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

[Mister Uno]

They renamed it, you're looking for "Reactive Strike" and no it's not a feat, they get it at lvl 1.

Jesus I feel stupid. Thanks for letting me know. Thankfully there isn't a Fighter in my group but still it's good to know in the future. Guessing certain creatures get it as well.

 

[p1138]

Jesus I feel stupid. Thanks for letting me know. Thankfully there isn't a Fighter in my group but still it's good to know in the future. Guessing certain creatures get it as well.

Can probably also do it with an archetype feat(archives of nethys is reasonably easy to search so long as you know the right name of something). But it avoids the boring task of avoiding AoOs from everything in pf1 by taking a 5' step first, then having that thing on its turn take a 5' step back into range for a full attack, repeat ad nauseum like half the combatants are line dancing.

 

[Caesare]

@Ensi Dude, just buy a PC and zone out playing Foxhole for a month or two. That should fit your needs for a while.

Such a neat game. Nothing else quite like it and I find there's less douchyness since everyone is just a POS that dies in a couple shots the same as you do. No epic weapons and level 1000 players. The perfect kind of online gaming experience imo. And I find it has more down to earth and helpful individuals playing than any other online game I'd ever spent time with.

It can start to feel like I'm participating in some very serious business if I start getting too involved with a group working together as a unit. I'll get this feeling like if I quit this current session while playing with a group, I'll be letting them down. I just have to remind myself "it's a game, retard. Stop if you wanna. It's not that serious."

Are you still playing regularly? I take long breaks and jump back in sporatically. I'm not with any of those squads where they have like work schedules and shit. That's too much for me. Maybe if I was retired with no family I'd be on that level. It can be an all consuming hobby if you get into it to that extent. There's certainly enough to do.

 

[Allied-Mastercomputer]

Are you still playing regularly?

Nah, I don’t play. Love watching the monthly recaps of the wars though. Each of them is a fantastic story of players cooperating and engaging in major battles.

 

[AnOminous]

Wonderfilled games has lost it on X/ Twitter.

How the fuck do white people "colonize" something they fucking invented?

This shit is so insufferable it's made me more racist than I ever was in my life and I'm not even a fan of racism.

 

[Corn Flakes]

How the fuck do white people "colonize" something they fucking invented?

It's not about what they did. It's about what they are.

White people are automatically considered "colonizers", even if it's a space they've created themselves. It's just a woke dogwhistle for "white".

 

[Caesare]

Nah, I don’t play. Love watching the monthly recaps of the wars though. Each of them is a fantastic story of players cooperating and engaging in major battles.

Did you get the feeling when you first began playing (unless you watched videos/read a lot about what went on in the game before you actually started playing) that the developers literally thought of everything? I did. And the more I'd learn, the more that feeling seemed to be accurate. Not saying it's perfect, but it has a lot of intricate systems that I've never experienced in other games. As a friend put it when I described it to him, "That sounds like an even more autistic Factorio." I thought about it for a brief moment before agreeing wholeheartedly.

 

[ZMOT]

Guessing certain creatures get it as well.

iirc mostly humanoids, basically "where it makes sense". same goes for classes (I think paladin has it as a level 5 feat. or barb. can't remember. maybe both).
means you don't have to glue yourself to enemies the whole fight, which makes it feel more dynamic.

 

[PhoBingas]

This is the worst tbh, I hate how videogames have retroactively influenced tabletop rpgs. I mean its also other genres that have been affected as well, but I remember for the longest time there was no “dedicated tanks” just strong adventurers or weaker ones.

4e is when that got into full swing. All those pick and choose abilities felt like building WoW or Everquest characters.

Also daily reminder 4e was only a failure by not making as much money as Hasbro wanted. (I'd also add "gaining and maintaining player engagement via a freely available playable SRD")

Was it? Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough, but when 4e was newish, there was so little content available online, I could barely find completed homebrew stuff and ended up going back to Palladium stuff for a couple years until 5e came out and the group I was in wanted to do that.

