Seems almost RIFTS-like, with that double-stack of AC to keep track of..
Pen & Paper Role Playing Games
- Thread starter Dei
- Start date
I wish I could get past my own bad ideas.
Like, I had an idea for a flavor book for RPGs on how different races and cultures would craft swords and armor, based off real-world techniques. For example, the swordsmiths of Toledo, Spain, were some of the finest in the world of their age. Part of what made their blades so good was how they improved their steel. They'd make standard bloom steel, then bury the ingots for two or three years. The corrosion would eat away the impurities of the steel, leaving a much stronger ingot of steel behind, which was then dug up and used to make blades. Now, to me, that's perfect for Elves, since time isn't as much as a factor to them.
That kind of thing. I mean, I know there's no market to it, and cultures aren't the same for each game world, but... eh, it's an idea that won't leave me alone.
Like, I had an idea for a flavor book for RPGs on how different races and cultures would craft swords and armor, based off real-world techniques. For example, the swordsmiths of Toledo, Spain, were some of the finest in the world of their age. Part of what made their blades so good was how they improved their steel. They'd make standard bloom steel, then bury the ingots for two or three years. The corrosion would eat away the impurities of the steel, leaving a much stronger ingot of steel behind, which was then dug up and used to make blades. Now, to me, that's perfect for Elves, since time isn't as much as a factor to them.
That kind of thing. I mean, I know there's no market to it, and cultures aren't the same for each game world, but... eh, it's an idea that won't leave me alone.
So finally got the Starfinder book and man am I in. It's so goofy, yet totally rad. So, in the solar system Pathfinder takes place in there's a planet of undead. In Starfinder, some unknown number of years in the future, those undead are just as much a starfaring species as any of the rest of the pact worlds of the Golarian system.
They have such vessels as the Thaumtech Omenbringer battleship:
This is so silly it's amazing. I fucking love it.
Other undead vessels.
Just wonderful. You have me again Paizo. I already pre-ordered every book upcoming in this setting.
They have such vessels as the Thaumtech Omenbringer battleship:
This is so silly it's amazing. I fucking love it.
Other undead vessels.
Just wonderful. You have me again Paizo. I already pre-ordered every book upcoming in this setting.
Just like with the Borg, I don't understand why they'd pressurize/life support anything on their ship. They don't need it. Unpressurized ships open to the air are cheaper, easier to launch, less likely to have catastrophic breaches, much harder to board/capture for the enemy,...
I mean, an undead troop transport? That could pretty much just be an engine with a couple of long poles attached to it. Everybody hold on tight for the next 6 months!
I do like the design and aesthetic, though.
I mean, an undead troop transport? That could pretty much just be an engine with a couple of long poles attached to it. Everybody hold on tight for the next 6 months!
I do like the design and aesthetic, though.
The Borg question I can "answer" somewhat: your troops need to be hardier to "live" in vacuum than if you only make them resilient when needed.
Setting aside First Contact's "outside" scene the way it was shown (which wouldn't work for numerous reasons unless the borg troops were running with shields on for pressure 100% of the time) their ships are pressurized because the biological bodies they have wouldn't survive in vacuum very well. And "hardening" all of their troops in such a way that they would (running forcefields all the time for instance) would be too power-intensive. So the least "cost" is to pressurize your ships where your crew is, and only use your "forcefield EVA" ability when strictly needed.
A worse problem for the Borg's depiction: why do they have buttons and consoles on their ships? Like ever? They can interface to their ships without such, so why don't they? They did this OK (mostly) at the beginning of Trek, but even in The Best of Both Worlds, they had Locutus looking at a "display" rather than just "in his head." Most of the rest of it is good, but that scene "broke the wall" so to speak, and by Voyager they're pushing buttons and shit on the ships. Which they shouldn't have to do at all.
BSG did this somewhat better (it was all across the map, so I'm not going to say it was ALWAYS better, just in this specific case) as the Cylons don't have always-on-wifi (the Borg do), and thus they need physical contact, but even then they put their hands in the "goo" and then communicate like machines with their ships.
I mean, the undead of Eox are sentient, so just hanging them off the bottom of a ship for months on end is probably shitty.
The pressurized parts of the ship are likely for the benefit of their pact world allies. Eoxians are allied with the humans, dwarves, elves, etc of the Golarian system and it's allies.
