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

I like this generally but also think that using exhaustion more consistently is a great idea, especially as punishment/effect for things. That said, I think they cucked the exhaustion system badly in 5.5e compared to what it was before in pursuit of streamlining and simplicity but I'll let others chime in on their thoughts.
What did they do to it?

Almost every time there's an implicit trust that what is happening is happening because It Has Been Willed and to question it is akin to heresy.
Yeah. That's what's throwing me.

To give a fictional example. Let's say the party is fighting a treeant, and someone casts fireball at it.
"It takes double damage and bursts into flames!"
"But DM, treeants don't have fire vunrability."
"I know, but it makes sense. It's a tree. It's made of flamable things, it bursts into flames."
"But elemental weaknesses aren't really a thing in Nimble."
"I know but narratively it makes sense."
"DM, no. The book says on page 152 that-"

cue 5 minutes or arguing why the tree would be weak to fire vs RAW. Even having people after the game approach me to try and explain. This is different from usual where rules lawyers try to power game. It's as if I'm a retard who doesn't understand the game. I worry things will get bad when it comes to homebrew monsters.

It's like the squabbles between 5e players about if skeletons take double damage from bludgeon or not.


This ties into magic items. +1 magic weapons aren't really a thing. I can add them, just make them deal +1 damage, but players are against this. The magic items in the PHB are retarded and prices are not given.

Goggles that allow you to see through the eyes of a pigeon or a ball of spiders that scares people might have RP potential but aren't really a replacement for a +1 sword.
A sword that gives you 2 extra arms that can be used to duel wield 2 handed weapons or equip 3 shields seems completely broken.
There is little middle ground.
My usual go-to of putting spell effects on things or having powerful single use items. But if I have a sword that can cast fireball, it leads to people complaining that martials don't do spells and spell casters have fireball already and don't need a magic sword. What little I can come up with or steal from other systems are not in the book so they point me to the magic item pages in the books.

I would say this leads to headdesk, but it's VTT so head-virtual-desk?
 
I know I stole it from somewhere, but when I ran 5e I always made it so when a PC was downed, the act of getting them back on their feet(with the exception of a Nat20 Death save) would give them 1 point of exhaustion. That way they could still play whack-a-mole with healing word but every time somebody got to their feet they would be worse for wear, and if the combat dragged on too long, or they had a particularly nasty string of fights, everyone would have to be a lot more strategic. I think during one very long battle they had our Warlock ended up with 5 points of exhaustion so if he went down again he would have just died if anyone healed him, and he was working with 0 movement, half max hp and disadvantage on everything.

I always found it alleviated some of the problems 5e had with tensionless battles.
Hey that sounds like a pretty good change. I might have to steal that for when I run 5e again.
 
Both Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford are leaving WOTC.

Story here.

I wonder if they are getting out before it hits the fan.
Considering they already let go the VP who was heading up their entirely halfassed Sigil VTT(launched it in what should be considered an early beta at best) and already laid off 90% of the dev team for it, and Hasbro has been jumping down WotCs throat for years demanding that D&D make more money...

I'm pretty sure all of the shit has hit the fan and is no longer even airborne there.
 
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They can't have two white males be in charge of Modern Audiences D&D, even if one of them is gay. This is the VP of Franchise & Product interviewed in the story:
1744391874940.png

Note the crazy eyes. Queers and People of Color, your white cat lady savior has arrived.
 
They can't have two white males be in charge of Modern Audiences D&D, even if one of them is gay. This is the VP of Franchise & Product interviewed in the story:
View attachment 7206716

Note the crazy eyes. Queers and People of Color, your white cat lady savior has arrived.
Its the glasses that cement it for me. It shrieks crazy cat lady who'll rip your head off for having an incorrect opinion
 
There's a certain sort of rules lawyer that believes the DM is not allowed to put anything in the world the players can't create themselves. This is kind of annoying in 5e, not because I have any problem using DM fiat to put a magical talking illusion that can only cast Magic Missile, but because I'll inevitably get a rules lawyer whining that there's no way for a powerful wizard to do such a thing, and then get mad when, after killing the wizard, he can't find the spell in his spell book.
Yeah these sorts exist. I do personally think you should give them an opportunity to study and try to figure out what the wizard did, but it should take time and research. Especially if the wizard did not write it down and it was a metamagic ability he figured out via shortcut.

