Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:33 pm

Was there a splatbook for 3.Yourmum that has rules for weapons with shitty materials like flint and bone? I'm sure I recall something of the sort, but I can't remember for the life of me and if anyone else knows the answer off-hand, that can save having to dig old books out of a box in the shed.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:42 pm

Arms and Equipment Guide, from 3.0

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:46 pm

I think the closest was the Dark Sun setting material by Dave Noonan in Dragon 319. Bone and stone were both -2 to attack and damage rolls.

edit: ninja'd. Same rules, as it turns out.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 8:41 pm

It's on page 144 of the 3.5 DMG.

Roog · Post by **Roog** » Tue Jun 02, 2015 10:38 pm

Koumei wrote:Was there a splatbook for 3.Yourmum that has rules for weapons with shitty materials like flint and bone?

PF has rules for this under special materials ( www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/special-materials).

Primative materials are often fragile, but " Masterwork and magical fragile weapons and armor lack these flaws unless otherwise noted in the item description or the special material description."

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 5:02 am

Why is it that death spirals work in dice pool games like Shadowrun and After Sundown, but critical existence failure is preferred in D&D?

Is it mainly a genre thing, where Shadowrun characters are expected to drop if shot in the chest but D&D heroes will chug along after being impaled on a lance?

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 5:13 am

Tis a genre thing, yes.

spongeknight · Post by **spongeknight** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 6:37 am

Well, it's also a mechanics thing- how would you implement a death spiral in a d20+bonuses resolution system? If you have flat penalties they become an absolute joke at high level even if they are insurmountably bad at first level. If you try to make people take percentages off their bonuses they will give you a confused look and then ignore that rule. There's not really much you can do to make a death spiral in D&D.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 6:45 am

spongeknight wrote:Well, it's also a mechanics thing- how would you implement a death spiral in a d20+bonuses resolution system? If you have flat penalties they become an absolute joke at high level even if they are insurmountably bad at first level. If you try to make people take percentages off their bonuses they will give you a confused look and then ignore that rule. There's not really much you can do to make a death spiral in D&D.

What?

A -2 penalty is just as bad on 1d20+0 vs DC 10 as on 1d20 + 100 vs DC 110

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 7:15 am

Spongeknight, there's lots you can do to create a death spiral in D&D. Adding wounds with stacking status conditions would start you on that path handily.

But the question was why do X mechanics work for X games and Y mechanics for Y games, and the answer is because the mechanics support the genre expectations. i.e. yes, it is a genre thing for why those mechanics work.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 3:16 pm

Why is it that death spirals work in dice pool games like Shadowrun and After Sundown, but critical existence failure is preferred in D&D?

1: really? Death spirals that work?

2: hit points definitely work. That shit is heroic.

Snark aside, it's all just legacy. D&D started from Chainmail man-to-man where you either died or you didn't, every round, inflationary ablative hit points added to give a sense of dramatic pacing to fights without losing the dramatic end.

Shadowrun started from idiots in the 80's not understanding dice probabilities, but they did have a sense that rolling great fistfuls of dice can be fun if you don't have to add them all up. Their lack of (unrealistic to 80's designers hating on D&D) inflationary ablative hit points alongside the tiny variance in the RNG means they need a death spiral to both delay death from round one and yet still allow death to happen at some point.

After Sundown is supposed to be how you make dicepool games that are less of a bag of assholes than the rest (former designer makes similar-but-better game). They still need some sort of shift in odds over time, because they don't conventionally have big hit point defence and don't want random deaths on round one.

Insomniac · Post by **Insomniac** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 5:17 pm

I am sure it has come up before, but what about abilities that detect alignment? Should any old putz subjected to one turn up Evil or Good? Or even Neutral?

The example I have seen given for this moral conundrum is a Paladin is in city and dealing with a merchant. The merchant is a drunk, cheats on his taxes, sells counterfeit food and clothing and every now again, he beats his wife.
What, if anything, should this person detect as? Sure, he is a dishonest scumbag, but is that enough for The Big E?

Zaranthan · Post by **Zaranthan** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 5:32 pm

Depends on what you mean by "counterfeit." If they're just knock-offs, then he's just lying, which isn't Evil. If he's selling toxic or spoiled food, or smallpox blankets, then yeah, he's deliberately hurting other people for his own gain, which is Evil.

