Support NeoGAF

[krypt0nian]

They should do a documentary of all of us to counter The Dungeon Masters. I didn't identify with any of them.

Non-mouth breathers unite!

 

[dude]

You lost me here.

In 3.5 and Pathfinder you have to go up to the next experience level to multiclass. You gain early class features, but some classes have good stuff as they progress, or abilities that build based on your class level. Pathfinder actually did a good job making sticking in one class more attractive.

In 3.5, Fighter, for example, was really only a valid choice as long as you wanted / needed more bonus feats, otherwise you'd be better off with a different class, especially if you factored in all the available alternative classes, like Knight or Warblade or whatnot. In Pathfinder, you got some decent bonuses for just sticking with Fighter.

Multiclassing is a really bad idea long-term for casters unless you keep progressing with the same spell list and slots, as well...

AD&D and 2nd Ed had their own, unique systems for MC of course.

4th Ed does it well, I think; trade feats for the versatility, trade the power of a paragon path for still more versatility...

Exactly - You have to go up the next experience level - Which many time means you have to gain lot XP points to advance to a low level - which means very low BAB, caster level, saving throws and what-not. For example, a level 10 Fighter and level 2 Wizard will need 13000 XP to level up, but say he picks a Wizard level - he gained 13000 XP for a much lower level, with spells that at this point in the game can't help for shit. And in his future, a 10 level character (which a multiclassed character basically is, only x2) is completley useless against a 20CR creature. I mean, a 20th level character with the BAB of a 10th level fighter (plus the lousy BAB of a 10th level wizard) and much less HP, and the spell list and caster level of a 10th level wizard? Just think how useless that is.

And more attractive in what? Bonuses? I don't care about that shit, as I said, I like to mix my classes up as my character progresses, I just wished I didn't have to make him useless by doing that. In any case, We long found out that when playing D&D you have to keep the battles to a minimum to have a fun game - The combat in D&D is so slow and cumbersome, it's horrible.

It's been years since I've played AD&D... I seem tp remember the MC as also slightly broken, but I don't remember it enough to go into details...

I didn't play 4E much, I don't like it for different reasons. The multiclassing looks to me very limited... I don't know if that's true, but it just feels like I can't have the scenarios I described above with my ex-Paladin half-elf or my pirate dwarf. It seems less broken from what I read though.

 

[DurielBlack]

Exactly - You have to go up the next experience level - Which many time means you have to gain lot XP points to advance to a low level - which means very low BAB, caster level, saving throws and what-not. For example, a level 10 Fighter and level 2 Wizard will need 13000 XP to level up, but say he picks a Wizard level - he gained 13000 XP for a much lower level, with spells that at this point in the game can't help for shit. And in his future, a 10 level character (which a multiclassed character basically is, only x2) is completley useless against a 20CR creature. I mean, a 20th level character with the BAB of a 10th level fighter (plus the lousy BAB of a 10th level wizard) and much less HP, and the spell list and caster level of a 10th level wizard? Just think how useless that is.

And more attractive in what? Bonuses? I don't care about that shit, as I said, I like to mix my classes up as my character progresses, I just wished I didn't have to make him useless by doing that. In any case, We long found out that when playing D&D you have to keep the battles to a minimum to have a fun game - The combat in D&D is so slow and cumbersome, it's horrible.

It's been years since I've played AD&D... I seem tp remember the MC as also slightly broken, but I don't remember it enough to go into details...

I didn't play 4E much, I don't like it for different reasons. The multiclassing looks to me very limited... I don't know if that's true, but it just feels like I can't have the scenarios I described above with my ex-Paladin half-elf or my pirate dwarf. It seems less broken from what I read though.

I've never cared for multi-classing as a player or a GM myself. As a GM I find it to be a headache when trying to scale encounters, in addition to the fact that many people only multi-class so they can abuse some combination of abilities.

As a player I prefer to think of my characters in a linear fashion. I'm a wizard or a warrior damnit, not both. Thats just a personal preference however.

I do recognize that there can be GOOD reasons to multi-class, especially for RP reasons. Like say, a paladin falls out of favor and becomes a rogue, tossing aside most of his training and faith to wallow in his self-pity.

I also think some classes can multi-class well together without being horribly broken, like a fighter taking a few levels of rogue or vice-versa.

As for not enjoying combat I find that you take all the silly rules that basically force you to use miniatures and toss those out the window. I have lots of combat in my games but you'll seldom see more than a simple quickly and poorly hand-drawn map be made. Most of combat is descriptive in nature based on the dice-rolling.

You open up a door and see a room of goblins sitting around a table. They start going for weapons. Players win initiave. Fighter says he will charge the closest goblin. Wizard says he will step inside the door to one side and cast magic missile at the next closest enemy. Cleric says he will enter the room and charge to the right to cover the fighters flank. Meanwhile the rogue stays in the doorway and fires his short bow.

No map required, I already ruled its a small room. You can cross to the far side in one move action although you might have to take into consideration any enemies that might be in the way, or an object such as the table I mentioned. Most of the "rules" are boiled down to common sense of what fits in with the scene I described. No wasted time arguing over precise positions of every creature on a grid or planning out moves like its a game of chess.

