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I hate the Vigilante because of how stupidly over engineered the class is to prevent powerful combos or even just useable things. Like the Celebrity Perks ability Ash quoted. If you ever sell the gift from the fan, you will have your celebrity status instantly ripped away from you by the Gods, no matter where you are, be it in the same country, planet, galaxy or planar realm.

I mean, a vigilante gets a gift at 7th level, and then 10 levels later, as he's wining and dining with a God-like being in another plane of existence, he decides to sell his collection of baubles from ages past and some supernatural force descends upon him, ripping away his extraordinary celebrity persona because, f@@@ you, that's why.

Or other abilities like Lethal Grace.

Lethal Grace (Ex) wrote:
The vigilante combines strength and speed into incredibly deadly attacks. He gains Weapon Finesse as a bonus feat, and if he already has the Weapon Finesse feat, he can immediately swap it for another feat for which he qualified at the level he chose Weapon Finesse. When using Weapon Finesse to make a melee attack using his Dexterity bonus on attack rolls and his Strength bonus on damage rolls, he also adds half his vigilante level on damage rolls. This bonus damage is not reduced or increased if the vigilante is wielding a weapon two-handed or in an off-hand.

The ability specifically calls out he must use dexterity for attack, and strength for damage in order to add half his level to damage rolls. This is the same kind of nonsense the resulted in the Nerfratta for the Slashing/Fencing Grace feats so you can't dual wield or use shields with them.


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Pretty much. I think with non-prestige classes, forced fluff should be kept to a minimum. The vigilante just rubs me in a lot of the wrong ways, which is sad, because I've been trying to pitch a D&D-superheroes game for like three years now. It's almost like conceptually the class was made for this sort of thing but the vigilante just doesn't do it for me.


TriOmegaZero wrote:

You should look closer at the avenger talents, Ash. I literally have hard choices to make as Falandar levels up.

As for the dual personas, I plan to just stay in social guise and use everything he has anyway. Not even bother with Disguise. If I know we're going to a fight, I'll put on the warpaint and shift alignments to CN just so he's less effected by evil spells.

There's something really funny about that, actually. :P

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Well it's not like you HAVE to play the masked avenger game, if you don't want to.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Well it's not like you HAVE to play the masked avenger game, if you don't want to.

Since you seem more familiar with them than I, what does a vigilante bring to the table?

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I wouldn't say I'm familiar with them. Just that I've spent a cursory examination of them via HeroLab and found them to be a decent martial option on paper. More to come as I play one this Sunday, but I'm looking at a full BAB character with 6 skill points a level and bonuses to social skills and some talent options that look to be quite helpful. I rebuilt my old switch-hitter ranger and Lethal Grace is going to help out the reduced Str score from point buy constraints. (Rolled two 18s last time and popped them in Str/Dex, now I'm going 14Str/18Dex.) Half level to damage isn't much, but it helps.


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Something my friend Arcane Knowledge and I started throwing together. This is a cutscene made in RPGmakerVX-Ace based on a novel I was writing.


You have been writing a novel?


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Klara Meison wrote:
You have been writing a novel?

Yeah I started writing a novel a while back during November, 'cause a friend of mine provoked me to do so. I figured it'd be fun. I only worked on it for three days though. It's sitting at 14,512 words at the moment (s'bout 9 pages long in two-columns in size 8 font).

I realized that it might not be horrible either, 'cause I ended up pulling my brother off of Skyrim.

That Story:
So I had been writing my novel for a bit and my brother was sitting in my room playing Skyrim. He had just got the expansions Dawnguard and such and was super into playing through it.

Well, I asked if he would check out what I had written thus far. He said he didn't feel like reading anything right now, so I said I would read it to him. He said "Okay," but his voice implied more heavily "gtf away". :P

Anyway, I started reading it aloud and he continued playing Skyrim. However, about 1/4 the way through, I noticed something...odd. Each time I looked over my shoulder, there was no movement on the screen. A short bit later, the camera on the screen had begun to idle and pan around his character. He was so intent on listening to what was going on that Skyrim was sitting idle in front of him. A little further in, he sat the controller down and went and sat on my bed, chest down, and just listened.

When I had reached the end of what I had written so far, he bemoaned that it had to stop there. I figured that, since it got a (then like 14-15 year old kid) to choose listening to it over his X-box, maybe it wasn't utter garbage. Made me feel pretty good. :P


Klara Meison wrote:
You have been writing a novel?

It occurs to me that I didn't even offer to send you a copy. If you want to read what little I've got, I can send you a link via my google drive.


I'd read it. :)


You mentioned a pathfinder/dnd superhero game. I'd just like to say that the idea made me gitty (but i agree vigilante doesn't cover it as well as people would think) do you think it would ever be on the table?


Does D&D Legends solve the house cat vs. Commoner problem?


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Tels wrote:
Does D&D Legends solve the house cat vs. Commoner problem?

Y'know, I hadn't even thought about that question. My first impulse would be to say yes, because Strength (which a housecat and most other small furry critters would be in short supply of) determines things like Hp. Additionally, making extra attacks comes at a penalty to hit, so if a cat tried to do the whole claw/claw/bite thing, it's accuracy would trash for its level range (it's level range being sub-1st).

Commoners (that is, level 0 characters) also have a base of 6 Hp (as opposed to a base of 3 Hp) so they don't crumble in a stiff breeze quite as readily. So assuming only core adjustments, and no other changes, the matchup would look like this.

Housecat
CR 1/4, 2 HP, AC 14 (+2 Dex, +2 Size),
Atk Bonus: +4 (+2 Dex, +2 Size); Attacks: Bite (1d3-2)/2 Claws (1d2-2)
Notes: Characters benefit from Dex to hit and damage with natural weapons if better than their Strength. However, like with Bows in Pathfinder, a poor Strength penalty applies to damage. So while a cat gets a +2 to damage from its Dexterity, it immediately eats a -4 from Strength (in essence, tiny creatures just do not hit hard).

