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5 months ago ::
Dec 22, 2012 - 3:16PM
#41
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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i'm not interested in playing a game if death is a mathematical inevitablity.
personally, i'd rather have a game where death is a final consequence of bad decisions.
Any fatality rate at all becomes a mathematical inevitability given a long enough time frame. 
<Ioun> they're apparently making a MolIsCool pp
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5 months ago ::
Dec 22, 2012 - 3:17PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Oct 21, 2012
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i'm not interested in playing a game if death is a mathematical inevitablity.
personally, i'd rather have a game where death is a final consequence of bad decisions.
If its possible then we can quantify it with probability. That result is not inevitable by any stretch of the imagination, just probable.
a 20% chance of death stretched over any appreciable time frame (say 1-2 years for an average campaign) becomes statistically 100% per character. this makes it inevitable.
Oh yes, very true. High lethality wont work for long term games. Just episodes and short runs. But it adds a whole different element to those games. And if short games are considered the default then DDN will have a very different feel. Much darker and faster.
Theres plenty of ways to mitigate that setting for players who want to run a long game, easy rez and lots of healing for example.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 22, 2012 - 3:18PM
#43
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Date Joined:
Oct 21, 2012
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i'm not interested in playing a game if death is a mathematical inevitablity.
personally, i'd rather have a game where death is a final consequence of bad decisions.
Any fatality rate at all becomes a mathematical inevitability given a long enough time frame.
Is that cocaine in your avatar?
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5 months ago ::
Dec 22, 2012 - 3:20PM
#44
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Date Joined:
Oct 21, 2012
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i'm not interested in playing a game if death is a mathematical inevitablity.
personally, i'd rather have a game where death is a final consequence of bad decisions.
Any fatality rate at all becomes a mathematical inevitability given a long enough time frame.
Is that cocaine in your avatar?
Oh, guess not =-) What is it?
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5 months ago ::
Dec 22, 2012 - 3:39PM
#45
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Date Joined:
Sep 30, 2006
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i'm not interested in playing a game if death is a mathematical inevitablity.
personally, i'd rather have a game where death is a final consequence of bad decisions.
If its possible then we can quantify it with probability. That result is not inevitable by any stretch of the imagination, just probable.
a 20% chance of death stretched over any appreciable time frame (say 1-2 years for an average campaign) becomes statistically 100% per character. this makes it inevitable.
Oh yes, very true. High lethality wont work for long term games. Just episodes and short runs. But it adds a whole different element to those games. And if short games are considered the default then DDN will have a very different feel. Much darker and faster.
Theres plenty of ways to mitigate that setting for players who want to run a long game, easy rez and lots of healing for example.
ressurrection is silly. if you're going to add an option that marginalizes death, why even have high mortality?
i want to play in games where i can feel free to develop a deep character without fearing that some mechanically-enforced mortality rug is going to be yanked out from under me.
i also want death--when it is appropriately stumbled into--to be absoultely final. no ressurrections.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 22, 2012 - 4:08PM
#46
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I used to think that monsters should be tough because I like encounters that makes the PCs sweat. Then I GMed a bit of 13th Age. Mobs are pretty easy kill in that game. However, this knob, I can just tuuuuurn it up sooooo easiiiiiiiily. I threw two normal bears and one dire bear (worth 10 levels) at 4 level 1 PCs (worth 4 levels). They did it, one PC went down and they blew the dailies, but they took it down. (They even chased down the one that tried to run off while the dire bear was still standing. Player didn't want it to call its bear friends for help.)
You know how easy it would of been to make that 2 dire bears? Easy easy. Make the survival rate when done by the books be pretty high. Weak mobs in the hands of a mean GM just means said GM has more freedom when making encounters. What if the PCs got hit by a trap that took out ~half their HP then IMMEDIATELY an ambush hit? I did that too. They survived, but one player definitely complained. "You're running off on round 1?" "You took out 3/4th of our HP then had us get *beep*ed by a bunch of mobs! *beep* yes I'm backing off!" Haha, Lawl.
It feels a lot better to turn things up then tone it down. I want low to medium difficulty by the books.
What I think the Wilder Design Goals should be. Psionic Homebrew Mk2! Changed core, Focus Points, Psionic Potentials, stuff! Very basic core stuff. :P Homebrew Psionics blog posts archive: Spoiler:
Show
UPDATED Dec/18/2012: BAMN! Random update with a modest amount of hard rules for Animal Affinity, Telepathy, and Telekinesis. ADDED: Discipline Burn and more "soft" ideas.
