Tabletop & Board Games

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Blossom
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Blossom » Fri Jul 04, 2014 1:53 pm

I know that the grognards are up in arms about Fighters actually having things they can do, and that futa elfs are canon. Beyond that, not much.
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nosimpleway
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby nosimpleway » Fri Jul 04, 2014 3:15 pm

It seems like your friend missed a lot about 4e, or had the wrong impressions to give you, but yes they got rid of Vancian magic in 4e (and it's back in 5e). Surges were healing, not magic power, available to every character (freeing up every party from having to have a Cleric present to dispense magic Band-Aids), and seem to be gone in 5e, showing up only as a Fighter's "Second Wind" power.

Regarding AoE and buffing, um. Well, 4e broke down what classes did into "roles", codifying that Fighters are supposed to pick out the biggest, meanest monster in the enemy party and pin it down so the Rogue can sneak up behind it and do lots of damage outright. That's always sort of been what those classes are for, and as of 4e they got a label for it.

AoE damage and debuffs are the realm of the "Controller" role, of which 4e has five: the wizard, the druid, the invoker, the psion, and the seeker. They're all a little same-y, as a lot of classes within the same role in 4e are, the main difference is that wizards are arcane, druids and seekers are primal, invokers are divine, and psions are... psionic.

Buffing and healing is the job of the "Leader" role: cleric, warlord, bard, shaman, ardent, and artificer. Clerics have the most straight-up healing, while warlords and artificers tend to have more in-battle buffs. But it's not like clerics were ever the sole party buffers, I mean even in 3.5 bards are right there.

For the most part 5e looks like it has more in common with 3.5 than 4e. The biggest changes seem to be "Advantage" and "Disadvantage", which replace a lot of flat numerical bonuses or penalties. For instance, in 3.5, flanking gives +2 to hit and catching an enemy flat-footed denied them their dexterity bonus to AC. In 5e, both of those and a lot of other things just gives Advantage. Being fatigued, stunned, dazed, or scared gave assorted and often similar but stackable penalties in 3.5, and in this case all they do is grant Disadvantage.
If you have Advantage for a roll, roll two dice and use the higher one. If you have Disadvantage, roll two dice and use the lower one. It's a lot simpler.

And you no longer get standard action/move-equivalent action/minor action in a turn. You can move up to your speed each turn, and that's not an action. You have a single Action that determines what you can do, and you have what looks like a single Reaction to take advantage of an opening an enemy gives you (for instance, to make an opportunity attack).

Looks like feats are optional rules now. The skill system looks like it was lifted more or less straight from 4e. THAC0 and BAB are now folded into the Proficiency bonus, which is just a new name given to the "half your level" bonus given to almost everything in 4e.

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Bongo Bill
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Bongo Bill » Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:14 pm

D&D 5th edition looks like an improvement over 3.5, but also, it appears to have completely jettisoned everything that was good about 4th edition, like Fighters being able to do anything interesting.
...but is it art?

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Büge
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:44 pm

TA wrote:futa elfs are canon.


wat
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nosimpleway
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby nosimpleway » Fri Jul 04, 2014 4:48 pm

TA wrote:I know that the grognards are up in arms about Fighters actually having things they can do


Bongo Bill wrote:it appears to have completely jettisoned everything that was good about 4th edition, like Fighters being able to do anything interesting.


You two hash this out and get back to me.

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Bongo Bill
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Bongo Bill » Fri Jul 04, 2014 5:02 pm

nosimpleway wrote:You two hash this out and get back to me.

Well, the difference is:

Bongo Bill wrote:interesting


Edit: although it's possible that it's just the "Basic" build of Fighter that's so dull, and the options in the PHB will be meatier.
...but is it art?

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Blossom
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Blossom » Fri Jul 04, 2014 5:41 pm

What I have seen is a lot of complaints about how Great Weapon Fighters had a thing that lets them do their Strength mod in damage on a melee attack even if they miss, and how that's unconscionable and completely unrealistic and totally against the spirit of the game and it's just emblematic of these nancy-boy modern games that give you everything and don't make you work for anything and Fighters are just magic now because they can hurt things that they miss. Similar complaints about a Fighter having a Second Wind ability that lets them regain some HP in a fight, but which they need a Short Rest before they can use again. How this means that Fighters just take a nap and heal all wounds because they're Wolverine and this is ridiculous Gygax is spinning in his grave I guess Fighters are just wizards AND clerics.

