#rpgchat

[alkasden]

17. what was your first muse? 30. what are your favorite RP tropes to play? (angst, hurt-comfort, etc…) 35. if you aren’t a native english speaker, do you play in your first language too?

Munday Asks!

(17. Oh goodness, that's a rough one to answer cause it was so long ago... Furthest back muse that wasn't just an outright OC I would say is probably Reno from Final Fantasy 7 in some old RPGChat forums.

30. Oh this one's fun to answer. I'm very big on Angst especially when coupled with Comedy. Though getting to raw tropes I'm a sucker for Enemies to Lovers. Also big fan of Tempting Fate or Bullying the Big Bad type stuff too if it weren't obvious. All for that thrill-seeking writing and not always good endings.

35. Only an English speaker here, though I can verbally understand a very tiny bit of Spanish due to it being used frequently around my town.) -Mod Nine

[sirlockee]

#rpgchat com SirLockee . Quer jogar RPG? >> Acesse meu Stories . Todos os dias de manhã vou publicar uma cena de #rpgsolo no Stories do meu Instagram. . Gosta de RPG? https://rpg.house/youtube >> LINK NO PERFIL . #vampirethemascarade5ed #vampirethemascarade #vampiroamascara #vampiro #vampire #goth #gotico #dracula #dungeonsanddragons #pathfinderrpg #pathfinder #pathfinder2 #dnd #dnd5 #rpg #nerd #rpgdemesa #rpgbrasil #roleplay #roleplaygame #rpggame #dungeonsanddragons5e #dungeonworld #zelda #thelegendofzelda #callofcthulhurpg #shadowrun5 #rpgparatodos https://www.instagram.com/p/B3mtHhEhh2p/?igshid=17jojg26ml416

[therpgacademy]

Our 99th ITunes review ( USA ). TY SirSchumcks. If you've been waiting to me our 100tj - now is your time. #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #rpg #rpgchat #podcast

[montecookgames]

It's New Gamemaster Month! With #Numenera, #UnknownArmies, or #TrailofCthulhu, we will take you from zero to GM by February! Today we plan logistics for your first session & read a bit of the corebooks to get acquainted! Experienced GMs, any advice? #rpg #gmadvice #rpgchat http://ow.ly/gnyt30hJ41i

[jackmonkeygames]

https://t.co/ZWeygXy41t Where does your Wizard live ? #rpg #rpgchat #ttrpg #roleplay #gamer #dnd #pathfinder #rolevsroll #shadowrun

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[highintlowwis-blog]

Armor as damage reduction or: how I learned to stop using strength to hit dodgy characters and love variant rules

