Tabletop General

[DemonFiren]

Bottom post of the previous page:

There's a lot of fun (read: sadism) to be had with playing your players.
If you have synths in the group make one get emagged while no one's looking.
If you have nonhumans in the group gradually increase stationwide racial tension until pogroms happen, then see if the players stick together or fend for themselves.
Could also make one of the NPCs they trust (>implying) end up being a tater or ling using the group to get to his own objectives if you'd rather not PVP.

[ShadowDimentio]

Bait the crew into committing a crime and getting shitcurity to go aggro on them (Oh look, a captain ID laying on the floor. Do you take it?)
Have some antags prowling around the station doing bad stuff and the team has to stop them. (The mime stabs the janitor and drags them into maint, does the team intervene etc)
Have the AI start watching them and noting their actions, and either helping or hampering them depending on what it thinks. (I'M SORRY DAVE I'M AFRAID I CAN'T DO THAT.)
Have them need to get something from one of the departments but the people staffing the desks are either stupid, incompetent, jerks, or bureaucrats. (You'll have to fill out forms 37-G to 41-C if you want some sheet metal. If you need more than what we give you, that'll require forms...)

[InsaneHyena]

Activated my almonds.

[ShadowDimentio]

>Cuckloid interracial

You try too hard to be funny. B+ for effort.

[Anonmare]

>digg

That better be a post-ironic unironic joke

[Qbopper]

my dnd game got cancelled permanently because my DM got tired of people not even saying if they could come or not

rip

[InsaneHyena]

Meanwhile, the campaign I'm in is finally picking up steam.

[ShadowDimentio]

I finally got the magic god stone item that was promised to me by the tinkerer archdevil, and it's everything I had hoped for.

Horn of Antimagic:
Recharges daily at dawn.
Player can use an action to activate this horn, acting as a Beholder's main eye, granting an antimagic 150 foot cone as in the antimagic field spell.
The horn stays in effect as long as the player can blow, which is equal to CON mod (min 1) rounds.

The downside is twofold-- antimagic is non-discriminate, effecting both allies and enemies, and while using the horn you can't do anything else except turn to aim it at the enemy. Seems pretty bad, as magic items are awesome and basically required at high levels because non-magical damage immunity is common as fuck.

But then I realized something-- I'm 100% unaffected by antimagic as a monk. Monks use ki as a fuel, which isn't magical, and all the effects derived from it are thus nonmagical. So basically while the enemy is totally crippled by the antimagic field, totally unable to use any of their fancy items, effects or spells, I get to wail on it and it can't do shit. Fucking awesome.

[Drynwyn]

But then I realized something-- I'm 100% unaffected by antimagic as a monk. Monks use ki as a fuel, which isn't magical, and all the effects derived from it are thus nonmagical. So basically while the enemy is totally crippled by the antimagic field, totally unable to use any of their fancy items, effects or spells, I get to wail on it and it can't do shit. Fucking awesome.

That won't work- ki is explicitly magical. The section discussing it is in fact titled "The Magic of Ki", and states that "Monks make careful study of a magical energy that most monastic traditions call ki."

Antimagic field states in suppresses "spells and other magical effects". Ki powers are definitely magical effects, they're based on an explicitly magical energy, even though they aren't actually spells.

Lacking explicit Su/Ex/Sp tags like 3.5 had, we're left to do this sort of fluff-based speculation, unfortunately.

[XSI]

Just play a psionic anything and have magic-not-called-magic

[Anonmare]

Antimagic suppresses magical and supernatural effects. Summoned creatures will be forced to wink out of existence until the field disappears, in which case they will re-appear where they disappeared. Creatures with spell resistance get a saving throw with their SR vs 1d20+CL.

Extraordinary effects are not suppressed, despite their physics-defying behaviour in some cases. Elementals, constructs or creatures that were made with magic in their creation do not wink out unless they were summoned but their spells, SPLAs and supernatural effects will not be functional.

Certain spells like Prismatic Wall/Sphere and Wall of Force, Artefacts and Deities ignore anti-magic fields.

[ShadowDimentio]

But then I realized something-- I'm 100% unaffected by antimagic as a monk. Monks use ki as a fuel, which isn't magical, and all the effects derived from it are thus nonmagical. So basically while the enemy is totally crippled by the antimagic field, totally unable to use any of their fancy items, effects or spells, I get to wail on it and it can't do shit. Fucking awesome.

