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makapatag · 3 months
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Tactical Combat, Violence Dice and Missing Your Attacks in Gubat Banwa
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In this post I talk about game feel and decision points when it comes to the "To-Hit Roll" and the "Damage Roll" in relation to Gubat Banwa's design, the Violence Die.
Let's lay down some groundwork: this post assumes that the reader is familiar and has played with the D&D style of wargame combat common nowadays in TTRPGs, brought about no doubt by the market dominance of a game like D&D. It situates its arguments within that context, because much of new-school design makes these things mostly non-problems. (See: the paradigmatic shift required to play a Powered by the Apocalypse game, that completely changes how combat mechanics are interpreted).
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With that done, let's specify even more: D&D 5e and 4e are the forerunners of this kind of game--the tactical grid game that prefers a battlemat. 5e's absolute dominance means that there's a 90% chance that you have played the kind of combat I'll be referring to in this post. The one where you roll a d20, add the relevant modifiers, and try to roll equal to or higher than a Target Number to actually hit. Then when you do hit, you roll dice to deal damage. This has been the way of things since OD&D, and has been a staple of many TTRPG combat systems. It's easy to grasp, and has behemoth cultural momentum. Each 1 on a d20 is a 5% chance, so you can essentially do a d100 with smaller increments and thus easier math (smaller numbers are easier to math than larger numbers, generally).
This is how LANCER works, this is how ICON works, this is how SHADOW OF THE DEMON LORD works, this is how TRESPASSER works, this is how WYRDWOOD WAND works, this is how VALIANT QUEST works, etc. etc. It's a tried and true formula, every D&D player has a d20, it's emblematic of the hobby.
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There's been a lot more critical discussion lately on D&D's conventions, especially due to the OGL. Many past D&D only people are branching out of the bubble and into the rest of the TTRPG hobby. It's not a new phenomenon--it's happened before. Back in the 2010s, when Apocalypse World came out while D&D was in its 4th Edition, grappling with Pathfinder. Grappling with its stringent GSL License (funny how circular this all is).
Anyway, all of that is just to put in the groundwork. My problem with D&D Violence (particularly, of the 3e, 4e, and 5e version) is that it's a violence that arises from "default fantasy". Default Fantasy is what comes to mind when you say fantasy: dragons, kings, medieval castles, knights, goblins, trolls. It's that fantasy cultivated by people who's played D&D and thus informs D&D. There is much to be said about the majority of this being an American Samsaric Cycle, and it being tied to the greater commodification agenda of Capitalism, but we won't go into that right now. Anyway, D&D Violence is boring. It thinks of fights in HITS and MISSES and DAMAGE PER SECOND.
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A Difference Of Paradigm and Philosophies
I believe this is because it stems from D&D still having one foot in the "grungy dungeon crawler" genre it wants to be and the "combat encounter balance MMO" it also wants to be. What ends up happening is that players play it like an immersive sim, finding ways to "cheese" encounters with spells, instead of interacting with the game as the fiction intended. This is exemplified in something like Baldur's Gate 3 for example: a lot of the strats that people love about it includes cheesing, shooting things before they have the chance to react, instead of doing an in-fiction brawl or fight to the death. It's a pragmatist way of approaching the game, and the mechanics of the game kind of reinforce it. People enjoy that approach, so that's good. I don't. Wuxia and Asian Martial Dramas aren't like that, for the most part.
It must be said that this is my paradigm: that the rules and mechanics of the game is what makes the fiction (that shared collective imagination that binds us, penetrates us) arise. A fiction that arises from a set of mechanics is dependent on those mechanics. There is no fiction that arises independently. This is why I commonly say that the mechanics are the narrative. Even if you try to play a game that completely ignores the rules--as is the case in many OSR games where rules elide--your fiction is still arising from shared cultural tropes, shared ideas, shared interests and consumed media.
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So for Gubat Banwa, the philosophy was this: when you spend a resource, something happens. This changes the entire battle state--thus changing the mechanics, thus changing the fiction. In a tactical game, very often, the mechanics are the fiction, barring the moments that you or your Umalagad (or both of you!) have honed creativity enough to take advantage of the fiction without mechanical crutches (ie., trying to justify that cold soup on the table can douse the flames on your Kadungganan if he runs across the table).
