
knightnday |

knightnday wrote:Confession: The phrase "martials can't have anything nice" makes me sleepy. It also makes me wonder who has been playing these classes for the last 40 or so years if they suck so bad.It still astonishes me after all this time that so many people conflate "This sucks compared to X" with "Nobody uses that".
The iPhone is the most popular smart phone on the market despite being utter s~*! compared to Android phones or even the Windows phone, lacking features those phones had several years prior, and then adding them with the fanfare you'd expect for a true innovation three years too late.
Popularity and functionality are not the same thing.
Going by the complaints regarding martials, I'll stand by my statement. Or if these people are using them, they never talk in anything other than wistful sadness that a fighter isn't a wizard.

kyrt-ryder |
Cranky Bastard wrote:Krensky wrote:Confession: I hate the entitled number crunching b*&!!$%~ that seems to have infected D&D related games since 3.0 pulled new people into the game.Weirdly enough I don't hate them per se.
I hate when they want.to play their way when I am GMing and it is specifically not a Mathfinder situation - to wit, roleplay. I have days where I want to roll dice and hack and slash, but it isn't always the mood.
I prefer the math be brought to bear in esoteric was that make me laugh before I issue forth a FFS and take everything off the rails.
No, its not a rollplay/roleplay false dichotomy elitism thing.
Its that I remember when Manuals, wishes, heck, magic items and boons in general were special rewards, not things that you were entitled too like level based stat increases or getting more HP or skill points when you level.
You do not just get +5 to a stat from wishes because you leveled up. You may encounter magic to get you inherent stat boosts, but you and not fsckig entitled to it!
You DO realize that a Wizard of 17th level or higher IS entitled to it, right?
At level 17 he gets 2 spells of up to 9th level of his choice in his Spellbook. Do you know what else he has [barring an archetype that traded it out]?
Scribe Scroll
So yes, a 17th level wizard doesn't have enough spells per day to Wish an Ability Score up by 5 points, but he does have the resources [assuming the GM gives him the time (and a certain amount of downtime is expected), and each such scroll only takes 4 days to craft and costs the Wizard less than 2,000 gold more than the base cost of the Wishes to do so] to create the two scrolls [three if he doesn't have a Bonded Object] to do so.

thegreenteagamer |
4 people marked this as a favorite. |

All this back and forth about the veteran concept and it's viability or lack thereof, and I'm still wondering why these people are so dang attached to their concepts (or phenomenally, remarkably, ridiculously uncreative that they cannot think of anything else) where they're willing to pitch a fit over it instead of pulling another one out of their hat and moving on instead of bogging down yourself and the GM fighting about making something more viable.
How bloody uncreative can you be where you grab one idea and hold onto it for dear life, trying desperately to bang that square peg into the round hole of Pathfinder when there are so many round pegs sitting within reach?
As I said before - billions of possible concepts.

DrDeth |

DrDeth wrote:Start with 18, add 2 from race and 5 from levels and 5 from wishes =30+6 item=36kyrt-ryder wrote:In a 1-20 game [incredibly rare though they may be] your primary stat gets +5 Inherent Bonus from Manuals/Tomes or Wishes. This stacks with the actual increases from levels.
At level 20 your bog standard Wizard has between a 34 and 36 Intelligence, assuming they started with at least an 18. A 17 will never reach 34.
Start with 18, add 5 from levels and 5 from wishes= 28 +6 item= 34
Start with 17, add 5 from levels and 5 from wishes= 27 +6 item= 33How do you get 36??
Then they started with a 20, not a 18.

thejeff |
All this back and forth about the veteran concept and it's viability or lack thereof, and I'm still wondering why these people are so dang attached to their concepts (or phenomenally, remarkably, ridiculously uncreative that they cannot think of anything else) where they're willing to pitch a fit over it instead of pulling another one out of their hat and moving on instead of bogging down yourself and the GM fighting about making something more viable.
How bloody uncreative can you be where you grab one idea and hold onto it for dear life, trying desperately to bang that square peg into the round hole of Pathfinder when there are so many round pegs sitting within reach?
As I said before - billions of possible concepts.
You know, I'm normally on that side, but I see this as something different. This is a concept that PF as a whole doesn't do well, but is better supported in other systems.

