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

[PAM Cooking Spray]

There's some dispute as to her existence and the details of her life, but she's attested to in multiple accounts and was quite famous in later generations in Japan. And she wasn't even the only female general of her era.

How does her being mentioned in multiple fictional tales have anything to do with her existing?
She's a fictional character.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

How does her being mentioned in multiple fictional tales have anything to do with her existing?
She's a fictional character.

"Fictional" tales are often just fictionalized accounts of an actual person's life, which is a common practice throughout Japanese history. She was honored and accepted as an actual historical figure by the Japanese, not as a legend or story like The Tale of Genji. There are a whole lot fictionalized accounts of Oda Nobunaga's life, but he's understood to be a real person. The same with Miyamoto Musashi. The Tale of the Heike itself, which Tomoe Gozen is most associated with, and other epic accounts like it, were based on real situations, events, and people. Though they were rendered as larger than life figures by said accounts, the events they attested to are actual important moments in Japanese history. Its why even today they are studied extensively by historians, because many of the events and situations they've detailed in fact stand up to close historical scrutiny, while others did not. The Central figures of the story were well known to the Japanese, the events they concerned were attested to and important moments in Japanese history, and the stakes they dealt with were accepted and understood by the Japanese of the time.

 

[The Ugly One]

How does her being mentioned in multiple fictional tales have anything to do with her existing?
She's a fictional character.

People who want to believe kickass women armies were just as capable as men will hang onto any myth they find.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

People who want to believe kickass women armies were just as capable as men will hang onto any myth they find.

It also doesn't help that the people who do so have an agenda in mind

 

[Quintus]

So, I apologize for this being an out-of-nowhere and very late topic, but a player with my DnD group brought it up recently; I was curious as to what you guys thought.

What do you guys think about DnD 5e's Oathbreaker class? Like, do you guys think people playing it is an interesting choice, or should it be restricted to NPCs only? Have you guys ever played or DM'd for anyone who wanted to play an Oathbreaker? You find it to be kind of a "red flag" for a table if a player wants to play one? What do you guys think?

Oath breaker isn't very useful for players imo. I'd be fine with it. If you're concerned about it, I would suggest they try oath of conquest.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Oath breaker isn't very useful for players imo.

I thought it was one of the strongest Paladin archetypes?

 

[Overly Serious]

Training and weapons make a big difference. As does good nutrition. An all female army marching with heavy gear or fighting for long periods... not so much. But a minor noblewoman who has actually been instructed in weapon use and provided with quality gear? I don't see why it's so implausible she couldn't fight off the odd roving peasant soldier. Even if she's fighting someone also professionally trained and equipped, there's a big difference between a woman fighting me and we're both unarmed and that same woman fighting me when we're both holding swishy 1m swords of death.

 

[Second Missing Primarch]

Anything like the original S modules if you don't mind them being incredibly deadly. They're not all Tomb of Horrors, but even something like White Plume Mountain is pretty grim in parts.

It's hardly a megadungeon (the original was something like 16 pages), but it's a tricky puzzle dungeon with Grimtooth-level traps in it.

For a longer more campaign-type thing, I always liked the Saltmarsh modules which involve fish people in a coastal town pretty clearly modeled on the Deep Ones from Lovecraft. There was originally a four-part campaign based on them, but there are also a number of standalone scenarios you can more or less mix and match with without necessarily running an ongoing campaign heading to some kind of climactic ending.

Again, these are mostly fairly deadly.

Tbh, I'd love to run my current party through Tomb of Horrors or the old Saltmarsh stuff, but they'd all die so quickly.

I was at a game store with one of my players recently and he asked me about the difference between 5e and the older editions in terms of difficulty. I noted that his character would already be dead twice over if we'd been playing AD&D or 3/3.5, and most of the rest of the party would be too, considering their tendency to Leeroy Jenkins it whenever a fight breaks out. He seemed a bit shaken by that.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Tbh, I'd love to run my current party through Tomb of Horrors or the old Saltmarsh stuff, but they'd all die so quickly.

