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This is a film that should not have been made, cause frankly, all to many people can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. 2012's are already to common, and this frankly will not help. You make it sound like sensationalism wasn't the whole point of disaster movies. :P
Three APs I'm acquainted with so far (RotRL, CotCT, S.D), all three have members of the Vancaskerkin family (Orik, Verrik, and Saul), two of them bad apples. Are there any more Vancaskerkins in other APs? Are they a tip of the hat to H.P Lovecraft's Carnby family who now and then either appear or get mentioned in his tales?
As long as you don't wear your Furry costume to the game, you're welcome at my table. What if the table is LARPing Werewolf? =D
And I've rejected Gygax by keeping my players entertained and their characters miserable. Hmm more food for thought, is there any author out there that could rightly be named "the anti-Gygax: Seventh son of a seventh son" or similar?
I have played with gay people. I have played with straight yet (extremely)effeminate people (as in, anime-effeminate). I have played with TG people. I have played with wiccan peope (BEST Mage: The Asencion game I've ST'd, -ever-). I have played with overly-religious people. I have played with atheists. I have played with plain-sh1tbat-crazy people. I have played with tools. ...all of the above have applied at one time or another to both meatspace and online gaming tables... How do I deal with them in the table? Same as I deal with everyone else, once the dice start rolling I don't deal with you, I deal with your character. As far as my personal experience goes at least, the roleplaying crowds are a particularly non-judgemental bunch as an average (there are always cases of jerks, but fortunately those are the exception rather than the norm). Relax, you worry too much. There are some very prominent gay characters in the game (including at least one iconic and one BBEG) Bad Yoda! You already knew Seltyel wanted to keep it a secret! But noooo, you had to go an out him like that, I hope you are satisfied now, you insensitive monster. =P
Full of win.
The first thing I dd when I saw the slow experience table was to do the happy dance. My players threatened a revolt however so we compromised and used the medium progession instead. It all depends on what are the GM's expectations regarding the game. Whenever you're going to start a game, ask yourself the following questions: -Is this game an ongoing, episodic, comicbook-narrative game with no schedulled end in sight? Or do I want a story with a begining and an end? -How long is this campaign going to last? Two months? Six? One year? (both your and and your players' lives aren't -that- static as to assume you'll still be doing the same thing after three years, is it?). -What level do I want my players to have achieved by the time the end comes? If a GM's intention is truncating progression altogether by reaching level (something-or-other-around-midgame) then by all means, to each their own, that's what E6 and plenty other de-facto solutions are there for. What people should avoid, however, is using any of these measures while still deluding themselves into the idea of "reaching high level someday". I mean, sure, I can use PF's XP tables for my epic game of Record of the Lord of the Excalibur Wars in which I want my players to defeat the Injustice League of BBEGs by the time they hit level 20, but then I'd be ignoring that hitting lvl 20 in PF takes six times as much XP as on regular d20 progression (and that saying we use the 'fast' table), turning my year-long planned game into a six years long pipedream, during which two of my players will get married, two will move overseas for job reasons, and the last one will start gravitating towards Shadowrun by the end of year one... which would have translated pretty much into a monumental waste of my time, if you ask me. Personally, my two favorite XP methods are: 1) The alternative proposed by Monte Cook in MCWoD where, rather than XP, at the end of each session players chosen one of three character aspects to escalate, being these:
2) 4E, which goes the extra mile by giving you estimates of how much real-time of play is required to go all the way from level 1 to 20, helping GMs to plan accordingly. Define your game's scope and stick with it.