The other philosophy was this: we're designing fights that feel like kinetic high flying exchanges between fabled heroes and dirty fighters. In these genres, in these fictions, there was no "he attacked thrice, and one of these attacks missed". Every attack was a move forward.
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So Gubat Banwa removed itself from the To-Hit/Damage roll dichotomy. It sought to put itself outside of that paradigm, use game conventions and cultural rituals that exist outside of the current West-dominated space. For combat, I looked to Japanese RPGs for mechanical inspiration: in FINAL FANTASY TACTICS and TACTICS OGRE, missing was rare, and when you did miss it was because you didn't take advantage of your battlefield positioning or was using a kind of weapon that didn't work well against the target's armor. It existed as a fail state to encourage positioning and movement. In wuxia and silat films, fighters are constantly running across the environment and battlefield, trying to find good positioning so that they're not overwhelmed or so that they could have a hand up against the target.
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The Violence Die: the Visceral Attacking Roll
Gubat Banwa has THE VIOLENCE DIE: this is the initial die or dice that you roll as part of a specific offensive technique.
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In the above example, the Inflict Violence that belongs to the HEAVENSPEAR Discipline, the d8 is the Violence Die. When you roll this die, it can be modified by effects that affect the Violence Die specifically. This becomes an accuracy effect: the more accurate your attack, the more damage you deal against your target's Posture. Mas asintado, mas mapinsala.
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You compare your Violence Die roll to your target's EVADE [EVD]. If you rolled equal to or lower than the target's EVD, they avoid that attack completely. There: we keep the tacticality of having to make sure your attack doesn't miss, but also EVD values are very low: often they're just 1, or 2. 4 is very often the highest it can go, and that's with significant investment.
If you rolled higher than that? Then you ignore EVD completely. If you rolled a 3 and the target's EVD was 2, then you deal 3 DMG + relevant modifiers to the DMG. When I wrote this, I had no conception of "removing the To-Hit Roll" or "Just rolling Damage Dice". To me this was the ATTACK, and all attacks wore down your target's capacity to defend themselves until they're completely open to a significant wound. In most fights, a single wound is more than enough to spell certain doom and put you out of the fight, which is the most important distinction here.
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In the Thundering Spear example, that targets PARRY [PAR], representing it being blocked by physical means of acuity and quickness. Any damage brought about by the attack is directly reduced by the target's PAR. A means for the target to stay in the fight, actively defending.
But if the attack isn't outright EVADED, then they still suffer its effects. So the target of a Thundering Spear might have reduced the damage of an attack to just 1 (1 is minimum damage), they would still be thrown up to 3 tiles away. It matches that sort of, anime combat thing: they strike Goku, but Goku is still flung back. The game keeps going, the fight keeps going.
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On Mechanical Weight
When you miss, the mechanical complexity immediately stops--if you miss, you don't do anything else. Move on. To the next Beat, the next Riff, the next Resound, think about where you could go to better your chances next time.
Otherwise, the attack's other parts are a lot more mechanically involved. If you don't miss: roll add your Attacking Prowess, add extra dice from buffs, roll an extra amount of dice representing battlefield positioning or perhaps other attacks you make, apply the effects of your attack, the statuses connected to your attack. It keeps going, and missing is rare, especially once you've learned the systematic intricacies of Gubat Banwa's THUNDERING TACTICS BATTLE SYSTEM.
So there was a lot of setup in the beginning of this post just to sort of contextualize what I was trying to say here. Gubat Banwa inherently arises from those traditions--as a 4e fan, I would be remiss to ignore that. However, the conclusion I wanted to come up to here is the fact that Gubat Banwa tries to step outside of the many conventions of that design due to that design inherently servicing the deliverance of a specific kind of combat fiction, one that isn't 100% conducive to the constantly exchanging attacks that Gubat Banwa tries to make arise in the imagination.
