FlyingScanian
Tea Addict
- Location
- Land of Eternal Night
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Cute, thinking the D20 has a loving heart. Full of spite, it is. Just, occasionally aimed at not-you.
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Dungeons and Dragons Megathread
- Thread starter Havocfett
- Start date
PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You're the one who jumped into a conversation and told someone you couldn't see what their problem was. I interpreted that as you saying "I can't understand how you could disagree with me." I wasn't trying to be condescending, I was trying to be polite. That's why I said "please". I reminded you that your opinions are just opinions because I felt you needed to be reminded of that.
I picked up on absolutely none of what you say your post implied. Even now I don't see how you expected me to pick that up from a single word. I'm not familiar enough with you, your opinions, or 4e to figure that much out from a single word.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it does.
- Location
- Charlotte, NC
Tzeench: *hooks up a blood-fountain powered by a Warp-infused aquarium pump*
Khorne: "Perfection!"
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
Everyone states their opinions as statements most of the time. No one wants to be bothered prefacing their opinions with IMO every sentence.
This is an incredibly petty thing to harp on.
I at least put my actual position out there. Skip the nitpicks and make substantive criticisms if you have any.
PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fine, I'll be blunt. If felt you were acting like you couldn't comprehend anyone else having a different opinion. That's why I reminded you your opinions are opinions, not facts.
I've put positions out there, you just said they weren't relevant. They still happened, so don't act like I've posted nothing but nitpicks.
Edit: but honestly, I'm worn out for IRL stress, so I don't really feel like continuing this. Feel free to reply to this post, but don't expect a future reply from me.
Edit2: Actually I came up with a potentially interesting line of further discussion. How would you go about doing this:
in practice? How would you make the classes mechanically different but still do away with the caster/martial divide? Other than "make 4e," which you've said you don't like. You did mention psionics as something you like, so would you apply a system like psionics to martial characters?
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
I think that's you reading too much into *one line* I said to arawn, TBH.
but fair enough, I am bad at tone and I apologize for coming on too aggro.
Like, martial could just be psychic warriors. Almost everything a psychic warrior can do outside of form of doom can be flavored as martial arts. And heck if you like Wu Xia battle auras, you can even squeeze that in.
like you can just flat rename "power points" to "stamina points" or "Chakra motes" and run most psionic classes as martial arts chars with only modest pruning of athematic powers.
the Dread class works great as an Eastern Fantasy qi-vampire, Aegis has several archetypes that fit the Xianxia cultivator mold, etc.
Then you just run witches and warlocks as Spherecasters instead if you want the "magic" classes to have different mechanics.
(Spherecasting and Psionics minus the more esoteric high end powers are actually about par for scope and power.)
my own preference is to let anyone use whatever magic they like and flavor it however they like. So one guy is running a "martial" SoM Conscript focusing Tech Sphere as a Golemcrafter in the rabbinic tradition and is thematically a caster, while the SoP Symbiat next to him is doing all the telekinesis and flavoring it as Ki-based Martial arts moves. Meanwhile, the AkM Stormbound char is Totally a Technological Cyborg with Particle Guns and Nanomachine Clouds, honest. This works entirely fine except for some funny interactions with Anti-magic field.
Fantasy martials are just as magical as fantasy mages - they both fundamentally live in a universe where winged horses fly and evil viziers hide their heats/souls in vessels buried in a secret spot to thwart assassinations, so there's really no reason you can't run both off the same magic mechanics if you want to.
after all, even "non-magic" abilities in D&D are labeled (Ex) for extra-ordinary, not (Mu) for mundane. Any 6th level d20 char is explicitly superhuman by IRL standards.
Right, like I said, "maximum grimderp".
Normally the skulls of Khorne's followers( and their victim's) are added to the Skull Throne, but with the skulls of the dishonorable or cowardly Khorne just chews on them for a while and then crunches them between his molars.
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Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
That's not been the case for a very long time. Chaos is mostly just synonymous with evil, selfish, and self destructive behaviours and has been for most of the 21st century. Like, Warhammer Fantasy has tended towards the Norscans being depraved satanist murderer-vikings and insane pale skinned pagan barbarians who are even more violently bloodthirsty than the Orcs (Orcs at least only brutalise you for fun, Norscans do it because it's fun and because they legitimately hate you so they won't stop when they get bored) and attack the southern folk for no good reason and got their just desserts when Settra burned half the peninsula to the ground and wiped out thirteen of their great tribes to the last man able to swing a sword against the armies of skeleton egypt to punish them for stealing his crown like the nosey northern colonists they were.