Commoner
CR 1/4, 6 Hp, AC 10,
Atk Bonus: +0; Attacks: Unarmed (1d4 nonlethal)
Notes: The commoner can pull up at least a +1 bonus from ability scores out of their butt due having a floating 3 PB unaccounted for. This is also assuming the commoner is nekkid.

The biggest change in favor for the commoner is actually from the Combat rules themselves. See, Diehard is kind of built into everyone. Each round you find yourself below 0 HP (or with too much nonlethal damage) you have to make a DC 5 Strength check or fall unconscious. You take a penalty equal to the excess damage you've taken (so if you can drop to -17 without dying, that's great, but you'll be making a DC 5 Strngth check with a -16 penalty the last round before you expire).

The cat's negative HP threshold is a mere 3 points, while the Commoner can likely take up to 16 points of damage before he or she is pushing daisies on the new farm they bought. Most likely the Commoner is going to give the cat one good whack and the cat is going to run screaming for the hills before it collapses or it's going to get KO'd.

This has the side effect of making tiny creatures like cats, rats, fairies, and so forth wussies. Which is good. Nothing that small should be dangerous in normal combat without some sort of magic or poison. It also has the benefit of making big beefy heroes, dragons, and other massive high Strength creatures quite tenacious.


TheAlicornSage wrote:
I'd read it. :)

The Wraith. WIP, on hiatus until I find the will to jump back into it in earnest. I still think about the story though and have most of it already planned out.


>Nothing that small should be dangerous in normal combat without some sort of magic or poison.

Yes, but then again, there are tales of killer rabbits.

Ashiel wrote:
Klara Meison wrote:
You have been writing a novel?
It occurs to me that I didn't even offer to send you a copy. If you want to read what little I've got, I can send you a link via my google drive.

I tend to not read works in progress, for the simple reason that if I won't like it I won't know if it's because the good part hasn't been written yet or because it's just bad, and if I will like it I will hate the author for taking a million years to continue the story.


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Vidmaster7 wrote:
You mentioned a pathfinder/dnd superhero game. I'd just like to say that the idea made me gitty (but i agree vigilante doesn't cover it as well as people would think) do you think it would ever be on the table?

Maybe, who knows?

It's usually a pretty difficult pitch since people tend to think of superheroes and D&D as wildly different genres and it's difficult explaining that I'm not so much talking about the "hey be Superman" kind of superheroism as I am talking about the whole masked hero with a secret identity thing going on.

See, the idea is that general adventuring activities tend to be pretty well frowned upon in most civilizations if you're not actively slaying some ooze in a sewer or repelling a goblin invasion or something. When you get right down to it, heroes acting outside the norms of society would be frowned upon. Plus, even if you're a 6th level character, that doesn't mean all your friends are, and badguys are known for attacking your friends if they can't attack you.

So the idea is that everyone dons an alias and at least a crappy disguise (thanks to the way Disguise works, most people don't even get checks unless they're paying good attention, and IDing disguised people at a distance is super hard due to how Perception works) and goes out and does some kickass heroing. Make a few recurring enemies. Uncover corruption in the system. Find out the city is secretly being run by mind-flayers or something. Point is, there's great potential for some fun Urban adventure mixed with slice-of-life RP opportunities with this sort of campaign.

The idea was probably what originally spawned my character Wraith (or was spawned by, I forget the order). Essentially, Varisa Heavens AKA Wraith was murdered and returned to life as an undead creature (a ghoul/ghast actually). Being undead is in itself super illegal in the kingdom she is from (they're an open-minded bunch on the large but there are stiff laws against many forms of necromancy and conjuring, especially as it pertains to undead and fiends) and she could legally be destroyed simply for existing.

However, she's got a new chance on life and she's now a psychic warrior with an appetite. Have claws will paralyze kind of thing. So during her quest to find her family and her killers, she dons the alias Wraith, named for the misnomer that the villagers used when they thought she had returned as a ghost or something (ignorant peasants for the win), and goes out to engage in some vigilante justice. Vengeance is...delicious.

However, on the way she has to deal with hurdles and strangeness she never expected, including romantic interests, the quest to be reunited with a family that may reject her, and being hunted down by her sister who has been tasked with finding and eliminating the undead monster known as the Wraith. I guess Varisa found the fastest way for life to get more complicated was to die.

/Teaser


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Klara Meison wrote:

>Nothing that small should be dangerous in normal combat without some sort of magic or poison.

Yes, but then again, there are tales of killer rabbits.

Clearly some sort of crazy paragon of rabbits I say. This rabbit is probably much higher than level 0. :D

Also, I <3 Dragon's Crown. Did you know that there's an entire boss that's a homage to MPatHG? In the forest stage you encounter a cloaked wizard wearing the same helm as the one in the movie, and when you're going through taking the 2nd path route to all the stages, what you seek is guarded by a "horrible monster".

That horrible monster is...the Killer Rabbit.

Damn I wish this game would get a PC port. I could forget about consoles if it did. XD

EDIT: The folks in the video need a lesson from Mr. Piccolo.


> Plus, even if you're a 6th level character, that doesn't mean all your friends are.

This goes both ways, and heroes are perfectly capable of finding the friends of the BBEG.


Klara Meison wrote:

> Plus, even if you're a 6th level character, that doesn't mean all your friends are.

This goes both ways, and heroes are perfectly capable of finding the friends of the BBEG.

Yes they are, though I'd question their heroism if they made a habbit of breaking the knees of the mafia boss' twelve year old son or something. :P

Of course, all the more reason to have masked villain sorts as well.


>> seriois question: What is lvl 0, where is that from, and why does it exist?

>> not so serious question: Why is there a commoner class anyway, shouldn't they be experts specializing in farming?