Being an abusive spouse probably makes the above question moot.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Mon Jun 08, 2015 6:05 pm

Per the PHB, humans don't gravitate toward any specific alignment. Since the NPC doesn't have actions that the players see, the GM determines alignment and then chooses actions to suit.

In this case, it's easiest to write 'evil' and avoid arguing how bad you can be and still be technically neutral.

Alignment is dumb for lots of reasons, but arguing the alignments of real people is even dumber.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:21 am

I figure detect alignment can be replaced with "detect killing intent" so it's more a mechanic for avoiding ambushes than being the jury/executioner to some guy you bumped into in the city. Or a "detect outsiders" so you can sense if there's a succubus in the room. Detecting magic and what kind of magic someone wields then alerts you to the divine/arcane sources of power folks draw from and if they're definitely being powered by Orcus you're more inclined to stab them.

So a Paladin can detect if there's demonic influences on the room, a Rogue can detect if someone is lying, and a Soldier can detect there's an ambush down the road. Everyone is detecting 'evil' in their own unique ways.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 12:23 pm

Sort of a game question- what is the probability of a set of dice (d4, d6, d10, d%, d12, d20) rules together coming up max? Anydice doesn't express probabilities below .01%.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 12:33 pm

1 in 5760000. You arrive at this figure by taking probabilities of getting maximum value on each individual die roll (ie. 1 in 4, 1 in 6, 1 in 10...) and multiplying them all together.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 09, 2015 12:35 pm

Ah, thanks.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 7:45 am

There's been some games were even/odd number results activate certain abilities. The reason for doing so is to have a 50% chance of activating some effect, So on a d20 it looks something like "roll to hit, and if your hit roll was even then you also knock them prone". I forgot where I heard about this though, does anyone remember what game has used this mechanic recently? I think it's one of the post 4e kickstarter games.

Do you think this mechanic would work for a D&D3.X kind of game?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 7:50 am

Actually, not a bad idea. It's a good way to consolidate a percentile roll into an attack and make people roll fewer things.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 7:55 am

13th Age has mechanics like that, I remember.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 8:04 am

What's the general opinion on 13th age? It seems like it was at least slightly more interesting than straight 4e.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 8:49 am

It's "like 4e, but ..." and that's where everyone tunes out.

That thing where you get a special result when you roll a 5 on your attack (while adding 12 vs DC 23 or whatever), or roll a 5, 9, or 13, or roll some other set of numbers that change when you level up or do different stuff, it's not actually any faster than just rolling another die, not really any better than just rolling 18+ or 1-3, and all that parallel processing makes people tired and grumpy.

There's a lot of stuff like that in their otherwise brief game. It's like they thought the bandwidth limit on tabletop randomisers was the number of dice you rolled, rather than the volume of math required by the observer.

The only thing I saw people like about it was those sort of mechanical dice-compression tricks, which aren't actually any good for anything. It is at least relatively small, so you won't lose too much life by checking their SRD.

http://www.13thagesrd.com/

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 9:01 am

Blicero wrote:13th Age has mechanics like that, I remember.

You remember what they did with them though? I believe the main complaint that it was minor stuff like a 4e "push 1 square" atwill power

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Fri Jun 12, 2015 9:06 am

OgreBattle wrote:There's been some games were even/odd number results activate certain abilities. The reason for doing so is to have a 50% chance of activating some effect, So on a d20 it looks something like "roll to hit, and if your hit roll was even then you also knock them prone". I forgot where I heard about this though, does anyone remember what game has used this mechanic recently? I think it's one of the post 4e kickstarter games.

Do you think this mechanic would work for a D&D3.X kind of game?

Prak wrote:Actually, not a bad idea. It's a good way to consolidate a percentile roll into an attack and make people roll fewer things.

The math doesn't exactly match if you consolidate rolls with percentages. e.g. let's say you need to roll 12 or higher to hit something normally and it has full concealment.

Odds of hitting normally (roll >=12, 50 %): 9/20*.5=.225 or 22.5 % or 9/20*.501 = .22545 or 22.545 % if you actually use percentile die apparently*

Odds of hitting if you beat concealment on evens (roll 12, 14, 16, 18, 20): 5/20=.25 or 25 %
Odds of hitting if you beat concealment on odds (roll 13, 15, 17, 19): 4/20=.2 or 20 %

The difference might be small enough to ignore though.

*Roll (5, 6, 7, 8 or 9) on 10s digit = 5/10 = .5
Roll (0) on 10s and 1s digit = 1/10*1/10= .01