Threads that make us Laugh, Cry, or Both

[shirak]

I like how the Witch uses a character 4 levels lower than the monster's CR as a check for balance. I mean, sure, Wizards are plenty powerful but come on!

[Username17]

Does noone else have their head explode every time Witch brings up the "example" of a 16th level Wizard going toe to toe with a CR 20 lord of the Abyss as a standard scenario where Spell Penetration won't be enough to get you where you want to be?

I'm reminded of something that I said on this very subject:

OK... rather than just bypassing spell resistance, let's just do spell resistance. Get Spell Penetration. Then line up your enemies:

CR 10
Animated Object, Collosal (No SR, 100%)
Bebilith (No SR, 100%)
Couatl (No SR, 100%)
Formian Mymarch (SR 25, 40%)
Fire Giant (No SR, 100%)
Clay Golem (Infinite SR, 0%)
Hydra (No SR, 100%)
Guardian Naga (No SR, 100%)
Gargantuan Scorpion (No SR, 100%)
Rakshasa (SR 27, 30%)
Gray Slaad (No SR, 100%)
Noble Salamander (No SR, 100%)
Adult White Dragon (SR 18, 75%)
Young Red Dragon (No SR, 100%)

So seriously, if you just cast SR spells at CR 10 opponents as a 10th level character at random, you are only going to have your spells fail only 18.2% of the time. If you factor in that yu aren't a god damned idiot and have no intention of dropping SR spells on Clay Golems, you are looking at having your spells fail only 11.9% of the time. Oh noes!

But right, we're talking after 10th level. Let's consider:

CR 15
Marut (SR 25, 65%)
Vampire Lord (No SR, 100%)
Adult Red Dragon (SR 21, 85%)
Old White Dragon (SR 21, 85%)

Well gosh. Right out of the Monster Manual the few CR 15 Monsters that there are look like they are going to stop a magic bullet only 16.25% of the time - even less often than the CR 10 critters.

So let's continue:

CR 20
Balor (SR 28, 75%)
Pit Fiend (SR 32, 55%)
Tarrasque (SR 32, 55%)
Old Red Dragon (SR 24, 95%)
Wyrm Black Dragon (SR 26, 85%)

Holy shiznit. At CR 20, everything has SR. And if you just dump spells on things, your spells will totally get stopped fully 27% of the time.

Now it is important to note that a 20th level Wizard can shapechange into a variety of monsters that have Supernatural attacks that don't allow SR at all. Or that there are just plain spells you can throw that don't allow SR. But really, you don't need to make that argument. At no level is SR going to stop you from doing anything even a third of the time.

Just running up and using your spells exactly as intended and watching them bounce off enemy SR from time to time - it's not even a big deal.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Bitnine's joke balances that Witch moron's ranting. Unfortunately I'm sure Witch can post garbage faster than Bitnine can post comedy.

[shirak]

1184230663[/unixtime]]Bitnine's joke balances that Witch moron's ranting. Unfortunately I'm sure Witch can post garbage faster than Bitnine can post comedy.

Obviously. There is a thinking process involved with joking. Witch is such a fucking idiot it's not even funny.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Just for the record, anytime I see Witch post in a thread (usually tipped of by his avatar of a blue guy yelling at people) I stop reading the thread right there. Really. There is no point in reading further, it is just going to go to crap. There is no point in posting, it will just add to the crap.

It's kinda like a grease fire, most of the time you just let them burn out.

[tzor]

1184174784[/unixtime]]Has this guy ever actually read the 1E DMG? What was it Cecil called it? "All the joys of double-entry accounting with none of that boring 'fun' stuff thrown in"?

As one that has not only read the 1E AD&D DMG and PHB I can say with absolute certanty that most people I know simply avoided the complex part. The complex part was generally weapon speed factors, weapons against armor types and hand to hand combat tables. Otherwise everything was a roll the dice and look up the answer on the DMG screen. I don't recall anything "complex" in 1E.

