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

[Judge Dredd]

which is known for being fantastic mechanically

I thought 4e was mechanically terrible? I hear it's lots of small +1 bonuses you have to track, combat that drags on to long, and results in everyone standing in a line for flanking bonuses?

So wait, did we ever settle on a GOOD mech game or are we still shitting on Lancer?

Kiwis suggested lots of options. Battletech, Mekton, Heavy Gear, and others.

I haven't settled on a good mech game, because my wants are specific and I haven't gotten around to checking out the suggestions. I'm shitting on Lancer because a friend wants to play it, it's the only mech game people will touch (it's the 5e of mech games), and I'm complaining about it because I want to try and make it work. If I'm shitting up the thread, sorry. I can stop. It's just frustrating how dumb the setting is when it's held up as the pinnacle of mech RPGs.

The stupid Horus thing isn't a virus, it's part and parcel of design of these magic printers and the payoff is bit by bit it's shaving away at the lives of people across the whole empire

Good idea about them being not-a-virus and instead being core to the printers themselves. I might have to steal that. The sapping life part sounds like something straight out of the god machine, I like it.

This might seem off topic, but I'm quickly going to go into Person of Interest and The God Machine since they're fantastic concepts that work great for modern and sci-fi games.

The Machine from Person of Interest.

The premise is explained in the intro. It's a machine with access to basically all networked electronics. Camera, phones, e-mail, you name it. It puts it all together. In the show, the main characters receive a telephone call each day with the social security number of someone connected to a violent crime in the near future, and the main characters have to stop it.

The God Machine Chronicle.

It's a book for World of Darkness (I think) that is very lite on mechanics, and instead talks about ideas and concepts. The god machine is a vast, unknowable machine that is up to ...something. There is a pattern to it's actions, but the reason why is often vague. Examples include a cog that only spins if oiled with human blood, and if it stops natural disasters wreck the area. A highway traffic management system that is trying to make a certain combination of vehicles cross a specific area of road for a specific reason. Other possible examples are the Draconic Prophesy is Eberron, or the Warmind in Destiny. Horus, as presented so far in Lancer, seems to be a shitty version of that.

When done in the ways described above, it makes not only a fun wildcard, but a great DM tool since, if PCs align themselves with it (or even if they don't) it becomes an adventure generator.

 

[Ghostse]

I thought 4e was mechanically terrible? I hear it's lots of small +1 bonuses you have to track, combat that drags on to long, and results in everyone standing in a line for flanking bonuses?

The math is excellent, the power systme is great, just the enemies usually have too much HP.
At higher levels tracking not just bonuses but effects can get sort of nuts.

 

[Quintus]

The math is excellent, the power systme is great, just the enemies usually have too much HP.
At higher levels tracking not just bonuses but effects can get sort of nuts.

I actually quite liked what little I played of 4e. It was nice to play a martial that doesn't just do regular attacks every turn.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

I actually quite liked what little I played of 4e. It was nice to play a martial that doesn't just do regular attacks every turn.

When it first dropped, we started a new campaign and went from level 1 to level 10. At that point, we were recalculating everything based upon positioning and proximity every time someone’s turn came up and if we had combat, that was what we were doing for the entire session. At a certain point, we put it on the shelf and never touched it again.

Factor in the “gnome problem” wherein certain classes and races just weren’t there at launch, to include all of the backwoods classes like Barbarian and Druid and the complete lack of backwards compatibility? That was the second straw.

The final straw was when PHB2 came out and all of those things were put back into the game at an additional price plus a whole bunch of shit that nobody asked for and the Forgotten realms were completely rewritten with literal handwavium.

In recent years, 4e has benefited from the “prequel trilogy” effect where a bad entry in the series gets retroactive goodwill because what came after it managed to, somehow, be an even bigger shitshow. That doesn’t make 4e good. It was never good. Nothing about it was ever good. Six page character sheets were never good and rogues that could do 4d6+4 fire damage per encounter at the same level that wizards could do 3d8+3 fire damage per encounter were never good.

And don’t fucking “Well ackshually” me about the exact numbers. They were close enough for it not to matter.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

Six page character sheets were never good

*looks up from meticulously interconnected 10 page excel sheet for an Ars Magica character*

You're wrong.

 

[Ghostse]

When it first dropped, we started a new campaign and went from level 1 to level 10. At that point, we were recalculating everything based upon positioning and proximity every time someone’s turn came up and if we had combat, that was what we were doing for the entire session. At a certain point, we put it on the shelf and never touched it again.

Factor in the “gnome problem” wherein certain classes and races just weren’t there at launch, to include all of the backwoods classes like Barbarian and Druid and the complete lack of backwards compatibility? That was the second straw.