Büge wrote:
TA wrote:futa elfs are canon.


wat

D&D Next Basic rules, p. 33, "Personality and Background".
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Bongo Bill
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Bongo Bill » Fri Jul 04, 2014 6:03 pm

TA wrote:What I have seen is a lot of complaints about how Great Weapon Fighters had a thing that lets them do their Strength mod in damage on a melee attack even if they miss, and how that's unconscionable and completely unrealistic and totally against the spirit of the game and it's just emblematic of these nancy-boy modern games that give you everything and don't make you work for anything and Fighters are just magic now because they can hurt things that they miss. Similar complaints about a Fighter having a Second Wind ability that lets them regain some HP in a fight, but which they need a Short Rest before they can use again. How this means that Fighters just take a nap and heal all wounds because they're Wolverine and this is ridiculous Gygax is spinning in his grave I guess Fighters are just wizards AND clerics.

Damage on a miss was included in an earlier playtest, but it's not in the Basic release, presumably because so many people whined that they backed down. Second Wind is still in, but it sucks, so it doesn't please 4e fans or 4e haters.
...but is it art?

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Classic
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Classic » Sat Jul 05, 2014 3:22 am

Incidentally, am I the only one who imagined hit points not as a literal ability to absorb damage, but as representing a character's ability to avoid an incapacitating wound?
Like, a character being hit on an attack roll represents less a solid blow with a sword (which should be incapacitating to anything that resembles a human) but represents that character expending energy to avoid or safely absorb that blow. When characters run out of HP, they're too exhausted by the battle to avoid the most recent blow and it incapacitates them (for varying definitions of incapacitate).

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zaratustra
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby zaratustra » Sat Jul 05, 2014 5:28 am

A noble effort of imagination, but doesn't quite jive with pretty much anything else in the game (like environmental/falling damage, healing potions, save-for-half-damage doing the same thing, etc)

The fact is the hit-on-miss is not more absurd than anything else on D&D, it's just different. At this point the D&D environment is so fossilized and toxic the greatest thing that could be done is putting a bullet through its head and forbidding it from being played for the next 20 years.

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nosimpleway
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby nosimpleway » Sat Jul 05, 2014 12:19 pm

There have been about a dozen different ways to justify numerical HP over the years; I'm pretty sure Classic's "ability to roll with a hit" explanation was actually in some core AD&D book or another somewhere.

Mechanically, lots of classes have had "damage on miss" abilities for ages, the most obvious of which is "save vs. Spell/Reflex for half", changed in 4e to a slew of daily abilities that do, explicitly, half damage and lessened side effects on a miss.

In narrative terms, it's not unbelievable that a well-trained fighter could turn a miss into a glancing blow. Since we're talking about flat Strength-mod damage, and that looks like it tops out at around 5 for practical purposes*, and 5 HP really isn't much against anyone but a low-level wizard... I'm pretty sure this is just an example of grognards getting angry about anything having changed at all.

* - You can't buy your stats above 20 by leveling up. 3.0 and 3.5 had lots of "flat bonus to base stat" magic items, 4e had none. No telling which way 5e is going to go.

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Classic
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Classic » Sat Jul 05, 2014 12:52 pm

It's a cool thought that just being toe-to-toe with a high-level fighter is dangerous even if you've got superb defensive capabilities.
Though, tbh, now that I think on it, I like the idea that characters that the fighter wants to damage take damage just for being that close to the fighter because they're just that lethal.

zaratustra wrote:A noble effort of imagination, but doesn't quite jive with pretty much anything else in the game (like environmental/falling damage, healing potions, save-for-half-damage doing the same thing, etc)

Save for half represents someone seeing the danger with enough time to save on effort to avoid it.
Falling damage represents a tumble or maybe just bracing against the impact.
And, you know, heroic characters find ways to deal with fire or toxic gas or whatever in ways that are strenuous but not fatal "all the time".

The real problem to this interpretation is that I feel like there are non-damage effects meant to simulate portions of what I'd like to imagine are abstracted away by HP.

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pacobird
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby pacobird » Mon Jul 07, 2014 2:32 pm

The biggest problem with the HP-as-abstraction idea is that it's static. If I have 100 HP, I always have 100 HP unless I start taking damage. It doesn't matter if, say, I have the flu or am hung over and thus am not fighting at my normal ability. In fact, IIRC D&D specifically accounts for such things via reduced THAC0 or save penalties rather than diminished HP.

Furthermore, you're going to get caught flat-footed no matter how awesome you are, so a goblin with a sword never being able to straight-up kill you while you're on your feet makes even less sense than the poor bastard never being able to kill you in fewer than ten direct hits. We even codified a specific idea for when you just get your ass kicked for being unlucky (the critical hit) and that won't even come close to killing you outright.

