Dragon Age RPG by Green Ronin

[souran]

If you play computer/video game rpgs as well as table rpgs then you could not possibly have gotten through this past christmas season without hearing about dragon age origins.

Bioware's game divoreced itself from any version of the D&D rules and used a modified system of the rpg math used in the first mass effect and put forth a fairly solid (if not very difficult) video game rpg.

However, before you even even used your free "expansion content download key" Bioware had already sold the rights to make a pen and paper version of their computerized rpg to green ronin.

Now the game is at the publisher and we have an idea of what sort of game its going to be.

If you desire you can check out what they put together

http://www.greenronin.com/dragon_age/

However here are the highlights:

System: 3d6 -> its Bell Curve D&D. Roll 3d6 add them togther add modifer get above target number. The game also doesn't include a skill system. The game master uses his best judgment to determine which ability/attribute is best suited for a task and you add that modifer. Instead of skills you picked "focuses" which are like specalities in white wolf. You add an extra bonus to your check result if you have a focus in a task.

Right away we know that this system is going to have even lightly optimized characters off the rng for level appropriate tasks. Assuming you can figure out that a high ability score in your primary area is good and that a focus is good then you can probably figure out having both is better. The only other real option would be for the the check difficulties to presupose this level of ability for characters. If thats the case then players without good abiltiies scores and without a focus would be even more helpless than their unskilled d20 equivalents because your chance of rolling a 20 is 5%, but your chance of rolling an 18 is only about .5%

Note that the game also uses degree of sucess. You pick one die of your 3d6 and its individual value services as the marker for overall success/failure.

Races/Classes: 3 races but your race is a subpick from your background selection. Three classes just like the computer game. Just from the preview it appears that spellcasters have considerably more options than other characters.

Characters are created using a really oldschool method. You roll 3d6 in order and get to only switch 2 values. If you like rolled characters this is good.

Really you can see all this information on the green ronin website, and to date the game hasn't probably been PLAYED by hardly anybody. However, I have already seen some people at ign/gamespy forums talking about a "new and exciting pen and paper rpg!" With its videogame tie in it might even be able to find shelf space at borders.

Consider yourself forwarned....

Edit: I realized I had not explained well enough and that therefore some of what I had said was not totally true.

a 3d6 instead of d20 system is not automatically broken, but in a bell curve system bonuses are more valuable because its harder to get scores out in the tails of the bell.

This means that handing out +1s like dnd is a really BAD idea in a bell curve system becuse with modifiers are not really a flat percentage increase in outcome.

However, the sample charcters (which are almost never optimized) show a variance in their attributes of -1 to +4. Additionally the details published seem to indicate that +4 is possibly not the maximum bonus based on ability scores. A +4 is already pretty huge in this system so the fact that good characers are likely to add more than +4 seems to indicate that the game will likely have a pretty easily broken difficulty system.

[ggroy]

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

They might have been great; however, I was heavily into 3rd Edition D&D at the time, and didn't know they even existed.

[Doom]

I'm find the CRPG to not be particularly easy (except in easy mode)...but I've always had a hard time with 'control multiple players in real time' games.

Any quick tips beyond 'cone of cold' repeatedly, and lots of micromanagement?

[Jilocasin]

Pause a lot. It's supposed to be played more like a turn based thing rather than real time.

Also, know how the numbers actually work, rather than how they say they work.

[Blicero]

Yeah, Mind Blast and the telekinetic powers are pretty much pure jesus. Crowd control abilities are a total must. And mages are teh winnzor, unsurprisingly.

[souran]

The accepts mmo style roles so make sure you have a tank. If you only use 1 wizard make sure they are set to do a lot of healing. It takes some playtest but figure out which spells are junk.

Heal
Mass Heal
Mass rejuvenation (not regular)
Crushing Prison
Force Shield/field
telekenetic weapons (best of the weapon buffs, especially later)

These are basically the games uber spells. You can make some good combos out of other spells, and if you have more than 1 mage you should invest in other stuff, but 1 wizard using these abilties (and whichever basic attack spell they have frost bolt/spirit bolt)

Rewrite the healer script to heal at an earlier time, use crushing prison on elites or better, keep telekentic weapons up, and cast force shield on any spellcasters.