kyrt-ryder |
kyrt-ryder wrote:Then they started with a 20, not a 18.DrDeth wrote:Start with 18, add 2 from race and 5 from levels and 5 from wishes =30+6 item=36kyrt-ryder wrote:In a 1-20 game [incredibly rare though they may be] your primary stat gets +5 Inherent Bonus from Manuals/Tomes or Wishes. This stacks with the actual increases from levels.
At level 20 your bog standard Wizard has between a 34 and 36 Intelligence, assuming they started with at least an 18. A 17 will never reach 34.
Start with 18, add 5 from levels and 5 from wishes= 28 +6 item= 34
Start with 17, add 5 from levels and 5 from wishes= 27 +6 item= 33How do you get 36??
That's exactly what I said, a Wizard who started with at least an 18 would have between 34 and 36 at level 20 [depending on whether they started with 18/19 or 20.]

TheAlicornSage |

According to the skills, normal humans are never more than lvl 5, with lvl 5 being but a handful in several billion people, lvl 5 being Einsteins. But somehow, not all aspects of the game match this perfectly, but considering that few people ever reach lvl4, why do players insist that a veteran must be high lvl?
Gandalf was lvl 5, even accounting all his spells were third spell lvl and lower, and I can't rightly stat him higher on other fronts. Most of those soldiers in those armies were lvl 1s and 2s. Why can't they be considered veterans if they survive?

kyrt-ryder |
According to the skills, normal humans are never more than lvl 5, with lvl 5 being but a handful in several billion people, lvl 5 being Einsteins. But somehow, not all aspects of the game match this perfectly, but considering that few people ever reach lvl4, why do players insist that a veteran must be high lvl?
Gandalf was lvl 5, even accounting all his spells were third spell lvl and lower, and I can't rightly stat him higher on other fronts. Most of those soldiers in those armies were lvl 1s and 2s. Why can't they be considered veterans if they survive?
It's because Experience Points are presented as a representation of a character's Experience in Challenging Encounters.
This concept is a bit stronger in PF than it was even in 3.5, because there's nothing that spends Experience Points.
The fact is true that the vast majority of people are level 1 with the vast majority of those left being level 2, but that's not the expectation most people have of the game world.
I had a bit of a chuckle earlier when somebody (probably in another thread) suggested an army of 1,000 level 8 Fighters... and couldn't help but wonder if the world they were discussing had a single government to be able to put together an army like that.

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Krensky wrote:Cranky Bastard wrote:Krensky wrote:Confession: I hate the entitled number crunching b*&!!$%~ that seems to have infected D&D related games since 3.0 pulled new people into the game.Weirdly enough I don't hate them per se.
I hate when they want.to play their way when I am GMing and it is specifically not a Mathfinder situation - to wit, roleplay. I have days where I want to roll dice and hack and slash, but it isn't always the mood.
I prefer the math be brought to bear in esoteric was that make me laugh before I issue forth a FFS and take everything off the rails.
No, its not a rollplay/roleplay false dichotomy elitism thing.
Its that I remember when Manuals, wishes, heck, magic items and boons in general were special rewards, not things that you were entitled too like level based stat increases or getting more HP or skill points when you level.
You do not just get +5 to a stat from wishes because you leveled up. You may encounter magic to get you inherent stat boosts, but you and not fsckig entitled to it!
You DO realize that a Wizard of 17th level or higher IS entitled to it, right?
At level 17 he gets 2 spells of up to 9th level of his choice in his Spellbook. Do you know what else he has [barring an archetype that traded it out]?
Scribe Scroll
So yes, a 17th level wizard doesn't have enough spells per day to Wish an Ability Score up by 5 points, but he does have the resources [assuming the GM gives him the time (and a certain amount of downtime is expected), and each such scroll only takes 4 days to craft and costs the Wizard less than 2,000 gold more than the base cost of the Wishes to do so] to create the two scrolls [three if he doesn't have a Bonded Object] to do so.
I constantly forget how completely the devs failed at recognizing and fixing the problems with 3.5. Not only did they not fix the major issues, they typically made them worse.

