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I think you'll find that 5e and 3.5/Pathfinder 1e can capture the "feel" of D&D and be quite robust. There are differences in complexity and attendant differences in depth and flexibility, but 5e also is less shy about handing out awesome powers earlier.

What will likely be best for a beginner is whatever the group he can find is playing.

As to the curse, that sounds very specific and not generally supported, simply because it's more a story arc than a character build. But you can and should discuss it and what you want from the play experience with it with your DM.

Unless I misunderstood and all you want is to be a cat girl who used to be a male human. In which case that mostly is an exercise in finding the race to represent being a cat girl and then just RPing the curse. Even lifting it would be more plot event than strict mechanics.
 
Kryslin said:
ThAC0 was easier than having to right down 21 numbers, from 10 to -10, and then apply all the modifiers for the weapon against each entry (D&D 0e, AD&D 1e). I dealt with that from '76 to '84. I will agree that making the Armor class the number you have to beat to hit for various conditions is a simpler system than that, but the point remains that the current armor class is simply an umodified THAC0, pre-computed at all steps.

@Leechblade : While D&D discussions are a tangent, they're hardly a derails, more like we got switched onto a side track. A derail would be debating which would win in a dogfight with a dragon : F-14 Tomcat, F-16 Fighting Falcon, or A-10 Thunderbolt II.

But be of good cheer! Normal posting resumes Saturday!
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A-10 suffers from fire breath melting the propeller and engines, F-14 accidentally gets clipped by a stray scale and blows up, F-16 Does a better job before the ammo starts cooking off from multiple fire breaths.

Sorry had to.
 
Storyreader21 said:
I'm curious about all this talk of dungeons and dragons. I've never played before, and dont have anyone around I can play with, so I have three questions. One where can I find the rules? Two, is there anywhere online i can play? And three is it possible to have a character that is under a curse that turns him from a male human, to a shrunken female catgirl, specifically one small enough to be unaware swallowed, but have the curse force him/her to survive, being swallowed or crushed while feeling all the pain and have to go on a long quest to either cure the curse or control the curse(gaining the ability to swap between the two forms as needed) or would that be illegal, since again I have never played.
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There's a 3rd Edition race called the tibbit which turns from a half-sized humanoid (similar to a halfling, or a hobbit if you're into Tolkien) to a cat. The gender-change is easily done via fluff.

There's also a variant of the 3rd Edition druid that can turn into an anthropomorphic beast at 1st level, which you can fluff to being a female feline.

Combine to the two for a cheap and easy lycanthrope (which is otherwise a PITA to make).
 
Actually, there are several D&D cat folk races; building a cursed belt of genderbending racebending shouldn't be much harder than the classic genderbender belt.

And if you wanted to be a bastard, make the condition for breaking the curse something evil like must bear a child in their female form, (whatever race that is) to break the curse.
 
Malcanthet said:
A-10 suffers from fire breath melting the propeller and engines, F-14 accidentally gets clipped by a stray scale and blows up, F-16 Does a better job before the ammo starts cooking off from multiple fire breaths.

Sorry had to.
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If a Fighter Jet gets close enough to a Dragon for it's breath weapon to come into play, and NOT kill it with long or medium range missiles, then they are doing it wrong.

Realistically, any air-to-air missile that goes off near a Dragon should shred them; or at least do enough damage to make them an easy target for a follow up attack. From Miles Away. The hard part will be locking on, and a laser guided missile should have no problems with that...
 
Jacen1 said:
If a Fighter Jet gets close enough to a Dragon for it's breath weapon to come into play, and NOT kill it with long or medium range missiles, then they are doing it wrong.

Realistically, any air-to-air missile that goes off near a Dragon should shred them; or at least do enough damage to make them an easy target for a follow up attack. From Miles Away. The hard part will be locking on, and a laser guided missile should have no problems with that...
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Given the body temperature of a fire breathing dragon, heat seekers would work quite well.
 
Jacen1 said:
If a Fighter Jet gets close enough to a Dragon for it's breath weapon to come into play, and NOT kill it with long or medium range missiles, then they are doing it wrong.