From what I've read about Gygax (I started with AD&D 2E, or so I think, so I may not be really Gygaxian myself), one of his main points used to be this: "Challenge the player, not the character" This single line marks the main difference between "old-school" and "new" IMHO. By implication, in new-school roleplay, you play a character, whereas in old-school you just play. Old school expects players to use their own wits, talents, and luck to surmount the challenges laid before them which, rather than being laid in terms of "skill challenges", they're actual puzzles and other "food for thought" (the greatest expression of this style, of course, being the (in)famous Tomb of Horrors). This has the advantage that smart people pretty much have it made, all they need is their wits and a lucky die. The drawbacks, though, are twofold, first one is that players tend to just play themselves over and over (after all, it's either "play smart" or "play dead", then again this might or might not be perceived as something bad according to your definition of roleplay). Second drawback (the one potentially damaging) is that well, if you suck at puzzles or are otherwise on the slow side then sucks to be you, for this hobby has nothing for you other than frustration and disappointment. New school, on the other side, brings to the table a disociation of player and character, the character becoming his own persona with his own set of talents, wits, knowledge base, strengths and weaknesses (enter the games with formal skill systems). This one has the advantage that a player is under no obligation to go to the Police Academy if he wants to play a detective or having been the prom King/Queen at school to play a bard, opening the possibility to play whatever character concept tickles your fancy (in this school, you're -not- your character, the fact that he has +10 in Diplomacy or Perception doesn't mean you yourself have to be as capable IRL). The downside, however, is that a badly handled new school game can make players lazy, just letting the dice fall where they may without even trying to roleplay the process by which they attained the result of said roll (becoming "roll-players"), there's no point in a school that focuses on "being someone else" if you don't actually try walking the mile in his shoes. Which one is best? Both have their strengths, both have their flaws, it's all on whatever works for you. Then again, both names of "old" and "new" school might be rather vague now since 4E started the whole "old is new again" thing. My personal favorite? New school, I'm irredeemably both a new-school and a thespian roleplayer to the point that my relation with both of these trends is rather intrinsical, try to take us apart, and I'd most likely die in agony... also, I royally suck at puzzles and riddles.
Green beans are better raw than cooked, 'though. Unless cooked with bacon, in which case, that's okay. :) Green beans, carrots, and corn, rice's best friends. =9 
The only drawback... a monachromatic, monaural party.
Happy Erik Mona Day everyone! Many years more of one-eyed goodness!
I've got a couple gallons of fresh home-made marinara, a 1-1/2 gallons of fresh pizza sauce, and a gallon of fresh pesto, all frozen in 8oz containers. It's super-easy to defrost and reheat and always beats store-bought in taste. *plans a raid to Ambrosia's home in the near future* Have you tried having rainbow trout or tilapia? Hmmm tilapia.... =9
What do you understand by "channeling your inner Gygax"? Is this a noble endeavour? How can the average gamer contribute to channeling his inner Gygax? Discuss.
you're better off having a chat with your players than channeling your inner Gygax. "Channeling your inner Gygax", sounds something worth starting a new thread. =D
He's to low a level to teach there, yet too high a level to actually be a new student. Well, the Graduate feat only requires "wizard level 1+", so he might as well be a senior student still on his way to graduate. Now, regarding whether he could teach or not, perhaps he could be either a teacher's adjutant or perhaps he could teach arcane theory (saying his Int score is good enough and he takes Skill Focus on perhaps Spellcraft or Knowledge: Arcana/Planes/Religion to get a skill score of 10+, then I could see him imparting classs at least to freshmen). Hmmm.... an exam for the graduate program... perhaps mediating a negotiation with a low-level devil at a Planar Binding spell? It might require a decent Sense Motive not to get shafted, but sounds fun enough to roleplay at least. Let me know how it works out. =)
The "Academae Graduate" feat from CotCT's Players Guide has no level requisite, so I assume you can graduate as early as level 1. There's no reason why students can't pursue post-graduate education though. On our current CotCT game, for example, my evokress is a Journeywoman from the Arcanamirium pursuing a master's degree in evocation (given how the Arcanamirium's options can be relatively limited for specialist wizards).
Hmm, it will be interesting to see what they make of Dark Sun in 4E but, will it be as deadly?
Gah! So it's a whole vegan -month-? Okay okay, I promise to catch up... more carnitas and more tacos de chorizo it is then. I've been on white meat this week though, so I'm keeping the death-rate-per-pound high. =D
Examining both feats in detail: Divine Metamagic:
Sudden Maximize
As far as I understand it, Sudden Maximize only works once per day, so you only get one maximized spell costing you 1 Turn Undead use in a given day, the rest still costing you 4 T.Us each... and to get that benefit you'd still need the regular Maximize Spell feat, as you already used up your Sudden Maximize for the day.
Same thing I thought when I read that. LOL!I'm not a huge fan of tuna, but mixed with horseradish or spicy brown mustard, it's pretty yummy, Hey, no making fun of Set, he might just be pregnant! =D
Dogbert, you seem to be taking this as seriously as bugley. Otherwise you wouldn't be gloating like this. So, PLEASE try to remain polite, both of you. We haven't had a flame war in ages, and I'd rather not be a witness to one. You're right, and I apologize, even if those who live in houses of glass shouldn't throw stones. It was hard not not to take it personal, though, as one of those two dietists (or dietitians, both terms seem to be right according to english dictionaries) I was talking about is my mother. In Mexico we have a saying: "A groseria, groseria y media" (something like "An insult received is paid back with interest"). Next time Bugley chooses to stab civility in the face he'd do well to save himself unnecessary embarassment and at least get properly documented on the topic at hand.