I was at a game store with one of my players recently and he asked me about the difference between 5e and the older editions in terms of difficulty. I noted that his character would already be dead twice over if we'd been playing AD&D or 3/3.5, and most of the rest of the party would be too, considering their tendency to Leeroy Jenkins it whenever a fight breaks out. He seemed a bit shaken by that.

I don't think 3.5 was particularly lethal unless you had a killer DM. It wasn't a cake walk, but it definitely wasn't the most lethal game I played.

 

[Abella]

I don't think 3.5 was particularly lethal unless you had a killer DM. It wasn't a cake walk, but it definitely wasn't the most lethal game I played.

There was more lethality solely because they didn’t want it to be where the players would have their hands held throughout the campaign. AD&D was more lethal than 3.5, tbh.

 

[Ghostse]

I don't think 3.5 was particularly lethal unless you had a killer DM. It wasn't a cake walk, but it definitely wasn't the most lethal game I played.

3.5 was only lethal when either the DM min/maxed the monsters like they were a PF sperg, and/or because the DR on some monsters was fucked.

we had a near TPK because the DM put against against some demons that did AOE to everything in a 45-foot radius when they took damage, and that was further than most of my bard spells would reach and our paladin's abilities. We could have probably whittled them down with ranged but neither the players nor our characters were feeling like playing I'm not touching you.

People who want to believe kickass women armies were just as capable as men will hang onto any myth they find.

Training and weapons make a big difference. As does good nutrition. An all female army marching with heavy gear or fighting for long periods... not so much. But a minor noblewoman who has actually been instructed in weapon use and provided with quality gear? I don't see why it's so implausible she couldn't fight off the odd roving peasant soldier. Even if she's fighting someone also professionally trained and equipped, there's a big difference between a woman fighting me and we're both unarmed and that same woman fighting me when we're both holding swishy 1m swords of death.

The two main issue with female armies is "Odds" and "logsitics"
There is nothing amiss with a city guard or guardscorp of females. Especially when its a royal guard unit where you have a battalion or less of female soldiers recruited from a whole country, you can find enough the mutant super stronk amazon women to pad out a unit and keep it supplied with new recruits. But trying to find enough women to keep an active campaigning unit supplied would be a hard undertaking. You need the top 0.1% of women to match the average man on raw physical strength.
<insert table comparing women's athletic world records to men's rankings here>

the other issues is logistics. Women just usually were kept away from the fighting because they needed to make babies which was a pretty lethal pastime, to the point Spartans would only give graves to men who died in combat and women who died in child birth, because both died in service of Sparta.
But women also have periods, which in addition to loss of blood requiring extra nutrition... if you are campaigning and the enemy knows your army is going to be significantly less combat effective 1 week out of 4, your enemy can leverage that. Now this is much less important when its a homeguard situation.

I guess what I'm saying is I give zero fucks if a player wants play a female fighter (ok, I give some concerns if its a guy wanting to play a female and I'm getting ANY bad vibes). You can be that one-in-ten-million amazon mutant. I do care when source books start injecting female footsoldiers into armies for diversity reasons.

 

[Joshua Connor Tomar]

Starting a new Pathfinder game as a magus looking to throw big hammers at people and get big. Don't think we will go long enough where I can get huge but will duregar large around for a bit. Or I'll die at level 0.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Oath breaker isn't very useful for players imo. I'd be fine with it. If you're concerned about it, I would suggest they try oath of conquest.

Not really so much "concerned" about it; I was mostly just wondering what you guys thought about it. I noticed that there's been something of an uptick of people playing it thanks to Baldur's Gate 3; my party brought it up as a possible character concept for a PC recently, hence my curiosity.

Personally, I'm on the fence about it myself; it does make for some interesting character ideas, but it also seems like a "special snowflake" class, if you know what I mean.