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capriceandwhimsy · 1 year
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You know, watching Legend of Vox Machina Season II really reminds me that 5e dragons just got the short end of the stick.
All 5e dragons follow the same template:
A Multiattack
A Bite
A Claw
A couple of Legendary actions which usually include a tail slap and a wing attack.
A breath attack that recharges on a 5-6.
Whereas the dragons in LOVM are using abilities like:
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An AOE acid flyover attack caused by the wings scattering acid.
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Creating ice walls to separate the party.
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Lingering poison gas clouds.
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AOE flame attacks that strike a wide area and leave lingering flames.
You know what this reminds me of? 4e's dragons. Like, look at this ability from a 4th Edition Black Dragon.
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Sets up a cloud of darkness that blinds everyone within it, allowing the dragon to evade attacks and pick off the weaker enemies.
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The Ancient Red Dragon, by contrast, punishes you for trying to fight it. It has an innate aura that makes it hard to shoot it. It has a fire aura that damages anyone who tries to get in close. Anyone who tries to flank it gets slapped away. Anyone who tries to stay at range gets burned by either its Breath Weapon or single target Immolate attack.
And do you see that kicker on the breath weapon? The Red Dragon's flames are so powerful it can overcome damage resistance. There is no safe way to fight an Ancient Red Dragon.
Compare that to 5e's Ancient Red Dragon.
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God, that shit is dull. It's just a better Wyrmling. It has some more attacks and a few extra powers. Half its abilities can be hard countered with a Ring of Fire Elemental Command. Lair actions make things a bit more interesting, but it's still mostly variations on "do something with fire."
4e had a lot of faults, but the monsters at least had interesting powers.
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Gubat Banwa
Gubat Banwa is a tactics based TTRPG based on SEA culture, it's primarily based on the much demonized D&D 4e, but it's genuinely a fantastic game people should check out and support.
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dice-wizard · 3 months
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"D&D 4e was so difficult to design for!"
Skill issue.
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my-t4t-romance · 1 year
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what with all the anti-trust overpriced nonsense going on with Hasbro and D&D, I just now remembered that I started collecting pdfs of D&D sourcebooks somewhere around the beginning of the pandemic! it’s mostly 3.5e and 4e (EDIT: now with lots of 5e materials added by @honeynutqueerioz!), but here’s a link to the google drive folders. let me know if yall can access the pdfs alright, and dm me if you have anything you’d like added to the collection!
1 reblog = 1 yo ho
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level2janitor · 3 months
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whenever someone complaints abt a ttrpg being 'gamey' the standard response is "well what did you expect?? you're playing a game, dipshit". but i think by 'gamey' the actual criticism being made is that it feels artificial
5e's always felt gamey to me because of the annoying obligation to balance encounters and an adventuring day. you need to have enough encounters to drain the wizard's resources, they need to walk a tightrope between challenging the PCs and not TPK-ing them, etc etc.
and everyone talks about how hard this is on the GM with the limited tools 5e gives you (which it is) but it also has the unrelated effect of feeling extremely forced from a player-side. the illusion of a consistent world starts to slip because what the PCs encounter has to revolve around the PCs for the game to work.
also i've been seeing a lot of 4e defending on my dash lately and like, yes it's a good game that's very good at the thing it chooses to do. but the criticism that 4e feels gamey (read: artificial) is extremely valid; the strict separation between combat and non-combat results in all flavor basically being only flavor
there's a 4e paragon path you can take called the Entrancing Mystic, whose powers have flavor text describing how you bewitch and ensnare the minds of your enemies. what do the powers actually do? some forced movement in the combat boardgame. what happens if you use them out of combat? who knows! they certainly weren't designed to be used that way, because their actual effect is measured only in terms of the combat boardgame
obviously there's a lot of aspects of non-4e D&D and similar games that are unrealistic. hit points are not how being stabbed works. but certain gamisms bother me more bc they create a clear disconnect between the fiction and the mechanics in a more tangible way.
like, 13th age's resting system (great game but i wanna pick on it here) has you fully heal every 3 or 4 encounters. only had one encounter? no full heal-up, even if you're resting. you have had four encounters? you get a full heal-up. there's a halfhearted sidebar about how the GM should contrive a reason for the heal-up to happen.