The good thing about this is that it can move quicker. I find that when players don't have a grid of mini's to mull over they often get into the habit of making decisions faster. They also put more RP effort into their combat, especially when they realize how much a battle can be affected just by a good description.

The bad thing is that it can be a drag when something technical comes up (and it WILL happen eventually). Or when something doesn't make sense because you DIDN'T have mini's and a player suddenly wonders why they are being flanked by an enemy that shouldn't be there. Woops. Also sometimes people might not understand your description, causing them to make bad tactical decisions they wouldn't have otherwise and leading into an arguement over which end of the bridge the lever was at.

Overall I prefer the rules-lite mechanics. I like the detailed rules to be there for when I need them, but I avoid them when I can to keep stuff moving.

 

[krypt0nian]

Really excellent free dungeon crawl adventure for 4E released, complete with player handouts, puzzles, and pre-gen characters.

Fantastic quality stuff from the folks at Fourthcore.

http://slamdancr.com/wp/2011/02/saturday-night-delves-1-revenge-of-the-iron-lich/

 

[JayDubya]

Exactly - You have to go up the next experience level - Which many time means you have to gain lot XP points to advance to a low level - which means very low BAB, caster level, saving throws and what-not. For example, a level 10 Fighter and level 2 Wizard will need 13000 XP to level up, but say he picks a Wizard level - he gained 13000 XP for a much lower level, with spells that at this point in the game can't help for shit. And in his future, a 10 level character (which a multiclassed character basically is, only x2) is completley useless against a 20CR creature. I mean, a 20th level character with the BAB of a 10th level fighter (plus the lousy BAB of a 10th level wizard) and much less HP, and the spell list and caster level of a 10th level wizard? Just think how useless that is.

And more attractive in what? Bonuses? I don't care about that shit, as I said, I like to mix my classes up as my character progresses, I just wished I didn't have to make him useless by doing that. In any case, We long found out that when playing D&D you have to keep the battles to a minimum to have a fun game - The combat in D&D is so slow and cumbersome, it's horrible.

We have very different experiences, then. I like D&D combat for starters, and for seconds, I thought you were saying multi-classing was broken the other way, like, overpowered.

I was trying to underplay it. Heh. Like, I was saying, oh, it's not THAT overpowered.

There is little question that a character optimizer can squeeze more power out of mix and matching classes and prestige classes than with sticking with just one class. You can end up with some ridiculous monstrosities going that way, though, with combinations that don't make any sense.

One thing you'll find that makes multiclassing much more effective are prestige classes built around the hybrid concept, with medium / high BAB and full / almost full spell progression to boot.

You can make some truly ridiculous multiclassed characters if you know what you are doing, but that sort of exploitation never really appealed to me, particularly because you end up with character class combinations that are thematically incongruous.

The real reason why multiclass exploitation is not THAT powerful, however, is that they fail to compare to the ridiculous power of CoDzilla.

3.5's biggest mistake, imo, was in thinking that they had balanced all the classes when they hadn't, then letting all the classes advance at the same rate. Cleric and Druid are not really balanced well compared to the rest of the classes... not at all. Not in the long-run.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fine to be a 3.5 Fighter for a few levels, while the Wizard's just a poor crossbow sniper, and the Cleric's more or less a poor substitute for you who can weakly heal a couple of times a day. But things break down pretty quickly after that.

Towards the end, they corrected things a bit for the martial set with the Book of Nine Swords.

Warblades never quite reach CoDzilla levels, but they can't be rendered completely irrelevant by an equivalent level Wizard or Cleric like a Fighter can.

It's been years since I've played AD&D... I seem tp remember the MC as also slightly broken, but I don't remember it enough to go into details...

In 2nd, I mean, multiclassing was something non-humans could do, and you literally divided your experience points by number of classes you had, and advanced in multiple classes at the same time. You could never change this combo, either, but you ended up being a true hybrid. This could be plenty effective, of course. Maybe not always as ideal as all specialists, but hybrids shine both when a party is too small to fill every role, or big enough where they can supplement.

Dual-classing was more frustrating, of course, as you had to drop your original class until your second class was higher level, and you could never advance in your first class again. This arguably created more powerful characters than multi-classing - EVENTUALLY - because different classes advanced at different rates and obviously early levels came easier, so you could still have your versatility cake and eat your long-term specialization cake at little real cost (late in your career, that 150000 xp you put into another class doesn't mean much when you have millions of xp).

Another problem is it's really only viable in video games where you as the player control multiple characters and you don't mind having one of your characters being dead weight to be lugged around. In tabletop, it's bound to be more irritating both for player and party to have your rogue say, hey guys, I'm not going to pick any locks for a long while, and when I can do it again, I'll never be any better than I am right now.

I didn't play 4E much, I don't like it for different reasons. The multiclassing looks to me very limited... I don't know if that's true, but it just feels like I can't have the scenarios I described above with my ex-Paladin half-elf or my pirate dwarf. It seems less broken from what I read though.

