Hot take: Strongest creatures in the setting shouldn't just be clowned by PCs with no resistance.
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Meh, I can make a Swara bastet / Tremere abomination with ranks in Celerity and mage powers and cybernetic arms from that one Pentex supplement who can attack 30 times in Crinos (but that’s not a problem cuz I’m Metis with some pointless “story factor” drawback that has no effect on my combat capabilities) with enchanted plasma cannons, doing 300d aggravated before Cain gets his first action.
Caine congratulates you on making him laugh before killing you.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
I feel like this is one of those “make sure people are on the same page before you start running the rpg”. I’ve had players react very badly to their characters being maimed and stuff (a fairly normal Dark Heresy event), but I’ve also had some players want a severe tacticool experience. And some people want cozy vibes with some dice rolling.
D&D does suffer from a lot of system/setting baggage as well as the expectation that the system works as well from level 1 to 20+.
I want to play shadowrun again, for all its flaws
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
Heroic fantasy vs dark gritty fantasy.
Give me heroic fantasy every time.
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It’s never the real god, just a physical avatar. There’s still a lot of Batman vs Superman narrative horseshit in the idea though
“Oh you surprised the guy who moves faster than most speedsters and can hear and see everything around him. Sure, okay, then he leaves and throws an asteroid he found within half a second from orbit before you’re done blinking”
DnD avatars don’t really scale that hard but neither do PCs so all of those fights revolve around the avatar being stupid or using a McGuffin
D&D 3.5 characters can scale pretty high
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
No one actually plays dnd like that though…
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Beat the campaign by forcing the DM to explain the logistics of how the monsters find their daily calories
A wizard did it.
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I mean this meme is built for strawmen that’s what it is
And brother, I brought matches.
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May be few and far between but I can vouch for it; I had a party like that whom I hated DMing or playing with in their games. Myself though I am as you said someone who prefers the challenge; both exist in large numbers.
Yep had a player like that. Would also be upset if he couldn’t do literally anything he wanted.
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A wizard did it.
This is Pathfinder, kiddo, we don’t play around with silly D&D handwaves: Which wizard, and why?
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If you ain’t dying, you ain’t trying.
Win if you can, lose if you must, but always TPK.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
You say that, but IIRC there are official DnD statements that gods do not have statblocks because they are too powerful for mortals to even try to fight. They renamed the Tiamat statblock to Aspect of Tiamat for precisely this reason.
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I am not that much a D&D player, but doesn’t it a huge power scale meaning that in the lower levels, it’s fairly easy to design a you fucking loose encounter. And isn’t there The Tarasque who is basically a you fucking loose statblock
I am all for a choose your fight approach where you should definitely not mess with someone bigger/stronger especiully without a plan or a lot of explosives. However, I expect that PC can make it out of an ordinary fight (just make sure it’s not a target shooting practice and put 1-2 PC on the ground). Then if the 13th gen newborns vampire want to fight the 5th gen prince, not my problem if they have to burn their character sheet afterwards.
Finally, one of the best rpg out there is 10 candles where you know from scratch that everyone will die
Things I have learned in 4 decades of DMing:
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There is no encounter that cannot be cheesed by creative players
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Same creative players will also party wipe by doing stupid things like trying to run on lava
It’s basically impossible to accurately scale encounters beyond astrology and good wishes. I’ve seen a party of 6th levels get wiped by seven starving goblins in a tower.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
Old. Funny but repeated too often. I don’t like DnD but even if they once gave stats to Cthulhu, I wouldn’t name a game to be better. Why one? On which criteria?
Also: I like World of Darkness. I have Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changelin, and many add ons. But let’s be honest (and troll a bit): Vampire the Masquerade is just a simulation of puberty. The system, when it was released, was awesome but it is way to crunchy for today’s standards.
If one should bash DnD, then do it with style with modern games: Blades in the Dark, Fate, Dungeon World, Ironsworn,… whatever from this century.
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D&D 3.5 characters can scale pretty high
Not on a Superman or Wonder Woman level but I think you could make a strong argument that Wish fixes (or breaks) everything by itself.
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Not on a Superman or Wonder Woman level but I think you could make a strong argument that Wish fixes (or breaks) everything by itself.
My character that got most close to broken was a Master Of Many Forms druid, though I was playing with a group with two well skilled min-maxers who were ridiculous from the outset at level 3
Wish can’t make you great, it can’t do much more than the equivalent of about half a level, you need a broken character design from the start
Of course there’s also support for epic level progression taking you beyond level 20. A druid at level 20 could face an army and win
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You say that, but IIRC there are official DnD statements that gods do not have statblocks because they are too powerful for mortals to even try to fight. They renamed the Tiamat statblock to Aspect of Tiamat for precisely this reason.
When you need to stop your players from trying to fight the Gods.
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Inspired by frustrating conversation I had. For those curious, that was the statblock of Caine, father of the vampires.
Also WoD:
Player: I’m a mage I’m literally changing reality, I will cure that vampire.
System: vampirism is a curse from God, do you really think you can roll more successes than God?
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Also WoD:
Player: I’m a mage I’m literally changing reality, I will cure that vampire.
System: vampirism is a curse from God, do you really think you can roll more successes than God?
We used to talk about how to cure Vampires in Mage (awakening, 2e).
The easiest is probably time magic. With Time4, rules as written you can rewrite their history so they never became a vampire. It persists until the spell elapses, but you could make that last a year without too much trouble (assuming time4, gnosis3, a rote skill of 4).
With Time5, the “fuck you” level of Mage, you can use the Unmaking practice and prevent them from being embraced, though that’s big hubris and risks butterfly effects at the GM’s discretion.
Other approaches I’m less sure about. You could probably do something with Life5 (make a new body), 5 or so points of Death or Spirit to get a new soul (fun fact: in awakening, souls are fungible), and Mind5 to put their mind in the new body. Kind of a ship of Theseus situation.
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It is actually bad game design in the sense that there really isn’t a decent mechanic to escape monsters.
5.0 orcs, for example, had double the speed of the average PC with their dumbass free move action.
The solution is rolling disengage as a series of skill checks (like World of Darkness would…) but then you have to explain how, exactly, a dude in full plate escapes a dragon.
D&D, especially 5e, is just missing broad sections of game stuff so it can “leave it up to the DM”. Other stuff is really underbaked. Degree of success, succeed at a cost, non-violent conflict, ending combat other than totally wiping the other factions…
That can be fine if everyone’s on the same page, but since D&D is the mega popular game you’re likely to be playing with new players, or just randos, and that can lead to tension.
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We used to talk about how to cure Vampires in Mage (awakening, 2e).
The easiest is probably time magic. With Time4, rules as written you can rewrite their history so they never became a vampire. It persists until the spell elapses, but you could make that last a year without too much trouble (assuming time4, gnosis3, a rote skill of 4).
With Time5, the “fuck you” level of Mage, you can use the Unmaking practice and prevent them from being embraced, though that’s big hubris and risks butterfly effects at the GM’s discretion.
Other approaches I’m less sure about. You could probably do something with Life5 (make a new body), 5 or so points of Death or Spirit to get a new soul (fun fact: in awakening, souls are fungible), and Mind5 to put their mind in the new body. Kind of a ship of Theseus situation.
In oWoD meanwhile there is an entire book with ideas how Mages could fix a vampire and what would be the consequences.
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