Also. While Str won't apply to a Ray or Energy Missile spell in disarm, the +4 from Improved Disarm (and perhaps a +1 from Weapon Focus if you allow it) combined with Bard and Cleric buffs should carry him through the way to midgame at least. =)
Let' seee..... Complete Arcane doesn't mention categories for "weaponlike spells", but Tome and Blood divides them in Ray (Disintegrate, Ennervation, etc), Energy Missile (Melf's Acid Arrow, Electric Orb, etc), and Touch (Ghoul Touch, Chill Touch, etc). Hope that helps. :)
*Pulls out DM2. Flips to the 'Alternate Reward' section. Turns a page to find a big sidebar section starting with "You can remove magic items from the game entirely and replace them with alternative rewards."* The alternate rewards, a reason to get the DMG 2. =D
Later it was discovered that common chimps can really be quite violent. Warfare has been observed, and there are some 'psycho' chimps as well. Among Goodall's chimps there was a mother-daughter team, Pom and Passion, who committed infanticide and ate their victims. Is this a bad time to realise there's an evil monkey in my closet? o_o;
First, I'm not a native english speaker, so thanks for the correction. Second, just a note that I'm laughing at your foaming vitriol as I type (hit a nerve, didn't I?). Allow me correct you though: The article you sent includes milk, milk products, and eggs, all of which are... *drumroll* yes, -animal protein-. This diet includes animal protein, all it does is excluding meat. While soy products are high in protein, said protein is vegetable, and of low value. Thanks for sending the article though, it actually further proves my point. But I'm sure the "dietists" in your family know best. :rolleyes: They know better than you, that's for sure. Both have over 25 years of experience (and keeping up to date) in the field, and you have... not even the knowledge to tell between animal and vegetable proteins. Have a nice day. P.D: Cooking... cooking... SERVED!
Palladium has been extremely sensitive (as you've posted regarding their reaction to conversion sites) and would probably go out of business before they did anything to "help" WotC (and d20 is part of WotC). ...and a decade later, they nearly did (go out of business), curiously, this happened by the time there was fan talk about the interest in a "Rifts d20", and even more curiously this was the time when our favorite evil empire was still in a stage of predatory expansionism. While I'm not accusing wizards of seducing Siembieda's people into inducing the fraud that nearly broke Palladium years ago (I mean, such extremes would be plain preposterous) timing was awfully convenient, and supervillains tend to get accused of every crime that takes place during their rampages, even if they weren't even there when they took place.
I'm about to finally give 4E a try in a couple months with my table. Our playstyle, however, is everything but level-dependant thought. This, in addition to feedback from my players have gotten me brainstorming on four houserulings I'll be doing to the system for my table to better enjoy it and help them adapt: WARNING: Flammable, true-believers may find the following offensive and should skip the rest of the post. You have been warned. 1) Bring back all the positive combat modifiers like Flanking, vs Prone, Invisible Attacker, etc. If my players want to try an assassination (as opposed to a bum-rush) of a target against whom it would be suicide to face directly, I want them to have a chance, and I want mechanics to reward clever planning.
Those were my heretic two cents. =)
The real danger in common message board usage is belief that there's any single way to optimize. All optimization is toward a goal and all optimization involves some kind of trade-off. You can't optimize toward every goal when there are a sufficient number of choices available. QFT. This is also true in the sense of Integer Programming, you optimize to either maximize or minimize a single variable. Now, still related to Integer Programming, a certain number can be the max/min without being the -optimal- solution to your problem, and that's where we see the sor/wiz with Con 10 who dies on the first ghoul encounter, the Wis 10 fighter who lives as perpetual mage-bait, and Seoni, whose Str 8 could have made her succumb to the first slaver raid before level 3: all it takes is a band of monsters that act as a distraction while a squirmisher does a sneak-and-grapple on her, take her away and poof! Bye-bye Seoni... if as a GM you wanna pile insult upon injury, narrate it as the enemy dragging her away by the "standard female grab area" (the mid-bicep of the left arm). If you ask me, if we take it strictly from the base definition, min/maxing = optimization. Now, contrary to what RP-nazis think, neither min/maxing nor optimizing have anything to do with a person's capacity for roleplay, and in fact both can be used as RP tools (who knows? Perhaps Seoni's creator just wanted a "girly-girl", not all adventurers have to be Jack Sparrow).
