Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[squirrelloid]

Assuming you're just on the astral plane, not teleporting.

The SRD tells us two important things:
-Subjective Gravity
-The plane is Timeless.

So, travel in the astral plane is fast. IIRC, you define down and fall in that direction. Since you hit terminal velocity in like 2 rounds, this is stupid fast.

Further, no time passes while you're in the astral plane.

So its basically 'beam me up scotty', except you can encounter monsters between dematerializing and rematerializing.

(I don't actually know how you have rounds if no time is passing. The very idea is incoherent. The only sensible interpretation i can come up with is there is apparent time on the astral plane, which is not actually time passing, just an ordering of events. But the physicist says 'isn't that the definition of time?'. yes, but fuck, morons wrote the planar rules.)

[tussock]

Timeless doesn't work like that, does it?

Timeless: On these planes, time still passes, but the effects of time are diminished. Those effects should be specifically defined for timeless planes. Such conditions as hunger, thirst, and aging might not be affected in a timeless dimension. By the same token, natural healing may be affected, meaning that no wounds heal except by magic. If a plane is timeless with respect to magic, any spell cast with a noninstantaneous duration is permanent until dispelled.
The danger of timeless planes is that once one leaves such a plane for one where time flows normally, conditions such as hunger and aging do occur—sometimes retroactively. A character who hasn't eaten for ten years in a timeless plane might be ravenous (though not dead), and one who has been “stuck” at age twenty for fifty years might now reach age seventy in a heartbeat. Traditional tales of folklore tell of places where heroes live hundreds of years, only to crumble to dust as soon as they leave.

Timeless: Age, hunger, thirst, poison, and natural healing don't function in the Astral Plane, though they resume functioning when the traveler leaves the Astral
Plane.

Right, so timeless works however the fuck you want it to. Good to know. Key thing, time still passes, so timeless really means not timeless at all, just ignores some things to do with duration and such.

[SlyJohnny]

In Shadowrun, 4th ed:

1) How often do you make perception tests to notice someone trying to be hidden? If someone is approaching you from a great distance, are they doomed to be spotted?

2) What are your options for stealth on the astral outside of Concealment?

3) Can spirits bring objects with them onto the astral?

[Ted the Flayer]

Pathfinder system:

I want to build a character with decent HP, as much AC as possible, good saves, and still be able to do things in combat. They allow any first party stuff and psionics crap as well.

7th level, standard treasure, the group is morally grey so anyone too goody-goody would have a problem in the group.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Synthesist summoner is pretty simple. You hulk out into a giant clawbeast and tear stuff up.

[Ted the Flayer]

That seems to be the answer to everything Pathfinder related...

[Wrathzog]

That's because it Is the answer to everything pathfinder related.

Alternatively, if they're allowing Psionics Unleashed stuff, look into the Aegis, which is a bit more balanced imo.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Remember, Pathfinder is Caster Edition. A Wizard/Cleric might be able to do more crazy stuff at higher levels. That said, Synthesist is pretty simple to use in play, which is nice if you don't want to bother with the intricacies of playing a full caster.

[Koumei]

So at the end of the day, which is better for the game?
[*]The quicker resolution (especially for multiple-target effects like fireball) of rolling attacks against static defences (allowing you to go "Okay, I make one attack roll, it hits a Reflex Defence of 17 or worse" and not waiting for Barry and Rodders to roll their saves or the MC to roll 20 saves)?
[*]Or the player agency of having everything be "defender rolls a save against your attack DC" (meaning people "have something to do" (rolling a die) when it isn't their turn, and meaning it's generally a percentage of the 20 orcs that are hit, not the weird all-or-nothing?

I'm really undecided between the two, and given the best example of the former is 4E, it's hard to be fair to it and not go "therefore it's bad, because Hitler4E did it".

[hyzmarca]

That totally depends on your design goals.

[Foxwarrior]

Well, if you're using the unspoken assumption that you roll only one attack for an AoE spell, but you roll one save per creature, then the latter option is mechanically more sensible for anything other than that cinematic magical thing in LotR where Sauron flings all the soldiers.

[Whatever]

You can always give monsters/NPCs fixed AC, saves, and attack values, and have PCs roll all their own attacks and defenses. That maximizes player "agency" and minimizes MC dice rolling (which can otherwise be cumbersome). It would make PC aoes have that all or nothing feel, but it's fine to let them clear a roomful of weaker enemies, or get a lucky mass attack in sometimes. But enemy area attacks against the PCs probably won't hit everyone, which is good (likewise, volley attacks against the PCs will have some hits and some misses, which both feels right and works better for balance).

[Kaelik]

Or the player agency of having everything be "defender rolls a save against your attack DC" (meaning people "have something to do" (rolling a die) when it isn't their turn, and meaning it's generally a percentage of the 20 orcs that are hit, not the weird all-or-nothing?

This is not player agency, and you should feel ashamed of yourself for calling it that.

[Koumei]

Yeah, I know it doesn't actually offer them any choices or real input, but it can give that illusion - they're less likely to wander off and do something else when it's not their turn if they have to roll some dice or something.

But maybe it's just better to let people wander off and do somthing else when it's not their turn, in this busy age of everyone needing to walk their dog, check their email/text messages, play another level of Angry Kestrels, make a coffee and masturbate.

