Dungeons & Dragons... Discuss!

[Thorne]

As you like.
I disagree, but I'm not willing to raise my blood pressure arguing the point. Carry on, gentlemen.

[Chris Brady]

The folks who reacted negatively to 3rd Edition were AD&D players.  They're not Paizo fans, either.

Granted, some 3rd Edition fans weren't so fond of some 3.5 changes, but overall it fixed a lot of things.

No, I'm talking 3.0 to 3.5, the whining about having to buy new books for the 'same system' was all over the net at the time.  Paizo pulls the same BS, and is considered the hero for it.  Especially with every new book they put out invalidates your 3.x library one book at a time, but it's Paizo so it's A-OK.

And I personally believe that all classes should have access to Perception (type) skills.  But if not Fighter's and Rogues should have it be default on their list.

I've mentioned this before, but in terms of skills, the professional soldier that Fighter type character tends to be, he or she should get a huge selection of skills.  Hell, the archetype is probably the most commonly well traveled, second to any wandering bard types.  You pick up a few skills along the way, whether you're a mercenary, a knight or a man-at-arms.  Not to mention that the Fighter archetype is possible the only one that should be a God of War, if not literally.  War or combat is not an occupation for a Fighter, it's their way of life, from basic combat skills, to advanced techniques, to knowledge of tactics, strategy and famous battles and (wo)men.  The ability to negotiate a contract, or a place to stay for his troops, companions and/or fellow Knights, not to mention that knowing HOW to talk to a city guardsman, or a merchant would be things they either KNOW, or PICK UP on the way.

But most Fantasy games don't do this, and most of it is legacy from D&D.

[Aiden]

So what is the Spanish for "step into the square circle baby!", anyway?

¡Ooooh, si!

My lucahdor monk stole the show.

Friend tried to set up the scene with Elminster pulling heroes from different "planes". (Midnight, Greyhawk, Faerrun, etc) I interrupt him and set my own scene up with my monk about to face his arch rival for the heavy weight championship. I play into music and everything.
(using my phone, even stand up and do a walk in intro from the hall)

Shawn Michaels Theme Song

The group goes wild, I even get my best friend to play my arch rival (he is a lot more into wrestling then me, so I asked him to have a "face and heel" exchange) As the bell rings to start, he is locked in place and taken to another plane. I procceed to get some belligerant he has to sleep me.

Hilarity ensured, when people saw me keep using the macho man voice.

When we got to a battle, I am tricked by an npc that the temple (of Bane) is actually a gym for my arch rival (but how, since I am on a different plane, my guy is not the smartest when it comes to that).

I charge in, grapple the first guard I encounter and roll a strength check to lift over my head and throw him into three other guards.
Crit...

I drop them into a pile and then jump up high, landing on all of them. All 350 pounds of me + their heavy plate and weight. I killed four people in two rounds. followed with "YO SOY TIBURON!"

[Avis habilis]

Not D&D, but d20 at least: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11773.phtml

Just in case you ever want to go the full on pro wrasslin' route.

[TheGlyphstone]

My greatest dream is to play a pro-wrestler Monk/Bard in an X-Crawl game.

[Aiden]

Not D&D, but d20 at least: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11773.phtml

Just in case you ever want to go the full on pro wrasslin' route.

Looks good, I might look into it for future campaigns. I know my group is starting a WOD game via google hang out soon, since we live far apart and gaming in person is not easy.

I do plan on adding updates of the adventures of EL Tiburon! Here every month when we meet up, His current goal is to find the Belt of Thor (doubles your strength) and to power bomb Elminister among other targets.

[Sasquatch421]

I got a chuckle out of this...

[Chris Brady]

I'm finding that... I can't argue with that...

[TheGlyphstone]

and if it's a tree, HIT IT! You've gotten a surprise round in, and you want to deal as much damage as possible before it can retaliate - all those branches will give it dozens of attacks per round, and it has a ton of natural armor from bark. Trees are the ancestral enemies of dwarves, rememer.

[Avis habilis]

Plus, what's a gazebo made out of?

That's right. Get in there & mow 'em down while they're still in the larval stage!

[EroticFantasyAuthor]

Sadly the only D&D I've played in quite awhile has been Play-By-Post, and while good, they're not the same as sitting around a table with friends.

[Hades]

Plus, what's a gazebo made out of?

That's right. Get in there & mow 'em down while they're still in the larval stage!

