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

[EleventySeven]

I get it. It's a game with a decade of updates, and I imagine someone coming to 5e today would have the same problem. But PF1 had multiple revisions, fan made and official to address balance problems, and the game is still completely broken.

From having run it as GM for a single group for ~3 years straight, the thing I have noticed is that yes, it's broken, but everyone can be broken in a number of ways of their choosing. Plus, the third party scene for it is/was massive and generally well done. It's fun broken and if your GM runs it like that (scaling encounters up and rolling with the retardation), it makes for a better 3.5e. "Superheroes but with wizards" as @2LtMashengo says. Then again, I'm the resident Pf1e shill so take my words with a grain of salt.


That and the SRD covers nearly everything and is online for free so it's super cheap/easy to run and for your players to access all the niche things.

Man I've been enjoying my latest pathfinder character - vital strike pure fighter. We got to level 8 so far but its probably me favorite way to play the class.
nice balance between hitting and not getting hit, you actually can move and fight in combat, works both on melee and range and having only one attack per turn means it doesn't take much time to roll all the shit during your turn.
If any of you haven't tried it yet strongly recommend.

Have you checked out the Iron Caster guide? My favorite way to play fighter in 1e. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G1oa8hQif08qqRdEyMnDVVFAoBN_53uhNcJc4wArQxs/mobilebasic

 

[Ghostse]

That and the SRD covers nearly everything and is online for free so it's super cheap/easy to run and for your players to access all the niche things.

SRD fucking nothing, they have the literal PF1&2 PHB online for free.
I hate Pozzio for being pozzed out cucks, but unlike Woketards they do actually enjoy gaming. No matter how much I hate a company, when they do something good I'll acknowledge it.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

After a long stretch of no games because so many in my group had real life shit going on, one of the DMs is going to try to run a Dragon Age themed game because Veilguard was a giant fucking turd and he can literally shit out a better story than what they delivered. I don't know anything about the setting, so what are the least pozzed race/class/faction combos?

 

[The Ugly One]

the least pozzed race/class/faction combos?

Every class in Dragon Age is defined by which orifice it likes to stick wieners into.

 

[LovisXVI]

I don't know anything about the setting, so what are the least pozzed race/class/faction combos?

Human, male, Tevintir magister. Really as long as you aren't Orlesian, you should be fine.

 

[The Ugly One]

Corinne Bush, a tranny who helped turn the Dragon Age game into a 3D lecture on nombinary identity, has been hired by WotC after being sacked by EA:


It's gonna get a lot worse.

 

[Ghostse]

Corinne Bush, a tranny who helped turn the Dragon Age game into a 3D lecture on nombinary identity, has been hired by WotC after being sacked by EA:
View attachment 6941093

It's gonna get a lot worse.

Oh god. This is like drilling a hole in the titanic to try to get the water to drain out.

 

[AnOminous]

Maybe if there is complete change in corporate culture at Hasbro, although that's still a big if. But it has to be top down, and it has to start with a major purge.

They need to bring back the breed of Jews who actually like money. I'm sure they still exist. Greed is good.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

SRD fucking nothing, they have the literal PF1&2 PHB online for free.
I hate Pozzio for being pozzed out cucks, but unlike Woketards they do actually enjoy gaming. No matter how much I hate a company, when they do something good I'll acknowledge it.

At least it's still ran by the people that started the whole thing and hasn't been snagged by some soulless corporation like Hasbro. As woke as Jason Bulman is the guy can write an adventure. I met him at Gencon years ago and we had a brief talk about Mad God's Key, which was his first published adventure in Dungeon and the first published thing I ran, which started a pretty successful thrown together campaign that lasted a couple of years. It's in Dungeon 114 and just a solid little adventure that's pretty open ended if you're looking for something to run. Seemed like a nice guy even though he said that I'm not allowed to play Pathfinder anymore on twitter because I like Trump.

I've been told that I'm not allowed to do a lot of things though so it's all good.

 

[Ghostse]

They need to bring back the breed of Jews who actually like money. I'm sure they still exist. Greed is good.

The issue is they already have all the money. Now they want power.

At least it's still ran by the people that started the whole thing and hasn't been snagged by some soulless corporation like Hasbro. As woke as Jason Bulman is the guy can write an adventure. I met him at Gencon years ago and we had a brief talk about Mad God's Key, which was his first published adventure in Dungeon and the first published thing I ran, which started a pretty successful thrown together campaign that lasted a couple of years. It's in Dungeon 114 and just a solid little adventure that's pretty open ended if you're looking for something to run. Seemed like a nice guy even though he said that I'm not allowed to play Pathfinder anymore on twitter because I like Trump.

I've been told that I'm not allowed to do a lot of things though so it's all good.

