Still more Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[ubernoob]

Fucking +10 INTERNETS FOR YOU

That's like Kids In The Hall quality right there.

Pics?

It only happened like three hours ago. If I turn up in the newspaper then I'll get an image up somehow of it. If you were just wondering what sort of guy I look like then look here and here. No, I was not wearing any of my hats at the time.

[JonSetanta]

I have a better idea of the scene now.

Still, be careful about puting pictures of yourself on the interbutts.
You'll never know who's going to shoop them for /b/.

[ubernoob]

I have a better idea of the scene now.

Still, be careful about puting pictures of yourself on the interbutts.
You'll never know who's going to shoop them for /b/.

Point taken.

[K]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dued/20080911

Oh WotC. Why do you fail so hard, and so often?

They still don't get that Pun Pun is not a brilliant player min-max, but a product of a DM and exactly the same as giving a 1st level fighter an artifact.

[Koumei]

I notice that when he said "What are we to do?" he said "Ask the experienced players to handicap themselves? Put them in experienced-only groups?" as a way of showing that it's really a problem of 3E that players can learn the rules and make powerful things, that power was stolen from the DM, and that 4E fixes it.

But he didn't say "Tell the inexperienced to read the fucking books and learn the rules."

Seriously, it's not even that hard.

[RandomCasualty2]

But he didn't say "Tell the inexperienced to read the fucking books and learn the rules."

Seriously, it's not even that hard.

Actually for a lot of players it is.

I've played with experienced groups and I've played with novice ones. Novice players generally aren't going to go hardcore into searching for crazy combos and abilities. They barely know the core rules, let alone the rules for 15 different supplements and how they interact. Some people really just want to play a casual RPG and not get into dumpster diving into a bunch of sources.

Hell one group I'm in has trouble even grasping the 4E rules for whatever reason, and they're easy as hell.

[JonSetanta]

Reading and remembering the rules is one thing.

Compiling them in your head as an interactive game and related what you just read to others is the hard part.
D&D especially is highly interpretive; without DM personal judgement no game could work, even by core. Without that human element you end up with NWN again... running through a dungeon with randomly spawned encounter until the prescripted NPC shows up, yaks at you, and you kill them.

... but the human element varies wildly.
The quality of sessions depends entirely upon the fairness and wisdom of your DM, and the cooperation of players.

[ckafrica]

Yeah, I've been playing for decades and never really considered the depths of what actually makes a good build until I started to lurk around here. The guys I play with now are friends with the dudes who wrote the Munchkin game and think themselves quite the min-maxers and many of you could eat them for breakfast.

[Judging__Eagle]

.... rogue 1/bard 1/fighter 1 >_>).

I just laughed, cried, or bothed.

That character is meant to be me actually. Mostly b/c I can't find a ranger that I like. ...

Actually.... it's not a bad start for a build.

The rest of the build is Fighter, Fighter, Fighter, Fighter... Fighter.

Mind you, this is using Frank's take on the Bard, and the RoW fighter.

So... retardedly high knowledge checks, sneaking, very heveh armour and 'unexpected' combat ability.

[Username17]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dued/20080911

Oh WotC. Why do you fail so hard, and so often?

They still don't get that Pun Pun is not a brilliant player min-max, but a product of a DM and exactly the same as giving a 1st level fighter an artifact.

I also noticed that his big revelation about 4th edition and the reason it brought him so much joy was that the DM couldn't tell the player what to do and the player couldn't achieve anything. It really sounds like he'd rather be playing a board game.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Yeah, I've been playing for decades and never really considered the depths of what actually makes a good build until I started to lurk around here. The guys I play with now are friends with the dudes who wrote the Munchkin game and think themselves quite the min-maxers and many of you could eat them for breakfast.

It's all relative. Someone might think they're a CharOp hotshot in their local gaming store but once they get in to the vast ocean of the internet...

... it's like the Olympics, or in Dragonball Z when the heroes meet yet another villain that causes their eyes to quiver in fear. You usually just don't even compare to the 'pros' that have been not only CharOpping for decades, but they have all D&D rules memorized, all books on file (well, OK, I'm close to that), and play almost weekly.
Its a whole. Nutha. Level.

[Koumei]

I still don't think it's that hard.

