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The paths also seemed to work well in character generation during the pre-alpha demos for friends & family. Nobody dealt with any charts or graphs or had to see a specific page. They just added some numbers together and kept moving.
An example of building a character in d20 legends.
Generation
We buy a 15, 13, and 14 for our starting ability scores.
We begin with a base of 6 HP, and 2 skill points (like a commoner*).
Level 1
We get to take our first path. We choose martial gaining 7 HP, 1 BAB, and 6 skill points. Our MAB is 0.5. We have a 0 MAB for determining our magic.
We buy some skills using our skill points.
Our base defenses are Fort 13, Ref 12, Will 13.
We pick a magic tradition (spellcasting) and make him a spontaneous caster. He selects 4 spells (what out MAB of 0 allows us) so we take flame blade, ignite, flare, and shield.
We gain a talent to buy our class with. We select "Conjurer" and get some stuff associated with conjuration wizards (let's say a +2 on Concentration checks when casting conjuration spells).
We feat. We pick a feat that gives something like "You apply only half your armor check penalties when making a Concentration check". We buy him some chainmail (medium armor) and a shield.
We're done. We name our custom class "Knight of Ignis". He hits stuff with a uses fire magics.
Level 2
We continue on the martial path. We add the mods in.
We now have BAB +2. We gain +1d6 damage on attack damage.
We now have MAB +1. That means we get a new spell known (we pick mending).
We have Fort 14, Ref 13, Will 14 now.
We spend our new skill points.
We gain another talent. We invest it into Conjurer again, picking up another conjuration perk: Now we get a +2 bonus on our magic attack rolls with conjuration spells.
We're done.
Etcetera, etcetera.
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Even Halo is rather well known as proving that good story can told in an fps game, but first, you forgot that social part, second, Halo can be called roleplaying (since it is where you are playing the role of a character), but at the same time, games like Halo or even Mass Effect tend to actually be flipping back and forth between game and story, which often happens but doesn't need to happen around the table (see my example earlier about traps being a point of rp vs being a dice roll speed bump).
That seems very disingenuous since by that definition everything from Super Mario Brothers to Pacman is a roleplaying game. As would pretty much every RTS game (you're taking the role of all those little zerglings man). The weird playstation game where you play a mosquito trying to suck blood from people without getting swatted would be a roleplaying game. Very little wouldn't be.
"...yes it does shift them unpredictably? I even showed how:your powerboost can differ from the original by 2.32 or 0.64 times(in case of a +/-5) depending on your current base number."
Current base number in this case is called the DC, or the opposing check result.
To take something from the Alexandrian, the book might give you a DC for a 2 inch ledge, but the gm is still setting the dc, they set it by picking the 2 inch ledge vs the 4 inch ledge.
Same case here, the gm picks what opponents are faced, wjat condition those opponents are in, what items or equipment they have, how well the opponents use what is available, etc.
More than that, everything that applies to players also applies to monsters. PCs already outperform monsters, and this doesn't change that. If you don't want the pcd to outshine monsters, then you'd need to adjust anyway, and this just makes you change a bit further left. Certainly not more difficult than doing that in the first place.
Furthermore, as characters go up in level, the spread between highest and lowest potential values grows quickly, thus modules and things need to be designed to handled a wide range of possible attack values and that just grows as level goes up.
To start, attack values from -2 to +5 must be viable at a minimum. This range grows considerably and by 5th, that range has doubled or so.
You keep looking at a tiny part of the equation in a vacuum, a roll and DC. You are ignoring all the factors in play that make things viable for play regardless of how easy/hard it is to make any one particular DC.
The system already needs to handle characters with low bonuses and high bonuses at the same time, thus it is already set to easily handle bell curves.
I've played it. Your isolated statistics experiment does not invalidate the experience from actually doing it.
Furthermore, the number 1 warning going into statistics is that statistics are extremely easy to say whatever you want. What factors are included, how are they categorized, what is the reliability of sources, what is question being asked, etc, all can vastly affect the outcome of the statistics.
In this case, you are isolating a single element from an entire system and expecting your statistics to be valid for the whole system. I believe it is the Buddhists when asked a yes/no question might also respond with "wrong question." Your statistics question is wrong, thus your results are wrong.
"Ever heard of taking 10?"
Since when would taking 10 change from moving to a bell curve?
">Additionally, the designers saw fit to put this variant in the Unearthed Arcana book.
Heh, that's a good one. Were they the same designers who thought that a weapon cord could be approximated by a mouse cord?"
Nope. Unearthed Arcana was 3.x hayday put out by by wotc before they went insane. Written by individuals who did loads of the 1pp 3.x books.
"Exactly as your intuition, honed by throwing objects inside an atmosphere for thousands of years, would have told you."
Did you forget all the years of dropping objects off leaning towers and balconies to watch things hit the ground at the same time? Far more reliable than mere implications from watching a single object.
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">RPGs are the only kind of game that can be all about the story.
Still making sweeping statements that only take one counterexample to disprove, eh? Well, here you go:a game that is all about the story without being about role-playing. There are others like it(Stanley's parable, for example), but it's the first one that came to mind."
Both of those are roleplaying games so far as I can tell from my rather sucky google fu.
Even Halo is rather well known as proving that good story can told in an fps game, but first, you forgot that social part, second, Halo can be called roleplaying (since it is where you are playing the role of a character), but at the same time, games like Halo or even Mass Effect tend to actually be flipping back and forth between game and story, which often happens but doesn't need to happen around the table (see my example earlier about traps being a point of rp vs being a dice roll speed bump).
In any case, all of them are games of you playing a character, hence roleplaying game (since apparently everyone else wants roleplaying games to mean a very broad selection of just about any game of playing characters.) and therefore you have not disproved anything with this.
Still, I included the social aspect for a reason, and in terms of what is or is not included in my comment, that really narrows things quite considerably.