In the end, HP doesn't make any sense but it's probably necessary for a game where persistent characters have to get beat up a lot without dying and making the player start over again.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:54 pm

Okay, maybe you don't care about GW. Maybe you don't play tabletop games at all! But the CEO's mid-year shareholder speech was leaked and it is amazing.

Seriously, if you ever wanted to know what a speech by a lunatic helming a burning zeppelin is like, read this. It's screamingly funny, and maybe a little horrifying when you think of the poor bastards whose livelihoods depend on this assclown and his ilk.

CEO Tom Kirby's shareholder report

Highlights include:

- Kirby opening with "Profit was down 42% - we're doing great!"
- Kirby resigning, mid-speech, almost as an afterthought
- Kirby offhandedly revealing that they spent £4 million on a new website, which incidentally more than offsets the savings they reaped from reducing their stores to one staff member each.
- The part where he addresses 3D printing by completely discounting it and then stating that even if he's wrong they'll just sell Citadel branded 3D printers.
- This glorious, glorious line:
"I said, ‘we recruit for attitude and not for skill’. It is what makes us great"

- This even more glorious line:
"Our market is a niche market made up of people who want to collect our miniatures. They tend to be male, middle-class, discerning teenagers and adults. We do no demographic research, we have no focus groups, we do not ask the market what it wants. These things are otiose in a niche."

"What will not change is the eternal desire for some always to want yet more of the small, jewel-like objects of magic and wonder that we call Citadel miniatures."

There's more. The whole thing is lunacy of the highest orders. I can only imagine the shareholders desperately groping for vomit bags, hard liquor, or both
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François
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby François » Wed Jul 30, 2014 11:43 pm

Man, that dude makes it sound like even I could get a seat on the board at Games Workshop.

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hngkong
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby hngkong » Wed Jul 30, 2014 11:52 pm

Wow, that must be even more frightening for investors since that job posting that basically read "OH GOD, WE KNOW WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT CAN MAKE US MONEY!". And he seems pretty confident that 3d printers aren't going to be getting any better soon, despite the huge leaps and bounds they've made in what, the last two years?

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sei
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby sei » Thu Jul 31, 2014 12:39 am

zaratustra wrote:A noble effort of imagination, but doesn't quite jive with pretty much anything else in the game (like environmental/falling damage, healing potions, save-for-half-damage doing the same thing, etc)

The fact is the hit-on-miss is not more absurd than anything else on D&D, it's just different. At this point the D&D environment is so fossilized and toxic the greatest thing that could be done is putting a bullet through its head and forbidding it from being played for the next 20 years.


For what it's worth, failing to make the AC roll doesn't necessarily mean the weapon got nothing but air. It could also have been that it was a glancing blow, was absorbed by armor (not in the sense of DR), etc.

pacobird wrote:The biggest problem with the HP-as-abstraction idea is that it's static. If I have 100 HP, I always have 100 HP unless I start taking damage. It doesn't matter if, say, I have the flu or am hung over and thus am not fighting at my normal ability.

Diseases and poisons can involve con damage, which effectively lowers max HP.
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Grath » Thu Jul 31, 2014 10:16 am

hngkong wrote:Wow, that must be even more frightening for investors since that job posting that basically read "OH GOD, WE KNOW WE HAVE SOMETHING THAT CAN MAKE US MONEY!". And he seems pretty confident that 3d printers aren't going to be getting any better soon, despite the huge leaps and bounds they've made in what, the last two years?


Another key set of patents expired this year, so another type of 3D printing is going to do the thousands of dollars -> hundreds of dollars plunge in cost of printers. Five years ago FDM (technology for current available "home" 3D printers) printers were $15k, now they're $300. Same type of thing is going to start happening with Selective Laser Sintering printers over the next couple years, and apparently SLS printers are capable of printing to the same level of quality as injection-molded stuff.

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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Mongrel » Sat Aug 02, 2014 12:21 pm

So there's a fellow who posts on DakkaDakka and elsewhere (I believe it's Wayshuba) whose day job is monitoring the heath and prospects of various businesses, presumably for investment funds or banks etc. (I don't recall exactly what or if he's been so explicit - I rarely go to DakkDakka).

Anyway, he's posted for a while that GW is exhibiting classic signs of a company in a fatal death spiral. Well, now he's putting a hard date on that. Two days ago, he stated that - in his professional capacity - that he's predicting two years or less before GW dies, and moreover that death will come in a spectacular, explosive fashion.

I don't know if he's right for not, but that's a pretty definite statement, so I thought I'd repost it for posterity. It'll be interesting to see if that does in fact come true.
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Büge
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Re: Tabletop & Board Games

Postby Büge » Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:20 pm

I remembered what this situation reminded me of.

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