>> suggedion with example: Doing that to the cat's damage makes it unable to kill a mouse with it's claws. Wouldn't it be better to have a size modifer on damage and hp, or a scaler perhaps? For example, my system treats every size identically, then scales things when sizes interact, thus damage from a cat would be 1/9 normal when applied to humans (one third for each of 2 size categories of difference).

That would allow a cat to be a serious danger to mice or even other cats, but still do very little to a human. Also makes it easier to handle when the standard size is not medium, such as for a party of halflings.

Of course, when you are simply adding extra dice to either the attacker or the defender, it is much easier than the math d20 would require, but it still isn't that bad.


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TheAlicornSage wrote:

>> seriois question: What is lvl 0, where is that from, and why does it exist?

>> not so serious question: Why is there a commoner class anyway, shouldn't they be experts specializing in farming?

>> suggedion with example: Doing that to the cat's damage makes it unable to kill a mouse with it's claws. Wouldn't it be better to have a size modifer on damage and hp, or a scaler perhaps? For example, my system treats every size identically, then scales things when sizes interact, thus damage from a cat would be 1/9 normal when applied to humans (one third for each of 2 size categories of difference).

That would allow a cat to be a serious danger to mice or even other cats, but still do very little to a human. Also makes it easier to handle when the standard size is not medium, such as for a party of halflings.

Of course, when you are simply adding extra dice to either the attacker or the defender, it is much easier than the math d20 would require, but it still isn't that bad.

In D20 Legends, level 0 is what a character is before they have gained a heroic class and become level 1. There are no hit dice in d20 legends, but all characters (humanoids at least) begin with 6 HP and a few skill points. Each time you progress in level, you gain a flat amount of HP/BAB/Casting/etc, depending on your route.

As to experts specializing in farming. Yeah, probably. Or just experts in general, though not necessarily farmers. It's generally true that the common guy had to be pretty self sufficient in most D&D-lore, so a smattering of random skills across the board is pretty true to type, especially in rural environments where the town "Smith" probably also knows how to help raise a barn, takes care of his own horses, and cooks for himself.

As to the cat thing, a mouse would essentially crumble to the cat after the cat grabbed the mouse and bit him. I've grown up with cats and I've watched how they hunt fine-sized prey, and it's rare that they just tap them with their claws and they keel over. They usually grab 'em and then bite them to kill them. A mouse would have 1 HP and die at -1 HP. If a cat pounces the mouse, that mouse is probably boned. Even dealing nonlethal damage, the cat's going to kill it quickly.

How I would see that playing out is the cat charges the mouse (pouncing on it) and grapples (in D20 Legends, like 3.5, you can charge into a grapple). The mouse, due to being fine sized and having a Str of 1, is very likely to get grabbed by the cat who is noticeably larger than it is. Once the cat has it, he can inflict damage from its natural weapons while pinning the mouse and kill it in short order.

Seems to be working as intended. :3

EDIT: In a similar fashion, when two cats are trying to kill each other (this is something I've witnessed a fair number of times due to having grown up with lots of cats in a rural area where toms fight for territory), it's rarely a quick affair. There is a lot of back and forth slugging it out, biting, clawing, grappling, running, chasing, and more. The cats inflicting various amounts of misses and non-lethal hits until they wear the other down likewise seems to be working as intended. I've never seen a cat just KO another cat in a shot or two.


>one third for each of 2 size categories of difference

That is a horrible idea, at least the way you described it and without heavy revisions of the rest of the system. Lategame monsters can be Gargantuan, if not Colossal. Medium adventurer druid vs a Gargantuan dragon will deal 1/27th the damage. That is like dragon having DR f&+&-you/-. I mean, it turns 50 damage attack(quite a fair bit of damage) into 1.8, 1 rounded down(less than a commoner deals at lv 1). Even if druid can deal, let's say, 400 damage with their pounce of doom, that will only be 14 damage to the dragon. Given their 300-400 HP, it means that martials will ~never be able to kill big monsters.

And Small halfling druid vs a colossal BBEG? Yeah, forget it. 1/243 damage means that even if they deal 2k damage on a full attack(is that even possible?), it will only be -8 HP to the boss. Your contribution to the fight can be countered by a lv 1 mook casting Infernal Healing on their boss.

David vs Goliaph? More like small pile of guts and blood vs Goliaph.


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Klara Meison wrote:

>one third for each of 2 size categories of difference

That is a horrible idea, at least the way you described it and without heavy revisions of the rest of the system. Lategame monsters can be Gargantuan, if not Colossal. Medium adventurer druid vs a Gargantuan dragon will deal 1/27th the damage. That is like dragon having DR f#~#-you/-. I mean, it turns 50 damage attack(quite a fair bit of damage) into 1.8, 1 rounded down(less than a commoner deals at lv 1). Even if druid can deal, let's say, 400 damage with their pounce of doom, that will only be 14 damage to the dragon. Given their 300-400 HP, it means that martials will ~never be able to kill big monsters.

And Small halfling druid vs a colossal BBEG? Yeah, forget it. 1/243 damage means that even if they deal 2k damage on a full attack(is that even possible?), it will only be -8 HP to the boss. Your contribution to the fight can be countered by a lv 1 mook casting Infernal Healing on their boss.

David vs Goliaph? More like small pile of guts and blood vs Goliaph.

One of the things we're intending to figure out is some consistent mechanics for truly enormous size categories. We might drop the naming conventions for size and give creatures a size rating (so fine might be size 1, while a human might be size 5 (fine = 1, diminutive =2, tiny =3, small=4, medium=5, etc), so we can more readily give mechanics that reflect truly titanic monsters without having to scour dictionaries looking for anything synonymous with "bigger than really f***ing huge".

I hope to include some mechanics for scaling larger creatures in combat and some sort of benefits for doing so, which would finally allow you to do things like ride on an angry wyvern while it tries to buck you off, or climb a colossal giant Shadow of the Colossus style. Aratrok had been putting together some early drafts last we spoke about it, but that's been a while.

