Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Grotesque Bushes]

Also they're ontologically evil.

On the flipside dnd's approach to alignment is ontologically retarded. If orcs are actual sentient beings they'll break in combat at some point. We have seen that happen to every army on our planet, even animals will cut their losses at some point and bail.
I personally prefer the enemies in my RPG to act with some self-preservation in mind, especially in larger battles.

 

[Corn Flakes]

On the flipside dnd's approach to alignment is ontologically retarded. If orcs are actual sentient beings they'll break in combat at some point. We have seen that happen to every army on our planet, even animals will cut their losses at some point and bail.
I personally prefer the enemies in my RPG to act with some self-preservation in mind, especially in larger battles.

That's not D&D's approach to alignment, that's GMs being lazy and not thinking about morale. Chaotic evil means you revel in the slaughter, not that you're suicidal. I guarantee you any GM that has orcs always fighting to the death will also run animals who always fight to the death.

 

[East_Clintwood]

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Any particular reason your post has a picture of the Oxventurers instead of CR or just a mistake?

Anyways something I want to get off my chest, has anyone noticed how D&Dtards only want to play D&D and nothing else? I mean goddamn not even Warhammer fans are narrow-minded enough to reject the idea of trying different board/war games. Yet D&D fags seem to be allergic to anything that isn't 5e slop.

yeah it happens a bunch. One of my regular groups sometimes falls apart at the last minute just because most of us are at the age where we have responsibilities like kids/being on call at work etc. When it does basically the only random pickup game I'm able to get is 5E because so many people refuse to play other shit, even if I offer to DM.

@Ghostse what does WMPRP stands for? Thought you meant the warhammer fantasy rpg but rhe initials don't match up and google isn't helpful at all.

World's Most Popular RPG.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

As a GM I was always big on traps. Imagine yourself as a crazy wizard setting up a place to be difficult to steal from. You have years to plan. Your dumb minions might be all dead by the time someone tries to plunder your booty (I said booty lol).

I generally set up things so it would be essentially suicidal just to charge in like a bunch of morons.

Remember Grimtooth's Traps? I used a few of them but mostly used it for inspiration to create traps in a similar vein (the players had mostly all read it too and would recognize the really obvious ones anyway).

My personal favorite was the spyglass with a blurry picture of a pretty girl that drove a spike into the player's eye.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

You know, maybe the Wizards staff are so concerned about how races like Orcs are taken because they're monstrous humanoids themselves.

Speaking of wizards of the coast and race. Hasbro celebrated 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons by teaming with a cosmetic company that specialized in makeup for cosplaying black women and black drag queens. In other news, Hasbro is doing more mass layoffs.

Any particular reason your post has a picture of the Oxventurers instead of CR or just a mistake?

Hammering in how Hasbro accidentally creates competitors by focusing on the trendy fake geek culture. Half critical role clones start making games. It will be like a post-90s comic crash. Where most new comics company collapsed, and it ended up hurting DC and marvel in the long run, because there was less public interest in comics afterward. The American comic market never recovered and got even worse.

 

[Ghostse]

@Ghostse what does WMPRP stands for? Thought you meant the warhammer fantasy rpg but rhe initials don't match up and google isn't helpful at all.

World's Most Popular Role Playing Game.
It is a IP-free way to refer to D&D (while also implying that Wizard's current product is something that isn't dungeons and dragons)

Speaking of wizards of the coast and race. Hasbro celebrated 50 years of Dungeons and Dragons by teaming with a cosmetic company that specialized in makeup for cosplaying black women and black drag queens. In other news, Hasbro is doing more mass layoffs.

Pure coincidence I sure you. Now get excited for next product.

 

[AnOminous]

We have seen that happen to every army on our planet, even animals will cut their losses at some point and bail.
I personally prefer the enemies in my RPG to act with some self-preservation in mind, especially in larger battles.

Mine didn't generally have much in the way of free will, and they're not going to surrender if what their own leaders will do to them is worse than what you would. I also had semi-feral orcs that weren't really formally connected to other groups. Those would sometimes run away. Actual military orcs would make strategic retreats and do ambushes but those were generally led by smarter creatures like Uruk-Hai or trolls or an evil wizard.

