Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[TiaC]

The fact that you think 3.0 DR is superior seriously undermines your credibility.

Also, 3.0 Haste was a terrible thing for the game.

[zugschef]

The fact that you think 3.0 DR is superior seriously undermines your credibility.

Also, 3.0 Haste was a terrible thing for the game.

Haste is a terrible thing for the game.

[fectin]

New and disturbingly related question: what advice do you give someone who has been running 2E for decades, and is now about to start running 3E (maybe 3.5? It's not clear)?

[ishy]

The fact that you think 3.0 DR is superior seriously undermines your credibility.

Also, 3.0 Haste was a terrible thing for the game.

What is wrong with it?

[RadiantPhoenix]

The fact that you think 3.0 DR is superior seriously undermines your credibility.

Also, 3.0 Haste was a terrible thing for the game.

What is wrong with it?

I think the consensus among people who think there's something wrong with it is, "it lets casters cast two spells/round"

[Kaelik]

Also, 3.0 Haste was a terrible thing for the game.

What is wrong with it?

I think the consensus among people who think there's something wrong with it is, "it lets casters cast two spells/round"

But he is claiming that 3.5 haste is also a problem for the game. So that can't be it.

[zugschef]

But he is claiming that 3.5 haste is also a problem for the game. So that can't be it.

No that was me, not TiaC. I was exaggerating, but haste is just another boring, mechanical spell.

[Username17]

The fact that you think 3.0 DR is superior seriously undermines your credibility.

Also, 3.0 Haste was a terrible thing for the game.

Both of these positions are bullshit. Haste is somewhat problematic for a couple of levels running from about 8th to 10th when Wizards have enough spell slots that spending a 3rd level spell slot on the first round of combat in order to be able to spend and cast an extra spell on the second and third round of combat is actually worthwhile and Mass Haste hasn't come online yet. But even that disparity goes away when you use Defenders of the Faith and everyone who wears armor has easy access to Haste Armor in the same level range.

3.5 Damage Reduction is cooler conceptually, in that actually needing silver to hurt werewolves is extremely thematic, while simply having a big magic sword that cuts through everything and gives zero fucks about any DR on anything is not. But let's be honest here: 3.5 DR is a huge nerf to fighters. And if the last 13 years of playing D&D and designing games has told us anything, it's that Fighters don't need to be nerfed. In 3e, having a +3 Weapon let you ignore all the DR on pre-epic enemies. In 3.5, you're expected to have a Good Aligned Cold Iron Bludgeoning weapon, and if you don't you have 10 points or more pulled off the top of all your damage tallies.

3e DR and Haste had obvious problems, but 3.5 didn't actually make those problems any better.

-Username17

[zugschef]

What if you used 3.0 DR and 3.5's types gave a damage bonus? So a werewolf has DR, say, 10/+2, and if you happen to wield a silver weapon, you deal an additional, say, 2d6 points of damage.

[RobbyPants]

New and disturbingly related question: what advice do you give someone who has been running 2E for decades, and is now about to start running 3E (maybe 3.5? It's not clear)?

Read all of the rules. So much has changed between 2E and 3.5. Starting with 3.0 might be easier, because a lot of those changes were incremental, and 3.0 still has a lot of remaining bits of 2E in it.

Monsters have more HP. Blasting spells and weapons don't work as effectively as they used to.

[Username17]

What if you used 3.0 DR and 3.5's types gave a damage bonus? So a werewolf has DR, say, 10/+2, and if you happen to wield a silver weapon, you deal an additional, say, 2d6 points of damage.

That would be terrible. The basic issue is that 3.5 Damage Reduction is cooler. It's conceptually superior. If you were making a new game, you'd build on 3.5 DR and not 3e DR. The issue is that 3e had actual playtesters and 3.5 didn't, so even though the concepts behind 3e DR are dumb in comparison to 3.5's DR, the math works better.

If you were going to do some kind of math fix, you'd build on 3.5 DR.

-Username17

[ishy]

Problem with 3.5 DR is that it promotes a golf club of weapons, but as soon as Masterwork weapons are no longer viable, it really doesn't work well with wealth by level.

[Hicks]

New and disturbingly related question: what advice do you give someone who has been running 2E for decades, and is now about to start running 3E (maybe 3.5? It's not clear)?

The biggest difference is HP inflation: monsters and PCs have moar HP because of the constitution modifiers gets so large it overshadow HD. Without trying, a mage could have a Con score of (14 base + 6 item + 5 inherent) 25, who's +7 bonus completely overshadows the d4 hit die. Fuck, it overshadows a barbarian's d12 hit die.