>since it is where you are playing the role of a character
So your original point was "Games where you are playing the role of some character are the only kind of games that can be all about the story."? Considering that that is ~all games, we can simplify it to "All games are the only kind of games that can be all about the story.".
Well, yes, that is correct. Fat load of good that sort of definition does to your point though.
>It is rather pointless. It would be like trying to mix chess and flux (the card game). In theory it could be done, but it wouldn't be very good.
One of my most favourite games is Puzzle Quest, which mixes match-3(like in candy crush) and RPG mechanics. Another example of mixed mechanics I rather liked was Gwent/Gwynt in Witcher 3:collectable card game mixed with an open-world RPG. Point is, you can't know that mixing something with something else will be any good or not until you actually try to do it.
"You complain a bit lower (I'm getting to that) about fractions of 0.5, but at the same time you suggest that Hp should be a direct derivative of 1/2 Con score with a feat to increase to 3/4 Con score, multiplied by the character's level? What? O.o"
First, I didn't complain about fractions, I just had an idea for dealing with them since I've met one or two that had issues. (oh and there is reason people count whole cents and not 1/2, 1/4, 1/10, 1/20, and 1/100 of a dollar.)
My hp suggestion follows quite well with tje original hp growth. Figured if you didn't like it, then maybe it'd still potentially spark a good idea.
Personally I'd never go with growing hp like that, but then in creating my own system, I was never tempted to remain in the same ballpark as d20. I am actually amused at how easy the conversion is to my system since I didn't keep such, what is in my opinion, ridiculousness.
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"Exactly as your intuition, honed by throwing objects inside an atmosphere for thousands of years, would have told you."
Did you forget all the years of dropping objects off leaning towers and balconies to watch things hit the ground at the same time? Far more reliable than mere implications from watching a single object.
If you have objections to my physics, show me your equations. If you don't have any, kindly stop saying things which aren't true. Yes, this is a thing, but you need a vacuum chamber costing ...a lot... for that to be true. If there is air, it is, unsurprisingly, not true, and heavier objects(such as a lead ball) fall faster than lighter objects(such as a ping-pong ball).
The paths are in essence another layer of classes, by whatever other name you choose to use for them.
Classes have an advantage in making character creation quicker and easier, but also a disadvantage in limiting flexibility.*
In any case, I was just being curious about led you to choosing another layer of class vs alternatives.
*Some people like the simplicity of apple devices and either don't care about the lack of flexibility and tinkering, or are willing to sacrifice those things to get the ease of apple. But then you have on the other side of that. I like to at least attempt to understand some parts of the opposing perspective and thinking, to improve my own designs. Still useful despite my being on the other side.
Even Halo is rather well known as proving that good story can told in an fps game, but first, you forgot that social part, second, Halo can be called roleplaying (since it is where you are playing the role of a character), but at the same time, games like Halo or even Mass Effect tend to actually be flipping back and forth between game and story, which often happens but doesn't need to happen around the table (see my example earlier about traps being a point of rp vs being a dice roll speed bump).That seems very disingenuous since by that definition everything from Super Mario Brothers to Pacman is a roleplaying game. As would pretty much every RTS game (you're taking the role of all those little zerglings man). The weird playstation game where you play a mosquito trying to suck blood from people without getting swatted would be a roleplaying game. Very little wouldn't be.
Depends really. Do your choices affect the outcome of the story, and is the character an actual character?
Also, I prefer a narrower definition, but folks try to burn me as a witch if I even so much as suggest it, and seems that most think of something as an rpg if you play a character through anything more than the most threadbare of a story.
But in any case, rpgs around the table have the story truly develop according to the players, while games like Halo or Mario are playing with snippets of a static and predetermined story. Mass Effect and similar will sometimes have a few branching paths, but in the end, they are all predetermined.
A ttrpg, can 100% avoid predetermined story in a way no other game can, but it still remains perfectly capable of doing what every other game does and follow predetermined script snippets interspersed with gameplay that has only trappings but no story.
Besides, I was comparing to actual other types of games, boardgames, cardgames, etc.
Roleplaying is something beyond rules or systems, so it can be combined with any type of game, but any game that has it, is an rpg of sorts.
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The paths are in essence another layer of classes, by whatever other name you choose to use for them.
Classes have an advantage in making character creation quicker and easier, but also a disadvantage in limiting flexibility.*
In any case, I was just being curious about led you to choosing another layer of class vs alternatives.
*Some people like the simplicity of apple devices and either don't care about the lack of flexibility and tinkering, or are willing to sacrifice those things to get the ease of apple. But then you have on the other side of that. I like to at least attempt to understand some parts of the opposing perspective and thinking, to improve my own designs. Still useful despite my being on the other side.
>I was just being curious about led you to choosing another layer of class vs alternatives.
My guess would be decoupling BaB and HP progression from class features, thus allowing for a decrease in the total number of classes without losing flexibility("Full Nature caster with 0.5 BaB", "0.75 nature caster with 0.75 BaB" and "0.5 nature caster with full BaB" all collapse into one class, say, "druid".). Decrease in the total number of classes is desirable because it makes picking the one you need easier, and reduces the amount of information a player has to take in when being introduced to a new class.
I imagine that was also the reasoning behind leaving magic tradition selection up to the player(I think that was implied at some point?).
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To Ashiel: in your homebrew setting(Alvena was the name, I believe), how technologically advanced is the world?
"One of my most favourite games is Puzzle Quest, which mixes match-3(like in candy crush) and RPG mechanics. Another example of mixed mechanics I rather liked was Gwent/Gwynt in Witcher 3:collectable card game mixed with an open-world RPG. Point is, you can't know that mixing something with something else will be any good or not until you actually try to do it.?"
Wow, the point flew so far over your head.
Your response was about mechanics. Mechanics have nothing, not a thing, to do with it.
I used chess for example, because chess is a serious game of strategy. You don't play chess to laugh and joke rather than think about the game.