And if using a sword or axe doesn't work against the threat that gazebos post to adventurers of all levels, there's always this solution:




And then something else that explains why my last table-top group said I was never allowed to be the one in charge of negotiations:

[Aiden]

None of my other friends ever wish to talk the lead, so they let me. I always make the war monger....needless to say, we get in a lot of fights.

[Avis habilis]

"When you have to kill everything in a 20' radius ... including party members when the magic-user casts one in an enclosed space."

[chaoslord29]

I always take the approach that if the Spellcaster is reduced to casting Fireball, it's because we've already exhausted other options and are already in a sore spot. Sort of the "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried" approach.

Spellcasters in D&D laugh in the face of linear challenges, and once they reach level 10 or so can obviate the entire party if not properly handled. Whenever I GM, I always make sure to remind the casters of their mortality, why then need the fighter out front even if they can torch a dozen orcs in the time it takes him to kill 3 (If they're all adjacent to him).

[Ephiral]

As my party's primary caster, I'd say that if the wizard is memorizing Fireball, something is horribly wrong. That's another Haste or Stinking Cloud you could've had.

Your GMing style is why my primary tactical approach has become "You, hit targrets as I set them up for precision damage. You and you... just stand between the damage and me. Hit things that want to hurt us." Meat shields - gotta keep it simple for 'em. 

[chaoslord29]

Actually, you're exactly the kind of caster I'm talking about. Glass Cannons who love to think they're walking artillery pieces are easy to deal with, but when you get someone who's using the more creative utility spells more, well, creatively, that's where the real challenge is. If all the rest of the party is to you are meat shields, I'm still doing it wrong lol.

When I say remind the casters of their mortality, I don't mean remind them that they can be killed, I mean remind them they're not gods. Gods don't have to still be able to talk and move their hands to reshape the fabric of reality. Whenever I have a caster who's getting too uppity, I simply put them in the middle of a storm, or have the dungeon be tectonically unstable, or have whatever enemies they're fighting keep up a constant din of war shouts and weapons battering against shields. Traps that cause deafness and silence, or a room so thick with spider webs that the caster can barely move their arms, or even just high gravity environments so suddenly that caster's light robes and staff are a heavy load? Bet you wish you hadn't made strength your dump stat now.

One of my favorite tricks is to coat doorknobs and other readily handled items with contact poisons which cause aphasia or dyslexia. The most embarrassed I've ever seen a caster though was when I had them grappled by an ordinary bat so that they couldn't cast spells for the whole of combat.

[TheGlyphstone]

No one ever claims that casters cannot be DM fiated into needing other party members. But they are, as you clearly understand by your wide variety of anti-caster plot elements, the ones that require the greatest variety of and often the most heavy-handed methods of keeping under control.

My favorite style of casters are the 'hidden master' buffmonkeys. Any mundane scrub with a sword can deal HP damage, and while arcane magic can singlehandedly end encounters, that earns DM wrath who will then go out of their way to nerf the caster. So you load up with Haste, Stinking Cloud, Acid Fog, Enervation, Mass Snake's Swiftness, Ironguard, Brilliant Blade. You buy Metamagic Rods of Chain Spell. You prestige into classes like War Weaver, or if you're feeling merciless, Incantatrix. Then you throw out a flurry of buff spells that turns your entire party into near-unstoppable demigodlings, drop a few no-save crippling debuffs on the enemy, and let your 'meat shields' puree everything while you sit back and drink daquiris, safe in the knowledge that you were, as usual, the deciding factor in the fight, but you were smart and subtle enough not to brag about it. It makes your party members feel awesome because they're living wrecking balls, and rarely complain when you want to make them even better at their job, and it's actually more efficient than using your own spell slots for damage/summons.

[chaoslord29]

No one ever claims that casters cannot be DM fiated into needing other party members. But they are, as you clearly understand by your wide variety of anti-caster plot elements, the ones that require the greatest variety of and often the most heavy-handed methods of keeping under control.

My favorite style of casters are the 'hidden master' buffmonkeys. Any mundane scrub with a sword can deal HP damage, and while arcane magic can singlehandedly end encounters, that earns DM wrath who will then go out of their way to nerf the caster. So you load up with Haste, Stinking Cloud, Acid Fog, Enervation, Mass Snake's Swiftness, Ironguard, Brilliant Blade. You buy Metamagic Rods of Chain Spell. You prestige into classes like War Weaver, or if you're feeling merciless, Incantatrix. Then you throw out a flurry of buff spells that turns your entire party into near-unstoppable demigodlings, drop a few no-save crippling debuffs on the enemy, and let your 'meat shields' puree everything while you sit back and drink daquiris, safe in the knowledge that you were, as usual, the deciding factor in the fight, but you were smart and subtle enough not to brag about it. It makes your party members feel awesome because they're living wrecking balls, and rarely complain when you want to make them even better at their job, and it's actually more efficient than using your own spell slots for damage/summons.