Ranged rogues eventually own. If you use Lilania bump her dex alot. Start off using rapid shot, and get up to critical shot. One you have high tier weapons with the "rapid aim" ability ditch rapid shot and have her use aim. She will shoot arrows at the normal rate and they will nearly all be crits.

Your last character can be anything. If you go melee I would suggest a warrior over a rogue for durability. Although shale takes really no oversight to use. If you are having trouble controlling people using him can be easy because he can be scripted out very easily.

[Leress]

They might have been great; however, I was heavily into 3rd Edition D&D at the time, and didn't know they even existed.

I can tell you right now that the Everquest one was bad. So was the Diablo one.

[Caedrus]

Also, know how the numbers actually work, rather than how they say they work.

Care to explain?

[NineInchNall]

The Telekinesis line will get you through most of everything. All four spells in it are great.

The Healing and Spirit Healer lines are necessary.

Blood Magic has two spells that basically win the game: Blood Wound and Blood Puppet. The latter's a dominate effect and the former ... Well, it's the Best Spell In The Game. Huge area of effect, significant damage over time, duration > cooldown, and paralysis.

[Jilocasin]

Also, know how the numbers actually work, rather than how they say they work.

Care to explain?

Not really.

Kaelik explained it more or less here.

[sake]

Blood Magic has two spells that basically win the game: Blood Wound and Blood Puppet. The latter's a dominate effect and the former ... Well, it's the Best Spell In The Game. Huge area of effect, significant damage over time, duration > cooldown, and paralysis.

Don't forget the other reason why the blood mage spells are awesome sauce... they're some of the small few spells that can be cast without putting away a melee weapon.

[Dominicius]

One little combo that I've found on my playthrough was that of Aura of Miasma and Haste. Completely trivializes any kiting you might need to do. If you have blood magic you can keep haste up for longer since mana for its upkeep is drawn from your actual mana while while the mana needed to cast spells is drawn from your health.

But in general the buff line is utter ass. It doesn't do anything by itself. Heroic offense raises attack by 15 which is hardly even felt in battle, affects one target and has a short enough duration that you will be constantly refreshing if you want the bonus on all of your party members.

The only way the buff line ever becomes viable is when you combo it with the debuff line and simply put every available buff on your party and every available debuff on your enemy. Since the sources stack you will always have the upper hand. But this strategy falls under the rule of too much effort for not enough gain. You are better of sticking to the spells mentioned above.

[Vnonymous]

Mages in Dragon Age win all day every day unless you pick spells like the npcs do (you get two caster npcs, both of whom picked useless specialisations).

The spells you get as a mage are just so much better, more fun and even more interesting than the abilities you get as a fighter or rogue. I don't know why, considering they obviously don't mind fighters being magical -you glow with blue fire whenever you kill someone in melee, blue of course being the colour of mana lyrium.

They just never bother doing anything with it, instead relying on the same 3 or 4 canned animations to keep you interested, along with a host of uninteresting and tactically forgettable abilities.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The spells you get as a mage are just so much better, more fun and even more interesting than the abilities you get as a fighter or rogue. I don't know why, considering they obviously don't mind fighters being magical -you glow with blue fire whenever you kill someone in melee, blue of course being the colour of mana lyrium.

This is exactly why I have argued that the Martial power source needs to go. Not just in D&D, but gaming in general.

[Cielingcat]

The worst part is that it wouldn't even be hard to make Martial powers equal to Magic ones, especially in a video game. But the designers just don't do it.

[Lokathor]

The spells you get as a mage are just so much better, more fun and even more interesting than the abilities you get as a fighter or rogue. I don't know why, considering they obviously don't mind fighters being magical -you glow with blue fire whenever you kill someone in melee, blue of course being the colour of mana lyrium.

This is exactly why I have argued that the Martial power source needs to go. Not just in D&D, but gaming in general.

How do we play as John McClain or Solid Snake then?

[Archmage]

Solid Snake isn't Martial, he's Technological. The guy has nanites in his bloodstream that give him built-in radar, immunity to fatigue, etc. And Metal Gear Solid villains are anything but mundane.

Any sufficiently advanced technology, and all that.

[Lago PARANOIA]

How do we play as John McClain or Solid Snake then?