Likewise, you don't play fluxx to get all intellectually serious and deep and prove your strategic thinking as superior.
Fluxx could be played serious, but then you'd find needing to quote monty python in a silly pirate voice to be counter to the seriousness.
Likewise, you could try to play chess laughing amd joking, but the constant need to actually think and ponder the next move dampens the free flow of hilarity.
Thus, chess is not the best option for a beer and pretzels game, and fluxx is not the best at a serious worldwide competition.
If you have objections to my physics, show me your equations. If you don't have any, kindly stop saying things which aren't true. Yes, this is a thing, but you need a vacuum chamber costing ...a lot... for that to be true. If there is air, it is, unsurprisingly, not true, and heavier objects(such as a lead ball) fall faster than lighter objects(such as a ping-pong ball)."Exactly as your intuition, honed by throwing objects inside an atmosphere for thousands of years, would have told you."
Did you forget all the years of dropping objects off leaning towers and balconies to watch things hit the ground at the same time? Far more reliable than mere implications from watching a single object.
???
You just showed a video proving me right, then say I'm wrong?
I think I'm just lost on what you are trying to say.
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"One of my most favourite games is Puzzle Quest, which mixes match-3(like in candy crush) and RPG mechanics. Another example of mixed mechanics I rather liked was Gwent/Gwynt in Witcher 3:collectable card game mixed with an open-world RPG. Point is, you can't know that mixing something with something else will be any good or not until you actually try to do it.?"
Wow, the point flew so far over your head.
Your response was about mechanics. Mechanics have nothing, not a thing, to do with it.
I used chess for example, because chess is a serious game of strategy. You don't play chess to laugh and joke rather than think about the game.
Likewise, you don't play fluxx to get all intellectually serious and deep and prove your strategic thinking as superior.
Fluxx could be played serious, but then you'd find needing to quote monty python in a silly pirate voice to be counter to the seriousness.
Likewise, you could try to play chess laughing amd joking, but the constant need to actually think and ponder the next move dampens the free flow of hilarity.
Thus, chess is not the best option for a beer and pretzels game, and fluxx is not the best at a serious worldwide competition.
>Your response was about mechanics.
My response was about mixing different kinds of games with radically different audiences together. CCG is absolutely unlike an open-world RPG. Feel is different, thinking is different, everything is different. People who play open-world RPGs aren't more likely to play CCGs that the general populace, and vice-versa.
Yet here we are, with a sucessful example of a mix of the two.
>You don't play chess to laugh and joke rather than think about the game.
Googled "drunk chess". Found at least one example of a game that seemed quite conventionaly fun, with both players laughing and joking. It wasn't even hard, come on.
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To Ashiel: in your homebrew setting(Alvena was the name, I believe), how technologically advanced is the world?
Depends on where in the world you are for the most part, and how you go about measuring technological advancement. In a lot of ways their lifestyles would seem primitive since horses and such are still the primary mode of transportation, candles and such are the most common source of light, etc.
However, they have things like printing presses, and mages and archetechs pull things like golems and other ancient wonders (lets face it, most constructs in D&D are basically robots) up from dungeons, and reverse engineering has allowed people to rediscover the arts of making certain kinds of magic items.
While many facets of life seem primitive and not everything about the physical world is full understood, lots of communities - even small ones - make use of low level magical conveniences to provide things like town lighting (continual flames cast on the tops of lamp posts for instance) or running water (the systems for running water vary from place to place but it's not particularly uncommon to find people have a create water item built into their homes, or that the town has funded a sort of centralized well point with pipes or chutes leading to different points in a village.
There are still some remnants of the past age of wonders. There's still one great sky city that's still in orbit and houses some of the greatest libraries and technology in the world (where finding sentient constructs isn't very hard). Much of the draw to adventuring is exploring the ancient wonders of the last world to help rebuild after the apocalypse.
Traditional non-magical science has become a popular thing as well. Since magic became noticeably less commonplace after the demon wars (mostly due to the death tolls and loss of libraries, universities, etc), people have been looking for more mundane ways of achieving useful things. A minority of people even believe that magic was at the root of the apocalypse and so they've taken to shunning it and trying to convince others to do the same.
Then of course, there are a few places in the world who are more advanced on average that the rest. There's a nation that wasn't hit quite as hard by all the demonic invasion stuff and they've taken to converting the energy-generating powers of magic with mundane physics to do things like create steam boats.
So much like our own world, the level of tech and kinds of tech vary from place to place, blending bits by bits along trade routes and the like. You're more likely to see mixtures of different cultural advancements at trade cities and ports where people are coming and going and carrying their cool stuff with them.
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If you have objections to my physics, show me your equations. If you don't have any, kindly stop saying things which aren't true. Yes, this is a thing, but you need a vacuum chamber costing ...a lot... for that to be true. If there is air, it is, unsurprisingly, not true, and heavier objects(such as a lead ball) fall faster than lighter objects(such as a ping-pong ball)."Exactly as your intuition, honed by throwing objects inside an atmosphere for thousands of years, would have told you."
Did you forget all the years of dropping objects off leaning towers and balconies to watch things hit the ground at the same time? Far more reliable than mere implications from watching a single object.
???
You just showed a video proving me right, then say I'm wrong?
I think I'm just lost on what you are trying to say.
I showed a video of two objects falling in a vacuum. Before that, you said the following:
"First, dropping two objects of same air resistance but different mass are known to fall at the same rate (unless affected by forced magnetic fields which slows descent [only single source, supposedly was the last director of nasa])."
Which isn't true. Two objects with the same aerodynamic characteristics, but different masses, unaffected by any magnetic fields(situation described by you) will fall at different rates in an atmosphere. They will only fall at the same rate if there is no atmosphere. Such as in the video I have shown.
Same with this:"years of dropping objects off leaning towers and balconies to watch things hit the ground at the same time"
Two different objects dropped off a tower in an atmosphere will generally not hit the ground at the same time. Gallileo's tower of Piza experiment with dropping two balls made of different materials was a thought experiment ffs.
