Lessons learned the hard way

Herald is an easier setup but Apex Avian + Thunderbird = gg.

Shadow Era:

• Card draw is king.
• Don't pack cards you'll never use except as sacrifices.
• ALWAYS get up to 5 resources minimum.

Magic The Gathering:

If your opponent is playing Red/Green, and attacks you despite the fact that you can easily kill their attackers? They're going to buff that creature or destroy yuurs. Either have a cancel ready or throw something weak at them.

Legend Of The Five Rings: That card you can't destroy because of its attachments? The attachment is a "card without any attachments."

"Solo monster" usually doesn't mean you can solo it.

General:

Even if an idea sounds cool, sometimes you have to reconsider if it sounds more like a book then an actual game...

Pathfinder society:

• THE TEN-FOOT POLE WON'T SAVE YOU!
• Do not be that rouge that doesn't have disable device and stealth. DO NOT.
  • Unless you're one of those charming rouges or an alternate without trap-finding but even then take it anyway! You have, like, 8 ranks a level!
• Figure out what immunities you have BEFORE starting play.
• Pazio lieks swarms. Swarms like eating foolish wretches without area damage. Flasks leik area damage. See where I'm going with this? (Where I'm going is flasks-abuse city.)
  • Even if you ARN'T up swarm creek without a caster, bring them anyway: A little extra energy-damage on a touch attack is never worthless at low level.
    • Alchemists, too, should do that, seeing as a flask will do as much damage as a first level bomb until lv. 3. and will remain competitive until Lv. 6, thanks to int bonus to damage.
• Having a wand of C.L.W is always welcome.
• Haste is amazing, but remember, being 30ft faster into the battle is bad if you're also going to flee 30ft faster OUT of it.
• If you build is complete at third level, figure out something to do for the next 9 in advance

edited 19th Apr '13 11:17:38 PM by doorhandle

The second to last one is why it took me so long to learn how to play monks right in 4E. In the wrong hands, a monk exists to split the party and die horribly.

edited 5th May '13 2:03:51 PM by darnpenguin

Yu Gi Oh

• If you're never using it for anything but Tributes without taking advantage of it's effect to do so, it's a dead card and it needs to come out of your Deck (I'm looking at YOU, Des Frog)
• There is a reason Egyptian God cards are untiered - even with a Frog summoner engine.
  • Winged Dragon of Ra - yes it gets shit-tons of ATK and DEF. Yes, you have to give up ALL of your LP bar 100 to do that. Yes, it is also a dead card if you haven't many LP left. Stick to Slifer and Obelisk.
• Think about what you're doing. If you discard your only God Card to Special Summon Hardened Armed Dragon, you deserve the slap on the head when you go to Summon that God card.

edited 7th May '13 6:55:20 AM by Plumbum

Addendum: Never put your deckbox in your back pocket. Unlike phones and wallets, deckboxes cannot be safely sat on. Very nearly ruined a good Six Sam deck today doing that.

Dark Heresy:

• You will roll a 9 when you least want to.
• You can't retroactively cast Resist Possession.
• Your Willpower is your only friend.
• Corruption adds up fast.

Yes, I used to play a psyker. Why do you ask?

Magic The Gathering:

• Modal spells are your friend. Austere Command and Merciless Eviction, specifically.
• Don't be afraid to wrath.
• Obvious combo piece and superabundance generals (Teferi, Azusa, et al) should be killed the second they appear. Or, if you're running blue, slightly before that second.
• Blue does EVERYTHING.
• It doesn't matter how much mana you have if you have nothing to spend it on. X-spells are also your friend.

The Deck of Many Things is not something to be toyed with lightly.

General lessons learned the hard way (At least with dungeons and dragons):

• It's okay to have a character not too developed, to allow for some room to develop.
  • It's not if you don't know where to develop.
• It's acceptable to have a little character Development.
  • It's not necessarily worth it if you or someone else suffers for it.
• It's okay to have a character quirk.
  • It's not if you overplay it.

Dungeon Crawl Classics:

• I hope you're ready to lose at least one of your level zero characters!
  • Pets are not exempt from this. That falcon you sent to scout? Skeleton blob food.

Lessons learned in Star Wars Saga Edition with a rather tactically-minded GM.