The lesson is thus: Direct Damage that is not power attack or sneak attack based crys itself to sleep every night. Evocation just sucks. Magic missile, fireball, meteor swarm, every direct damage spell out of the box sucks. This does not mean that you can't voltron together multiple spells to do direct damage in ways that you care about (telekinesis + shrink item + colossal (element) flasks + greater magic weapon is good for ~765 acid and twice that in fire damage, no Spell resistance, as long as you make 15 very easy touch attacks; dispel magic on a book filled with explosive runes is good for 600d6 damage), just that single spells no longer cut it and you need to prepare. All the Power Word spells are now a legacy joke, by the time you can cast Power Word: Kill, every enemy, even yourself as a wizard has more than 150 hp, often at least twice that.

Most people don't bother, and just cast Save or Lose, Save or Die, or No Save Just Die Spells.

[Kaelik]

3.5 Damage Reduction is cooler conceptually, in that actually needing silver to hurt werewolves is extremely thematic, while simply having a big magic sword that cuts through everything and gives zero fucks about any DR on anything is not. But let's be honest here: 3.5 DR is a huge nerf to fighters. And if the last 13 years of playing D&D and designing games has told us anything, it's that Fighters don't need to be nerfed. In 3e, having a +3 Weapon let you ignore all the DR on pre-epic enemies. In 3.5, you're expected to have a Good Aligned Cold Iron Bludgeoning weapon, and if you don't you have 10 points or more pulled off the top of all your damage tallies.

3e DR and Haste had obvious problems, but 3.5 didn't actually make those problems any better.

-Username17

Well then in that case, all the rules are terrible to both editions because they nerf commoners. Commoners just cannot compete as level appropriate entities, so all the rules that nerf commoners, BAB, spells only being cast by spellcasters, Spellbooks not casting spells for Commoners, ect, are all bad rules.

No Frank, 3.5 DR is better because it isn't an arbitrary "you must be this tall" test. It doesn't matter that it nerfs fighters, because fighters are not real characters. What it does is it makes certain kinds of real characters better against certain enemies, IE, chargers over Rogues against some monsters. In that respect, it is just like energy resistances or mind affecting immunity, in that it makes some types of attacks better, and creates variations.

Now it is also bypassable so that if the someone really needs to, they can avoid certain kinds of DR. DR is not the best system, it has problems, but anyone who claims that 3e DR is better is full of shit. The ideal situation for 3e DR from a game mechanics point of view is that it never comes up and you just have wasted space on the page. Any slight improvement to the game at all is better than that, in fact, no improvement and just keeping the game neutral is better than that. And if 3e ever actually makes any difference in play at all as opposed to just wasting page space:

1) It nerfs Fighters even harder.
2) It is insulting to the game.

But he is claiming that 3.5 haste is also a problem for the game. So that can't be it.

No that was me, not TiaC. I was exaggerating, but haste is just another boring, mechanical spell.

I know who said what. I was saying that TiaC's explanation couldn't be what you meant, because you were saying it about 3.5 Haste. I certainly wasn't telling TiaC that his explanation didn't cover what he meant, because I would have been insulting him somewhere if that had been the case.

[Hicks]

On DR: the easy way to fix that is to combine them by saying " DR 20/+3 or Silver" or Iron, or Adamantine, or Wood , or Stone. Seriously, fixes The problem of the golf bag and let's armies and lower level adventurers do shit to outsiders and werewolves.

[ishy]

colossal (element) flasks

Can you even make bigger sized flasks?
Thought they were 1 size only. Can you make bigger healing potions etc as well then?

[virgil]

colossal (element) flasks

Can you even make bigger sized flasks?
Thought they were 1 size only. Can you make bigger healing potions etc as well then?

Say you want to fill a barrel with over 4,000 flasks of acid, then throw it at a fool. What happens? RaW, you do over four thousand damage because it's all splash, which is stupid and nobody's happy. Instead, you treat it as a single flask that has been scaled like the weapons in D&D. A flask scaled four size categories has 4096 times the volume of a normal flask, and would therefore be something proportionally thrown by a colossal character. Now when you brew a fifty gallon drum's worth of acid, cast shrink item on it, then throw it; you're only doing 4d6 acid damage (1d6 splash) and it's just another quiver in your arsenal rather than a game-breaking hack.

[hyzmarca]

Well then in that case, all the rules are terrible to both editions because they nerf commoners. Commoners just cannot compete as level appropriate entities, so all the rules that nerf commoners, BAB, spells only being cast by spellcasters, Spellbooks not casting spells for Commoners, ect, are all bad rules.

I agree completely. 3.5 would be much better balanced if level-appropriate spellcasting was accessible to everyone and your class only determined the flavor of your basic spells.

[Kaelik]

On DR: the easy way to fix that is to combine them by saying " DR 20/+3 or Silver" or Iron, or Adamantine, or Wood , or Stone. Seriously, fixes The problem of the golf bag and let's armies and lower level adventurers do shit to outsiders and werewolves.