Well, that makes sense; I'm not used to undead with living allies.
There's a whole 'nother question, too - does an undead's body function in extreme cold?
So, I was just browsing through the SRD, and I see that androids gain a +2 bonus on saves vs disease.
Like, weird.
You've never heard of a computer virus?
Aye, but it looks like they're talking about biological diseases, because it says the bonus doesn't apply if it's meant to affect constructs.
This is the wording:
"They receive a +2 racial bonus to saving throws against disease, mind-affecting effects, poison, and sleep, unless those effects specifically target constructs."
These androids are more like cyborgs.
Got to play my first game of D&D 5E on Roll20.net last night, using Discord for voice chat and roll20 for the dice rolls and such. I just answered a LFG posting and was chosen to be able to join.
I decided I wanted to try something completely different - since picking up doing RPGs in 2001, in D&D I'd normally play fighters or barbarians, but had dabbled some as a ranger and a cleric, while in other systems I'd play various other stuff. So, for this game, I'm playing a Tabaxi (from Volo's Guide - basically a humanoid leopard) Warlock with the ArchFey as my patron, which we started off at second level. I messed up my first round of combat as I didn't correctly read the casting time for my two main combat spells - Hex (bonus action, but accidentally read as action) and Eldtritch blast (action).
The first session was a lot of fun - we had a very good DM and the rest of the group was great to play with once we got warmed up to each other, which is great since none of us knew each other (all of us are in different parts of the US). We did got enough XP rewarded at the end of the session to level to 3rd - looking forward to being able to use the Book of Shadows (Pact of the Tome) with being able to choose any three cantrips from any spell listing.
Roll20's interface started off as a little clunky when you're used to playing with paper and dice, but after playing that first session, it got better as time went along - I adjusted some of the spells that do things in different ways into their own parts (ex: Hex - I have one for casting it and one for dealing the damage). I did like using Discord for the voice and text chat (we used the message option for DM to player confidential information). The two together worked out quite well - I'd recommend it as a player.
I decided I wanted to try something completely different - since picking up doing RPGs in 2001, in D&D I'd normally play fighters or barbarians, but had dabbled some as a ranger and a cleric, while in other systems I'd play various other stuff. So, for this game, I'm playing a Tabaxi (from Volo's Guide - basically a humanoid leopard) Warlock with the ArchFey as my patron, which we started off at second level. I messed up my first round of combat as I didn't correctly read the casting time for my two main combat spells - Hex (bonus action, but accidentally read as action) and Eldtritch blast (action).
The first session was a lot of fun - we had a very good DM and the rest of the group was great to play with once we got warmed up to each other, which is great since none of us knew each other (all of us are in different parts of the US). We did got enough XP rewarded at the end of the session to level to 3rd - looking forward to being able to use the Book of Shadows (Pact of the Tome) with being able to choose any three cantrips from any spell listing.
Roll20's interface started off as a little clunky when you're used to playing with paper and dice, but after playing that first session, it got better as time went along - I adjusted some of the spells that do things in different ways into their own parts (ex: Hex - I have one for casting it and one for dealing the damage). I did like using Discord for the voice and text chat (we used the message option for DM to player confidential information). The two together worked out quite well - I'd recommend it as a player.
Not sure how many people watch Critical Role, but here's a tribute (spoilers if you haven't watched the last of the 115 episodes):
I can't wait until they start again in January.
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The one shots they have been doing while Matt and Marisha were on their honeymoon are amazing. Travis is up tonight.
I'm not denying that the one-shots aren't amazing, I just really like the longer story arcs that Matt had - the Chroma Conclave, the guest characters, the intertwining of the player's backstories into the overall story, and taking on
Vecna
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Just got Xanathar's Guide to Everything and it's a fucking fantastic expansion source book for 5th edition. It expands options, like good sourcebooks do, but it also clarifies and expands on the basic stuff from the DMG, acting as almost a printed FAQ from Wizards of the Coast's point of view. I've only just started skimming through it, but I'm impressed so far. It's not quite as rad as Volo's Guide to Monsters, which was so coloured with flavour from Volo and Elminster and made even the most boring of monsters from the Monster Manual (giants) rad.