Realistically, any air-to-air missile that goes off near a Dragon should shred them; or at least do enough damage to make them an easy target for a follow up attack. From Miles Away. The hard part will be locking on, and a laser guided missile should have no problems with that...
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Yet what actually happens is the F-22 tries to bounce off the dragon's scales and rapidly disassembles itself in the process. The dragon, faced with the demand to be realistic, responds thus:
 
Jacen1 said:
If a Fighter Jet gets close enough to a Dragon for it's breath weapon to come into play, and NOT kill it with long or medium range missiles, then they are doing it wrong.

Realistically, any air-to-air missile that goes off near a Dragon should shred them; or at least do enough damage to make them an easy target for a follow up attack. From Miles Away. The hard part will be locking on, and a laser guided missile should have no problems with that...
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Personally I like how gate handled dragons. As you pointed out the dragons never got close. Through they did absorb a decent amount of firepower before succumbing.
 
That all works until the dragon breaks out a Resilient Sphere, and has been spending the past 20 minutes healing itself and prepping a Contingent Teleport.

Dragons in D&D are -smart- buggers, and when presented with overwhelming firepower, can apply the best defense:

BE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

(and attack from an unexpected direction).
 
on the Dragons Vs. Fighter Jet debate let me just point out that if the fighters are facing a prepared dragon they literally won't be able to even harm the dragon, "Protection from normal missiles" is a third level spell and would make the dragon completely immune to anything a fighter jet can do to it except ramming.
 
Gelasin said:
on the Dragons Vs. Fighter Jet debate let me just point out that if the fighters are facing a prepared dragon they literally won't be able to even harm the dragon, "Protection from normal missiles" is a third level spell and would make the dragon completely immune to anything a fighter jet can do to it except ramming.
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Are the dragons in Gate intelligent? I've only fics to go on but I've never gotten the impression that they were, much less that they could use magic. :???:
 
Gelasin said:
on the Dragons Vs. Fighter Jet debate let me just point out that if the fighters are facing a prepared dragon they literally won't be able to even harm the dragon, "Protection from normal missiles" is a third level spell and would make the dragon completely immune to anything a fighter jet can do to it except ramming.
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That's more jet vs spellcaster than vs dragon. Most setting don't have dragons use any more than the innate magic. Still good point to consider.

Amendment: We probably should drop this topic it is a bit of a derail.
 
Ravenwood240 said:
I love those systems. THAC0 was the greatest thing in the world.

The only reason I play 3.5 more than anything else is because there are so many splatbooks for OGLD20 in the 3.5 version. There is literally nothing you can't do in 3.5, if your GM will allow it.
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Wasn't THAC0 just AC in reverse? A modifier on the attacker's dice roll to see if they got above or below a target number?

To me it feels like the difference between 3.5/PF/5e Saving Throws vs. 4e's Saving Class. (Which is one of my favorite things about 4e, streamlined attacking so it's only the attacker rolling, not the defenders. Saves a LOT of time in Play By Post gaming)

Lycanthromancer said:
There's a 3rd Edition race called the tibbit which turns from a half-sized humanoid (similar to a halfling, or a hobbit if you're into Tolkien) to a cat. The gender-change is easily done via fluff.
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Tibbits are also in 3.5 in the Dragon Compendium reprint of a few Dragon Magazine articles. (They make great Warlocks if your GM allows the Savage Species feat that lets Druids cast spells using animal somatic / vocal components)
Catfolk in 3.5 are a +1 LA race that are humanoid cat people. (More Anthro Cat than "Girl with cat ears" though)
Tabaxi are a bit more human looking than Catfolk having a human body, but have full on cat heads, tails, and fur. (They skipped 3rd-4th ed though)
Hengeyokai are were-animals and can shift between human, animal, and hybrid forms a number of times a day.



There's a reason I prefer the Revised Core Star Wars rule books, they were based off the 3.0 / 3.5 OGL rather than the clunky D&D Modern rules or the prototype 4e rules that were Saga Edition. They're also the same era as the Babylon 5 game books and with very little tweaking could be used to play a hybrid game with both rulesets. (Or with about the same amount of tweaking combine the two and update it to Pathfinder's Skills and Feats rules)
 
Valdimarian said:
Wasn't THAC0 just AC in reverse? A modifier on the attacker's dice roll to see if they got above or below a target number?
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Not....... quite. Originally, one's AC started at 10, and went down as it improved. So, to get the target number, the AC was subtracted from the player's THAC0 (which started at 20 for level one characters, but dropped at different rated based on class) and other modifiers were applied to get a target number for the attack. I suspect the AC may have been a holdover from the games origins in the Chainmail Wargame, but having never played it, I can't be sure.

Either way, barring extreme cases (having Dex as a Dump Stat on a Wizard? Sucketh to be Youeth) AC ranged from +10 (Worst) to -10 (Best) in the older versions of D&D. I can see how having a base "to hit" of 10, with AC as a modifier that's added can make sense, but the problem I find is that the progression they set up let them come up with some ludicrously high AC numbers at the high end, which went a long way to creating the Linear Fighter/Quadratic Wizard effect, when instead letting fighters do more damage by hitting more would have gone a LONG way towards balancing their effectiveness. Well, that plus they made it very hard for Fighters to improve their AC in a meaningful way by adding a cap to how much Dex helps when using armor.......

Let's just say I was less then impressed with the changes WotC made after buying out TSR, and leave it at that.
 
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Gelasin said:
on the Dragons Vs. Fighter Jet debate let me just point out that if the fighters are facing a prepared dragon they literally won't be able to even harm the dragon, "Protection from normal missiles" is a third level spell and would make the dragon completely immune to anything a fighter jet can do to it except ramming.
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So, no real way to soft-peddle this: That's wrong on a few different levels.

Firstly, "Protection from Normal Missiles" hasn't existed since OD&D. In the 3.5e/PF universe that is the greatest collective consciousness, and even more-so in 5e, the spell doesn't exist and is irrelevant to the conversation. The equivalent spell, "Protection from Arrows," that replaced it is far, far weaker. A mere DR 10/magic vs ranged attacks.

Secondly, even if the dragon can somehow cast that spell, you're using the wrong definition of "missile." The text SPECIFIALLY calls out:
The target cannot be harmed by ranged weapon attacks (projectiles such as arrows or thrown weapons such as javelins). It reduces the damage taken from magical attacks, or from seige equipment, by -1 per dice."
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A modern anti-air missile is nothing like an arrow or javelin and, if it's covered by the spell at all as opposed to bypassing it due to being an AoE proximity explosion with a Reflex save, it would fall under siege weaponry due to having explosive power significantly greater than anything medieval siege equipment could produce.

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On a completely different note, I'm wondering what would happen if, during any dimensional portal shenanigans that might happen in relation to similar events in canon, a portal opened between Brockton Bay and Faerun.
 
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Keep in mind that when I wrote "Naurelin gets shot by 12.7mm Anti-materiel rifles" section, I had the D&D 5e Modern PDF in front of me.

Protection from Normal Missiles was active, along with Mage Armor.

While the first two shots did minor damage, the last two were a full damage non-critical, and a full damage critical hit; The last was stopped by Taylor's actual Parahuman power. At that time, her control of it was subconscious. As noted later, she's learning some conscious control; It's what kept her from trashing the Dallon's yard, and kept her from wrecking the Boardwalk.

As noted, PfNM doesn't work very well against things designed to wreck buildings and vehicles (12.7mm does a very good job of that; it might not be able to get through a lot of armor, but it does do some downright rude things when it does). Hence, as soon as Taylor learns enough about magic on her own to do so, she's going to create Ward against (All the) Missiles (Ward vs. ICBM is a much higher level spell).

Anyway, Next post is back from the editor, so normal posting resumes on Saturday.
 
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Kryslin said:
While the first two shots did minor damage, the last two were a full damage non-critical, and a full damage critical hit; The last was stopped by Taylor's actual Parahuman power. At that time, her control of it was subconscious. As noted later, she's learning some conscious control; It's what kept her from trashing the Dallon's yard, and kept her from wrecking the Boardwalk.
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Her power is Eidolon levels of broken, by the way. I love it. :p
 
disadvantage is only effectively -4 or -5 to hit. sure it can make you miss entirely, but mechanically it works out to -4/5. so if youre a good enough shot, or for some reason have advantage yourself that negates the disadvantage, then you can still hit. while resistance just means you take half damage.

tho im pretty sure that taylor is running off of 3rd ed or 3.5 or something like that and not 5th ed. especially as that version of protection from arrows has a damage resistance that wears off after it has soaked a scaling amount (caster level * 10).
 
Kryslin has stated that they are pulling from several versions of D&D, obviously, since first ed's spell was the best, that's the version Taylor's using.

Do you really think Tiamat would use anything less than the best?
 
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