Design philosophies that make you rage?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 10:50 pm

RC2: Yes, to be fair, it is arbitrary. But in a world where fireballs start shit on fire and melt coins, it's pretty damn hot.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:01 pm

Because not everyone's character concept is do the most fucking damage.

Hey, look guys, Psychic Robot just ROLEplay not ROLLplay'd both me and his entire goddamn gaming system.

Why should we listen to his input on anything?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:02 pm

Lawl @ ad hominem. "My character is a sword-fighter. NO, HE NEEDS TO USE MAGIC BECAUSE HE WANTS TO DO DAMAGE." If you're only playing with numbers, you're retarded and you should be playing a wargame.

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:07 pm

Is it just me or does the Den have an awful lot of flaming and flame wars lately? This one is especially ironic because it is about flames.

PR, Frank has noted that most armies do not, in fact, use fire. This is true even in the middle ages (and when Greek Fire was around). In the middle Ages, if you wanted to destroy the people in a city, you rode through their city on horseback and cut throats until there weren't any more people. In general, if you firebombed it with malatov catapults then people would escape (many unscathed).

Yes, you are right. There are a number of Flamethrower vs. Knife situations that we can come up with. The truth is that malatov cocktails have existed for a very long period of time. As has oil. These options for face-to-face combat have been avoided by all major military powers in favor of the popular tactics of the day, be they arrows, sabers and horseback, slings, or polearms. Many people hit with a malatov cocktail or otherwise set on fire do not die. Many people stabbed with a rapier die.

This does not say that fire does not have it's place in history and in the modern military. Fire is a crowd control tactic. If the enemy is in cramped quarters (boat, surrounded town/house, castle interior), and you don't care about territory damage, and the wind is in your favor, then fire is a very effective option.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:09 pm

PR wrote:If you want to rape verisimilitude so that fire sucks nuts in comparison to swinging a club, go right ahead. I'm sorry that flamethrowers in the Middle Ages automatically win, but that's just how it fucking is.

Want me to call you a Waambulance?

Because they actually fucking had flamethrowers in the middle ages, and people used swords instead for a variety of reasons. Flamethrowers were expensive to run, dangerous to operate, and while they were terrifying they did not actually outperform stabbing people in the face with sharp metal in the key metric of actually killing fools.

Seriously. Look it up. Flame throwers really aren't that great. They have been almost completely abandoned by modern armies and guerrilla units. Not because they are technically unfeasible, but because they simply are not the Spess Marine weapon of automatically winning that you seem to think they are. They are just a super soaker filled with sticky fuel and a pilot light. It's not really that exciting.

-Username17

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:11 pm

STW: Well, since you're willing to have a civil discussion, I'll elaborate. The difference between D&D and actual sources of fire damage in history is that wizards can basically use auto-aim with their spells. In a case where your fire weapons are inaccurate and not hot enough to melt coins in an instant, then, yes, other weapons would be far more effective. However, in D&D land, where you can accurately create tremendous bursts of fire that are clearly very hot (for fire), a fireball will win out. The trade-off is that characters can only do it a few times per day.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:25 pm

Psychic Robot wrote:Lawl @ ad hominem. "My character is a sword-fighter. NO, HE NEEDS TO USE MAGIC BECAUSE HE WANTS TO DO DAMAGE." If you're only playing with numbers, you're retarded and you should be playing a wargame.

I just got ROLEplayed not ROLLplayed a second time. This can't be right, considering how he sympathsized with me in that thread over In The Trenches.

Look, younger sibling of Psychic Robot who has somehow hijacked his account, you seem like a nice enough kid so I'll go really slowly for you.

1) A roleplaying game is a Wargame that you play Magic Tea Party on. If you're designing a roleplaying game from the ground up, you should work on the Wargame aspect first. Otherwise when the Wargame and ROLEplay portions of the game clash you might not get the conclusion you want.

2) No one likes the idea of magic being generically superior to nonmagic in a world where having 'magic' and 'nonmagic' characters are supposed to have equal spotlight. That's a trope pushed almost exclusively by D&D and its derivative works. And you know what? Since this is a D&D-pushed trope, WE CAN CHANGE IT.

3) This is a cooperative storytelling game. Everyone's contributions should ideally be equal. If you don't, then you'll have people at the table resenting the others for not pulling their weight/stealing the spotlight depending on what side of the equation you're on.

