The Gaming Den

zugschef wrote: But that discussion has gone through several times per year on the Den (thank you, Lord Mistborn).

You're welcome.

This is an important point: the ability to go around asking people and have a contact list is an inherent ability of a character. Regardless of whether you accomplish a goal by having NPCs come up and help you or spitting on the ground and affecting change by magic, the fact is that anything that your character can expect to be able to accomplish is a facet of the character. Owning a corporation or summoning monsters is not actually different provided that both cause you to be able to get goons in on short notice. From the standpoint of the narrators (the players), the reason that someone can expect to accomplish a task is just a black box. Socially derived abilities are no worse and no different from abilities granted by "training" or "magic" or "alien superscience."

Reminds me of the basic design building blocks of Hero System, "Reasoning From Effect", and so on.

infected slut princess wrote:No one has mentioned to most important cornerstone of adventuring: Macking Bitches.

Yes they did. Almost six years ago:

sigma999 wrote:You are missing Get Rich, Sex With Exotic Beings, and Influence Setting.

Game On,
fbmf

Previn wrote:Doesn't that just that turn around into: 'Just because a Wizard could have fly, or polymorph, or a charmed a griffon, doesn't mean any particular Wizard will have those things.'

Am I misunderstanding this?

or maybe people forget that in ANY story where a fighter is flying around and shit, they are no longer a D&D style fighter, so you are comparing apples to oranges and people like Frank use their apple to orange comparison as an excuse to double-talk and con people into thinking it is something real or that the fighter from D&d is "shitty", simply because it is a D&D Fighter, not Frank's personal fighter to wank over from his story with HIS authorial rendering.

its like Mearls in the new "feel" article trying to say D&D magic should be something new, but then doesn't understand that if it IS something new, it isn't D&D magic anymore. it is 3rd/4th edition all over again.

Previn wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:But of course, this is the beginning of the sleight of hand that people have used for justifying shitty Fighters for forty years. Just because an abstract Fighter could fulfill the minimum requirement of "getting to the adventure" in the cloud castle by having a griffon mount or magical winged sandals doesn't mean any particular Fighter will have either of those things.

Doesn't that just that turn around into: 'Just because a Wizard could have fly, or polymorph, or a charmed a griffon, doesn't mean any particular Wizard will have those things.'

Am I misunderstanding this?

It really should not be necessary to explain to people that "wizards have to pick the right abilities in order to solve problems" is not even remotely similar to "fighters have to beg the DM for the right abilities in order to solve problems." That'd be almost like thinking that wizards are underpowered because you can dump int and be completely unable to cast spells. Almost every character in the game can fail at life during chargen/level up, news at 11:00. We can talk about that after you explain the choices a fighter is supposed to make that result in not failing at life.

Also so help me god if you turn this into another fighters thread I will lose it. It's twenty-fucking-thirteen. When someone says "fighters only get to solve noncombat problems expected of characters their level through DM pity and that's bad," you nod your goddamn head. No other response is permissible.

Right. If "Flying Griffin Mount, Bitch" was an actual Fighter Class Feature (and why the fuck not?) that you got at the level 7-9 range from the fighter class without sucking the DM's proverbial dick, it'd be a different story.

Heisenberg wrote:Right. If "Flying Griffin Mount, Bitch" was an actual Fighter Class Feature (and why the fuck not?) that you got at the level 7-9 range from the fighter class without sucking the DM's proverbial dick, it'd be a different story.

or maybe realize, Fighter doesnt get any way to fly natively, so don't be a dick by trying to put a fucking castle in the clouds for him to have to travel to?

apples to oranges.

D&D was made to do what D&D was made to do. they fact you want something different, just means you shouldn't have been playing a game like or modeled from D&D in the first place. you only have yourself to blame.

when people grow up and realize this, THEN they can understand any number of pillars or cornerstones or whatever, and pick the RIGHT game to meet their playstyle, rather than bithcing like EVERY game was made jsut for them, and complain when they learn it was not.

who the fuck ever said to put a castle in the sky to begin with when using the D&D Fighter? maybe you should go bitch at them for suggesting it, rather than the game for not providing EVERY possible way to make it happen.

funny games with the D&D Fighter don't have extensive aerial or naval combat rules because well, the game wasnt meant for those things.

What if that's a rule for DM's to follow? That they should consider at level X characters need to handle flying encounters so the fighter should get a scene where he tames a hippogryph or finds winged boots.

Even AD&D had beastrider kits that gave your dude a flying mount. With a tiered approach to D&D levels "Beast Rider" can come up at level 6 and let your cavalier charge around on a winged mount.

I get that you have a raging hate boner for fighters, but maybe you should step back and look at what I'm actually asking?

