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

[EleventySeven]

Re: Spell components, one thing I've seen pitched but I haven't tried to do yet is:
(Well, sort of. I've technically done with 4e and rituals)

Allow your wizard to have just a "Components" resource. So in town they just buy "Spell Components", you set a weight per-gp, and the wizard just spends from that when they need a component.

I do like this idea since it gives a meaningful resource difference between the wizard and sorcerer, in pathfinder 1e at least, since the sorcerer automatically gets eschew materials as a feat. Another suggestion: target your wizard's component pouch. It has to be readily available for him to use it and so have opponents look for and target it if they can. Make their use of components meaningful even if you or they don't want to bother with tracking balls of bat guano.

 

[King Dead]

My current DM has said previously that he's going to require casters to have the appropriate materials for every spell and not just handwave it away with a component pouch, presumably roleplaying every interaction required to obtain them. He already did that once in our session zero, where he had the wizard determine how long he'd need to work as a healer to afford the ingredients for Find Familiar (only to have the cleric kill it by accident by blindly chucking a dagger at it when it screeched at him in the dark immediately afterward). I doubt he's going to keep that up for long, though, because having to keep an eye on a player's inventory for every spell they plan on casting will end up slowing things down a lot. Maybe it would be okay in between sessions if we have some time in town or something, but again, I doubt he'll want to keep doing it.

As a barbarian, this doesn't concern me in the slightest. Feels good to pulverize everything before me without having to worry about pesky things like spell slots or material components.

So yeah, for 5e specifically, I'd personally go with the standard rules: if you have a component pouch, that will cover any mundane ingredients, with the assumption being made that you sourced the materials you needed. Or you could go the easy way and just use a focus instead. For consumed ingredients or ingredients with a cost, however, you'll have to actually go through the process of acquiring the item in question and keep track of what you do and don't have. That's what one should be anal about, not nitpicking over making sure they found a sprig of holly or a bag of dirt or whatever.

One way you might handle it: if the players level up and learn some new spells while out in the wild, and the material components aren't something they could either logically source from around them or already have on them, then you might rule that they'll need to wait until they're back in town and can make a quick run by the local Wizmart. But again, focuses would negate this issue for mundane components that aren't consumed anyway, so it's probably not worth getting worked up over it.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

It's still the same in 5e, it's just there are no rules for actually doing any of those things. You can go full WWE and put a wizard in a perfect camel clutch, and he'll still be able to fireball the rest of your party.

You're using the wrong finisher, you rudypoo jabroni

 

[Corn Flakes]

As a barbarian, this doesn't concern me in the slightest. Feels good to pulverize everything before me without having to worry about pesky things like spell slots or material components.

Just wait until he implements durability mechanics to your axe's haft.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

Just wait until the implements durability mechanics to your axe's haft.

You can really tell who in the party cut their teeth on older editions by looking at how many weapons/tools/useful equipment they have listed on their sheet.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

You can really tell who in the party cut their teeth on older editions by looking at how many weapons/tools/useful equipment they have listed on their sheet.

When all you have is a ten foot pole everything is a pressure plate trap or a mouth that leads to the cold vacuum of space.

 

[strawberry15]

You can really tell who in the party cut their teeth on older editions by looking at how many weapons/tools/useful equipment they have listed on their sheet.

Of course we are leaving that shitty pipe bomb and getting the block and tackle with us player! we are not there to kill goblins, we are there to get the treasure. plate armor and magical items are more useful then a lvl anyways...

 

[Corn Flakes]

You can really tell who in the party cut their teeth on older editions by looking at how many weapons/tools/useful equipment they have listed on their sheet.

I never thought I'd say that, but after 5e's complete lack of differentiation between weapon types, I miss the 3.5e Swiss-army-knife fighters. Carrying multiple kinds of weapons for specific vulnerabilities or situations was fun if you weren't going deep into the weapon focus/specialization feats.