4) Explicitly making one archetype of character superior to the other sends the message of 'your character is bad and you should be punished'. This is not strictly a bad thing, mind you. When done correctly, it can correctly reienforce genre conventions like 'everyone should wear pants' or 'human beings should have to worry about food, water, and sleep' or even more narrow ones like 'characters who use their bow to fight in melee combat get their asses kick'.

However, heroic fantasy supports the idea of sworded characters fighting alongside wizards and contributing equally. If you're going to have both in your game then you should have them contributing equally, otherwise you'll get problem 3. If you don't want them to be equal then you should either allow a team of only swordsmen or only wizards.

The shit in Exalted where Solar Exalts are supposed to adventure alongside Dragonborn and Lunars and Sidereals is fucking stupid and I would really wish you wouldn't try to replicate that in D&D. I especially would hope you wouldn't try to gloss over the fact that Dragonborn are weaker than Solar with 'well, some people want to play a Dragonborn!'

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Mar 13, 2009 11:31 pm

PR wrote:Lawl @ ad hominem. "My character is a sword-fighter. NO, HE NEEDS TO USE MAGIC BECAUSE HE WANTS TO DO DAMAGE." If you're only playing with numbers, you're retarded and you should be playing a wargame.

Actually, you know what? Stop the fucking presses. THIS design philosophy makes me rage the most, more than anything on the thread.

The desire to punish unwitting players in your game because they don't dance to your tune. Telling them 'you know what? It's only 2d6 damage. Grow up, you big baby'. This attitude is exactly what completely fucking ruined any hope of balancing 3E.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:23 am

"Story? Fluff? Oh, um, we'll tack those on after balancing it. No one really cares about those, right?"

As for balancing warriors and wizards, I'll put it this way.

I can live with the wizard overshadowing my fighter some of the time.

Hell, I can live with him making a horde tremble before him when I'm unable to deal effectively with that.

However, there has to be something that makes me being able to stab fools in the face worth it - it may be worth it less often, but if a fighter is made just plain redundant - the game fucking sucks.

If there is NEVER a time to whip out a sword, then I'm basically there to be the wizard's bitch. And if I really want to play that, I'll play a goddamn commoner, who at least has a marginally more interesting skill set last time I checked.

So yeah. A game doesn't have to make wizards and warriors perfectly even, but if my skills offer nothing and/or his solve everything, something is wrong.

Better to be 45-55 than 50-50 from being identical or even better to be 40-60 than 50-50 identical and boring or who-cares-because-he-can-do-my-damn-schtick's-function.

Seconding Lago on the unwitting - if something is an inferior option, say that very loudly and very often. Making someone think something is equal when it isn't is cruel and petty and lazy.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:26 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:1) A roleplaying game is a Wargame that you play Magic Tea Party on. If you're designing a roleplaying game from the ground up, you should work on the Wargame aspect first. Otherwise when the Wargame and ROLEplay portions of the game clash you might not get the conclusion you want.

This is true for D&D and many of its close cousins, but not for any number of other RPGs. Seriously, Hero's Banner has exactly zero wargame in it, and it's not alone.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:42 am

I was thinking that it could be interesting to have magic only able to affect things a certain distance away from you. So, you can create really hot fire but it only goes a couple of metres away, far enough away that someone can rush you with a knife and have a decent chance of hitting you. As well as that, magic requires relatively large gestures which can be used to predict what is going to happen, so that you can dodge, block and fight with someone using magic. In effect, magic is another weapon that is roughly as effective but can also be used to solve various problems.

Magic could then be used to change stuff, create small objects that disappear at a range and affect the caster or one individual. The benefits of magic are that you can vary the type of damage, you can do things like create holes, remove doors, fly for short periods, create forcefields and so on. However spells don't last much longer than concentration and a caster can only really have one spell up at a time so an archer will hurt them unless they have a forcefield up.

Non-casters would instead have more skills, especially survival, diplomacy and movement. Their weapons will kill faster and they can do various save or dies.

So, a small group could have one caster holding a forcefield occasionally dropping it to cast a spell when needed, an archer moving in and out of the forcefield shooting at targets of opportunity, a couple of melee and casters in close combat and a rogue sneaking around the back to try and take out opposing casters to remove their shields.

Another group might be all casters, all moving into melee and using spells that synergise to focus fire, pushing the enemy backwards.