Dec/13/2012: Small Psionics Homebrew Update, now that I'm done with Finals.
Really old.
Nov/02/2012:
I'm working on a homebrew Wilder, and so a homebrew Psionics system. Here's a 3 part post with info on where I am in the design process.
Part 1, Hard rules/example soulknife discipline: Link.
Part 2, Basic ideas/goals on basic numbers and classes: Link.
Part 3, Direction/ideas I want to take with specific disciplines: Link.:3
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5 months ago ::
Dec 24, 2012 - 9:55PM
#47
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Date Joined:
Dec 22, 2012
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JUST A POINT: In my first campaign with this new package (I was DMing), after much roleplaying, we finally got a bit of blood... one of my PCs was on the ground in the first enconter...  ...She was a monk, and she charged in there, and didn't even bother using a maneuver, after the rouge took out the only other oppenent with a sneak-attack-less dagger... Then it was Inflict Light Wounds, and she was down... One hit point from death. I like this edition - it's more realistic then 4e, where you barely notice the 12 arrows in your chest, but it's pretty dangerous as it is... Or my PC's are used to being invincible, but...
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5 months ago ::
Dec 24, 2012 - 9:57PM
#48
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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i'm not interested in playing a game if death is a mathematical inevitablity.
personally, i'd rather have a game where death is a final consequence of bad decisions.
Any fatality rate at all becomes a mathematical inevitability given a long enough time frame.
Is that cocaine in your avatar?
Serotonin.
<Ioun> they're apparently making a MolIsCool pp
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5 months ago ::
Dec 25, 2012 - 1:02AM
#49
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How many character deaths are you guys seeing during play? I don't have the opportunity to play right now, but I was going through the rules and it seemed that the characters have a very high survivability rate; 95% + over the course of a session. This, of course, is just entirely too high for the encounters to create any sense of dread and apprehension. I think 80% would be a lot more exciting; so that with 5 players its pretty unlikely that all of their characters will make it through the session.
Where do you think the default fatality level is currently set in DDN? Is this where you would like to see it kept?
I don't think it's too biased in favor of Character survival. I mean, an orc can still one-shot most level 1 characters. A lvl 1 rogue or wizard with less than a 16 Con goes down from the static average damage of its melee attack in one hit. The cleric and fighter fare better, but a cleric or a monk with less than a 16 Con still goes down on a roll of 8 or better on the orc's d12 damage die (that's a 33% chance of going down on the first hit). The fighter fares the best, being unlikely to go down on the first hit for anything other than a crit, and even that assumes a low roll when mitigating damage via parry.
Why Mechanics-Alignment Integration is Bad
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so why even play a fighter if you can play the paladin the exact same way behaviorally and get added power to boot. "Paladin" is about accepting better game-enhancing mechanics at the price of more rigid in game behavior.
Really? So it goes something like this?
Fighter: "I want to be a paladin."
NPC: "Really?"
Fighter: "Yes."
NPC: "Very well." Starts reading from a holy book while still in-character "Do you accept having to choose and stick to the lawful good alignment, eventhough neither of us actually knows that it exists or what it is?"
Fighter: "I do."
NPC: "Do you reject good game balance because you accidentally rolled a high Charisma?"
Fighter: "What?"
NPC: "I don't know what it means either."
Fighter: "Oh. Umm, ok I do."
NPC: "In the name of all that is metagamey and broken, accept these better game enhancing mechanics."
Fighter: "These what?"
NPC: "Just get out there and try to fulfill a million different people's notion of good while not violating and part of any of them."
So the system is designed such that every single hit needs to be described to avoid confusion? Here's a scenario. The players are nudists, everybody in the world are nudists, it's not weird, it's totally normal in this land. They are naked and they fight drakes taking damage throughout, but healing up with surges. Later they meet the guy who raised the drakes.
Part 1: I didn't describe any of the hits. What does he see?
Part 2: Lets say I described the drakes as biting the players, yet they healed up. What does he see?
D20 Modern Toon PC Race.
Mecha Pilot's Skill Challenge Emporium.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 25, 2012 - 2:23AM
#50
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Date Joined:
May 19, 2011
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I like this edition - it's more realistic then 4e, where you barely notice the 12 arrows in your chest, but it's pretty dangerous as it is...
When Im playing a game with spell-slinging Wizards and immortal Monks who fight dragons, zombies, evil wizards, and devils, realism is usually the last thing I'm concerned with.
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