Legend: some dude's d20 clone

[JigokuBosatsu]

Man, I found a ring of feather fall in a game once. All I did after that was find any excuse to use it. I'd climb trees just to fall off them. If the airship was taking too long to dock, I'd hop over the side. I didn't give a fuck.

Sigged!

[ishy]

The old Ring of Featherfall has seen a lot of use. But last I checked, that thing was just continuous and didn't use your actions (Immediate or otherwise) at all.

It's use-activated. But it still doesn't use an action.

It also activates automatically even if the user is for example unconscious.

- Edit: Huh, guess I was wrong about what use-actived meant.

[Ice9]

Translation: almost no immediate actions were ever used.

The immediate action spells were gimmicky and weird and not as good as existing spells, so they were never used. Aside from board-builds that were proofs for very action economy abuse, you never even heard about them.

Manwhat? The Tomes have quite a number of Swift and Immediate action abilities. I don't see this "unworkable complexity" in Legend - it doesn't look any worse than a mid-level caster or even a mid-level melee type with some tricks. And those are what I play in 3E.

Now yes, theoretically, my brain cannot actually handle the number of choices present, and all the times I thought I was having fun I was actually being crushed by the tyranny of too many options. But meh, I'm happy with my "delusions" in that regard.


On to items - is it a perfect system? No, but I haven't actually seen a better one for D&D. Certainly I don't consider "items are entirely DM fiat, and trying to circumvent that makes you a bad person" to be a better system.

Yeah, downtime items don't really take up a slot. Is that actually a problem? Is it going to break the game or anything? Nodwicking works too, but all you get (at the cost of having to guard minions that could easily be killed by the first big AoO), is a small amount of horizontal utility power.

[echoVanguard]

The immediate action spells were gimmicky and weird and not as good as existing spells, so they were never used. Aside from board-builds that were proofs for very action economy abuse, you never even heard about them.

...

You know, I've played a lot of DnD, and I've never seen anyone use Feather Fall in a game.

I've never even heard of someone using it.

I'll see your anecdotal evidence and raise you some anecdotal evidence - I've seen Feather Fall used at least five or six times in action from both sides of the table, and I've seen other Immediate Action spells and abilities used very often (mostly the Celerity spell, the Improved Mirror Image spell, and the Abjurant Jaunt ability). I also ran a ToB game once which had an Immediate Action Maneuver used at least once every combat.

echo

[Prak]

Translation: almost no immediate actions were ever used.

The immediate action spells were gimmicky and weird and not as good as existing spells, so they were never used. Aside from board-builds that were proofs for very action economy abuse, you never even heard about them.

Never even heard about them.

You know, I've played a lot of DnD, and I've never seen anyone use Feather Fall in a game.

I've never even heard of someone using it.

I didn't even realize feather fall was an immediate action to cast.

As for things I'd like to see, since Koumei put her's, I'd like to see some kind of shapechanging ability. I imagine it's likely coming in the monster manual, but of the two characters I've looked at building in the system, lack of shapechanging made it difficult to build one.


On the other hand, the other character I looked at building was Kratos. Any system where Kratos is so easily built, is a system I like.

[Ice9]

Yeah, Shapechanging ability is key, and so is Mind Control. Here's some example cases that the rules should cover (IMO):

Mind Control:
* Wave a hand and "jedi mind trick" significantly lower level people.
* Focus your will and control a real opponent. This may require concentration and they probably get multiple chances to break out.
* Do a ritual on a restrained target to control them long term. On a significantly lower level person, this is permanent until broken by an outside party. On a roughly equal one, it still lasts a while, but not forever, and they get a chance to break out if you order them to do something they're sufficiently opposed to.

Shapeshifting:
* Look like a different person, for as long as you need. You can still use all your abilities in this form.
* Look like a harmless mouse/pidgeon/whatever for as long as you need. Maybe you can't use your abilities like this.
* Turn into a giant snake / whatever and wreak havoc. Enough havoc to be worth using against real foes.
* Get past obstacles by shapeshifting - turn into an eel and swim through the underwater pipe, then into a spider to climb the wall, then into something strong to pry open the window bars.