Save a tree, ride a witch today! But getting serious, we -need- meat if on the mere grounds that proteins of vegetable origin are comparatively poor in quality so yes, if you try to raise your children on a strictly vegetarian diet you -will- have a case of malnutrition, and criminal charges of child neglect. Homo Sapiens have pointy canine teeth as a result of more than two million years of evolution eating -meat-, our organisms -need- animal protein to properly develop and let no (hugely misinformed)vegans tell you otherwise, the average vegetarian has an organism with lots of deficiencies (I've got more than my share of doctors in the family to certify this, including two dietists). A solution, though, would be as Set said, if only tissue cloning could be made cheap enough for livestock to become unnecessary...
Get well soon Lil. :)
Chopper Island was a trigger left unused as a curiosity for players and GMs, so you can do what you want of it and it won't mess the adventure, rest assured. Precisely I did just that on my late sessions, except I connected it with chapter 5 with just a dash of express-expanded dungeon (thanks to Donjon's instant dungeon generator). It all started with Hemlock being jailed for brutally murdering Chopper's mom, and he was caught in-fraganti. After talking to Helmock, our cleric heroine finds out that he went to seek the missing Brodent Quint, whom no one has seen for days since he went to poke around the Old Light. The last thing the sheriff remembers is walking to Chopper Isle. ...Where he got possessed by Chopper's Ghost, when he finally got back to his senses, he had a bloody knife in his hands, a corpse at his feet, and guards pointing pikes at him. Also, while this happened, Chopper (invisibly) switched bodies to one of the guards, whom he'd use later to create a hostage situation while he was talking with the cleric. Good old Jarvis used his hostage to lure Hemlock again to Chopper Isle, where the ghost plans to exact his final revenge. The latter parts got a bit messy as silly me forgot about Pazuzu's existance completely and went for something else entirely involving a Vrock, also our heroic cleric wasn't able to figure out what issues still fetter Chopper, so the ghost will still be around to haunt some more. All in all it was a good time or so I hope.
More devil's advocate: Cows produce methane gas, trees produce oxygen. If you ask me which of the two I'd preserve, I'd rather preserve plants and eat the animal. >=P
The race doesn't have "too much", the problem is that racial bonuses are placed all too conveniently. Dex bonus + Stealth bonus + AC bonus is bound to raise suspicious brows among several GMs. All the advantages of a textbook-Rogue race without any of the drawbacks... and with increased speed to boot. Speaking of racial bonuses, I wouldn't call cats "charismatic" given how your average cat has the same degree of domestication as a tiger and, by the same token, granting a Perception bonus while inflicting a Wisdom penalty is rather contradictory. A build needs congruence.
Some seeds will not sprout; some seedlings won't become saplings; some saplings won't become adult trees. If I remember right, the rate was "one in four" regarding sapplings to adult-trees.
This leads to me really worrying about the other guys getting annoyed with my character twisting the adventure into the 'Fayne Backstory Show'. In my case, I shamelessly declare my table is a Thespiocracy, and all players are encouraged to have equally rich backgrounds, goals, and problems of their own, mainly because players with the most complelling roleplay tend to get extra spotlight. Heh, but now sharing anecdotes, at my table what we're up to right now is forcing the spotlight on our shyer player as a "remedial crash course" of sorts. Basically, we're focusing on his background and issues regardless of whether he likes it or not lol, also we're having him lead the group for a change and our characters of stronger personality are finding reasons for staying quiet and leaving him the decision-making for now.
Ah, but that's the thing. What makes a succubus is not the six hit die, or the hundred foot telepathy, or the Energy Drain ability. "Succubus" is a character aspect of a beautiful and wily demoness. The stats presented in the Monster Manual are merely one representation among an infinite array of representations. Choosing one representation over another does not mean the product ceases to be a succubus. Hmm, while I usually don't like handling different rules for PCs and NPCs... your solution is rather practical, elegant, and easy to implement. What about bonuses to Bluff, and Sense Motive? (and Perform(Sexual Techniques) if available... now don't you dare giving me that look, as if we weren't talking about a succubus!) Treats the whip as a martial weapon perhaps? And Favored Class: Why? BARD of course. =) For the other supernatural abilities and qualities like resistances, detect thoughts, etc, you can always take the route of sorcerers' Heritage Feats from the PHB 2 too. With some levels you could get close enough to the real thing.