I mean "Ignore politics and focus on output" cuts both ways.

 

[Loose Goose]

They need to bring back the breed of Jews who actually like money. I'm sure they still exist. Greed is good.

Alas, Brian Blume died in 2020, so they can't bring him back to fix things.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

I mean "Ignore politics and focus on output" cuts both ways.

I have a lot of friends with retarded opinions, shivering about muh fascists that don't exist. They're still good friends but still fun to game with most of the time. I mean I did brutalize the party with wyverns the last time we played together and buddy seemed legit upset but I was pretty happy about it. Game isn't fun if you can't die after all. Fuck of it is that same guy had the best moment where he killed the second in command of the great overlord of that section of the map and got away and still proceeded to pout.

Sort of feel like I should make things more dangerous next time.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Looking for DM advice.

To cut a long story short, I've been asked to run a mimic focused one shot. Looking at the adventure, I'm not happy with the mechanics but wanted opinions and suggestions. I'd also like plot help, but I have a few ideas for that.

The premise is the PCs have to explore a hoarders house full of mimics.

The problem I have is it's just a bunch of perception checks to notice the fixed mimics. Any item they interact with the DM rolls on a table to see if it's a mini mimic or not. I don't like either of these, but I might be over thinking it. I considered narrating the room and deliberately including too many of certain items. Three chairs when there's two desks, etc. Kind of like the early levels of Prey. But I worry about book keeping, and given the house is filled with junk, it makes narrating the vast stacks of junk a headache. It would also be impossible for the PCs unless they're obvious. So I'm torn between autism or the being moving from room to room rolling perception.

One idea I had was making it a sci-fi setting, giving the PCs a motion tracker out of aliens or some other gadget.


On a more fun note. The plot also needed work, in that there wasn't one. My ideas here are pretty basic. A wizard is mass producing mimics and has to be stopped before they're becoming a problem. Alternatively someone important has ran inside and the PCs have to rescue them. For the sci-fi version, I might set it on a small ship or train, some kind of enclosed place and they have to get to the bridge.

 

[pootoucher]

Looking for DM advice.

Ideas;
Any random thing they're investigating? Use a card deck(or multiple), in sekrit. Each time they interact with a new(or sufficiently unattended) item that could be a mimic, discretely/secretly draw a card.
If it's clubs or whatever, it's an obvious mimic that either acts right then(Reflex saves?) or is a smart one that's trying but failing convincingly to pose as something else.
If it's hearts or whatever, ask them if they want to roll Perception. BTW, it's only a mimic if it's a face card or ace of hearts.
Spades? Pick hearts or clubs; it counts as that if it's a face card or ace of spades.
Diamonds? Not a mimic. Fuck with them anyway if you want.
Specific things that they're investigating, such as the third chair or whatnot? Decide beforehand which if any are mimics or not.
Also definitely include too many of given objects. It's a hoarder's house. The mimics moved in because they're like cockroaches for hoards.

 

[Ghostse]

Looking for DM advice.

To cut a long story short, I've been asked to run a mimic focused one shot. Looking at the adventure, I'm not happy with the mechanics but wanted opinions and suggestions. I'd also like plot help, but I have a few ideas for that.

The premise is the PCs have to explore a hoarders house full of mimics.

The problem I have is it's just a bunch of perception checks to notice the fixed mimics. Any item they interact with the DM rolls on a table to see if it's a mini mimic or not. I don't like either of these, but I might be over thinking it. I considered narrating the room and deliberately including too many of certain items. Three chairs when there's two desks, etc. Kind of like the early levels of Prey. But I worry about book keeping, and given the house is filled with junk, it makes narrating the vast stacks of junk a headache. It would also be impossible for the PCs unless they're obvious. So I'm torn between autism or the being moving from room to room rolling perception.

One idea I had was making it a sci-fi setting, giving the PCs a motion tracker out of aliens or some other gadget.


On a more fun note. The plot also needed work, in that there wasn't one. My ideas here are pretty basic. A wizard is mass producing mimics and has to be stopped before they're becoming a problem. Alternatively someone important has ran inside and the PCs have to rescue them. For the sci-fi version, I might set it on a small ship or train, some kind of enclosed place and they have to get to the bridge.

I'll maybe try to get back to this when I have more IQ to devote but off the top of the head:
- Have mimics fuck up puzzles. Do some sort of logic puzzle the goal being the players realize there's one too many of one element. Example: do the 3 gallon bucket and 5 gallon bucket but they need to place EXACTLY 4 gallons on a scale. Have there be a puzzle descripting that clarifies 5 and 3 buckets must be used, but have a 2 gallon bucket sitting there which is the mimic.
- don't worry about random tables and just be pure evil. The chest isn't a mimic, but the sword is. The door is a mimic. The floor is a mimic. Have the entire house be one giant mimic.