Ok, so this has been bothering me for a while.  A super strong . . . . I don't know - half-dragon troll let's say . . . has an easy time hitting a pixie using the total defense action . . . because he has a 29 str?  I mean, I guess you could justify it by saying that with that much strength he can swing faster and land the blow before the pixie can dart out of the way, but let's be honest. The real reason strength adds to hit is because this is a table-top game.  Some simplifications had to be made in order to prevent you from having to do lot's of heavy physics calculations every time your character swings his sword.  Fine.  I get that.  The d20 system was never meant to simulate real world physics perfectly.  And I'm ok with that. But it seems to me that with some very simple tweaks, the rules could be adapted to be much more realistic and intuitive (not withstanding the whole magic, super-human powers, dragons, etc. . . ) without over complicating or slowing down game play more than a negligible amount. I read through the official pathfinder variant rules for using armor as damage reduction and they didn't quite cut it for me. I like strength being used to overcome armor, and armor mitigating attacks, but I think they went too far (under the standard rules) in their attempt to keep things simple. To wit, I have devised an alternative variant for using armor as damage reduction. Here it is in a nutshell:  Strength doesn't help you hit (dex does that for all attack rolls now), but the amount of extra damage it contributes is doubled, keeping it relevant, and helping it counteract the effects of armor. Armor and Nat AC no longer reduce your chance to be hit, but instead now mitigate damage.  Half (rounding down) their combined total is added to any existing DR the player or creature might have and the other half (rounding up) converts lethal damage into non-lethal damage. That's basically it. a few loose ends created by this variation are that weapon finesse wouldn't serve any purpose, so I propose making it perform in the opposite manner to power attack (with similar pre-reqs, i.e. 13 dex).  Loose damage, but gain accuracy.  Good for hitting pixies ;) The changes are relatively simple and the consequences are all (i hope) positive ones. Vital strike becomes much more useful, as DR becomes essentially ubiquitous.  This is not objectively good, but I like VS, so it's good for me :) Strength still helps overcome armor, but does not absurdly allow you to hit small fast targets. being better coordinated always helps you land attacks.  Period. Side-note: weapon finesse would not be useable during a rage, so it might make sense to build a barbarian for dex now, rather than strength. Another knock-on effect is that the quadratic scaling of strength is no longer an issue.  With a high enough strength, a character used to be able to basically always hit and always kill a target.  Now that simply isn't the case.  Strength now scales linearly, simply adding damage.  The damage was doubled to allow strength to maintain it's importance while preventing abuse.  It also makes sense that a dragon slamming you with it's tale is going to mess you up, full plate or not. Yet another knock-on effect of this rule is that taking non-lethal damage will become much more common.  This has several positive effects.   #1 you can push your players that much harder, knowing that you're more likely to K.O. the front-liner with an unlucky roll, rather than kill him outright.   So as long as the rest of the team can rally, everything should work out fine. #2)  in-combat healing might take on a more meaningful role, as curing hp damage always cures an equal amount of non-lethal damage.  Even if players end up taking more damage throughout a combat, those wands of cure light wounds will go that much further. Undead, being immune to non-lethal become much scarier.  I'm not sure if this is good or bad.  Constructs actually get much scarier.  That's probably bad.  But it's not like constructs were a walk in the park before, so . . . whatever. side note:  Brilliant energy weapons will still bypass the protection offered by normal armor, it's just bypassing damage mitigation instead of chance not to be hit.  Also, the paladin's smite, which bypasses any and all damage reduction, will not bypass the damage reduction contributed by armor and Nat AC under my variant rules.  It just bypasses the standard DR types, as normal.  smite still adds plenty to hit and damage, and should be able to overcome the protection of armor just fine without also nullifying armor and nat ac. There are probably some other consequences I haven't thought of yet, but on paper (no pun intended) it seems like this will work.  I am scientifically minded, though, so I feel the need to test this out.  I will be running a rules-test one-shot this winter break to find out.  I'm thinking a gladiatorial arena where the players fight wave after wave of awful beasties of varying shapes and sizes.  Should be a good way to get a lot of test cases.  

Wish me luck, and let me know if you have any thoughts! Feel free to comment.

[orclabs]

Select as many classes/levels as you want! & Off-Hand magic weapon properties!

[springald-jack]

Leap into Recruiting Gamers!

So on twitter at least some Thursdays I participate in a thing called #rpgchat where we talk, in twitter about some topic related to RPGs. I couldn't make it this week, because I had meatspace stuff to do. Ha! Meatspace! anyway here's what I know.

Most of the people I have gamed with, I gamed with because I recruited them to gaming. The only exception was in college where there were a few people who were already playing RPGs that I found. Even then most of the gamers I did RPGs with from the existing gamers were Magic:the Gathering players I introduced or re-introduced to RPGs.

I'm honestly very happy with this approach for a couple of reasons. The most important is that I only suggest RPGs with people I already know are tolerable. I tried recruiting strangers once. I did not enjoy the experience. Far better to convert people who you already get along with. (For board/card games which often have a much lower investment of time required random people work much better). Another reason is that I think people who aren't "set in their ways" in RPGs are more receptive to some of the odder RPGs I enjoy (like indie games).

Because they're not strangers it's not dropping my "weird hobbies" on just anybody. They've already got used to the fact that I'm a geeky guy. Probably when I used a LotR or Batman analogy. (I can do much more obscure ones of course, but a lot of people actually get LotR or Batman).

One thing that has, at times, worked well for me is that I like and use a fair amount of RPGs that are based on popular media properties. People are often interested in a chance to play in the world (or a very similar world to) a media property they enjoy. Historically I've had the most success with The Angel Roleplaying Game from Eden Studios, but going forward I will later this summer run a short-shot (3-5 sessions) game of Evil Hat's The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. 

So those are my short unstructured thoughts on the issue. Look Behind you! Batman is fighting Legolas!

NINJA SMOKE BOMB!

