D&D V6 - Edition jokes don't really make sense anymore - Games

[QUOTE=gufu;51465755]I mean, we had that guy running an X-Com campaign, and that was doing a pretty job good in-between an RPG and Wargame. Besides, you can still have solid roleplaying, especially if you have larger-than-life characters. In a way, you only change the scale from 1 Goblin to a 100.[/QUOTE] Heyo. I never actually used mass combat rules for what I did, though it's not like that system has any to begin with. The 'wargame' element was in how movement and range resolution was handled entirely physically- rule-marked sticks and blast templates and that sort of thing held up next to the models on the table with free movement, instead of using a grid. Going from a game that's more balanced in terms of roleplay:combat to one that's heavily slanted towards combat isn't a big leap at all, it's just a matter of focusing more on some rules than on other elements. Introducing a mass combat system is a bigger task. Generally it involves abstracting and simplifying the 'less important' characters and distilling them down to units that can, most importantly, be tracked without keeping any books about them. A single soldier is either killed or not killed, and his one or two attacks have some chance of killing or not killing some other unit. Most RPG systems have gone the complete opposite direction from this, where the variety of actions a single character can take is increased and the amount of things one can track on them is increased as well. you can certainly do it, but then there's another step of trickiness if you want hero characters using the existing ruleset to be able to interface with the simplified, mass-scalable ones. I'm not going to dig out my copy but Heroes of Battle, that mass combat supplement for D&D did a decent enough take on it. It introduced rules for groups of lower-fidelity characters and how they would interact, and how the player characters could interact with their mechanics without getting into the slog, and shrugged and accepted that any direct interaction would have to fall back to the fully-detailed base system.

I have a friend designing a campaign. Standard 5e he wants to involve sprawling winter tundras and dense rainforest (separate of course) How would he go about doing that. Have Any of you done things like this What world building tips would you give for those environments?

[QUOTE=gufu;51465755]I mean, we had that guy running an X-Com campaign, and that was doing a pretty job good in-between an RPG and Wargame. Besides, you can still have solid roleplaying, especially if you have larger-than-life characters. In a way, you only change the scale from 1 Goblin to a 100.[/QUOTE] There's a difference between running a session where the PCs are in a large scale battle, and running a session where you turn it into a wargame. For a roleplaying game, everything that's not done by the important characters is just narrative. It doesn't really need in-depth mechanics and the only thing those in-depth mechanics would add is a fuckton more bookkeeping, at least as far as roleplaying games go it doesn't really add anything. Since you brought up Dynasty Tactics, I think Dynasty Warriors is actually a pretty good inspiration for how to do large scale battles in a roleplaying game, at least when it comes to larger than life characters. In Dynasty Warriors, the enemy soldiers don't really matter at all. Your objective is always unrelated to them, you have to beat the enemy officers and heroes, protect someone important on your side, or do something important to the lay of the battle such as breaking through a castle gate with a siege weapon or disarming a trap. Killing random enemy soldiers is never part of your goal, they are nothing more than an obstruction on your path to the real objective. The battle between the two armies is nothing more than a a background element. That's how I'd handle it in a roleplaying game, as well. Introducing specific in-depth mass combat rules isn't inherently bad or anything, but it is taking a few steps away from a roleplaying game and towards a war game.

[QUOTE=elowin;51467326] In Dynasty Warriors, the enemy soldiers don't really matter at all. Your objective is always unrelated to them, you have to beat the enemy officers and heroes, protect someone important on your side, or do something important to the lay of the battle such as breaking through a castle gate with a siege weapon or disarming a trap. Killing random enemy soldiers is never part of your goal, they are nothing more than an obstruction on your path to the real objective. The battle between the two armies is nothing more than a a background element.[/QUOTE] Aye, this is what I was mostly thinking. PCs fighting through endless nameless NPCs would be mostly quick number crunch as you smash through dozens of peasants at a time, while Enemy Officers would be the ones where you go into actual regular RPG combat. Still, if one of the players fancies themsleves a general (or if they are a non-combat class), it allows them to play what amounts to a Wargame against the GM, while everyone else trashtalks each other while wading through endless soldiers. You can still have PCs act freely on objectives that appear on the battlefield and in times between it. I may or may not want actual DW roleplayan.