Another might be mostly archers, putting enough arrows into the enemy shield to temporarily remove it, taking down targets while a melee guy stops the enemy from getting to the archers.

As a pretty high level view, how does something like this sound for a magic/non-magic dichotomy? Magic as a weapon is slightly weaker than a sword and about the same range but can be used in more circumstances and is often more defensive.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:43 am

Okay, please let cooler heads tell me if I'm wrong here, I'm on edge as a result of recent goings-on here.

But I think PR has more or less exhausted the benefit of the doubt he may once have deserved.

He came here, crowing over his little engagements with the forces of "PAIZIL FAIL" and "4etards." He posted all his little disputes as though they were triumphs, when a click-through frequently revealed levels of douche and fail in his own posts easily on par with his adversaries.

Remember that, because by PR's own standards we have no reason to listen to him. He *is* one of the Paizils. We met him on the Pathfinder board and he proceeded to follow us home, then go to great lengths to sabotage our already shaky reputation in the gaming community.

I don't want to be prejudiced against him because of his origin, but he hasn't shown any sign that he *understands* what's wrong with their design philosophy; or, for that matter, what's wrong with 4E. Apparently his problem is that it sucks the Fighter's cock instead of the wizard's.

I don't recall PR ever contributing to any of our ongoing projects, so I'm starting to think it's time for another ignore campaign. You tell me, PR: why should we listen to you?

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:05 am

As someone who has had PR agree with them, or had PR think he (PR) agreed with them...

I'm going to second Boolean's post.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:52 am

Nobody has ever been banned from TGDMB. Right now PR is making an ass of himself, but that doesn't mean that you have to go criticizing him as 'not a true Denner'. If you don't think this is just a short lived phase, ignore him.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:03 am

I hope that he at least is a useful Denner, because I can't tell whether or not taking him seriously is even his intent or not.

Exagerating to make a point is one thing. This is just...well, I'd like to say PL is distorting his position, but I can't even tell what that position was supposed to be with certainty.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:24 am

Elennsar wrote:I'd like to say PL is distorting his position

I'd like to as well, because that would be fucking awesome since I made like one post on this thread two or three pages back that had almost nothing to do with the current conversation.

It would be like having super forum mind control powers.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:42 am

PhoneLobster wrote:It would be like having super forum mind control powers.

Must... buy... pizza... for... Phonelobster... must... play... capsulemonsters...

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:49 pm

Just to say that I barely contribute anything to this forum beyond mild critique of a class or feat for F&K every once in a while. I have no idea how New Edition works.

However, there has been a significant amount of flaming here lately, and that is distasteful. I'm not a big fan of E, but he seems to have had the point beaten into him, and that spat seems to be over.

The Den cannot ban anyone and maintain a reputation. The Den is already quasi-elitist, and banning people enforces that. I really, really, really, don't want to see the Den ban anyone.

PR, fire is as powerful as the rules say it is. The idea is that the rules should say "it is a comparable option to doing <something else> with <other class>". Throwing a fireball should be about the same as performing a level 5-6 melee maneuver that targets multiple opponents.

As far as "how can it not be better than stabbing" goes, I have had my pants catch on fire before. I have also sprained my ankle. One of these took me out of combat for a round, one of them took me out of combat. Fire is a slow-use weapon. The fact that the fire is hot enough to melt gold for an instant is irrelevant, because that this means it is going to catch you on fire (which does not burn hot enough to melt gold). There is no reason, mechanically speaking, to state that fire is better than swords in every situation.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:09 am

FrankTrollman wrote:Flamethrowers.

Again, Frank, this is borderline intellectual dishonesty. I'm talking about flamethrowers that aren't hindered by technology. I'm talking about flamethrowers where you point and shoot them, and the only limitations are having a 13 Int. That's it.

If you want to start arguing what I'm arguing, then fine. Otherwise, I'm not wasting my time with this conversation.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I just got ROLEplayed not ROLLplayed a second time. This can't be right, considering how he sympathsized with me in that thread over In The Trenches.

While this doesn't even matter, what I said was:

Why were you accused of such?

Don't read too heavily into my posts. They mean what I say.

1) A roleplaying game is a Wargame that you play Magic Tea Party on. If you're designing a roleplaying game from the ground up, you should work on the Wargame aspect first. Otherwise when the Wargame and ROLEplay portions of the game clash you might not get the conclusion you want.

White Wolf representatives are knocking on your door. They politely disagree with you.