The final straw was when PHB2 came out and all of those things were put back into the game at an additional price plus a whole bunch of shit that nobody asked for and the Forgotten realms were completely rewritten with literal handwavium.

In recent years, 4e has benefited from the “prequel trilogy” effect where a bad entry in the series gets retroactive goodwill because what came after it managed to, somehow, be an even bigger shitshow. That doesn’t make 4e good. It was never good. Nothing about it was ever good. Six page character sheets were never good and rogues that could do 4d6+4 fire damage per encounter at the same level that wizards could do 3d8+3 fire damage per encounter were never good.

And don’t fucking “Well ackshually” me about the exact numbers. They were close enough for it not to matter.

Sounds like someone's pissed that wizards weren't miles ahead of martial classes.

 

[The Ugly One]

Sounds like someone's pissed that wizards weren't miles ahead of martial classes.

"Nooo the whole point of D&D is that Fighter is supposed to be a trap class that makes new players feel like they are useless baggage at 8th level!"

 

[Judge Dredd]

That doesn’t make 4e good. It was never good. Nothing about it was ever good.

Female dragonborn had tits. That was good.

I wonder if 4e would make a better computer game than a TTRPG.

 

[Maverick Vile]

"Nooo the whole point of D&D is that Fighter is supposed to be a trap class that makes new players feel like they are useless baggage at 8th level!"

I always found that mindset odd in a game inspired by a whole genre where it is commonplace for a fighter, barbarian, or paladin to kill a powerful wizard at the end of their quest.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

I always found that mindset odd in a game inspired by a whole genre where it is commonplace for a fighter, barbarian, or paladin to kill a powerful wizard at the end of their quest.

The source of that mindset is scrawny nerds.

 

[Gingervitis]

So wait, did we ever settle on a GOOD mech game or are we still shitting on Lancer?

Now you got me wondering- are there any good fantasy mech games? I’ve been playing a lot of Lords of Thunder, and recently I started playing Divine Dynamo Flamefrit, and I was wondering if there were any games that were good. I was looking at Battle Century G Remastered, but I’ll be honest, the default setting and the pronouns in place of sex are political to the point of turning me off. So I’m hoping there’s a good enough game that, with little to no modification, can give me my schizo-tech fantasy mecha fix.

 

[EleventySeven]

The source of that mindset is scrawny nerds.

This is even more true when you consider that the fighter is usually the de facto "leader" of the party if not de jure. It's the class of princes, kings, and warlords as much as it is the soldier class which makes the scrawny nerds, who want to make martials suck, cope and seethe.

 

[ZMOT]

I haven't settled on a good mech game, because my wants are specific and I haven't gotten around to checking out the suggestions. I'm shitting on Lancer because a friend wants to play it, it's the only mech game people will touch (it's the 5e of mech games), and I'm complaining about it because I want to try and make it work. If I'm shitting up the thread, sorry. I can stop. It's just frustrating how dumb the setting is when it's held up as the pinnacle of mech RPGs.

personally I don't mind, it's not like this thread is particularly fast moving.

I'd say figure out why they want to play it. if it's for the combat you probably can tack on any lore you want, they don't care anyway. otoh if it is about combat you might as well play battletech as a proper competitive wargame, and not you running some gimp pve power fantasy.
if it's for the lore ask if they suck troon girldick behind the FLGS for pokemon cards and find other players.

I thought 4e was mechanically terrible? I hear it's lots of small +1 bonuses you have to track, combat that drags on to long, and results in everyone standing in a line for flanking bonuses?

that was more 3.5. 4e streamlined and balanced a lot of things, too much for some people, especially munchkins who liked how borderline broken and unbalanced 3.5 was (to each his own).
combat dragging on too long was the result of bloated monster HP (later fixed, arguably too late) leading to less than exciting "whittling down the monster without any danger".

4e's main fault was being too different and to "gamey" (there are unironically people claiming you can't rp in 4e), and being the next edition after people spend hundreds on broken 3.x splatbooks.
had wizards called it dnd tactics or something while putting 3.5 on maintenance, thus slowly moving people over, it probably would've gone over far better (but wotc/hasbro were always retarded like that, so it was to be expected, dunno what 3.x tards assumed would happen eventually).

I wonder if 4e would make a better computer game than a TTRPG.

it does, it was literally planned to be played virtually (ironically before the whole roll20 vtt craze started), but the murder-suicide of the project manager put a damper on that.
it's part of the whole MUH WOW CLONE whining.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

Sounds like someone's pissed that wizards weren't miles ahead of martial classes.

"Nooo the whole point of D&D is that Fighter is supposed to be a trap class that makes new players feel like they are useless baggage at 8th level!"