thejeff |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
According to the skills, normal humans are never more than lvl 5, with lvl 5 being but a handful in several billion people, lvl 5 being Einsteins. But somehow, not all aspects of the game match this perfectly, but considering that few people ever reach lvl4, why do players insist that a veteran must be high lvl?
Gandalf was lvl 5, even accounting all his spells were third spell lvl and lower, and I can't rightly stat him higher on other fronts. Most of those soldiers in those armies were lvl 1s and 2s. Why can't they be considered veterans if they survive?
I love it when people present opinions like this as facts. "According to the skills" - According to the skills, the vast majority of people in the real world can't be written up in PF rules because skills (other than combat skills, which aren't skills in PF) don't have the slightest link to combat ability or getting tougher or any of the other things linked to level in PF. Any comparisons break completely at that point.
The same with Gandalf. He's not a PF character. He only casts spells that seem vaguely like third level or lower, so he must be low level. OTOH, he solos a Balrog, but since he's low level it must be weak too, despite being enough to drive all the dwarves out of Moria. The same with the other characters - we know they're low level, so the soldiers they fight must all have been low level too.

thejeff |
Gandalf is an odd duck as far as levels go.
He's not really a classed PC or NPC, he's basically a Solar who's been forbidden to unleash his full power.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I'd do if I had to port him to PF. Which I would only do under great protest. LotR magic doesn't port over to PF's ultra-high fantasy well, IMO.
Whatever he is though, he's not 5th level. Or CR 5, if you want to think of him that way.

kyrt-ryder |
Rynjin wrote:Gandalf is an odd duck as far as levels go.
He's not really a classed PC or NPC, he's basically a Solar who's been forbidden to unleash his full power.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I'd do if I had to port him to PF. Which I would only do under great protest. LotR magic doesn't port over to PF's ultra-high fantasy well, IMO.
Whatever he is though, he's not 5th level. Or CR 5, if you want to think of him that way.
He's fundamentally a GMPC, he has whatever powers he needs to have, whenever he needs it in order to push the story and make sure the party doesn't deviate from the plan.

thejeff |
thejeff wrote:He's fundamentally a GMPC, he has whatever powers he needs to have, whenever he needs it in order to push the story and make sure the party doesn't deviate from the plan.Rynjin wrote:Gandalf is an odd duck as far as levels go.
He's not really a classed PC or NPC, he's basically a Solar who's been forbidden to unleash his full power.
Yeah, that's pretty much what I'd do if I had to port him to PF. Which I would only do under great protest. LotR magic doesn't port over to PF's ultra-high fantasy well, IMO.
Whatever he is though, he's not 5th level. Or CR 5, if you want to think of him that way.
To a certain extent, yes. As does pretty much any character in any book ever.
Tolkien was pretty fair about it though. He stayed pretty consistent. Few "hat out of a rabbit" moments.You could argue just as well that Conan was pretty much a GMPC as well, just tough and skilled enough for whatever was needed to push the story.

thegreenteagamer |

thegreenteagamer wrote:You know, I'm normally on that side, but I see this as something different. This is a concept that PF as a whole doesn't do well, but is better supported in other systems.All this back and forth about the veteran concept and it's viability or lack thereof, and I'm still wondering why these people are so dang attached to their concepts (or phenomenally, remarkably, ridiculously uncreative that they cannot think of anything else) where they're willing to pitch a fit over it instead of pulling another one out of their hat and moving on instead of bogging down yourself and the GM fighting about making something more viable.
How bloody uncreative can you be where you grab one idea and hold onto it for dear life, trying desperately to bang that square peg into the round hole of Pathfinder when there are so many round pegs sitting within reach?
As I said before - billions of possible concepts.
I agree, which is why I don't play Pathfinder exclusively. If you look over my message history, you'll find I'm a big proponent of finding a system that fits your needs instead of b****ing about the one you play and trying to homebrew it so much that it's no longer even the same game. I like Pathfinder, and I use it for what it does well, switching games when I want to do something different. I'm not some computer with a limited hard drive space capable of only installing and learning so many systems, so why should I act like Paizo built some kind of exclusivity clause into its game?