Savage worlds has pretty good mass battle rules

Helping players design characters is so satisfying; once you get a hold on the game mechanics and can help them realise all these really cool ideas they have and fully realise it. Like helping tie my friends Druid together and him flipping out at all he can do with his snake and how many spells he can use.

chaotic neutral is the objectively most superior alignment and better than all others always that is all

[QUOTE=elowin;51482668]chaotic neutral is the objectively most superior alignment and better than all others always that is all[/QUOTE] no lawful good is the best believe it

[QUOTE=ElTacoLad;51482675]no lawful good is the best believe it[/QUOTE] lawful good more like lawful stupid lmao

[QUOTE=elowin;51482682]lawful good more like lawful stupid lmao[/QUOTE] but muh honor

[QUOTE=ElTacoLad;51482684]but muh honor[/QUOTE] lawful = no honor

But, slightly more seriously, in Shadowrun today Elowin basically went super saiyan and cut up a room full of dudes with a sword. While he was doing that I missed a mook 5 times in a row in the next room over. [editline]5th December 2016[/editline] muh automerge

Today in Shadowrun: The adept, Wang, gets called by his old boss, the oyabun of the Yakuza across all of North America, and told that he has a job for him. The group heads over to the Great Golden Dragon, a restaurant with a big gold dragon statue outside, and meets Hanzo Shotozumi. The dryad decker tries to ask for some sushi, but Hanzo shuts her down, and gets to telling them a long story about a dragon whose son was a disappointment, and got kidnapped by some swans. Then he drops the metaphor and explains that his son, Takashi, who Wang has met, was kidnapped by the Finnigan family, of the mafia. They go to Takashi's dorm room and scare his roommate(you'd be scared too if a 2 guys, a dryad, and a troll broke into your dorm room), then find a balled up burger wrapper from "O'Malley's", which the decker recognizes as the name of the largest family in the Mafia, and the infiltrator recognizes as a fast food chain that covers the continent. They head to the nearest restaurant, and proceed to fuck shit up. The adept summons/channels a Force 8 spirit, then proceeds to chop of a dudes arm off on his way to the basement, where the infiltrator shoots a dude in the head(BUT HE DOESN'T DIE). The adept slices a door into tiny pieces, then runs in and starts wailing on a street sam, who gets knocked out, and then explodes(because cortex bombs). Meanwhile, the infiltrator is still trying to kill the guy he shot in the head, and fires a full 6 shots at him, ALL of them making contact but none doing damage, before the dude finally says fuck it, surrenders his gun, and runs away. The decker is also sitting upstairs, hashing it out with a machine sprite and the technomancer downstairs, who are both taking a -5 to all their matrix-related shit because she set her spare deck to act as a Jammer. TL;DR, the group fucked shit up massively. Also shut the fuck up you two.

[QUOTE=ElTacoLad;51482691]But, slightly more seriously, in Shadowrun today Elowin basically went super saiyan and cut up a room full of dudes with a sword. While he was doing that I missed a mook 5 times in a row in the next room over. [editline]5th December 2016[/editline] muh automerge[/QUOTE] The power of true japanese honor, [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8xoTBZrzko]believe it![/url]

