-_-... Id be coup de gras-ing someone after that...
Five out of the six party members take pains to make sure that opponents that can be injured non-lethally can have that done/stabilize opponents... and then when all the opponents are down, the sixth attempts coup de gras on the downed opponents...
From what I understand of the way Starfinder handles non-lethal damage, Starfinder is especially ripe for that kind of problem.
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Meh if the the party knows you guys are trying to knock someone out and kills them instead you don't blame the system you blame the @#$%^&*! that did the lethal damage.
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Five out of the six party members take pains to make sure that opponents that can be injured non-lethally can have that done/stabilize opponents... and then when all the opponents are down, the sixth attempts coup de gras on the downed opponents...
Not sure I’d worry too much about being hit by fat, unless it was frozen or something...
Bill: Was trying to use a plural-ish version of coup de grace
Since "grace" means mercy/kindness, you'd pluralize the "coup" (which means blow/strike), so it'd be "coups de grace".
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Five out of the six party members take pains to make sure that opponents that can be injured non-lethally can have that done/stabilize opponents... and then when all the opponents are down, the sixth attempts coup de gras on the downed opponents...
Ah, the famous 'you killed my prisoner' dilemma. It's been the cause of several cases of party members attacking each other, in my experience.
One funny version was a character hanging back to bandage a couple fallen foes and make sure they didn't bleed to death, while the other two continued to the next room and got in over their heads. The player stopped bandaging wounds to join the fray and help their allies, but paused to cut the throats of the two men their character was bandaging, because they didn't want them to get up and attack us from behind.
At every step of the way, the decisions made seemed sensible, it was just as a whole they looked funny.
We all laughed. :)
I've said this many times before but magic items that just cast X spell Y times per day as their only function are infuriating and a waste of page space. Every wondrous item should have some unique or continuous function. We already have a pricing formula for X spell Y times per day, there is no need to continue giving examples.
A valid gripe, but ignoring two important things:
1} Many GMs won't allow anything at their table that isn't in print, for (understandable) balance reasons. Having something in print isn't a panacea against such a GM, but at least it gives a starting point for a request.
2} Magic item pricing is an art, not a science. Once again, having things in print offers more guidance.
One thing that I have experienced from the same DM lately is the offering of terrible suggestions for character building. Yet as a player takes the best options around. Which I find hypocritical to a certain extent. Does not like the fact that human as a race choice for a class offers two free feats at first level. Yet the first to take a human as a player. I get DMs wanting to have some control at what is allowed at a table. Yet their is a fine line between that and sabotaging player characters.
I have been guilty of this myself (to a lesser extent than the examples below, but I am certainly contrary by nature, and nothing piques my interest like being told that my barbarian can't be lawful, or whatever), but one of my big pet peeves is players who don't want to play the game that's on the table.
"This is going to be a very political game, more intrigue and scheming and power plays than combat." "Oh cool!" <Game starts> "I'm bored, I pick a fight with the city ruler!"
"We've got seven clans of vampires to choose from." "Can I play a clanless vampire?" "Can I play a werewolf?" "Can I play a highlander immortal, like Conner McCloud?" "Sigh..."
"It's a superhero game. You'll be playing superheroes." "My character robs a bank." "..."
Hmm ok yeah that is a very reasonable thing to be irritated by.
anecdote:
I had one player (HAD) who would do that played a ninja in a superhero game (which right there was one strick) and assasinated a mind controlled superhero and it cause ssoooooo much trouble.
I had one player (HAD) who would always play a black leather-clad female ninja. He played a black leather-clad female ninja druid, he played a black leather-clad female ninja ranger/rogue, he played a black leather-clad female ninja fighter, etc. etc.
A valid gripe, but ignoring two important things:1} Many GMs won't allow anything at their table that isn't in print, for (understandable) balance reasons. Having something in print isn't a panacea against such a GM, but at least it gives a starting point for a request.
2} Magic item pricing is an art, not a science. Once again, having things in print offers more guidance.
I still find them to be supremely boring both as a player to get and as a GM to give. Magic items should all have unique interesting effects.
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I had one player (HAD) who would always play a black leather-clad female ninja. He played a black leather-clad female ninja druid, he played a black leather-clad female ninja ranger/rogue, he played a black leather-clad female ninja fighter, etc. etc.