That won't work- ki is explicitly magical. The section discussing it is in fact titled "The Magic of Ki", and states that "Monks make careful study of a magical energy that most monastic traditions call ki."

Antimagic field states in suppresses "spells and other magical effects". Ki powers are definitely magical effects, they're based on an explicitly magical energy, even though they aren't actually spells.

Lacking explicit Su/Ex/Sp tags like 3.5 had, we're left to do this sort of fluff-based speculation, unfortunately.

Wrong. That might be true in another edition, but in 5E monks have zero mention of Ki being magical, it's reffered to as "the mystic energy of ki". Mystic isn't magic, so thus effects derived from it aren't magical and are unaffected by antimagic.

Fugg I re-read the opening and it is sort of magic. Still, it's probably far enough away that my GM will let it slide.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Its not like monks are ever powerful anyways

[ShadowDimentio]

Say that to my FUCKING FACE FAGGOT I'LL SAVE OR DIE YOU SO FAST HHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNHGGH

Monks are the best. Best saves, best movements, best defense, best offense. What's not the best about them?

[Anonmare]

If we're talking 3.5 Monk...

Low HD, medium BAB, multi-attribute dependency, can't combine their movement speed with Flurry, lack of weapon proficiencies, poor flanking ability, low skill points (and being unable to afford decent Int thanks to multi-attribute dependency), can't threaten a mage with nothing to threaten mages with, using anti-magic field forces them to give up ~80% of their class features and mages have ways to easily defeat their spell defenses and touch AC.

In short - 3.5 Monks are too unspecialised, lack synergy between features and the few good features they have they can't use often enough to matter and makes them weak at defeating the one thing they should be good against (I.E. Mages). Only way to play a 3.5 Monk effectively is to play a Fighter with a Monk dipping sauce.

Or play a Pathfinder Unchained Monk which is like a 3.5 Monk except not hopelessly broken.

[ShadowDimentio]

We're talking about 5E. 5E open hand monks get 4 attacks a round, proficiency in every save, AC derived from their two best stats, superior DEX saves that ignore damage on a success, invisibility that halves all but one damage type received, and a save or die move. It's awesome.

[XSI]

5th edition apparently does change everything regarding balance, so I can see monks being fixed to not suck as much

I don't know 5th myself though

[Drynwyn]

5e monks are extremely, extremely solid. Balance is generally closer in 5e than 3.5, but I'd say that Open Hand and Long Death monks are second in power only to Bladesingers, and even that's a fairly close call. (Bladesingers are better in 'whiteroom' optimization, but have noticeably more limited resources than monks. Which is better depends on GM and campaign style.)

Like most 5e classes, which archetype* you pick greatly affects the balance, but if Shadow is using the Open Hand tradition, he gets a load of special abilities that are quite useful, but more importantly, it's on a chassis that gives you exceptionally good defenses.

Monks key stats (Dex, Wis, Con) are all tied to the three "good" saving throws. (5e moved from 3.5's Ref/Fort/Will to each stat getting it's own saving throw. However, saving throws tied Dex, Con, and Wis are DRAMATICALLY more common than Str, Int, and Chr, due to a large number of effects keeping their saving throws from 3.5). Monks also have really high AC's now- The AC provided by armor was nerfed relative to 3.5 (even accounting for the change in to-hit bonuses) and ability score increases became more common.

This is important, because in 5e, unlike 3.5, defenses that aren't outright immunity are actually worth having, since save-or-suck effects were BTFO.

If you are looking for a way of arguing that you should be allowed to use your abilities in an antimagic field, Shadow, you could try pointing out that the abilities of the same name as many Open Hand monk powers were Extraordinary abilities in 3.5.

[Alipheese]

How to go about dealing with our GM's girlfriend possibly cheesing loot rolls., and then looting while we are STILL in combat, other than outright murdering her character in 1 round because of salt?

example, shes the ranger, in negative energy plane retreiving a holy septer for a church, go in, we start fighting some warforged guards and she as a ranger who could snipe anything we fought that entire session does nothing for 6 rounds sitting around saying she cant hit shit when she then proceeds to snipe the back line archers in the eyes. so the warforged drop, i immeditely have my chicken ally push their bodies into the void to avoid her looting them DURING OUR STILL ONGOING COMAT, we go to the final area and start clearing out the last remaining undead and she loots the third warforged during the combat. we finish, go pull levers to open gate and our boss comes in on a wyern.