I myself had carnitas, had I known the day it was I'd have had another two tacos... then again today I just fixed that. =)
From online games, "twinking" is outfitting a character with items he shouldn't usually have access to. There are several forms of twinking, from giving a new alt of yours hand-me-downs that your higher-level main discarded long ago to the "legal" ones like crunching numbers on items and class features in order to cover an item's prerequisites, allowing you to equip it. Roleplay-wise, though, such thing as "twinking" can't really happen as everyone in the party is usually the same level and share the same degree of access to resources. The few times a character dies and is replaced by a level 1 though, his party outfitting him with the best equipment available isn't so much twinking as trying to keep him alive from encounters that by now are far out of his league. In some games, like Anarchy Online, twinking along with game-world economy has contributed partially to unreasonable increases in difficulty to the point that what was once "twinking" now is just a bare requisite for survival. Extrapolating to roleplay, some GMs eventually pass through a scaredy-cat phase where they become mortally afraid of the players "beating him", and do similar increases in difficulty, this is particularly common in games centered on combat and defeating a BBEG as the be all end all of the game.
OP, -you-'ve got to be kidding me! >_< Complaining about an excess of 4E crunch books while so many grognards languish and cling to a 3E that receives no further crunchy bits! (unless you're into PF, which not everyone is into). Is this your way of mocking our grognard-ness?? ;_;
Just kinda looking for other opinions here. What happens in your campaign when the rebellious, anti-hero, anti-establishment, lone hero tough-guy, Wolverine wannabes actually outnumber what's considered "normal"? Back at my old meatspace hack&slash table? This repetitive style of campaign was the only item in the menu (all campaigns were anti-establishment). I decided to band with different GMs who liked different things, never looked back. Do any DM's here have players who predictably make the same character over and over and over again? Back at my old meatspace hack&slash table? This kind of players was the order of the day. Got myself new and better players, never looked back. When's the last time your players willingly went on adventure, battled the bad guys(instead of joining them), and didn't turn around and try to fork over the npc's that hired them? Sorry for the rant, it's just something I've seen in almost every single campaign I play in. Oooooooooookay... I sense someone is close to fill his "all I can take" bar... Okay, I guess this is something I must ask: do your players actually try to RP? Or are you the B.A to your Knights of the Dinner Table? If your players just use RP as an outlet to their sociopathic fantasies then don't even bother, get a new gaming table. ... now, if they're just a case of misguided roleplayers, keep on reading... If what you're sick of is your players dropping the ball and joining the side they're supposed to fight then perhaps you and the players aren't -quite- on the same wavelenght. As you design your campaign, do it in concert with your players, tell them what you want as campaign premise, and take their input regarding the niche they might fill. Also, are you portraying the "good guys" well? I have had the misfortune of playing in a couple of games where 'good' was portrayed in such an odious, cliched, contrived way that technically pushed me to the dark side: the "heroes chosen by destiny" are the classic example, make that count double if all good guys wear immaculate white/blue/green, triple if you were "spirited away" or otherwise "felt compelled by a strange feeling" to answer the summons of 'good'... finish making me vomit if GM wants the PCs to be the players' self-insertions. Many will feel compelled to help a cute damsel in distress, but nobody cares about a fastidious holier-than-thou that expects you to fight an equally cliched, mustache-twirling villain. The best way to motivate PCs to protect something is for them to -care-. As a GM you need to get the PCs involved with the village and people. Other than paladins and mercs, nobody puts his neck on the line for a bunch of people they don't know (and mercs are only loyal to money, so they are subject to be likewise bought by the bad guys for the right price). Now, if what you're sick of is your players playing the same character over and over and over again, here's what a friend did for a game of Vampire he ran: Before character creation, he specified that none of the players was allowed to pick a clan they had played in the past. For your next game specify that any concept goes -except- for spawn-clones, which will be strictly forbidden. But to answer the original question: what do you get when the rebellious, moody, anti-establishment loner types become so numerous that they're the mainstream? TEENAGERS and MTV And like six different series either starting or ending with the words "ninja turtles".