[Cielingcat]

1184220022[/unixtime]]Wow... I hadn't checked in on the WoTC boards in months. But that... that thread just made me wonder something very critical to my understanding of the situation over there.

How can reasonable people not have concurrent aneurysms when engaged in an argument on those boards? It... unnerves me to such a great degree. Ugh. Now I know never to go back once you quit.

WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE CRYING

Witch is one of the "reasonable" people on WotC.

[Captain_Bleach]

Just for the record, anytime I see Witch post in a thread (usually tipped of by his avatar of a blue guy yelling at people) I stop reading the thread right there. Really. There is no point in reading further, it is just going to go to crap. There is no point in posting, it will just add to the crap.

It's kinda like a grease fire, most of the time you just let them burn out.

But if you shift through the garbage, you might find a gem!
Of course, nobody really wants to shift through garbage...

[Crissa]

I thought the complex part of first-ed was things like saving throws and combat resolution...

-Crissa

[RandomCasualty]

1184279892[/unixtime]]I thought the complex part of first-ed was things like saving throws and combat resolution...

Well 1st and 2nd edition weren't particularly complicated, they were just arbitrary. They had odd tables for saves that seemed to make very little sense at all. Not to mention save categories that made no sense at all. Save vs spell was different from save vs. rod/staff/wand, so casting a fireball out of a staff of power had a different save rolled than having a wizard cast it.

As far as combat resolution, early edition combat wasn't exactly concrete in terms of what you could do. I honestly remember having difficulty figuring out if you could move and attack in the same round, since stuff didn't really take actions exactly and nothing was directly stated outright.

[tzor]

1E combat, assuming you ignored speed factors and weapon vs armor modifications, was exceptionally easy because it was a simple table lookup. You roll the d20 look up the AC and if it was lower or equal you hit.

Saving throws were also a table lookup.

Let's say you're a first level fighter. You can hit ac 10 on an 10 or better. Roll a 15 and you can hit AC 5 or lower. Roll a natural 20 and you can hit up to AC -5.

Remember that on the table the 20 number was repeated 6 times. The better attack bonuses you had the better this feature became.

Many people did use facing rules but that simply meant different AC values depending on where the opponent was and you could have them all specified on the char sheet ahead of time. Multiple attacks per round were rare, there was no attacks of opportunity so once things got going it was pretty straight forward.

[PhoneLobster]

Except like you said people ignored weapons different hit bonuses against different armours.

I was a kid when I played but if I recall...

Like where an axe would have say a +2 bonus to hit AC 4 and a -2 penalty to hit AC 10. While a sword would get +2 against AC 10 and -2 against AC 4.

So you rolled your d20 and a high roll converted into a low THACO result on a fairly straight forward table but THEN you somehow modified it by the bonus dependant on what the target AC actually is.

I can't recall if you modified the roll then consulted THACO, or if you consulted THACO and modified the result or what...

[tzor]

We had real debates about the weapon speeds. The weapon vs armor type was a problem that for the most part did not exist as we fought monsters not armored people. Generally the games that focused on person vs person combat were the ones that brought out the real tables of Role Master.

Honestly, if you can use those tables even at a mediocre pace then the AD&D tables were child's play. I honestly can say I never really used THAC0 until 2E. I might have saw it one back then but it went over my head like the space shuttle.

[Rob_Knotts]

1184244437[/unixtime]]WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE CRYING

Witch is one of the "reasonable" people on WotC.

I'm not sure which is worse, Witch's arguments of the fact that I still remember enough of D&D to understand the flaw in his argument.

I just realized I went back and read an entire WotC thread!

I'm DOOMED!

There's no hope...

no hope....

[shirak]

1184300331[/unixtime]]I'm not sure which is worse, Witch's arguments of the fact that I still remember enough of D&D to understand the flaw in his argument.

I just realized I went back and read an entire WotC thread!

I'm DOOMED!

There's no hope...

no hope....

Melodramatic this morning, aren't we?

