D&D 5e: Nobody Talks about D&D - Games

[QUOTE=Glent;50279909]problem is he has plate mail at level 2 more realistically at level 2 depending on how much money he got he should have something like scale or chain mail, maybe splint. full plate is 1500 gp - even half plate is 600 gp. Average fighter starts level 1 with 150 gp. Even rolling and getting the max possible of 240 gp isn't close to enough to buy plate, and then you also have buy weapons, equipment, etc. So unless you gave the party a huge amount of gold he shouldn't be able to afford such good armour Worth noting he could still have an AC of 19 at level 2 if he had good dexterity and a heavy shield, but that's different from having it free from your armour as you had to put points into dexterity and can't use the all powerful 3.5e two-handed weapon[/QUOTE] Sorry I meant Scale Mail. The one the handbook starts a dwarven fighter with.

[QUOTE=$$>MUFFIN<$$;50279983]Sorry I meant Scale Mail. The one the handbook starts a dwarven fighter with.[/QUOTE] Then his AC is going to vary depending on what his Dexterity is. If he only has 12 Dexterity, he should have an AC of 15, not including any bonuses from his shield. If he has 16 Dexterity however he can have an AC of 17, before the bonuses from his shield. If he has the Dodge feat he can also get +1 AC, but only against a single target. Whatever the case, he isn't going to get an AC of 19 for free- -If he's using a tower shield, he takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls. Using any kind of shield at all means you can't use two-handed weapons, and two-handed weapons are fantastic in 3.5 -If he has a high dexterity, it likely means he had to sacrifice some other stat. If rolling, he had to put one of his high rolls into Dex. If using point buy, he had to sink points into it that could've been more beneficial elsewhere -If he has the Dodge feat, it means he also has at least 13 Dex, and didn't take another, more offensive feat

[QUOTE=$$>MUFFIN<$$;50279983]Sorry I meant Scale Mail. The one the handbook starts a dwarven fighter with.[/QUOTE] That doesn't sound right, unless he's got 16+ dex for another 3AC and a heavy shield for another 2, or he's using a tower shield. But if he has built his character purely for wading into combat that'd murder everything else you need to give him other threats, touch attacks ignore armour and shields, his saves aren't going to be as high as his AC unless he's a paladin so spells, poison and traps can be equally effective on him as anyone else. Or you could be a cunt and make them fight in deep water where his ACP is doubled.

I guess he is just the wade in and take hits kind of build. I'll just have to be more creative with my methods. Doesn't help the rest of them when he says things like "That was a good fight, time to kick in this next door right now before you guys do anything".

[QUOTE=$$>MUFFIN<$$;50280096]I guess he is just the wade in and take hits kind of build. I'll just have to be more creative with my methods. Doesn't help the rest of them when he says things like "That was a good fight, time to kick in this next door right now before you guys do anything".[/QUOTE] Could just pull a Tucker's Kobolds on him, spam traps and lots of weak enemies with good positioning and ranged weapons, splash weapons are a good choice for that since they're touch attacks. 12 orcs might be a fair fight for him but 12 goblins he can't see throwing acid at him is a different situation.

drown him

Two words: Magic Missile

[QUOTE=$$>MUFFIN<$$;50280096]I guess he is just the wade in and take hits kind of build. I'll just have to be more creative with my methods. Doesn't help the rest of them when he says things like "That was a good fight, time to kick in this next door right now before you guys do anything".[/QUOTE] Just remember that the goal isn't to kill the PCs, its to make sure they're having fun nobody likes heat metal corridors

There can be no fun without suffering, games need these things in balance.

If the risk of death doesn't feel real it gets really boring really quick. Even more so if it's only one character who seems invulnerable while the rest get fucked over because of them.

Lethality in the form of dice rolls doesn't make the game interesting or add stakes. If you want a sense of peril, it's better to introduce that in the choices the party makes, not just have the enemies or traps they encounter more likely to kill them.

the subject of friendly fire was discussed and resolved very quickly in my party the wizard said that he was going to fireball a room where the fighter was currently locked in combat, and all the fighter had to say to make him not do that was "you better hope that the fireball kills me"

[QUOTE=Glent;50280566]Lethality in the form of dice rolls doesn't make the game interesting or add stakes. If you want a sense of peril, it's better to introduce that in the choices the party makes, not just have the enemies or traps they encounter more likely to kill them.[/QUOTE] This. Actions having actually consequences is much more likely to drive investment than just 'oh we only got through this because of clever tactics or much more likely, good dice luck'. It's not even that hard, considering adventuring parties attract enemies like nobody's business in the course of their typical business of getting whatever they want, and all it needs is to say 'oh, that boss you fought at the end of the first level dungeon, well, he had a brother who was quite the influential mafioso...' and you're in business for a real threat that results directly from the players actions to drive the plot. You don't even need to hit them harder than you usually do, you just need to catch them off guard, when they're not ready to handle their usual threats, when they think they're safe. To bring up some examples from my Shadowrun game, stuff like them getting jumped by Knight Errant while they were doing some general fuck-abouty post-job stuff because they finally traced all those acts of terrorism to the party, or someone whom they wronged earlier in the game scrapping together a band of mercenaries and other parties fucked by the PC's to try and take revenge. Neither event ended up actually mechanically hindering the party much in any way, aside from one player dead to the second because at the time the party had no healing mage, but they drove the plot in a way that felt like they were threatened much more than usual, which was much more important

Interestingly last night i had very much my first filler episode, it was most of the party just going around doing shenanigans and shopping with lots of backstory filling. There was a fair amount of inter-party conflict which was amazing (Mostly, around the Drunken fighter and her Goblin Husband 'muh gobsband' and the Drow wanting to murder it.) But what i did do at the end, once everyone had a very chilled session was trap the Ranger and the Druid on their own, in a room, with a religious organization that are pretty much a direct inspiration of the inquisition from 40k. So next episode should be fun.