[Prak]

Plus general buffing (ie, taking a bear form and just getting claws and some stat bonuses, becoming a bird man and getting flight, etc.)

[Seerow]

On feather fall: In the PHB it wasn't an immediate action because when the PHB was published immediate actions didn't exist. The vast majority of gamers who don't keep up with errata use the original text of the spell which has it as a free action.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, the setting is out. There seems to be absolutely no reason for anything being the way it is, beyond being 'different'. The craziness would almost work if anything naturally followed from anything else, but instead it's special cases all the way down. It's basically as though they took the setting from Feersum Endjinn and then removed any element that made sense with any other element and added a bunch of crap generated by random tables.

On the bright side, nothing about the game requires you to use the default setting.

[Edit]
Also, vampires need a Dominate feat written up.

[Blicero]

So, the setting is out. There seems to be absolutely no reason for anything being the way it is, beyond being 'different'. The craziness would almost work if anything naturally followed from anything else, but instead it's special cases all the way down. It's basically as though they took the setting from Feersum Endjinn and then removed any element that made sense with any other element and added a bunch of crap generated by random tables.

On the bright side, nothing about the game requires you to use the default setting.

Honestly, I liked the setting. It actually has the balls to do something very different from the vast majority of fantasy: Eberron done truly weird, if you will. But it definitely won't be for everyone. Still, I'm pretty curious to see what further elaboration it gets.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, the setting is out. There seems to be absolutely no reason for anything being the way it is, beyond being 'different'. The craziness would almost work if anything naturally followed from anything else, but instead it's special cases all the way down. It's basically as though they took the setting from Feersum Endjinn and then removed any element that made sense with any other element and added a bunch of crap generated by random tables.

On the bright side, nothing about the game requires you to use the default setting.

Honestly, I liked the setting. It actually has the balls to do something very different from the vast majority of fantasy: Eberron done truly weird, if you will. But it definitely won't be for everyone. Still, I'm pretty curious to see what further elaboration it gets.

Most of the inspirations that they cite would have made good settings, because they have focus, boundaries, and internal consistency. It's telling that their "strongest influence" would make a neat free-form Munchausen-style RPG, but an absolutely terrible rules-heavy high fantasy RPG. And that even the insane randomness of that setting is constrained to a few square miles.

The elements of Hallow seem even more disconnected and unrelated than its little floating worlds. Why are there D&D-esque Outer Planes when the world is effectively a limitless expanse of demiplanes? Are the plates held in place by 'giant thrust glyphs' or filigree "angels"? Why all of these irrelevant details about how Gabriel is different from other angels ("constellations"?), when we don't know enough about other angels/constellations to care? Why didn't someone just hang the sinking "thorn gate" from a scaffolding? Why does everything have to be described as "inexplicable", even to the native inhabitants of the world? Why is the sky blue?

And before you say that a preview doesn't have to explain everything, at the very least it should be treated as a short story.

[Blicero]

Most of the inspirations that they cite would have made good settings, because they have focus, boundaries, and internal consistency. It's telling that their "strongest influence" would make a neat free-form Munchausen-style RPG, but an absolutely terrible rules-heavy high fantasy RPG. And that even the insane randomness of that setting is constrained to a few square miles.

The elements of Hallow seem even more disconnected and unrelated than its little floating worlds. Why are there D&D-esque Outer Planes when the world is effectively a limitless expanse of demiplanes? Are the plates held in place by 'giant thrust glyphs' or filigree "angels"? Why all of these irrelevant details about how Gabriel is different from other angels ("constellations"?), when we don't know enough about other angels/constellations to care? Why didn't someone just hang the sinking "thorn gate" from a scaffolding? Why does everything have to be described as "inexplicable", even to the native inhabitants of the world? Why is the sky blue?

And before you say that a preview doesn't have to explain everything, at the very least it should be treated as a short story.

Oh, it's definitely very grabbag. And unfocused. And if the writers want there to be any chance of people actually being able to run internally consistent games set in the Hallow milieu, they're going to have to clarify and elaborate.

But the setting definitely did grab my attention. I read it and thought, "Wow, this is kind of scattershot, but it sounds like it could be fucking awesome." And I consider that a fairly impressive achievement.