Mostly because when you get right down to it, monsters get big but not that big in D&D. This was the visual representation of the size categories in 3.x, but dragons aren't even that big at colossal size, based on their spaces.


Klara Meison wrote:

>one third for each of 2 size categories of difference

That is a horrible idea, at least the way you described it and without heavy revisions of the rest of the system. Lategame monsters can be Gargantuan, if not Colossal. Medium adventurer druid vs a Gargantuan dragon will deal 1/27th the damage. That is like dragon having DR f&$~-you/-. I mean, it turns 50 damage attack(quite a fair bit of damage) into 1.8, 1 rounded down(less than a commoner deals at lv 1). Even if druid can deal, let's say, 400 damage with their pounce of doom, that will only be 14 damage to the dragon. Given their 300-400 HP, it means that martials will ~never be able to kill big monsters.

And Small halfling druid vs a colossal BBEG? Yeah, forget it. 1/243 damage means that even if they deal 2k damage on a full attack(is that even possible?), it will only be -8 HP to the boss. Your contribution to the fight can be countered by a lv 1 mook casting Infernal Healing on their boss.

David vs Goliaph? More like small pile of guts and blood vs Goliaph.

Consider for a moment the key phrase at the beginning "Every size is handled identically." That means that if the average medium sized creature has the equivalent of 10 hp, then the average colossal creature has the equivalent of 10 hp as well. Seems suddenly easier doesn't it, while it clearly is a case of needing plenty of men, or some exceptional heros, it is suddenly a far more manageable thing to deal around 10 hits to the dragon.

Of course, my system is not actually hp, but rather fort save with growing penalties, so those hits that did to little damage can still whittle ot down, and those that get past the fort save, can severely hamper the dragon with the injuries.

Also, called shots are easier to hit on larger creatures. Just think, smashing a dragon's manly parts, or slicing the achilles' tendon on a giant. Oh, and those things are actual possibilities with actual penalties.

That dragon is still formidable, but does it still seem out of reach?


You must remember that d30, like what ashiel is doing, raises or lowers strength amd hp and some other stats not only based on size but also the desired challange. Dragons have high hp only because they are larger and tougher than humans.

But doing that doesn't scale well when you start playing outside the expected parameters.

For example, ashiel's game and d20 would need to redefine mice as medium creatures and make a series of other changes if the players wanted to play a game set in Redwall or Mouseguard, but in mmy system, because average stats are for each size, an average mouseguard character has similar stats to an average human character, thus using a system like mine needs very little altered to play Mouseguard, and indeed, once I get a full beastiary established, many of the smaller animals could be used straight as is in either a human or mouse game, without adjusting stats to fit the scale of the game. That is something d20 can't do.

Then again, my system is designed to handle a broad range of game concepts with minimal adjustments.

Ashiel's game has a different focus and clearly won't support Mouseguard and Redwall games. (Nothing wrong with that. One must know what they are going for and stick to it.)


"I've never seen a cat just KO another cat in a shot or two."

True, yet despite the ability for one human to quickly and easily kill another, even without tools, it rarely happens. In fact, most fights are things more like tavern brawls, where each side batters the other into exhaustion and submission.

Why? Because killing is rarely the intent. The intent is to "teach them a lesson" or more accurately, to express themselves and try to dominate them.

Cats are fairly territorial (not as much as undomesticated cats perhaps). When they fight, rarely are they actually trying to kill each other. Hence, like humans who aren't trying to kill, the fight drags on and rarely results in a kill.


probably gonna have to wait for a pathfinder modern (street finder? heh heh) has always been my thought but hey if Starfinder does well you think it will be a start for Paizo crew to spread into more genres?


Vidmaster7 wrote:
probably gonna have to wait for a pathfinder modern (street finder? heh heh) has always been my thought but hey if Starfinder does well you think it will be a start for Paizo crew to spread into more genres?

It's likely you won't see a branching. Trying to maintain multiple different games and settings is one of the downfalls of TSR. In addition, by the time Starfinder does well enough to even consider the idea of a new game, PAthfinder 2 Wil probably be in development pushing the likelihood of "Streetfinder" even further away.


Do you read fan fiction? If so, what's your favorite kind? AU, crossovers time travel etc. Also, what's your favorite fandom?

Me, personally, I'm a huge nerd for the Harry Potter fandom. Recently, I've been really keen on Harry Potter/Star Wars crossovers.


TheAlicornSage wrote:
Klara Meison wrote:

>one third for each of 2 size categories of difference

That is a horrible idea, at least the way you described it and without heavy revisions of the rest of the system. Lategame monsters can be Gargantuan, if not Colossal. Medium adventurer druid vs a Gargantuan dragon will deal 1/27th the damage. That is like dragon having DR f&$~-you/-. I mean, it turns 50 damage attack(quite a fair bit of damage) into 1.8, 1 rounded down(less than a commoner deals at lv 1). Even if druid can deal, let's say, 400 damage with their pounce of doom, that will only be 14 damage to the dragon. Given their 300-400 HP, it means that martials will ~never be able to kill big monsters.

And Small halfling druid vs a colossal BBEG? Yeah, forget it. 1/243 damage means that even if they deal 2k damage on a full attack(is that even possible?), it will only be -8 HP to the boss. Your contribution to the fight can be countered by a lv 1 mook casting Infernal Healing on their boss.

David vs Goliaph? More like small pile of guts and blood vs Goliaph.

Consider for a moment the key phrase at the beginning "Every size is handled identically." That means that if the average medium sized creature has the equivalent of 10 hp, then the average colossal creature has the equivalent of 10 hp as well. Seems suddenly easier doesn't it, while it clearly is a case of needing plenty of men, or some exceptional heros, it is suddenly a far more manageable thing to deal around 10 hits to the dragon.

Of course, my system is not actually hp, but rather fort save with growing penalties, so those hits that did to little damage can still whittle ot down, and those that get past the fort save, can severely hamper the dragon with the injuries.

