DarkLightHitomi's page

In 3.5, arcane casters could learn spells not on their spell lists, but required roleplay, finding the spells and specially studying them. Strangely, that fact seems to always be missed or forgotten.

I’ve got two things planned, first I’ll be setting up a discord server to run a campaign where most of the mechanics are kept hidden, both to help players focus on the world (since I don’t want “playing the mechanics”) and also because I’m testing out various mechanics and this way I need less buy in from players and less explanation about them. They are supposed to be simulationist anyway.

The second thing is that I will be working on programming a game, a sort of mix between minecraft and dnd. This first iteration is mostly just a simulation sandbox so I can test out my AI designs and such, but it lays the groundwork for building and playing your own character. The end goal will eventually be a mix of minecraft, dnd, and breath of the wild, where the terrain is alterable, you can climb and glide and fly, use skills, cast spells, etc.

The sandbox simulation part will be using the 3.5 ogl as I saw a paper once where someone supposedly ran a simulation to see how common various levels of magic items and spells would actually be, but I think I can do better.

GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:

I’m going to try GMing through StartPlaying again. They have an event coming up for the release of the 2024 dnd dmg. Who knows if I’ll actually get any players for it though. It’ll be my first foray into 5e since the first version of 5e was in playtest.

Tell us how it went!

It hasn’t gone yet. I’ve got like a week before start and it doesn’t end till partway through next month.

So right now is job interview.

I’m going to try GMing through StartPlaying again. They have an event coming up for the release of the 2024 dnd dmg. Who knows if I’ll actually get any players for it though. It’ll be my first foray into 5e since the first version of 5e was in playtest.

Oh, I’m up to a rough sketch of six encounters guaranteed to make for at least a 50% chance of a tpk each, and built with all low level enemies, so it’s the return of Tucker’s Kobolds. }:)

I’m excited to see how it comes out. Once they’ve played it, I’ll post here the full evil glory of Silnyseoyl and her minions. I can’t wait.

I’m a player in reign of winter right now, we are having fun. I invented a new spell that makes cute little snowball creatures to zoom around and scout. I also took a level in gunslinger, for obvious reasons if you know the adventure.

I’m starting a campaign.

Also, helping my cousin with some upcoming encounters. Pretty sure his players will ban me from helping him ever again. }:)

If the devs wanted the gladius to count as a shortsword in all things, they could have said so. They didn't.

But they did, if indirectly. Though PFS tends to be it’s own thing, so contradictory rulings abound there. Not much concern of mine unless people start paying me to run it.

But the writing describing the Gladius includes a reference that only works if the Gladius is considered a short sword. We know this because if you swapped out “gladius” for “mace” then the sentence sounds wrong. Why, because the comparison made is of sort exclusively used for same category comparisons, therefore sticking an item in that phrase from a different category makes it sound odd to a native speaker.

That said, it is clear that the author felt it was so obvious that they didn’t think it needed clarifying. Happens a lot in writing.

Interestingly, most people don’t read into a text on such a level. I do though, and even analyzed bits of the regulations for the sergeants in my unit in the army when they were confused (my god does military regulations make the most complicated game rules seem simple).

So naturally, you get issues like this.

@ Ebonfist

I was making the point that it is not actually a grey area. The wording in the description only works if the gladius is considered a shortswort, and therefore, is an explicit and RAW, if indirect, statement that the gladius is a short sword.

Selena moved snow into the building, ”Alright, I’ll send out some scouts. You Maka are the inspiration for this so I figure on calling it Selena’s Maka Seekers, or maybe Maka’s Minions, something like that.”

Selena puts her hand on the pile of snow she magically pulled in from outside,
”Little balls of frozen snow,
Shapable and flexible as clay,
To boldy go,
And sometimes play,
Find my foe,
And seek my way.”

The pile of snow collapsed into many little snowballs that started to roll away from the pile like they had been dropped. They started to wriggle and cute little faces appeared on them, then they sprouted little limbs and started looking around the room.

Removed mention of Fin

Fine size gets +16 size mod to stealth and +8 size mod to dex I believe (It’s clear that size modifies ab scores, specifics need to be inferred. Reference a chart on creating monsters of different sizes.) That gives +20 stealth untrained. Being made of snow, moving through a snowscape, camouflage as thou will.