I'd say mine were dumber than straight Tolkien orcs, not entirely mindless like non-intelligent undead but more or less slaves to their nature as creatures created by magic specifically to be evil. There were also always more where the last came from, because they lived in inhospitable, rugged areas humans and the other more civilized races wouldn't want, and lacking in resources enough that they had to rely on constantly raiding their neighbors.

So while orcs and their raiding targets had a more or less openly genocidal attitude toward each other, none were in any imminent danger of actually being wiped out.

 

[Battlefield2142EU]

coincidence I sure you. Now get excited for next product.

This! If we don’t give our money to Hasbro. The Nazis sexist racist Terfs will win!

 

[BlazikenLover]

On the topic of critical role fans harassing the snake plissken wannabe: I would't call CR fans "based" or anything for being sick of self hating white dudes, since from what I gathered they are mad at him for ponting out and mocking a bit about cultural appropiation in Candela Obscura (CRs newest rpg).
I also heard how mediocre Candela Obscura is, lacking mechanics for stuff like pvp and the book just telling you "make it up lol" and thats on top of them "playing" this system when only a fraction of it had been written out.

Edit: shit I realized I should have posted this in the other thread

 

[derpherp2]

Long story short. Critical role is a popular podcast with voice actors playing roles by playing games and voicing their characters. They started out playing Pathfinder E1, but they later got sponsored by WOTC/Hasbro to play Dungeons and Dragons 5E instead. The critical role team later made an adult animated show on Amazon Prime called The Legend of vox machina based on their campaigns and characters. Critical role and WOTC had a falling out because they refused to licensed DND to them because of the show being too adult and violent. Critical role said" fuck it" and removed all ties to DND in the cartoon. Critical role is releasing a TTRPG based on the setting of the legend of the vox machina show called DaggerHeart. Now that critical role will be a direct competitor to WOTC. Dungeons and dragons youtubers now give a shit about critical roles being too edgy and problematic. Autistic as fuck. I know.

And as usual paizo fucked up and didn't try reintroducing them to PF2.

Then again, do I really want MORE trannies in Golarion.

 

[BlerdBjern]

Can't have ontological or objective evil any more, it's problematic and a bunch of other buzz words.

ontological evil when applied to a race of sapient beings capable of choice is kinda fucky wucky IMO.

Like even from an irl perspective that's just wrong.

Now make no mistake, if the orcs are killing innocent people and shit, then fuck em, go full murderhobo on their asses make their deaths slow and painful, they were evil assholes and deserve it.

But it should be "These orcs are evil because they rape and pillage." not "These orcs are evil because they are orcs."

That just makes the world simpler and dumber, and cuts off a lot of potentially good ideas.

 

[Ghostse]

]

ontological evil when applied to a race of sapient beings capable of choice is kinda fucky wucky IMO.

Like even from an irl perspective that's just wrong.

Now make no mistake, if the orcs are killing innocent people and shit, then fuck em, go full murderhobo on their asses make their deaths slow and painful, they were evil assholes and deserve it.

But it should be "These orcs are evil because they rape and pillage." not "These orcs are evil because they are orcs."

That just makes the world simpler and dumber, and cuts off a lot of potentially good ideas.

I like to borrow a bit of folk lore and give reasons why my "evil" races are fucked up an evil.

- Kobolds are greedy with delusions of dragondom, and being on the whole not overly smart are prone to being enlisted as henchmen by those more clever and powerful, especially dragons.
- Goblins only eat rotting food and are also sort of dumb, gullible, and liable to serve whoever the fear the most. They are too dumb to farm they just hunt and scavange. People in cities, not liking that they live in squalor and eat rotting, putrifying things force them to the outskirts of society where they are easily recruited to evil.
- Orcs just only understand the world by punching it because they are better at that then nearly any other race. Orcs have naturally selected to never back down from a fight.
- Gnolls worship a carrion god and have fuckedup Hyena world views.
- Drow live in one of the most dangerous and hostile environments. This has given them to make a an necessity to have a BDSM lifestyle fetish very highly structured society withonly the most ruthless on the top, and a willingness to make a deal with who or what ever will give them the power to overcome the dangers and scarcity in the underdark. Add to this constant religious indoctrination that this state of affairs is all the fault of surface dwellers but especially those Other, Bad Knife Ears.

