Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[momothefiddler]

I would point out that the game doesn't suffer at all if you just pretend that concept doesn't exist. I mean, either you want to prevent some race-class combinations, in which case you should outright prevent them, or you don't, in which case you shouldn't incentivize a narrow focus for race-class combinations beyond what the racial modifiers already accomplish.

A valid point, which I support. My expectation that they'll exist just comes from other books and can go fuck itself, and if there are none then it gives me room to wheedle my MC into porting over the one I want. Which seems like a reasonable way to handle them anyway.

[Prak]

Well, Pathfinder handles the idea a little better by just giving character very small number boosts (like +1 per four levels) if they're in a favoured class.

[virgil]

Well, Pathfinder handles the idea a little better by just giving character very small number boosts (like +1 per four levels) if they're in a favoured class.

That bonus is in addition to ability modifiers and special abilities that have synergy with the favored class. I consider that a passive aggressive forbidding of gnome wrestlers; you're still technically allowed to be one, but you'll be missing out on a pile of bonuses for breaking ranks.

[Hiram McDaniels]

Should games include nigh-untouchable target numbers?

I don't mean like a DC of 100 and fuck you; more like 5E where the DC tops out at 30 for superhuman feats of skill. Something that's technically possible to achieve, but requires a roll of yahtzee or above for success.

To put it another way, should upper echelon characters ever actually fail at a task or do they not give a shit about stealth rolls once invisibility comes online? If the former, how often should a specialized character fail at their specialized task? 5% of the time? 10%? 25%?

Keep in mind I'm talking about shit like climbing ice walls bare-handed and swimming up waterfalls, not convincing a farmer to let you sleep in his barn for a night or running a 10 minute mile.

[OgreBattle]

Should games include nigh-untouchable target numbers?
...
Keep in mind I'm talking about shit like climbing ice walls bare-handed and swimming up waterfalls

Yes, because when the PC is stumped by the wall of ice it makes the fight with ice-climbing yetis more interesting as they have a terrain advantage. Even if a PC can't swim up a waterfall, a level 19 magikarp doing so is evocative of the lore.

This also helps to give context to the supernatural and spell effects. If you have a DC for sneaking past an alert guard in good lighting down a narrow corridor with the guard facing you, then that gives context to what an invisibility spell can do vs what an assassin's stealth check can do.

[tussock]

No, because target numbers you can't hit: they suck.

You let someone specialise in climbing, and then become a god-like creature of vastly superhuman skill at everything they do, and then you say, "but it's ice, so no", they should punch you in the arm.

Because if you didn't want people to climb something when they're supposed to be superhuman climbers ... but you let them put 23 ranks and change into being better at climbing, fuck you.

Climby McClimberton should be able to climb other people's dreams into extra-dimensional spaces. Swimmy McSwimmerton should be able to swim backward through the streams of time, while on fire, in a vacuum. Or whatever lesser thematic limit you put on skill DCs, because you're mean and don't want Mundane classes to have nice things, the people who chose to be good at those things should actually be really good at them.

And if you take the gear, and the feat, and the other options too, then you should be perfect at them in a typhoon on a small boat in a lake of liquid evil, while wrestling a giant octopus. Otherwise you're just being mean, and letting people choose things that don't even work, let alone win the game.


And then if the Invisibility spell makes you only as good as a 10th level Thief (and doesn't stack), then that gives a good conceptual power level to 10th level Thieves, because they are functionally invisible whenever they want to be.

[TiaC]

Well, with stealth, yes, even high-level characters should fail. This is because it's an opposed roll, so stealth against another high-level character means that one of them is going to fail.

However, also yes in general, because if you can't fail at anything that the skill allows you to do, then that skill is just done. If this happens at 12th level, you're going to look pretty stupid next to the guy who specialized in a skill that provides level-appropriate benefits up to 18th level.

Also, there should still be a difference between "I have max ranks in swim" and "swimming is an essential and integral part of my character's identity so I devoted a large part of my character to it" at high levels.

[Prak]

So, fault me, as I know some of you will, for never reading the DMG cover to cover, but I just found the free form xp variant in it (somehow I never bothered to read that sidebar in all the times I've consulted the xp table on the other page.

For those who aren't familiar with the rule, it basically says "fuck tables, just give 75xParty level per standard encounter per character, or 100x or 150x for difficult encounters and 50x or 25x for easy encounters. Or say even fuck all that noise and just give 300x to each character at the end of each session."

I like the concept of that a lot, since I don't have to worry about which encounters are taken on and beaten and all that shit and I can just say "ok, everyone get 1200 xp! Oh, and here's some minor story xp!" I'm curious what others think about it.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

That's actually how I ran exp when I ran my game.

[PhoneLobster]

I abandoned XP all together last time I was running 3.x hax, and all I did was every now and then say "this seems like a significant achievement/amount of play time, have a level up!".