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PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You have some good points (e.g. allowing more eastern-inspired characters into d20 systems), but it sounds like your method for allowing balance and "unique" characters is to throw out everything you don't like and rely on players to flavor text the remaining classes. That's rather... fuck I can't find the right words. Not everyone may like psionics and spherecasting, so your system isn't perfect. I think that's the best way to phrase my thoughts.
Also, relying on flavor text to create the "character" of a class might shift more work onto the players. Some players will enjoy the additional opportunities, but not everyone will. It might also make building NPCs more work, though I'm not sure.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
That was one method just off the cuff. There are several more good AMS systems beyond Psionics and spheres out there, and they're basically all better balanced than spellcasting.
I mean, if you want to balance 3e/d20, tossing (non-theme limited) spellcasting out is basically the mandatory first step unless you play full-caster-only tier one game.
Basically any magic system has enough variation/powers to allow "unique" characters without resorting to "DM arbitrarily gives you permanent bonuses unrelated to class/race" ala Arawn's post. Balance is the harder part. 3e is not really designed to be easy to balance - there is no set math regime like 4/5e have.
if I actually threw out everything I don't like, I functionally would not be playing D&D at all. Even 4e has far too much bad legacy code, IMO. My general standby of "delete spellcasting and
Well points for originality I guess.
But honestly this is incredibly little work, and anyone too lazy to even do that much is probably going to prefer a game not based on imagination and story crafting - eg, they probably should play something other than a tRPG. (Yes I have met people this lazy but that also meant they were terrible RPG players in general who made the game miserable for everyone else and basically needed to be kicked out anyway because of that.)
I seriously think this complaint is spurious.
LordInsane
Loyalist to the Alvarian Merchant's Guild
- Location
- Bohuslän, Occupied Norway
It is more that AMS is a fan term rather than an official one, and that variant magic rules covers a broader space (it also includes variant rules for casting normal spells, like esoteric material components).
I am aware that most of GW have had their faces firmly jammed up their own assholes for a long time now, yes.
edit:
Some dunderhead wannabe-Khornate claiming that the Blood God would approve of the "challenge" of stomping on a baby as "great and honorable combat" just isn't very impressive to me.
That baby would be more impressive to Khorne, having faced an absurdly superior opponent and not retreated( not that they could have but when have Chaos Gods cared about contradictions like that?).
Regardless, I'm getting a little off-topic here, so I'll stop.
Unless someone feels like trying to whip up Warhammer D20? No, no takers? All right then.
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PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or they suffer from choice paralysis when given the option to create literally any flavor text, or they are suffering from the equivalent of writer's block, or they want to RP with people in a less time pressure environment than MMO, or some other reason besides laziness.
Your apparent inability to put any thought into understanding other people is infuriating.
Edit: For example, given the ability to flavor text abilities however I want, I could easily spend hours trying to figure out the best way to play a jedi. Or Son Goku. Or Heracles. Spending hours building a single character is the norm for me, even without having to think about "which AMS should this character use."
Edit 2: The other side of choice paralysis is "the party needs me to play an x, how do I want to flavor that class?" Which is probably harder for me than figuring out the best way to make a jedi. At least "I want to be x, how do I go about that?" has a define end point and rules. Going the other direction doesn't have that.
Edit 3: I'm not trying to imply the 3.5/PF1E systems of classes (without all the AMS) are free from choice paralysis or writer's block. I've had moments where a bunch of classes sound cool and other times when none of them do. I'm just pointing out that assuming the only reason people might not enjoy your flavor text heavy approach is because they're lazy is incredibly rude.
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Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
You can literally do all 3 examples as psychic warriors. It's some work, but not *that* complicated. Also, IME, most people start with mechanics they already picked out and then backfill flavor. Or have a concept and pick mechanics that seem to fit. Or look up a build online. Or are a spreadsheet nerd (like me) and already have 30+ prebuilt characters just lying around in google docs. 99.999% Of people are NOT going to go "oh no, so many options, I now have to calculate every single possible permutation so I can achieve maximum possible efficiency."
You don't need the best way to play a Jedi, you just need *a* way to play a Jedi. There's isn't an objectively best way to build a Jedi because a lot of stuff is subject to preference and opinion. I have made "Jedi" using multiple different mechanics and even the lower-powered ones are quite playable so long as you don't have a "my job is to kill the PCs" asshole DM.