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Though continuing the thought, the vast majority of Alvena is actually wilderness and ruins so if we're talking in terms of like development as well, very low. Many of the countries, kingdoms, and so forth have fairly loose borders with small communities and stuff dotting the landscape. Countless cities were ruined in the demon wars, and the bastions of civilizations today are mostly grown from refugee villages at the end of the war.
It's a big world and much of it has been lost to history. You could wander down the road and find overgrown ruins out in the distance as readily as you could wildflowers. Often danger lurks in those places, but people will still go looking because of curiosity or the chance to bring back a treasure from the old world.
Some of "art" objects you might find may involve things like a few pounds of copper tubing and your odd silver contacts. Or you might get a kickass flaming sword covered in runes. Never know until you look. Watch out for hiding imps and wild critters though.
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Does the inclusion of an orbital city mean that there are rockets in Alvena?
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Does the inclusion of an orbital city mean that there are rockets in Alvena?
Not traditionally but it wouldn't take a whole lot to make a rocket in Alvena, magic being a thing. The sky cities aren't quite to the point where they're actually in space. They just hover over the planet's surface very high in the air and so the only practical way to reach them is via flight or teleportation.
Space exploration in a D&D universe would be a lot more practical than it is for us. Magic can provide a renewable source of energy and propellant, and there are a variety of low level spells or low to mid level magic items that would make space travel less horrific on the people inside, including but not limited to spells like...
Prestidigitation (disposes of waste)
Endure/Resist elements (makes most hot/cold fluctuations survivable)
Create food & water (solves feeding astronauts in space)
Various energy spells (can be used to produce fire without oxygen or electricity infinitely)
Bottle of Air (with a fan system drawing air out of the bottle continuously could provide an oxygen rich interior for a ship)
Necklace of adaptation would be good too.
Rope trick would provide a demiplane that had gravity where you could work out and avoid muscle deterioration.
Remove disease makes exploring less risky to your immune system.
Divination spells in general make plotting courses more practical.
And of course, huge amounts of the space-traveling stuff are completely circumvented by greater teleport since it works anywhere on the same plane of existence.
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I used chess for example, because chess is a serious game of strategy. You don't play chess to laugh and joke rather than think about the game.
This could be said about any game. I know some people who playing every game is "serious business". Meanwhile my sister and I joked and laughed while playing chess all the time.
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Meanwhile my sister and I joked and laughed while playing chess all the time.
Pretty much. I got bored of chess pretty quick when I realized the plays were fairly rote. Then I found this.
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Meanwhile my sister and I joked and laughed while playing chess all the time.Pretty much. I got bored of chess pretty quick when I realized the plays were fairly rote. Then I found this.
You should have heard the laughter when my Discord friends and I were playing Heroes of the Storm. Didn't matter if we were winning or losing, we were having a blast.
Meanwhile another friend of mine gets really tense if losing, to the point of shouting and being like "this match was horrible!"
Different strokes I guess. :)
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Meanwhile my sister and I joked and laughed while playing chess all the time.Pretty much. I got bored of chess pretty quick when I realized the plays were fairly rote. Then I found this.You should have heard the laughter when my Discord friends and I were playing Heroes of the Storm. Didn't matter if we were winning or losing, we were having a blast.
Meanwhile another friend of mine gets really tense if losing, to the point of shouting and being like "this match was horrible!"
Different strokes I guess. :)
Yeah know how both of those can go. That said HotS is so team based compared to other MOBA's that it's way easier for groups to do well.
I actually used to work on balancing for one of the first standalone MOBA's, HoN (Heroes of Newerth). It was purely a sorta fan thing that the devs allowed to do some things, but we held the devs to decisions and got to work on a patch, even if they refused to do a large portion of it :p. Frustrations with their methods and decisions eventually had our group fall apart though we still talk at times.
So I totally get the emotions that led to D20 Legends.
Chess n Fluxx
Kinda missing point. I know an earlier topic was about possible vs impossible, but this is a tangent from that topic and is not about possibilities, but rather how well opposing possibilities can be achieved with a single design.
For example, can you play football without getting tackled? Certainly possible, but the design of football isn't exactly built for it.
Back to chess, you can laugh while playing chess, but you'll nearly always be laughing at something else. Because chess is not built to incite laughter. Therefore it will never support a laughter filled session as well as Fluxx.
Fluxx likewise is built to incite laughter, and remaining serious while talking in various silly voices and quoting comedy is only for the most rigid of folks. Fluxx intentionally tries to get you to laugh, and therefore would never be a good choice for the kind of seriousness you'd find at a tournament with a million dollar top prize. (Such a tourny for such a game would probably make for a funny movie though)
Can chess be played while laughing? Yes, but it isn't made for it and won't incite it.
Thus, if you want a game to be about laughs, you'd make something more like Fluxx, and include elements designed to incite laughter.
One of the cons I went had a seminar about game design. The biggest piece of advice was "consider what you want a session of gameplay to look like, how you want the players to behave, what you want them to do. Make rules that reward such behavior."
So, a game that rewards silliness will be better for silliness tjan a game that doesn't, but more than that, seriousness actively counters silliness, so a game that rewards seriousness wil be even worse.
Trying to design a game that simultaneously rewards seriousness and silliness will never be as good at both of those things as games focusing on only one of those things because they are conflicting goals.
Likewise, ashiel's gamist centered philosophy and my philosophy are opposing. Trying to make a game that rewards both will never do as well at either.
One difference here though is that players of opposing philosophies in the same group can get quite unfun regardless of mechanics. Remember my story earlier about the group that kept getting angry at me for playing my character? Mechanics didn't cause that, but their desired style could be better achieved with mechanics focused on their philosophy, and my style could likewise be better achieved with other mechanics.
Trying to mix us in the same group didn't work, because I was trying to achieve something contrary to what they were trying to achieve.