1. Learning the rules: I did that really easily, over the course of a couple of sessions in one campaign. I went from "Um, I'll be a Human Sorceress like Lina Inverse. I guess that means I need a high Charisma, to cast lots of Fireballs. Can you make my character sheet for me?" to "Yes, I know I (did action that provokes). But you see, I have 3/4 cover, you have no cover. So in fact, I don't provoke. Also: suck it." After that, I was the one explaining how grapple and bullrush work, at another game. The DM himself deferred to me for "How the rules work".

Come to think of it, that's the group that I printed out a "Naze Nani D&D" article for. I typed it up, added cute little chibi characters, and basically made it an entertaining Tome-style read on the rules as they are.

It was easy.

2. Learning how to win the game: once you know the above, you can already realise really quickly that direct damage is a joke, and look for "Save or Die, Even if you Don't Actually Die" effects. You instantly realise that Cleric, Druid and Wizard win the game. You figure out what spells are the best, and how to get around situations. You should have already made your own spiked-chain-tripper build, smiled and said "But it's boring and still won't stand up to most foes, who are trip-proof", and can soon start work on things like "Say, acid flasks are touch attacks... rogues could add contact poison + Fire Trap and throw these..."

So unless I am THAT. DAMN. GOOD, I still don't think it's hard. Sure, it seems really huge and complicated at first, and you could probably make some bullshit class on it for Universities (why not? They have Pirate Studies and Pornography), but it's basically two steps, and the first is merely reading comprehension and a smart-ass person to explain it, the second is just applying your own knowledge from step 1.

Or am I incorrectly assuming it's that easy and most people can do it?

[Judging__Eagle]

a were-Dire Bat catfolk (no class yet, just HD)

I'm sure he or she is a fantastic warrior.

I played a L2 Succubus once (actually Incubus, little difference) out of Savage Species. No change to the racial class properties, although the CHA bonus was nerfed a bit by delaying it.

To put it simple, it sucked. No casting. No combat tactics. Pretty much a tough scout with resistances (and immune to poison) thanks to the racial bonuses to Spot and Listen and generous Outsider HD.

If we had the Tome fiends, I would have never given SS a second chance.

Well, I did the whole HD = CR, so from here on it's class levels, and the 1st 3 levels aren't sneezable either. He's delayed class features, but gained:

High Strength (check)

high... make that retarded dex (check) (near impossible to hit)

Con boost

Wis Boost

Massive to-hit due to TWFing and Weapon Finesse (i'm using the rules that differentiate the 3 main melee styles: +Str for 2Hweapons (no 1.5 str, but instead up to double str, if your BAB is high enough), +Con to sheild AC and all saves when using a non-buckler sheild and +Dex to-hit, but no extra attacks unless you have a feat; all bonuses are capped by your BaB). Which translates to +3 AC or +6 damage; although his to-hit is high enough that he can concievably do both.

DR 10/Silver

Scent doesn't hurt; low skill amounts do hurt a little.

Flight, bite attack and 2 claw attacks.

itsatank!

Taking Knight levels and wearing adamantine armour will mean +Xd6 damage nearly all the time on preffered target. Since DR's stack.

Trust me, the direbat was the most powerful option possible, it handed out the most nat AC, stats and other abilities for the lowest CR. The funny thing is that it's actually a creature that I drew for a class. Which is wierd, but w/e.

Werecamels are also pretty good to be, but only if you gain animal HD equal to the animals CR.

[Manxome]

Taking Knight levels and wearing adamantine armour will mean +Xd6 damage nearly all the time on preffered target. Since DR's stack.

Coincidentally, I've recently been reading some stuff from the SRD, and according to the SRD on damage reduction, they don't. Is this an errata/Tome series change/houserule?

[Username17]

Is this an errata/Tome series change/houserule?

Non-stacking DR is like non-stacking SR: it doesn't actually make any sense and makes a lot of rules cases explode. So the Tome series explicitly made DR stacking rules just as it made SR stacking rules.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

In the Character Optimization board's defense, they are actually getting a lot better at min-maxxing.

A lot of this, unfortunately, is 4E's slavish devotion to its biggest design factor:

The player is not allowed to do anything open-ended.

This is the real root of a wizard's power in 3rd Edition. Yes, a Tome Fighter can take one on and win in a fair fight, but who was the class that make the core of the game shake by plopping down a castle in the middle of nowhere and filling up it up demons for cheap-as-free? That's right, the wizards.

When the game designers realized that there should be no way for anyone to get out of spending 1,000,000 gp for a magic sword or a castle, that's when this game was shot in the balls.

[Fuchs]

I always thought the best option to "level the playing field" between experienced players and new players was to have the experienced players help the new ones with character builds.