Furthermore, your "you don't put effort into understanding other people" line is hypocritical as hell, given that "any option ever" was not what I said. I want players to have freedom to choose but like, a coherent story obviously requires that there be some thematic and mechanical limitations since the game is D&D and not Marvel Vs Capcom vs DC vs Mortal Combat Battle Royale: No Plot Only Punching. Realistically I'm going to offer the players maybe 5-10 magic systems I am familiar with to choose from, because I am a human DM and not Deep Thought. You seem to be deliberately interpreting everything in the worst possible light here. Maybe don't do that.
Also, if you take the 5 most common AMS systems and stack them all together, you still end up with less power entries than if you take the entire spell list for the 3.5 or Pathfinder Wizard or Cleric. So once again, "choice paralysis" sound spurious as hell. At this point, you're just digging for reasons to dislike/disagree with me here. And you're really reaching.
- Location
- my house
Out of curiosity which AMS would you pick? Arcanum, Spheres of Power, Binding and Psionics immediately come to mind, but I'm struggling to thinknofnmorenthat are really goos
- Location
- Somewhere
I like psionics, but that's mainly because I always thought TK was the coolest powerset
PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes, I do need the best (to my preferences of course, because it's subjective) way to play a particular thing. And doing them all as psychic warriors sounds boring. Having looked at that class's power list, they seem rather underwhelming. I don't have a library of character sheets because (a) I'm new to this, which everyone is at some point and (b) I'm an assistant GM, so all the characters I build get slotted into the campaign as NPCs.
You still haven't seemed to understand that other people are people, which is what I was meant with "understand other people." You refuse to seem to consider that other people have different perspectives, preferences, etc. Sorry for not stating that clearly enough.
It's not reasonable to expect me to go and count the number of abilities in 5 AMS systems and 2 spell lists. My list of possible reasons people might not prefer your system was off the top of my head so no, I'm not digging. I'm not sure how "other people aren't you!" is spurious and you didn't make an argument as to how any of my objections besides "choice paralysis" weren't valid. Your preferences and a system tuned to your preferences aren't universal! That's been my point this whole time! Other people play TTRPGs for their own reasons, and there's reasons to uses systems other than yours besides laziness. You're welcome to have your own opinions, but please realize they are just that, your opinions, not facts.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
again, I at no point demanded that everyone use my system.
you are attacking a strawman that exists only in your head.
I brought up laziness only in the sense that you called "re-flavoring mechanics" too much work. Jumping from that to "anyone who doesn't use my system is lazy" is ridiculous. Is English not your primary language? Because I'm having a hard time understanding where your wild accusations are coming from, short of a language gap.
Like, I don't even have a system, really. I have a hack for easier DMing of "throw out the obviously and egregiously broken core spellcasting system, use these less broken systems instead." (They're still far from perfect but they make balance much less impossible).
it's a hack. If I made an actual system, it would, once again, not be D&D Based at all.
Edit:
I'm not familiar with Arcanum.
I would go with Spheres of Might, Psionics, Akashic Mysteries, Spheres of Power, Incarnum, Pact Magic (Grimorie revision), Tome of Magic, Path of War, Invocations (Warlock, DFA, Avowed, Malefex), Bo9S, probably Tome of Radiance since it's a good fan made, maybe 3.5 Spirit Binding, and possibly Tzocatl if someone can find a playable version.
In rough order of preference as a DM.
(fan Metroid conversion included in Incarnum, but no fan Tome of Battle schools.)
(the initiators are rated lower than the mechanics probably deserve because they tend to produce the most player fights at the table)
(I a also looking into maybe adding Elemental Magic to my repertoire. While I like Strange Magic on a conceptual level, almost all their subsystems are horrifically excessive re: bookkeeping, so as DM I don't want the fuss)
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Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
The brokenness of the core spellcasting is primarily on the brokenness of the particular spells printed, as with essentially any widget-bearing system. Unlike the underpowered nature of Truenaming, which is on the base system it works with.
Psionics isn't nearly so broken because it's fairly penned-in, it didn't get splatbook overdose and legacy code campaign-wreckers like the core spellcasting got. There isn't a Summon Monster series, there's just the one Astral Construct power, with its narrowly-defined list of options. As a base mechanics set, Psionics is more broken because there's less room for shenanigans without snapping everything open, as demonstrated by just how many ridiculous combos it already has by RAW because of just how many ways there are to break PP transfers and bonus actions. Psionics doesn't have as many inbuilt safeties to handle such problems, because there isn't a line between big fight-winners and your general combat fillers. Same resource for both, and often the same scaling cost between the two.
