[QUOTE=deltasquid;45672258]So I was reading the Dungeon World rules trying to come up with a new character build and discovered that if you know what you're doing, you can make a wizard that deals 3d4+2d8 damage per punch. That might not seem like much, but due to the way that monsters are statted in Dungeon World, a solidly connected punch to a dragon's face has a 16,5% chance of outright one-hit killing it.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kWFBcs6.jpg[/IMG]
My next character shall henceforth be known as Regnum the Ripped![/QUOTE]
Why are you trying to powergame Dungeon World?
Imagine powergaming and thinking you're actually fun to play with
[QUOTE=evilweazel;45672356]Imagine powergaming and thinking you're actually fun to play with[/QUOTE]
Powergaming can be hilarious for short dungeon crawls with gimmick characters.
[QUOTE=cyclocius;45672337]Why are you trying to powergame Dungeon World?[/QUOTE]
It's a fun gimmick. the +2d8 is technically a buff someone else needs to give you (thinking about a level 6 bard) and the 3d4 is at level 6 earliest. With the right moves you can get a free +4 armor on top of that. This sounds like overkill until you remember that a lucky ranger can oneshot a dragon on his own at level 6 with just two swords or something.
[QUOTE=deltasquid;45672435]It's a fun gimmick. the +2d8 is technically a buff someone else needs to give you (thinking about a level 6 bard) and the 3d4 is at level 6 earliest. With the right moves you can get a free +4 armor on top of that. This sounds like overkill until you remember that a lucky ranger can oneshot a dragon on his own at level 6 with just two swords or something.[/QUOTE]
Hahaha, what are you doing? It's Dungeon World. Of course you CAN do this, and it's fun to think about, but in practice this sorta ruins everything about Dungeon World. It's supposed to be a game where you make a character that you think is fun, and play 90% of the game out narratively. Like, the whole reason you play Dungeon World is to get AWAY from all that rules shit, and just play out a big epic adventure.
I know that you doofus. :v: I'm going to play as a joke mage called Regnum the Ripped who casts spells by punching shit. At level 1 I could deal 2d4 damage with my human wizard, but I doubt I'll build the gimmick further than that and flavourfully sucker punching people when casting invisibility/charm person and what have you. I was just thinking about it theoretically because playing a wizard with high intelligence and dexterity is boring and cliché and wanted to try something new and interesting without gimping myself, namely a wizard that uses Str and Con as his highest starting stats.
[QUOTE=deltasquid;45672503]I know that you doofus. :v: I'm going to play as a joke mage called Regnum the Ripped who casts spells by punching shit. At level 1 I could deal 2d4 damage with my human wizard, but I doubt I'll build the gimmick further than that and flavourfully sucker punching people when casting invisibility/charm person and what have you. I was just thinking about it theoretically because playing a wizard with high intelligence and dexterity is boring and cliché and wanted to try something new and interesting without gimping myself, namely a wizard that uses Str and Con as his highest starting stats.[/QUOTE]
You should take a bunch of ranks in Perform (strings), and shred out on a magically electrified guitar after every battle.
[QUOTE=Funktastic Dog;45672547]You should take a bunch of ranks in Perform (strings), and shred out on a magically electrified guitar after every battle.[/QUOTE]
Dungeon World doesn't have ranks or perform or what have you though?
[QUOTE=deltasquid;45672258]So I was reading the Dungeon World rules trying to come up with a new character build and discovered that if you know what you're doing, you can make a wizard that deals 3d4+2d8 damage per punch. That might not seem like much, but due to the way that monsters are statted in Dungeon World, a solidly connected punch to a dragon's face has a 16,5% chance of outright one-hit killing it.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kWFBcs6.jpg[/IMG]
My next character shall henceforth be known as Regnum the Ripped![/QUOTE]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7RosIoQisA[/media]
Would using a bare bones RPG defeat the point of practising the management/organisation side of GMing?
still gotta organise plot and npcs
The trick is lay out a rough frame work and maybe some neat twists, allow the plot to advance naturally and then allow your players to fill the gaps. Your players will almost certainly come up with ideas or theories that are better than what you had planned - use them!