If I were writing writing an XP system for a level based game where the levels where largish and meant to take at least a bit of effort now, I'd write it like...

The Gold Star Level Up System
When the group, or even an individual character achieves something arbitrarily interesting the GM may award the players one or more GOLD STARS.

When the group has X gold stars (perhaps one or two per player?) they may cash them in and level all their characters up.


...Thus letting them have some token achievement er... token between levels to let them feel like they are progressing between what still might as well be utterly arbitrary break points in advancement.

[AndreiChekov]

I like the concept of that a lot, since I don't have to worry about which encounters are taken on and beaten and all that shit and I can just say "ok, everyone get 1200 xp! Oh, and here's some minor story xp!" I'm curious what others think about it.

I give 1k xp per session attended. No matter what happens in the session. And, if a session ends mid fight, for whatever reason, then they get a shounen level op.

However, even in doing this, I have level caps for certain tiers of the game. Where you must defeat this boss to advance beyond level 4 or whatever. and I usually just cap all games at level 10.

[Zaranthan]

You know how prewritten adventures have little sidebars saying stuff like "The players should be level X when they start, level Y at the end of chapter 2, and level Z around the middle of chapter 5"? That's more or less how I hand out XP. I plan a dozen or so encounters, and when they do something that moves the story along and get to go home and party for a while, I just tell them to level up.

[virgil]

Anonymous asked: Why are you so [high level]

Every time you give a woman an unfulfilling sexual encounter I gain [a level].

[Orion]

In D&D, I actually give out level 2 at a time, or very occasionally 3 at once. Like PhoneLobster and Zaranthan, I peg them to story progress, mostly because I don't want the boss I wrote up to become irrelevant by the time the PCs reach them. I hand out multiple levels partly so that I can run one "story" for more session without slowing down the rate of leveling, but also because I think it's just better.

If your players have low system mastery and/or you have substantial house rules and/or are writing Elothars on the fly, then every level-up requires substantial labor from the MC. Also, low-mastery players may seriously dead leveling. Plus, some levels are seriously disappointing for some characters. This is less of a problem for tome classes than in the core game. (Jumping a fighter from 4 to 6 is way less depressing than telling them they and the wizard are both hitting 5). Giving out 2 levels means casters always get a new tier of spells, and it means almost every character should get to make at least one significant choice, or every character if you move feats to 1/2 levels.

Also, if you keep everyone on even levels, then sorcerers suck a little less.

[Meikle641]

Now that Dungeon and Dragon are gone, what other "big" RPG and tabletop magazines are there? White Dwarf?

Not sure where TTRPG companies really advertise anymore.

[AndreiChekov]

In D&D, I actually give out level 2 at a time, or very occasionally 3 at once. Like PhoneLobster and Zaranthan, I peg them to story progress, mostly because I don't want the boss I wrote up to become irrelevant by the time the PCs reach them. I hand out multiple levels partly so that I can run one "story" for more session without slowing down the rate of leveling, but also because I think it's just better.

If your players have low system mastery and/or you have substantial house rules and/or are writing Elothars on the fly, then every level-up requires substantial labor from the MC. Also, low-mastery players may seriously dead leveling. Plus, some levels are seriously disappointing for some characters. This is less of a problem for tome classes than in the core game. (Jumping a fighter from 4 to 6 is way less depressing than telling them they and the wizard are both hitting 5). Giving out 2 levels means casters always get a new tier of spells, and it means almost every character should get to make at least one significant choice, or every character if you move feats to 1/2 levels.

Also, if you keep everyone on even levels, then sorcerers suck a little less.

You know, moving sorcerers to get their spells at the same level as wizard removes half on this problem, right?

[OgreBattle]

Now that Dungeon and Dragon are gone, what other "big" RPG and tabletop magazines are there? White Dwarf?

When I lived in Beijing nearly every metro stop news stand I saw had tabletop gaming magazines. But those are for card games and board games, not tRPG's.

In general print is on a drastic decline in the English speaking world (I don't know much about continental Europe) but is still strong in Asian cities.

[OgreBattle]

In D&D, I actually give out level 2 at a time, or very occasionally 3 at once. Like PhoneLobster and Zaranthan, I peg them to story progress, mostly because I don't want the boss I wrote up to become irrelevant by the time the PCs reach them. I hand out multiple levels partly so that I can run one "story" for more session without slowing down the rate of leveling, but also because I think it's just better.

What level do your games usually start at, and how many levels do they tend to move up before it ends? Do you tend to stay in one 'tier' or do you go from stabbing orcs to stabbing orc gods.

[Zaranthan]

I usually start at level 3, it's after the point where hitting things with a stick is a death attack, but leaves a good amount of room before hitting things with a stick goes obsolete. Most games peter out due to flaky players and life getting in the way, but I never plan adventures beyond 12-14. Let the players enjoy being powerful, but let the story end before things get totally absurd.

