The Gaming Den

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:13 pm

But touching with the intent to harm, but doing so gently seems wrong and annoys me.

Maybe gently pointing at the target is part of the spell process, perhaps the magic electricity really only likes to jump from extended fingers.

seems I logged in to reply but didn't send the reply.

Shocking Grasp has not to my knowledge been a spell that can go through a weapon in any edition for the last two decades. According to Google, 2e vaguely mentions that Shocking Grasp can go through a conductor which I guess could be a sword being swung with full force, but they don't spell out that use.

Foxwarrior wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 05, 2023 6:21 am

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:13 pm

But touching with the intent to harm, but doing so gently seems wrong and annoys me.

Maybe gently pointing at the target is part of the spell process, perhaps the magic electricity really only likes to jump from extended fingers.

If it only likes to jump from extended fingers, it probably shouldn't be called Shocking GRASP.

As a grasp, clearly it should trigger from a grapple, probably aiding in the delivery of a Blue Thunder Bomb, Lightning Spiral, or Storm Breaker.

As an aside, the Absorb Elements spell allows you to catch some of an incoming attack, and the next time you hit someone normally, they get zapped by a bit of it.

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 02, 2023 12:06 pm

Ok, been looking through 5e and while there is a lot that just looks bad. In particular, they way attack spells either do or do not affect things other than creatures, seemingly depending on whether or not the writer remembered to put rules in for that. When it does affect things (eg "A flammable object hit by this spell ignites"), there's always the caveat "if it isn't being worn or carried".

Which, ok, it doesn't make sense, but I can accept that not having adventurers equipment risk being destroyed every fight is a worthwhile thing. And it makes it nice and simple and straightforwards, which is a plus.

Wondering what other people's thoughts were about that.

Hey, this came up in my game last night! We found a big magic engine hanging over a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, sucking energy out of it and using it to power all sorts of fancy ancient magitech. Typical adventuring stuff. Our Warlock's patron was a djinn who wanted him to close it, and forced the guy to blow up the tiny chain holding the engine over the portal - we go into "bullet time" to react before the shit falls into the portal and blows us all up, and our bard goes "wait, I cast Featherfall on it?"
Before he even brought up the spell text, I said "ah-ah, that's only for creatures!" and surely enough - you can't cast Featherfall on objects. For... reasons.
We got out fine, but this is one of 5e's more aggressive issues and one that I need to iron out for my game. I can understand why some spells would only work on living creatures, but I suspect WOTC did not really have that in mind when writing most spells.

First animate the falling engine. Then feather fall.

gatorized2 wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 02, 2023 3:30 pm

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:13 pm

Ok, totally random and minor thing that's been bugging me. Current 5th ed D&D Shocking Grasp, you cast it and make a melee spell attack to touch the target. Would it not be better to cast it and then make a normal attack and if you hit the target gets normal damage and Shocking Grasp damage? Now, that's an action for a spell and and action for an attack, but in the description as it is it says that your action is to cast and then touch, and it'd make sense for the touching to happen forcefully. Maybe just an unarmed attack, or maybe you cast it and then attack next round.

But touching with the intent to harm, but doing so gently seems wrong and annoys me.

Why does D&D make something that should be simple so complicated?

Carrier attack. Six hero points. Strike, lightning damage, however many ranks you want. Now you have extra lightning damage you can add onto whichever attack you want. If you put it on strike or martial arts, it's a melee attack.

The history of shocking grasp is that the actual spell has always been underwhelming because "walking up to someone and shocking them with a tazer" is inherently underwhelming in D&D land, but the theorycrafting has always excited that specific kind of player who likes to make MacGyver rogues or crush the BBEG by throwing a boulder affected by Shrink Item at them. I remember people at my table getting excited about the idea of delivering Shocking Grasp through a puddle of water or a chain their familiar drops on the target, or the wizard/rogue dreaming of dealing sneak attack shocking grasps through his rapier. It's not actually good unless you apply some house rules, but it was definitely fun to think about.