Of course that's just my style. Also as a general rule never plan the ending - if you do that you're going to wind up railroading people, intentionally or otherwise. Just set up the house of cards and wait and see how it falls when the players knock it over.
Like rear said, I tend towards providing the setup and letting my players just sort of do whatever with that and try to see where it goes, whilst still aiming to give enough structure to keep them on-goal and moving forward
like, biggest lesson I learned from my pathfinder game (aside from that I hate pathfinder's rigidity and rules-intensiveness) was that I can't just plonk them down somewhere and say 'do whatever' because the end result is mostly nothing getting actually done. Whereas my traveller game, which although still rather freeform (They got a ship, a big sector of space to explore, and a secret mission to work on, with no super specific orders beyond it) has worked out a lot better because even though the possibilities also theoretically endless it's actually a hell of a lot easier to create a self-contained arcs when there's just a little urgency to keep things moving and something to work towards, as opposed to just throwing them out there and yelling 'adventure!', which is more or less what happened in PF and then the party mostly sat around scheming instead of actually doing things
but yea, never plan the ending. Plan core stuff, but always assume that your players are going to think their way around it and come at it some way you didn't expect (and I am one to talk because this is how I play almost all my characters because thinking is fun), and above all don't discourage this, I think is the best thing. Keep your cool set pieces, but don't necessarily expect that they'll come in the order or end the way you planned
And honestly, rules-light systems are a lot more forgiving on extensive planning than rules-heavy ones, because it's a hell of a lot easier to improvise for unexpected events when the rules can be easily bent. Again, just from my experience, I found it a lot easier to plan for traveller because the exact mechanics of encounters and such could be basically run on the fly, leaving me free to try ideas that I thought would be intesting as opposed to just ideas that could be worked into the rules, whereas for PF it required so much more work to plan basically anything at all that I just stopped trying altogether
If I may offer another viewpoint: since people's brains work differently, some GMs are actually much more at ease preparing for more codified rulesets like PF since it gives them tangible boundaries to work with, while rules-light systems leaves them stumped because they're not good at improvisation. Even in a sandbox game in PF it's definitely doable for some GMs if they have the right tools and mindsets. I've never had too much of a problem preparing for PF, and I'm normally a fan of more light-rules systems like Savage Worlds or Numenera or Dungeon World. But that's because a) I don't use XP; players level up at milestones, b) I'm lazy and don't create NPCs unless they're super plot relevant, otherwise I just steal from the pfsrd or somewhere else. And as for treasure and all that? Bahh, just use the treasure generator, throw in some personalized gear for certain PCs, bam done.
But of course, this is all a personal thing. YMMV and all that.
I just do things.
Rules are for players not GMs.
[QUOTE=deltasquid;45672258]So I was reading the Dungeon World rules trying to come up with a new character build and discovered that if you know what you're doing, you can make a wizard that deals 3d4+2d8 damage per punch. That might not seem like much, but due to the way that monsters are statted in Dungeon World, a solidly connected punch to a dragon's face has a 16,5% chance of outright one-hit killing it.
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kWFBcs6.jpg[/IMG]
My next character shall henceforth be known as Regnum the Ripped![/QUOTE]
So while in my bed I was thinking about this and truly, this character build doesn't even come close to breaking Dungeon World. I don't know how many of you have played DW but I'll do my best to summarize breaking the game completely, which is possible at level 2 with a fighter.
You can either make the GM frothe with rage by becoming impossible to kill, or by making it impossible for any NPC to live. The former involves stacking as much armor and "I ignore this" on top of each other, the latter is a bit more complicated and involves stacking as many damage dice on top of each other. More dice is better than larger dice! Adding a 1d4 on top of your starting d4 is better than turning it into a d8, for the simple reason that armor in DW is a flat number. Get 5 dice on top of each other and you can basically bypass armor completely, because nothing has over 5 armor. The way you do this, is look for a class that can do this by itself, but more importantly, a class that has a lot of multiclass moves, allowing you to combine the most bullshit elements of every class.