Seriously, if you've got a mix of optimisers and non-optimisers, then chances are that the optimisers like to minmax, and would enjoy helping the others on the team get a stronger character. And in the sme vein, if someone is not that interested in minmaxing they usually do not mind getting help, as long as their core concepts for the character are fine.

Team Work is not restricted to the battlemap.

[RandomCasualty2]

I still don't think it's that hard.

1. Learning the rules: I did that really easily, over the course of a couple of sessions in one campaign. I went from "Um, I'll be a Human Sorceress like Lina Inverse. I guess that means I need a high Charisma, to cast lots of Fireballs. Can you make my character sheet for me?" to "Yes, I know I (did action that provokes). But you see, I have 3/4 cover, you have no cover. So in fact, I don't provoke. Also: suck it." After that, I was the one explaining how grapple and bullrush work, at another game. The DM himself deferred to me for "How the rules work".

Come to think of it, that's the group that I printed out a "Naze Nani D&D" article for. I typed it up, added cute little chibi characters, and basically made it an entertaining Tome-style read on the rules as they are.

It was easy.

Easy for you, and easy for me, but that doesn't mean it's easy for everyone. Seriously, I could basically read and figure out what a 4E power did just by reading the power description before I even read the 4E formal rules. But some people in my 4E group still stare at their low level powers with a blank stare.

I don't really know why this is so, but they do. Learning the rules is difficult for some people.

[Koumei]

Maybe it's thanks to your SUPER POWERS! Wait, but would that mean I too have super powers?

Er, anyway, perhaps I am simply better at math* than I give myself credit for, and reading comprehension might not actually be so simple as I always considered it to be.

As for mentoring less skilled players or outright making the characters for them, that also works. Heck, for one online game, I recruited players I liked, and none of them are familiar with the rules, so I'll likely be making the actual characters, based on their concepts.

*Real math. With numbers. And things like +-*/%. Not the bullshit that camels mathematicians use.

[RandomCasualty2]

Er, anyway, perhaps I am simply better at math* than I give myself credit for, and reading comprehension might not actually be so simple as I always considered it to be.

As for mentoring less skilled players or outright making the characters for them, that also works. Heck, for one online game, I recruited players I liked, and none of them are familiar with the rules, so I'll likely be making the actual characters, based on their concepts.

I don't think it really has much to do with math, so much as a logical and structured way of thinking where you're capable of reading the rules more like computer code instead of english.

[Cynic]

I always thought the best option to "level the playing field" between experienced players and new players was to have the experienced players help the new ones with character builds.

Seriously, if you've got a mix of optimisers and non-optimisers, then chances are that the optimisers like to minmax, and would enjoy helping the others on the team get a stronger character. And in the sme vein, if someone is not that interested in minmaxing they usually do not mind getting help, as long as their core concepts for the character are fine.

Team Work is not restricted to the battlemap.

Teamwork is great but it also makes you look like a douche when you try to help someone and they don't want your help. Take for example a few players in my group. They don't play in as minmaxers and they aren't horrible players either. My DM (Virgileso) got exasperated at one point when I do better than the others. I tried to help some of the others with their character building at one point and was told in both subtle and not so subtle ways that they had it in control eventhough they had never played a mage and they weren't used to picking out spells.

[Judging__Eagle]

Yeah, DRs stack; on the other hand, monster DRs get multiplied. So it cuts both ways.

I've even had to remind the GM of a Tome game that a monster had more DR.

[ubernoob]

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... pic=2091.0

We've got traces of Paizo there.

[K]

In the Character Optimization board's defense, they are actually getting a lot better at min-maxxing.

A lot of this, unfortunately, is 4E's slavish devotion to its biggest design factor:

The player is not allowed to do anything open-ended.

This is the real root of a wizard's power in 3rd Edition. Yes, a Tome Fighter can take one on and win in a fair fight, but who was the class that make the core of the game shake by plopping down a castle in the middle of nowhere and filling up it up demons for cheap-as-free? That's right, the wizards.

When the game designers realized that there should be no way for anyone to get out of spending 1,000,000 gp for a magic sword or a castle, that's when this game was shot in the balls.

Yeh, the core conceit of "money=power" basically tainted 3e and when taken to it's logical conclusion it ruined 4e.

However, it is not a surprise that people working in corporations can't even believe in a world where money does not equal power.

[Judging__Eagle]

....

They keep suggesting Rogue.

And melee rogues too.

Acid-flasking invisible rogues plz.