Probably hint that it was a freak accident or perhaps a bit of bloodline sorcery that it even happened.
cue 5 minutes or arguing why the tree would be weak to fire vs RAW. Even having people after the game approach me to try and explain. This is different from usual where rules lawyers try to power game. It's as if I'm a retard who doesn't understand the game. I worry things will get bad when it comes to homebrew monsters.
In this order.

First, I'd state that I know the trees normally just take damage, but I'm doing this for flavor purposes. If they still argue, I'd then ask why they think I don't know the damn system if I'm running the monster from the book. If they insist on it not being inherent to the system, I'd ask if they ever heard of what homebrew is, and state that I'm just adding a mechanic that this thing's ancestors had. If they STILL tard on I'd just cut the session, tell them to run the game themselves, and to stop calling the person running it a moron because they want to argue mechanics on homebrew.

Because at that point it's fucking clear they're being sanctimonious jackasses IMO, if they genuinely think that I don't know the fucking system I'm running on. Fuck them, they can do it themselves.

I'd only frame it more politely if they were friends, but I'd still be done with it after something like that.
 
Yeah these sorts exist. I do personally think you should give them an opportunity to study and try to figure out what the wizard did, but it should take time and research. Especially if the wizard did not write it down and it was a metamagic ability he figured out via shortcut.

Probably hint that it was a freak accident or perhaps a bit of bloodline sorcery that it even happened.
Those sorts will not be happy until you let them break the game. The problem with them is not an autistic commitment to verisimilitude, it's that they want to break your game. They saw you put something in a dungeon or vampire's lair, thought of a way to break the game with it, and will whine until you allow them to turn it into a frequent-use effect that destroys everything. The solution is to just say, "no."
 
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

cue 5 minutes or arguing why the tree would be weak to fire vs RAW. Even having people after the game approach me to try and explain. This is different from usual where rules lawyers try to power game. It's as if I'm a retard who doesn't understand the game. I worry things will get bad when it comes to homebrew monsters.
Yeah we had a guy like this in the group I've been in for six years I think it was like three years ago i'd like to say it was three years ago and he sat there and tried to argue with the DMF for good like 20 minutes why all of his broken Powell game build.
That class that makes magical items affect and the leader of the magical let's just say order showed up because it was breaking every single wool of the university and banished him and he tried to argue that he couldn't just do that it's like he's a 70th level wizard of course you can do that.

Keep in mind everyone in this group power games but this guy was just being a complete and utter obnoxious monkey about it
 
Both Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford are leaving WOTC.

Story here.

I wonder if they are getting out before it hits the fan.
If they didn't just finish releasing the gayest shittiest noncommittal edition of D&D of all time, this could be a major "Which way Western Man?" moment for D&D where they could right the ship and win back a lot of good faith by hiring someone who knows what they are doing to lead.

5.5e/24/6e is such a shit show with gay elves and dwarves, Mexican orcs and people with tranny scars all over their books that they could hire a reanimated Gygax himself and it wouldn't be enough to salvage it.

I garuntee they are going to double down on the rainbow D&D fan base and hire some gay black woman to run it further into the ground.
 
If they still argue, I'd then ask why they think I don't know the damn system if I'm running the monster from the book.
That's basically how the argument goes, every, single, time. But this line specifically goes to why I think it still happens.

I don't know the system inside out. I know how it works, but I couldn't, say, list the spell book from the top of my head. They can, so I can (and do) defer to a player that does know when something I don't know comes up. Like asking what the damage on that spell is, or knowing what the DC of a fighters combat maneuver is.
"What's the damage of zap?"
"d12"
is easier than me flipping through the PDF to find the spell for zap.
 
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The original Conan stories weren't even bad when it came to those things, it was some of the retards that wrote the character later that did all that.
While the real solution is of course DON'T PLAY CONAN but even in Howard's stories the vast majority have some woman kept on the arm against her will by evil warlord/sorcerer/pirate and all the non-consent that implies. Also a lot of slavery and dark skinned sub humans that are into cannibalism. So if you had to AGAINST YOUR WILL play Conan anyway I could understand why the SA and horror elements and various taboo concepts that are verboten to modern audiences like sl*very and hecking r*cism could be awkward.

But again, not playing Conan is a perfectly viable option if you don't like the tone of Conan and don't want to play Conan. I don't know why niche modern tabletop can't just say "this isn't for everyone, fuck off to something else if you don't like it" when it's not like Conan is ever going to pull in Critical Role fans.
 
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