Also, called shots are easier to hit on larger creatures. Just think, smashing a dragon's manly parts, or slicing the achilles' tendon on a giant. Oh, and those things are actual possibilities with actual penalties.

That dragon is still formidable, but does it still seem out...

So, as I have said

>heavy revisions of the rest of the system


Okay, well for d20, core rules would not need heavy revisions, only the beastiary. Not much of an issue for a new system though. Or you could just consider all the hp values to have been converted to medium size, then you can convert back to the monster's actual size, or just leave it that way and convert all non-medium damage/hp to medium, then just convert from there when you need an alternative scale. Easy, but time consuming to edit the whole beastiary.


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TheAlicornSage wrote:

You must remember that d30, like what ashiel is doing, raises or lowers strength amd hp and some other stats not only based on size but also the desired challange. Dragons have high hp only because they are larger and tougher than humans.

But doing that doesn't scale well when you start playing outside the expected parameters.

For example, ashiel's game and d20 would need to redefine mice as medium creatures and make a series of other changes if the players wanted to play a game set in Redwall or Mouseguard, but in mmy system, because average stats are for each size, an average mouseguard character has similar stats to an average human character, thus using a system like mine needs very little altered to play Mouseguard, and indeed, once I get a full beastiary established, many of the smaller animals could be used straight as is in either a human or mouse game, without adjusting stats to fit the scale of the game. That is something d20 can't do.

It seems to me that if the entire campaign, or even a branch of the campaign, was to spend time as an incredibly small creature, the easiest way to handle that would be to run the game normally but change the fluff and environment. Redefine the scale, which is easy enough to do.

For example, if everyone in the campaign was supposed to be Fine and Diminutive size (rather than Small & Medium), then you'd just use larger versions of existing creatures such as lions, giant insects, and giants to represent things like cats, bugs, children, etc.

It's less the statistics in those cases that make it rather than the environmental fluff and the feeling of being in a world much larger than normal, such as being able to hide in a teacup or scurry about a network of tunnels inside the walls of a house.

If it IS about statistics, then you use the regular scale and accept that being fine or diminutive SUCKS for most characters (it even kinda sucks for casters in a number of ways mostly involving focus items / components), and they'll be easily crushed by being stepped on and such. But that's part of the experience if you really want to play a house mouse fighting pit fiends.

Quote:
Consider for a moment the key phrase at the beginning "Every size is handled identically." That means that if the average medium sized creature has the equivalent of 10 hp, then the average colossal creature has the equivalent of 10 hp as well. Seems suddenly easier doesn't it, while it clearly is a case of needing plenty of men, or some exceptional heros, it is suddenly a far more manageable thing to deal around 10 hits to the dragon.

One thing that concerns me about this is it reminds me of 5E and how heroes really aren't very special. Animate dead can kill virtually everything in the game simply because dogpiling things in fodder (with their "bounded accuracy" system) is so darn effective. One of the staples of being a high level in D&D is that you reach a point where you can't be replaced by a mob of angry villagers/undead/summons.


TheAlicornSage wrote:

"I've never seen a cat just KO another cat in a shot or two."

True, yet despite the ability for one human to quickly and easily kill another, even without tools, it rarely happens. In fact, most fights are things more like tavern brawls, where each side batters the other into exhaustion and submission.

Why? Because killing is rarely the intent. The intent is to "teach them a lesson" or more accurately, to express themselves and try to dominate them.

Well, when we're talking about regular unarmed humans, they're also dealing nonlethal damage with unarmed strikes and have little to no positive modifiers on their attacks, and making those attacks lethal incurs a nonproficiency penalty to their already less than wonderful attack rolls.

Consider two bikers in a bar wearing leather jackets (we'll say they count as padded armor so AC 11). They each have a 50% chance to hit the other with nonlethal damage or a 30% chance to hit each other with lethal damage. Since D20 Legends allows you to keep going until you're rendered unconscious, they can exchange quite a few blows with some of them being glancing (due to poor rolls) and a few actually hurting pretty good. Neither is at much risk of dying suddenly unless someone hits lethally or brings in an improvised weapon.


Tels wrote:

Do you read fan fiction? If so, what's your favorite kind? AU, crossovers time travel etc. Also, what's your favorite fandom?

Me, personally, I'm a huge nerd for the Harry Potter fandom. Recently, I've been really keen on Harry Potter/Star Wars crossovers.

I'll have to answer this more fully when I get back from work (gotta go right this moment) but I don't really read fanfiction much these days, and I'm not sure if I could pick a favorite fandom if my life depended on it. :P


Quote:
One thing that concerns me about this is it reminds me of 5E and how heroes really aren't very special. Animate dead can kill virtually everything in the game simply because dogpiling things in fodder (with their "bounded accuracy" system) is so darn effective. One of the staples of being a high level in D&D is that you reach a point where you can't be replaced by a mob of angry villagers/undead/summons.

Lol, I understand the desire to stay away from 5th in this regard. Rest assured my system doesn't really have that issue. In my system, skilled warriors are more likely to hit and more consistant with their attack rolls. I do admit that it is intended to remain in the gritty first tier in general, but it can actually handle going beyond that if you really want demigods.


Quote:
It seems to me that if the entire campaign, or even a branch of the campaign, was to spend time as an incredibly small creature, the easiest way to handle that would be to run the game normally but change the fluff and environment. Redefine the scale, which is easy enough to do.

How is that easier than just using the rules as is? Basically, the idea is that it can be handled and done without redefining scale or making any changes really.

D20 can't do it, and for d20 redefining scale is probably easier than going for a new system, but when designing a new system, that issue can be avoided completely, oh bonus, it would also handle any size issues more consistently, unlike d20. In d20, the bonus/penalty for being one size larger/smaller grows the further from medium you get (i.e. -1 to 0 has a difference of 1, but -16 to -8 has a difference of 8).