If you ask me, the problem with monstruos races, LA, and ECL wasn't from mechanics, but rather a case of "User Error, Replace user and hit any key to continue". As far as meatspace tables go, I haven't met two DMs who have the same idea as to how to handle XP and levels for such characters. I keep wondering what is it that people find so impregnable about handling ECLs. Let's take a lvl 1 Drow Fighter as an example (LA +2, you know people loves drow). From the d20 SRD, the drow's ECL will tell us the drow's equivalent level for the purpose of determining the amount of XP he needs to advance to the next level. This ECL is determined is determined by adding the Monster's Racial HD + class levels + Level Adjustment. Having only 1 HD, the SRD says he forgoes this racial HD, using those from his class levels instead (so, for purposes of the Monster HD + class levels + LA, his Monster HD=0). Thus we have ECL = 0 (monster HD) + 1 (fighter level) + 2 (LA) = 3; the 'Class/Levels' part of his character sheet will say 'Fighter 1', but the 'Character Level' part of his sheet will say '3' (his Effective Character Level). For purposes of the XP/level progression table, he is assumed to have 3,000 'ghost' XP, thus requiring 3,000 XP to reach his next level (whereas his lvl-1, regular-race buddies only need 1,000. The result: Saying all players receive constantly the same amount of XP, the drow PC will always be 1 HD behind the party. While in the case of drow this may seem unfair to many (barring of course the prejudice and constant persecution this PC -should- suffer at the hands of any DM worth his salt), the difference in hit-die becomes more extreme as we go up the food chain with yummier monstrous races, and we have a perfect example in Half-Celestial characters: The sweetest modifiers, DR, and SR all with an angelic face to boot, which looks like a sweet deal until your party is already facing challenges worth a Level-4 Party and you're still stuck with the hit points of a LEVEL ONE character, so it doesn't take more than a Burning Hands spell to 1-hit you... so sure, at levels 1-2 you're a beast, but levels 3-6 where Magic Users and Special-Attack Users make their appearance will require a monumental amount of luck to survive... and now I pity the fool who tries to play a VAMPIRE (LA +8)... while the possiblity of death is unlikely, I predict at least 12 levels of unliving hell where the poor sap is gonna be the proverbial "1-hit wonder", always being sent back to his coffin on the first round of combat: "DM: Round 1, the dragon uses his breath weapon... you still want me to roll damage on the unlikely event that all dice turn to be '1's?" "Vladimir, the Teenage Vampire: *grumbling* Nevermind, I'll go for snacks, anyone wants anything?" The only change I'd make on the whole "monsters as characters" thing? Adding an explicit clause that, regardless of ECL, "special kid" PCs entering a game had a starting wealth equal to that of the Average Party Level's.
No matter how you look at it, there will always be people who'll keep preaching The-One-True-Way from their moral high horse. All we can do is making sure we enjoy the way we play at our respectives tables.
World's Greatest Detective
(Note: this feat was made to help non-inquisitive players to play detective-like characters).
"Dungeons and Underdogs" "Dungeon Fodder" "Red Shirts R Us" "Nodwick: The RPG" Is any of these names already registered? Sounds like there might be just enough market for an underdog-flavored RPG. Back in 2E, characters started the game being -heroic- already to the point that I remember reading on AD&D's DMG that an army only used to have one 3rd level Fighter, and he was the general (those were the days where commoners were all "0-level Fighters" and gained no XP, let alone levels). On 3E, however, the context for power levels was watered down to the point that even "commoner" became a character class... one that advanced in levels. Furthermore, the prestige an AD&D level-6 PC used to have was instead postponed to far beyond level 20 (read the "epic levels handbook"). In addition, the population-building guidelines in 3E's DMG point clearly that, contrary to 2E, while heroes may still be "special", they're by no means the only big fishes in the pond (probably a consequence of too many Knights of the Dinner Table rejects around, which forced designers to change the dynamics in order for those rabid dogs to be easily put down). Now, while Hit Die is no longer a measure of a character's prestige (at least not within levels 1-20), making distinctions between "Character Classes" and "NPC Classes" is still suposed to entail some token status to the PCs. They're no longer "heroic", but they're still "the cool kids". However, while PCs are no longer intended to be "heroic", that doesn't mean players have to stick to an "underdog mentality", and d20 has enough resources for characters to get away with plenty of concepts. It all boils down to what do you like.