Rynjin |

After fiddling with it a bit, I think Mutants and Masterminds is a better game than Pathfinder in many, many ways. Unfortunately both the game I tried to run for it, and the game I tried to play in both died.
I still like Pathfinder though. It does many things well, even if it does just as many poorly.

thegreenteagamer |

After fiddling with it a bit, I think Mutants and Masterminds is a better game than Pathfinder in many, many ways. Unfortunately both the game I tried to run for it, and the game I tried to play in both died.
I still like Pathfinder though. It does many things well, even if it does just as many poorly.
Reflavoring M&M can indeed make a d20 based game of almost anything which is quite well balanced.
I am a huge Savage Worlds proponent.
I find getting a good group with a history of sticking together and introducing and proposing a new system with a proven GM works nicely, Rynjin. My group is gonna be playing SW as soon as we finish Kingmaker...I've already wrangled 4/5 players to the idea.

thegreenteagamer |

I got some of my old group to start playing M&M, but half of them disappeared and the other half (the ones in my Skull and Shackles and Carrion Crown games) kinda lost the motivation to play.
What's Savage Worlds like?
More importantly, how free is it?
It's about 10$ for the physical book, so I imagine the PDF would be cheap. It's a very simple rules set, and everything is purposefully generic for you to fill in with your own flavor. I cannot emphasize enough how fast it is - my old Pathfinder group got about 2-3 combats done in an 8 hour session at low to mid levels - that same group knocks out 3-4 in half the time. It's really interesting, the progression isn't so exponential. A first level character can get really lucky and kill a 20th, but it's really unlikely; but it isn't impossible. The exploding dice and wound system give it a real gritty edge, but the bennies (luck points basically) give you a real edge. It's made to emulate pulp action settings best.

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I'm not sure if it's free yet the core can be bought for a small price:
http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Worlds-Deluxe-Explorers-S2P10016/dp/1937013200 /ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436237903&sr=1-1&keywords= savage+worlds+explorer
The only difference between the Hardcover and the Explorer edition is one is a hardcover. The other a digest sized book.

thegreenteagamer |

It would take some conversion. Everything is by square, not foot...and all dice explode, or reroll and add upon maximum result ad infinitum. Positioning counts for a lot, as ganging up is a +1 to all rolls per character adjacent to the target to a certain maximum, I forget how much. It's very battle-mat oriented. It still does well with non combat stuff, though.

kyrt-ryder |
It would take some conversion. Everything is by square, not foot...and all dice explode, or reroll and add upon maximum result ad infinitum. Positioning counts for a lot, as ganging up is a +1 to all rolls per character adjacent to the target to a certain maximum, I forget how much. It's very battle-mat oriented. It still does well with non combat stuff, though.
This is actually a bit less mat-oriented than the flanking rules Pathfinder uses.

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I agree, which is why I don't play Pathfinder exclusively. If you look over my message history, you'll find I'm a big proponent of finding a system that fits your needs instead of b****ing about the one you play and trying to homebrew it so much that it's no longer even the same game. I like Pathfinder, and I use it for what it does well, switching games when I want to do something different. I'm not some computer with a limited hard drive space capable of only installing and learning so many systems, so why should I act like Paizo built some kind of exclusivity clause into its game?
It's because D&D/PF are the giants of the industry. Folks find it hard to branch out and find players for systems outside the industry leaders. So they want to the big dog to fit their needs exclusively. Its a cause of much aggravation for the playerbase and e.war unfortunately. Using the alternatives is a task many folks just aren't willing to take on and accept.

