The General D&D thread

Called shots were always optional and it was up to the DM to adjudicate the results. You pretty much had to Rule Zero it unless you wanted players doing things like "called shot to the eyeball, -8 to hit but it's an instant kill on a dragon" and such.

Of course, another way to deal with that would be to have enemies do called shots on the PCs. "Oops, your sword hand got chopped off again."

edited 21st Sep '12 8:31:50 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

You can still pull off a remarkable amount of improvisation in 4E. I did tons of just plain silly things with an anvil in my last 4E campaign. We also had a kidnapping plan that involved a cabbage cart, telekinesis, a bag of holding, and a bucket of blue paint. If you can't improvise, it just means you aren't trying hard enough.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.

Yeah... I do hate it how called shots turn into god mode player licenses to rewrite encounters. But there is not much you can do to stop it being abuse other then forbidding them out right or not playing with power gamers.

Doing the former is a lot easier that doing the latter.

edited 21st Sep '12 9:20:25 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

My biggest beef with 4e was that everything felt pretty same-y because of the unified class mechanics. It did make it significantly easier for a new player to pick up the game and go, but unless you had an entire group (including DM) of newbies, that was generally pretty easy to sort out by having new people play simpler classes and pick up more complicated stuff by watching other players. I'm rather glad that 5e seems to be going back to a more traditional system.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

While I don't know anything about 4e, I can say that 3.5 definitely does favor playing around with the rules to optimize a powerful character who can wreck stuff in combat (and ideally, also outside of it), and then building a character on top of that, rather than vice-versa.

Though in 3.5, there's such a huge variety of concepts and combinations that they almost become like writing prompts.

I wonder how it would be possible for supposedly good aligned character not to care about the imminent finale of existence itself.

(Wait, you said "imminent", not "inevitable". Disregard.)

edited 22nd Sep '12 3:22:57 AM by KylerThatch

This "faculty lot" you speak of sounds like a place of great power...

Yeah a lot of people bring up the 'all the classes feel the same' beef.

The thing is -in my opinion- if you're actually into playing the game 4th edition uniformed game mechanics does a much better job of offering character customization and accommodating a variety of play styles (and makes running the game a lot more easier)then the earlier editions ever did. But yes a lot of people seem to genuinely like having class with unique game mechanics even if they end up playing the same way.

hashtagsarestupid

I'm just gonna go ahead and bring up my homebrew class again, since this thread moves faster than the Git P homebrew subforum.

Since the general consensus is that it's a little too powerful, and the main thing that makes people say that is the spells, even though I don't want spells to be a major part of the class, I've been thinking about how to reformat the magic system to make it less unbalanced... but now that I think about it, maybe it would be very easy to fix. How would it change things if I said that the class doesn't cast spells, but instead uses them as spell-like abilities?

And to go a step further, maybe I could make each spell only usable once per day (even if you still have enough points), or maybe several times based on the character's Charisma modifier...?

That's a genuine question correct? I'm not sure if you're poking fun or not.

Any way I like what I'm reading so far, but making stuff Boundless Stride a 'limited ueses' special ability would be a good idea.

edited 22nd Sep '12 6:10:36 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

... It's a serious question, yes! Why? Would... making them spell-like abilities actually make them more powerful? I was thinking that it would be a major nerf because the character wouldn't be able to benefit from metamagic feats and such...

I just was checking you weren't poking fun at the idea of daily powers or anything, what with internet sarcasm being what it is

My 3.5 knowlege base is a little rust, but I'll get back to you.

edited 22nd Sep '12 6:37:57 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

• sigh* I was afraid my post would launch another edition war. Those things really comes a dime a dozen when it comes to D&D, isn't?

Something good I can say about D&D 4th: it's pretty easy to make a new character when you know nothing about the game. The DM explained to me the at-will/encounter/daily system, there's a clear table telling you what you get at every level, and every abilities are made into level tiers. I just had to read one class and was pretty much handed what I needed to chose at every level. I can appreciate that kind of simplicity and streamlining.

That doesn't mean 3/3.5/Pathfinder is bad, though. But I found it less overwhelming as a newcomer, and it gave me a good first impression of the game. I can roll a 3.5 character with my eyes closed, but it took me years to get to that point.

(Can't say the same when we were actually in combat, though! So many abilities to consider at the same time. Curses, pact boon, shadow walk and cover, healing surge... I got lost and forgot half of it in the first battle. But I guess it's just something that comes with experience.)

edited 22nd Sep '12 9:23:17 AM by Talden

Regarding the sameiness of classes, Essentials went a long way to fixing that.

And people started bitching about it.

Well, sure. Any fanbase as large as D&D's is not going to be of one mind on anything. But that's a large part of why they're doing what they're doing with 5e — optional modular rulesets not just on the campaign level, but on the player level, is a pretty neat concept.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Pie in the sky it is.

How do you figure? It's obviously not going to make everyone happy, but giving players options for how simple or complicated they want their own character to be seems entirely reasonable to me.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Because it's the DM who ultimately sets the narrative of the campaign, and presuming that it's P Cs who get to decide what the rules are defeats the entire purpose of the DM there in the first place. The DM will just have to say "Yeah, you're not allowed to use those rules."

Why would the DM care? The sort of rules that are player-specific are stuff that doesn't affect anything else. Things like you want to choose individual skill ranks and feats, or take lump packages that just tell you want your bonuses are so you don't have to think about it. There's no reason why the DM should forbid players from doing it in one way or another.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Whatever you say Jovian.

Look, I can go into an argument on this, but I can already see that it'd just turn into irreconcilable differences so let's just drop it.

edited 22nd Sep '12 11:45:07 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

I'd actually like to hear what you have to say. Just because we don't come to an agreement doesn't mean that talking about the subject is pointless. But if you don't want to talk about it, then you don't, I guess.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Well, take the proposed ruled for climb. That are rules for whether it's an autopass or whether or not you make a check. Basically, whenever you have different rules, that changes the expected gameplay. If P Cs have the options of deciding what the expected gameplay is, but the DM designed the game around a specific element of gameplay, then of course the DM has an incentive to say "no, you have to use this particular rules set."

That's not what I was talking about, though. There are some rules that are set for the campaign as a whole (like the details of how skill checks work) and some rules that are individual to characters (whether you individually select skills, feats, powers, etc or just take a simpler but less customized stat block). The rules used by different players are only about their character.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Okay, but in that context, D Ms may want to normalize how players operate in their campaigns. If, for instance, there is a mechanical advantage to the players for doing it one way as opposed to another, then the DM has the incentive to ask all players either do it that way or not do it that way for game balance. That doesn't mean the DM will necessarily, mind you.

Really, it's no different than a DM saying "no you can't use this-this is broken." However, I think there's an attitude of entitlement against players that, since something exists, they feel as if it's unfair for the DM to tell them they can't use it, regardless of whether it works in the DM's campaign.