Gothic Horror is quite different to High Fantasy and they don't mix well so please DON'T COMPARE WHAT CAN?T BE COMPARED Gothic Horror (having taken its name from the gothic castles said stories used to move around), is distinguised for two main things RP-wise: 1) Protagonists are rarely 'heroic', but instead regular men and women who are forced to face the unknown. 2) The antagonist is something beyond mortal capabilities, and direct confrontation means a sure death. Usually, part of the story consists in finding the antagonist's weakness and use it against him. Indeed, nothing to do with high-fantasy, apples and oranges. I've DM'ed my share of Ravenloft and Masque of the Red Death, I can talk about it. =D
[Okay, you have me there. Though the basic argument still holds mostly true, in that adventures are not the kind of people who have the time to sit down for a year with a variety of weapons and pig carcasses, just to work out which one does the most damage in a scientific manner. They arn't going to destroy a thosand suits of armour to work out, which weapons goes through it best. Personal taste, anacdotal and experience teach them what to use when, not any great understanding of what truely works best, nor why those things work best. And still, warriors still end up getting said experience... by doing -just that-, destroying thousands of armors along with their pig owners whose carcasses they try their weapons on. Like it or not, humans learn, and pass on their experience. A level 1 Fighter doesn't come "fresh out of the farm", he has trained in the use of weapons to the point he is -proficient- with them, and has trained long enough to start the game with more feats than a Commoner NPC will ever see. By the same token, Wizards and characters with similar afinity are quite familiar with the Scientific Method (which is over a millenia old). So, between the “Professional adventurer” and the “unlikely, underdog hero”, where does that leave pulp heroes who have a job, friends and family, and plenty of other things to do besides adventuring… except they –do- adventure for kicks, and not only they happen to be pretty good at both, also they extrapolate knowledge from their dayjob (or otherwise “normal occupation”) to adventures to pull all kinds of wacky shenanigans? My CoCT’s steampunk evokress, for example, is by no means an “optimized special forces”, but so far she has outwitted all but two of the encounters she has come across (and before anyone starts the old "magic is broken" lithany, last encounter she bypassed it without a single spell thank you very much... also, her last "level up" on last weekend came from roleplay XP only, no combat at all). “Optimization” has little with having a knack for lateral thinking. Already been commented on, responded to, and apologized for (by one of the participants, at least... the undead apparently have no remorse). There really was no need for this post except to aggravate the situation. lol sorry, after second Korvosan line I skipped to the end, so I didn't read the rest. :P Or call a spade a spade - most people play fantasy RPGs so they can be the stars of the story; Rosencratz and Guildenstern the RPG is going to fill a minor niche at best. QFT.
Okay let's make one thing clear: ONE MORE SPOILER FROM COTCT AND I'M GOING POSTAL, OK!??? (the 'spoiler' tags are there for a reason).
(g*&#~#mit what is supposed to be Luck Skywalker when no damn stormtroopers in a firing squad in close quarters, with time to aim and they can't just land a hit on him? they are the best of the best the damnable 501! and they can't scratch him! THIS is LUCK!) The "Stormtrooper Effect": The chance of getting a succesful shot in ranged combat is inversely proportional to its difficulty. Your 50 minions have no chance of succesfully hitting a running target point-blank. Conversely, a hero hanging upside down and twenty feet away from a target the size of a dime is sure to succeed. "the best laid plans are perfect, until meet with the enemy" or something like that. "No plan survives contact with the enemy". This is mainly because, try as you might, no intel can account for how -every single person in a battlefield- will act. In games, however, intel tends to be far more reliable for the following reasons: a) The environment is considerably smaller because encounters are designed to be "manageable", something manageable has a limited scope, and so exploitable flaws.
Some GMs are declared enemies of tactics, however, and will either deny players the proper positive combat modifiers (like Flanking, vs Prone, vs Flat-Footed, Surprise, etc) in order to render any attempts at "muchkin play" a moot, or they just keep wiping "X-factors" out of their @sses to constantly sabotage player plans (doing an effective remedial version of the odious, pre-emptive gaming). Personally I find these practices a bore as they reduce combat to a session of Halo, and if I wanted Halo, I'd turn the 360 on. Now, the worse GMs of the lot are those who design their encounters so you have no chance of using circumstances to your favor...an THEN they do use tactics against you. P.D: I like the Visceral and Tactician nomenclatures, let's stick to them. :)
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