For the purpose of demonstration, I will limit myself to the base classes the rules come with. If you throw in the Inverse World and Grim World playbooks, you might as well just cheat.
So let's take mister muscle wizard here. 3d4 certainly is a respectable base damage output, but it hinges on him acing his Weapon enhancement spell, which means it's rather unreliable to set up at the beginning of the session. It's an ongoing spell though, so you're set to go once you do get it up. The 2d8 bonus is just a bard buffing me, but he could buff anyone with a higher base damage output. (P.S. Having reread the bard's rules, he's actually giving you +4d4, not +2d8. That's even better.)
So let's take the fighter. At 1d10 base damage and starting with 3 armor, he can, at level 1, straight up beat my wizard in hand-to-hand combat until Regnum reaches level 6. But the fighter gets two moves that up his base damage output: merciless is a straight up +d4, scent of blood gives you +d4 against an enemy you've already attacked in combat. Armor mastery lets you negate any damage you take, at the cost of permanently damaging your armor, which you will have to repair afterwards. Still, a fighter with platemail and a shield could just ignore 5 bites from a dragon if he so desired. Because fuck you, I'm the fighter.
Now, we give him the multiclass dabbler move. Just pick whatever other class' bullshit you fancy, but my preference goes to the Paladin's bloody Aegis move. This move lets you shrug off ANY damage at the low, low price of taking a debility. So as long as you're willing to maim yourself six times and take all six debilities, you won't take any damage. A level 3 fighter could, theoretically, straight up ignore 11 attacks, and that's not counting the dozens of arrows and strikes that will deal less than 5 damage and won't even tickle him under his 5 armor cap. So now your fighter is invincible.
At level 6 and 7, you can upgrade your two extra damage moves to add d8's instead. Any friendly cleric or wizard with "enhanced weapon" could, at level 6, enchant your bullshit weapon with another 2d4 damage. A level 6 bard could add 4d4 damage on top of that, but his buff is a temporary one that only applies to the next hit, so he'd have to spam that over and over again and keep rolling high. Regardless, a level 7 fighter could, taking into account the base improvements he can apply to his weapon, d10+2d8+6d4+1, ignoring 2 armor points, damage on a single swing. A dragon has 16 HP and 5 armor, so you'd need to deal 18 damage or more to instantly gib it. Assuming you've already attacked the dragon once to get that extra d8 from scent of blood, you have 0,4% chance to deal LESS than 18 damage. That's a 99,6% chance to instantly gib that poor dragon. You still get one multiclass move though, so at level 8 you just pick whatever +1 damage suits your fancy and then you have a 100% chance, as long as the bard keeps buffing you, to instantly gib anything the GM throws at you. You could, for example, trade your shield for an off-hand weapon with the ranger move "viper strike" to get a d4 extra damage. You could also just take the backstab move from the thief and deal an extra d6 damage to surprised or defenseless foes. It doesn't really matter.
So, you can either build your fighter in such a way that at level 3, he's invulnerable to damage, or if you play the waiting game, you can get a fighter that instantly gibs anything at level 8 if a bard and cleric/wizard are willing to put up with your bullshit.
[B]TL;DR:[/B] Powergaming your wizard in DW is pointless because the math in DW completely breaks apart once you get a few damage dice on top of each other, and a fighter is stupidly broken with 2 moves that let him absorb damage, AKA the fighter's god damn job. If I want my level 7 wizard to deal 3d4 damage by punching shit, I'm not breaking the game because any fighter, paladin, ranger or barbarian gets similar damage output around level fucking 1.
EDIt: wait, my fighter calculations were off. You get 2 multiclass moves so you can pick viper strike at your first mutliclass move instead of bloody aegis. Your fighter will be squishier but will start blending up enemies faster. Depends on how comfortable your comrades are at keeping you alive while you cut through everything.
As a crunchy person, the above paragraphs area joy to read. Powergaming can be awful, or at the same time, at least interesting (if not hilarious).
And at the end of the day, there are always ways to get around Powergaming as a GM.
[QUOTE=gufu;45676444]As a crunchy person, the above paragraphs area joy to read. Powergaming can be awful, or at the same time, at least interesting (if not hilarious).
