| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why do most of us play on a grid?
Sure, it "helps us visualize the environment", but why the grid? We could just place markers in relative positions to visualize things, without needing specific squares and measurements.
I remember when I first transitioned from theater of the DM's mind to grid play, how liberating and fair things became. No longer was I asking "can I charge the monster?" and "if I take a 5ft step, can I get line of sight or do I have to move more?" The DM didn't have to decide if he felt like letting my tactics work. He didn't have to worry that he was being too lenient and allowing things that weren't consistent impact balance, or being too strict and disallowing things that should have been possible but felt unlikely.
We play with the grid to play a consistent shared game. What the DM sees is what the players see. The rulebook is shared and the environment is shared. We're all playing the same game, in a consensual manner.
Some DM authority is always required, and a good thing. But there should - in my opinion - be as few human judgement calls as possible. The rules should cover actions and their consequence, with the overall caveat that if things don't work, a DM intervenes. They shouldn't - again IMHO - be printed by default assuming DM fabrication.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Characters are not builds. Builds are the mechanical skeleton that makes a character able to function in the game world.
Technically correct, and still 90% of the discussion is about builds nowadays, not about character, and Stormwind Fallacy shall be damned, that changed not only the discussion, it also changed the game, and at least for some of us, it changed the game into a very wrong direction.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I remember when I first transitioned from theater of the DM's mind to grid play, how liberating and fair things became. No longer was I asking "can I charge the monster?" and "if I take a 5ft step, can I get line of sight or do I have to move more?" The DM didn't have to decide if he felt like letting my tactics work. He didn't have to worry that he was being too lenient and allowing things that weren't consistent impact balance, or being too strict and disallowing things that should have been possible but felt unlikely.
I've made a very different experience with that. With us, suddenly discussions began basically because everyone tried to (slightly) cheat to get into the best tactical position possible to maximise their own advantage. Before, there was mutual trust between GM and players, now, if someone started out in a disadvantageous position, they immediately thought the GM was trying to punish them.
And it's kinda the same with the rulebook. There used to be a time when we were all just immersed in the world, in our characters and in the narrative we weaved together. Today, everyone is distracted from the actual gameplay because everyone is always trying to find a way to use the rules to their own advantage.
...
At least that's the impression you can easily get when you're frequenting forums like this one. I'm really glad that I'm playing mostly with my family members who couldn't care less about all that rules stuff because they just want to have a good time at the game table.
|
There IMO lies a problem with the rarity system. Once you allow an Uncommon element, you are functioning outside the standard array of abilities that adventure writers will take into account.So if that's not something you want, then I wouldn't allow higher rarity at your table. That's what rarity does. It allows you to say, "I'm functioning outside of the understood baseline." Again, how is this not helpful to GMs?
Previously, any adventure I did not write myself was still built around what was available in the rules. I did not need to consider how Detect Evil would impact the story because it was already taken into account by the writer.
Now, if I play a game where Detect Evil is Common, I might not be able to use a written adventure without heavy rewriting merely because it was not written under this assumption.
|
|
I remember when I first transitioned from theater of the DM's mind to grid play, how liberating and fair things became. No longer was I asking "can I charge the monster?" and "if I take a 5ft step, can I get line of sight or do I have to move more?" The DM didn't have to decide if he felt like letting my tactics work. He didn't have to worry that he was being too lenient and allowing things that weren't consistent impact balance, or being too strict and disallowing things that should have been possible but felt unlikely.I've made a very different experience with that. With us, suddenly discussions began basically because everyone tried to (slightly) cheat to get into the best tactical position possible to maximise their own advantage. Before, there was mutual trust between GM and players, now, if someone started out in a disadvantageous position, they immediately thought the GM was trying to punish them.
And it's kinda the same with the rulebook. There used to be a time when we were all just immersed in the world, in our characters and in the narrative we weaved together. Today, everyone is distracted from the actual gameplay because everyone is always trying to find a way to use the rules to their own advantage.