as a game balance mechanic, it's great! but i despise it because it's so disconnected from the reality of the game world. HP and fully healing on a rest isn't realistic, but it's an abstract representation of something that happens in the fiction. take a rest -> fully heal is unrealistic but internally consistent with the game world. 13th age healing is not - the in-universe characters can never acknowledge it as it makes no in-world sense.
anyway the reason i'm grumpy abt this lately is the MCDM game has a taunt mechanic that's just straight-up called taunting and it irks me so so bad. again, great game, super fun, but taunting leads to so many situations where an NPC does stuff they wouldn't do
y'know, like a videogame! where the dialogue and personality is just a skin over a set of game mechanics. and when NPCs start behaving out of character with no in-world justification (cause taunts aren't mind control ofc, it's just a guy... taunting you) they feel gamey. artificial.
i like all of the games i brought up (except probably 5e) but i had to get that out of my system thanks for coming to my ted talk
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katastrofish · 22 days
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birthday gift for @pawseds of their character hrodwyn!!! hrodwyn has very strong sky kid vibes so it was inspired that :3
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thecreaturecodex · 1 year
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Elemental Myrmidon
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Image © Wizards of the Coast.
[Commissioned by @tar-baphon​. I skipped the elemental myrmidon when I was writing up monsters from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes not from a lack of interest, but because I couldn’t decide whether to make it one monster with four variants based on elemental type, or four discrete monsters. This commissioner picked for me. Because the same commissioner has an elemental earth themed monster in queue, I went with the earth myrmidon as my example.
The elemental myrmidon is based on the archons from D&D 4th Edition. That edition was the most revisionist take on D&D, and stripped out a lot of the idiosyncratic developments of the previous 40 years in order to replace them with new idiosyncratic developments. This was widely disliked and seen as a bad idea by the fanbase, so most of those were quietly ignored in the reboot to 5th edition. In 4th edition, basic elementals didn’t exist, replaced by humanoid, armed and armored archons (none of the celestial types from D&D having survived the edition change) and hybrid elementals that were more like the vague blobs of matter of previous editions, just combining multiple elements.]
Elemental Myrmidon CR 10 N Outsider (elemental) This creature is a vaguely humanoid mass of elemental earth, wearing a breastplate, helmet and greaves. It carries an enormous hammer.
An elemental myrmidon is an elemental creature that has sworn itself completely to the service of a higher elemental power. This is typically one of the elemental lords, but myrmidons serving primordials or even true gods are not unknown. The myrmidon is bound to a suit of magical armor, engraved with holy symbols to the power in question. As long as that armor remains intact, the myrmidon will never die, reforming inside the armor to serve again.
An elemental myrmidon’s tactics and feats tend to vary with its type.  Air myrmidons often use ranged attacks, and use hit and run tactics in melee. Earth myrmidons favor overwhelming force, dealing as much damage as possible. Fire myrmidons often make use of two weapon fighting or other flashy techniques. Water myrmidons focus on defense as much as offense, and are most likely to specialize in combat maneuvers. Regardless, all myrmidons fight to the death in the service of their lord’s cause, knowing that they will be recreated to fight again if they fail.
Because the four elemental lords are evil, as are most of the primordials, more elemental myrmidons are evil than good. Those that are not evil may be hunted down by their evil fellows. Because myrmidons know their own weaknesses, they are sure to destroy the armor of rival myrmidons when slain in order to prevent them from rejuvenating. Elemental myrmidons are popular with conjurers for their strength and their servility; if they fall in the line of duty, their armor returns to the elemental planes before rejuvenation occurs. Most elemental myrmidons are bound to breastplates, but other forms of armor are possible.