I always found that mindset odd in a game inspired by a whole genre where it is commonplace for a fighter, barbarian, or paladin to kill a powerful wizard at the end of their quest.

The source of that mindset is scrawny nerds.

This is even more true when you consider that the fighter is usually the de facto "leader" of the party if not de jure. It's the class of princes, kings, and warlords as much as it is the soldier class which makes the scrawny nerds, who want to make martials suck, cope and seethe.

On the contrary. I am a fighter guy. My first DnD character was a fighter and I stuck with them through the 3/3.5e era. Barbs and paladins as well.

Yes, you have correctly identified a problem that has dogged DnD throughout its entire life except for that one edition where there’s less daylight between the classes but they fucked up literally everything else.

 

[pootoucher]

it does, it was literally planned to be played virtually (ironically before the whole roll20 vtt craze started), but the murder-suicide of the project manager put a damper on that.
it's part of the whole MUH WOW CLONE whining.

>murder-suicide of the project manager
Hang on hang on Jamie can you pull this up?

 

[GhastlyGhost]

>murder-suicide of the project manager
Hang on hang on Jamie can you pull this up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Melissa_Batten

Evidently the programmer's cheating whore of a wife was caught, it broke him, and he killed her and himself.

 

[Ghostse]

4e's main fault was being too different and to "gamey" (there are unironically people claiming you can't rp in 4e), and being the next edition after people spend hundreds on 3.x broken splatbooks.

not just that but 4e was a Hasbro cash grab. It was worse than the 5e various khotchkes and shit they sell, 4e had those too, but tons of player content was locked in subbooks, the downside to the the power system. There was also no playable SRD which made it hard to bring in new players. 3.5 you could get a new person into the game with the 3.5 SRD, 4e they needed a PHB or similar.

Now with readily available PDFs from COMPLETELY LEGAL AND LEGITIMATE SOURCES this is much less of an issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Melissa_Batten

Evidently the programmer's cheating whore of a wife was caught, it broke him, and he killed her and himself.

based.

 

[ZMOT]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Melissa_Batten

Evidently the programmer's cheating whore of a wife was caught, it broke him, and he killed her and himself.

before they started trooning out, programmers didn't fuck around

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

not just that but 4e was a Hasbro cash grab. It was worse than the 5e various khotchkes and shit they sell, 4e had those too, but tons of player content was locked in subbooks, the downside to the the power system. There was also no playable SRD which made it hard to bring in new players. 3.5 you could get a new person into the game with the 3.5 SRD, 4e they needed a PHB or similar.

you could print the cards and treat it like a boardgame, but yeah their idea of taking a cut from everything via GSL didn't help. otoh everyone is ok with dungeon master's guild, so...

 

[Generic Harem Master]

I thought 4e was mechanically terrible? I hear it's lots of small +1 bonuses you have to track, combat that drags on to long, and results in everyone standing in a line for flanking bonuses?

Several of the other messages have nailed the general thing for 4e, but yeah, Lancer is less indepth than 4e which actually helps on that. HP doesn't change much and rarely goes up, meaning HP inflation isn't much of an issue, and the way Structure works, just because you 'theoretically' have say 50-60HP, you may actually only have 15 to 30, depending on your Structure rolls. This means that even though weapons don't shift too much from their original damage values, a claw doing d10+5 which can force a Structure reroll is always going to be a threat.

Your 'powers' are also your mech parts, which means compared to 4e, which had lists for each class which could easily range into 30+ which you can shift between as you level up, you're getting one or two new parts per level. Sometimes, that's a chassis too, so out of the 20 'powers' you have, this will not only be at the very tail end of your campaign, but only 5 or 6 of those will be active at any one time.

I didn't run much 4e when it was about/mostly played, but it definitely has one of the more balanced/easy to eyeball and cost out level appropriate encounters, which Lancer also has. Which considering it's 98% just a straight wargame is good. When your game is just a couple of loosely linked 'drop in and capture the flag, wipe out the enemy force, escape to this part of the map' with a plot, having some solid way of quickly whipping up and encounter is great.

 

[Gingervitis]

Yes, you have correctly identified a problem that has dogged DnD throughout its entire life except for that one edition where there’s less daylight between the classes but they fucked up literally everything else.

I think the TSR editions had the right idea. When you got to a high enough level, you could (provided your players had the funds) get into domain play. Wizards got a tower and some apprentices, clerics get a stronghold and some soldiers, and thieves get a thieves guild and some apprentices. Meanwhile, the fighter gets to rule over a barony, withdraw taxes from them, and draft them in times of war, presumably in exchange for the fighter upholding his own end of the social contract.