There is another good piece of DM advice I got which is:
You don't need to come up with hard puzzles. the players will usually make an easy puzzle hard all by themselves.

That is, while I generally hate "completely random, no way to determine the answer" what I would do for this adventure is present your players with the problem: "There may or may not be a mimic in this room". Describe the room. And then see what your players come up with mimic detection and if you think the idea is reasonable, either roll a d6 or just either have that work and boom! mimic. IF you think the idea is dumb, let them try it, fail, and then have them get ambushed by two or three mimics for their insolence.

 

[Heartbeat]

-snip-

Mimic based one-shots/quests/adventures are one of hardest ones to pull off because there are so many preconceptions that in most cases its easier to just hard reset someone's brain and start from the beginning. A good and terrible thing about them is, however, that you can do an excellent portrayal of them regardless of the system as they don't rely on any mechanics, they're purely interactive entities.

For mimics, I would recommend reading The Mimic Book of Mimics forum thread on dndbyond since it has a plethora of good advice on playing and portraying a mimic well, just cherrypick the parts you like.

it's just a bunch of perception checks to notice the fixed mimics

Any writer guilty of writing this should be strung up. I'm a DM of the school of thought that rolling for something is failure state, player and DM's skill, imagination and roleplay play precedence, to hand over all that to just some random dice is peak retardation.

Any item they interact with the DM rolls on a table to see if it's a mini mimic or not

Same thing. I would rather prepare a bunch of pre-made mimics and would "spawn" them whenever players wanted to take a deeper look at some things as long as it makes sense. Quantum mimics, if you will. That way you won't need to make a ridiculous amount of mimics for a limited number of rooms. Instead, just a large number of them, heh.

Do some sort of logic puzzle the goal being the players realize there's one too many of one element

This is good advice for mimics in general. They can mimic things perfectly, but the logic is all wrong. It's like having a dinner table for four and yet for some weird reasons there are five chairs at the table, there's a bar of soap on top of a bookshelf, there's a tree branch underneath the mattress, and so on. Players should ideally pay attention to the room, its contents, and layout.

don't worry about random tables and just be pure evil

This. Just ask yourself what would make for the most interesting outcome. Meet expectations, subvert them, fuck with your players like a true mimic, that's what they signed up for, anyway.

 

[Adamska]

Also keep in mind they can mimic anything, and some really funny ones are ones that actually let you use them as functioned. For example, have a mimic replace the door with itself, but then only have it destroy them if they spot the dismantled door and hurl booze at it or destroy it. Have them also legit fuck with them by moving around when out of sight. Gaslight the fuck out of your players.

I've also for larger mimics have had them due to fear of their lives getting snuffed if the party seems tough, use items or kit they stored and hoarded reluctantly to make them more complicated to deal with.

 

[anti SJW]

 

[Adamska]

View attachment 6955578

Yeah, they proved to be much more respectful of culture with this change. They now made the grey-skinned tusked Chaotic Evil pillagers and murderers Mexican.

Ay dios mio, it's amazing to see their actual thoughts on not-whites when they keep seeing them as rape murder monsters.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Today I rant about the state of DnD again.

I wanted to run a sci-fi game, but it was a wash. One guy turned up on time. Lancer guy cancelled as he managed to find a lancer game online, and my other player no-showed. My one remaining player wants to try again next week, believing that maybe we can find replacements of no-show will turn up. I have my doubts. Not sure if I should try my next lot of ideas (so organized play below) or try again next week. Maybe I should have gone all in on Lancer.

My PF2 campaign chugs along, but it's a slog, and it's clear the game is going to be a combat gauntlet from here on out, as the party have all but decided to not bother with negotiation or nuance and just kill everything they see. Only one seems to be invested in the narrative. He's also the only one that is doing his homework. I have noticed they are thrifty with gold.

I don't know if I mentioned this, but I've been interested in one shots that form a narrative, specifically Paizo's "organized play" modules. I'm not interested in organized play itself, just the adventures. From the ones I've seen, they're generic and flawed in many ways, but they're all self contained with a vague narrative through line for those that stick with it. They also use stock content. Supposedly DnD has a similar series, "Adventure League" and "DMs Guild", but I found neither on the high seas. What's more, DMs Guild is also the name of a third party publisher/drive thru store and both terms are used interchangeably.

Does anyone have any opinions/experience with them? They use "tiers" instead of levels which I hope avoids narrow level ranges. My hope is that people can drop in and out. Those that refuse to play when a party member is absent can be told it's a one shot, those who only play campaigns get a campaign. I doubt it'll be successful however.