Elemental Myrmidon          CR 10 XP 9,600 N Medium outsider (elemental, earth, extraplanar) Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft., Perception +15, tremorsense 30 ft. Defense AC 25, touch 13, flat-footed 22 (+3 Dex, +5 natural, +7 armor) hp 114 (12d10+48) Fort +8, Ref +11, Will +10 DR 10/magic; Immune elemental traits; Resist acid 10 Defensive Abilities rejuvenation Offense Speed 30 ft., burrow 30 ft. (40 ft., burrow 40 ft. unarmored); earth glide Melee masterwork earth breaker +18/+13/+8 (2d6+7/19-20x3) or 2 slams +17 (1d6+5) Special Attacks elemental strike Statistics Str 20, Dex 16, Con 19, Int 9, Wis 11, Cha 10 Base Atk +12; CMB +17; CMD 30 Feats Blind-fight, Cleave, Improved Critical (earth breaker), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack Skills Acrobatics +15, Intimidate +15, Knowledge (planes) +14, Perception +15, Sense Motive +15 Languages Common, Terran SQ elemental affinity (earth), martial training Ecology Environment any (Plane of Elemental Earth) Organization solitary, pair or squad (3-6) Treasure standard (+1 breastplate, masterwork earth breaker, other treasure) Special Abilities Elemental Affinity (Ex) An elemental myrmidon is affiliated with one of the four elements. This determines its subtype, its movement and its resistances and immunities as follows: Air: Air subtype, resist electricity 10, speed 40 feet, fly 40 ft. (perfect) Earth: Earth subtype, tremorsense 30 feet, resist acid 10, speed 40 feet, burrow 40 ft.; earth glide Fire: Fire subtype, immune to fire, vulnerable to cold, speed 60 feet Water: Water subtype, resist cold 10, speed 40 feet, swim 40 feet. Elemental Strike (Su) Once every 1d4 rounds, an elemental myrmidon can imbue its manufactured weapon or a slam attack with elemental energy as a swift action. The next time this attack hits an opponent, it deals extra damage, and a secondary effect, as determined by the myrmidon’s type: Air: 4d6 electricity, Fortitude save (DC 20) or stunned for 1 round Earth: 4d8 bludgeoning, Reflex save (DC 20) or pushed 10 feet and knocked prone Fire: 4d6 fire, Reflex save (DC 20) or burn (2d6) Water: 4d6 cold, Fortitude save (DC 20) or fatigued The save DC is Constitution based. Martial Training (Ex) An elemental myrmidon is proficient in simple and martial weapons, simple and medium armor, and shields (except for tower shields). Rejuvenation (Su) If an elemental myrmidon is destroyed, it reforms inside of its armor 1d10 days later. If the elemental myrmidon was on a plane other than the Elemental Plane appropriate to its element, the armor is transported to that plane (as by plane shift) before this rejuvenation occurs. Only by destroying the armor can this be prevented.
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badragonplays · 3 months
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So I may have bought a few things today....
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dndbloggerepiteme · 3 months
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Demon Lord Lady Lynkhab
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This art was created by me using artificial intelligence to depict a modern version of this demon lord. The art is not copyrighted ask permission to use please.
Hello, I will be making a post that goes through the information given in 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E, and 5E. This includes all four hundred dragon magazines, all two hundred dungeon magazines, web supplements, and other official released content. There are many demon lords that have been depicted or lost in the vast amounts of DND content. I only wish to bring them to your attention and create new art that features these demon lords.
Trigger warning❗️
This post depicts a suicidal character if you are not comfortable with this topic being discussed please do not read.
Original depiction of Lady Lynkhab
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First Appearance
She was referenced in a 2E planescape book with a description.
This post gives an example of her story. Her full story and description will be found in my new post.
The Abyss
Before you read. You should know that the abyss and the lords in it influence every world within DND and some deities on certain planets only have influence in that world the abyss and its demon lords influence the entire multiverse while gods take control of certain aspects of their planet it’s the demon lords who have much more influence and the fact they are limited in power is a mystery, but Lady Lynkhab is a example of how much influence the abyss has on existence.
Character Description
Lady Lynkhab is a puzzle. She is deep depression and intense desire, both at the same time. A big book of names - the Mors Mysterium Nominum - says she is depressed because she did her job too well. What Xanxost means to say: Lynkhab expressed the idea of desire so perfectly that she became a disembodied force. Desire became permanent part of existence it existed in all things. But she reformed herself so she could continue her expression. Instead of being an energy she wanted to have a physical form and rule from her layer of the abyss. Now she wishes she never took her body, back. Oho! Too late.