Even on the explicitly-PC-allowed craft-your-own-stuff options, it can nastier than spellcasting by a long shot if we ignore the breadth of the lists, but it lacks the requisite shenanigans in the available list to make the underlying pattern of ML causing some low-level Powers to directly mimic high-level spells a major problem. Sure, there's a lot of zaniness with Psychic Warrior powers on the staff-equivalent thanks to lacking an effective exponent in the price when that kicks in and auto-augmenting as if Claws of the Beast didn't augment into day-long swift-action manifestations, but none of the major problem abilities (to my knowledge, memorization of the total of psionic powers in 3.5 isn't in me as of yet) like shapeshifting have the giant savings of a very-low-level power augmenting into the game-shattering 7th-level-and-up spell effects, thus saving an exponentiation on cost to craft, likely done because PP investment is substituting for automatic CL scaling, but has the spell-level iterations that are wildly more valuable as a design philosophy that exists as a risk factor of the system.
The big thing is that you essentially have to whitelist spells, and take action to errata fixes for the heavy-lifting possibility-space stuff you can't quite get rid of because of how iconic they are to being high magic. For example, turning Shadow Illusion into a rule on a spell series like the War Spell template, and doing much the same to Polymorph effects and Summon Monster, means you fix the issue of "do-everything" without removing any possibilities. And you can, indeed, further generalize these heavy-lifters as even broader spell series, making it so you can have an option to summon almost anything one might care to with a few basic rules, moderate resource investment, and DM permission, much like magic item crafting is intended to be.
This is a vast amount of tedium, however, because you ultimately need to pour over every spell ever printed, every feat that applies, every PRC that uses them, every single mechanic ever to touch spellcasting, at one point or another, and have a serious think about whether it's worth keeping, if it can be generalized alongside some other spells into a described series with permutations learned separately, if it needs to be a series or could be a singular option-bearing spell, if that entire kind of ability is just too breakable as a general rule, and on and on it goes. But it can ultimately be worth it, if you're willing to put up with the sheer bulk of number-crunching and contemplation. It can't really fix the difference between Sorcerer and Wizard (unless you re-batch into single spells at different levels, with Sorcerers getting do-everythings at lower levels to compensate their less-efficient access to one-offs), but it can fix the vast campaign-bending shenanigans of spellcasting as a whole. By essentially pruning all that from the game, piece by piece.
Psionics isn't nearly so broken because it's fairly penned-in, it didn't get splatbook overdose and legacy code campaign-wreckers like the core spellcasting got. There isn't a Summon Monster series, there's just the one Astral Construct power, with its narrowly-defined list of options. As a base mechanics set, Psionics is more broken because there's less room for shenanigans without snapping everything open, as demonstrated by just how many ridiculous combos it already has by RAW because of just how many ways there are to break PP transfers and bonus actions. Psionics doesn't have as many inbuilt safeties to handle such problems, because there isn't a line between big fight-winners and your general combat fillers. Same resource for both, and often the same scaling cost between the two.
Even on the explicitly-PC-allowed craft-your-own-stuff options, it can nastier than spellcasting by a long shot if we ignore the breadth of the lists, but it lacks the requisite shenanigans in the available list to make the underlying pattern of ML causing some low-level Powers to directly mimic high-level spells a major problem. Sure, there's a lot of zaniness with Psychic Warrior powers on the staff-equivalent thanks to lacking an effective exponent in the price when that kicks in and auto-augmenting as if Claws of the Beast didn't augment into day-long swift-action manifestations, but none of the major problem abilities (to my knowledge, memorization of the total of psionic powers in 3.5 isn't in me as of yet) like shapeshifting have the giant savings of a very-low-level power augmenting into the game-shattering 7th-level-and-up spell effects, thus saving an exponentiation on cost to craft, likely done because PP investment is substituting for automatic CL scaling, but has the spell-level iterations that are wildly more valuable as a design philosophy that exists as a risk factor of the system.
The big thing is that you essentially have to whitelist spells, and take action to errata fixes for the heavy-lifting possibility-space stuff you can't quite get rid of because of how iconic they are to being high magic. For example, turning Shadow Illusion into a rule on a spell series like the War Spell template, and doing much the same to Polymorph effects and Summon Monster, means you fix the issue of "do-everything" without removing any possibilities. And you can, indeed, further generalize these heavy-lifters as even broader spell series, making it so you can have an option to summon almost anything one might care to with a few basic rules, moderate resource investment, and DM permission, much like magic item crafting is intended to be.