Ashiel wrote:
TheAlicornSage wrote:

"I've never seen a cat just KO another cat in a shot or two."

True, yet despite the ability for one human to quickly and easily kill another, even without tools, it rarely happens. In fact, most fights are things more like tavern brawls, where each side batters the other into exhaustion and submission.

Why? Because killing is rarely the intent. The intent is to "teach them a lesson" or more accurately, to express themselves and try to dominate them.

Well, when we're talking about regular unarmed humans, they're also dealing nonlethal damage with unarmed strikes and have little to no positive modifiers on their attacks, and making those attacks lethal incurs a nonproficiency penalty to their already less than wonderful attack rolls.

Consider two bikers in a bar wearing leather jackets (we'll say they count as padded armor so AC 11). They each have a 50% chance to hit the other with nonlethal damage or a 30% chance to hit each other with lethal damage. Since D20 Legends allows you to keep going until you're rendered unconscious, they can exchange quite a few blows with some of them being glancing (due to poor rolls) and a few actually hurting pretty good. Neither is at much risk of dying suddenly unless someone hits lethally or brings in an improvised weapon.

This glosses over the difference between two bikers having a brawl vs two bikers trying to kill each other. There is a massive difference there, but the mechanics basically ignore it, and the closest way to handle it in the mechanics (-4 for making lethal unarmed strikes) sucks horribly at handling it.


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TheAlicornSage wrote:
Quote:
One thing that concerns me about this is it reminds me of 5E and how heroes really aren't very special. Animate dead can kill virtually everything in the game simply because dogpiling things in fodder (with their "bounded accuracy" system) is so darn effective. One of the staples of being a high level in D&D is that you reach a point where you can't be replaced by a mob of angry villagers/undead/summons.
Lol, I understand the desire to stay away from 5th in this regard. Rest assured my system doesn't really have that issue. In my system, skilled warriors are more likely to hit and more consistant with their attack rolls. I do admit that it is intended to remain in the gritty first tier in general, but it can actually handle going beyond that if you really want demigods.

Essentially it's just a matter of time. In 3.x/PF, things like DR, resistances, and such make angry mobs a moot point. By 20th level, an army of mundane soldiers (IE - 1st level warriors) couldn't have killed my Malconvoker if she never uttered a spell and just fought them with her claws and staff. Even if they landed hits, the hits couldn't effectively harm her due to secondary defenses.

So with any sort of system where things have something like 10 wounds, and you still have a chance to cause a wound, dogpiling becomes a strong option. Because even if you only had something like a 5% or even a 1% chance of landing a wound, it's easier to find 100 commoners than it is to find a 20th level hero. Probably easier to find 10,000 commoners in fact. One of the reasons you need things like real heroes to deal with dragons and the like in D&D is that commoners just can't. There comes a point where common man just cannot fight an ancient red dragon no matter their numbers and all the alchemist frost and magic weapon oils in the world won't change the fact the dragon can level a city without the entire populace being helpless to stop them sans any significantly leveled hero sorts.

5E totally failed in this regard. Virtually everything can be killed by the town militia. It even describes high level heroes as they exist in 3.x/PF, but the mechanics fail to deliver. High level martials are essentially replaceable with chaff like mindless undead (hilariously, the mindless undead also hit harder since they get their Str plus a bonus to damage from the mage's...proficiency I think it was called?).

Which isn't to say it's impossible to make a system that handles that well, just very difficult.


TheAlicornSage wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
TheAlicornSage wrote:

"I've never seen a cat just KO another cat in a shot or two."

True, yet despite the ability for one human to quickly and easily kill another, even without tools, it rarely happens. In fact, most fights are things more like tavern brawls, where each side batters the other into exhaustion and submission.

Why? Because killing is rarely the intent. The intent is to "teach them a lesson" or more accurately, to express themselves and try to dominate them.

Well, when we're talking about regular unarmed humans, they're also dealing nonlethal damage with unarmed strikes and have little to no positive modifiers on their attacks, and making those attacks lethal incurs a nonproficiency penalty to their already less than wonderful attack rolls.

Consider two bikers in a bar wearing leather jackets (we'll say they count as padded armor so AC 11). They each have a 50% chance to hit the other with nonlethal damage or a 30% chance to hit each other with lethal damage. Since D20 Legends allows you to keep going until you're rendered unconscious, they can exchange quite a few blows with some of them being glancing (due to poor rolls) and a few actually hurting pretty good. Neither is at much risk of dying suddenly unless someone hits lethally or brings in an improvised weapon.

This glosses over the difference between two bikers having a brawl vs two bikers trying to kill each other. There is a massive difference there, but the mechanics basically ignore it, and the closest way to handle it in the mechanics (-4 for making lethal unarmed strikes) sucks horribly at handling it.

Well, bikers often keep lock-whips in their pockets explicitly so they can have ready access to a lethal weapon in brawls. Or use various other improvised weapons. Or someone has the know-how to actually kill someone with unarmed combat without getting a lucky shot off (which is represented by things like IUS, which removes the penalty for "getting serious").

When dealing with thugs, if they're not skilled at unarmed combat, they're just as crude with their murders as the cats. Look at gangs that kill people just by flailing into them. Usually they deal enough nonlethal damage to disable or beat the fight out of the person and then they just keep beating them or begin performing coup de grace attempts (like stomping on their necks).

If we're talking about people that actually know how to kill you and can do so quickly, we're likely also talking about someone with IUS or some equivalent. :)


TheAlicornSage wrote:
Ashiel wrote:
TheAlicornSage wrote:

"I've never seen a cat just KO another cat in a shot or two."

True, yet despite the ability for one human to quickly and easily kill another, even without tools, it rarely happens. In fact, most fights are things more like tavern brawls, where each side batters the other into exhaustion and submission.

Why? Because killing is rarely the intent. The intent is to "teach them a lesson" or more accurately, to express themselves and try to dominate them.