And at the end of the day, there are always ways to get around Powergaming as a GM.[/QUOTE]
"Suddenly, a rare giant Power-gamer-eating Musk Rat appears and goes for your throat. He doesn't care about the rest of the party, they're cool."
[QUOTE=gufu;45676444]As a crunchy person, the above paragraphs area joy to read. Powergaming can be awful, or at the same time, at least interesting (if not hilarious).
And at the end of the day, there are always ways to get around Powergaming as a GM.[/QUOTE]
Powergaming can be absolutely hilarious. Here's one that's not mine, and from D&D 3e:
[quote]
There's some funny things when you screw around with distances and scales.
For example: the bard. Many people mock bards. Those people are fools.
One of the bard's most basic abilities is Inspire Courage, which lets the bard perform to grant a bonus to attack and weapon damage rolls, as well as bonuses to defend themselves against attacks that charm or frighten them. This bonus is granted to all allies who can hear the performance, and scales with the bard's level, capping out at +4 for a 20th level bard. Not too shabby.
Except for the fact that 3e never does anything by halves, so there's a pile of things that boost Inspire Courage.
The Song of the Heart feat from the Eberron Campaign Setting boosts all of your bard effects by one.
The Inspirational Boost spell from Spell Compendium boosts Inspire Courage by one.
The Badge of Valor from the Magic Item Compendium also boosts Inspire Courage by one.
Vest of Legends from the Dungeon Master's Guide II lets you function as a bard five levels higher.
The Words of Creation feat from the Book of Exalted Deeds just *doubles* your bonus. Where that multiplier comes in is kind of uncertain, with conservative estimates just multiplying your class bonus, while others argue that it should hit everything else. It comes at the cost of 3d4 nonlethal damage per round, but if you're immune to nonlethal damage by being a warforged or something, you can jam with the angels all day.
Fire it all up and you're looking at somewhere between +11 and +14 to hit and damage on every attack, which is enough to allow your party to punch way above its weight class thanks to increased accuracy while hitting like a truck in the process. Multiattackers love you because that bonus applies to every attack they make in a round, while even single attackers can profit by dumping that attack bonus via Power Attack.
If you prefer damage over accuracy, Dragonfire Inspiration from Dragon Magic lets you replace your +11 to hit and damage with +11d6 fire damage per hit, letting each attack hit with the force of a fireball. If you've got the right feats, you can add sonic damage instead, and Spell Compendium gives the creaking cacophony spell to make all enemies in range take +50% sonic damage. There's nothing stopping you from doing both either if you want attack and damage, using either two bards or a bard and a harmonizing weapon (Magic Item Compendium).
But why stop there? The bonus applies to you and any allies who can hear you sing. There's the aforementioned alphorn for an audience that can hear you for miles, but even if that doesn't fly with your DM, there's the resounding voice spell in Heroes of Battle that lets you be heard for 100 feet per caster level. Have your cleric buddy cast a properly metamagiced version and you can basically sing for miles all day. Fortunately, even if your allies and enemies are out of sight but within earshot, there's no risk of your enemies getting hopped up on your sweet jams.
+11 to hit and damage kicks the balance around in a party of adventurers, but it completely rocks the boat when you start throwing it on a pile of weak creatures such as peasants. A proper inspiration will let someone's grandma one-punch an orc warrior- throw it on something actually dangerous and you will see results.
In one corner, we have the Mongol Horde, bent on pillaging the city.
In the other? Two bards, and every housecat they villagers could find.
Confident of their victory, the horde charges, only for the bards to begin to rock out.
And a thousand cats burst into flames, descending onto the horde in a crowd of feline fury, slaying horse and rider with a single blow each.
Bards are a ridiculous large-scale force multiplier. Fear them. [/quote]
The more rules heavy a game is, the funnier I find it when you're able to do something retarded or unintended.
Speaking of just general fucking with the rules until you turn everything into a weapon.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPM7I49fj8[/media]
[QUOTE=Crimor;45679389]Speaking of just general fucking with the rules until you turn everything into a weapon.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPM7I49fj8[/media][/QUOTE]
This is the video that got me into tabletop games.