-snip-

[QUOTE=ElectricSquid;50272770] I wanted to do something involving a Thing-like alien in a game I run, but I wasn't all that certain about it. I feel like it could get out of hand too quickly, I guess? Or cause tonal dissonance (the game is primarily a 50s sci-fi kind of thing; the game's premise was like Planet of the Apes but in Fallout, basically)[/QUOTE] This happened in what I advertised as an Aliens vs. Predators game (or at least in the universe of Aliens with Predators lurking somewhere), and the players were all the crew of a kind of sketchy transport ship (one of their cargos during the game was baby adrenal glands - the worst thing I could spout off the top of my head at the time). So first session, instead of Aliens or Predators, I went full the Thing on them, had them drop out of lightspeed because of a distress call, but once they landed on the world, all they found was the lone surviving dog (which was of course The Thing). This also lead to one of our all-time enduringly quoted lines, when the infested Dog caught up with the doctor alone in the medbay and split in two to spew tentacles (like a Thing is wont to do), she got away, got on the intercom, and informed everyone else that the dog had ripped in half. Puzzled, they radioed back, "Oh my god, is the dog okay?" Other than the crew member that got gunned down in his bunk, only one other character got secretly infested, and they snuck off the ship when the crew set down on the next heavily populated world. :P

[QUOTE=Glent;50280566]Lethality in the form of dice rolls doesn't make the game interesting or add stakes. If you want a sense of peril, it's better to introduce that in the choices the party makes, not just have the enemies or traps they encounter more likely to kill them.[/QUOTE] Nah, adversity of any kind can be challenging and engaging.

[QUOTE=Nerts;50280970]Nah, adversity of any kind can be challenging and engaging.[/QUOTE] Adversity in the story can be engaging. Adversity in "hope this monster/trap doesn't roll high or you're dead" isn't engaging - it's tedious.

[QUOTE=Glent;50281023]Adversity in the story can be engaging. Adversity in "hope this monster/trap doesn't roll high or you're dead" isn't engaging - it's tedious.[/QUOTE] Whoever runs the games you're in is shit at designing encounters if it all just comes down to pure luck.

[QUOTE=Nerts;50281056]Whoever runs the games you're in is shit at designing encounters if it all just comes down to pure luck.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Glent;50280566]Lethality in the form of dice rolls doesn't make the game interesting or add stakes.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Nerts;50280970]Nah, adversity of any kind can be challenging and engaging.[/QUOTE] The original thing I said was "Just remember that the goal isn't to kill the PCs, its to make sure they're having fun." It's one thing to have a clearly shown trap and have the players try to figure out a way past it, and another to have an unseen trap which drops you into a pool to drown.

And another thing entirely to have a clearly shown trap and have the players try to figure out a way past it, only for one of them to trigger it and be completely entirely fine in the end. :dog: See: Elowin's giant robo-dragon, which took us 2 hours to finally figure out was a hologram.

illusions are the most cost effective deterrent

[QUOTE=elowin;50281298]illusions are the most cost effective deterrent[/QUOTE] What are you, a bloody gnome?

[QUOTE=gufu;50281449]What are you, a bloody gnome?[/QUOTE] The real question is, can you roll high enough to be able to tell he ISN'T a gnome?

Snip VTM: Malk with Split personalities, Got himself in deep shit with an angry lover. won a minor play in the Jyhad. Was quite excellent. didn't really write it in a way that doesn't sound creepy.

[QUOTE=The Jack;50283291]~creepy shit~[/QUOTE] How very magical domain. [editline]9th May 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Glent;50281081]The original thing I said was "Just remember that the goal isn't to kill the PCs, its to make sure they're having fun." It's one thing to have a clearly shown trap and have the players try to figure out a way past it, and another to have an unseen trap which drops you into a pool to drown.[/QUOTE] But it's also another thing to have a relatively balanced fight that the guy with AC coming out of his ears just wades through because lol these guys are all martial users. Which is what the original lethality comment was about. "Why don't you just replace the fight with a clever trap" isn't a solution to that.

So basically you're building an undead harem of people your character doesn't know half of the time and brain washing them into sleeping with your character

Don't Vampires in VtM actually kinda not care about sex at all, other than to seduce humans for blood? If I recall correctly it's a pretty huge element, that they enjoy nothing but drinking blood and are pretty empty in all other aspects of (un-)life.

[QUOTE=Mezzokoko;50285727]Don't Vampires in VtM actually kinda not care about sex at all, other than to seduce humans for blood? If I recall correctly it's a pretty huge element, that they enjoy nothing but drinking blood and are pretty empty in all other aspects of (un-)life.[/QUOTE] I don't think so. I know some maintain or try to maintain behaviours that make them feel human. But there's a one hell of a difference between having sex with a human to feel alive and mind control rape of your murdered exes sister, some random vampire who's also trying to mind control rape you and a lesbian.

[QUOTE=Mezzokoko;50285727]Don't Vampires in VtM actually kinda not care about sex at all, other than to seduce humans for blood? If I recall correctly it's a pretty huge element, that they enjoy nothing but drinking blood and are pretty empty in all other aspects of (un-)life.[/QUOTE] Well they enjoy control over people and things that remind them if bring alive, but romance isn't really a thing and especially not with humans since vamps tend to see everyone as either prey, rivals or threats, which is why the humanityometer is a thing, they're all various depths of sociopath.