2) No one likes the idea of magic being generically superior to nonmagic in a world where having 'magic' and 'nonmagic' characters are supposed to have equal spotlight. That's a trope pushed almost exclusively by D&D and its derivative works. And you know what? Since this is a D&D-pushed trope, WE CAN CHANGE IT.

If people don't like it, then why is it so popular? Oh, yes, because some people like it. I'm one of those people. You aren't. And yes, it can be changed.

3) This is a cooperative storytelling game. Everyone's contributions should ideally be equal. If you don't, then you'll have people at the table resenting the others for not pulling their weight/stealing the spotlight depending on what side of the equation you're on.

Agreed completely. However, this needs to take into account player sensibilities. If you're running a game of heavy political intrigue and somebody makes a beat-down-the-door-barian, it's going to suck for him, and that's his own fault (assuming the DM explained the type of game upfront).

4) Explicitly making one archetype of character superior to the other sends the message of 'your character is bad and you should be punished'. This is not strictly a bad thing, mind you. When done correctly, it can correctly reienforce genre conventions like 'everyone should wear pants' or 'human beings should have to worry about food, water, and sleep' or even more narrow ones like 'characters who use their bow to fight in melee combat get their asses kick'.

However, heroic fantasy supports the idea of sworded characters fighting alongside wizards and contributing equally. If you're going to have both in your game then you should have them contributing equally, otherwise you'll get problem 3. If you don't want them to be equal then you should either allow a team of only swordsmen or only wizards.

Agreed, again, to some extent. However, wizards being able to cast spells automatically makes them superior in some regards. No matter how much you want to spin it, a fighter doesn't get to fly without some sort of magic (be it through ki, incarnum, psionics, or what-have-you).

The shit in Exalted where Solar Exalts are supposed to adventure alongside Dragonborn and Lunars and Sidereals is fucking stupid and I would really wish you wouldn't try to replicate that in D&D. I especially would hope you wouldn't try to gloss over the fact that Dragonborn are weaker than Solar with 'well, some people want to play a Dragonborn!'

I'm largely unfamiliar with Exalted, so I don't know how much weaker Dragonborn are. However, if someone wants to play a Ghoul in a Vampire game, I'd be okay with that. He's going to be mechanically weaker than the rest of the Wampyres, but he's going to be able to do some things they can't.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:The desire to punish unwitting players in your game because they don't dance to your tune. Telling them 'you know what? It's only 2d6 damage. Grow up, you big baby'. This attitude is exactly what completely fucking ruined any hope of balancing 3E.

Sorry, I don't share this attitude. There's a difference between "the wizard has an advantage over the fighter" and "the wizard can completely destroy the fighter and then do his job without really trying."

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:13 am

The problem, PR, is that there has to be something that the ghoul/fighter/whatever can do that is worth including.

Being able to do something that is vitally important but only comes up 10% of the time would be better than the current situation for the fighter, because even "meatshield" is of extremely limited usefulness.

Also:

Don't read too heavily into my posts. They mean what I say.

Which is...that wizards should have things they do better than fighters and...um, remind me why we have fighters in PR's Ideal Game? I mean, seriously. What do they do?

Suboptimal is one thing. Subpar (in the sense par is actually used in golf) is one thing. "Useless" is another.

And if fire always beats swords, then there has to be something that guys with swords can do that means that guys with fire don't rule the entire world - if, of course, one intends guys with swords to be able to avoid living in such a world.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:15 am

Holy shit, did Elennsar actually post that?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:23 am

Boolean wrote:But I think PR has more or less exhausted the benefit of the doubt he may once have deserved.

He came here, crowing over his little engagements with the forces of "PAIZIL FAIL" and "4etards." He posted all his little disputes as though they were triumphs, when a click-through frequently revealed levels of douche and fail in his own posts easily on par with his adversaries.

Remember that, because by PR's own standards we have no reason to listen to him. He *is* one of the Paizils. We met him on the Pathfinder board and he proceeded to follow us home, then go to great lengths to sabotage our already shaky reputation in the gaming community.

I don't want to be prejudiced against him because of his origin, but he hasn't shown any sign that he *understands* what's wrong with their design philosophy; or, for that matter, what's wrong with 4E. Apparently his problem is that it sucks the Fighter's cock instead of the wizard's.

I don't recall PR ever contributing to any of our ongoing projects, so I'm starting to think it's time for another ignore campaign. You tell me, PR: why should we listen to you?