Frank's statement is pretty much equal for a fighter, or a wizard, or rogue, or a druid. If you didn't get something to deal with a situation, you won't be prepared for that situation applies equally to anyone (and is a bit tautological). It's not a statement against fighters like it's intended to be, but in being unprepared for anyone. Which is why I'm questioning it and it's use.


As a corner stone of adventuring, getting places is important. zugschef's concept of getting places as a cornerstone is good, his follow up to it is really, really bad.

He's shooting down the part where the players go and convince the dwarves that yes the dwarves should totally help them by loaning the players griffons to get rid of the cloud giants as part of rescuing the princess, or the gnomes and their magictech jetpacks, or the halflings and their flying dinosaurs. Or the party invents hang gliders, or makes giant kites, or hot air balloons. And all those things are pretty darn awesome and it would be a shame to lose them because you only get to play if you're a wizard with fly, otherwise GTFO you dirty stinking mundanes. The issue is the overly broad statement that "mundanes fail at life trying to get to the cloud castle" when, well, they don't have too, and that's really a D&D conceit anyways where mundanes suck, because BATMANWIZARDS.

If you want to tell the story where the players have to acquire the macguffin from its macguffin-holder in order to go on an adventure, then how about you do it at a level where the macguffin in question isn't a fucking class feature for half the party? How is that hard to grasp? The fighter problem is not that macguffins are bad and you should stop requiring players to acquire items in order to advance the plot. The fighter problem is that he requires macguffins that other characters get to write down on their character sheets for free. Your players should not start every adventure by trying to figure out how to ferry the fighter to it.

The fact that a druid can sit down for nine hours and get different spells that allow them to deal with a new situation is fundamentally different from the way a fighter could make puppydog eyes and boycott the game until the MC deigned to give them a griffon mount. Even taking several days to research a new spell or conjure and cajole a demon is fundamentally different from that.

Characters who can spend time to acquire the abilities needed to complete adventures can still complete those adventures without DM Pity reliance. Characters who can't... well, they fucking can't. The fact that it takes a day or two for a preparation caster to complete adventures that they aren't specced for doesn't mean they can't complete those adventures, it means they can.

Edit:

DSM wrote:Your players should not start every adventure by trying to figure out how to ferry the fighter to it.

You drug him and load him onto the plane. Then you bribe him with curry afterward.

-Username17

You could create a ruleset that granted base setting-stuff to character levels.

For example, you could just say that all 9th level characters can find and impress griffins with a week's work regardless if those griffins are solely owned by the King's Griffon-fuckers or flying free on Griffon Mountain.

The downside is that you need to standardize redesign for a new setting. Getting flying giant bats needs to be an easy substitution for griffon if you do an Underdark setting and flying testicle beasts need to be on the illithid darkworld.

FrankTrollman wrote:Characters who can spend time to acquire the abilities needed to complete adventures can still complete those adventures without DM Pity reliance.

and that ability ALL character have through play is called some sort of diplomacy.

haggle with the griffon herder for a share of the loot, something all classes can do. wizard doesnt want a griffon or doesnt think about it, his loss.

you are trying to claim that because one class has a specific method in which to do something then ALL classes, msut be able to employ that same method. that is wrong.

if all classes do the same thing, then you want all games to be 4th edition with a single class, only a little bit of flavor difference, but exact identical mechanics?

you jsut see ANY interaction with the DM as bad for the game, because you suck when having to deal with a DM. well that is part of an RPG, that you have to deal with the DM as they run EVERYTHING that isn't your character. it is YOUR choice to have your character find these things.

you claim it is DM pity because of your immaturity and bad past games, when you just don't trust DMs. you never once though maybe the griffon roost is a PART of the game, you just skipped that possibility to go into hyperbole and exaggeration about a perceived problem that doesn't exist.

you just basically want to be able to say "I beat the DM" even before any game exists.

shadzar wrote: you are trying to claim that because one class has a specific method in which to do something then ALL classes, msut be able to employ that same method. that is wrong.

No, they're specifically saying that it's okay if everyone does things in different ways, as long as they all have a way of dealing with certain 'core challenges'.

shadzar wrote: you just basically want to be able to say "I beat the DM" even before any game exists.

Some people like going on adventures, not handling the logistics of getting there - especially when most of the party have an easy way to do it all on their own.