I love when a player of that sort doesn't really plan ahead. They introduce their character as a lean mysterious figure in all black leather armor with eight visible daggers on their person named Nightshade, and you helped them write it up and know it's an assassin, and when the party inquires, stammers and finally claims to be a *farmer,* having clearly not thought past 'don't admit to being an assassin.'
Yeah. Okay. Go hoe a row, farmboy. We need adventurers. :)
(This was back in 1st edition, when 'Assassin' was a base class.)
I had one player (HAD) who would always play a black leather-clad female ninja. He played a black leather-clad female ninja druid, he played a black leather-clad female ninja ranger/rogue, he played a black leather-clad female ninja fighter, etc. etc.I love when a player of that sort doesn't really plan ahead. They introduce their character as a lean mysterious figure in all black leather armor with eight visible daggers on their person named Nightshade, and you helped them write it up and know it's an assassin, and when the party inquires, stammers and finally claims to be a *farmer,* having clearly not thought past 'don't admit to being an assassin.'
Yeah. Okay. Go hoe a row, farmboy. We need adventurers. :)
(This was back in 1st edition, when 'Assassin' was a base class.)
His day job is "napping assassin."
I had a 1st ed half orc cleric assassin called Nightshade!
How unoriginal was I?
One thing that I have experienced from the same DM lately is the offering of terrible suggestions for character building. Yet as a player takes the best options around. Which I find hypocritical to a certain extent. Does not like the fact that human as a race choice for a class offers two free feats at first level. Yet the first to take a human as a player. I get DMs wanting to have some control at what is allowed at a table. Yet their is a fine line between that and sabotaging player characters.
Lol, I seem to have the opposite problem. I can’t convince my players to take good, or even half decent options for the life of them.
I just want to make my monsters intimidating, damnit! It’s not a fair fight if you want to shoot once per round with a crossbow while playing a fighter, when the enemy NPC magus is literally teleport stabbing the backline wizard as their opening move and get a full attack to boot.
And that’s not even an outrageous character ability or archetype/feat combination, it’s literally just the spell Blade Dash and a baseline magus.
(I mean, I wouldn’t use that kind of NPC if this was an actual PC, but this and its ilk is brought to me more often than I would like...)
I'd be OK problem with my players taking all good options, or all bad options, as long as they're roughly the same combat power level as one another.
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Fears effects irritate me. Getting grappled by a giant monster, turned to stone because of magickz most foul, or being cast into a plane eternal torment? Ok that's cool, I'm being acted on by the world. Getting charmed or dominated? Okay cool, if I get to roleplay it out still: Who doesn't love the opportunity to have a good reason to fight the party? But fear? It strips you of all character agency and is embarrassing. As a DM I introduced a houserule that you can keep full control of your character while Frightened, but take a -4 to everything. Panicked is -8. If you choose to give into the fear as RAW, you don't take those negatives. It keeps the Fear effects relevant without the session turning into a farce everytime one is introduced, though I usually have mooks/animals/etc usually take the run option.
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I had one player (HAD) who would always play a black leather-clad female ninja. He played a black leather-clad female ninja druid, he played a black leather-clad female ninja ranger/rogue, he played a black leather-clad female ninja fighter, etc. etc.I love when a player of that sort doesn't really plan ahead. They introduce their character as a lean mysterious figure in all black leather armor with eight visible daggers on their person named Nightshade, and you helped them write it up and know it's an assassin, and when the party inquires, stammers and finally claims to be a *farmer,* having clearly not thought past 'don't admit to being an assassin.'
Yeah. Okay. Go hoe a row, farmboy. We need adventurers. :)
(This was back in 1st edition, when 'Assassin' was a base class.)
Awwww, I'm sad at the missed opportunities here.
"What do you farm?"
"Nightshade, how do you think I got the name?"
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I had one player (HAD) who would always play a black leather-clad female ninja. He played a black leather-clad female ninja druid, he played a black leather-clad female ninja ranger/rogue, he played a black leather-clad female ninja fighter, etc. etc.I love when a player of that sort doesn't really plan ahead. They introduce their character as a lean mysterious figure in all black leather armor with eight visible daggers on their person named Nightshade, and you helped them write it up and know it's an assassin, and when the party inquires, stammers and finally claims to be a *farmer,* having clearly not thought past 'don't admit to being an assassin.'
Yeah. Okay. Go hoe a row, farmboy. We need adventurers. :)
(This was back in 1st edition, when 'Assassin' was a base class.)
Awwww, I'm sad at the missed opportunities here.
"What do you farm?"