Why not just remove DR entirely? If your actual goal is for all the PCs to ignore all the DR from everything, just fucking get rid of it. It isn't like PCs can even get meaningful DR except by broken polymorph shit anyway.

If DR is never going to change the strategy of the PCs, and is never going to differentiate which PC is best off fighting which enemy, then what the fuck is it even doing? Giving a fuck you to people who try to fight monsters 5 CR higher than them? We have that already, it is called death.

[Koumei]

I think it's stupid when they stack too many types together ("Good-Aligned Cold Iron Bashing Weapons") or when they introduce new stupid types ("Weapons forged in the future"), but actually splitting it into different types rather than "Hahaha you idiot, you have a +2 Keen weapon, not a +3 weapon, fuck you" is better. And it promotes a bit of variety, because if not for material-based DR, everyone either goes for the cheapest material available (normal steel) or for something that gives some variety of regular advantage ("smashes stone walls" or "steals souls").

Now, whether the "chip five or, in extremis, ten points off if you don't make the cut" or "DR 50/whatever, hope you did the right thing!" option is better, I leave up to actual playtesting and math-checking. And maybe energy/spell damage also should go fuck itself ("your fireball is not silver fire, the werewolf reduces the damage by ten").

[Avoraciopoctules]

On DR: the easy way to fix that is to combine them by saying " DR 20/+3 or Silver" or Iron, or Adamantine, or Wood , or Stone. Seriously, fixes The problem of the golf bag and let's armies and lower level adventurers do shit to outsiders and werewolves.

Pathfinder does this to an extent. A +5 weapon ignores DR/silver, DR/cold iron, DR/adamantine, and DR/alignment. My group generally forgets about that in play, but it could trivialize most DR at higher levels since GMW basically counters everything but physical damage type DR.

[Koumei]

A question only slightly related to the DR thing: how often do players know what they'll be facing ahead of time, and what the traits of those things are? I mean, if you're dealing with something that has DR 10/Natural Weapons that are Chaos Aligned, that seriously requires that the players know this. When it's a werewolf, they can pull the silver out. When they're told "You're going to Werewolfville", they can actually get their weapons alchemically treated ahead of time.

This is also related to a few things Frank has said in regards to how if players know they're too weak for X they can just grind up on Y. I'm assuming this isn't literally "Hey MC, we're going to grind on troglodites for three levels, so keep the next few sessions blank" and is actually more "What? Go slay the Red Dragon King who ignited a continent? I don't think we're ready. Let's tackle some things that are more our size while we prepare."

But there have been enough games where it's "There is a big castle waiting to be ransacked" and "surprise, you knew there'd be a boss fight, its the Red Dragon King, in hiding".

It just seems that for some groups, there's a lot of knowledge of things before things occur. Is that really the standard? I don't just pull stuff out my ass as MC, but players tend to wander ahead (or decide "We're going _____, prepare some stuff that's over there for next session!") without worrying about researching the details for my games. And I acknowledge that might be because I tend to lowball encounters, with only three PC casualties so far over my entire "career".

[codeGlaze]

I tend to prep the players with shit. They know they're going to an area where X is a recognized threat.

They may not know EXACTLY what to expect, but they at least have a few bases covered. *shrug*

[Avoraciopoctules]

I'm trying to balance character ability sets for a Megaman-themed... hack of Old School Hack. Thing is, one player wants to be a more or less straightforward battleship-themed brawler and the other wants someone who can throw out both solid and nonsolid illusions. Needless to say, the balancing here could be a bit tricky. How do these ability sets compare?

Copy X
= Inherent: ____
= Weakness (Placeholder): _____

- Mega Buster: Built into your arms, this weapon does not count against your encumbrance and cannot be disarmed or lost. You fire orbs of plasma as a Ranged weapon that never runs out of ammunition.
- Charged Buster: Your Mega Buster can be charged with additional energy before firing, which lets you release a much more damaging projectile if you aren't interrupted. The attack is a Focused action, but deals 3 points of damage if it hits.
- Dash: Every other round you may activate accelerators in your legs to zoom a short distance at high speeds. This lets you take a free Move action without counting against your limit of one action per round. You can dash through the air, but will fall normally if you do not finish your move someplace that can support your weight.
- Wall Climber: Your feet have use a combination of magnetic force and suction to let you run up or along walls. This can allow you to access otherwise unreachable areas, but you cannot stay attached to a wall without moving.
- Subtank (rested): Your body contains a reserve battery that can be tapped to provide a sudden surge of power to your autorepair systems. As a Focused action, you may recover 5 hit points. This may be done once, refreshing after you rest.
- Power steal (rested): After succeeding in a melee attack on another reploid, you may test your Cunning or Daring against their Commitment. If you succeed, you may temporarily steal access to one of the non-Rested Traits you have witnessed them using. This prevents them from actively using it, but you can only steal one power before needing to rest to refresh this ability. The power theft wears off in about an hour.