A member/group/tribe of any of these races could very readily buck the trend, but that doesn't change how you interact with the average orc.
But it also means you might have individuals or populations that go against the grain.
A Kobold might decide to follow a cleric of bahamut. A goblin might have the realization that it can trade instead of steal. An Orc might grow tired of the cycle of violence. A gnoll might chose a path of growth instead of decay. A drow might realize that "haha how is living in the underdark a thing? Like just climb out, drigga. Just open your eyes."

Much like I'm sure you can possibly find a german who doesn't love scat porn, train time tables, or digging holes at the beach - its difficult, but POSSIBLE.

 

[Wallace]

Mike Mearls has been laid off. Your reward for your cuckery is a pink slip, Mike. Don't stumble on your way out the door.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Mike Mearls

Who?

This! If we don’t give our money to Hasbro. The Nazis sexist racist Terfs will win!
View attachment 5561110
View attachment 5561133

What were his conclusions?

 

[East_Clintwood]

Who?

One of the two lead designers for 5E. I believe after that he moved over to work on something to do with MTG.

 

[Ghostse]

Mike Mearls has been laid off. Your reward for your cuckery is a pink slip, Mike. Don't stumble on your way out the door.

View attachment 5561774

Forging the future = hand-crafting the bullet that he's going to eat 6 months when he's canceled for *ism.

 

[AnOminous]

ontological evil when applied to a race of sapient beings capable of choice is kinda fucky wucky IMO.

My orcs generally weren't. They were ultimate NPCs. My run of the mill orc was barely over animal intelligence, enough to use crude weapons but not to be organized without being organized by something smarter. So they shared the Tolkien trait of being created by evil magic while being even dumber.

Most of even the other "evil" races were capable of being reasoned with but I wanted at least one source of completely throwaway bad guys.

 

[Quintus]

Gentlexirs: gimme some advice on how to make a vaguely min-maxed Cleric feel a bit more scared/threatened without coming across as Rocks Fall On Your Head-tier lazy DM punishment. I'm running some Ravenloft and been enjoying that almost every character is squishy and feeling the heat but the one dude just has absurd AC and spell buffs going that at times I feel like is actively hurting his enjoyment of the game because most shit cannot hit him and he's doing so much damage that other PCs feel like side-kicks. The flip side is that if I crank shit up, it can feel too excessive on the rest of the party.

In the past I've tossed saving-throw based attacks/spells at people in similar situations with mixed results and I have seen Banshees used quite effectively but I am just seeking some general tips from veteran DMs who can advise as to how to put the fear of the Morninglord back into his heart instead of power-gaming/sleep-walking through every combat encounter. It doesn't have to even by a pure by-the-book solution either, more than happy to homebrew or mix-match as well.

I would be careful with this since you could come across as an adversarial dm. That said, if the player doesn't feel challenged at all they'll probably just get bored. So I don't think adding some stuff to your encounters to challenge him specifically isn't that crazy. Just don't go overboard with it. Maybe just toss in one or maybe two specific enemies to help make his job a little harder.

You didn't give much detail, but if this is 5e I'm guessing he just has really good stats, casts spirit guardians and wears heavy armor with a shield. That's what I would do if I just wanted to just be the biggest threat possible as a cleric. You can use saving throw spells on him that target his weaker stats. I saw someone mention heat metal and that's a good option too, same with spike growth. If the spells are what's pushing him over the edge dispel magic can help deal with that same with counter spell. Unless he has alert, you can always just set up ambushes, providing the enemies don't roll like shit anyway.

Asked and answered. The solution to every problem is Strahd.

This is also a valid response. Maybe Strahd has taken notice of this particularly skilled cleric.

 

[Wallace]

One of the two lead designers for 5E. I believe after that he moved over to work on something to do with MTG.

Mike was also at the center of the Zak Sabbath kerfluffle.

 

[Corn Flakes]

My orcs generally weren't. They were ultimate NPCs. My run of the mill orc was barely over animal intelligence, enough to use crude weapons but not to be organized without being organized by something smarter. So they shared the Tolkien trait of being created by evil magic while being even dumber.

Most of even the other "evil" races were capable of being reasoned with but I wanted at least one source of completely throwaway bad guys.

Undead and minor demons used to be pretty good for that, but even those seem to have advocate groups on reddit these days.

Tumblr breaking containment was even worse than most people think, because these "oh, undead shouldn't be evil!" and "demons are just misunderstood!" idiots all originally flooded out of there.