She became desire, but decided to manifest into a physical form. Why she did this is a mystery. Perhaps her demon and chaotic nature pulled her back to the abyss so she could protect her layer from invasion or being taken from her by another demon lord.
Lynkhab has become a creature of pure will, too cohesive to move on to a new existence. She tries and tries, and she fails and fails. She can force herself out of her own memory and thus out of being for a time, but she is desire!
Desire exists in all things and cannot be destroyed she is desire itself and can not destroy herself.
And she is so strong that she always reappears after a day or two. That is why she is depression, too. She wants to become a true deity, but she is stuck right where she is. Her physical form prevents her from ascending within the universe and becoming an all powerful deity. She is now stuck in the abyss in her physical body as desire itself unable to access the power throughout creation she made. She still is desire and desire cannot be destroyed, but she is limited by her physical form and trapped within it.
Just a poor little abyssal lord.
'Course, Lynkhab is stuck in a physical form, but it does not always have to be the same form. She reads the desires in the hearts of others and feeds off their lusts.
Wizards like to see what kind of slaadi she would make! Lately, Lynkhab takes the shape of a flame-haired, voluptuous elf with eyes of burning ice. The tanar'ri say she owns the 297th layer (the Sighing Cliffs), but she also wanders the Abyss because no one - not even other lords - can hurt her. Sometimes she seeks out mortal adventurers in the Abyss and says, "Hello, please try to kill me!" If they fail, she puts them in the dead-book. So far, everyone has failed.
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redwizardofgay · 11 months
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I regret very much to inform all of you that I am still on my bullshit with dnd 4e, and that today I shall be ranting about one of its better ideas: sorting classes into set roles.
So! 4e had this pretty neat idea of actually staying outright, in the rulebooks, what role a specific class was suited for given their abilities. Given that dnd is allegedly a roleplaying game, this is, on the face of it, a good idea. It gives players a good idea of what they're supposed to do in combat beyond "kill the monster" and also gives party building a much more coherent direction than "we need a cleric". Especially with sources acting as a sort of qualifier for what sort of powers and abilities a character could have, this creates a gorgeous symmetry where you could say something like " I want to play a divine striker" and wouldn't you know it 4e has just such a class. As is characteristic for 4e, however, the execution flamed out hard, and doesn't really work as intended.
The game offered a total of four roles: controller, defender, leader and striker. Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well.... by 4e's reckoning "controller" is an area of effect blaster unit, defender is a battlefield manipulator, and leader is healer. Strikers alone actually do what they sound like they should do: single target damage. There are three problems here. Firstly, it's never a good thing when the meaning of a game term doesn't intuitively follow it's obvious meaning. At minimum this slows down acquisition of knowledge and makes communication more difficult than it otherwise needs to be, at worst it actively confuses players and renders the system useless. Secondly, 4e is balanced around there being 5 players at the table, and yet there are only 4 roles. Nothing about that makes sense to me, and I just have more questions than answers there; most notably why certain roles are just not present. Which leads me to point three: missing roles. Long term dnd fans will automatically notice that 4e's role roster leaves out a role for skill challenges (traditionally held by bards and rogues), and the idea of a controller --- something like a Mesmer is Guild Wars or an Enchanter in Everquest fits right in with what 4e is going for, so why isn't there a class to represent that archetype? While I've found a tonne of neat insights from the devs of 4e as to why they made the choices that they did, this is one that still evades me. Like, why would they add this really neat system and then half-ass it so badly? In any case, I want to present you all with an idea of how to fix it.
To begin with, we're going to change around what roles we have. I see no reason to keep the four that we've already got so I'll instead present my thesis of five roles: Controller, Defender, Expert, Striker, and Support.
Controllers are characters who control the flow of battle, most often by manipulating enemy creatures' behaviour (either through mind magic or through punishing effects like countermagic,) the position of friends and foes, and the battlefield itself. A druid's ability to transform the weather and terrain of the battlefield makes them an ideal controller, as does the illusionist's ability to manipulate the perceptions and ideas of their enemies.