I look at it this way. Realistically, 95% of Legend's potential playerbase is going to already have played D&D for years. That's just the scale of a pay-what-you-want homebrew system based on a decade old ruleset. Now, I suspect that most of those potential players have already done a shittonne with traditional fantasy settings. They've probably done games in Forgotten Realms or Eberron or their MC's home setting or whatever. And, if they're so inclined, someone they know can and will whip up a Legend conversion in no time flat.

As such, I think it makes sense for Rule of Cool just to do something wacky and out there. And, at this stage, I feel it's more important just to give off vibes, images, and concepts. Stuff to make people excited. We can worry about specificities and consistency later on.

[OgreBattle]

Seems more a matter of execution than the rules themselves. Many casual card games make use of interrupt mechanics so it's not particularly difficult to grasp
If you had your interrupt abilities on a card held in your hand, like in M:tG or card games such as Asshole, people would use them more often.

[Prak]

for one thing, the intro needs some illustrations of this constructed world

[K]

The immediate action spells were gimmicky and weird and not as good as existing spells, so they were never used. Aside from board-builds that were proofs for very action economy abuse, you never even heard about them.

...

You know, I've played a lot of DnD, and I've never seen anyone use Feather Fall in a game.

I've never even heard of someone using it.

I'll see your anecdotal evidence and raise you some anecdotal evidence - I've seen Feather Fall used at least five or six times in action from both sides of the table, and I've seen other Immediate Action spells and abilities used very often (mostly the Celerity spell, the Improved Mirror Image spell, and the Abjurant Jaunt ability). I also ran a ToB game once which had an Immediate Action Maneuver used at least once every combat.

echo

I think your testimony supports my point that immediate actions are really rare.

I mean, five or six times for Feather Fall is really small. Heck, I've used hundreds of fireballs per campaign and that spell isn't even very good.

If you found anyone to adopt ToB, then you'd have a lot. Of course, finding anyone willing to use ToB is the hard part.

----------------------

I've been thinking of way to organize Legend actions so that people remember them, and cards won't work. Your hand size is just going to be too big to manage.

[Username17]

Remember that 4e can grind to a halt at mid paragon when every player has access to around two triggered actions and play is interrupted almost once a round by some thing or another. With every player juggling four or more immediate actions and stopping play to determine whether or not to use them or (even worse) asking for take backsies so their triggered actions can go off, I don't even know how combats can finish.

Remember: the more different triggers your abilities have, the more intractable the game is.

-Username17

[Blicero]

If you found anyone to adopt ToB, then you'd have a lot. Of course, finding anyone willing to use ToB is the hard part.

I don't have any stats of this sort at all, but, for example, scanning through general discussion threads and actual pbp games on, say, GitP does show a strong tendency to accept and embrace ToB. Presumably the stats for ToB-use among gamers who never go online (if they still exist...?) is a bit lower, but I suspect your assertion is probably incorrect.

For my anecdotal bits, I ran a few campaigns with ToB with my highschool group. Honestly, even the players who never obtained a good grasp of the rules managed to use Counters and Boosts and shit with a fair amount of efficacy.

I wonder if part of 4E's slowdown problem is that its interrupts are just not that interesting, so players are not compelled to actually take the time to learn them. If you gave them a set of Counters that were actually interesting and useful, I imagine their willingness to learn would be rather higher.

[Prak]

My friend uses ToB for pretty much every character (that I see, of course he only makes a handful of different characters, so...).

But yeah, immediates don't get used much.

[Ice9]

Actually, a lot of late-3.5 stuff has immediate actions.
ToB: Lots.
CM / PHB2: A number of spells, although some sucked.
Tomes: Several, especially in RoW
TGD Community Material: Out of the first 20 classes, 11 had them.

Edit: I decided to actually see how many immediate actions we're talking about here. I picked Barbarian because it was the first class on the list, and 10th level because it was halfway. Very scientific, I know.
* Barbarian 10 gets you two out-of-turn things, although only one is something you have to pick to use (the other is just improved effect from healing).
* Most feats don't give any immediate actions. If you load up on a couple of those that do (let's say True Names and Kensai), that's another three.
* Only two of the items (Burnished Phylactery, Eye of Wrath) even give immediate actions.