4th and 5th editions both felt the need to include Shocking Grasp, because people have fond memories of it, but removed the ability to theorycraft and allowed wizards to make weapon attacks with their int. So now a spell that was iconic because of all the fun stuff you could imagine doing with it is just a sad reminder that you don't get to do that anymore. Enjoy your tazer!

Why do developers put shitty options in their games?

Two big reasons:

1. Not everyone is a player character and you definitely want to mechanically support the difference between the Evil Empire's Royal Guard, the local rabble and the local rabble after they've gone through a training montage led by the player characters. It's fine if the disposable plastic gun you can get out of a Shadowrun vending machine is worse than an Ares Alpha assault rifle.

2. Sometimes the devs just plain fuck up their estimation of how powerful a given option is.

A more typical answer is that whoever was writing that option was phoning it in that day because they don't give a fuck about the work so much as not getting fired.

Well, there's bad options that just sit there and nobody is going to use, which aren't that bad if everyone knows not to use them. There's bad options that look good, but end up really not being good and can trip people up. There's bad options which invalidate all the others.

I don't mind the former, for flavour and random weirdness, but the latter two obviously have issues. I'd normally blame maths being hard and insufficient playtesting.

gatorized2 wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 02, 2023 2:46 am

Why do developers put shitty options in their games?

Sometimes it's a design goal. I'm not talking about Spike and Timmy, but I've heard that thrown out as a justification. But really! You see, people remember how much they loved playing 1st edition D&D, so they're committed to making the same mistakes that have already been made. They can call it tradition, or a sacred cow, but if someone else did it they can say that they're committed to the OSR sensibility that it represents.

More often, it's a failure to do adequate root cause analysis. Reaper Miniatures is releasing a game called Dungeon Dweller RPG principally designed and written by Joseph Wolf. They just finished a KickStarter, and their $100 pledge includes at least 4 hard-bound books plus $100 of minis, so to me it's like getting the books for free! Like Pathfinder, they have a good art budget, so I actually think this could make a splash. In any case, the design is not complete and I'm active on the Reaper Discord. I'm not trying to make anyone bow to my superior play preferences or anything, but I do enjoy talking about rules. I'm not characterizing the designer's position - just some I see in conversations with people interested in DDRPG. In any case, a series of recent discussion elements could be summed up as follows:

1) Wizards feel bad when they cast a high level spell and nothing happens. I'm thinking of making sure that SOMETHING happens even if they make their save. Maybe a 1 round auto-stun.
2) A 1 round auto-stun can lead to a stun-lock where a PC or a major NPC never has a chance to take any actions at all.
3) Well, casters can be interrupted while casting a spell, so that might not happen.
4) Wait, won't casters feel even WORSE when their spell gets interrupted and they don't do anything in a round?
5) Well, TRADITION!

Third and finally, a lot of time it's really just a matter of their own mental blocks about what reality they're modeling leading to incoherent design and bad options.

I see people say things like 'PCs should be afraid of a goblin no matter what level they are'. 'At high levels, PCs should be able to threaten the gods'. But are gods afraid of a goblin with a spear? Well, no, they're GODS!. No matter how much you want to avoid super-powers or keep the game gritty and characters always worried about death, there really isn't a good way to support PCs as near-gods and afraid of a goblin with a spear at all levels of play.

Another one is saying 'a wizard that travels with an adventuring party is going to pick up some elements of sword-play and martial combat, so it makes sense that a high level wizard is better at combat than a low-level wizard; they just shouldn't be better than a high level martial character'. But if you reverse that and say, 'a fighter that travels with a wizard is going to pick up some elements of magical combat, so it makes sense that a high level fighter is better at magic than a low-level wizard; they just shouldn't be better than a high level wizard', you'll get shot down immediately. They'll probably say something like 'if a fighter has spells, then he's not really a FIGHTER, is he'.