Defenders are characters who protect others. While defenders can manipulate enemy behaviour through taunting (an ability common to all classes in this role,) they can also use reactions like opportunity attacks, parrying, and defending (shoving allies out of a space and taking an attack on their behalf) to protect. Fighters and paladins are the quintessential defenders. Fighters' ability to lay down zones of control around themselves and viciously punish anything that gets too close makes them an ideal defender, while the paladin's ability to heal and smite makes them a punishing protector of the weak.
Whenever a party is faced with a skill challenge, they'd best call in an Expert to help them. Experts are characters with oodles of skills like picking locks, recalling knowledge, and tracking monsters that add ample depth to the game experience. In a fight, experts help their friends along by using their skills to get into advantageous positions (in which case they usually serve as sub-strikers) or using their knowledge to ensure every strike is as deadly as it can be (allowing them to serve as sub-supports.) Rogues and bards are quintessential experts.
Strikers are damage dealers, and count both single target and area-of-effect damage dealers as part of their club. As a striker, your primary objective is to hit the enemy as hard as you can from one turn to the next. Wizards and warlocks are both strikers, with wizards being better at multi-target attacks and warlocks being masters of single-target damage. A wizard's ability to command the essences of reality to assault large swaths of the battlefield makes them slow, vulnerable engines of destruction. Warlocks, in contrast, are essentially magical snipers, striking at enemies with punishing accuracy and ferocity before vanishing into magical darkness.
Supports, finally, are the healers, buffers and debuffers of the D&D party. As a support, you are expected to make your allies be all that they can be --- either by patching them up when things go awry, by making them better at things than they usually would be, or by making rest of the world bend to your will. Clerics and warlords are supports. Clerics are powerful healers who magical ability to heal and raise the dead enables many adventurers to push themselves beyond the brink and make it home again. Warlords, in contrast, are tactical super-geniuses whose military know-how ensures that their allies move with the confidence of trained soldiers.
I would also like to introduce the concept of sub-roles that is, a position that a class can play in but doesn't manage to do as well as a proper member of that role would. Rogues, as mentioned above, are adept strikers, even if their primary use is as experts. Wizards, in contrast are primarily strikers but can fill-in for an expert with their vast knowledge of the arcane. With sub-roles also accounted for, classes get to be more than just the role they're meant for, while also making it more difficult for parties to build themselves poorly and suffer as a result.
And that's what I've got one roles so far. I think the idea of having explicit roles for a class can be a good thing, but of course that comes with the caveat that they should be evidently loose. As in, the affinity any class has for a role should be loose enough that only a fool would insist that a rogue cannot be a striker, or a wizard must also be a blaster. That's more for community management than anything else, but I still think it's worth putting down somewhere.
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crustmonster · 1 year
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4e Fix--dev log 1
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Some of the best times I’ve ever had playing D&D were with 4th edition. It’s the only edition where I got just as much enjoyment out of interacting with the mechanics of the game as I did hanging out with my friends playing make believe. That said, it’s pretty hard to get back into 4e after playing other editions of D&D, and especially other RPGs in general. Once the game gets going it’s easy enough to play, but the sheer amount of effort you have to go through to make a character, and to level them up between sessions is daunting. Plus, the game is slowed down by lots of bonuses that are so small, and rules so specific, that they don’t have any meaningful impact on gameplay. The way I see it, these problems are mostly due to “vestigial 3.5-isms”--game elements from the previous edition that stuck around even though they didn’t need to. 
The goal of 4e Fix is to create a supplement that can be used alongside the core 4e books which removes these vestigial game elements, and incorporates a handful of modern game design elements to streamline and declutter the D&D 4e experience without altering so much that it stops being D&D 4e altogether.
To-Do:
Simplify races (renamed to origins) down to 2 traits each. Get rid of  minor bonuses too small to matter.
Simplify classes. Get rid of class features that provide minor bonuses too small to matter. Rewrite class features that provide feats.
