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Eruntalon
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2015 8:17 pm
Posts: 8
Location: Brazil
PostPosted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 10:03 pm 
 

So I've found this RPG topic and since I'm trying to mingle with people here in some way I decided to start properly here.

Have you played MERP?

I am new in RPG, although I've always wanted to play it. This winter me and some friends of mine finally managed to start playing Shadow of The Demon Lord, which is a very fun game. We are in a delay now, since our GM is occupied with other stuff, and in the meantime I searched for Middle Earth Role Playing Game (2nd edition). I am really excited with this system: the roll conventions and the precision in the actions of the game open so many possibilities both for story-telling and role-playing. I've heard that this system was intended as a soft version of Rolemaster, which I don't know, but MERP sounds as plenty adventure for a year or even more. I'd truly like to know if any of you have played this system before.

I'll have a couple of weeks vacation and I'll take this time to write my first adventure as a GM using MERP. I would also appreciate if any of you could give me suggestions in writing a first adventure.
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:11 pm 
 

Last session was a fun one. We had to infiltrate this house where a kindly old noblewoman who'd been missing for weeks was being held hostage in a coma by our arch-nemesis hag Rotten Polly. We start searching the place, and we all get snagged by these vine monsters in the walls. While the more fighty-types went to town trying to hack their way through them, I took advantage of my new spell selection. I cast dimension door to go straight up to the top floor of the house, finding myself in the bedroom of the woman with the hag hunched over her, sucking away her life-force. Hag turns invisible and bolts, I give chase and faerie fire her. She turns to cast Hold Person on me, I counterspell. My turn again, I polymorph into a tyrannosaurus rex and charge her. Queue chase scene where a massive t-rex smashes through a house chasing a hag around. Awesome day!
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:06 pm 
 

Did you get her? Did you eat her?


Eruntalon wrote:
Have you played MERP?

my first adventure as a GM using MERP.

Merp.
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Sun Jul 15, 2018 1:27 pm 
 

Nope, she escaped >:|

Next session, perhaps!
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Mon Jul 16, 2018 3:27 am 
 

Dammit. I really enjoyed the image of a huge .. dinosaur (?wtf?) smashing through walls in pursuit, though.
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Yak_Forger
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:53 am
Posts: 16
Location: Belgium
PostPosted: Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:00 pm 
 

Not a RPG, but still a board game.

I've recently discovered the Battlegroup WW2 wargame rules, and am spending my music money on plastic tanks and Russians now :lol: I managed to contain myself and form only 3 armies, but now it's all over since 1) I learnt you can do a 1940 Belgian list as well (and I'm not missing an opportunity to play my homeland in a modern-ish wargame) and 2) they're working on a Cold War edition of the rules as well... Plus, 20th century wargames aren't really off topic on that board, since tanks are literally heavy doom metal.

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Scorntyrant
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:55 am
Posts: 1516
PostPosted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 3:20 am 
 

What scale are you playing battle group in? I’m playing a lot of Bolt Action in 28mm these days, even doing a very lighthearted podcast about various aspects of the game
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Zdan
Veteran

Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 6:05 pm
Posts: 2762
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:09 pm 
 

For the past couple of days I have been reading the playtest version of Pathfinder Second Edition. It is too early to have any concrete thoughts on what I have read (also because I have played yet) but I find it extremely funny that people from all over the RPG portion of the net bitch and complain because almost all of the spells got toned down and nerfed. It seems like the Pathfinder devs finally saw the issue of linear fighter quadratic wizard is a REAL issue and decided to do something about it. And out come the hordes and decry that now the game is worthless because they cannot dominate in combat and out-of-combat like they used to. Funny shit.

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Yak_Forger
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 8:53 am
Posts: 16
Location: Belgium
PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 11:07 am 
 

I'm playing Battlegroup in both 15 and 20mm. I'm debating forming a couple 6mm "travel sized" armies for it, mostly aimed at playing with newcomers in order to get them hooked, and switching all inches to centimeters to reflect the smaller size, but so far it's just idle thoughts.

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Oxenkiller
Veteran

Joined: Sat Feb 09, 2008 3:42 am
Posts: 3613
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sat Aug 11, 2018 3:10 pm 
 

Oh man... MERP, yeah that takes me back. I haven't played it since around 1994, but I remember liking it...that is, until the game got too big.

One warning to all RPG'ers out there- keep your gaming groups small. 4-6 characters, max. Any more than that, and things get so cumbersome, both for the players and especially for the gamekeeper/Dungeon Master- that it just doesn't work. You can't accomplish very much in a gaming session because (for example) one combat can take up to an hour, as all ten or eleven players are all constantly shouting at the gamekeeper at once about what they want to do.

So our MERP campaign, which initially featured only five of us, ultimately ended up with around eleven people, because everyone we knew all liked the idea of a role playing game in Middle Earth, and they wanted to join in, too. And then, when you'd have eleven people show up for a game session, it just went downhill and was no longer even playable.

So the game itself; I loved it, I loved the system and the gaming environment but I would imagine it has changed quite a bit with new rules and revisions (much like regular Dungeons and Dragons) in the 25 years since then.

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 2:16 am 
 

Have you played D&D 5E? I'm a huge Tolkien nerd, and was super addicted to Lord of the Rings Online for a long time, so I'd love to play a Middle-Earth TTRPG. I just don't know if MERP would be the best route, or those Middle-Earth 5E supplements I've seen.
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Scorntyrant
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:55 am
Posts: 1516
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:20 am 
 

Grave_Wyrm wrote:
Anyone watching this thread into painting miniatures? I'm about to embark on a series of paints over the next year, and it got me curious who else here does it.


puts hand up.

I paint a lot, even go semi-pro from time to time and accept commission work. Lately I've been experimenting with doing a lot of my base work on larger projects (say 10 or more minis with the same scheme) with the airbrush. That's a big time saver.
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Metantoine
Slave to Santa

Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:00 pm
Posts: 12030
Location: Montréal
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 2:17 pm 
 

Scorntyrant wrote:
Grave_Wyrm wrote:
Anyone watching this thread into painting miniatures? I'm about to embark on a series of paints over the next year, and it got me curious who else here does it.


puts hand up.

I paint a lot, even go semi-pro from time to time and accept commission work. Lately I've been experimenting with doing a lot of my base work on larger projects (say 10 or more minis with the same scheme) with the airbrush. That's a big time saver.

Man, I'd like to see some of your work then! I'm starting to paint and while I'm not bad, I know that I'll look at the minis I did this year with disdain in the future. I did a fast job on three goblins this week and I plan to do touchups on some of the metal minis I did some months ago and apply the Citadel ardcoat I bought yesterday.

There's some of my stuff on my IG, still pretty amateurish! https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj1LzsFBPmN ... metantoine
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 3:07 pm 
 

I second Tony, I'd love to see some Scornytyrant work.

I kind of wish I had enough of a reason to get an airbrush set. Definitely if I was doing commissions and competing, since dollars. I'm going to be working with layering black, grey, and white spray primers to support the light and shadow, and see how that affects my washes.

Metantoine wrote:
I know that I'll look at the minis I did this year with disdain in the future.

I hear ya. Anyone know any reliable ways to remove paint from minis, or do you just re-prime and start over?
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andersbang
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:28 am
Posts: 1069
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 5:38 pm 
 

There are many ways to remove paints, depending on if the miniature's plastic, metal, resin... just google it, it's very easy to do.

I play warhammer and mordheim and love painting and converting. Let me see if I can get some pics one of these days. Converting up a chaos warband atm, which is really fun.

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:14 pm 
 

Making progress in our campaign. Since my last post, we finished clearing out that house, spoke to a crazed angel who serves the god of despair who wants to bring his god back to life and impose a new domain of despair over all of civilization (gotta put a cork in that one sometime). We then left town to give chase to the hag who got away to her manor which had teleported in from the feywild to the slave fields north of town, but on the way there we swung by the dwarven hold to call in a favor. We found the place in lockdown mode and flying plague quarantine flags. Upon investigating we found the bodies of huge numbers of dwarves being picked clean by dwarven ghouls. We fought our way through, found one survivor, and learned that strange creatures had let loose the plague as suddenly half of the dwarf populace had become ghouls in an instant. We used the surviving dwarf boy to gain entrance to the dwarven keep at the top of the hold, where we found that the spirit forms of the hags we had already killed were haunting the place as banshees. We put an end to two of them, with a couple people getting knocked out by the banshee wails in the process. We then began to fight our way upstairs, but turned back as we felt we were missing an artifact known as the Dawnbreak Hammer which would be needed in the final battle against the evil fey goddess whose soul had been split into the seven hags. We found a forge underneath the keep and there fought the torturer of the dark fey court and his enthralled dwarves that were animating suits of armor. We killed him and managed to free quite a few dwarven survivors, which the fey had chained up and had been offering as reward to the ghouls for doing their bidding. One of the survivors was none other than Roar Gulgenstag, the First of the Bronzebeards, and he helped us retrieve the Dawnbreak Hammer, which he had stashed away, then led the survivors deep into the caves until the coast was clear for them to return to their keep (the Bronzebeards are a notoriously low and cowardly house).

Wielding the Dawnbreak Hammer, our group, now known as the Unfated, returned to the keep to lay waste to the fey court and finally cleanse the land of their foul influence.
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 10:50 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Wielding the Dawnbreak Hammer, our group, now known as the Unfated, returned to the keep to lay waste to the fey court and finally cleanse the land of their foul influence.

Hooray!! The place crawling with feeding dwarf ghouls was pretty rad.

andersbang wrote:
... just google it, it's very easy to do.

While you're undoubtedly right (and I certainly will), that's the opposite of discussion. Sometimes ya just want to talk to a person..

What have you all used that's been good, what was the bad fail, etc..
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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:52 am 
 

Yeah, I just wish my character's gameplay wasn't so swingy. With the martial characters you get some misses, and some hits to balance things out, and sometimes you crit! However, the vast majority of my spells are save-or-suck debuffs, so sometimes you get entire sessions where not a single enemy fails a saving throw and you feel entirely worthless. This past session made up for that, largely, since I was able to effectively use my last four remaining spell slots to great success. Two fireballs right into tightly packed crowds of ghouls, then well-aimed faerie fires to grant my ginsu-ish party's multitude of attack rolls advantage. Plus we managed to finally sneak a long rest in after three sessions, so I should be going into that fey court fight with a mostly full array of spell options.
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Scorntyrant
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:55 am
Posts: 1516
PostPosted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 7:36 pm 
 

Grave_Wyrm wrote:
I second Tony, I'd love to see some Scornytyrant work.


Ask and ye shall receive:

https://imgur.com/a/qJVTSUi
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 2:31 am 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Yeah, I just wish my character's gameplay wasn't so swingy.

Damn that sounds really annoying. Is that a character build flaw or a rules issue?

I hate swingy play. I talk with my friend about this a lot because he loves games with dice, and he gets a huge kick out of a tense gambling situation. We played and hated Frostgrave because of how swingy it is and how dull that gets. Granted it's really hard to properly balance probability, let alone integrate it into a semblance of believability, but when it's bad we quickly loses investment, so I can imagine that getting pretty disappointing.

Those fireballs must have felt pretty good after all that. May a rested wizard be a well prepared wizard.

Scorntyrant wrote:
Ask and ye shall receive:

Neat! That snow scene tray was pretty cool. Were those your soldiers for Bolt Action? Anything in that set of pictures from your commission work? I can't imagine tanks being anything but terrifying in combat.

I've been having some issues with my metalic paints looking kind of sparkly or glittery. A friend of mine recommended spraying a dull coat, but I can't help but feel like I could also just try a different brand. They're Vallejo, so it surprised me because everything else goes on great. Any thoughts?

(Man .. it's hard to think with Fidelium going in my head. Guys, I'm trying to think about game stuff here!)
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Scorntyrant
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:55 am
Posts: 1516
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 3:00 am 
 

That was just some recent pics I had on my phone. Current commission is only about halfway done - bolt action Waffen SS in the spring/summer camouflage smocks.

While I love painting them and have lots due to very generous tournament prize support, Tanks really aren’t all that great in Bolt Action - especially the big German ones. At its heart it’s an infantry skirmish game and the cost of Tigers and Panthers gets prohibitive pretty quickly.
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Zdan
Veteran

Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 6:05 pm
Posts: 2762
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 4:20 am 
 

I would say that in 3e/Pathfinder/5e D&D the casters actually get to play with toys that are not swingy. There a a ton of spells that give an effect without even rolling dice. Martials and skills monkeys do not get that...EVER (or VERY rarely). This is what put me off 3e/PF and made me return to older editions of D&D that limitations put on casters that were later removed.

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andersbang
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:28 am
Posts: 1069
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 5:39 am 
 

Grave_Wyrm wrote:
andersbang wrote:
... just google it, it's very easy to do.

While you're undoubtedly right (and I certainly will), that's the opposite of discussion. Sometimes ya just want to talk to a person..

What have you all used that's been good, what was the bad fail, etc..


Sorry, it wasn't meant to be dismissive! It's just that the best solution really depends on the material your mini's made of. It's not often I strip miniatures (I rarely have to start a mini totally over, so I normally just paint directly on top of the area I want to change). Sometimes when I buy used models that have a thin layer of paint on them I just basecoat them on top of the existing paint. When the paint's thick I've used turpentine with great success to strip metal models. It will melt plastics and green stuff though.

In other miniature related news my Chaos Warriors of Nurgle got their butt kicked by my buddy's goddamn Golin army yesterday. 8th edition fantasy.

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 5:51 am 
 

Grave_Wyrm wrote:
Damn that sounds really annoying. Is that a character build flaw or a rules issue?


Both, I think. Lots of the control spells are wisdom saving throws, and as it turns out wisdom is the most common saving throw proficiency in the monster manual. Lots of creatures that seem pretty dumb have low intelligence but shockingly high wisdom, even basic creatures, and then lots of really powerful enemies have massive wisdom scores. So, it's pretty hard to land things like Hypnotic Pattern. Casting straight damage spells like fireball tends to feel more satisfying because even if the creatures make their saves you do half damage, so at least you contributed somewhat.

The other issue, though, is sort of with the DM: he's more old-school and doesn't have the tightest grasp either of the 5e rules or the philosophy behind it. In older editions, I guess things were balanced more by having things like spell effects that lasted for d6 rounds or something with no subsequent saving throws allowed, but then lots more monsters had magic resistance or were outright immune to certain spell effects. So I kinda get the double whammy where he'll just declare my spells ineffective lots and lots of times despite them being ok per the rules (like he'll say that any spell that affects a creature mentally is a charm, so charm-immune stuff isn't affected, even if the spell does not inflict the charmed condition) but then even if they do land, the monsters get subsequent saves per 5e rules. Kinda the worst of two worlds for a character like mine.

The other side of the rules-lite coin is that the other party members, which are much less dependent on DM adjudication for the effects of their combat actions, can do stuff that's not actually kosher in 5e rules willy-nilly without ever getting called on it (like bonus action attacking every round with an offhand hand crossbow, or multiclassing rogue and warlock and getting sneak attack damage on eldritch blast beams). The combo of spells rarely working either through monsters making saves or DM calls, sparse long rests to recharge those (often wasted) spell slots, and my overtuned teammates just slicing their way through everything that gets thrown at them, was kinda leaving me bummed for a while. Still kinda is. I was actually sorta hoping I'd die last session so I could whip out a backup character (a Grave Domain cleric) that would retain some of the magic utility of my bard but would use buffs and healing to support the party rather than debuffs that would fail more often than not.
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Zdan
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Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 6:05 pm
Posts: 2762
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 8:23 am 
 

In older editions casters and martials were way more balanced in many aspects but I will try to list just two to illustrate a point.

1. Spells had generally higher casting times and if you got hit during casting you lost the spell. That was it actually. Made for some fairly interesting tactical combat and the fighter was not totally useless against casters at higher levels. Of course a wise caster could still mitigate this without much problem but it was a solution.
2. Only saving throws leveled up. There were no save DC's against spells. So your saves started low and at low levels you failed them a lot but when you hit the higher levels you saved a lot too (for example if a save said 4+ you had to roll 4 or higher on the d20 to save against the spell). Bonuses to saving throws were circumstancial and not common.

In general the caster/martial disparity still existed in previous editions but was not so pronounced as in 3/PF. 5e still has that problem but a little less. Plus there were other issues - like a chance to learn the spell in older D&D etc.

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failsafeman
Digital Dictator

Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:45 am
Posts: 11852
Location: In the Arena
PostPosted: Fri Aug 17, 2018 10:06 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Both, I think. Lots of the control spells are wisdom saving throws, and as it turns out wisdom is the most common saving throw proficiency in the monster manual. Lots of creatures that seem pretty dumb have low intelligence but shockingly high wisdom, even basic creatures, and then lots of really powerful enemies have massive wisdom scores.

Well keep in mind in 5e, wisdom is basically just perception (in terms of senses but also mental perception, like street-smarts or cunning), so a lot of animals or creatures that might be dumb as a brick might still have high perception. Also a lot of the wisdom saving throw spells essentially just take the enemy out of combat, what with fear or stun or sleep, so it makes sense that they'd have high defenses against it. I do agree some of them might benefit from a half effect on a saving throw or something - like maybe they take some psychic damage, or lose some speed for their next turn. Like you said, even on a failed save a fireball still does respectable damage, plus it's an AoE.

I kinda feel your pain, though - my party is full of squishies, with a ranger, a bard, a wizard, a monk, and a pugilist, which is a homebrew grappler class that has high HP but low AC. So I thought a tank would be perfect for our party composition. Except the DM is fairly combat-lite, and even then he almost never REALLY puts us through the ringer, so my fighter pretty much just stands around with his ridiculous AC and HP pools while everyone else leaps around making things explode and solving problems with all their useful spells and skills.

It'll get better once I dip into warlock though, which I'm going to do if we ever LEVEL UP GODDAMMIT. The DM is using this kind of milestone leveling system where whenever we finish a quest and return to our home base, we level up, except we've been trudging around in this goddamn yuan-ti infested cursed swamp for the last three months trying to stop the evil snake god from being summoned onto our plane of reality, and I have the secret directive from the Raven Queen that I'm not allowed to kill any gods to upset the balance of nature and life and death, so I can't even take out my frustrations on the cloaca of this fucking giant snake asshole!
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andersbang
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:28 am
Posts: 1069
PostPosted: Sat Aug 18, 2018 5:17 pm 
 

Just tried Saga (version 1) for the first time yesterday. Really, really cool game. I hope I can convince my playing group to start a Path to Glory chaos warbands campaign using Saga rules. I'm already converting and painting a warband, so I hope I get to play with them and not on build and paint them.

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iamntbatman
Chaos Breed

Joined: Sat Feb 21, 2009 5:55 am
Posts: 11421
Location: Tyrn Gorthad
PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 9:47 am 
 

failsafeman wrote:
Well keep in mind in 5e, wisdom is basically just perception (in terms of senses but also mental perception, like street-smarts or cunning), so a lot of animals or creatures that might be dumb as a brick might still have high perception. Also a lot of the wisdom saving throw spells essentially just take the enemy out of combat, what with fear or stun or sleep, so it makes sense that they'd have high defenses against it. I do agree some of them might benefit from a half effect on a saving throw or something - like maybe they take some psychic damage, or lose some speed for their next turn. Like you said, even on a failed save a fireball still does respectable damage, plus it's an AoE.

I kinda feel your pain, though - my party is full of squishies, with a ranger, a bard, a wizard, a monk, and a pugilist, which is a homebrew grappler class that has high HP but low AC. So I thought a tank would be perfect for our party composition. Except the DM is fairly combat-lite, and even then he almost never REALLY puts us through the ringer, so my fighter pretty much just stands around with his ridiculous AC and HP pools while everyone else leaps around making things explode and solving problems with all their useful spells and skills.

It'll get better once I dip into warlock though, which I'm going to do if we ever LEVEL UP GODDAMMIT. The DM is using this kind of milestone leveling system where whenever we finish a quest and return to our home base, we level up, except we've been trudging around in this goddamn yuan-ti infested cursed swamp for the last three months trying to stop the evil snake god from being summoned onto our plane of reality, and I have the secret directive from the Raven Queen that I'm not allowed to kill any gods to upset the balance of nature and life and death, so I can't even take out my frustrations on the cloaca of this fucking giant snake asshole!


Yeah, I mean it makes sense, but the combo of tons of creatures getting high wisdom saves and the 5E design philosophy of most spells (and other effects) allowing saves to shake them off on subsequent rounds really neuters the efficacy of a lot of the control spells.

I'm kinda worried about next session. We've been playing with the core group of five people for a while now, but one of our players moved back to the U.S. months ago and has been playing via video chat, and another player leaves the country Tuesday morning, so I guess it will be the DM, two players at the table, and two players on computer screens.
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MrMcThrasher II
Metalhead

Joined: Sat Dec 29, 2012 6:01 pm
Posts: 1321
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 6:58 pm 
 

My friends are doing a new campaign for Arkham Horror. I gotta say, Father Mateo is a stupid hard character to use, and while it makes the game harder I kinda like the challenge at the same time.
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failsafeman
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Joined: Wed Sep 01, 2004 8:45 am
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Location: In the Arena
PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 7:16 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
Yeah, I mean it makes sense, but the combo of tons of creatures getting high wisdom saves and the 5E design philosophy of most spells (and other effects) allowing saves to shake them off on subsequent rounds really neuters the efficacy of a lot of the control spells.

What's your spell save DC? As a bard, maybe you're not as min-maxed on your casting stat as a full caster would be? I've had similar annoying problems with strength DCs for my fighter's trip attack but I only have 16 strength which adds up to a 14 DC, not too hard to beat unless it's a caster or something.
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 12:42 am 
 

I have 20 charisma now, so my DC is 16. Next level my proficiency will go up, so it will be 17. The one thing that does kind of suck is that there aren't any items in the DMG that increase spell save DC for bards. Only warlocks, wizards and sorcerers get that stuff. Though....I am technically a sorcerer now as well...maybe some Robes of the Archmagi are in my future!
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failsafeman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 7:06 am 
 

Whoa how the fuck are those monsters beating a 16 all the time? Even with high stats, they shouldn't have more than a +6 or so, so 50/50...either the DM is getting lucky or cheesing it. At least trip attack does extra damage regardless of whether or not the trip portion succeeds.
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Zelkiiro
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:29 am 
 

failsafeman wrote:
Whoa how the fuck are those monsters beating a 16 all the time? Even with high stats, they shouldn't have more than a +6 or so, so 50/50...either the DM is getting lucky or cheesing it. At least trip attack does extra damage regardless of whether or not the trip portion succeeds.

Dice rolls can be a bitch sometimes.

A prime example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJeTMkZtKio
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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:21 am 
 

Yeah, I mean there are lots of lucky dice rolls, but then again like I said sometimes he just tells me the spell has no effect because he feels like X monster probably wouldn't be affected by that sort of magic. So for example ghouls are immune to the charmed condition, so he ruled that basically any illusion or psychic spell wouldn't work on them, which is most of my spell list, and he had my Chill Touch spell actually heal them when I tried it. I mean, he's the DM so he can give creatures whatever abilities he wants, it just seems like it more often than not goes in favor of the martial classes and I have a hard time getting much to be effective. Gripe, gripe.
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Grave_Wyrm
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:49 pm 
 

iamntbatman wrote:
he'll just declare my spells ineffective lots and lots of times despite them being ok per the rules

Uhh...


iamntbatman wrote:
bonus action attacking every round with an offhand hand crossbow,

Wh-..


iamntbatman wrote:
I was actually sorta hoping I'd die last session so I could whip out a backup character (a Grave Domain cleric)

You'll find a way.

Your DM should support your character's development. He's breaking the oath.


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iamntbatman
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 2:12 pm 
 

I think it's just the nature of magic throwing him for a loop. Like, he has down the monster's hitpoints and AC, and the other people are just rolling attacks. All he can do is say if it hit or missed, and if it hits, call for damage, which is rolled. They can stomp his monster encounters, but it's nearly always a process; monsters miss or do little damage, PCs hit and start shearing off monster HP. At some point, he realizes his monsters are losing.

However, with magic, especially control spells, they get fired off in the first round and, if successful, are often combat-ending sorts of things. I had one encounter I remember where Hypnotic Pattern actually worked as intended. I think four out of five monsters failed their saves and stood there incapacitated. Team took down the one who passed his save in no time, then systematically wrecked each subsequent monster. It's a nasty, nasty spell, and I think seeing that combat happen that way made him realize that if certain spells go off with any kind of frequency there aren't a lot of things we can't obliterate.

Plus, my character is kind of an asshole. Enemy throws out a nasty spell at us? Counterspell, motherfucker, with Jack of All Trades added to my contest roll if applicable. Big monster hit on an ally? Burn a Bardic Inspiration die for Cutting Words. Lots of little things I can do to make the DM's goons less effective, so I think his old-schooling it with having spells fail is his way of making my character less of a combat-ender.
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Zdan
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 2:24 pm 
 

Funny thing - in high-level 3e/PF games control spells hitting their targets showed us martials how useless we were. Like literally - we could not contribute outside of combat (mainly because there was a spell for everything one could want) and in combat we were beyond useless. If by some chance the party needed some martial combatants no sweat - they druid would turn into a bear/elemental and summon more bears and elementals. That is when I knew linear fighter quadratic wizard was a real thing.

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rexxz
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 7:18 pm 
 

Yeah, martial classes being shit in high level 3e/PF play is a notorious problem with those systems.
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Zdan
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 7:26 pm 
 

There is a reason caster supremacy is a BIG THING in 3e/3.5e/PF. It was already present in 2e AD&D but there your Fighter buddy was not useless at 15th level. He was not the reality-altering god that you were but you still brought him along because if you needed something dead he was still a good man to do the job (plus at higher levels most monsters made their saving throws or had some sort of SR). And if you got hit while casting the spell - bye bye spell, nice knowing ya!

But in 3e you did not have to powergame to break the party dynamics - all you had to do is write "druid" on your character sheet and take the "Natural Spell" feat. Voila! Now you are better than a fighter! I have seen many games just fall apart because the fighter, rogue or the barbarian were just feeling useless.

5e still has shades of this but not as in-your-face as 3e/PF. I hope they would really mitigate it but they kinda stopped halfway. Shame.

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rexxz
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 22, 2018 7:30 pm 
 

I dunno, I've DMd and "played" many a 5e session, both as casters and martial archetypes. Can't say I've had much issue in power discrepancies or overall usefulness between the two. Same with my other players.
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