So, infernal boss demon guy immediately has a hateboner for our celestial warrior, they que their good vs evil battle while we take care of the wyern, she as an archer should have no issue hitting this wyern that is currently attacking our rogue, no she focuses on the boss who our warrior is slowly taking care of. wyern takes flight so the rogue and I cant do jack shit, so we sit there and chill waiting for a chance to do anything, eventually the ranger gets the idea to hit the wyern, and finishes it off (which then fell to where she was and i was hoping so hard for her to fail her save roll to fall into the void and die.) shes fine, says she wants to loot the wyern, but she did all she could that turn, so with our celestial and the infernal fighting i loot the wyern before she can.

At this point seeing hes losing his fight, the infernal boss guy decides to throw magic bombs at the 3 of us on the ground, rogue, ranger, and i. finished taking the wyern heart which was the only thing of value to grab quickly, we are almost hit by it but the celestial does a sacrifical drop and block to take the damage to save the rogue and ranger and me, hes getting close to death and had to use luck to stay alive.

with our celestial unable to fight the infernal boss guy because we are being pelted by bombs the ranger says to our celestial to let her climb on his back, fly back up to the infernal so she can shoot him in the eyes when shes shot the wyern from twice the range she is to the infernal, surprisingly im the only person that objects to her using our dying celestial as a stepping stone for no bonus to hit whatsoever. so he lets her on, takes 1 more bomb and makes another save to avoid dying, and hes only got about 10 hp before hes outright dead no save roll. que about 5-6 rounds of them trying to hit eachother and she NEVER FIRES HER GOD DAMN BOW ONCE, our celestial finally crits and kills the guy.

combat over, ranger immediately goes to loot the infernal boss guy, trying to steal 2 of the 5 pieces of loot on him, proceeding to say she did most of the work on him and the wyern. i say no, all the loot on the boss goes to the guy who was fighting him the entire time, almost died to get the relic septer we needed and did 99% of the damage to him, gets all the loot. eventually she lets that happend begrudingly.

NPC who was almost dead comes out of hiding and asks if we are ready to leave, I say ill skin the damn wyern since im the only one who can, make my roll and im good, ranger then takes all teeth, all the scales, all the bones, all the meat, everything but the heart i took prior and the wings and tails our rogue wanted for poisons and leather. she doesnt even give my character a single thing for skinning it all.

Getting back to town and finishing the quest, the ranger then uses well over half of all the wyern shit to make her and her ally who is never there gear, then doesnt even ask if anyone wants anything then goes to try to sell it all including a few pieces of gear that belongs to our celestial, I call that she cant just sell our celestials gear without his permission, entire group says just do it. I dont have any of that and as they said 'i threw a hissy' so the celestial got his items back.

so TL;DR, gm's gf is a ranger who does 3x damage of us because gm builds all her sheets and brags about how good she is and then steals all the loot and from our own party members for herself and acts like an innocent person when we know she does bad shit, looks at our sheets from the gm's screen and is generally a massive cunt when we do our sessions, how do i deal with this?

Edit: my idea is to just 1shot her in her sleep and when she looks to the GM for anything to save her ass say No, i did over 5 times your total health in 1 shot, by the rules the GM uses for my character and we researched this, is an instant kill no matter what

[XSI]

There is no winning there
Have you tried telling them that it's no fun and that the GM is being "That guy"?
And telling his GF that she is being completely insufferable and acting like a complete retard?

Because lets be honest here, the way it sounds- If you kill their character, they're going to just kick you from the group and retcon it. They do not at all sound like they're in it for anyone's fun except their own

[Wyzack]

No game at all is better than a game with shitty people

[InsaneHyena]

Open Hand and Long Death monks are second in power only to Bladesingers, and even that's a fairly close call

Jesus Christ, where did you even get that from?

[Screemonster]

No game at all is better than a game with shitty people

This.

Really, a tabletop campaign is a massive investment of your free time, especially if it's a weekend game or something where that session is what you're setting your entire day aside to attend. If you're not enjoying yourself doing this thing, then why should you be obliged to continue doing that thing in favour of any number of other things?