 

[#1 Hot Sauce of Kiwi Farm]

We don't use spell materials as my DM already hates when I go to any settlement as I am going to buy all kinds of miscellaneous tools and spell scrolls for spells I want, but don't want to waste a spell slot on (Slowfall and such). Of the entire team I am the most gold hungry and have accrued a debt with the other players that disappears when I pull out the tool or spell I bought that saves our ass.

I still have no damage spells save for a few wands and scrolls for when things need to die. I have 8 strength so the other party has to carry a lot of my stuff, but they love me as I support them and make sure we are prepared. I always make sure to investigate what we may be up against even if it may drag the game on, but knowing and being able to counter whatever the DM may throw at us is how I make up for not being killy even if the DM and others may find it a bit annoying.

 

[AnOminous]

So yeah, for 5e specifically, I'd personally go with the standard rules: if you have a component pouch, that will cover any mundane ingredients, with the assumption being made that you sourced the materials you needed.

I generally just assumed anything mundane was available and you'd have enough of it for reasonable purposes. And that if a wizard gets captured, any sapient relieves them of their material components and binds and gags them.

I'd only make a big deal of it if you needed something like a basilisk's eye or whatever.

I might have made exceptions for if the party is dropped in an extremely impoverished environment like a desert where the environment itself was the enemy, but otherwise I'd just assume the party had some access to water, could hunt and gather by spending some time to do it, etc.

I also had a grapple mechanic which wasn't much, just sort of a STR v. STR test. It might have been from a Dragon article.

I generally disliked players having to spend much time in detailed, boring bookkeeping and scrounging tasks and would have an NPC who took care of that kind of stuff.

 

[Senwosret III]

First post here, so I'm sorry if the formatting's wrong.
One of the players for my regular saturday 4e game I DM online (since we live on different countries now, we had to make the switch to Roll20, greatest mistake of my life), asked if she(?) could switch characters. "She" wasn't on the original roster of players, but came recommended to me by one of them after another had to drop out. I have the habit of interviewing any potential players to avoid gay retarded shit, but I must've had an off-day, because this is the garbage I was sent as a concept:

Drow Druid, troon, left the Underdark because the females don't recognize the troon as a female and muh oppreshun!!!!!

Seing these red flags, I said no, please don't inject alphabet garbage in my game. This is the first time as a DM that this happened to me. Does anyone know of better ways to dissuade the player from this retardation, or should I just boot the troon fetishist out of my game?

 

[#1 Hot Sauce of Kiwi Farm]

I generally disliked players having to spend much time in detailed, boring bookkeeping and scrounging tasks and would have an NPC who took care of that kind of stuff.

You'd hate me then as I love shopping talking to the merchants building a rapport with them haggling as we are low level and I need every gold we can spare (DM is stingy with gold and magic items). I like the logistical side of the game and most of all shopping and looking at all the cool items and just stuff.

I have to drag the Lawful Good Paladin around as my characters is a Drow (Yes evil it's a long story of how they are forced to work together). Taking them shopping is another not hostile method to torture them though I try to keep it brief for the other players sake. However, I have been nudged a few times to hurry up. I really like learning about the worlds and societies I am in as why would you not want to see cool fantasy stuff!

 

[AnOminous]

You'd hate me then as I love shopping talking to the merchants building a rapport with them haggling as we are low level and I need every gold we can spare (DM is stingy with gold and magic items). I like the logistical side of the game and most of all shopping and looking at all the cool items and just stuff.

No, I actually had NPC sheets (actually index cards) with some stats and details on NPCs like shopkeepers, the local gendarmerie, minor nobles, etc. so if you met some rando and wanted to talk to him I'd have something to say without having to make it up on the spot. But having to go on scrounging trips to collect bat guano and roll it into pellets? Not very intereresting.