I was a bit bummed I didn't get the cool looking limited cover I saw in the game store here, but paying half price on Amazon was hard to beat.
I was a bit bummed I didn't get the cool looking limited cover I saw in the game store here, but paying half price on Amazon was hard to beat.
I'm glad you're liking it, but just don't let the horrific new spell identify rules creep into your game. Confirmed via Twitter too. Basically, requiring an Action (yes your full action) or reaction to identify means it's functionally impossible to do it with the character actually counterspelling, as they don't get back their "action budget" until it's their turn, so how often do they go through their turn in combat and not use EITHER of their action AND their reaction? That's almost never. It gets into things like one player identifying and another counterspelling, but think of the "timing" of that in RP terms. It just breaks flow badly too. Also lots of crap (very well identified in that linked thread) about how you must cast every spell in secret (DM and player) to prevent abuse of this mechanism as well.
Most of the bad (sans slowdown) would have been gone if they'd just said identifying it was a roll, but a free action. That wouldn't stop some of the bullshit, but it would at least not gimp counterspelling in general.
TL;DR; This rule won't be at my table @Dirona, @HCGLNS, or @Squidleybits. DM Fiat.
True enough, it's not exactly a big issue in our campaign until Silver gets 3rd-level spells (Druids (and thus Torin) don't get counterspell, unless it's a Circle spell, which seems doubtful), which would be in quite a while, so it isn't something to worry about anyways. But if an NPC gets it, I'm also not going to be an asshole with these rules either.
Dave
Staff member
So my group met last Sunday. I had a HUGE overland campaign written out. They are tasked to travel South to a city that lies about 3300 miles away. Instead, they traveled North and found a ship that was willing to take them around the continent. It shaved about 50 days off of their trip and caused me to reevaluate what the "set" encounters were going to be. A young Mist Dragon clawed its way up the side of the ship and my son cast a pain spell on it as soon as its head popped over the side. In my game you start casting on your initiative phase and each level of the spell takes 2 phases. So he started on an 18 (on a d20) and cast the spell at 3rd level, which means the spell fired of at phase 12. The dragons's init was an 11. All rolls are done in plain view, including saves, and the dragon failed. It let go of the ship and splashed back down into the water, unable to do anything for 3 rounds. By that time they'd cast Gust of Wind and the ship had taken off like a bat out of hell.
Man I've missed gaming...
Man I've missed gaming...
I forgot how annoying drunk/stoned players are. Was persuaded to pause my (decade-old) table sobriety rule for a one-shot DCC game, and Jesus Christ... They pretty much forced themselves into a TPK. Rule is back in effect.
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This kind of thing may get "interesting" when pot is legalized in Canada next year...
I wouldn't recommend it. Outside medical users (who seem to be vigilant/mindful about undesirable effects), I've only seen it greatly diminish people's capacity to pay attention to the game outside of rolling dice and reacting to direct prompts. My experience is with about a dozen players on pot, and about twice as many on (noticeable quantities of) alcohol.
I was (mostly) kidding. Our games take long enough as it is, so having anybody (let alone multiple people, or the GM) stoned seems counterproductive.
Fucking this.
I can see where he's coming from. Though, I doubt it's that big of a deal. I've literally spent 60+ levels playing a wizard in D&D (my favorite class) and I think I've counterspelled maybe twice in all those years.
Luckily, being D&D, you can just ignore it.
So, I've skimmed more of the book and I gotta say, I think wasting nearly 20 pages on random name tables was a HUUUUUUUUUGE waste of space. Were they really that hurting for content? They only put out like one or two sourcebooks a year now.
And this sourcebook was just the "finalized" version of most of their Unearthed Arcana anyway. There is nothing "new" in this book, it's all stuff from the website with maybe a few alterations.
I would be hilarious for me to watch though!!!
Might be interesting as a penalty for your character/self.
"Your character gets hit by a mind-altering spell. They're sluggish and confused. Now IRL, take 4 drags on this joint. I'm not letting you metagame out of this one!"
Seems like it could be very interesting. Bad too, but potentially interesting.
GasBandit
Staff member
Dunno if anybody posted this already in the last 5 pages, but it seems handy for this sort of thing: http://donjon.bin.sh/
It generates worlds, inns, dungeons, etc.
It generates worlds, inns, dungeons, etc.