I adore both 4E and Pathfinder, myself. Multi-classing is more limited, of course, but I think that's an improvement. I don't think you've seen how game abusive things could get with 3.5 multiclassing.

Now, if you want to dabble in everything in 4E, there is an Epic Destiny for that. And of course, Bards can take as many multiclass feats as they want.

 

[Porkepik]

My last play probably dates back from the mid nineties lolll, I would not mind playing again someday loll just for laugh

 

[krypt0nian]

Too many lolll's.

 

[Fallen_Hero]

I'm a complete beginner. What exactly do you need to easily begin playing some games?

 

[JayDubya]

I'm a complete beginner. What exactly do you need to easily begin playing some games?

Someone who isn't a complete beginner, either online or in person, who owns some books and is creative and willing. Then add some other beginners & friends and there you go.

Or, if you are the creative type with time on your hands to learn, play with some other total neophytes yourself and learn by doing as a DM.

If you want to play D&D around a tabletop in person, and you're total beginner, the Red Box is probably a good idea to try out the basics of the game. From there, there's quite a few more products to recommend.

 

[Karak]

Man, I didn't have to deal with that since high school... I used to mod a P&P RPG forum, and we had some great games there. I GMed some games based on mangas (I was 17!) like HxH and Naruto, all home-brewed or free form. We actually had an interesting system in place in the HxH game - we let the player pick what attributes they have without rolling dice! It was our attempt to make the game free form while also having some system in place to have objectivity. It actually worked, and the game was pretty awesome.
I kind of miss those days.

Ya. We pretty much still play that way. I mean, the cards take place of the dice, and things that matter are indeed left up to skills but I just don't really ever see a game that is rollbased ever be nearly as energetic or amazing as rolebased. Of course anyone can play any type but for me, it is the "high school" feel that I want and continue to have. I guess its working because we continue to get more players for more sessions, many of them who come from 4th, or WOD or whatever and say they never want to go back. I basically take that as a sign that what we are doing works.

Sometimes I think that the dice/table/meta way of playing seems to be the very thing that makes it so boring to me in other players games.

I too find it difficult to go to other players games and just BE a player. I do try but I find that many rely on dice to make up story bits or to break up pauses in games. Or they roll for everything, or don't understand that the more locked down the game, the closer it gets to a videogame Which sadly then begins to cause me to compare it to a video game. I don't want scaled adventures, for fuck sakes every classic fantasy and enjoyable story I have read is luck/adventure/risk. Not a calculation for how difficult bad guys are.

Some game systems get really close to zoned instances in an MMO where the difficulty almost scales with you.
Thanks but no thanks.

Keep playing in games with others though. Sometimes you will find a DM/GM that fits with the way you want to play and coming from the standpoint of someone who gets a good deal of praise for it. It means a great deal. I hope your players give you props also, for trying to make the game better.

 

[krypt0nian]

I'm a complete beginner. What exactly do you need to easily begin playing some games?

I'd say

1) a willing group
2) I'd go with either the D&D Red Box or maybe the Essentials line of Heroes of the Fallen Lands or Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms for a starter rule book plus the Dungeon Master's Kit.
3) watch the Robot Chicken video podcasts over at wizards.com for a look at how sessions run. It can be kind of hard to wrap you head around at first.


Plus you can always ask questions here for help.

 

[Duane Cunningham]

Some friends of mine and I have been playing for 15 years or something, but with huge, multi-year gaps. It's not been the same campaign or anything, either. We've played D&D a little bit, but mostly Rifts. We all just like it better.

Last weekend, however, we got together with a D20 Modern book and just rolled some simple characters and did a pre-made adventure straight out of the book. I really liked it a lot! It made me want to give D&D another shot one of these days.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Been getting back into this stuff. Think I will try DMing for some curious friends.

Heads up: Borders has begun liquidating stores slated to close. You can get all kinds of D&D stuff, starting at at least 20% off. Deal should get better in the coming days and weeks.

 

[krypt0nian]

Been getting back into this stuff. Think I will try DMing for some curious friends.

Heads up: Borders has begun liquidating stores slated to close. You can get all kinds of D&D stuff, starting at at least 20% off. Deal should get better in the coming days and weeks.

Aw nice tip! And some of the stores are still loaded with mini booster packs! MINE!

 

[teiresias]

Aw nice tip! And some of the stores are still loaded with mini booster packs! MINE!

Even at 20% off retail you're still better off going through Amazon.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Even at 20% off retail you're still better off going through Amazon.

Yeah, you should read a bit closer. I understand, though, given your screen-name.

 

[fallengorn]

My first group fizzled out. (Not surprised since 2/5 live out of state.)

Now trying to get a bi-weekly game going. I'm considering doing an online game... but I wouldn't get so much use out of the scads of minis I have. :\

 

[teiresias]

Yeah, you should read a bit closer. I understand, though, given your screen-name.

What's there to read closer, I was in a Borders that was liquidating last week, and the prices were still better on Amazon, and in my experience with liquidation sales (Circuit City in particular) nothing ever gets as great as one would think in such situations, they just make the signs bigger and more garish as the weeks go on.