 

[Catch The Rainbow]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runefoundry/wild-imaginary-west-rpg-with-boylei-hobby-time

Been following this guy for a while and he launched a Kickstarter. Considering backing it but curious on your guys take on it

The quick story guide seems good but I'm not experienced with this stuff.

 

[Lucky Coin]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runefoundry/wild-imaginary-west-rpg-with-boylei-hobby-time

Been following this guy for a while and he launched a Kickstarter. Considering backing it but curious on your guys take on it

The quick stary guide seems good but I'm not experienced with this stuff.

I'm probably going to buy it just because I like the channel and the setting, but I suffer from FOMO with physical TTRPG books. You could always run the quickstart adventure with your players to see if they like the system.

 

[King Dead]

I never thought I'd say that, but after 5e's complete lack of differentiation between weapon types, I miss the 3.5e Swiss-army-knife fighters. Carrying multiple kinds of weapons for specific vulnerabilities or situations was fun if you weren't going deep into the weapon focus/specialization feats.

That is one place where the 2024 update seems to be making an objective improvement, giving different weapons specific mastery properties that martial characters can use to supplement their standard damage rolls, like cleaving an adjacent target or knocking them prone. Not only does it give more variety in weapons that previously had practically zero difference, it also means that classes that were previously effectively locked to one weapon (like greataxes for barbarians since you wanted the biggest damage die for Brutal Critical) will have more tactical options to choose from. Obviously nowhere near the same level of choice as casters have, but anything is better than nothing. I dunno how similar this is to what you're describing from 3.5, I'm guessing not as complex.

Somehow in the two years or so that we've been playing, grappling has never come up in any of our games, I think because nobody actually bothered to read and understand those rules and realize that they could do something beyond their standard attacks. In my defense, I've been playing exclusively casters up to this point, and a wizard ain't gonna grapple very well. I'm probably going to end up surprising the DM when I pull a grapple for the first time, so that'll be fun. As a giant barbarian, I'm practically built for it, especially since I can grapple up to huge monsters when I rage (eventually even gargantuan). It'll be interesting to see if he puts extra thought into encounter design afterward to make it more difficult, though with everything I've got in my favor, outside of incapacitating me round one, I don't think there's anything that could truly stop me from grappling if I want to.

 

[Ghostse]

My current DM has said previously that he's going to require casters to have the appropriate materials for every spell and not just handwave it away with a component pouch, presumably roleplaying every interaction required to obtain them

Depends on system/campaign. I think that sounds like more work than its worth, but I get the idea behind it.

I think it ends up like Initiative every turn, or hit zone dice, or a bunch of other systems:
On paper it does great things for immersion, but at the table it just slows everythign down and kills the flow.

First post here, so I'm sorry if the formatting's wrong.
One of the players for my regular saturday 4e game I DM online (since we live on different countries now, we had to make the switch to Roll20, greatest mistake of my life), asked if she(?) could switch characters. "She" wasn't on the original roster of players, but came recommended to me by one of them after another had to drop out. I have the habit of interviewing any potential players to avoid gay retarded shit, but I must've had an off-day, because this is the garbage I was sent as a concept:

Drow Druid, troon, left the Underdark because the females don't recognize the troon as a female and muh oppreshun!!!!!

Seing these red flags, I said no, please don't inject alphabet garbage in my game. This is the first time as a DM that this happened to me. Does anyone know of better ways to dissuade the player from this retardation, or should I just boot the troon fetishist out of my game?

Have them roll 1d100 right as the session starts. On 59 or higher, their character committed suicide before the session started. (If they roll 59 or below, they were murdered by the first drow female with a child who walked into the bathroom and saw a male that wasn't cleaning) Then kick them from voice/game/discord/etc. Tell the remaining players you don't cotton to alphabet nonsense.

Serious suggestion is to just boot them now. They are just testing the waters and will continue dancing around the edges to inject their troon faggotry. Though I will say a drow trooning out makes a degree of sense, the gender special nonsense is now beyond parody - 15 years ago Grogmor the half-orc PRETTY PRINCESS demanding to use the Ladys' would have been funny. Now its the sad reality of clownworld.