• Concentration of force is not optional. Literally everyone and their mother in this game owns a submachine gun, and they will use autofire to fuck your day up. Also, those actions go by quick, and it takes only one missed shot or too-successful enemy shot for a plan to go to hell. If you send a detachment to do something, you better damn well make sure it has adequate fire support.
  • In other words: two people are entirely too few to send around a corner for a blocking detachment. Luckily the enemy surrendered instead of fighting it out; that could have been very, very bad.
• Prepared actions, prepared actions, prepared actions. They're the difference between a successful doorbreach and a crash-open-the-door-and-get-shot-to-hell.
• Grenades are very useful, especially for those people in our party who either can't shoot for shit or do a piddly 2d6 damage on a hit. That's not counting what you could get up to when you have Jedi who could do Move Light Object almost at will.
• Also, droids own. That is all.

Using the Force to reverse-pickpocket a grenade into someone's pocket? Sounds like a good time, and/or dark side points.

Well, less that and more "precision grenade launcher", but same general concept. We're working on variants of that for when we don't have grenades: since we have a neurotoxic doggoth^note "Doggoth" because "horrific nameless abomination", while more accurate, was too clunky for everyday use as a pet, we're trying to make or acquire hypodermic darts for the Jedi to fling. The neurotoxin is quick-acting and very, very deadly. And maybe now our bow-and-arrow-armed Feluccian can actually contribute to ranged combat!

Pathfinder / Dungeons & Dragons

• Alchemical items aren't enemy-killers, but they are battle-enders.
• The GM wants the players to choose to split the party; it makes them easier targets.
• It doesn't matter if your build should make you completely invulnerable to a particular trap (even if you made it without that trap in mind); the GM will find a way to make you hurt by it.
• It doesn't matter how many ranks of Perception or Spot/Listen you have. The enemy has more Stealth or Hide/Move Silently.
• The Spring Attack feat chain exists for a reason; it is not merely a feat tax for people who don't take Acrobatics. Yes, even in 3.5.
• When the GM asks if your character would be completely immune to a gelatinous cube's array of attacks, they are not asking idly.

Star Wars: Age Of Rebellion

1) Frag grenades (to say nothing of thermal detonators) are incredibly lethal to Mooks. And every Stormtrooper (who most parties will drop like flies) carries one. Space out your encounters and keep squads apart, lest a dozen Wilhelm Screams call out at once and then be silenced as the encounter ends in one flick of a wrist. From the vehicle specialist...

2) Starfighter combat is deadly. As in movie deadly, even heavier snubfighters can only take 2 or 3 hits. And most of them have the Linked qualities on their weapons, letting them score multiple hits per attack under the right circumstances.

edited 15th Aug '14 4:42:47 PM by Rationalinsanity

See, we wish we had that kind of frag grenade in Saga Edition. 3d6 is not enough to permanently put someone down, especially when they're in clonetruppen armor.

Yeah, grenades have definitely gotten a buff from Saga.

The basic ones do at least 8 damage plus successes to the primary target and do 6 damage plus successes to everyone Engaged with them (so squadmates, people fighting them in melee, etc). A Stormtrooper has 5 health and soaks 4 damage due to Brawn/Armor, so you need just 3 successes to wipe out every Stormtrooper (who are actually pretty hardy for Mooks) in the blast. And since grenades use Agility (the God Stat for ranged fighters and pilots) and Ranged-Light skill (usually for pistols) so some characters get frighteningly good dice pools when they normally aren't that good at ground combat.

And the things are common as all hell.

Here's one our GM learned rather painfully: Even if thy internet is crapping the bed, thou shalt never EVER declare player fiat. After all, power corrupts, and absolute power leads to weird situations.

Black Crusade:

• When fighting multiple enemies, your main problem isn't their +10 for Ganging Up, it's the fact you only have one reaction (well, sometimes two).
• Acquisition rolls are much easier when you've got loot, especially exotic loot.

edited 8th Sep '14 1:46:47 AM by Medinoc

D&D 4e.

When reading your attack power cards, take careful note of the targeting listing. It might really come in handy when I as a DM am dropping 2d6 of non-minion enemies a round on top of you.

Also, when you have a blast power, read if it targets enemies or all creatures. One is party friendly and might save their lives. The other might just make them die faster.

Guide to difficulty balance

If their base attack does an average of more than the majority of the Parties HP, it's probably too powerful for them.