I'd have picked up minis if they'd have had some. It sort of sucks that me and my friends are just wanting to start playing and they decide to cancel the miniature line. My friends will really do better with minis on a grid map for encounters than doing verbal descriptions. I guess there's always the tokens, but they're so bland.

 

[Count Dookkake]

Wow, you really are like your namesake.

The sale starts at 20%. It won't stop there. Everything in the store, by the end, will be priced at one dollar. That will be in about a month or so.

 

[krypt0nian]

What's there to read closer, I was in a Borders that was liquidating last week, and the prices were still better on Amazon, and in my experience with liquidation sales (Circuit City in particular) nothing ever gets as great as one would think in such situations, they just make the signs bigger and more garish as the weeks go on.

I'd have picked up minis if they'd have had some. It sort of sucks that me and my friends are just wanting to start playing and they decide to cancel the miniature line. My friends will really do better with minis on a grid map for encounters than doing verbal descriptions. I guess there's always the tokens, but they're so bland.

Not to worry as there are many places like trollandtoad.com that do lots of common/uncommons of the old sets for dirt cheap. And there are plenty of old sets out there. I think it's crap that they decided to drop the mini line too, but you have options.

 

[teiresias]

Wow, you really are like your namesake.

The sale starts at 20%. It won't stop there. Everything in the store, by the end, will be priced at one dollar. That will be in about a month or so.

If you really believe liquidation sales work that way, then I bow to your naivety.

 

[Count Dookkake]

While you're down there, give it a tug. Thanks.

 

[krypt0nian]

Be nice. This is a thread of pure love.

 

[fallengorn]

I think it's crap that they decided to drop the mini line too, but you have options.

Wait, what? No more minis?

 

[krypt0nian]

Wait, what? No more minis?

Nope. They've retired the line.

 

[teiresias]

Wait, what? No more minis?

Alas, no.

I've also become completely addicted to reading the enworld forums. Any other good PnP or D&D specific communities to bookmark?

 

[krypt0nian]

Alas, no.

I've also become completely addicted to reading the enworld forums. Any other good PnP or D&D specific communities to bookmark?

Not really a forum but http://4eblogs.com/ is a great news accumulator of the main 4E bloggers from the excellent #dnd twitter community.

 

[Karak]

If you really believe liquidation sales work that way, then I bow to your naivety.

This brought me a good laugh.

I saw this exact kind of thing a couple weeks ago.

50% off almost everything. The sign read.
2 weeks pass. New signs...in red and yellow with a big exclamation point. New Sale 50% off on everything!

Last week.
50% off on everything IN THE STORE.

We just had a discussion about this at work when a couple of us drove past the place. They literally changed the damn sign content each 2 weeks until closing.
Almost everything
Everything
Everything in the store

As for the mini's there are always places to get them or steal them from other games. Heroscape mini's work, Heroquest. Tons of cheap stuff out there if you want fodder as well. We keep that stuff very far away from our roleplaying games but I have thousands of them for Warhammer, Heroscape, and Heroquest.

Man nothing beats a good Heroquest game...sigh. I guess I know what we are doing this weekend.

 

[dude]

I've never cared for multi-classing as a player or a GM myself. As a GM I find it to be a headache when trying to scale encounters, in addition to the fact that many people only multi-class so they can abuse some combination of abilities.

As a player I prefer to think of my characters in a linear fashion. I'm a wizard or a warrior damnit, not both. Thats just a personal preference however.

I do recognize that there can be GOOD reasons to multi-class, especially for RP reasons. Like say, a paladin falls out of favor and becomes a rogue, tossing aside most of his training and faith to wallow in his self-pity.

I also think some classes can multi-class well together without being horribly broken, like a fighter taking a few levels of rogue or vice-versa.

As for not enjoying combat I find that you take all the silly rules that basically force you to use miniatures and toss those out the window. I have lots of combat in my games but you'll seldom see more than a simple quickly and poorly hand-drawn map be made. Most of combat is descriptive in nature based on the dice-rolling.

You open up a door and see a room of goblins sitting around a table. They start going for weapons. Players win initiave. Fighter says he will charge the closest goblin. Wizard says he will step inside the door to one side and cast magic missile at the next closest enemy. Cleric says he will enter the room and charge to the right to cover the fighters flank. Meanwhile the rogue stays in the doorway and fires his short bow.

No map required, I already ruled its a small room. You can cross to the far side in one move action although you might have to take into consideration any enemies that might be in the way, or an object such as the table I mentioned. Most of the "rules" are boiled down to common sense of what fits in with the scene I described. No wasted time arguing over precise positions of every creature on a grid or planning out moves like its a game of chess.

The good thing about this is that it can move quicker. I find that when players don't have a grid of mini's to mull over they often get into the habit of making decisions faster. They also put more RP effort into their combat, especially when they realize how much a battle can be affected just by a good description.