...
At least that's the impression you can easily get when you're frequenting forums like this one. I'm really glad that I'm playing mostly with my family members who couldn't care less about all that rules stuff because they just want to have a good time at the game table.
I believe the origin of this is not clearer and more structured rules, but Organized Play.
I don't know about you, but if I say, "Hey, I can handle a game with Detect Evil in it," I should be prepared to have my players use Detect Evil. That's not a fault of the system, but a fault of not using it properly. What's being written is still built around the rules, the rarity baseline is taken into account by the writer.
If I'm allowing things of higher rarity, I'm adjusting to allow for them to be used. I chose to make that happen. To suddenly say, "Wait, this module can be torn apart by this uncommon option!" but do nothing to account for it is on you.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
What Nox Aeterna said. Rarity doesn't ease the load on me as the GM because coming from 18 years of similar game, I don't have to ban teleportation, nor alignment spells nor divinations nor enchantments. I still have to check PC's options for some abusable combo, or underpowered characters. It was supposed to be the tool for new/inexperienced GMs, but unfortunately it got written half-assed, and it was somehow more important to get the "rewards" sidebar than explaining what consequences do some spell/PC options have on the game.
sure, but the new player that has 0 years of experience...?
lets face it, all of these rules are more or less for the less experienced of us. everyone else can just ignore them.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Whenever you read a murder mystery adventure, the victim would always have a broken jaw or something to nix any speak with dead attempts. It almost became comical at a point.
PC: "So we find another victim and they-"
GM: "Yup, smashed up jaw."
Cleric: "Guys, I'm not gonna lie. I'm starting to think this spell slot was wasted."
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I believe the origin of this is not clearer and more structured rules, but Organized Play.
Dunno about organized play, because with one or two exceptions via PbP, I never had part in it. I also don't think that clarity or structure is the culprit, it's more about presentation and who's the adressee of the rules. In my experience, PLayers didn't use to look much farther than the PLayer's handbook to build their characters, the rest was mostly rules options for the GM to use when he wanted.
Which was a kind of a problem for the industry, because only a small part of the audience was buying their books, so they tried to appeal more to the players. Simultaneously, internet became a thing, and the indie scene started to develop.
So now you have 3E being published under the OGL, players have easy access to the rules via the internet (originally mostly Core Rules stuff from the SRD, but in the meantime basically everything available (including 3PP stuff). And all the time the indie scene changes the landscape with theoretical discussions and the introduction of terms like Player Agency.
And while I applaud a lot of those developments, there's still the problem that D&D as a system is centered around the existence of a GM, while Player Agency, taken to the extrem, can lead to GM-less systems, so there's obviously a tension between the system as is, and the system as it is perceived by a growing number of players.
There's a large bandwith between "Everything's about the GM" and "Everything's about the players". And apart from the game also being played by jerks, I think a large part of the adversarial relationship between GMs and players has to do with people sitting on different points of that spectrum.
Also explains the different views on things like item's rarity, that got introduced with PF2. Especially when you think that 4E (5E?) went the other direction and encouraged players to tell the GM which items they want to find and the GM placing treasure accordingly.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There IMO lies a problem with the rarity system. Once you allow an Uncommon element, you are functioning outside the standard array of abilities that adventure writers will take into account.
I think that applies to rare things, not uncommon things. The uncommon rarity tag sort of assumes that a feat/archetype could be printed that straight up gives you access to this. While "rare" means "only if the GM or the adventure writer gives you access."
Since I mean, having access to a gnomish flickmace isn't going to put you outside the standard array of what adventure writers will assume, but having access to Antimagic Field probably does.
When writing an adventure you should assume there's nothing uncommon that PCs can't get, but there is uncommon stuff that the adversaries might not have (such as the ability to scry the PCs or to teleport away). Indeed, you should hand out Uncommon stuff as appropriate with considerable regularity.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you're in a world where spellcasters capable of casting Speak with Dead are common enough, sure! But I would make sure to be clear (easy medicine check?) that the murderer intentionally smashed the jaw post-mortem. Otherwise your players may feel like every corpse just has a smashed jaw by sheer "coincidence, I swear".Whenever you read a murder mystery adventure, the victim would always have a broken jaw or something to nix any speak with dead attempts. It almost became comical at a point.