"Nightshade, how do you think I got the name?"
I’M A KNIFE FARMER!
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I had one player (HAD) who would always play a black leather-clad female ninja. He played a black leather-clad female ninja druid, he played a black leather-clad female ninja ranger/rogue, he played a black leather-clad female ninja fighter, etc. etc.I love when a player of that sort doesn't really plan ahead. They introduce their character as a lean mysterious figure in all black leather armor with eight visible daggers on their person named Nightshade, and you helped them write it up and know it's an assassin, and when the party inquires, stammers and finally claims to be a *farmer,* having clearly not thought past 'don't admit to being an assassin.'
Yeah. Okay. Go hoe a row, farmboy. We need adventurers. :)
(This was back in 1st edition, when 'Assassin' was a base class.)
Awwww, I'm sad at the missed opportunities here.
"What do you farm?"
"Nightshade, how do you think I got the name?"I’M A KNIFE FARMER!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
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I would like to mention that I introduced a character who was brooding, covered in burns, dark leather armor, and seemed to be clearly edgy.
Was literally a farmer. He put on all this stuff because he thought he could be like the antiheroes in his novels. The burns were real. The horrible dark magic DEFINITELY real. But he got it in a pact with a devil but was frankly horribly ill equipped at being an adventure, which was quickly discovered when his veneer crumbled and the awkward and cowardly loser was revealed. His 20 Charisma was literally the only thing keeping him afloat, and I’m pretty sure that was pure delusion of his own capabilities or sheer confidence in the act he was portraying, which was bad. It was hilarious when the farm boy came out every so often since he loved being a farmer, and he would often school others on how to treat animals and proper care of horses in particular. He also was a great cook and knew a lot about wine (he drank a lot of it too. For the memories...)
This was heavily contrasted by the other member of the party and his best friend in the world, the paladin, who solo’d dragons and vampires and was possibly the most heroic person in the world and everything my character was not.
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I had a 1st ed half orc cleric assassin called Nightshade!
How unoriginal was I?
I played Gambit once in a GURPS supers game, so I've forfeited the right to ever criticize anyone else's originality, in perpetuity. :)
I mean, it wasn't Wolverine or anything (who seems to be the Drizzt of superhero games), but the shame still burns.
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I had a 1st ed half orc cleric assassin called Nightshade!
How unoriginal was I?I played Gambit once in a GURPS supers game, so I've forfeited the right to ever criticize anyone else's originality, in perpetuity. :)
I mean, it wasn't Wolverine or anything (who seems to be the Drizzt of superhero games), but the shame still burns.
Oh, we've all done similar things. Hell, I've played ersatz Sephiroth, River Tam, and Chun Li. Doesn't get much worse than that.
I wish I knew where to find the thread on here where somebody described a REALLY BAD roleplayer who insisted on trying to emulate a mixture of Tolkien characters from Lord of the Rings (especially Gandalf) VERY BADLY . . . and seemed to be dead serious about it.
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I had a 1st ed half orc cleric assassin called Nightshade!
How unoriginal was I?
Chainmail: Originality galore.
BECMI: Almost original1E: Token unoriginality. Not even worth mentioning.
2E: Minor unoriginality. Should have tweaked the name: Knightdrape, Evening Blinds, or something of that ilk.
3E: Moderately unoriginal. Consider a full orc, hobgoblin, or human and dropping the cleric bit. Name needs help: Darkstalker the Relentless, but by this stage you should be moving out of the nocturnal cycle entirely. Consider Iceknife the Cold, Prowler, or the like.
3.5E: Heavily unoriginal. At this point you should switch over to half-dragon instead of half-orc, drop the assassin, but be a cleric of Bhaal (or whatever murder deity is appropriate to your campaign).
PATHFINDER: Extremely unoriginal. There's no help, none whatsoever. Just find some of your name and chow down on it. However, if you're committed, then you need to be taking Mixed Blood as often as possible and your name has to be as innocuous as possible: Lou the Dungsweeper, Melvin the Cobbler, etc.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I grant a bonus for good roleplay, but never a penalty for bad. However, I conversely don't like when a DM requires a roll even when the roleplay was so above and beyond it shouldn't be required.
If you never requires rolls when people roleplay well, you can run into the problem where it's not worth putting ranks in social skills. I used to see that in old LARPs where buying social adeptness with XP was considered a waste because the player "will just roleplay that stuff."