Hey guys, checking in. I’m rather lucky getting a chance to log in today, but in the next week or three (depending on the orientation stuff) I’ll be starting a new security post. If all goes well, I’ll be able to start posting regularly at that point.

In any case, I’m sorry about being missing lately. Good luck everyone.

”We probably shouldn’t trust any antidotes we get from this town.” Naomi notes solemnly as she keeps watch.

GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:

glass wrote:

GM DarkLightHitomi wrote:

What am I missing? I only get the mid 20s for all that.

I do not know what all of those things do (and I cannot be bothered to look them all up), but it gets to mid 20s just from Strength. Add 7 from the weapon and 18 from Power Attack and you're already in the 50s.

You are making a very incorrect calculation.

Strength bonus to dmg is the modifier, not the score. Thus, 18 strength plus a +6 item and rage for a score of 26 which is a +8 modifier, with a two handed weapon that gives only +12 dmg.

Half orc for another two, level 20 for another 5, and Amplified Rage for another 4. 37 strength, bonus of +13, damage of +19.

So I might have been slightly off, unless I thought of some other bonus to Strength the other day that I am now forgetting, but I was closer than you.

Hmm, you were assuming strength 18 at start and all ability ups went to strength. Neither was stated, and frankly you are already pretty darn high on the point buy to get even a single score to 18. You’re basically asking for broken just from that, but still it had not occurred to me to make that assumption. I went with what was stated which was having 18 str at lvl 20.

I wouldn't give it that much, but I also have no interest in Star Wars stories.

That’s sacrilegious! You inhuman heathen!

Just kidding, but I’m really curious, why not?

I get more leery of folks who have a "concept" that uses race and class to "build" toward. I saw a lot of people asking how to "build" certain functions in PF1 advice threads and folks would reply saying "choose this race for x benefit". Completely bereft of "character" and completely beholden to mechanical aspirations. But even that is still a "concept".

So to me, I think of a race/class "concept" I want to explore via roleplay. Has worked well these past 40+ years. Didn't know I wasn't doing it the supposed way.

Hmm.

My experience is usually the opposite. People come up with a gimmick of mechanics, often just a race/class, and then they build everything else around that mechanical choice. The character concept becomes secondary and subservient to the mechanical concept.

The one thing I like better about “old school” gameplay is that the lack mechanics means most players create character concepts first, and mechanics second or not at all.

Phishing? That’s when someone is trying to con someone into giving their personally identifiable info, the sort necessary to access bank accounts and such. How exactly is my post inviting people to give me such personal info?

Really I posted here because I played the pf2 playtest and found it dropped the most important things I want from a system so I didn’t bother wasting my time playing further, but as essentially a d20 based system, my modification would work for it. I just didn’t know if the problem existed here or not, hence finding out. Thanks for answering that at least, along with your bizarre accusation.

Note, it is a common misconception that your house is an asset. It's not. Assets are things that bring you money. The only time a house is an asset is when you have paying tenants or when you are selling it. If you live in it, it's a liability.

Don't mind me, I'm thoroughly enjoying the dysfunctional back and forth between Quasit and Selena. Really seems to fit the pair actually, given that Selena is a noble and sees it as her place to lead but having been supplanted by Quasit, but she also knows she is still on the young side and also not surprised she isn't trusted.

No worries. I'm a GM, so keeping characters separate from myself is quite easy. Reflexive really.

There is a thread around here for advice. I'll see if I can find it (my focus list got destroyed so I don't know where to find it right now).

Some basics,
tags can be used with square brackets, info listed below the text entry box.
Bold is generally used for speech, italics for telepathy or thought.
dice tags can have a name, which is a good spot to put dc and other pertinent info.
Your alias profile page has a big text box intended for your sheet and stuff, but just above are several small text boxes labeled as common stats. Some of them show up at the top of all your posts with that alias. players have taken to putting a bunch of info there as a status reminder or common stats.

don't go posting too fast unless you're dealing exclusively with one other player. it can be quite frustrating to make a post and come cack the next to find half the group has a couple dozen posts while the other half never had a chance to respond.