Kinda like how in that gamers movie cass basically stormed out in a fit of rage because of what
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D20 Legends - Classes: I won't be commenting on any typos, or hold over text, just comments, observations and questions as I'm reading along in the classes chapter.
Alchemist: So an Alchemist gains True Alchemy, Concoctions, Biomancy, Bombs, and Mutagens all just for becoming an Alchemist right? They also advance with your total level, so just putting a single talent into Alchemist can be fairly rewarding, even if they won't be nearly as potent as someone who specializes as an Alchemist.
This is interesting, as it really helps with characters who practice alchemy as a "hobby" not feel like they wasted a talent during leveling.
Barbarian: I notice that Barbarians get rage powers every few levels, are these in addition to the talents they get? So a Barbarian could have some 10 rage powers, along with talents spent in another class? If so, a Rage Chemist (barbarian/alchemist) looks pretty fun!
Bard: I really like the force multiplier this bard is, but I notice the bards power caps out, at this point, at 12th level. The reason is Inspire Greatness increases your effective level for level dependant effects. Pick up Inspire Courage/Greatness/Heroics and the Epiphanies to match, along with the ability to maintain at least two of them. At 12th level, Inspire Greatness gives you +4 effective level, raising your Inspire abilities to 16th level, which puts you at the level cap. So at 12th level, you buff yourself to 16th level, and grant +5 to levels, attack, damage, AC, defenses, immunity to fear, and 25 temporary hp.
Bards pull lots of aggro huh?
Champions: Champions get a lot for a single level huh? I could easily see myself spending two talents, one for the class, and the other for greater channeling, with many builds. Really alleviates the need for healing.
Is it intentional that all champions are both negative and positive energy channelers? Will negative and positive energy be more of a "neutral" force, like elemental energy is? A bard with 2 talents spent in champion would be a Hell of an ally. Buff the Hell out of you, then clears mobs with channel energy, also heals as needed.
Rogues: Just to clarify, you reduce damage on your cunning strike when using staggering/blinding/bleeding talents before you multiply for attacking a flat-footed foe or for flanking them, right?
By the way... damn, rogues are just little murder machines huh?
Misc.
If a character multiclasses into two metaphysical classes, do they have two separate choices for casting methods and spell types? For example a spontaneous, psionic bard/prepared magical champion.
I thought you were merging "wizard" and "sorcerer" into a single class, but I notice both mage and sorcerer in the pdf?
Over all, I'm super excited for the design as i first see it. It looks like someone could have tons of fun with a huge variety of characters. It's also immediately obvious that you won't need to create tons of new classes either, just more talents and class choices.
The only major character type I don't see represented is "knight". Essentially, nonmagical warrior in heavy armor. I know you hate fighters, but I mean, mounted knights, traveling swordsman etc, exist in all types of fantasy.
How would you go about creating a heavy armored warrior that doesn't have to rely on falling into a rage, magic, or backstabbing people in D20 Legends? Sometimes people just want to play a "Fighter" but that option doesn't seem to be available. At least, not yet.
I gotta say, it's hard to try and ask the above question and avoid the stigma of the 3e/Pathfinder fighter. I mean, there are some things I like about the fighter, namely being able to wield a wide variety of weapons and do well with them without having to spend daily resources, but... I hate everything else.
Anyway, I've only read the "Classes - Alpha" part at this point; I'll get working on the other bits when I can. I'm really getting hyped for this. I think Legends is shaping up to have lots of potential.
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Likewise, ashiel's gamist centered philosophy and my philosophy are opposing. Trying to make a game that rewards both will never do as well at either.
I'm still confused as to what your philosophy actually is. I have struggled, frequently, to understand exactly what you are talking about. Much to my chagrin, each time I think I see what you mean or what you're talking about, you pose a metaphor or go in a direction which suplexes that like Zangief.
It's hard discussing any sort of opposing "philosophy" when I don't know what that philosophy is. It's been exceedingly difficult to make heads or tails of. And believe me, I've been trying.
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Incoming response for Tels...
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D20 Legends - Classes: I won't be commenting on any typos, or hold over text, just comments, observations and questions as I'm reading along in the classes chapter.
Alchemist: So an Alchemist gains True Alchemy, Concoctions, Biomancy, Bombs, and Mutagens all just for becoming an Alchemist right? They also advance with your total level, so just putting a single talent into Alchemist can be fairly rewarding, even if they won't be nearly as potent as someone who specializes as an Alchemist.
This is interesting, as it really helps with characters who practice alchemy as a "hobby" not feel like they wasted a talent during leveling.
That's correct. The alchemy shticks are all tied to the same resource, and the plan is to allow you to specialize and improve your alchemy abilities with talents.
Barbarian: I notice that Barbarians get rage powers every few levels, are these in addition to the talents they get? So a Barbarian could have some 10 rage powers, along with talents spent in another class? If so, a Rage Chemist (barbarian/alchemist) looks pretty fun!
Yes. The rage powers talent gives you a progression. So by investing 1 talent into it you get 5 over the course of your career, and a 2nd talent makes it 10.
Rogue tricks and alchemist discoveries will work in pretty much the same fashion.
Bard: I really like the force multiplier this bard is, but I notice the bards power caps out, at this point, at 12th level. The reason is Inspire Greatness increases your effective level for level dependant effects. Pick up Inspire Courage/Greatness/Heroics and the Epiphanies to match, along with the ability to maintain at least two of them. At 12th level, Inspire Greatness gives you +4 effective level, raising your Inspire abilities to 16th level, which puts you at the level cap. So at 12th level, you buff yourself to 16th level, and grant +5 to levels, attack, damage, AC, defenses, immunity to fear, and 25 temporary hp.
Bards pull lots of aggro huh?
Very. Not sure if I'll need to nerf them at all (I hope not, I kinda like 'em) but the general consensus is that if there is a bard in the party (or on the enemy team) he or she should keep their heads down. :P
Champions: Champions get a lot for a single level huh? I could easily see myself spending two talents, one for the class, and the other for greater channeling, with many builds. Really alleviates the need for healing.