Well, when we're talking about regular unarmed humans, they're also dealing nonlethal damage with unarmed strikes and have little to no positive modifiers on their attacks, and making those attacks lethal incurs a nonproficiency penalty to their already less than wonderful attack rolls.

Consider two bikers in a bar wearing leather jackets (we'll say they count as padded armor so AC 11). They each have a 50% chance to hit the other with nonlethal damage or a 30% chance to hit each other with lethal damage. Since D20 Legends allows you to keep going until you're rendered unconscious, they can exchange quite a few blows with some of them being glancing (due to poor rolls) and a few actually hurting pretty good. Neither is at much risk of dying suddenly unless someone hits lethally or brings in an improvised weapon.

This glosses over the difference between two bikers having a brawl vs two bikers trying to kill each other. There is a massive difference there, but the mechanics basically ignore it, and the closest way to handle it in the mechanics (-4 for making lethal unarmed strikes) sucks horribly at handling it.

Well, bikers often keep lock-whips in their pockets explicitly so they can have ready access to a lethal weapon in brawls. Or use various other improvised weapons. Or someone has the know-how to actually kill someone with unarmed combat without getting a lucky shot off (which is represented by things like IUS, which removes the penalty for "getting serious").

When dealing with thugs, if they're not skilled at unarmed combat, they're just as crude with their murders as the cats. Look at gangs that kill people just by flailing into them. Usually they deal enough nonlethal damage to disable or beat the fight out of the person and then they just keep beating them or begin performing coup de grace attempts (like stomping on their necks).

If we're talking about people that actually know how to kill you and can do so quickly, we're likely also talking about someone with IUS or some equivalent. :)


TheAlicornSage wrote:
Quote:
It seems to me that if the entire campaign, or even a branch of the campaign, was to spend time as an incredibly small creature, the easiest way to handle that would be to run the game normally but change the fluff and environment. Redefine the scale, which is easy enough to do.

How is that easier than just using the rules as is? Basically, the idea is that it can be handled and done without redefining scale or making any changes really.

D20 can't do it, and for d20 redefining scale is probably easier than going for a new system, but when designing a new system, that issue can be avoided completely, oh bonus, it would also handle any size issues more consistently, unlike d20. In d20, the bonus/penalty for being one size larger/smaller grows the further from medium you get (i.e. -1 to 0 has a difference of 1, but -16 to -8 has a difference of 8).

It's easier for two major reasons.

1. It means that you don't have to come up with some sort hackneyed mechanics that try to define where a flea sits on the scale next to the tarrasque. A flea might legitimately be something that could be a hazard in a game where the average sized creature is a house mouse the length of two finger knuckles (it would essentially be like a giant insect at that scale).

2. It means you have more options available to you as a GM without having to stat up things houseflies, fleas, kittens, dragonflies, and other minutia that would be legitimately a thing in a game where everyone was the size of mice. Instead, you can just use the mechanics more or less as-is, using monsters like giant vermin to represent actual vermin at this scale. You don't have to throw your bestiary in the trash for the duration of the "Mighty Midgets" campaign in favor of resources explicitly built for a campaign that expects your average PC to be able to climb through a keyhole.

As to the size differences in d20, I've never disliked how the size differences grow because the size differences aren't linear.


1) Dragons

You are forgetting that heroes are lvl 4 or 5. Lvl 10s are myths, lvl 20s are demigods.

RnR can actually handle that, but it is designed to stay within a desired tier range while still providing effectively limitless growth, such as me prefering to hang around the tier of humans doing only what real humans could do (plus magic of course). But because of tier control (such as tier dice), it is easy to make demigods out of dragons and thus require several armies to actually kill one when demigod adventurers aren't around.

I think you give too much credit to them in dnd though. A small army (soldiers would be lvl 2-3, not 1 unless using conscripts) could handle a dragon. It'd be difficult, and the army would take major losses, and the army could lose if the commander was a moron, but the dragon can't just pretend that armies don't exist and are no threat.

The reason adventurers are the ones who kill dragons is more about story conceit (no story if the army comes in and slays the dragon first) and from an in world pov, stopping a dragon is expensive, sometimes more expensive than the losses incurred from the dragon. Also, strategic considerations play a part, perhaps the neighboring nation would love to sweep in and take a province over if the military went to deal with the dragon, or the expected losses would leave the kingdom too weak to withstand the orc hordes, etc.

Having a small army able to kill a dragon does not mean there is no room for needing demigod heroes.

5th is just not up to handling such things in a satisfiable way for folks like you and me.


2) untrained killing

It is easy, but that doesn't mean that it is natural instinct. Humans are prey and have prey instincts. A human can kill another fairly easily if they actually think about they are doing and try to kill. Most don't think though. Brawls are not about being lethal either, they are about dominance, expressing anger, and expending pent up energy/tension. That is why guys who actually have a fight (that doesn't get interrupted) can end up as friends afterwards. Combat is a form of conversation. It tells you about the other person, who they are inside where words fail.

Most of the time you get some guy killing another slowly by beating up on them until they fall and then continuing, are usually because they never decided to kill, they act out of anger and in the moment take it too far, go for too long (this is a serious problem bdcause modern society has very few proper outlets for that kind of energy/tension and worse, modern society doesn't teach emotional control nor proper ways of handling and releasing aggressive energy.), on some occasions they start with a beating and then decide to kill (which is when they start doing coup de grace, which is nothing more than striking a vital location on a target that can't evade or defend against the attack.)

Carrying lock whips and such are for handling muggers and such. Or when you want the fight over soon, whether going for a kill or not.


3) Matters of Scale

"come up with some sort hackneyed mechanics"

What hackneyed mechanics? You make it sound like the mechanics must be complicated and/or convoluted to workm and that's false.