But don't worry - nobody is making any changes that will affect the game you're writing for yourself. This is for the games that they're writing for THEMSELVES. Surely you don't object to other people having different preferences than you?

deaddmwalking wrote:This is for the games that they're writing for THEMSELVES.

but in fact all they will do is rewrite 4th edition with the road they are on. that is why it has been pointed out BEFORe i said anything, that an option exists, though it may not be their preferred option that bypasses any contact with the DM.

and i use DM, not GM because the talk of "fighter for 40 years" can only be the D&D fighter, since everything was built off of it.

if someone wants to make Aang, then have fun in Avatar-land, but you can't bitch at the D&D fighter for being a D&D fighter and doing what it was made to do.

whether D&D or not, "expenses" are part of an adventure design, and the one doing the hiring CAN be and SHOULD be asked to pay them in either funds to prepare or items that would help. ANY contract requiring said items to be returned should be hammered out beforehand. be these items, mounts (land, sea, air), weapons, artifacts, etc...

if you don't want the "haggle" or "negotiate" part of an adventure, then you jsut make a rule that such types of things are handwaved, and it doesn't matter if a fighter can fly to the castle or not.

then is the argument going to turn into that a wizard can float across the gorge, but a fighter cannot and has to use a rope to cross?

you basically have to lok at every video game ever to see WHY the quest granter gives things for use to proceed to the quest. it is that ONE quest iver that has the need for these oddities, so they must provide for them, IF they want anyone to partake of the quest.

otherwise, the fighter could tie a rope around the wizard and himself and let the wizard fly him there, no special concessions required. that or just don't call the thing a "fighter" unless you are ready for people to compare it to a D&D fighter. call it a warrior or guardian or something else if you want to remove the D&D connotations from it.

then whe the name is changed, you can have it fly, swim in circles, whatever, as it wont still be connected to the D&D Fighter by that red string of fate, which is the word "fighter".

so a thesaurus could easily solve the problem.

K wrote:You could create a ruleset that granted base setting-stuff to character levels.

For example, you could just say that all 9th level characters can find and impress griffins with a week's work regardless if those griffins are solely owned by the King's Griffon-fuckers or flying free on Griffon Mountain.

The downside is that you need to standardize redesign for a new setting. Getting flying giant bats needs to be an easy substitution for griffon if you do an Underdark setting and flying testicle beasts need to be on the illithid darkworld.

Certainly. Indeed, we generally don't even get worried about characters having the ability to get to the adventure in modern games, because the setting pretty much presupposes the ability to buy a plane ticket or rent a boat.

Fantasy settings easily could be set up such that players could simply expect to be able to acquire flying mounts, water breathing, and portals to other worlds. But for whatever reason, there's enormous amounts of pushback on that. Games like Heroes of Might and Magic and Master of Magic and such give us buildings in large cities that let us buy griffons, and that seems to be fine. But people keep demanding "lower magic" than that for their fantasy RPGs. And of course, "lower magic" always seems to mean "Fighters don't have access to flying mounts, but wizards can still fly with magic and you still have to fight flying dragons."

-Username17

Part of that problem is the believe that party wide spells should be higher level than single target spells.
If you want to go to an underwater temple, everyone in the party needs to be able to breath underwater. A personal only spell won't do. So either you can get a party wide underwater breathing method, or everyone needs to get their own.

FrankTrollman wrote: This is an important point: the ability to go around asking people and have a contact list is an inherent ability of a character. Regardless of whether you accomplish a goal by having NPCs come up and help you or spitting on the ground and affecting change by magic, the fact is that anything that your character can expect to be able to accomplish is a facet of the character. Owning a corporation or summoning monsters is not actually different provided that both cause you to be able to get goons in on short notice. From the standpoint of the narrators (the players), the reason that someone can expect to accomplish a task is just a black box. Socially derived abilities are no worse and no different from abilities granted by "training" or "magic" or "alien superscience."

-Username17

But that's only true *IF* Mister Cavern does not arbitrarily fuck Social abilities with conditional modifiers or barriers. Players don't trust their GMs not to do that, and with good reason; they've seen how other non-magical abilities get fucked all the time.

ishy wrote:Part of that problem is the believe that party wide spells should be higher level than single target spells.
If you want to go to an underwater temple, everyone in the party needs to be able to breath underwater. A personal only spell won't do. So either you can get a party wide underwater breathing method, or everyone needs to get their own.

I agree with this. Things like flight have both a tactical and strategic aspect, but water breathing and such is good to apply to a large number of people. Even teleport allows the whole party to go.

fbmf wrote:

infected slut princess wrote:No one has mentioned to most important cornerstone of adventuring: Macking Bitches.

Yes they did. Almost six years ago:

sigma999 wrote:You are missing Get Rich, Sex With Exotic Beings, and Influence Setting.

Game On,
fbmf

I mentioned the middle part mostly due to the common trope of "Wizards summoning an Outsider harem", which many classes simply can't do outside of DM fia/roleplay. The spells to summon outright allow a caster to tell Outsiders what to do and for how long.
Noncasters don't get to enjoy the endgame pleasures of eager and willing succubitches.