The bad thing is that it can be a drag when something technical comes up (and it WILL happen eventually). Or when something doesn't make sense because you DIDN'T have mini's and a player suddenly wonders why they are being flanked by an enemy that shouldn't be there. Woops. Also sometimes people might not understand your description, causing them to make bad tactical decisions they wouldn't have otherwise and leading into an arguement over which end of the bridge the lever was at.

Overall I prefer the rules-lite mechanics. I like the detailed rules to be there for when I need them, but I avoid them when I can to keep stuff moving.

I never use miniatures as well. But the combat in D&D is still rather cumbersome. When we have battles, we try and make them epic as hell - we have almost no "random encounters", like with a bunch of goblins or somethingnv, who the fuck cares about that? Unless the battle is essential to the story, it's cut. Then, we try to make the battle sort of like a boss fight - There's something to learn, something to do in order to win - I never felt that much of an achievement by rolling dice.
I also can't get into the "I'm a fighter" mentality - I mean really? That's what your character thinks? Throughout the game my character goes through numerous changes (if it's a good game, I mean), some time some shocking stuff, that can't leave him the same, and I believe that some time, that should also result in choosing a new lifestyle...

We have very different experiences, then. I like D&D combat for starters, and for seconds, I thought you were saying multi-classing was broken the other way, like, overpowered.

I was trying to underplay it. Heh. Like, I was saying, oh, it's not THAT overpowered.

There is little question that a character optimizer can squeeze more power out of mix and matching classes and prestige classes than with sticking with just one class. You can end up with some ridiculous monstrosities going that way, though, with combinations that don't make any sense.

One thing you'll find that makes multiclassing much more effective are prestige classes built around the hybrid concept, with medium / high BAB and full / almost full spell progression to boot.

You can make some truly ridiculous multiclassed characters if you know what you are doing, but that sort of exploitation never really appealed to me, particularly because you end up with character class combinations that are thematically incongruous.

The real reason why multiclass exploitation is not THAT powerful, however, is that they fail to compare to the ridiculous power of CoDzilla.

3.5's biggest mistake, imo, was in thinking that they had balanced all the classes when they hadn't, then letting all the classes advance at the same rate. Cleric and Druid are not really balanced well compared to the rest of the classes... not at all. Not in the long-run.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fine to be a 3.5 Fighter for a few levels, while the Wizard's just a poor crossbow sniper, and the Cleric's more or less a poor substitute for you who can weakly heal a couple of times a day. But things break down pretty quickly after that.

Towards the end, they corrected things a bit for the martial set with the Book of Nine Swords.

Warblades never quite reach CoDzilla levels, but they can't be rendered completely irrelevant by an equivalent level Wizard or Cleric like a Fighter can.

In 3e/3.5E/Pathfinder, multi-classing is underpowered. They offer it as a reasonable option which is a lie - 80% of the time it'll make your character a useless mess.
I did not count prestige classes as "multi-class". Prestige classes was their way to fix multi classing, and it sort of worked, many of the fixes to multi-classing you'll find in the web are simply to only use prestige classes. I, personally, don't like prestige classes, so I don't use this method. I don't know what overpowered multi-class/dual-classed character you're talking about, I remember there were some overpowered multi-classing in AD&D, but in 3e? That shit is useless.

In 2nd, I mean, multiclassing was something non-humans could do, and you literally divided your experience points by number of classes you had, and advanced in multiple classes at the same time. You could never change this combo, either, but you ended up being a true hybrid. This could be plenty effective, of course. Maybe not always as ideal as all specialists, but hybrids shine both when a party is too small to fill every role, or big enough where they can supplement.

Dual-classing was more frustrating, of course, as you had to drop your original class until your second class was higher level, and you could never advance in your first class again. This arguably created more powerful characters than multi-classing - EVENTUALLY - because different classes advanced at different rates and obviously early levels came easier, so you could still have your versatility cake and eat your long-term specialization cake at little real cost (late in your career, that 150000 xp you put into another class doesn't mean much when you have millions of xp).

Another problem is it's really only viable in video games where you as the player control multiple characters and you don't mind having one of your characters being dead weight to be lugged around. In tabletop, it's bound to be more irritating both for player and party to have your rogue say, hey guys, I'm not going to pick any locks for a long while, and when I can do it again, I'll never be any better than I am right now.

Yeah, that's how I remember it.

I adore both 4E and Pathfinder, myself. Multi-classing is more limited, of course, but I think that's an improvement. I don't think you've seen how game abusive things could get with 3.5 multiclassing.

Now, if you want to dabble in everything in 4E, there is an Epic Destiny for that. And of course, Bards can take as many multiclass feats as they want.

Well, maybe I didn't see the working of some expert character-crafters because I play with a very close group of friends and we're all very, very RP oriented... But I don't really see how can anyone get past the fact that he's spending twice the amount of XP for half the level. It can work for, like, a fighter/barbarian, but any spellcaster is doomed to be underpowered. Anyway, I prefer a system that is free and allows me more control over my character creation even if it is unbalanced.