Bismarck
= Inherent: Amphibious, you are not penalized by moving or fighting underwater. You may run along the bottom of flooded areas like most reploids, but can also alter your buoiancy so you float up to the surface and can swim around.
= Weakness (Ice): Your armor is designed to fracture when exposed to extreme cold. Cold or ice-based attacks deal an additional point of damage to you and also reduce your armor class by 1, to a minimum of unarmored. You still gain the standard bonus Awesome points for fighting unarmored if your armor has been so totally depleted, but you'll need the services of a trained technician to repair fractured armor between missions.

- Steely Fists: Your hands count as Heavy weapons that are impossible to disarm and don't count against your encumbrance.
- Sweeping Strike: A variant dash system in your arms lets you make quick swings that cover a wide area. When you fight in melee, you may attack 2 things in your arena instead of just one.
- Ironclad: You have an additional 3 hit points, for a total of 8 instead of the normal 5.
- Depth Charge Launcher: You have a specialized mortar cannon on your back that allows you to fire grenades 2 arenas out rather than just 1. You can also set the bombs to detonate later than they would otherwise, up to 5 minutes added onto the default grenade timer. You can calculate the timing necessary to get a falling bomb to detonate at a particular depth.
- Cruise Cannon (Rested): A shoulder mounted turret holds explosive shells that can effectively hit targets beyond the range of plasma weaponry. This is a Ranged weapon that doesn't count against encumbrance and can target enemies 2 arenas out rather than just 1. It has enough ammunition for 8 shots, but reloading is a delicate procedure, and your ammo only refreshes to full when you rest.
- Sonar Pulse (Rested, Focused): As a Focused action, you can emanate waves of sound that bounce through the environment and give you a clear picture of where all the solid objects are laid out. This can counter cloaking systems, bypass cloud cover, and reveal hiding spots, giving you a +4 bonus on most rolls that involve searching an area. In combat, the sonar gives you a +2 bonus to hit so long as you stay in the Arena where you activated the ability. The effect wears off when you leave the arena/immediate area, or in around an hour if you linger.


Lumen
= Inherent: An infiltrator by design, you may pass for human when not using your special abilities. You can wear human clothes, and can even change the color of your eyes and hair with a few moments of concentration.
= Weakness (Fire): Chaotic thermal radiation passes right through your holograms, permanently disrupting them. Whether solid or not, you can't produce or sustain your light-based abilities somewhere that is on fire. Finally, you take an additional point of damage from fire based attacks and hazards. If you lose over half your hitpoints from fire damage, you lose access to one of your traits for the duration of the mission, but get an automatic 2 Awesome Points for every subsequent battle you survive participating in.

- Phantasm (Focused): You may produce a nonsolid illusion depicting an object at most 3 cubic meters larger. You may only have one at a time, and someone inside the image can see through it without difficulty. If it is used to produce cover to hide in during combat, the masked character's AC improves by 2.
- Mirror Image (Focused): In a flash of light, you seem to split into 2 copies of yourself. One is actually a semisolid hologram under your control. Treat it as a Minion without a ranged weapon. This ability is a Focused action, you can only have one in existance at a time, and it fades away if moved more than two arenas from you.
- Holographic Shield: Every round, if you have a free hand you create a Light Shield (made out of hard light, but also mechanically it's a Light Shield) if you do not already have one. With a Daring test, you might be able to manifest the shield as a convenient platform to momentarily arrest a fall or "double jump" in midair.
- Grand Mirage (Rested, Focused): Flaring with energy, you manifest one of your built-in training holograms over the arena you are in or an adjacent one. This can change the arena's type to anything but Open, create solid bridges over gaps, and make nondamaging obstacles to moving from one arena to another. Safety regulations prevent the holograms from directly causing harm.
- Flash Stopper (Rested, Focused): This ability produces wild flashes of intense light and communication static that disrupt the function of mechaniloids and potentially distract full reploids. All mechaniloids in your arena lose their next turn, and reploids must make a DL 12 Commitment test or take a -2 penalty to their next action.
- Servitor Holograms (Rested, Focused): You may summon a pair of translucent reploid holograms to fight for you. These function as Guards who cannot use Heavy weapons or armor and disappear if they leave your arena.

[Roog]

Pathfinder does this to an extent. A +5 weapon ignores DR/silver, DR/cold iron, DR/adamantine, and DR/alignment. My group generally forgets about that in play, but it could trivialize most DR at higher levels since GMW basically counters everything but physical damage type DR.

Pathfinder also added a clause to GMW specifically to say that that doesn't work.