Thaluikhain wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 02, 2023 12:06 pm

Ok, been looking through 5e and while there is a lot that just looks bad. In particular, they way attack spells either do or do not affect things other than creatures, seemingly depending on whether or not the writer remembered to put rules in for that. When it does affect things (eg "A flammable object hit by this spell ignites"), there's always the caveat "if it isn't being worn or carried".

Which, ok, it doesn't make sense, but I can accept that not having adventurers equipment risk being destroyed every fight is a worthwhile thing. And it makes it nice and simple and straightforwards, which is a plus.

Wondering what other people's thoughts were about that.

5e rules about objects are especially terrible by RAW. So when someone engages in the attack action they can target a creature, an object, or a space. If they target an object, the object has an AC according to it's material and hp based on it's size (with 2 choices for size based off perceived fragility). So by raw, you could cast like firebolt and target someones shield, if it was made out of wood it's AC is 15, it would be a resilient small item and therefore get 3d6 hp (10). So for a cantrip or two, you can easily destroy someone's shield, or weapon, or target their armor (probably be a medium sized object, 4d8 hp).

Then there's some spells that just completely break this meta, like chain lightning, by raw a single chain lightning can essentially disrobe a character and destroy all their magic items. (magic items just get damage resistance, no additional hit points or ac). Indeed, by raw, the items automatically fail their save (it doesn't matter if they are worn or carried, 5e no longer has that general rule and that language just shows up in a spell or two).

There are some easy fixes, any attended items have an AC of the one attending it or their item ac (whatever is higher), attended items don't auto fail saves and use the attenders saves. Finally, magic items need more hitpoints, but i have no easy fix on how to do that across the board, my current thoughts are to rate every item as +1 to +3 (so an item that isn't a sword might still get an internal +1 to +3 based off it's power or rarity), but to take that rating and increase hp, maybe +1 would be 2x, +2 is 4x, +3 is 8x (so +3 platemail would have 4d8 x 8 hp), maybe that isn't that right multiplier, but something along those lines.

Finally, you wouild probably want to fix spells to make it clear they impact things besides creatures, but that might not be very popular either. Eitherway, it leads to some funny moments, like wall of fire can't actually set anything on fire -- cast it in a barn full of dry hay and nothing happens. Or cone of cold can't damage objects because it asks for a con save, and objects are immune to anything that doesn't generate a str or dex save(which they auto fail). I think it's a bit of a difficult problem, as insisting all these spells damage the environment around them, I could see some players feeling depowered because they no longer want to cast wall of fire inside the king's throne room as it'll scuff up the stone and light the carpet on fire, especially if they're used to tables that just handwave all that and let people use their big area effect spells without always checking if they can make a mess of the place.

I think this wouldn't be as much of an issue in a system that isn't obsessed with the idea of loot acquisition and gear being super important to character effectiveness along with being difficult to replace. You should be able to automatically replace or repair destroyed items between scenes for free.

gatorized2 wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 12, 2023 7:38 pm

I think this wouldn't be as much of an issue in a system that isn't obsessed with the idea of loot acquisition and gear being super important to character effectiveness along with being difficult to replace. You should be able to automatically replace or repair destroyed items between scenes for free.

Just another point in the "you play non magic, you are doing it wrong" pile <.<

Ok, how do you pronounce the Warlock of Firetop Mountain's name?

I always thought it was zag oar, with no strong emphasis on either syllable, but watched a youtbue video discussing the gamebook, where it got pronounced ZAY gor, with emphasis on the first. I guess it could also be za GORE, emphasis on the last.

There doesn't seem to be a canonical pronunciation, so whatever you prefer is correct to you. I always pronounced it ZAY-gore in my head. Zagor is an actual word/name that shows up chiefly in central Europe, but most versions have accent marks that the FF version doesn't have. The only unaccented version of the word I can find is in Turkish, where it's pronounced zah-GORE.