I too find it difficult to go to other players games and just BE a player. I do try but I find that many rely on dice to make up story bits or to break up pauses in games. Or they roll for everything, or don't understand that the more locked down the game, the closer it gets to a videogame Which sadly then begins to cause me to compare it to a video game. I don't want scaled adventures, for fuck sakes every classic fantasy and enjoyable story I have read is luck/adventure/risk. Not a calculation for how difficult bad guys are.

Some DMs think they have a "choose you own adventure" type of thing, and your choices are basically reduced to "go to page 36" or "go to page 90"...

 

[JayDubya]

What I find is that it can be very beneficial to get rollplay tangled up in your roleplay, and here's why: I am not a master diplomat, or a great public speaker, yet if you leave these things entirely in the hands of roleplay, my own aptitudes and flaws limit what my character can do.

Even if one may play a courtly knight with high charisma and lots of training in diplomacy, it doesn't make one a natural roleplayer, so I find it often needs to be collaborative. The DM has to set the stage and the player brings to the table a character - distinct from him or herself - that may have many skills the player himself may not possess, or no knowledge of something the player is well versed in.

Personally, I encourage everyone to get into character and talk in the first person, but failing that, it's pretty okay to describe what you want to do, what you're trying to do, and let the dice tell us how well-spoken you just were, or how much you actually know about trolls.

*****

As far as grids and miniatures and such, I like tactical RPGs, positioning, the use of terrain and such... abstract combat bothers the hell out of me, personally.

 

[dude]

Well... I sometime let players talk not in character when doing diplomacy, if I feel that it doesn't take away from the experience.

I never actually tried miniatures, to be honest - I won't even buy any books other than what I essentially need to play. I'm cheap. And abstract combat was never a problem for us, and when we absolutely need it, we draw the area in general detail, just so everyone understands where is everything.
But, as I said, we're not a very battle oriented group... We find that most battles are way too long (White Wolf seems to be the worst offender, with each turn lasting forever, even in a a game like Exalted that's supposed to be fast.) We've eliminated pretty much all unnecessary encounters.

Just wondering - Do you guys prefer to use preexisting worlds/settings, or do you create them from scratch? How deep do you go with the details?

 

[JayDubya]

I never actually tried miniatures, to be honest - I won't even buy any books other than what I essentially need to play. I'm cheap. And abstract combat was never a problem for us, and when we absolutely need it, we draw the area in general detail, just so everyone understands where is everything.
But, as I said, we're not a very battle oriented group... We find that most battles are way too long (White Wolf seems to be the worst offender, with each turn lasting forever, even in a a game like Exalted that's supposed to be fast.) We've eliminated pretty much all unnecessary encounters.

Ooh Exalted, I love Exalted.

Anyway, yeah combat always goes longer than it seems like it was designed to, but part of that, honestly, is DMs not remembering that if the heroes are going to have 4-6 encounters before a rest, some encounters ought to be quick and easy. Personally, I am guilty of this, as I strongly favor difficult encounters.

But abstraction just irritates me, yeah. Even if you've just got marks on some graph paper, it limits how arbitrary combat can be. I mean, there's already a lot of randomness and already a predefined element of terrain, monsters / npcs, and their tactics. Letting the players have a clear view of the stage you have set lets them
finally have a measure of control and the ability to display their own tactical skill through use of that terrain.

As for the cost of minis, yeah, I hear ya. But really the players need something as their avatar, one each (and it could just as well be a die or a bottlecap if needs be), and the DM can also make tokens, reuse things, etc, and use pictures at the game table.

Or, of course, if you're playing online or with computer assistance, you can Fair Use pictures off the internet and make as many unique looking pogs as you want / need for free.

Just wondering - Do you guys prefer to use preexisting worlds/settings, or do you create them from scratch? How deep do you go with the details?

I don't strictly have a preference in this regard, per se, but if I have limited time to plan, a campaign setting is much better.

If I am using someone else's campaign setting (Star Wars, Eberron, etc), I read prodigiously about the details and minutiae of that setting so I can use its unique flavor as much as possible. If I am making my own, I create only that detail that I immediately need coupled with a blueprint of what I will soon or eventually need.

 

[DurielBlack]

Just wondering - Do you guys prefer to use preexisting worlds/settings, or do you create them from scratch? How deep do you go with the details?

I usually prefer stuff from scratch these days. When I first started playing I was using the boxed sets like Planescape, Forgotten Realms, etc.

Now I homebrew all my settings except if I want to do something like Star Wars, and even then like most people I make my own adjustments to the setting.

 

[JayDubya]

Incidentally, you brought up another point, dude, that I thought was worth mentioning and forgot about.

Different systems are better at different things.

Exalted, which you mentioned, is White Wolf's Storyteller system, adapted from World of Darkness games like Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage.

That system, imo, is great for relatively combat-light games, or intense, rare combats where the things you are fighting are just as over-the-top strong as the player characters are, if not more so since it's often 3-4v1.

Exalted doesn't usually break down to tactical combat vs. lots of incidental enemy soldiers because they're almost entirely irrelevant next to the power of a Solar. Now, if they have a powerful Dragon-Blooded sorcerer around, yeah, combat can be slow as he wails on your various defenses.