Get rid of ability scores–just use modifiers.
Get rid of the “add ½ your level” bonus some stats have. Adjust monster math to compensate.
Simplify weapons and armor, taking inspiration from the way D&D Gamma World does it.
Experimental:
Get rid of both feats and skills–replace them with a single new thing that fills both roles.
I’ll be posting updates.
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friendrat · 6 months
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So, remember when I asked for opinions about my backup dnd character, Anansi? It worked out perfectly because, not only did I realize that the one other bard character I had made for a campaign that fell through didn't have a theme and scholar fit her background perfectly, but I also had forgotten that the prescient bard build exists. So now, Anansi has abilities like Glimpse the Future, Clarvoyance, and Cast Fortune from both parts of his build, and I am thrilled!
Now I just need to convince the DM to let me use Cast Fortune and Glimpse the Future together.... 😆 (one allows me to pick an ally and roll 3d20s and they replace their next three d20 rolls that character makes for saves, attacks, and skill checks, and the other let's me roll 3d20s and pick the highest one and use it at any point during the encounter to change an ally's roll... so if I am allowed, I could "foresee" someone crit failing and then change the future to a more desirable outcome)
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kiinngazau · 7 months
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I’m super excited cause I’m currently running a game using my ttrpg Im making once a week, and I’m starting another game this week playing D&D 4th edition. Now I know 4e isn’t the most popular system, but I really love heavy mechanical systems with tons of options, so I’m really excited to play it for the first time! I ran it once as a GM but I’ve never played it before. On the ttrpg I made. The first session went very well and everyone seemed to enjoy it! I took lots of notes during the session and during character creation so I know what stuff to clean up, fix, elaborate on, or reformat/reorganize. The base rules and mechanics of the system are mostly just done, I’m basically making more player options and enemies, while also trying to make everything more streamlined and easy to understand. Seeing the things people miss also helps me to see where I need to put more redundancy,
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underleveledjosh · 10 months
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"Short people using great swords have historical president." Yes. Humans. That were 5+ feet tall. Not somebody who is 3-4 feet tall like a halfling or a gnome. Also not to mention greatswords were used to counter pike formations so if it was less than 50 inches long, it would not be a greatsword, as it would not fulfill its purpose. So no "greatswords for halflings" either. Sure, a halfling could wield a greatsword, but they would have some form of penalty, and halfling sized great swords do not exist (as I mentioned earlier, a blade less than 50 inches would not be a greatsword). That would be a longsword and mechanically function as such. So if you are a halfling player, you gotta just stick to the longsword as the biggest weapon you can wield without any sort of disadvantage.
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So there's 4E D&D conversation going around again? That's nice. I, unironically, love Fourth Edition of the World's Oldest RPG. You can write that down, I just did. Monster Manual 3 on a business card; clear(er?) ideas of what a class did and what classes can sub in for other classes, but you can get weird if you want to; Fighters (and other martials) that felt cinematic (depending on your definition, maybe above that), meaning they can do their job while the Sorcerer does hers - that's fucking great; monks, coming from my 3E context, that didn't suck and were so mobile, that was fun; just the mobility and forced movement in general - if you weren't Pushing and Pulling bad guys and Sliding allies and dropping down Zones I don't think you were using the 4E tech to its fullest extent.
But, naturally, I'm gonna talk about Dwarf Fighters and how 4E was the first edition to really fulfill the promises behind "In this house we play Dwarf Fighters" - what does that mean? Why Dwarf Fighters? It's about being on the frontline because wherever you are, that's where the frontline is. It's about protecting your allies by stopping the bad guys from getting by you (and not in a "I use the terrain" hand wave-y fashion" but opportunity attacks and slowing them and pushing them back and and and). It's about being tough, no tougher, and knowing they aren't going to push you out of your spot between your buddies and them, they'll have to step over your unconscious body. It's about sacrifice because when they're attacking you, they aren't attacking your friends. That's why, in this house, we play Dwarf Fighters, and that's what 4E really gave *me* in the long, long ago - when I also wasn't a PermaGM. And that was enough.
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