Or possibly going the "actual player agency" route by providing various reactions to attacks that could be taken: let them roll against your defence (or roll your save), or "decide you're fighting defensively" (as above, but now your odds are better but your attacks are worse next turn), some kind of "rather than attempt a save, I'll just eat an automatic partial effect" and such. But that's still mostly just making a guess based on what you think the odds are, potentially wasting time for no benefit.

(Basically, on the road trip, friend said we should "totally make the new awesome D&D that does things our way, it doesn't even have to be made to sell because it just needs to appeal to us and our groups!" So while it's not going to be the grand [dWo] thing, and while there are some things where I'm going along with ideas I'd personally rather put to rest (six ability scores, stat boosts/penalties for races), it's also not something I'm going to put up on the Den and expect people to start using. So I want to make the "rolling in combat" more or less ideal for small groups of awesome people who go toe-to-toe with similar, clear big teams of mooks, and have dramatic "destroy the landscape" battles with single powerful foes.)

[tussock]

Depends on the spell.

AD&D fireball is the Mage player rolling and adding 8d6 together (and then halving it, if they're polite) while DM makes a handful of saves by rolling under the same target number for each critter. It's a very efficient combined use of their time.

Should the DM fireball the party each one gets to make their own save as the DM rolls and adds the damage. Empowerment achieved, players feel good about getting to roll dice before you do bad things to them. Even though it's not a choice or anything.

But single target spells with no other dice to roll are a bit anti-climactic for a player to cast if they don't get any dice to roll. Again, because players like rolling something, even if it's only damage. This is likely where 3e's bad-touch roll came from, which ends up complicating all your odds in strange ways.

Note that when damaged, the defender doesn't need to roll anything else, because they're already busy doing subtraction, which is hard, relatively speaking.

[rasmuswagner]

Depends on the spell.

AD&D fireball is the Mage player rolling and adding 8d6 together (and then halving it, if they're polite) while DM makes a handful of saves by rolling under the same target number for each critter. It's a very efficient combined use of their time.

Should the DM fireball the party each one gets to make their own save as the DM rolls and adds the damage. Empowerment achieved, players feel good about getting to roll dice before you do bad things to them. Even though it's not a choice or anything.

But single target spells with no other dice to roll are a bit anti-climactic for a player to cast if they don't get any dice to roll. Again, because players like rolling something, even if it's only damage. This is likely where 3e's bad-touch roll came from, which ends up complicating all your odds in strange ways.

Note that when damaged, the defender doesn't need to roll anything else, because they're already busy doing subtraction, which is hard, relatively speaking.

Charm Person needs to do 1d6 Friendship per caster level, Will save for half.

[Ancient History]

"I cast charm person."
"The barmaid has a headache, your spell automatically fails."

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Quick rifts question:

I remember a drunken holy demon fighter class that the narrator never let me play back when I did the Rifts things. I thought it was from Wormwood, but that's been dissected and it wasn't there. Am I just misremembering that (did an awful lot of drinking between then and about a year ago and I don't really remember a lot from before then)

[Nebuchadnezzar]

You are likely referring to the Demon Queller in Japan, although there are also several similar OCCs in China 2.

[Prak]

Yeah, I would suggest Rifts Japan. I seem to recall something like it there.

[Strung Nether]

Shadowrun:
Is there a way to fix the 2 shot problem?

[virgil]

Shadowrun:
Is there a way to fix the 2 shot problem?

Increase the number of health boxes by some amount, thus turning it into a 3+ shot problem?
Honestly though, if I've learned anything from so many slap-dash attempts to solve D&D's Rocket Tag through padding defenses, is that prolonging combat does nothing but make your roll dice twice as long. If you go through a full overhaul of the combat system, you might be able to do it, but the tabletop systems I know that manage that are along the lines of Battletech or MTP; with little in-between. I may be forgetting a system, but that's been the impression I've gleaned in the gaming industry.

[Username17]

Shadowrun:
Is there a way to fix the 2 shot problem?

The short answer is to bring back LMSD damage. Like After Sundown. I did most of the work converting SR4 to a proportional damage system in the alt.war thread before I walked away from the project due to the people I was "working with" being incredible assholes who told me to go fuck myself in an incredibly shitty and passive aggressive way.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Speaking of, how close is H:AT to completion right now? I understand it hasn't been worked on for a while, I'm just wondering how close to finished it was.

[Username17]

Speaking of, how close is H:AT to completion right now? I understand it hasn't been worked on for a while, I'm just wondering how close to finished it was.

At this point I'm fishing around for core game mechanics. The recent discussion on doing high level Matrix abstraction is extremely relevant, and I should probably start a new thread about it.

The core idea I'm playing with right now is that combat is played out in rounds which the winners get to do stuff. One of the things you can do is to invest resources (such as spending off ammunition on suppressive fire) to make a round a "tie" where nothing happens except time moving forward.

But you can also "ignore" the ongoing combat in order to do other things. Most notably would be casting spells, hacking, and maneuvering. But locating and stealing an important prototype or something could be that sort of thing too. The idea then is that combat characters have as a major selling point the ability to provide covering fire for other characters to do things. The other idea is that actions in general are fairly "high level", you take gambits, you spend resources, you have outcomes. The kind of thing which, not to put too fine a point on it - you could play over internet chat without missing the table.

-Username17