[Username17]

Blast from the Past!

Yes, we have threads like this here too. Watch:

• Famous posters loudly and persistently claim at great length that treating a triggered directive as a bivalent conditional statement is logically sound.
  
• People demand that their interpretation where individual lines out of a paragraph trump more specific text while other lines in the same paragraph don't be taken at "equal value" since it's "an" interpretation.
  
• Frank loses his fvcking temper and goes off on people.

But it all ends with this:

Your construct was based "logically" on using Contraposition on sets of directives - which is painfully invalid. Consider, Contraposition gives us things such as:

If you roll a 20 on your attack roll, you hit your opponent. Therefore: If you miss your opponent, you did not roll a 20 on your attack roll.

Er, Frank, that statement is true. If I missed my opponent, then I didn't roll a 20, did I?

• Rolls a natural 20.
  
• Fails Concealment Miss Check.
  
• Head Explodes.

-Username17

[Naar]

Mechanics-hating nut Kiero, who doesn't even play D&D yet constantly makes threads about it, starts this thread asking what people did to customize their characters before feats, leading to a hilarious series of 'my edition is better than your edition'-type arguments.

There are games out there that handle combat options just fine without 'feats'. Look around, stop whiffing WOTCs a**. I can't stand 3.5. Power gaming for power trippers, to a large degree. And it shows in a lot of the posts here.

Thanks rpg.net!!!

[Rob_Knotts]

1184361978[/unixtime]]Mechanics-hating nut Kiero, who doesn't even play D&D yet constantly makes threads about it, starts this thread asking what people did to customize their characters before feats, leading to a hilarious series of 'my edition is better than your edition'-type arguments.

He's got the same thread running over on Giant's board: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthre ... uote]There are games out there that handle combat options just fine without 'feats'. Look around, stop whiffing WOTCs a**.[/quote]Y'know, even SJ Games' GURPS 4e includes a system similar to Feats (Techniques) as part of the main system. In GURPS 3e they were an optional set of rules introduced in GURPS Martial Arts.

[PhoneLobster]

Something tangential about that kiero guy just amazes me.

1st level RPGnetter, 23,315 posts...!

A) You have to have HOW many posts to be a 2nd level RPGnetter?

B) Wait... 23,315 posts?

[Rob_Knotts]

1184402404[/unixtime]]You have to have HOW many posts to be a 2nd level RPGnetter?

From a quick at this guy's profile, it looks like ranking on RPG.net is based on game reviews you've submitted to the site, not post count. Interesting setup.

[Captain_Bleach]

Or they just don't view posting as important as reviewing games.

[Rob_Knotts]

I said it was an interesting setup, didn't say there was anything wrong with it:biggrin:

[Rob_Knotts]

Another gem from Kiero: GitP

Essentially another "thought" exercise about D&D 3.x being inferior to AD&D overall. But when asked why he would even consider running D&D if he felt the need to alter it so drastically, he starts to characterize himself as a martyr for giving the crowd what they want.

So he's a martyr... for considering how he would do something he adamantly refuses to do... because most players are familiar with D&D 3.x... but his game would be completely unrecognizable as D&D 3.x...

Aspirin, need aspirin...

[RandomCasualty]

1184426387[/unixtime]]Another gem from Kiero: GitP

Essentially another "thought" exercise about D&D 3.x being inferior to AD&D overall. But when asked why he would even consider running D&D if he felt the need to alter it so drastically, he starts to characterize himself as a martyr for giving the crowd what they want.

Yeah it sounds like Kiero is just frustrated at not being able to find a group to play a rules lite system, which is obviously what he wants to run.

So instead, he just bitches at D&D because thats what everyone else wants to play.

[Username17]

Just like playing "I Win" with the Epic "Rules" only with Shadowrun. It's... Time for a Dragon "Hunt".


Remember, you're not just trying to kill a dragon, you're trying to get to the dragon when the game master is being obstructionist and vague on the grounds that your opponent is "really smart".

-Username17