That said, having a bit of a side discussion moving quickly is just fine, and when done well, gives the slower posters something interesting to read when they come back for their next post, just make sure you only do that when the only characters involved are the ones posting quickly.

Edit: Wow! I critted my google check!
Here is the link to a great guide.
Guide

She is hoping to sell tickets.

Reminder that auditory spells/effects depend on whether you need to hear them for them to take effect, not just the ability to speak or make sounds. Verbal components needed one but not the other, so it's unlikely spells would ever be given the auditory trait to denote a need to speak, rather than the more significant need to hear the caster.

This loses some important restrictions.

First, verbal components are specifically a need to speak load enough to be heard, which draws attention and doesn't work with stealth.

Second, silence kills the ability to cast spells with verbal components.

The metamagic to cast silently thus is specifically important to counter these two drawbacks. Additionally, these two drawbacks create interesting problems and situations.

Here, take an inspiration die for your next con save!

Fun idea, run a special campaign in which each player gets twelve standard npc characters and a party of four pcs. Then have them face off tourny style, npcs vs pcs. Do it repeatedly with difficulty kinds of npc races. Let the players get creative in tactics and consumables use.

Npcs live in a world of magic, I think it's only logical to assume that even goblins would learn to avoid being bunched up for a fireball when it can be avoided. Doing this exercise will help everyone develop better tactics, and the gm can include more sensible tactics that account for the quirks of the world.

That said, doing this should stick to the levels commonly found in the world. 9th level spells are basically legendary and thus no warriors have significant experience facing such magic and so unlikely to gave tactics adapted to them.

"Tucker's Kobolds" ... They put up little resistance when the adventuring party entered the dungeon, mostly retreating into small tunnels. But when the party was departing after a successful raid on the deeper levels, out of their strongest spells but loaded with treasure, the kobold tribe emerged to assault the party much stronger than before.

This is incorrect. It was on the way into the dungeon. They escaped down to level 10 (much less scary), and they dreaded when it would be time to leave. So they were facing the kobolds full and fresh.

Of course, spell limits mattered more back then. For example, the wizard could not cast fireball because in the tight confines the area affected would spread further and hit the party too.

Thank you Mathmuse for starting this thread. I appreciate your thoughts here and your analysis of the math is always something I learn from. I think a lot of GMs could learn from your ideas here.

One thing I try to play with as a GM for really exciting encounters is the beyond-extreme encounter that is over a sprawlingly large map, with enemies spread out across in different locations, close enough to trigger when appropriate, but far enough away to have that be a visible factor in the party tactics. I think that one of the reasons why some tables experience "weak casters" is when durations of encounters are never longer than 3 to 5 rounds and the map is so small that the longer range of many powerful spells is an irrelevant feature of the spell. My players have responded very well to encounters that are several trivial, low and moderate encounters, with one severe hidden in there somewhere, that can be fought in waves by moving around a central courtyard or on a boat that is pulling out of dock.

In the old days, encounters started when opponents were sighted, or understood to be enemies, which could happen at hundreds of feet away. There would be the question of how to approach an enemy. Archers and mages could be attacking multiple rounds before the martials ever get close enough to attack.

Further, in the older days, you could not assume hostility unless clearly marked as an enemy faction currently at war. Even bands of savages aren't always out to slaughter everything. Sometimes you could just evade the enemy instead, either because they didn't notice you or they let you avoid contact.

The two frontliners could prevent a Pack Attack that requires three wolves next to one target by splitting the three wolves between them. The wolves would advance and attempt a jaws attack with Knockdown, followed by another jaws attack if successful.

Why would wolves ever attack like this? They wouldn't. Neither if basing tactics on slim knowledge of real wolf tactics nor on just logical tactics based on the wolves' goals.

Wolves won't be attacking seeking a tpk, nor will they be acting like idiot bots in an mmo.

The wolves are going to attack for either, desperate hunger, to defend territory, or feeling cornered/defending pups.

If hungry, they aren't going to go for the whole party, they'll harrass and provoke until they can get a chance to isolate one member (by pack members hiding if possible) then trip and drag off the one member, likely expecting the rest of the group to leave. If pressed too hard, they'll retreat, and that would probably happen after the first or second solid hit the party gets on any of the wolves.