Allow me to open this by telling you to go fuck yourself. How much fail can you cram into one post? Let's see, I posted on the Paizo boards. True. I met Frank on the Paizo boards. By your halfwit reasoning, Frank is a Paizil. I left the Paizo boards because I was sick on their shit. Frank is the one who already "sabotaged" your reputation with the gaming community. Frank is the one who poisoned the Paizils against the Den, not me. Perhaps I cemented it, but that's like complaining that I drove the final nail in the coffin when Frank had already put in ten others.

Your fucking strawman argument is that I hate 4e because the wizard is too weak. Idiocy. I have repeatedly bemoaned the caster-noncaster imbalance in 3e. My problem with 4e is that it's so obsessed with balance that it's boring. You can't have an animal companion in the Core books because it was deemed too powerful. Why? Economy of actions, oh noes. Same with summoning. Same with necromancy. The game is so mind-numbingly balanced that you can't deviate from your prescribed role (no enchanters, that's too powerful!), or else people like Titanium_Dragon--the people for whom 4e was developed--will throw a fucking fit and say that overland flight is broken.

Maybe I don't want to play a blaster wizard, but I can't do that in 4e because it's broken. Fuck that. Give me slight imbalances with interesting mechanics any day of the weak.

As for why you should listen to me: maybe you shouldn't. We clearly like very different types of games. I'm okay with casters having more powers that non-casters. You're not. Fine. I'm also the one who is getting work done on a D&D overhaul. It might not be what you want to play, and it might not be perfect, but I'm doing something. What have your projects accomplished? Multi-page bitchfests about floating islands vs. hollow worlds. Fuck that.

I'm willing to contribute to projects. Tell me the paradigm you're working in (heroic fantasy with Charles Atlas Superpowers that match spellcasters?), and I'll add my ideas. My paradigm doesn't work like that. It's heroic fantasy with heroes doing heroic things, and the spellcasters come out a bit ahead, but the game doesn't fall apart because of the imbalance.

Now, go guzzle santorum and meditate on this.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:29 am

Elennsar wrote:The problem, PR, is that there has to be something that the ghoul/fighter/whatever can do that is worth including.

Being able to do something that is vitally important but only comes up 10% of the time would be better than the current situation for the fighter, because even "meatshield" is of extremely limited usefulness.

And if people would stop with their strawman characterization of my position, they would realize that I am absolutely in agreement with that. I don't want the fighter to be relegated to glorified packmule.

Which is...that wizards should have things they do better than fighters and...um, remind me why we have fighters in PR's Ideal Game? I mean, seriously. What do they do?

Suboptimal is one thing. Subpar (in the sense par is actually used in golf) is one thing. "Useless" is another.

And if fire always beats swords, then there has to be something that guys with swords can do that means that guys with fire don't rule the entire world - if, of course, one intends guys with swords to be able to avoid living in such a world.

Fighters in PR's ideal game are there because a) not everyone wants to do magic, b) not every player cares about having the most power (no, really, it's true), c) fighters can fight competently and aren't rendered obsolete by the wizard, and d) wizards are frail.

The reason that not everyone wants to use fire is because not everyone can do (or chooses to do) magic. And the reason that flamethrowers don't rule the world is just because of that--fire might beat swords, but when there are far more swords than fire, fire can't beat all of them.

In terms of mechanics, the fighter can beat the shit out of the flamethrower once he gets close enough. Or he can harry the flamethrower with ranged weaponry. And he can survive getting hit by the flamethrower.

Elennsar · Post by **Elennsar** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:33 am

Well, that just exhausted any possibility that I'll ever want PR's help, commentary, advice, or even jokes on...

Anything, really.

And here I was thinking that he had a legitimate point that was being stiffled by bad communication on one or both ends.

If that was a rant, it was a singularly nonproductive rant. If that was intended to be taken seriously, then PR is quite possibly the most obnoxious resident of a site that doesn't generally try very hard to be nonobnoxious.

In plainer English:

Holy fuck PR, do you like us thinking you're a dick or something?

Note: This post is not being edited to take into account the response to my question until the above (the plain English form) is taken into consideration by the responder.

Because by the ever-loving Emperor, that was quite possibly the best way to say "Reading what I have to say is pointless, and I am doing it that way on purpose." I have ever had the displeasure of reading.

violence in the media · Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:42 am

You have got to be kidding.