This is a vast amount of tedium, however, because you ultimately need to pour over every spell ever printed, every feat that applies, every PRC that uses them, every single mechanic ever to touch spellcasting, at one point or another, and have a serious think about whether it's worth keeping, if it can be generalized alongside some other spells into a described series with permutations learned separately, if it needs to be a series or could be a singular option-bearing spell, if that entire kind of ability is just too breakable as a general rule, and on and on it goes. But it can ultimately be worth it, if you're willing to put up with the sheer bulk of number-crunching and contemplation. It can't really fix the difference between Sorcerer and Wizard (unless you re-batch into single spells at different levels, with Sorcerers getting do-everythings at lower levels to compensate their less-efficient access to one-offs), but it can fix the vast campaign-bending shenanigans of spellcasting as a whole. By essentially pruning all that from the game, piece by piece.
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PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Violation of Rule 3 (Be Civil): Let's not insult other users.
Pointing out that your system isn't for everyone isn't attacking a strawman.
You literally said "anyone too lazy to use your system shouldn't play a TTRPG" in response to me saying:
I said "not everyone will enjoy the work of flavor texting their class's powers". Not that it's too much work, but that it's not fun for everyone. You called those people lazy and said they shouldn't play table top RPGs. That's effectively saying "anyone who doesn't want to use your method shouldn't be playing TTRPGs."
And yes, English is my first language, asshole. I just find the attitude you started this conversation with:
to be egotistical and narcissistic. You told someone you couldn't understand their problem (narcissistic and/or self-centered). Then you portrayed your "system" (a shorthand I used to refer to your ideas, not a literal new system) as a simple solution to a significant, long standing problem of game balance (egotistical). On top of that you've consistently been rude to me, accusing me of "just nitpicking" after dismissing all my comments on 4e as irrelevant and misunderstanding my other main point, calling my comment that not everyone will enjoy your method "spurious", and accusing me of " digging for reasons to dislike/disagree with me here" when my reason was "your system isn't for everyone."
I understand you just fine and think you're an asshole because of it.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
There seems to be a critical piece of TTRPG philosophy the two of you aren't realizing you're disagreeing on. That being TTRPG as just a set of rules for who beats who to structure challenge for Chloe, and TTRPG as, sometimes, a set of descriptive rules for how things work in-setting for Phoenix. Essentially, the gap between GURPS and supplements like Magic of Faerun: GURBS says quite literally nothing of the setting you're playing in by design, but Magic of Faerun is explicitly descriptive, on some level, as "this is how these parts of that setting work".
Chloe essentially seems to be ignoring that White Wolf products are a thing, at least within the context of this conversation, which is a highly-popular series of highly-descriptive TTRPGs designed around ludonarritive resonance, complete with explicit "soft" rules for characterization and social interaction that give guidelines for RP purposes in the face of fantastical abilities that directly and drastically impact RP phenomena, making an attempt at tackling things like the Charm Person on PC problem in the mechanics instead of hoisting it all onto the DM. Licensed TTRPGs also share in this.
Chloe's suggestion ("just refluff everything") is fundamentally at odds with the entire premise of White Wolf products. You can't take Abyssal charms and mechanics and call yourself a Solar, because Limit vs. Resonance is a fundamentally different occurrence in game, not just in-universe. Similarly, you can't quite just walk in and say you're playing a Wizard in Faerun while using Incarnum mechanics verbatim, because that's quite simply not how Wizards in Faerun work. The mechanics, in that case, are explicitly describing an in-universe phenomenon on some level, and the wild difference of what those mechanics say means it doesn't fit.
Some people want to play D&D for D&D settings. They want to play a Tashalatora-trained Egotist face-fisting Mind Flayers in the Underdark. Some people appreciate the general structure imposed by it, because coming up with a cohesive fluff is actually quite hard to keep up when you keep piling on weirdly-specific mechanics like D&D is covered in. If you're supposed to be a quite open-ended telekinetic powerhouse, the extreme widgeting of D&D is a very poor fit on a basic mechanical level. If your character's supposed to be an innovative engineer, a fixed-list caster is quite simply not going to run smoothly without a lot of on-the-fly fluffing, something that can easily distract greatly from roleplaying.