I've seen the 5 Cha dwarf with a silver-tongued player. You need to do the rolls to make their self-imposed penalty meaningful.
My least favorite thing out of game is players who don't understand parallel action out of combat.
For example, the party goes to town and the cleric goes to pray and seek information on the [insert plot device], the rogue tries to find someone they can pickpocket, the bard goes to the tavern looking for ale and romance and the fighter finds someone to train with.
When the GM asks the paladin what they wand to do, they go with the cleric to pray and gather information, try to stop the rogue from pickpocketing, protects the virtue of the women of the bar and lectures to bard about overindulging, trains with the fighter and also patrols the city looking for anyone else in need of their assistance.
They should only be able to do 1 or 2 of these at most, but they manage to weasel in to each action and steal the spotlight from other players (whether meaning to or not).
This killed a 5e campaign I was in.
...I must admit partial responsibility for this very thing, because there was no clear delineation of separate scenes, and one scene the GM attempted to use a language barrier to separate the scenes and refused to allow people who didn't have the language to walk away to do other things (go to the bathroom, get a drink/smoke) while the scene was happening.
...I was playing an 'arcane trickster technician' whose sole mission statement was 'get in good with ALL the factions and provide whatever services they require'.
I had a dwarf with 6 Cha that used failed Diplomacy checks as agro. :-)
I feel as though it's the GM's responsibility to read "silver-tongued player/terrible diplomacy mod character" through the lens of their stats, no matter how compelling they are speaking extemporaneously. I do this, but a really good speech by the player might give a +3 circumstance modifier, but that won't help the charisma 5 dwarf with no ranks in diplomacy very much.
If it's a situation where success or failure doesn't make a difference, I won't ask for a roll, instead just going with whatever feels right in the moment, but I don't really think that's a case of player skill overruling character skill, because the situation wasn't one where success or failure made a significant difference anyway.
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I grant a bonus for good roleplay, but never a penalty for bad. However, I conversely don't like when a DM requires a roll even when the roleplay was so above and beyond it shouldn't be required.
If you never requires rolls when people roleplay well, you can run into the problem where it's not worth putting ranks in social skills. I used to see that in old LARPs where buying social adeptness with XP was considered a waste because the player "will just roleplay that stuff."
I've seen the 5 Cha dwarf with a silver-tongued player. You need to do the rolls to make their self-imposed penalty meaningful.
Yeah, foregoing rolls for social stuff due to roleplay is like foregoing attack rolls because you describe your attack really well.
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Yeah, foregoing rolls for social stuff due to roleplay is like foregoing attack rolls because you describe your attack really well.
Oh god, I want to play in that game. It would be the most gruesome game ever, and every single attack I'd make would be a crit!
I played Gambit once in a GURPS supers game, so I've forfeited the right to ever criticize anyone else's originality, in perpetuity. :)
I mean, it wasn't Wolverine or anything (who seems to be the Drizzt of superhero games), but the shame still burns.
Yeah, if you want to copy a Marvel character, you should at least copy someone cool - like Squirrel Girl! Every time you'd get back after missing a session, your GM would be like "During the events of last session, your character split with the party for a while and killed <super powerful bad guy X>. Now she's back, but no details are given!"
a few thoughts on the roleplay vs rollplay issue:
this can be avoided if you roll first and then roleplay accordingly. If you roll awesome diplomacy and then roleplay bad diplomacy, it is up to the GM to have the NPC to respond positively to whatever awful thing the PC just said.
Player: I roll diplomacy, nat20!
PC: "When your mother sits around the house..."
GM: Surprisingly your insult works to break the ice.
NPC: Laughs, "Well it's true about my mother... Say, how 'bout a drink?"
A further thought, some races may respond to an Intimidate check as if it were a Diplomacy check. I'm thinking like, successfully posturing and threatening an Orc or whatever settings variant of 'Proud Warrior Race' there is could actually disarm them and turn them into your friend, because their culture values and respects threatening postures.
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When someone has the attitude of "The GM is God, NEVER question the GM." GMs are people; they can be mistaken. If you don't ask, either you won't know if it's an intentional houserule or the GM won't realize they missed something. Worst case scenario, someone telling others this can lead to abusive situations that players think they just have to accept.
Also when people aren't sure about an important rule but can't be bothered to take 15 seconds to check when they have the means to do so sitting right there.
FTFY - I'm fairly sure Doreen don't kill ;)
Ah, thanks. "Defeated" is indeed what I intended to say!