If martial characters are the only characters in the game then it's okay, but if you're in a mixed group of power sources then you don't unless the game is kept at a sub-Shadowrun power level.

[sake]

The worst part is that it wouldn't even be hard to make Martial powers equal to Magic ones, especially in a video game. But the designers just don't do it.

Dragon Age did it better than some, melee types can get several stuns, debuffs,and even a few point blank aoe powers.

And really I found the general high level area magic spells in DA to be almost completely worthless. They take three times the time to cast, they do laughable damage over time, they can hit you and your party, and unless you cheat and somehow have stealth you will never cast it before the monsters notice you and run into melee. Sure you can toss down a rune to get one guy, tk cage another, frost a third. and let your party kill them but that get's boring so quickly.

The game made me long for NWN or KoTOR's quick, easy room clearing powers.

[mlangsdorf]

Why would you need to cheat to have Stealth? I cleared 3/4s of the game by putting the entire party on Hold, having the Rogue go into Stealth and advance until he saw something, and then having the mages drop Blizzard spells until the Rogue stopped seeing stuff.

There are a few battles that require more advanced tactics, but Stealthy scouting + big ranged spells will cover a lot of the game.

[souran]

I don't think anybody will dispute that wizards are quite good in DOA, However, the 20 playable levels of DOA make it pretty clear that the playres are just better than the monsters---assuming you focus each of your pc builds.

A tank with 42 strength, Max Agi and a 15 con/health stat and the whole line of defensive abilties, champion abilites and taunt can gather everything up in a room and then get MISSED a hundred times and when he does take damage its pathetic damage. I played through as a tank. The game is NOT hard.

Rogues/warriors can do stupid awesome damage in the melee. push dex up to 25 then go strength. They will hit stupid hard rogues espeically if they get behind people. However Rally (buff from tank) + Berserk rage +powerful swings + destroyer means each hit against a bad guy does a crapton of damage and it INCREASES for each hit beyond the first. Slap on a high end weapon and let the tall guy or dwarf kill crap. Again, a tad bit of optimization and the game doesn't keep up even with its "scaled" bad guys.

Rogues with bows are stupid awesome. the ONLY stat they need is dex (even casters need 2 stats one for mana and one for magic power) and rogues can be rangers which is like cheating. Again, optimize and the game sucks.

Wizards are so good its crazy. However, the idea you NEED more than one is also silly. Just script your wizard to only do not stupid things and go.

Hell, with the scripting YOU don't even have to play the damn game. Just scripty everybody to do only not stupid things, and then you will beat every battle in the level up screen.

Its a video game, even if it says rpg on the box. Its designers really didn't make the game robust enough to challenge a person willing to learn some system master for it.

[Kaelik]

Rogues with bows are stupid awesome. the ONLY stat they need is dex (even casters need 2 stats one for mana and one for magic power) and rogues can be rangers which is like cheating. Again, optimize and the game sucks.

Depends on the game version.

If you play Xbox or non patched or 1.1 or 1.2 or 1.3 your bows are worthless shit because you get no attribute bonus to damage at all.

[NineInchNall]

Just script your wizard to only do not stupid things and go.

Hell, with the scripting YOU don't even have to play the damn game. Just scripty everybody to do only not stupid things, and then you will beat every battle in the level up screen.

No. The AI "scripting" sucks donkey testicles. Getting your allies to simply go focus fire is a chore and a half, and don't even get me started on trying to get the AI squishies to A) not run into melee, B) not try to cast while in shapeshifted forms and thus immediately drain all their mana, C) not attack an enemy you've encased in a force field, D) use abilities that you have not assigned to specific AI lines.

Seriously.

[Blicero]

Yeah, I've found the scripting system to have some serious flaws. Most notable are its tendency to use health poultices/lyrium potions right after the last enemy has just been killed, in spite of the crazy fast regeneration rates and generally low supply of healing items. Your allies also seem to have almost an affinity for attacking enemies encased in force fields. Seeing as I prefer to micromanage pretty much everything, I find it way more annoying when the AI does do something I don't want it to do than when it doesn't do something I'd like it to do.

The best combat tactic isn't even that different from BGII, in all honesty. You just find a bottleneck area and draw off members of large mobs as slowly as possible, applying Cone of Cold and other jeezus spells as needed.