[final-evolution-blog]

fangirling with my canadian friend that I write online with over our two characters. We ship them together so hard, and we're basically drooling over the possible character development. 

yes we r 2 kool 4 skool

[jackmonkeygames]

https://t.co/yjVa5FIigY #rvr #rolevsroll #rvrcards #rpg #rpgchat #tabletop https://t.co/xWZc5sAOO4

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[highintlowwis-blog]

Duelist & the armor as DR variant rules

So I got a lot of great feedback on my armor as DR idea and it got me thinking more about the consequences of altering the rules that way.

I haven't run the numbers yet, but I think the duelist might actually be worth playing now for more than RP flavor.  If this turns out to be true, I would be really happy about that.  I I love the duelist.  I love the concept.  I liked the swashbuckler back in 3.5 from complete warrior, and I love the improvements they made to the duelist in pathfinder.

Let's face it though, the duelist isn't about the mechanics, it's about the style.  Who doesn't love Syrio Forel, from GoT?  Or Inigo Montoya (or the man in black for that matter) from the Princess Bride?  Or Cyrano Debergerac?  The quit-witted graceful swordsman who uses agility rather than brute strength is a classic trope and one which, I personally, am very fond of.

That said, I am an optimizer.  I usually pick something that I want my character to be able to do and then comb through the books to look for the best way to achieve that effect.  After I've found something that works well, and isn't too cheesy, I look at all the different sources that lead up to the final result and try to imagine what sort of personal story would have led a person to make those choices and a character starts to emerge.

I know this seems backwards to the more serious role-players, but I find it gives me inspiration.  Sometimes I even find a character concept along the way that I like more than the original mechanical inspiration, and I scrap the original build and go with the character.  This method just gives me more direction.  It works for me.  Different strokes for different folks, though.

All that aside, though, I have a real hard time choosing the duelist as is.  You're almost universally better off doing. . . . just about anything else.  Fighter is going to have more damage, accuracy, and AC, with similar restrictions on weapon choices.  What are the real selling points for the PrC?  You pay a few feats to enter and you get . . . what?  Limitations to your armor, limitations to your weapon choices, no shield . . . for . . .a few points of extra damage and riposte?  Think about it.  With one more level of weapon training you can afford to power attack with a two-hander and get 3 more points of damage - oh wait - 4 . . . the weapon training adds to damage, too.  Then there's greater weapon specialization.  And you can wear heavier armor, get extra damage from using a second weapon or 2-hander, or use a shield.  The Duelist is just worse.  Until now. . . . 

And here we come, full circle back to the variant armor rules.  Now it's much harder for the traditional martial classes to stack AC in the traditional sense.  If you wear full plate and an amulet of Nat AC you're going to take hits, they'll just hurt less.  The duelist gets elaborate parry and canny defense - which, under the traditional rules is just worse than using beefier armor.  But now, it may give him a way to push his defense score above what would be possible for a comparably geared/levelled fighter, ranger, barbarian, etc. . . .

Now there is actually something that the duelist can do better than anyone else.  He still may be a weaker option overall - which is fine - but he has a specialty that he's actually special with.  To me that's . . . what's the opposite of a deal-breaker?

Now, consider also that most monsters are going to be a little less accurate but hit significantly harder, because they tend to be built around high strength scores.  This is mostly cancelled out for most front-line PCs because they have lower defense scores but now have some DR.  It's usually going to be a wash, or close to it.  Late game, it might actually get scarier for the melee types, because their DR may not keep up with the sheer amount of damage coming their way.  And it's harder to stack avoidance, because the easiest traditional method (full-plate) doesn't help them avoid $h!t anymore.

Under the variant rules the Duelist will shine, because he can push his defense score higher than the fighter, even with equal rings of protection, belts of dexterity, and dusty rose prism ioun stones.  That may be the difference that makes the class.

Being able to bank on just not getting hit may be more viable for the duelist under the variant rules and less viable for anyone else.  This may be a niche class, but at least it has a niche now.

[orclabs]

Testing the Feats and Conditional mod screens!

[jackmonkeygames]

Rage card for Role vs Roll #rpg #rpgchat https://t.co/xfPxEi8wVU #rvr #rolevsroll #dnd #pathfinder #dnd5e

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[jackmonkeygames]

You laugh till you see the GM award the PC who plays this card extra XP. #rpg #rpgchat #rolevsroll https://t.co/wMYTp7OIQg

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[orclabs]

Weapons Screen!

[orclabs]

d20 Attack has been released! Check it out in the iOS app store!

http://d20attack.com/