Playing an ex-detective who was fired after his last investigation led to important people. He's now taking up a bodyguard gig (The first job that is how all the PCs meet) so he can make money to support his family.

Traveler character creation is interesting as fuck and I wish more systems did things like that.

And yet I can't get anyone to play RIFTs.

I know the struggle. My group is hard on 5e, but I think that's the system a couple of them learned first and they aren't really comfortable outside of that.

They are staying away from anything Conan-inspired.

Maybe they're trying to avoid whoever holds the copyright to Conan off their ass. I could see whoever is behind that Exiles game being really stingy with rights.

Mainly 4e pissed people off because it was very VERY different. (also becaues it was WotC nickle and diming you for all you're worth) and it degraded the "mud farmer simulator" aspect by leaning all the way on 4e characters being fantasy superheroes.

Am I remembering it wrong, or didn't the core rulebooks leave out half of the at will/encounter/daily abilities and you were stuck buying class-specific books at like $40-$50 a pop?

Also, I've heard for years that Ironclaw is a decent system mechanically.

Oddly enough I heard that too, but usually from people that you didn't want touching your tabletop stuff, less your stuff takes on their smell so I always took it with a grain of salt or assumed they meant it was a good system for doing freaky furry shit.

Lorraine Williams

I do love the revisionist history how 0 I totally did one accompanying to the ground it's because she has vagina and that's it and all the people defending her and attacking Gary Gygax our little homosexuals.
The woman literally was creating products to funnel money back into her own pocket

Wasn't she the one who nearly tanked TSR by funneling money into a bunch of Buck Rogers shit she bought the licensing for thinking it was going to be a big money-maker?

I once met Brittney Venti at PAX East, though I suppose that's not as horrifying.

Did she smell like a litterbox or no?

Aside from that, he admitted to using the Custom Lineage from Tasha's as an excuse to bring races from older versions of DnD into 5e, like the Gnolls or Lupins, strictly using the same stat spreads. He also never took Darkvision for some reason outside of a few cases; said that he "prefers" to play with restrictions.

He's been wanting to bring some of his build ideas to our table; what do you guys think?

He doesn't seem like he's doing gooner shit, and I honestly like how he imposed some in-game consequence for an injury, which could come up for humanoids with weak bones who flew.
If he wants to do homebrew stuff, I'd for sure want to see it first and give it a once over. If it seems super OP offer to retool it so it's a bit more balanced, however if it doesn't mesh with your setting maybe suggest he find a homebrew that's a bit more fitting.
Might be interesting, if I was the GM I'd hear them out.

I generally don't ban stuff unless it doesn't fit the setting. But I made an exception for Silvery Barbs. One of my players who also dm's did it first and I didn't get why until he used it in my Dark Sun game. It just slows combat down. It probably is fine at lower levels, but a full caster with it is kind of obnoxious. Especially if they have any way of quickly getting spell slots back. If it wasn't a 1st level spell, I think it would be more reasonable. But it's a 1st level spell that does something very similar to the Lucky feat and gives a buff to another party member. Heck if it just did one thing or the other I'd say it's fine at first level. But both?

Which is weird it's a 1st level spell. Gift of luck is a 2nd level spell and only gives advantage on 3 rolls. It's as broken as some Kobold Press spells.

It’s a shame about the TTRPG space being made almost entirely of communists, degenerates and a few normal guys like Macris, because I would love to see a Dick Tracy-esque game where you crack some eccentric criminal heads.

Palladium's Ninjas and Superspies, Heroes Unlimited or Beyond the Supernatural could all work for that.

 

[Buckaroo]

Was it? Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough, but when 4e was newish, there was so little content available online, I could barely find completed homebrew stuff and ended up going back to Palladium stuff for a couple years until 5e came out and the group I was in wanted to do that.

It sold incredibly well until Essentials crippled it. I think the lack of homebrew is just related to the common complaint of option paralysis being strong in 4e already.

 

[PhoBingas]

It sold incredibly well until Essentials crippled it. I think the lack of homebrew is just related to the common complaint of option paralysis being strong in 4e already.