TheAlicornSage |

TheAlicornSage wrote:According to the skills, normal humans are never more than lvl 5, with lvl 5 being but a handful in several billion people, lvl 5 being Einsteins. But somehow, not all aspects of the game match this perfectly, but considering that few people ever reach lvl4, why do players insist that a veteran must be high lvl?
Gandalf was lvl 5, even accounting all his spells were third spell lvl and lower, and I can't rightly stat him higher on other fronts. Most of those soldiers in those armies were lvl 1s and 2s. Why can't they be considered veterans if they survive?
I love it when people present opinions like this as facts. "According to the skills" - According to the skills, the vast majority of people in the real world can't be written up in PF rules because skills (other than combat skills, which aren't skills in PF) don't have the slightest link to combat ability or getting tougher or any of the other things linked to level in PF. Any comparisons break completely at that point.
The same with Gandalf. He's not a PF character. He only casts spells that seem vaguely like third level or lower, so he must be low level. OTOH, he solos a Balrog, but since he's low level it must be weak too, despite being enough to drive all the dwarves out of Moria. The same with the other characters - we know they're low level, so the soldiers they fight must all have been low level too.
Compare the numbers to the real world, for example, take the long jump rules and compare to olympic records. That is how skills can be compared to real world. Is the system perfect? No, but it is designed to go from average person past supernatural and into the realm of demigods, yet so many players go "It has twenty levels, therefore in every setting level twenty must be acheivable!" That statement is false. A system can be designed to cover a wide variety of possibilities, not to mention that gods exist which could raise their champions far beyond the mortal norm and having that can handle that is a good thing, until players take that height of power as normal.
It is kinda like spike damage vs normal damage. Casters are supposed to be spike damage, but once players treat that spike damage as normal damage, then normal becomes seen as weak and pathetic.
Likewise, when players start seeing epic lvl 20 as merely heroic lvl 20, the entire scale gets out of whack and starts causing problems as suddenly you have warriors in full plate jumping three times as far as olympic champions and wondering why it doesn't match.
Granted, real world people have more versatility, a broader range of skills than the game, but that doesn't make the skills all that wrong either.

thegreenteagamer |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Confession, I like Savage Worlds and the various settings including The Savage World of My Little Pony, but I still don't have the core book (aside from the beta test.)
Knowing this exists, I like it a bit less than I did five minutes ago. A considerable amount less if it's official and not one of the tons of fan conversions.

bookrat |

All this back and forth about the veteran concept and it's viability or lack thereof, and I'm still wondering why these people are so dang attached to their concepts (or phenomenally, remarkably, ridiculously uncreative that they cannot think of anything else) where they're willing to pitch a fit over it instead of pulling another one out of their hat and moving on instead of bogging down yourself and the GM fighting about making something more viable.
How bloody uncreative can you be where you grab one idea and hold onto it for dear life, trying desperately to bang that square peg into the round hole of Pathfinder when there are so many round pegs sitting within reach?
As I said before - billions of possible concepts.
Well, sometimes I like to play me. :)

TheAlicornSage |

TheAlicornSage wrote:Confession, I like Savage Worlds and the various settings including The Savage World of My Little Pony, but I still don't have the core book (aside from the beta test.)Knowing this exists, I like it a bit less than I did five minutes ago. A considerable amount less if it's official and not one of the tons of fan conversions.
Don't worry, it is unofficial. Has some interesting mechanics for non combat resolutions to conflict and balancing spellcasters with unlimited spellcasting against noncasters.

Tormsskull |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I cannot emphasize enough how fast it is - my old Pathfinder group got about 2-3 combats done in an 8 hour session at low to mid levels - that same group knocks out 3-4 in half the time.
If you're looking to speed game play up, I'd have to throw in a recommendation for 5th edition D&D not using a battle map. Theater of the mind combat took a little while for my group to get used to, but we now regularly get through 3-4 times as much content per session than we did with Pathfinder.
I sometimes miss all of the fiddly bits of Pathfinder (scouring through numerous races and numerous classes and finding fun combinations,) but for the purpose of keeping the story moving and getting things done, 5th edition has been a breath of fresh air.