DSMatticus wrote:The fighter problem is that he requires macguffins that other characters get to write down on their character sheets for free.

I think that's just as much a wizard problem where casters get to write anything they want on the character sheet. Both extremes are poisonous and I really don't get why the wizard/cleric/druid gets a free pass from criticism for being way too good. I think the fighter vs wizard problem in 3.x needs to be approached from both angles (fighters up, wizards down) to get a working design/game.

The fact that a druid can sit down for nine hours and get different spells that allow them to deal with a new situation is fundamentally different from the way a fighter could make puppydog eyes and boycott the game until the MC deigned to give them a griffon mount. Even taking several days to research a new spell or conjure and cajole a demon is fundamentally different from that.

Ok, this makes more sense. The opportunity cost to be able to get prepared when you're not is enormously different.

Previn wrote:I think that's just as much a wizard problem where casters get to write anything they want on the character sheet. Both extremes are poisonous and I really don't get why the wizard/cleric/druid gets a free pass from criticism for being way too good. I think the fighter vs wizard problem in 3.x needs to be approached from both angles (fighters up, wizards down) to get a working design/game.

You still don't get it.

The Tome fighter and barbarian are able to kick butt in combat, but they still totally fail at life. When they're 15th level they can kill level-appropriate monsters, but they can't go on an adventure without the help of another party member, DM fiat (railroading) or DM pitty (hippogriff).

Your idea with toning casters down, doesn't help either in that respect, because even if you use 34 instead of 17 levels to get to 9th level spells, you will always hit the point at which you need powers to advance the plot. And totally nerfing shit out of the casters isn't viable either. The only thing you'd achieve by taking away the spells which entitle players to advance plots, is making the game objectively worse.

Previn wrote:I think that's just as much a wizard problem where casters get to write anything they want on the character sheet.

There is literally not a single fucking class anywhere in D&D that is as noncombat incompetent as the fighter. It is the null set. It is the nullest of sets. Fighters do not at any point get to write anything on their character sheet that solves noncombat problems.

You first attempted to justify this because a bad argument about griffons=horses=dm fiat okay. Classes are expected to have equal noncombat contributions. If your party member's solutions to noncombat problems can't be shared with you (one person needs to break a hole in a wall, the party needs to phase through it), then you have to bring your own. Otherwise you are dead weight and do not get to go on that adventure without DM fiat buffs.

Then you tried to do this weird thing where wizards choosing abilities which presumably solve other noncombat problems instead of "fly to cloud castle" (or failing at life by picking 27 different fireballs) is equivalent to complaints that the only way for the fighter to solve the noncombat problem "fly to cloud castle" is DM fiat buffs. Not every character is expected to have every solution to every noncombat problem, but you are expected to contribute roughly equally to a handful of particular problem domains. And in the case of "travelling to exotic locations," everyone has to be able to get there so either you bring your own or your party member covers you with a party wide ability. And even if all your friends cover you you still have to justify your existence (or rather, justify playing a fighter) with the solution to some other problem they aren't solving.

And now you are going with the argument that "wizards are OP why aren't you bitching that they solve too many problems?" Well, firstly, because that's a thinly-veiled non-sequitur. Even if wizards are too batmany, fighters are still too useless and you aren't defending the notion that it's okay for fighters to need DM fiat griffons at all. But secondly, okay: wizards are too powerful and fighters should not need DM fiat griffons to keep up with the party. BAM.

I'd collapse the list of five things into three. #1 and #2 are pretty good as-is, #4 shouldn't even be a thing (clearly "Fight Monsters" is also supposed to mean "Fight Monsters and Not Die", for instance), and #3 and #5 can be combined.

Playing a tabletop RPG character should involve:
1) Fighting enemies
2) Talking to people
3) Solving puzzles

("Solving puzzles" includes not only shit like sudoku or the Towers of Hanoi, but things like finding clues to mysteries and bypassing obstacles like magic walls.)

DSMatticus wrote:

Previn wrote:I think that's just as much a wizard problem where casters get to write anything they want on the character sheet.

There is literally not a single fucking class anywhere in D&D that is as noncombat incompetent as the fighter. It is the null set. It is the nullest of sets. Fighters do not at any point get to write anything on their character sheet that solves noncombat problems.

this is just a plain lie, of course fighters get to write something on their character sheet that is jsut as equal to anything any other class gets for solving noncombat problems.

everything doesn't have to interact with some RNG in order to make it a game.

is this problem you are having coming from needing something on the sheet, or some problem created when WotC tried to destroy the "fighter"?