[ShadowDimentio]

Open Hand and Long Death monks are second in power only to Bladesingers, and even that's a fairly close call

fake news

Jesus Christ, where did you even get that from?

Bladesingers are good but open hand monks are second only in power at high levels to moon druids, who are virtually fucking invincible. Effectively 140 temp HP that regenerates at the start of their turns, full caster spells, good stats across the board, and transformations that'll meme your life up.

[Drynwyn]

Open Hand and Long Death monks are second in power only to Bladesingers, and even that's a fairly close call

fake news

Jesus Christ, where did you even get that from?

Bladesingers are good but open hand monks are second only in power at high levels to moon druids, who are virtually fucking invincible. Effectively 140 temp HP that regenerates at the start of their turns, full caster spells, good stats across the board, and transformations that'll meme your life up.

I mean, if you want to bring 20th level capstone features into it, at that point Clerics can call for automatic divine intervention.

[ShadowDimentio]

It's unlikely that the GM would allow that to do anything besides deal a bunch of damage, but again anything less than 140 is nothing to the druid.

[Drynwyn]

Why is it unlikely that a given GM would allow that do anything other than damage? That seems to make giant sweeping assumptions about the GM.

Also, at 20th level casters have more than enough save or die to deal with unlimited hitpoints.

[InsaneHyena]

Monks are not horrible, but they're overall no better than fighters. Bladesingers are straight up garbage compared to other wizards.

[Drynwyn]

All of my high-level estimates could be way off; I've only played 5e in the 1-8 level range. Bladesingers do extremely well in that period. All of my statements about higher levels are pure theorycraft.

[Anonmare]

I kind of want to play a Vigilante in Pathfinder. Though I'm pretty sure most GMs will probably not allow it due to them not really fitting in theme with the setting I think.

[InsaneHyena]

All of my high-level estimates could be way off; I've only played 5e in the 1-8 level range. Bladesingers do extremely well in that period. All of my statements about higher levels are pure theorycraft.

Bladesingers are nerds, who awkwardly pretend to be Chads. Their attempts to go into melee with their two attacks per round and d6 hitdice are plain adorable. Yes, they get a higher AC, but they're still wizards trying as hard as they can to be fighters. A diviner wizard would be much more useful than bladesinger's LARPing ass.

Pathfinder

Rabbit season soon.

[Anonmare]

Fighting over editions is silly except when it's the edition I play.

[Drynwyn]

I prefer Pathfinder's skill system, and it's more frequent feats, but I prefer D&D 3.5's suite of character options.

[XSI]

I'm in multiple Pathfinder games but I don't really like any D&D system.
It all feels like it's needlessly limited in an attempt to make people fit predetermined party roles

I suppose I dislike class-based systems as a whole, just being free to develop how you intend to do things is better than having most of your options cut off because multiclassing is a terrible choice except in a few builds that really need it

[InsaneHyena]

I hate 3.5 and Pathfinder. Pathfinder a lot more, since it had years of 3.5's mistakes to learn from, and chose to discard all of this experience and make the same mistakes. Look up "INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS tower design".

[Drynwyn]

I hate 3.5 and Pathfinder. Pathfinder a lot more, since it had years of 3.5's mistakes to learn from, and chose to discard all of this experience and make the same mistakes. Look up "INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS tower design".

I'm familiar with the Monte Cook blog post in question. It doesn't actually support "I hate 3.5", it supports "3.5 would have benefited from explaining to it's players how to use the tools it provides."

But as someone who's spent years with those tools and is very comfortable with them, I enjoy them.

Plus, the existence of a wide variety of community-created guides to what is and isn't good makes INTERNAL DISCUSSIONS tower game design far less of a problem. If you enjoy figuring out what's good and what isn't for yourself, that's great. If not, someone already did so for you on a forum that you can find with Google and 20 seconds.

[XSI]

The big thing with PF/3.5 is that it doesn't tell you anything on what is actually going to be useful

In one of the games I'm at, I got one free teamwork feat at first level.
We are now level 9
I've not used the teamwork feat once because I took one that seemed like it would be useful(Added damage when flanking), but it turns out the thing is 100% useless because combat doesn't last long enough to flank anything

Same thing with several skills, and several pieces of gear I got
They exist, but they'll never get used because it turned out that they just weren't useful.