I never thought I'd say that, but after 5e's complete lack of differentiation between weapon types, I miss the 3.5e Swiss-army-knife fighters. Carrying multiple kinds of weapons for specific vulnerabilities or situations was fun if you weren't going deep into the weapon focus/specialization feats.

I'm of two minds. On one hand, its nice there is some variation besides damage dice on weapons. On the other hand, tracking that stuff can get sort of annoying, and needing to bring multiple +X weapons gets annoying and expensive.

I have thought of trying to add a bit more variety to the OSR classes, sort of cribbing off things like 3e's racial weapons, where every player is a rifleman fighter, and it makes sense that even a mage would have learned to swing a weapon, where non-fighter gets training in a single type of weapon, but the fighter turns everything they put their hands on into a lethal weapon.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I'm of two minds. On one hand, its nice there is some variation besides damage dice on weapons. On the other hand, tracking that stuff can get sort of annoying, and needing to bring multiple +X weapons gets annoying and expensive.

It wasn't that bad, to be honest. On my final martial in the 3.5e days (I don't remember if it was a Paladin or a Fighter), I remember carrying a generic magic longsword and a shield as my bread and butter, a warhammer I could swap in for bludgeoning damage, a silvered greataxe, a cold iron greatsword, and a handful of shortspears for throwing in a pinch. The GM usually told me to pick two melee weapons when preparing to get into trouble and let me carry the spears across my character's back. Everything else stayed in the cart with the underling.

In hindsight, it was fun knowing I could deal damage to basically anything, and looking around for weapons whenever the party arrived at a new city gave our GM plenty of opportunity to drop plot or gossip hooks in front of us. Sure, it could get a little pricy, but it wasn't like the martial wasn't getting the lion's share of the party's gear fund anyway. On the other hand, it was definitely not the most "efficient" way to play, since you did lose out on Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization and the Greater versions of both and those added up with a friendly Wizard pumping you up with Haste and giving you 3 swings per Full Attack at only level 6.

It's funny how the occasionally obnoxious elements of 3e feel like a breath of fresh air now. Still, my group is currently having fun with BFRP and comparing it to both 5e and 3.5e so I'm not about to get too nostalgic about it.

 

[#1 Hot Sauce of Kiwi Farm]

Drow Druid, troon, left the Underdark because the females don't recognize the troon as a female and muh oppreshun!!!!!

How would that even work the Drow just let a male not only leave without permission though also just not outright kill him for pretending to be his betters. Any Drow would have just killed the troon as I assume it's a male that somehow got polyformed into a female.

 

[Ghostse]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/runefoundry/wild-imaginary-west-rpg-with-boylei-hobby-time

Been following this guy for a while and he launched a Kickstarter. Considering backing it but curious on your guys take on it

The quick story guide seems good but I'm not experienced with this stuff.

Skimmed it. I'd need to see if there's a quickstart or playtest somewhere.

Just from my fast skim:
This is a """D6""" dicepool game. D6 is in quotes because they use their own gay custom D6 bullet dice. normally I'd applaud the theming for backer dice since its a Wild West game, but the fact they are using custom dice scheme is mega-gay: you have to use their meme dice for their game, and you can't use their meme dice in any other games. (They say you can convert normal d6s but that's stupid. Just do the conversion.) its probably a trademark bullshit. Wonder why all these gay icons in RPGS lately? Because you can't copy right "On a result of 4...." but you can copy right an image of a gay spiral

Adding to this, I hatehatehatehate their result descriptions except one. "Some success" "some failure" - go fuck yourself. Qualify that shit, don't put out some half-baked story game shit. The spur things I sort of like, which is dice from the pool you reroll if you have a talent that applies to the roll.

This sounds a little bit like D6 Star Wars from what I understand.