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If you really need to play MLP: The RPG, use the right damn tool.
Golden Sky Stories even has a pony conversion document.
Failing that, FATE. Or Fiasco. One or the other
This is exactly what GURPS was created for -- a rule system that could be used for any genre. Back in the day, Steve Jackson was a licensing fool and their seemed to be a world book for every sf book of note. GURPS Uplift. GURPS Discworld. GURPS Wild Cards. GURPS For Love of Freaking Mother-Not. In a truly weird bit of recursion, I actually played a game of GURPS Mage:the Ascension.
It would be trivial to cobble together GURPS Ponies, if someone hasn't already done so. That would be my advice.
Although there is nothing wrong with Ponyfinder.

Randarak |
8 people marked this as a favorite. |

I've been playing RPGs for over 30 years, and I have NEVER encountered (or even heard of) a lot of the concepts, arguments, and controversies that apparently exist amongst (between) various gamers (or groups of gamers) until I started reading these forums....
...and I still don't understand what the big deal is about most of said concepts, arguments, and controversies...

Cranky Bastard |

Krensky wrote:If you really need to play MLP: The RPG, use the right damn tool.
Golden Sky Stories even has a pony conversion document.
Failing that, FATE. Or Fiasco. One or the other
This is exactly what GURPS was created for -- a rule system that could be used for any genre. Back in the day, Steve Jackson was a licensing fool and their seemed to be a world book for every sf book of note. GURPS Uplift. GURPS Discworld. GURPS Wild Cards. GURPS For Love of Freaking Mother-Not. In a truly weird bit of recursion, I actually played a game of GURPS Mage:the Ascension.
It would be trivial to cobble together GURPS Ponies, if someone hasn't already done so. That would be my advice.
Although there is nothing wrong with Ponyfinder.
Confession du moment: I actually vastly prefer oWoD played with GURPS to playing in its own system.

DungeonmasterCal |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

If you're looking to speed game play up, I'd have to throw in a recommendation for 5th edition D&D not using a battle map. Theater of the mind combat took a little while for my group to get used to, but we now regularly get through 3-4 times as much content per session than we did with Pathfinder.
I cut my teeth in the 80s on theater of the mind, and to this day we prefer it over using a battle mat.

Goth Guru |

I consider constructive criticism = making a mountain out of a molehill.
Does the player actually sicken others nearby, like a ghast?
Is the overweight person actually breaking the chairs?
If not, the jokes had better be funny or I'm making jokes about you!
Like, "Your opinion stinks worse!" or "Healthy body image, look it up."

bookrat |

I've been playing RPGs for over 30 years, and I have NEVER encountered (or even heard of) a lot of the concepts, arguments, and controversies that apparently exist amongst (between) various gamers (or groups of gamers) until I started reading these forums....
...and I still don't understand what the big deal is about most of said concepts, arguments, and controversies...
I've been playing this game for 25 years, and I have experienced quite a bit of it. Much of it I didn't even know there were debates and controversies over them until I read the forums and saw that other people had experienced the same things I did.
Which ones have you never seen?

Randarak |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Which ones have you never seen?
Well, let's see, just for some examples of arguments/controversies/concepts that I never really experienced or knew about:
Martial characters are weak.
That ANY class is broken.
Player's being outraged by not being able to play a particular character in the GM's game.
DPR=I never played with anybody that took the time to calculate it
People not using experience points
The sheer, unadulterated venom towards paladins
The so-called Stormwind fallacy
This is just off of the top of my head. I'm sure I could come up with a notebook of others if I did the research...

knightnday |

To be fair, many of them turn up but usually in a much more diluted form than you might find on the Internet, which tends to blow things up to Godzilla-like proportions.
You might not play with someone who calculates DPR, but they grouse about doing less damage or someone else doing more or what weapon might be better.