Otherwise, they'll be defensive, trying to scare away the intruders, not kill them. Not even tripping because a tripped opponent can't run away.

And if pushed so far they have nowhere to run, they'll be fighting to escape unless they can't see a way out or have pups they are defending.

This fight you described with wolves is completely ridiculous as anything but a cosmetically altered mmo fight. It completely ignores the wolves' reason for being in the fight and how that impacts tactics and decision making for them.

I'm talking about the encounter design conceit, the way it works. If you think we should throw that mechanical underpinning out to replace it with a philosophy of "not playing videogames" that's great, but how do YOU propose we rewrite the game to account for your idea of how to design encounters?

This is the first of two incorrect assumptions.

What I'm talking about has nothing to do with the rules. Nothing to do with the mechanics or math. So why would the game need to be rewritten?

Metaphorically speaking, I'm saying there are multiple different knots to use to tie your shoes, and you're asking me what we should replace the laces with. You don't need to replace the laces, just see what else can be done with them.

===
The second assumption that everyone keeps making is that encounters need to be mechanically balanced.

Everyone keeps making this assumption.

Mathmuse even opens with "I love math discussions" when I'm not talking about the math.

The truly weird entry here is Unicore describing how the player's preparation has a massive impact on difficulty, but describes it like that still requires balanced encounters.

They even discuss it as a bad thing when the players can always succeed on anything but a crit fail.

So here I bring back Tucker's Kobolds, a tale of players facing enemies so pathetically low that anything but a critical miss would kill the enemy in one hit, and yet they were terrifying to face despite how easy they were to kill.

Mathematically, encountering a den of kobolds for mid level players should be so easy as to be boring. What made it scary? Absolutely nothing about the math. The math and mechanical balance, which was very unbalanced, had absolutely nothing to do with making Tucker's Kobolds a force to be feared.

And yet everyone keeps contextualizing everything I say under the assumption that encounters will need to be balanced.

Aside from working 14+ hours doing deliveries, in between deliveries or while waiting on a restaurant, I'm working on preparing to run the Witchfire trilogy in my own setting, and thus I need to post all the rule changes to account for how my world works plus a few other tweaks. It's going to be awhile at this pace.

I'll also add that, anecdotally, the most I've paid for a 4-hour PFS game is $5, and that was to the game store in which the game was held, not to the GM. There's a game at the cafe where the rule is 2 items from the cafe, so $10-15, but obvs there's a sandwich and a drink involved in addition to the game.

PFS GMs are given in-game rewards: character boons for PFS1, double AcP for PFS2. Most accept that, with $0 cash, so ... there's your price anchor.

Well, I'm not able to run anything for free. Seeing that there is a market with an average price point of $20 per player on that site, I'm trying it because that's 3/4s my current daily income in 1/4 the time and that assumes only 4 players. If I got 6 players, that would be more in 4 hours than I currently make in 16 hours. GM rewards are not even worth my time to write down right now.

That's literally that only way I'll get to run anything.

Thus for me, it's not about rewards, it's the difference between running nothing or something.

And I'm looking at it primarily just to make my financial situation better. I'm living in a car right now, in Texas summer heat, any improvement to my income is absolutely worth it. It just so happens I can actually run games.

But I also know people are less likely to pay to play for some homebrew unknown system, hence considering PFS since I have a season and actually am familiar with pf1 which is still run. 5e is out because I dumped that after the playtest because I hate it and I have no adventure league modules to run for it anyway.

I am looking at campaigns too obviously, but I'm not limiting myself till I know better about where I can get good customers.

Ed Reppert wrote:

Last time I checked if a store has something locked up, you can ask a store employee to let you get a closer look at it. If you can't, don't shop there.

I don't like the idea of dragging an employee over and then realizing I don't want it. It's not something I'm particularly comfortable with.

#introvertProblems

But you're comfortable making a choice without really knowing what you're choosing?

Also, having been that employee a long time ago, it's what we were there for.

It's OK. For generic NPCs and monsters I will just go back to PFS (and other adventures too)'s staple of Fight to the death + Cannot be reasoned with.

Remind me to never play in your games. I hate that way of handling bad guys.

Generally speaking. It does make sense for robots and cornered animals.