Personally, that's not a huge number. You could easily have just the one/two from Barbarian, and the healing one is probably not a big deal if you forget it.
Even with the max - for a PC, where the person playing it has no other characters to keep track of, and have acquired the abilities over time ... not a problem, IME.


Edit 2: On closer inspection ...
However, Journeyman Healer is a fucking terrible feat. Mystic Healer is not too awesome either.
Small crappy bonuses are small and crappy no matter how rare they are. If you're worried about falling off the RNG, make like SWSE and give rerolls instead.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So, the numbers can get pretty divergent. For an example, let's look at Angry McElf (Elf Barbarian Rage/Lucky (Rogue)/whatever).

Angry is 5th level, with a dexterity of 18 and wisdom of 14. His twin brother, Mad McElf, has been showing off a shiny new Blaze Bolter, and Angry gets jealous. While raging, Angry's Larceny bonus jumps to 13. He decides to steal the Bolter, and to 'wing it' (Improv), raising his bonus to 15.

Mad McElf has an Awareness of 17. This means that Angry only fails to steal the Bolter on a roll of one.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that Angry does roll a 1. Mad discovers the treacherous attempt, and gets mad. The argument escalates, and Mad decides that the situation warrants 'winging it'. He does the first thing that pops into his head: he shoots his brother with the Bolter (not a great idea at point-blank...).

With an attack bonus of +18, Mad will only miss his brother's AC of 20 on a roll of one. That said, he won't kill Angry (or himself) this round, even with power attacking.

---

As expected, this problem mostly just gets worse as levels go up.

---

Bugs

[*]Intimidating in combat does not have a DC.
[*]"Guardian" weapon quality seems redundant and inconsistantly appiled.
[*]Needs a better description of how skill bonuses work. As written, you start out with a "bonus" equal to your level and then add one "rank" whenever you level up. I realize that these are supposed to be the same thing, but consistant language would be helpful.
[*]Can't find any real rules for mounts and mounted combat.

---

That said, the game is looking pretty good, and the beta stage (or whatever it's at) is a good time to get all of these bugs out. I'm in agreement with others that it could use a more consistency (see save bonus progression Vs save DC progression Vs Awareness progression Vs BAB/AC progression), but for a d20 game it's pretty solid.

[Seerow]

Is it possible to get that kind of variance without the dex based rage? Because rage adding bonuses to hit and skills is what seems to throw that out of whack with the RNG (giving a +7 bonus in his favor, in a system where bonuses are rare and +2-4 is a pretty major one).

Given as far as I can tell, strength doesn't actually increase what you can lift/carry (I haven't seen rules on it anywhere, and never got an answer when I asked in the GitP thread, despite Doc Roc and others posting since), so the only benefit to making it +str/dex instead of +damage is the bonus hit, and the bonus to skills (primarily the bonus move speed to athletics)

So why not have rage be +damage as if they power attacked off the full +7 attack bonus (so something like +4 damage per hit per Rage Circle possessed), and a +5/10ft movement speed bonus while raging mixed in somewhere. So you get the same intended benefit without screwing the RNG all over the place.

[K]

Actually, a lot of late-3.5 stuff has immediate actions.
ToB: Lots.
CM / PHB2: A number of spells, although some sucked.
Tomes: Several, especially in RoW
TGD Community Material: Out of the first 20 classes, 11 had them.

Edit: I decided to actually see how many immediate actions we're talking about here. I picked Barbarian because it was the first class on the list, and 10th level because it was halfway. Very scientific, I know.
* Barbarian 10 gets you two out-of-turn things, although only one is something you have to pick to use (the other is just improved effect from healing).
* Most feats don't give any immediate actions. If you load up on a couple of those that do (let's say True Names and Kensai), that's another three.
* Only two of the items (Burnished Phylactery, Eye of Wrath) even give immediate actions.

Personally, that's not a huge number. You could easily have just the one/two from Barbarian, and the healing one is probably not a big deal if you forget it.
Even with the max - for a PC, where the person playing it has no other characters to keep track of, and have acquired the abilities over time ... not a problem, IME.