[QUOTE=Stren;45678008]The more rules heavy a game is, the funnier I find it when you're able to do something retarded or unintended.[/QUOTE]
i made a rogue wizard with specialization in illusions (pathfinder), can pretty much do everything i want except destroy in combat. but the rogue levels give sneak attack so it's still viable to fight.
[QUOTE=Crimor;45667050]Haven't played SR in forever, what changed in 5e?[/QUOTE]
Hacking got a complete overhaul. It not functions on the same timescale as meatspace combat, so you can be hacking while the rest of the team is fighting something in meatspace. And hacking minor things is really fast now. Like you can hack people's weapons in the middle of combat fast.
[QUOTE=deltasquid;45676123]You can either make the GM frothe with rage by becoming impossible to kill, or by making it impossible for any NPC to live.[/QUOTE]
Well, thing is, as much as some gygaxian GMs and hardcore oldschool players might not like to believe it, GM's usually are the biggest fans of the PCs out there. Like, we challenge you, but thats cause we want to see you do cool shit. When you do stuff like this, it sorta breaks the trust between you and the GM, as now you see it as super gamey.
I get your point, that you were intentionally trying to break it. But some people might not understand that. All I'm saying was that if I saw this in my game, I would straight up be like: "Roll a new character, and don't powergame Dungeon World."
[QUOTE=elowin;45680563]Hacking got a complete overhaul. It not functions on the same timescale as meatspace combat, so you can be hacking while the rest of the team is fighting something in meatspace. And hacking minor things is really fast now. Like you can hack people's weapons in the middle of combat fast.[/QUOTE]
I'm already mentally envisioning a scenario where the party is fighting and there's one guy who refuses to join in because he's too busy hacking a nearby slurpee machine or something.
[editline]13th August 2014[/editline]
[url=http://yourplayersaidwhat.tumblr.com/]Here's another hilarious D&D tumblr to follow[/url]
[img]http://puu.sh/aRg79/3f5ad57a55.png[/img]
Well, it looks like the Band of Bastards has broken up. I guess that's one of the pitfalls of an office game - work drama can leak in and break things up.
The good side, at least, is that the player who is no longer part of the game is the one who most consistently did stupid, silly things.
With him gone, two new players added, and another player making an independent effort to take things seriously, we've decided to start fresh. New characters, new campaign, even a new setting.
I'm starting on the worldbuilding tonight. Last time, I showed restraint because I wanted to leave myself room to improvise anything. This time, I'm holding nothing back, so no matter where they go or what they do, there's a story.
There's also a bit of bragging rights motivating me. One of the new-ish players is a GM himself, and he shared the 40-page world document he wrote for his own campaign. I'm going to top that.
And this time, I really am going to chronicle the entire thing, for your pleasure.
Write a 300 page backstory for every character. EVERY CHARACTER. Mayor of smallsville? 300 pages. Blacksmith of tinytown? 300 pages. Generic farmer #4167? 300 pages Forest squirrel? 300 pages.
You must have a minimum 1000 pages of description per village, and an additional 500 pages per city size up from there, oh and a complete map of every location as well.
so in the realm of 'concept characters I will never use' I realized that my railgun-toting shadowrun chrome hound, while awesome in theory, would be completely useless in any real game since the only solution I had to any problem would be shooting
so now I'm building a stealthy infiltrator type with lots of pistols because gunslingers are third only to heavy weapons users and vehicle operators in terms of character types I love to build
so I'm currently trying to see if there's any possible way I could justify explosive gel to fit in the squirt-gun thing that I've got as my primary nonlethal, which I'd goop people with then set off with darts from my taser/incendiary rounds from my fubuki
currently no luck on actual explosives, but I could probably put napalm or white phosphorus in the thing for a similar effect
although maybe the foam explosives would work. It's mostly a question of whether or not placing the foam within the gel medium the gun shoots causes it to start to harden or not. But since it's explicitly set off by electrical current the taser combo could work
Explosives are rarely stealthy, although there's lots of things you can load squirtguns with that are effective/fun, even without using DMSO as previously mentioned.
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