Soon after 4e came out, I got the PHB, MM and DMG, so Wizards got my money. Other friends I gamed with bought it too, and all had complaints similar to mine that it felt like an MMO tabletop and it felt incomplete. I don't think any of the groups I GM'd for or played with ever ended up playing it. IIRC I ended up grabbing a Diablo 2 D&D 3.5 or 3.0 book that I ran a few sessions of before I convinced my main group to give Rifts a try and we had a game that ran for a couple years. As janky as it can be, I prefer palladium stuff over D&D. People who complain combat in 5e can get long and unwieldy at higher levels have never played Rifts, where most combat classes get four or more attacks at level 1 and rounds are 15 seconds.

 

[Allied-Mastercomputer]

ended up going back to Palladium

What sourcebooks would you recommend? Friend of mine got me into Fantasy and Rifts and it’s some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen. Don’t know if I’ll ever play it but collecting it has been fun.

 

[Buckaroo]

Soon after 4e came out, I got the PHB, MM and DMG, so Wizards got my money. Other friends I gamed with bought it too, and all had complaints similar to mine that it felt like an MMO tabletop and it felt incomplete. I don't think any of the groups I GM'd for or played with ever ended up playing it.

On launch it was really rough, monster HP was way too high and their damage was too low so combat dragged on if you used the monsters from the book. MM2 improved that but it still wasn't enough and MM3 and Monster Vault finally got the numbers right. Luckily for me, my group didn't play much 4e until CBLoader existed so we didn't have to track down all the online content so I enjoyed it enough at the time.

 

[PhoBingas]

What sourcebooks would you recommend? Friend of mine got me into Fantasy and Rifts and it’s some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen. Don’t know if I’ll ever play it but collecting it has been fun.

It's all about what you want to do and where you want to go. If you're talking Rifts earth... Either Ultimate Edition or the core edition along with the GM guide and the guide to magic are essential. For sourcebooks it's all about what kind of game you want to run for your party. There's enough in those books to think up adventure hooks and a bunch of provided ones in the GM's guide.
My favorite are the Phase world books. So if you wanted to run it yourself you could probably get away with buying or acquiring the ultimate edition for character creation and rules and stuff, and for content the Phase World dimensions books. For Rifts Earth, the Coalition War Campaign books are good if you want to stomp magic-user and extra-dimensional migrant ass.
Heroes Unlimited is fun as fuck too if you have the right group for it. It can quickly turn into Villains Unlimited, but that's sort of half the fun of it.
If you want to have a one-off joke campaign there's the TMNT books that are also compatible with HU.

On launch it was really rough, monster HP was way too high and their damage was too low so combat dragged on if you used the monsters from the book. MM2 improved that but it still wasn't enough and MM3 and Monster Vault finally got the numbers right. Luckily for me, my group didn't play much 4e until CBLoader existed so we didn't have to track down all the online content so I enjoyed it enough at the time.

I sort of regretted getting the core books, but it was nice to have them. I can't recall if I used by the book monsters for the little test one shot I spun up for 4e or if I homebrewed monsters for the party to fight. At the time it just made me yearn for systems I was more familiar with and when the groups I knew unanimously decided they didn't like it, it just became books on my shelf I never touched until I lost track of them.
*edit to not double-post

 

[Mister Uno]

means you don't have to glue yourself to enemies the whole fight, which makes it feel more dynamic.

I was effy about it at first but yeah I can see it as being more of a good thing. So far I am really liking 2E.

 

[Ghostse]

Am I remembering it wrong, or didn't the core rulebooks leave out half of the at will/encounter/daily abilities and you were stuck buying class-specific books at like $40-$50 a pop?

You are remembering partly wrong. The rules books had everything you needed for characters.

What you are mixing up is two things:
First, a lot of player-favorite classes like Bard and Barbarian, and races like Half-Orc were locked in PHB2 which pissed off a lot of grogs, especially when Dragonborn, Teiflings, and two types of elf (three if you count half-elves) were in the PHB1.
Second, in a move that presage 5e's subclass splat powerscaling fuckery, they released "character option" books for Martials/Primals, Arcane, and Divine power-detrived classes that included power/feat/paragon progression that was far superior to anything in the PHB1/2/3.