Barbarian 10 has three Swifts and three non-actions that can take place other's turn (Disruptive Presence, Lesser Resilience, and Hard to Break). Since he's going full buy-in because he's not a moron, he could pick something incredibly fiddly like Virtue: The Seven Circles of Renewal.

They also get four feats and a bonus one for race.

Add in a feat like Kensai and now you are adding an immediate and keeping track of a Focus pool. Toss in something like My Name is War where you get another immediate and the need to track enemy and ally Circle use, a feat like Wake that is a non-action that take takes place twice a round, Baptized in Rage for an immediate three times a day, and a bonus feat like Livers Need not Apply for yet another resource track and a substitution move action and......suddenly the turn is pretty complicated.

Final tally for this sample 10th level Barbarian: four swifts, three immediates, potentially eight unique and separate non-actions that might trigger several times for some (and a cumulative extra non-action you will be taking each turn of combat), and four separate and extra resource pools to track (focus, drinks, fonts, Circles used) on top of various limits (per day, per encounter, per round) and durations (rage, font).

My point is that this is a lot to fiddle with. I'd literally be unable to play if you knocked over my character sheet and suddenly I couldn't keep all the tokens I'd be using to track this stuff. I can't even imagine what 4-6 players and monsters built as players would look like if you tried to break the action economy (as it is too easy to do) and started doing things like opposed skill checks during move actions or finding other ways to do more per round.

Sure, I could make a less complicated character by picking worse feats and keeping the crap magic item track, but isn't the need to self-nerf to make a playable character enough of a complaint about a system?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Full buy-in is probably not a great idea, but if you do take Virtue, your swift and immediate actions are going to be mostly spoken for.

Rage on your first turn. That's one swift action, and not one that needs debating. Raging includes a special Intimidation attempt, but that just goes off automatically. Because you went full buy-in, you don't get another swift action. You could take some kind of immediate action, but your going to save it for next turn.

On the second turn, you place a font. That's your only swift action.

On the third turn, you place another font or drink a drink, and get your first arc. It goes on like this for the next four rounds. Then, finally, you might decide to Cleave.

All in all, there's not much choice involved, and it doesn't devolve into the sort of 'analysis paralysis quagmire' that you've been ranting about.

Now, if you had kept you item track and traded out Path of the Ancestors for Virtue, you'd be able to use a True Symbol and get those fonts out much faster. And then all the actions might become an issue -- but you wouldn't have as many swift/immediate/free actions to worry about.

[Blicero]

I can't even imagine what 4-6 players and monsters

The monsters bit is probably the only legitimately problematic issue you've brought up. I suspect that, especially if games start at lowish levels as players are getting used to a system (which they presumably will), then option paralysis will not be unbearable. Like Catharz said, there's probably going to be oftentimes a clearish order of precedence amongst such actions. And starting at low levels will allow players to learn the ropes and slowly expand. (Now, if you attempt to make a character with as many different resource pools and options available as possible, you will in fact end up with a character who has a shittonne of different resourcepools and options.

But monsters prevent a way more troubling issue. If the majority of monsters (even the ones in the actual bestiary) are built like PCs, then MCs having to consistently and simultaneously micromanage rotating rosters of what are essentially PC-complexity monsters, then that might actually make Legend close to unplayable. Ideally the bestiary will not do that, though.

And (also assuming that the magic item rules eventually come out to be something comprehensible) full buy in does seem to leave characters several points behind on the RNG. Which could present serious problems. That also depends on the common range of defenses for monsters.

[JesterZero]

But monsters prevent a way more troubling issue. If the majority of monsters (even the ones in the actual bestiary) are built like PCs, then MCs having to consistently and simultaneously micromanage rotating rosters of what are essentially PC-complexity monsters, then that might actually make Legend close to unplayable. Ideally the bestiary will not do that, though.

I have a feeling that the Utter Brute track is more along the lines of how they intend to handle monster tracks. It seems to have been written with that in mind, given that the 2nd and 7th circle abilities are useful against PC's than for PC's.

If not...oy. That would be bad.