Yesterday in Numenera: A player decided the best way to get information was to lay down in the street in front of a market stall and fake cry. [quote] GM: Gary, after a tense moment of crying on the ground a few of the local town guards show up, they are clearly not amused by your antics, "Hey, you, on your feet or we'll give you a reason to keep crying." Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): "I am the Pope" Gary (Bryan Nigz4000): "Thank you for your immediate attention, it is greatly appreciated! I was just so blown away at the beauty of these edible specimens here :D" [/quote] See that one named Pope there? Yeah he's uhm. Well. As it continues they hear a rumour that the local lake has some kind of monster in it or something because a few fishermen disappeared and that shit's scary yo. So his brilliant plan? He is going to buy a net and go fishing so he can sell the fish to the village for an amazing price. Instead the fishing merchant they find offers them a deal since they can't afford a net. A bag of tools as collateral and half of whatever they catch and they can borrow one of his nets. He also offered to pay them for the other half of the catch that wasn't his cut. In the words of one of my players, [quote] Busk Enfant Terrible (spookyw): what a shit deal lol [/quote] [quote] GM: it's a lake, looks like a pretty calm lake It's also about late afternoon Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): Cast the net GM: You cast the net and after a few attempts you manage to catch a few fish. roll perception for me pls Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): rolling 1d20 to persuade the fish to fill the net ( 16 ) = 16 FUCK YEAH GM: You can't persuade fish to get into a net seriously? Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): Yes I can GM: uhm, do you speak fish? do you have a device capable of telepathy with creatures? do you even SEE any fish? Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): Don't think I won't also try to intimidate or deceive them into the net GM: You can /try/ anything that doesn't mean you're attempting things that have any reasonable amount of success in the cards Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): I can even cast hedge magic so they all see an attractive female fish in the net and nobly attempt to rescue her GM: anyway I'll take that 16 is a perception roll. [/quote] Then that happened. After this they see what they think is a group of people swimming about in the lake nearby so naturally they uhh, decide to spy on them... [quote] Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): Okay, then somebody hold this net, I'm gonna walk into the lake and spy on them from inside, they'll never suspect it Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): You guys interview them on the shore, I will stand under the water and listen [/quote] No flaws in this plan, nope.. [quote] Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): what am I seeing in the lake? GM: You see murky lake water... Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): Can I even hear the beach people? GM: no.. because you're under water.. Pope Sinestrus I (Jaid): I did not think this out so well [/quote] No, no you did not.. Icing on the cake? The group was actually severed heads being bobbed about by a lake monster. So they ran like all hell, pope narrowly got fucking destroyed by a massive lake crab monster, and then went back to sell their fish. A smooth transaction for a rather hefty feeling pouch and... Bam, mostly filled with sand that spills between their fingers and onto the ground. They got paid for about 1/2 the haul of fish they were going to be paid for, or about 1/4 of the whole haul. Not my fault they let the shifty AF merchant who openly gave them a raw as shit deal continue to ruse them without question. I honestly hate this game and since transplanting all the players except pope (guess why) to a different campaign and group, everyone is much happier, especially me. Can't wait for this game to die because I'm not doing my part to prop it up anymore, it lives so long as they breathe life into it now. I'd kick him out but he's kind of a whiny entitled bitch and friends with me and my girlfriend on FB. Plus it makes for a story, maybe I'll see about getting his stupidity animated one day.

[url=http://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/2016_Fighter_UA_1205_1.pdf]Unearthed arcana fighter is up[/url]

My players finally got their Ultimate weapons. [img]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/67144542/Drawings/2016/419_Dec4_Losers.png[/img] Pictured: Helmut Donner summons his Bunglegaffe-brand Joust n’ Bout Blunderbolt ‘Brella using the power of artificial grape flavoring and convoluted weapon names.

I'm a god damn 7'8" half orc barbarian (Male(CN) My party has a 2'3" gnome bard (Male(NG) What do.

Get him to ride on your shoulders for improved reach

If I start swinging him around while he has his sword out does he class as a longsword, flail or improvised weapon?

Do not weild the gnome

Wield the gnome.

So the gnome swings a sword, you swing the gnome, a bugbear swings you, a troll swings the bugbear, and a giant swings the troll. You 1-shot a Tarrasque

I feel like I'm playing Neverwinter Nights wrong it's so fucking boring I don't understand the love for this game

[QUOTE=cdr248;51489071]I feel like I'm playing Neverwinter Nights wrong it's so fucking boring I don't understand the love for this game[/QUOTE] NWN 1 was pretty boring honestly. The love came for the online community, and the sheer modability it had (and being the first proper 3e game that wasn't just a repurposed engine like Icewind Dale 2 or whatever). NWN 2 is better, but it's still 3e (the worst rules), and has a bit of jankiness to it.

also the portraits in that game are quite possibly some of the grossest pieces of artwork i have [I]ever [/I]seen

[video=youtube;0Ehm4ba3UBY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ehm4ba3UBY[/video] D&December is back in season.

[QUOTE=Chronische;51489269]NWN 1 was pretty boring honestly. The love came for the online community, and the sheer modability it had (and being the first proper 3e game that wasn't just a repurposed engine like Icewind Dale 2 or whatever). NWN 2 is better, but it's still 3e (the worst rules), and has a bit of jankiness to it.[/QUOTE] NWN2's campaign is way better, but as far as the actual gameplay and shit goes I think NWN1 is better. Also the spell effects in NWN1 are like a million times cooler.

[video=youtube;Dz_AP5dBrkc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz_AP5dBrkc[/video] This LP is pretty cool too!

[QUOTE=elowin;51490873]NWN2's campaign is way better, but as far as the actual gameplay and shit goes I think NWN1 is better. [B]Also the spell effects in NWN1 are like a million times cooler.[/B][/QUOTE] Glad I'm not the only one who thought that, particles effects were really big tech at the time, and they really went all out with it.