On that note, while certainly Storyteller CAN be combat heavy, it does much better with abstract, limited combat than, say, D&D.

D&D is also robust enough that you don't have to play it entirely as a tactical combat game, but it's largely designed around that concept, and so it does that well. You can have rich plots and roleplaying, but don't forget to add several heaping tablespoons of action into the mix for the system to shine.

 

[ChiTownBuffalo]

Well....my players rolled their own characters last night. And it went not the way I expected.

Amongst themselves they had decided they best menthod to go was to roll a band of rouges. Or 'ninjas." No other classes, just a bunch of half-even rogues.

So tonight, we're going to reroll characters where they have some more class diversity.

 

[JayDubya]

Well....my players rolled their own characters last night. And it went not the way I expected.

Amongst themselves they had decided they best menthod to go was to roll a band of rouges. Or 'ninjas." No other classes, just a bunch of half-even rogues.

So tonight, we're going to reroll characters where they have some more class diversity.

You can theoretically do a "thieves guild" type thing, but I'd recommend no more than two full-on rogues (there's enough versatility there that they could be vastly different if they build different ways). A Ranger has a very close skill set, too, so they'd fit right in.

Such a group would need a leader, as well, so a Tactical Warlord would be a motivator without bringing in any kind of magical power... of course, Bards are also the masters of multiclassing and classically affiliated with Thieves and Rogues. Certain builds of Fighters would be at home with that kind of play as well... Would be wise for someone to be the rituals guy, too.

With multi-class feats, someone can pick up a limited use version of a rogue skill + a skill like Stealth or Thievery.

And don't forget about Backgrounds - may help a few PCs pick up some appropriate class skills for a "thieves guild" game, so those Warlords or Fighters or whatnot could pick up Stealth or Thievery. It gets redundant for that many people to trained in the same skills sometimes, but not so much for Stealth.

Just a question of what you're looking for, really.

You can probably live without a Controller, but I really wouldn't want to be in a group without at least one Defender and one Leader. Rogues are glass cannons: easy to hit, w/ low hit points.

 

[JayDubya]

Shameless bump for D&D recruitment.

My formerly entirely-GAF Online D&D group is down to four, so we're looking for a few more to bolster the ranks.

We play Sunday evenings, we're playing 4th Ed, we're running H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth with some plot adjustments and custom content / side quests / plot hooks, etc. If you're interested, by all means, post here or shoot me a PM.

 

[krypt0nian]

Shameless bump for D&D recruitment.

My formerly entirely-GAF Online D&D group is down to four, so we're looking for a few more to bolster the ranks.

We play Sunday evenings, we're playing 4th Ed, we're running H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth with some plot adjustments and custom content / side quests / plot hooks, etc. If you're interested, by all means, post here or shoot me a PM.

Definitely recap what tools you guys use so people have a heads up.

 

[JayDubya]

Definitely recap what tools you guys use so people have a heads up.

Sure. And this is general terms for playing online; I'd be happy to see others playing even if they can't or don't want to play with me (on Sunday evenings or otherwise). ;P

MapTool and TokenTool: http://www.rptools.net/index.php?page=downloads#MapTool

A virtual tabletop program that can easily incorporate images as maps, objects, characters, track all kinds of statistics and with macros and frameworks, can actually automate much of the math and status tracking that goes into a complex tactical combat game.

I used Gametable a while ago, but it has less support now and you had to draw all the maps yourself on a grid rather than taking existing maps and placing a grid on a scale you desire.

We use Rumble's framework, but that's not something a non-DM would need to download.


Mumble, a VOIP: http://mumble.sourceforge.net/

Could just as well be TeamSpeak or Ventrilo or whatever, but this is what we use. Need a mic, obviously.


Beyond that? You need some D&D Books.

Or D&D Insider: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/tools.aspx

I use it to build characters and custom monsters. I can also use the formatted data from the Compendium to quickly add statistics to my MapTool framework. And lots of maps and art for MT as well...

Or, should you be so lucky as to acquire or already have the Character Builder from before they switched to Online only, there is a wonderful mod out there called CBLoader in which people have programmed in the subsequent updates, errattas, and new feats. Learned about this one on SA.


Need to build a character and need advice? Here you go, the 4th Edition Character Optimization Wiki. A fairly objective breakdown of every single class, their strengths and weaknesses, and what feats and what powers one should select for different goals or builds.

 

[Songbird]

Shameless bump for D&D recruitment.

My formerly entirely-GAF Online D&D group is down to four, so we're looking for a few more to bolster the ranks.

We play Sunday evenings, we're playing 4th Ed, we're running H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth with some plot adjustments and custom content / side quests / plot hooks, etc. If you're interested, by all means, post here or shoot me a PM.

I am...interested. I can handle time-zones too, even. The problem is that I'm an absolute beginner at D&D (never played it) but I've worked my way around CRPGs.

 

[JayDubya]

Here's a screencap of what it looks like in play. Well, in a town full of NPCs anyway, this isn't a battle shot or anything.

 

[Songbird]

I recognise MapTool I think, it's what the SA Let's Players use in their campaign.