[radthemad4]

In D&D, I actually give out level 2 at a time, or very occasionally 3 at once. Like PhoneLobster and Zaranthan, I peg them to story progress, mostly because I don't want the boss I wrote up to become irrelevant by the time the PCs reach them. I hand out multiple levels partly so that I can run one "story" for more session without slowing down the rate of leveling, but also because I think it's just better.

If your players have low system mastery and/or you have substantial house rules and/or are writing Elothars on the fly, then every level-up requires substantial labor from the MC. Also, low-mastery players may seriously dead leveling. Plus, some levels are seriously disappointing for some characters. This is less of a problem for tome classes than in the core game. (Jumping a fighter from 4 to 6 is way less depressing than telling them they and the wizard are both hitting 5). Giving out 2 levels means casters always get a new tier of spells, and it means almost every character should get to make at least one significant choice, or every character if you move feats to 1/2 levels.

Also, if you keep everyone on even levels, then sorcerers suck a little less.

You know, moving sorcerers to get their spells at the same level as wizard removes half on this problem, right?

Doing both those things and sticking to even levels lets you dip something that doesn't progress your primary schtick (e.g. spellcasting, sneak attack, eldritch blast, tome monk fighting style, or whatever) without being significantly behind a large portion of the time.

[Prak]

I have a player who likes the idea of skill crits. Of course what he really wants is for me to MTP say "sure, you get exactly what you want, and here's some cake and ice cream too!"

But I'm curious what people think about the idea of skills having a special effect on a natural 20? Obviously a codified effect is better than "sure! You convince the crowd you're the king's long lost cousin! Even though he's human and you're a fucking Ettin!"

[PhoneLobster]

"sure! You convince the crowd you're the king's long lost cousin! Even though he's human and you're a fucking Ettin!"

Half Cousin. On the left hand side.

[Prak]

I can only defend that with the fact that it was my girlfriend at the time who made the check and the game only contained her and the MTP-Skill Crit guy. So letting her make the most absurd lie and him become the new king literally left no other players out of the spotlight.

I was young, I needed the tail.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Random musings regarding Pathfinder that I've had:

* Let's say instead of having good/bad saves, you have a base saving throw equal to 1/2 your level. Your character class can give you one or more +2 class bonus to saves (as a named bonus it would not stack with other class bonuses. Example: a cleric would get +2 to fort and will, if he took a level of monk he'd get that +2 class bonus to ref, but the other two would overlap and not stack). As pathfinder prestige classes like to have weird save progressions, they will give a +1 prestige save bonus to certain saves (which do stack with class bonuses but not other prestige bonuses).

* Let's say I throw out alignment, but keep alignment subtypes. I don't care if Proteans, Demons, and Eladrin are literally made either partly or wholly out of chaos, but I can't think of a time where PC alignment did anything but start stupid arguments at the table. Other than some tweaking of the alignment-based domains and the spells contained within and possibly giving paladins more things to smite (perhaps they can smite Dragons, Undead, Evil Outsiders then a couple more creature types of the paladin's choosing), would I need to worry about anything other than the disturbing lack of stupid "But I'm CHAOTIC NOOTRALLL LOLOLOLOLOL" arguments.

* Considering the previous class bonus rule to saves mentioned earlier: I give fighters, barbarians, paladins, and cavaliers all good saves. Other than making them tougher to take down with magic, what side-effects can I expect?

[Hiram McDaniels]

No, because target numbers you can't hit: they suck.

You let someone specialise in climbing, and then become a god-like creature of vastly superhuman skill at everything they do, and then you say, "but it's ice, so no", they should punch you in the arm.

Because if you didn't want people to climb something when they're supposed to be superhuman climbers ... but you let them put 23 ranks and change into being better at climbing, fuck you.

Climby McClimberton should be able to climb other people's dreams into extra-dimensional spaces. Swimmy McSwimmerton should be able to swim backward through the streams of time, while on fire, in a vacuum. Or whatever lesser thematic limit you put on skill DCs, because you're mean and don't want Mundane classes to have nice things, the people who chose to be good at those things should actually be really good at them.

And if you take the gear, and the feat, and the other options too, then you should be perfect at them in a typhoon on a small boat in a lake of liquid evil, while wrestling a giant octopus. Otherwise you're just being mean, and letting people choose things that don't even work, let alone win the game.


And then if the Invisibility spell makes you only as good as a 10th level Thief (and doesn't stack), then that gives a good conceptual power level to 10th level Thieves, because they are functionally invisible whenever they want to be.

Okay...I dig what you're laying down here, Jack. But, assuming that putting all your skill points into being the best swimmer in the world does in fact allow Leggsy Fishman to regularly perform superhuman feats of swimming, should failure ever be an option at all? And I don't mean drowning in a duck pond on a natty 1; I mean what percentage of the time does Leggsy fail to meet the very highest of high swimming DC's, if ever? Like 10% 5%? 1%?