[InsaneHyena]

Oh, 3.5 does have a lot of options and tools, yes.
They're shit. Not all of them, but 90%. When I first started playing this game, I've came with expectations of heroic fantasy - something like Conan or Lord of the Rings, where I could be a brave warrior with a sword and a shield, slaying dragons and evil wizards. And with its' advertisement, with it's covers and pretty pictures, the game offered me what I wanted. But after years of learning the system, I've found out that just like shady sites offering me escort services, DnD lied to me and used pretty pictures to hide the shitty reality.
Those options you're talking about? Yes, there are plenty of them, hundreds of splatbooks. Complete Warrior, Complete Arcane, Complete Divine, Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic, Tome of Battle, Stormwreck, Sandstorm, Frostburn, Dungeonscape, Cityscape - literally millions of optipns. And they're shit. All of them. Either overpowered mess or underpowered garbage. Do you want to find the silver lining? Fuck you. Spend years mastering the system, or weeks reading the forums about optimal and unoptimal choices.
Oh, you want to be a fighter with a sword and a shield? Fuck you. Fighters suck. Fighters are garbage. This is a game about supersonic god-wizards doing god things. You can still make your sword and board fighter, if you want, though. Go ahead and do it. It takes only six hundred different feats, templates, variant classes, prestiges and multiclasses to achieve. It also involves growing to gargantuan size, spreading darkness around you from your armor spikes (because enchanting armor spikes is virtually the same as enchanting armor, but fifty times cheaper!) and using wands. What are you saying? It has nothing to do with what you actually want to play? Fuck you. We're 3.5. We're doing things our own way.

I could go on and on, but my point in short is, 3.5 is a great game if you want to let your autism loose and play legos with millions of character options. If you want to play it to, you know, play a fantasy game and have fun? It's shit.
5e might have only 1/100 of 3.5's conent, but it also has only one millionth of it's useless garbage and traps. The only outright bad things in it are ranger (which has been fixed since by official ruling) and way of 4 elements monk. If you want to play a fantasy campaign without spending weeks reading powergaming forums and days coming up with a character build, 5e is your system. You can simply play and have fun with it.
This is literally the only thing I've wanted from 3.5 all along, and what it adamantly refused to deliver.

[InsaneHyena]

3.5 makes me angry.

[Drynwyn]

I inferred that.
I do find that the majority of actual 3.5 play isn't as you describe it. That's how the game ends up if everyone pushes the upper limits of practical optimization, yes. Generally, though, I find that in most 3.5 games players understand how to keep their optimization to a level set by the community.

Now, that's not good game design- good games incentive people directly to do what results in fun, not hope that social incentives limit people to doing what's fun. I play 3.5 for wealth of content and mechanical variety, not for intricate, precise balance.

5e, as you say, is an amazing system for pick up and play. The rulebook is well laid out, it's easy to go through character creation, things are balanced relative to each other, and the unified proficiency bonus + stat + advantage system for checks means far less math than 3.5's "I added numbers from 6 different places to arrive at my hitting number".

My main issue with 5th ed (which I still think is a solid system with a lot to recommend) is that you essentially make only two mechanical decisions as part of character creation- what's my character class, and what's my archetype? All the other decisions you make are either not particularly important, amounting to a +1 or +2 in one place or a different place, or straightforwardly informed by your class and archetype (such as "what ability score do I increase"). Spellcasters have it a bit better, but there just aren't that many spells, and many of them are functionally rather similar or good enough to appear on almost everyone's spell list

So if Shadow makes an Open Palm monk, and I make an Open Palm monk, our character sheets will wind up looking pretty similar. Our magical gear might differ, but there's no guidelines at all for handing that out, so it can't be credited to the game designers, and magical items aren't particularly game-changing in any case.

I like being able to sit down at a table with 4 people, all of who have the exact same class and level, and still have wildly different roles in combat and non-combat tools available to them.

[XSI]

I'm trying pretty hard to keep my PF characters to their original ideas, but it's pretty difficult sometimes. The only reason I can play a martial class at all is because Path of War exists and my GM allows it. Otherwise, I'd be either useless or just playing yet another wizard/sorc/druid like everyone else.