In short, at a certain point, mechanics and fluff need to intersect for gameplay to function. Otherwise you're quite simply better off with rejiggering GURPS on whatever whim strikes you than using anything nearly so discrete as any version of the D20 system. And this is my persistent issue with Chloe's views on TTRPGs, because it feels like ignoring the entire point of having explicit mechanics, something I'm not alone in because this seems to be Phoenix's point as well.
Is it really so hard to accept some people preferring to come up with fitting mechanics so that Psions stick to Psionics, Meldshapers are wedded to Incarnum, and you have the widgets or variant rules for whatever concept you're digging for within that space, so that everyone using the same power source is running on the same rules?
Chloe essentially seems to be ignoring that White Wolf products are a thing, at least within the context of this conversation, which is a highly-popular series of highly-descriptive TTRPGs designed around ludonarritive resonance, complete with explicit "soft" rules for characterization and social interaction that give guidelines for RP purposes in the face of fantastical abilities that directly and drastically impact RP phenomena, making an attempt at tackling things like the Charm Person on PC problem in the mechanics instead of hoisting it all onto the DM. Licensed TTRPGs also share in this.
Chloe's suggestion ("just refluff everything") is fundamentally at odds with the entire premise of White Wolf products. You can't take Abyssal charms and mechanics and call yourself a Solar, because Limit vs. Resonance is a fundamentally different occurrence in game, not just in-universe. Similarly, you can't quite just walk in and say you're playing a Wizard in Faerun while using Incarnum mechanics verbatim, because that's quite simply not how Wizards in Faerun work. The mechanics, in that case, are explicitly describing an in-universe phenomenon on some level, and the wild difference of what those mechanics say means it doesn't fit.
Some people want to play D&D for D&D settings. They want to play a Tashalatora-trained Egotist face-fisting Mind Flayers in the Underdark. Some people appreciate the general structure imposed by it, because coming up with a cohesive fluff is actually quite hard to keep up when you keep piling on weirdly-specific mechanics like D&D is covered in. If you're supposed to be a quite open-ended telekinetic powerhouse, the extreme widgeting of D&D is a very poor fit on a basic mechanical level. If your character's supposed to be an innovative engineer, a fixed-list caster is quite simply not going to run smoothly without a lot of on-the-fly fluffing, something that can easily distract greatly from roleplaying.
In short, at a certain point, mechanics and fluff need to intersect for gameplay to function. Otherwise you're quite simply better off with rejiggering GURPS on whatever whim strikes you than using anything nearly so discrete as any version of the D20 system. And this is my persistent issue with Chloe's views on TTRPGs, because it feels like ignoring the entire point of having explicit mechanics, something I'm not alone in because this seems to be Phoenix's point as well.
Is it really so hard to accept some people preferring to come up with fitting mechanics so that Psions stick to Psionics, Meldshapers are wedded to Incarnum, and you have the widgets or variant rules for whatever concept you're digging for within that space, so that everyone using the same power source is running on the same rules?
PhoenixMercurous
Soaring through the stars
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, that's not my point. I've actually a couple points over the last couple days, but the latest argument started when I pointed out that some players might not enjoy Chloe's homebrew system. Due to a communications failure somewhere (I honestly don't know if I wasn't clear enough, they failed their reading comprehension check, or a bit of both), we ended up arguing past each other, I think. I'm not sure what Chloe was trying to argue, but I interpret their posts as calling people who might not enjoy their system too lazy to play TTRPGs and insulting me a couple different ways. My main point in this latest string has been that not every system, homebrew or official, is for everyone, and people can have different reasons for preferring different systems.
Chloe Sullivan
Subdefective
- Location
- 1630 Revello Drive, Sunnydale CA
You clearly don't.
you do not get to claim that know what my words mean better than I do. That is miles more offensive than anything anyone has said in the last 50 pages of this thread.
For the record:
"I don't know what your problem is" is an idiomatic expression, and is no way a statement of "I am in ignorance of something." As you should know as a native English speaker. That you have been pretending otherwise for two pages now makes you very dishonest.
I used that expression to express my annoyance at arawn for his incessant need to negatively compare newer editions to his beloved AD&D.
("I don't know what your problem is" means "stop being annoying," not "I can not comprehend your actions")
My actual argument was that importing "magic elixirs that give you unique powers" from AD&D to 5e doesn't add anything to 5e that can't already be done with native 5e tools, and is more likely to cause problems than enrich the experience.