PC: "So we find another victim and they-"
GM: "Yup, smashed up jaw."
Cleric: "Guys, I'm not gonna lie. I'm starting to think this spell slot was wasted."Do you find it comical that criminals often wear gloves so we can't use their fingerprints? Because smashing a jaw in a world where "Speak with Dead" exists is no different. The characters don't exist in our world, they exist in theirs and the story should reflect that. What murderer in their right mind wouldn't damage the jaw?
I mean honestly, magic doesn't harm storytelling ability much, if any, more than modern technology does for fiction. I'm sorry that cell phones make your job harder, but that doesn't mean you just get to ignore them or their impact on the world and call it a day.
That would be fine for say, if you found a body that seemed to have fallen down the stairs. Make the check to see if can tell the jaw was broken after the fall. But if you find a corpse with a knife in the gut and a shattered jaw, it's a pretty safe assumption why the jaw was smashed. You could actually use the jaw not being broken to help determine what happened. A corpse without a broken jaw is an indicator of a complete amateur or that the murder was more a crime of passion. Which of course isn't to say that you still wouldn't have a check for the corpse in the ally. You might also need to be worried about skilled assassins giving the victim false and/or misleading information before killing them and then making it look like an accident/amateur job.
Speak with Dead opens up a lot of options for a mystery, but yeah might require adaption of a base mystery. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Some mysteries are easily solved. A camera in an ally can tell the investigators who did the killing as easily, probably a LOT easier, than a speak with dead spell. And I still run murder mysteries in the modern day.
Does Speak With the Dead even exist anymore? I can't find it on aon.
But regardless, marking it uncommon will make it less likely for malefactors to know that this is a thing which can be done and in order to prevent it they should take the head, smash the jaw, put needles in certain places, etc.
Diagetically it seems like "Speaking with the recently deceased" is the sort of thing religious orders would want to control access to since it's the sort of tool that could be seen as disrespectful contextually. So they'd only let people who they believe they can trust in on it.
Does Speak With the Dead even exist anymore? I can't find it on aon.
But regardless, marking it uncommon will make it less likely for malefactors to know that this is a thing which can be done and in order to prevent it they should take the head, smash the jaw, put needles in certain places, etc.
Diagetically it seems like "Speaking with the recently deceased" is the sort of thing religious orders would want to control access to since it's the sort of tool that could be seen as disrespectful contextually. So they'd only let people who they believe they can trust in on it.
Talking corpse, page 376. Interestingly, Undead sorcs can get it.
Does Speak With the Dead even exist anymore? I can't find it on aon.
The spell has been renamed talking corpse.
|
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
"The appeal of PF1 comes from combing classes, archetypes, traits, feats, spells and items to some unique (and mostly overpowered) builds". And I fully agree with that sentiment. In the new system, you're pretty much gonna pick 1 or 2 classes and...
I disagree with this. In fact it is what drove me away from PF1 to begin with. It was never fun GMing for "mostly overpowered Builds" where PCs would one shot everything. It was even less fun playing on a table with a "less than optimized" character (And to be fair I have seen a few new players (in PFS) driven away after there first game because of this too) with someone running a "mostly overpowered Builds".
So yeah a hard No from me dawg.
I mean, one benefit to making Talking Corpse uncommon is that if the PCs are taking steps to hide their identities from their antagonists, they do not feel obligated to desecrate every single corpse they create. Moreover, if they elect not to start chopping off heads and throwing them in a sack to take with them, you don't need to make the antagonist group not contain a cleric or divine sorcerer of 7th level or higher, or alternatively declare that particular cleric incompetent enough to not ask the corpses of the people who got up close and personal with the party before dying.