The first 3.5 game I played was a group of 4 wizards(Unintentionally, we just didn't talk to eachother during chargen and it turns out we all made wizards) and one spell-sword I forgot the class name of. We all got entirely different spells and combat roles. I liked that as well, we had the same base class and yet we had entirely different things to do and were distinct characters
It was great until we accidentally gibbed one of the players by dropping a horse onto them from ~1200ft and the game broke up after that

[Anonmare]

I like classes that are modular. You get a base to work with and can pick and choose how to specialise without working against your classes' nature or having to comprimise your character concept for the sake of mechanics.

I mentioned Vigilante earlier and I really liked how I could make a character that could be like a rogue, fighter or caster without compromising their effectiveness and still be effective in utility via skills and social encounters.

[Alipheese]

GURPS best system

[Screemonster]

BESM was always my go-to for silly short campaigns back in the day. Not quite as versatile as GURPS, but it had all the essentials and it was simple enough to make chargen quick.

[ShadowDimentio]

GURPS best system

GURPS IS FUCKING GARBAGE GET OUT AND NEVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN

[Qbopper]

i really want to play paranoia some day

i played it with shaps/some friends but we didn't prepare or know the rules so it was little more than a game of improv

[ShadowDimentio]

Monk man's adventures through Hell finally went to the next level, the ice level.

He wandered a bit, found a new party member, found a nice devil after he punched a block of ice, freed the nice devil from the block of ice, got directions from the nice devil on how get to next level, and then faced himself and the rest of the party in a MIRROR MATCH and totally wiped the floor with them.

Nobody is stronger than monk man, not even himself.

[Drynwyn]

i really want to play paranoia some day

i played it with shaps/some friends but we didn't prepare or know the rules so it was little more than a game of improv

I've been thinking about running a one-shot game of Paranoia for /tg/ folks for a while now. I'll hit you up.

Anyone else who'd be interested?

[Qbopper]

i really want to play paranoia some day

i played it with shaps/some friends but we didn't prepare or know the rules so it was little more than a game of improv

I've been thinking about running a one-shot game of Paranoia for /tg/ folks for a while now. I'll hit you up.

Anyone else who'd be interested?

shaps was also into playing for real sometime iirc so I would ask him

[ShadowDimentio]

Meanwhile in DnD, I'm faced with a conundrum. I'm playing a neutral lizardman fighter, and I'm stuck in an extremely evil party containing a vampire woman, a sociopath samurai woman, and a evil wizard-turned-gas that became unfathomably powerful after being fed a shitload of power crystals from the samurai.

The power crystals are some sort of magical shenanigan stuff that's possibly crystallized god blood that are extremely powerful and extremely unstable around magic. Consuming them makes magic really powerful, but also destroys your body. Example: Someone the samurai knew once snacked on one and threw a firebolt that blew the fuck out of the target and also burned all the skin off of both her arms. Bad news. Completely ignoring this, my lizardguy has experimented with them on a basic level by slotting them into his harpoon and has so far had one harpoon supernova and burrow into the center of the earth, another teleport him and the samurai into the void for a short while, and the last give him an incapacitating headache.

A fight is inevitably going to break out between me and the others and I want to be ready. I'm extremely robust and can easily dispatch the samurai with bomb-harpoons and probably the vampire with my radiant harpoon, but the fart wizard is totally beyond my abilities of stabbing things with harpoons. I need an ace-in-the-hole to have any chance of winning.

I have at my disposal:

1 huge power crystal the size of a backpack that would kill everyone within a mile if it ever resonated
45 small power crystal shards
A bunch of harpoons with weird effects, the two most notable letting me blow stuff up Yoshikage Kira style and another lets me heal from drinking beer
An infinite* supply of basic bone harpoons
A water elemental summoning crystal
Like a billion gold

My only plan so far is to kill the samurai and run. If the worst case scenario happens and there's nowhere to run, I say FUCK IT and detonate my huge power crystal, literally killing everyone on the entire continent. Another is grabbing my bag of crystal shards and a barrel of beer, chugging it and hoping that the resonance is positive and doesn't kill me. I don't want to do either, funny as it might be. Any ideas?

[XSI]

>Crystal shards that blow up
>Explosives

Do you even need to ask?