact a computer game, in which there could be no increase or decrease in the amount of money given then it would be true. However, there's a DM. A human person who can adjust this. In addition, using the ritual is trading one form of power (wealth) for another (information, tactical advantage, etc).

Ok, so you're saying that the people that use rituals should get more money to compensate the expense? This way they get to use rituals AND maintain magic item relevance?

Or are you saying that using rituals to open doors and improve harvests provides enough of a persistent advantage that the characters need no additional compensation?

[mandrake]

If it's explicit, give me a page number.

[mandrake]

This is incredibly bad. Your group is going out its way to hobble itself because the system is fundamentally flawed. This isn't encouraging role-playing or anything else, its simply passively accepting an assrape by a fundamentally flawed mechanic.

My group is going out of our way to have fun. We are having fun. The DM is having fun.
Also, can we not compare mechanics to assrape in the future? Thanks.

mandrake, there are two points that you seem to be fundamentally missing,
one, on rituals, is that you can almost always accomplish the ritual effect (if, indeed the ritual effect matters at all) some other way that doesn't cost money. If, to use a simple example, Knock costs money and picking a lock (or hacking down the door) doesn't, Knock is always inferior to the other options.

Great, so don't use knock. Unless you don't have anyone who can pick the lock or knock down the door. I can't imagine why they even made knock...

Second, 'the DM can fix the failed system,' which is what you have started arguing, isn't a good answer. In fact, its the first indication that the system has serious problems, and you should go find a system that actually works. Yes, you can fix it yourself. And perhaps you have less trouble house-ruling 4e into an acceptable state than you do with another system. But it is not an endorsement for the default state of the game. A jury rigged gremlin will never be a porsche.

Fix the failed system? What failure? I'd say the DM can adjust power levels according to how the game is running. I think, in fact, this is the point of having a DM.

4e requires fewer house rules than any other edition of D&D. This is a good thing. In fact, we only use... 2 house rules that I can think of, off the top of my head.

[Morzas]

it gives permanent wealth penalties for anyone who attempts to direct the story with rituals every time they do anything.

This is simply wrong. If D&D were in fact a computer game, in which there could be no increase or decrease in the amount of money given then it would be true. However, there's a DM. A human person who can adjust this. In addition, using the ritual is trading one form of power (wealth) for another (information, tactical advantage, etc).

That's nice, but it seems that Frank is trying to criticize the rules as they are written. As they are written, they penalize the player who takes the flavorful but useless Ritual of Booger-Flinging over the player who takes the equally costed and boring +2 Ass-Raping Skullfucking Polearm. Saying "but the DM can fix that" does not change the fact that the system discourages intelligent players from spending their limited wealth on a ritual which only aids them in the corner case that is Booger-Flinging over the very common situation where a Polearm of Ass-Raping Skullfucking is required handy.

EDIT: Wow, I got ninja'd hard.

Also, sodomy hivemind.

EDIT2: There, is that better?

[mandrake]

I'll take a moment here and refer you to my request regarding ass rape in analogies.

[Morzas]

Oh my, how rude of me. I'll change that at once.

[Voss]

Great, so don't use knock. Unless you don't have anyone who can pick the lock or knock down the door. I can't imagine why they even made knock...

For those in the audience too busy getting assraped to pay attention, substitute Knock for *every ritual in the game*.

Fix the failed system? What failure? I'd say the DM can adjust power levels according to how the game is running. I think, in fact, this is the point of having a DM.

4e requires fewer house rules than any other edition of D&D. This is a good thing. In fact, we only use... 2 house rules that I can think of, off the top of my head.

Well, lets see, one that forces everyone to take turns during skill challenges, despite being explicitly bad for the party is one, whats the other?