Is it intentional that all champions are both negative and positive energy channelers? Will negative and positive energy be more of a "neutral" force, like elemental energy is? A bard with 2 talents spent in champion would be a Hell of an ally. Buff the Hell out of you, then clears mobs with channel energy, also heals as needed.
I've given some wonder if champions get a bit too much but it's not been an issue in the pre-alpha demos, and I knew I was going to end up heavily tweaking everything before it officially goes into Alpha so I'll worry mostly about it then. As is, yeah, they get some nice features right out of the gate. :)
And yes, positive/negative energy are unaligned, as are the planes they come from. They are essentially opposing elemental energies (life and unlife). Death is the lack of either force. They tend to cancel each other out, so applying negative energy to living creatures pushes them closer to death, and the reverse is true for undead.
Rogues: Just to clarify, you reduce damage on your cunning strike when using staggering/blinding/bleeding talents before you multiply for attacking a flat-footed foe or for flanking them, right?
By the way... damn, rogues are just little murder machines huh?
Oh no, it's based on the total. If you have +1d6 cunning strike and then flank your foe, you could now drop a die for a status ailment (making +1d6 and a kicker) or drop both dice and go maximum control over damage.
And yes, they are horrible murder machines. They are probably the top damage dealing route at the moment (I've got plans for the two-handed squad but out of the pre-alpha demos, rogues just mulch stuff). My brother and a friend toyed with making different sorts of characters using the rogue class. One of the characters he made was a steampunk-style bounty hunter that preferred to use cunning strike at short range with pistols. The other was a dwarf that had a more fighter-flare to him, especially since he said cunning strike on a sword & board guy reminded him of a bunch of dwarfs wrecking a giant.
Misc.
If a character multiclasses into two metaphysical classes, do they have two separate choices for casting methods and spell types? For example a spontaneous, psionic bard/prepared magical champion.
I've currently been trying to think of a good and fair way to do this, but the general gist of it is that I will probably make feat options that let you have a sort of theurgic casting (so when you take this feat you select an additional magic tradition but you lose MAB in the process; which is less of a joykill since your caster level is always based on your character level, so if a theurgic route was offered, you'd have trouble reaching high level spells but your low level spells would still be great).
Also the magic traditions aren't tied to classes (though classes might have talents that support them), so a rogue can learn to cast spells just as readily as anyone else. Mages will tend to have talents that support that choice.
I thought you were merging "wizard" and "sorcerer" into a single class, but I notice both mage and sorcerer in the pdf?
At the moment, sorcerer is probably going to be more about magical reflections in your being, so like bloodline stuff (or it might be fluffed as "enhancing" your features through magic). So if you want to play some sort of spellcaster that sprouts horns, claws, wings, breathes fire, or has a barbed tail, or turns into some sort of fey thing, the sorcerer would be the way to go.
Mage on the other hand is your traditional wizardly sort. They'll focus more on mastering certain types of magic through their talents, rather than directly modifying or taking on aspects of magical beings.
Over all, I'm super excited for the design as i first see it. It looks like someone could have tons of fun with a huge variety of characters. It's also immediately obvious that you won't need to create tons of new classes either, just more talents and class choices.
That's pretty much the plan. I like new content but I'm really not a fan of the class bloat and such that happened in 3.x and Pathfinder. However, I'm more happier with the way the APG had spreads of new rage powers and rogue talents and stuff.
The system is being designed from the start to make adding new material more like that. Instead if there's a new theme or thing you want to explore, you can write up a set of new talents for an existing class, or if the theme requires a new mechanic, you can write a new class and doing so involves only writing the new mechanic and the talents that will go along with them.
I would argue this system makes it easier to produce new content for the game, be it official or homebrew, and makes any new content published worthwhile for players and GMs. One problem that springs up in 3.x/Pathfinder a lot is that new classes coming out do diddly for giving something new to play with in an existing game. Given the way classes & talents work, if during your campaign the new "Plagues and Pestilence" sourcebook comes out, you might decide to becoming a Barbarian/Plague Knight or something. Or just use any new material for barbarians from the sourcebook.
The only major character type I don't see represented is "knight". Essentially, nonmagical warrior in heavy armor. I know you hate fighters, but I mean, mounted knights, traveling swordsman etc, exist in all types of fantasy.
How would you go about creating a heavy armored warrior that doesn't have to rely on falling into a rage, magic, or backstabbing people in D20 Legends? Sometimes people just want to play a "Fighter" but that option doesn't seem to be available. At least, not yet.
It's definitely a concern. One of the biggest challenges that I have is coming up with a non-magical magic tradition (a bit of an oxymoron I know). Something that makes up for a loss of magic if you want to be Captain Mundane.
I do have some ideas for non-magical traditions. One idea would be something Tome of Battle-esque, while another idea involved being really good at using tools and equipment (such as getting better benefits out of magic items, or being able to Mcguyver something). There's still a lot of work to be done coming up with good alternatives to magic stuff.
As for an actual "fighter"-style class, perhaps ironically the idea I have for them right now would look remarkably similar to the description of the vanilla fighter. I'd like to give them...
1. Combat styles (where you get a pool of combat feats at certain levels). Because martial character damage is very strong naturally in d20 legends, combat feats will tend to be based around letting you do special things with certain kinds of weapons or actions. Most of the feats that exist just for a strait damage boost will be cut with a few exceptions.
2. Weapon and Armor specializations*
3. Leader options (basically, I'd like you to be able to get special perks for working together with your team and I'd like you to be able to recruit followers up to a certain CR based on your level, which would allow you to build a company or have a strong sidekick).