There were no class specific books. In the later half of the run they introduced "Race Splats" with special options for races, and Necromancer was locked in their book talking about the dead. But no worse than what 5e does with subclasses.

Was it? Maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough, but when 4e was newish, there was so little content available online, I could barely find completed homebrew stuff and ended up going back to Palladium stuff for a couple years until 5e came out and the group I was in wanted to do that.

There was plenty of content. Adventure paths to 30, some of the best modules for any edition like Madness at Gardmore Abbey. The nentir itself is jammed full of adventure hooks.
The issue was they tried to nickle and dime you as hard as they fucking could.

 

[Snekposter]

If you can, get hold of the 20th Anniversary edition. It has more of the rules collated in the core book and is slightly re-organised and edited to read more clearly. The art and fiction for it is nice, too.

That will really give you a pretty complete game in its own right with everything you'd need to play. But I'd also recommend as an excellent source book for the setting in general and obviously Seattle itself as the default place to play. Following that I'd recommend Arsenal which isn't only a giant catalogue of guns, vehicles, etc. but also is pretty rich in creating a feel for the setting. Most people would probably recommend Street Magic as the most necessary follow up book and it's very, very good. But you probably don't want to mainline all the magic stuff right away. Augmentations and Unwired round out the last of the four core rule supplements and Unwired is the only weak one of the four.

Yeah, when I did some SR games they were all based on 20th and the dice rolling ran smoothly since the rolls themselves are simple, even for guys who didn't have much experience with TTRPG's. Character creation is a bit more complex than D&D but that's what Chummer is for.

(Obviously things that didn't involve dice rolling but actual honest-to-God roleplaying didn't go quite so smooth like one of the other elves saying the friendly helpful Ork tow truck driver unfucking our ride "wasn't an Uruk".)

 

[PhoBingas]

You are remembering partly wrong. The rules books had everything you needed for characters.

Thanks for clearing that up. 4e coming out is closer to 20 years old than I'd like so my memory was a little fuzzy. It was just really forgettable but that's probably just because I never actually played or ran a game of it.

There was plenty of content. Adventure paths to 30, some of the best modules for any edition like Madness at Gardmore Abbey. The nentir itself is jammed full of adventure hooks.
The issue was they tried to nickle and dime you as hard as they fucking could.

From what I've read in the thread I'm sort of sad I didn't stick with 4e at least until the MM2 and 3 came out. Seems like it had potential with the right group.

 

[Ghostse]

From what I've read in the thread I'm sort of sad I didn't stick with 4e at least until the MM2 and 3 came out. Seems like it had potential with the right group.

From a GM perspective 4e is a dream to run. Dungeons rooms were design documented to be no more than a 2-page spread so you can run encounters without flipping around. The start of the dungeon comes with tips for how it is to run, if anything dungeon-wide is to happen in response to party actions. Running 4e has ruined me for other systems and 5e is generally dogshit by comparison.

From a game perspective, 4e has some warts. In addition to combat that can quickly grind to a halt with all the potential bullshit that can get stacked up and Save vs. effects.
PEople were calling it a "tactical mini game" which I think undersells the system but the comparison isn't wholly inapt; 4e works best when the party has anything outside of combat abstracted to theater of the mind, and just shows up at the encounter.

Additionally, especially in some encounters, the party just doesn't have enough special attacks to make combat interesting for players and it comes down an at-will endurance match. Also the economy is straight up busted to shit, and just in general in a lot of places they don't a great job of balancing "we don't want you to cheese the engine with by abusing the numbers, but we also make to make it easy to carry a reasonable amount of special gear"

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Anyone remember that GiantLands RPG that came out a few years ago? That one about playing a post-apocalyptic world without white people, akin to Coyote & Crow? Was curious if anyone else knew all that much about it; found a recent video on it is why I'm curious: