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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread

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Just watched a video talking about WotC's attempt at a VTT, Project Sigil, and found something entirely new to doom over! Apparently they want it to not just be for DnD but able to support other systems too. And if there is one thing modern companies desire above all else it's market capture.

Basically I expect them to try and get themselves exclusivity deals with various rpg companies to only sell on their platform. It wouldnt mean removing content from people who've already purchased something on a competitor but removing the option to buy going forward.
 
It seems really unlikely to ke that other RPG companies would agree to an exclusivity deal like that and sacrifice all the sales that they could get on other platforms to chain themselves to an unproven one created by an untrustworthy competitor.

I also have a hard time believing that WOTC would want to promote other game systems when their market dominance depends on the general public's ignorance of the alternatives. Did they actually say "other systems by other companies" or do they mean "other editions of D&D and MtG and other WOTC and TSR games that they still have the rights to"?

Also, like, you can use a VTT to play any game system you want if you're just using it to provide a virtual battlemap and dice for remote gaming and not as a rulebook repository or character builder. That's how I use Roll20: as an online map that we can move tokens on since we can't meet in person. And I can do that for any game, including ones of my own creation, without Roll20 needing to know the rules. So are they actually saying that they'll sell rules support for other games on their VTT, or are they just saying that once we've paid them for access to it, we can use the virtual map to run other games if we want? (Likely with them providing absolutely nothing on the back end to support that, like grid measurements for anything other than 5 ft. increments, diagonal movement that understands Pythagoras, AoE templates that aren't square, etc.)
 
PF2e has a simple system that basically lets you be half whatever you want. It's also not limited to having human as the baseline. You can play as a Half-Gnome / Half-Halfling, Half-Dwarf / Half-Elf or if your DM is especially permissive a Half-Automaton / Half-Kitsune. That's only limited to mechanics though so it's up to you & your DM to come up with some proper lore and flavor for them.

Half Elves & Half Orcs have some unique feats they can select from and with the recent remaster they've got some new lore & specific terms. (Aiuvarin for Half-Elves & Dromaars for Half-Orcs.)
 
Honestly, my main issue with the 5.5 take on halves is that it is clearly written on the assumption of first generation halves being the only thing that matters, not leaving much room for when you're, say, a half-elf because your parents were half-elves and so were their parents going back several generations (Eberron's Khoravar may be the most famous example of that in an official setting, but it's not the only one).
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
strictly unnecessary though, people who think robots are hot and people who think foxpeople are hot have a lot of overlap
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I mean, there's only so many ways you can have it make sense. That was one. A cyborg kitsune is another. Automatons don't have genetics so it's obviously not a crossbreed. And unless they've changed it since 1e, Automaton in Pathfinder refers to a specific group of constructs that are human minds/souls uploaded into robot bodies.
 
Arawn_Emrys said:
Automatons don't have genetics so it's obviously not a crossbreed.
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I fully admit that I was being humorous, but that's still a bold claim in a setting where elves come from Venus and 'my eyebrows are made of literal actual fire' is a thing you can inherit from grandpa. D&D is wacky enough you can have automatons evolved from naturally occurring gears, levers, and pulleys; I wouldn't even insist the robot parent have access to Alter Self.
Arawn_Emrys said:
And unless they've changed it since 1e, Automaton in Pathfinder refers to a specific group of constructs that are human minds/souls uploaded into robot bodies.
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Huh, I think I was confusing them with the robots from the crashed spaceship in Crashed Spaceship Cultist Country. PF2 calls those Androids, though. Maybe it also refers to the robots from Mercury?
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
Huh, I think I was confusing them with the robots from the crashed spaceship in Crashed Spaceship Cultist Country. PF2 calls those Androids, though. Maybe it also refers to the robots from Mercury?
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The ones that were on the crashed spaceship were androids (there were also various kinds of robots aboard, but Androids were the playable ones) in both editions of Pathfinder and are also in Starfinder. They're semi-biological (they don't need to breathe in PF1E but they do need to eat) and have souls, but their bodies are inhabited by souls naturally. (Old Androids in Starfinder will usually choose to let themselves die after a century and move on to the afterlife and let a new soul incarnate into the body.

Automatons are only a player ancestry in PF2E, where they are construct bodies created (usually) by an ancient empire and the mind and soul of a mortal placed into it.

The robots from Mercury are called anacites and are more traditional AIs with purely-mechanical robotic bodies. They don't seem to be available yet as a playable species in Pathfinder or Starfinder.
 
The Narrator said:
Automatons are only a player ancestry in PF2E, where they are construct bodies created (usually) by an ancient empire and the mind and soul of a mortal placed into it.
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So is that Razmir's backstory now, rather than just an Azlanti wizard who got stuck in a cryopod?
The Narrator said:
The robots from Mercury are called anacites and are more traditional AIs with purely-mechanical robotic bodies. They don't seem to be available yet as a playable species in Pathfinder or Starfinder.
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Not even in Starfinder? Despite their wacky machine god plan actually working? For shame.
 
Possible, but unlikely. The techniques for turning people into Automatons isn't connected to the Azlanti as far as I know.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
So is that Razmir's backstory now, rather than just an Azlanti wizard who got stuck in a cryopod?
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I've never heard it suggested that either of those was Razmir's backstory. As far as I know, Razmir is just a high-level human wizard and con artist pretending to be a god. The wiki says that he's ethnically Taldan.

HoratioVonBecker said:
Not even in Starfinder? Despite their wacky machine god plan actually working? For shame.
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Your standard anacite doesn't have enough individuality, but I forgot about SROs, Sentient Robotic Organisms, which are a playable fully-robotic species. Their artificial intelligence has upgraded itself enough to achieve true sapience and thus developed a soul.
 
The Narrator said:
I've never heard it suggested that either of those was Razmir's backstory. As far as I know, Razmir is just a high-level human wizard and con artist pretending to be a god. The wiki says that he's ethnically Taldan.
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Well, Aevylmar on Glowfic posited the cryopod variant, and used Hordak from SPOP as his facecast. The resulting threads are very funny, and it's quite a pity that he made them threads members-only. (Careful use of a scriptblocker can make the archived version usable, but it does require messing around with uMatrix or something equivalent.)
But, like, look at this description:
A PERFECTLY ORDINARY wizard from Thassilon who survived Earthfall and is now a 19th-level archmage without being good at his job. He rules Razmiran as god-king, specifically God Of First-World Living Standards, which his people seem to have glossed as "luxury."


He doesn't want to be here, but he'll accept ruling the planet as a temporary substitute.


Race: Human (Thassilonian)
Class: Wizard (Runesage + Arcane Crafter) 19
Int: 24 (13 base, +5 wishes, +6 headband)
Wis: 11 (9, +2 ioun stone)
Cha: 10 (6, +4 headband)


- - -


(Praise ye Rimmon, King of Kings,
Who ruleth Earth and Sky!
And again I bow as the censer swings
And the God Enthroned goes by.)
- "Rimmon," Rudyard Kipling.
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How dickish would it be if a Dungeon Master tried to play a trick on a player by having a Ring of Stoneflesh that is cursed to petrify the wearer and only signals it by them finding the ring on the finger of a statue?
 
Muhkat Lomorki said:
How dickish would it be if a Dungeon Master tried to play a trick on a player by having a Ring of Stoneflesh that is cursed to petrify the wearer and only signals it by them finding the ring on the finger of a statue?
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Depends entirely on the tone of the game.

If it's a "Tomb of Horrors" style game where the players expect everything to be potentially deadly, then it's fair game. There's fair warning, and if the game has means of identifying cursed objects, it just makes the players use it.

Otherwise, it depends on whether there is a chance to identify cursed items, but more importantly on whether the players have the means to reverse the petrifications.
If they can't reverse it - yeah, be careful with that, you just killed off a player character.
If they can easily reverse it - that's a shock moment that maybe makes them wary of other items, which can be a good thing.
If they need to go to substantial effort to reverse it - well that can be a mix of the two above things, depending on how long it takes the affected player out of the session.
 
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FaeGlade Plural said:
If they need to go to substantial effort to reverse it - well that can be a mix of the two above things, depending on how long it takes the affected player out of the session.
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Could make for a good motivation for one of the party members, where one of the party members has an NPC loved one that has this happened to them and their goal is to undo the petrification.

Or it could be the goal of the campaign where the party working to undo the petrification of some important person for one reason or another.
 
Valstrax said:
Could make for a good motivation for one of the party members, where one of the party members has an NPC loved one that has this happened to them and their goal is to undo the petrification.

Or it could be the goal of the campaign where the party working to undo the petrification of some important person for one reason or another.
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Those work if it happens to an NPC, which is noticeably different than it happening to a PC.
And if you have a cursed ring in a dungeon, you don't really have control over whether the PCs will try it on or not.
 
Potentially fun way to do it is that the ring makes you petrified and mostly invincible, until someone takes it off of you. Might not be fun in practice, though.
 
Muhkat Lomorki said:
How dickish would it be if a Dungeon Master tried to play a trick on a player by having a Ring of Stoneflesh that is cursed to petrify the wearer and only signals it by them finding the ring on the finger of a statue?
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Kinda dickish? If it works, you're basically forcing a player to sit out the game for an extended period of time (possibly multiple sessions if no one in the remaining party can cast the countering spell).

And afterwards, your players will become paranoid about cursed items and start wasting time and money to identify every item that they find in case it's cursed. My gaming group has long had a "no cursed items" standing rule to avoid that.
 
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