 

[JayDubya]

Yeah. The best thing about MapTool is something I was hesitant to learn and use at first, and that's advanced macros and frameworks.

For a while I made my own, very simple macros.

I eventually realized I was joining the MapTool community after a great deal of work had already been made in this area, and there was an easier way to benefit from the expertise of others: frameworks.

With frameworks, you load a default map with a default grassy field and a few sample characters for playtesting and all the settings ready to go, with commands built in to help make new characters and creatures quickly. T

Then you just pull in all the maps and character / creature art you need and away you go.

Such a time saver, in prep time and in the game itself. That map above? The Seven-Pillared Hall? I drew it all manually in Gametable before we switched to MapTool (all you can do on Gametable is draw straight or diagonal colored lines along the grid, and the background is always the same pale-yellowish battlemat color).

Whereas with MapTool, someone else on the interwebs made that beautiful custom map and posted it on the Cartographer's Guild forum. Click click click done.

In any event, sure man, I'll send you a PM.

 

[DurielBlack]

Shameless bump for D&D recruitment.

My formerly entirely-GAF Online D&D group is down to four, so we're looking for a few more to bolster the ranks.

We play Sunday evenings, we're playing 4th Ed, we're running H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth with some plot adjustments and custom content / side quests / plot hooks, etc. If you're interested, by all means, post here or shoot me a PM.

Sounds interesting, depending on the time I might be able to play.

 

[dude]

Shameless bump for D&D recruitment.

My formerly entirely-GAF Online D&D group is down to four, so we're looking for a few more to bolster the ranks.

We play Sunday evenings, we're playing 4th Ed, we're running H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth with some plot adjustments and custom content / side quests / plot hooks, etc. If you're interested, by all means, post here or shoot me a PM.

I'd join, but I believe the time difference makes that pretty impossible. Good luck though.

Incidentally, you brought up another point, dude, that I thought was worth mentioning and forgot about.

Different systems are better at different things.

Exalted, which you mentioned, is White Wolf's Storyteller system, adapted from World of Darkness games like Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage.

That system, imo, is great for relatively combat-light games, or intense, rare combats where the things you are fighting are just as over-the-top strong as the player characters are, if not more so since it's often 3-4v1.

Exalted doesn't usually break down to tactical combat vs. lots of incidental enemy soldiers because they're almost entirely irrelevant next to the power of a Solar. Now, if they have a powerful Dragon-Blooded sorcerer around, yeah, combat can be slow as he wails on your various defenses.

On that note, while certainly Storyteller CAN be combat heavy, it does much better with abstract, limited combat than, say, D&D.

D&D is also robust enough that you don't have to play it entirely as a tactical combat game, but it's largely designed around that concept, and so it does that well. You can have rich plots and roleplaying, but don't forget to add several heaping tablespoons of action into the mix for the system to shine.

I used to be a huge White Wolf fan, but I just feel their system is not that good. The combat in Exalted has so many different phases it's horrible, it turns all combats into a mess. It's still nice to play every once and again, but I found that I just don't find any of WW's worlds to be interesting anymore.

As for D&D, it's funny, 4e is very combat oriented and everything is basically built around combat, but a friend of mine just bought the AD&D books again, and man, is it different. There's even a pharagraph explaining why AD&D is not about combat and that combat should be reduced to the minimum. I vastly prefer AD&D's way of handeling things.

 

[krypt0nian]

I'd join, but I believe the time difference makes that pretty impossible. Good luck though.


I used to be a huge White Wolf fan, but I just feel their system is not that good. The combat in Exalted has so many different phases it's horrible, it turns all combats into a mess. It's still nice to play every once and again, but I found that I just don't find any of WW's worlds to be interesting anymore.

As for D&D, it's funny, 4e is very combat oriented and everything is basically built around combat, but a friend of mine just bought the AD&D books again, and man, is it different. There's even a pharagraph explaining why AD&D is not about combat and that combat should be reduced to the minimum. I vastly prefer AD&D's way of handeling things.

I don't think this is remotely true. We have sessions many nights with zero combat.

 

[ChiTownBuffalo]

So, I played last night for the first time since puberty I think.

It was fun, I enjoyed myself.

I dropped in on a D&D Encounters thing at a local gameshop. Maybe its something about where the shop is, but its predominantly hipsters.

My character is a Paladin named Sasha the Grey.

 

[Riposte]

Every time I've tried to run DnD online, it has never panned out. Either too slow or too messy. How are you going about it? (I am not throwing my hat in, just curious. A little too busy unfortunately.)

My character is a Paladin named Sasha the Grey.

Good for crowd control.


EDIT: What a horrible 300th I've turned this into.

 

[dude]

I don't think this is remotely true. We have sessions many nights with zero combat.

You don't have to play it like that, but the book is basically all about combat now.

AD&D is very, very good BTW, much better than I remembered... I mean, I remembered it as a very complicated and clumsy, but it's actually pretty light-weight and easy.

 

[ChiTownBuffalo]

Good for crowd control.

Yup. She's not unfamilar with taking on 2, 3, 5 people at a time.