 

[The Ugly One]

Oathbreaker isn't supposed to be a player class. It's an option for the DM if a player breaks his oath, or to use for a villain. That's why it's in the DMG, not the PHB.

IMO a Paladin who's broken his oath shoul just become a Fighter.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Oathbreaker isn't supposed to be a player class. It's an option for the DM if a player breaks his oath, or to use for a villain. That's why it's in the DMG, not the PHB.

A lot of that is simply due to the fact that its a class geared towards evil players, and many DMs still avoid evil campaigns. Generally, in D&D, options for evil characters are not treated as normal players options, and this has been the case for years. If your campaign allows evil characters, its a perfectly viable class.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Personally, I'm on the fence about it myself; it does make for some interesting character ideas, but it also seems like a "special snowflake" class, if you know what I mean.

Its just a class. The only issue is if you won't allow an evil character in your campaign, since they must be evil. RPGBot even gives pointers on how to play the class effectively. As long as your cool with your player playing an evil SOB, I say let him go for it.

 

[Quintus]

I thought it was one of the strongest Paladin archetypes?

I think that's mostly due to the aura. Adding your charisma to all melee damage rolls is pretty good. It doesn't work for your allies though, unless they're fiends or undead I guess. The rest of it's kit is pretty situational.

IMO a Paladin who's broken his oath shoul just become a Fighter.

Yeah that honestly makes the most sense, they had the right idea in earlier editions in that regard. The Oath breaker feels like it should be a separate class, certainly not a subclass. If you break your oath, you shouldn't suddenly gain a bunch of random new abilities.

Personally, I'm on the fence about it myself; it does make for some interesting character ideas, but it also seems like a "special snowflake" class, if you know what I mean.

I could see that. I guess in that case it would depend on the player you give it to. Having such a a character in a party could open the door to tons of interesting situations. Maybe he was part of a religious order and he is being hunted down by his former allies for breaking his oath? Maybe he regrets his actions and being an oath breaker is only temporary while he seeks redemption? I would talk to your player and see exactly what they want out of the subclass. If they just want to be an evil paladin oath of conquest and vengeance can facilitate that too.

 

[AnOminous]

Yeah that honestly makes the most sense, they had the right idea in earlier editions in that regard. The Oath breaker feels like it should be a separate class, certainly not a subclass. If you break your oath, you shouldn't suddenly gain a bunch of random new abilities.

Paladins and oathbreaking reminds me of the DM foil characters I'd play where the whole point was to be necessary to finishing the adventure but also being so obnoxious they'd have to be disciplined not just to murder my character. So I'd taunt the paladin constantly, the only character who would say no, we can't just torture the information out of this guy because torture is BAD.

And then when some NPC spewed out the information I was keeping secret everyone realized I was now useless and all eyes were on me. "Let's just kill this asshole finally." And the paladin looked at me. And I said you can't kill me! That would be EVIL! And he said "I'll repent tomorrow" and immediately finished me with his holy vorpy.

Was that an oath breaking? Or did he just do the right thing?

Sometimes even paladins are forced to make tough moral choices.

 

[Abella]

A lot of that is simply due to the fact that it’s a class geared towards evil players, and many DMs still avoid evil campaigns. Generally, in D&D, options for evil characters are not treated as normal players options, and this has been the case for years. If your campaign allows evil characters, it’s a perfectly viable class.

It’s the fact people try to spin them around in a way where they’d be passable as a non-evil character. That goes back to the idea of using reddit and tiktok as inspiration for creating characters.

 

[JamusActimus]

Oath breaker isn't very useful for players imo. I'd be fine with it. If you're concerned about it, I would suggest they try oath of conquest.

Oathbreaking is so interresting as a concept and narrative tool that no player should ever start as an oathbreaker period.
We need to see the player evolve, change and be confronted by something that will cause him to doubt his oath and break it.