*: When I say weapon and armor specializations, I mean primarily doing new things with your weapons and armor. This could just fold into the feats thing (and perhaps very well should), but I'm thinking in terms of things like allowing you to change the damage type of your weapon on the fly (such as smashing someone in the face with the pole-end of your spear), or applying your armor check penalties as a bonus on CMD to bull rush or resist being bull rushed (essentially throwing the weight and mass of your gear into your movements), and stuff like that.
Wouldn't it be just really crazy if you had a reason to want to wear heavier armor and shields rather than trying to get mithral versions of everything? That's a pretty far out idea from a Pathfinder perspective I think.
I gotta say, it's hard to try and ask the above question and avoid the stigma of the 3e/Pathfinder fighter. I mean, there are some things I like about the fighter, namely being able to wield a wide variety of weapons and do well with them without having to spend daily resources, but... I hate everything else.
Yeah it's not so much that I hate the fighter. It's just in a very bad place because it's not "finished" enough to be a character class. But in d20 legends, you technically wouldn't have to be, because mixing with something else is par for the course, which can allow each class to be more niche without hosing character options.
Anyway, I've only read the "Classes - Alpha" part at this point; I'll get working on the other bits when I can. I'm really getting hyped for this. I think Legends is shaping up to have lots of potential.
Glad to hear it! I'm working on it slowly but steadily. Sometimes a lot of the work is on the conceptual floor so a number of ideas might be devised, fiddled with, scrapped, or tweaked, before they make it into their own document.
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Meanwhile my sister and I joked and laughed while playing chess all the time.Pretty much. I got bored of chess pretty quick when I realized the plays were fairly rote. Then I found this.
also if you ever want to kill 2-3 days we had a game called DnD chess you would assign pcs to your chess piece give them one magic item pawns would be like 1st level with the queen all the way up to 12 they move like chess piece (although spells could change but it would be your turn to use the spell so teleport where you want but that is your turn.) the attacking piece always has initiative (so the magic item should be decisive choice.) its also a good way to teach spell usage but it takes literally forever to set up as one would imagine.
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Likewise, ashiel's gamist centered philosophy and my philosophy are opposing. Trying to make a game that rewards both will never do as well at either.I'm still confused as to what your philosophy actually is. I have struggled, frequently, to understand exactly what you are talking about. Much to my chagrin, each time I think I see what you mean or what you're talking about, you pose a metaphor or go in a direction which suplexes that like Zangief.
It's hard discussing any sort of opposing "philosophy" when I don't know what that philosophy is. It's been exceedingly difficult to make heads or tails of. And believe me, I've been trying.
yeah its like he starts out trying to say one thing and then slowly pulls away from it and eventually changes the meaning of what he was originally trying to say its really hard to follow. I think also he assumes you just know what hes talking about so he doesn't elaborate on some of his metaphors and terms. (NOT trying to attack you!! just trying to understand I have my issues too mostly grammatical and (i (really) like using the asides)
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Chess n Fluxx
Kinda missing point. I know an earlier topic was about possible vs impossible, but this is a tangent from that topic and is not about possibilities, but rather how well opposing possibilities can be achieved with a single design.
For example, can you play football without getting tackled? Certainly possible, but the design of football isn't exactly built for it.
Back to chess, you can laugh while playing chess, but you'll nearly always be laughing at something else. Because chess is not built to incite laughter. Therefore it will never support a laughter filled session as well as Fluxx.
Fluxx likewise is built to incite laughter, and remaining serious while talking in various silly voices and quoting comedy is only for the most rigid of folks. Fluxx intentionally tries to get you to laugh, and therefore would never be a good choice for the kind of seriousness you'd find at a tournament with a million dollar top prize. (Such a tourny for such a game would probably make for a funny movie though)
Can chess be played while laughing? Yes, but it isn't made for it and won't incite it.
Thus, if you want a game to be about laughs, you'd make something more like Fluxx, and include elements designed to incite laughter.
One of the cons I went had a seminar about game design. The biggest piece of advice was "consider what you want a session of gameplay to look like, how you want the players to behave, what you want them to do. Make rules that reward such behavior."
So, a game that rewards silliness will be better for silliness tjan a game that doesn't, but more than that, seriousness actively counters silliness, so a game that rewards seriousness wil be even worse.
Trying to design a game that simultaneously rewards seriousness and silliness will never be as good at both of those things as games focusing on only one of those things because they are conflicting goals.
Likewise, ashiel's gamist centered philosophy and my philosophy are opposing. Trying to make a game...
>Back to chess, you can laugh while playing chess, but you'll nearly always be laughing at something else.
"Guys, where do you want this? A bit to the left or is this fine?"
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^^I should not find this as amusing as I do! I thank you
you'd be surprised what one can gain amusement from
Me and my friend once broke out laughing to tears from pulling up carpet from a flooded floor I have no explanation other then that carpet kicked our arse.
but mostly thank you for that klara
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^^I should not find this as amusing as I do! I thank you
you'd be surprised what one can gain amusement from
Me and my friend once broke out laughing to tears from pulling up carpet from a flooded floor I have no explanation other then that carpet kicked our arse.but mostly thank you for that klara
Yeah, we were laughing hysterically at that on Discord too. XD
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The paths are in essence another layer of classes, by whatever other name you choose to use for them.
Classes have an advantage in making character creation quicker and easier, but also a disadvantage in limiting flexibility.*
In any case, I was just being curious about led you to choosing another layer of class vs alternatives.
*Some people like the simplicity of apple devices and either don't care about the lack of flexibility and tinkering, or are willing to sacrifice those things to get the ease of apple. But then you have on the other side of that. I like to at least attempt to understand some parts of the opposing perspective and thinking, to improve my own designs. Still useful despite my being on the other side.
>I was just being curious about led you to choosing another layer of class vs alternatives.
My guess would be decoupling BaB and HP progression from class features, thus allowing for a decrease in the total number of classes without losing flexibility("Full Nature caster with 0.5 BaB", "0.75 nature caster with 0.75 BaB" and "0.5 nature caster with full BaB" all collapse into one class, say, "druid".). Decrease in the total number of classes is desirable because it makes picking the one you need easier, and reduces the amount of information a player has to take in when being introduced to a new class.
I imagine that was also the reasoning behind leaving magic tradition selection up to the player(I think that was implied at some point?).
By the way, was my guess generally correct?
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So correct that I didn't even think to mention it again. You split the arrow, so to speak. I couldn't have described it, nor the reasons for it, any better.
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Actually, something that I told Aratrok, I'm really anxious to see people constructing and naming their builds and sharing them. The idea of that excites me to no end. It's a ways off, but I imagine once enough has been put together to form a proper alpha playtest, there will be enough variety to make it interesting. (^.^)
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From your class file, on alchemists:
>Only spells that have targets can be made into extracts (so spells that do not affect specific targets, such as fireball, cannot be made into extracts). However, alchemists enjoy a unique benefit in that unlike normal potions or oils, they can create extracts out of personal range spells (those with a target of “you”, such as mirror image).
Does this mean that an extract of Charm Person could be a possible option? It affects specific targets(quite unlike fireball), after all.
EDIT: d'oh, nevermind. It says so literally two paragraphs down from this point:
>Alchemists can make extracts of spells that require special attacks or are hostile.
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Oh Great and Powerful Ashiel,
What's up with Alvena Publishing? And please don't tell me that a single 1-star review from Endzeigest was enough to extinguish your publishing enthusiasm. EZG is, duh, lol, just one guy.
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Oh Great and Powerful Ashiel,
What's up with Alvena Publishing? [uel=http://paizo.com/products/btpy8j38?Alvena-Adventures-The-Forsaken-Churchyard]And please don't tell me that a single 1-star review from Endzeigest was enough to extinguish your publishing enthusiasm.[/url] EZG is, duh, lol, just one guy.
She only really answers if you sacrifice at least 3 virgins in her name on an altar forged from the finest dwarven steel during the full moon, though I hear nowadays heathen souls are also accepted as offerings. You may have to wait a while otherwise.
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Personally, I inherently distrust anyone who's word is taken with as much gospel as Endzeitgeist's is in our community. I've seen numerous people have buy, or not buy, products purely on the word of him alone, regardless of what any other reviewer has to say.
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Oh Great and Powerful Ashiel,
What's up with Alvena Publishing? [uel=http://paizo.com/products/btpy8j38?Alvena-Adventures-The-Forsaken-Churchyard]And please don't tell me that a single 1-star review from Endzeigest was enough to extinguish your publishing enthusiasm.[/url] EZG is, duh, lol, just one guy.
I wanted to get some experience with doing the 3PP thing, so I wrote the adventure based on the needs I felt like I had when dealing with pre-published adventures.
I feel like it was a good learning experience and overall I feel like it was a success. I had intended to do more adventures like it, drawing on the experience from the first, but most of my free time ended up going towards my friends and family, and then when my mom died, my free time shrank drastically as I found a typical day job to help my family financially.
Before that, most of the material I wrote that probably would have been worth publishing typically got given away for free. I used to regularly post revised statblocks, new magic items, encounter ideas, new classes, new subsystems, and guides, which I gave away for free (perhaps not the best business practice but I was satisfied with people simply being able to enjoy them).
Endzeigest's review had some legitimate criticisms (the one that bothered me the most is that the final version was missing the +1 CL bonus of the fog lillies, and the harddrive I had the original backed up on was hurled of my desk accidentally by my brother and broken, so it was kind of stuck).
However, the other two reviews meant a lot more to me because they liked the adventure for the reasons I wrote the adventure. Everything that Grimmy's review noted was an actual intentional thing that I had intended when I sat down to write the adventure in the unusual format that it was in. So I considered that a massive success because it was right on target with my intent.
I admit that I do often feel the urge to write more adventures. I had started a fairly high level adventure involving a white dragon a while back that I was going to release to the community but it became very obvious that I would never get d20 legends off the ground if I kept doing these random things (there just is not enough time in the day unless I end up ignoring all my friends and family, and I've got a few friends who need me to be there sometimes), and d20 legends took priority because it's a system that I intend to use for a very long time after its completion (as I noted a little earlier, it began as a customized version of d20 for running my own games with).
EDIT: I intend to do more adventure writing in the future (especially once d20 legends comes out, since I would like to write adventures for that) and I'll write them even better because experience is something you have only after you needed it. :P
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She only really answers if you sacrifice at least 3 virgins in her name on an altar forged from the finest dwarven steel during the full moon, though I hear nowadays heathen souls are also accepted as offerings. You may have to wait a while otherwise.Oh Great and Powerful Ashiel,
What's up with Alvena Publishing? [uel=http://paizo.com/products/btpy8j38?Alvena-Adventures-The-Forsaken-Churchyard]And please don't tell me that a single 1-star review from Endzeigest was enough to extinguish your publishing enthusiasm.[/url] EZG is, duh, lol, just one guy.
My being a deity of undeath seems to leave a lot of misunderstandings, I think. See, when she says "sacrifice virgins", that's codespeak for introduce 3 new people to roleplaying. :3
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End's review for that adventure basically boils down to "whaa! There aren't enough pretty pictures in this PDF!"
Good riddance. If you really want to see sexually explicit digital images on your computer screen, disable your ad-blocking extensions and visit almost any website. No space devoted to sleazy images means more space for the stuff you're actually going to use. Ya know, like the adventure.
Humorously, the choice to leave out maps and such was intentional based on my own experiences as a GM. In the future I'd like to include some example maps at least, but the adventures I write are intended to be adapted to the needs of a campaign or dropped into an existing campaign.
I've found a lot of GMs don't really get to use stuff like their custom dungeon tile sets or whatever. Plus, when you scale encounters sometimes you need them to take place in a slightly different area (or else it's too congested or two open).
But I admit including a sample map pack with the adventure wouldn't be a bad idea.