"You don't have to throw your bestiary in the trash for the duration of the "Mighty Midgets" campaign"

Who said you have to? I very much support reskinning things, I just happen to think one shouldn't rely on it, much like others don't think the ability to houserule is an acceptable excuse for making bad mechanics. Actually, if you think about it, reskinning is houseruling, so my system really only needs that for greater variety, as the core system natively handles various scales. You idea of reliance on reskins however is basically relying on houseruling.

Further, I think handing different sizes better comes more into play with less extreme examples, such as small halflings against a large troll. If you tie hp to size and strength, then you must really be careful to make sure halfling vs human has the same disparity as human vs troll, and that gets really complex, convoluted, and often requires being built-in under the scenes where most don't even know about it.


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When I remarked about creating "hackneyed" mechanics concerning the differences between fleas and tarrasques, I mean, specifically, that there's a point where the point seems to fall apart. With enough detail, you could model theoretically anything in an RPG, but there's a tenuous balance between simulation and usability. These things aren't directly opposed (in being less simulationist doesn't make something more usable, or vice versa) but they do interact very strongly with each other (such as accuracy of falling damage rules vs ease of use at the table).

When everything's a matter of relativity, and determining the value of a flea vs a tarrasque is a moot point either way, is there something to be gained by trying to focus the lens that finely?


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As to the dragon thing, and the level of soldiers, it will suffice to say that I disagree. The 1-3 level thing is more a matter of preference and world expectations so I'll leave that alone, but an ancient red dragon really has no business losing to a level 1-3 army. It's very possible for the dragon to simply be impervious to them. Even if they hit the dragon, or cast spells on the dragon, or whatever, the dragon is simply immune to the damage and/or unhindered.

The dragon likewise has so many ways of destroying everything in sight that it can dismantle an army of mundanes in short order. It's breath weapon turns 50 ft. radius areas of land into death sentences for everything in the area (that's 100 ft. across the entire circle that gets turned into lava, dealing an automatic 20d6 fire damage the 1st round and 10d6 the second, no save allowed).

The dragon's mere presence near enemies is enough to kill them.

If making attacks, they must be lucky enough to hit the dragon (only 5% of their attacks will make it through the dragon's AC), overcome the 20-50% concealment (things like blur, displacement, or greater invisibility), very likely must be a melee attack (because things like fickle winds) vs your flying ass, and then they must pierce any DR you happen to have (which means it must also be done with a magic weapon and very likely a blessed weapon as well, since they can mimic spells like righteous might and 3.x red dragons can cast some Cleric spells). This is, of course, ignoring any feats or magic items the dragon has on hand.

If casting spells, then the dragon's SR 30 (impossible for a 1st-3rd level army to pierce effectively), saving throws, immunities, and resistances, make such attempts trite and trivial. A thousand 3rd level mages could volley their finest spells at the dragon and not even inconvenience it (a thousand acid arrows, ignored; five thousand magic missiles, laughed at; one thousand hideous laughters, pointless; a thousand more scorching rays (even metamagic'd to something like [Sonic]), hopeless.

EDIT: This is the real measure where 5E falls apart when describing high level beings. No amount of angry militia, soldiers, pitchfork wielding peasants, or animated skeletons is going to stop this fiery engine of destruction and death. You either get the big boys or you run away. End of story, more or less.


Well the rules are also to cover spaceships and such, in which you can get a similar difference in scale. A human on a dreadnaught.

But consider that I'm not suggesting rules that worry about fleas vs tarrasques specifically, but rather rules that are scale agnostic. RnR is intended to cover different scales, even in the same game, such as starwars for example, which has personal scale amd starship scale. Why have entirely different rule sets when you can keep 90% of the rules identical. Scale doesn't matter to the rules. Fleas to deathstars and everything in between all covered by fairly simple rules. No need to worry about the specific sizes being used as a fighter vs frigate is just like a human vs giant, the rules don't care which.


"It's very possible for the dragon to simply be impervious to them."

That isn't a dragon, that is a demigod.

Frankly, those numbers are scaled to the pcs, and well since the pcs are demigods, the dragon must therefore be one as well, oh more than actually since the dragon goes against a party of demigods.

But the thing I think you miss is that there is a difference between the story and the mechanics. Lots of players have no clue what 20th lvl actually means, so they make high level versions of Conan or Aragorn and wonder why their creation makes those source characters look like dupes, but then those that don't recreate such characters have a harder time figuring out that level 20 is so far beyond human, that Hercules would be crushed like a bug and even the polytheistic gods would have a fight trying to live. But players don't get that, so they create a level 20 and think they are Olympic games level of skill.

What you describe as being impervious to an army of regular people is not a dragon, it is a demigod, and the so called heroes to fight it are not heroes, those are demigods.

Even Smaug was slain by mundanes. Sure luck played a hand but they were also mere militia and taken by surprise.


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I'd like to point out that Smaug, cannonically, sacked an entire dwarven kingdom and the entire kingdom couldn't do anything about it. The only way he was killed because of a special vulnerability he had due to "plot" (a single patch of his underside with no scales which had to be found by Bilbo and relayed to his killer).

Saying a dragon is not what it is doesn't really serve much of a purpose. A dragon of the magnitude of an ancient red dragon just shows where they sit on the proverbial food chain (which is to say really high, as you need mid+ level heroes to even be able to scratch them, let alone actually defeat one).

And no, there really isn't a difference between story and mechanics as far as what something is. An ancient red dragon is, effectively, impervious to an army of mundanes or even pseudo-mundanes. If you don't want it to be an ancient red dragon, you use something that isn't an ancient red dragon, but let's not split hairs pretending that an ancient red dragon isn't, or that story somehow overrides the fact the dragon is what it is.

You could create some sort of "dragon" that was quite large but not of an ancient red dragon's calibur, such as an advanced wyvern or half-dragon wyvern (which for most respects if fairly indistinguishable from a traditional dragon to layfolk), if the desire was to have a dragon that was "big" but still mundane enough that soldiers could reasonably harm it.

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