Bam! That right there is exactly the sort of spellcasting I love to reward haha. The kind that makes everyone feel like a raging badass and makes mincemeat of the toughest monsters I'd care to throw at the party.

I do resent the implication that perhaps my methods are 'fiats'; I'm just presenting the players with a higher level of play than a shooting gallery of goblin mooks (which obviously gives the advantage to the guy with arcane equivalent of a machine gun). I think what most gms (and players who love to play munchkined out glass cannon casters) love to forget is that the world is not a friendly place for casters. They make plots and campaigns that are too caster-friendly because it's convenient and easy for them to do so. I'm simply taking advantage of a full fleshed out world that encourages a more balanced character.

[Tsenta]

I like buff casters more than dps casters, just cause they're about the party more than "Lul, I kill it all."  I made a half-dragon fighter and my friend built a caster basically revolved around making it more deadly. Needless to say, unstoppable duo!

[TheGlyphstone]

Bam! That right there is exactly the sort of spellcasting I love to reward haha. The kind that makes everyone feel like a raging badass and makes mincemeat of the toughest monsters I'd care to throw at the party.

I do resent the implication that perhaps my methods are 'fiats'; I'm just presenting the players with a higher level of play than a shooting gallery of goblin mooks (which obviously gives the advantage to the guy with arcane equivalent of a machine gun). I think what most gms (and players who love to play munchkined out glass cannon casters) love to forget is that the world is not a friendly place for casters. They make plots and campaigns that are too caster-friendly because it's convenient and easy for them to do so. I'm simply taking advantage of a full fleshed out world that encourages a more balanced character.

Some of the examples you gave I'd definitely consider 'fiat', since there's no real rules support and they (with no information other than what was described) seemed intended specifically to harm the casters - heavy gravity fields that can prevent casters from moving their arms to cast spells (encumbrance, in itself, doesn't give spell failure chance) because their robes are too heavy without collapsing the fighter's bones under his plate in a commensurately heavy effective-weight ratio, or spreading anti-caster poisons everywhere. Storms or earth tremors or spider webs, there's at least ways to replicate those without Rule 0 and they affect everyone equally (right up until the caster is hampered enough that he starts specifically readying a countermeasure, because Yes There Is A Spell For That), but at a certain point it stops being a balanced world that knows casters are immensely powerful and prepares accordingly, and starts being a world where reality itself has developed an irrational hatred for magic-users. The trick is finding that sweet spot where you're providing the caster players with a challenge without making it so hard that the non-casters get flattened as collateral damage, without making it look like you're just singling the casters out, and there's a point where you need the cooperation of the player - or at least a gentleman's agreement - to avoid having to resort to blatant fiat.

[chaoslord29]

Some of the examples you gave I'd definitely consider 'fiat', since there's no real rules support and they (with no information other than what was described) seemed intended specifically to harm the casters - heavy gravity fields that can prevent casters from moving their arms to cast spells (encumbrance, in itself, doesn't give spell failure chance) because their robes are too heavy without collapsing the fighter's bones under his plate in a commensurately heavy effective-weight ratio, or spreading anti-caster poisons everywhere. Storms or earth tremors or spider webs, there's at least ways to replicate those without Rule 0 and they affect everyone equally (right up until the caster is hampered enough that he starts specifically readying a countermeasure, because Yes There Is A Spell For That), but at a certain point it stops being a balanced world that knows casters are immensely powerful and prepares accordingly, and starts being a world where reality itself has developed an irrational hatred for magic-users. The trick is finding that sweet spot where you're providing the caster players with a challenge without making it so hard that the non-casters get flattened as collateral damage, without making it look like you're just singling the casters out, and there's a point where you need the cooperation of the player - or at least a gentleman's agreement - to avoid having to resort to blatant fiat.

You are not wrong sir, and that sweet spot is exactly what I hope to achieve. Rule 0 of course being my guiding light in doing so.

[TheGlyphstone]

I'd consider Rule -1 to be a better guiding light, realistically. Rule 0 is just a blank check - the DM's word overrides the printed rules at any time. Rule -1 says that a DM who abuses Rule 0 ends up without any players. Listening to the players (and getting them to talk to you, I find this is often harder) is crucial to finding that sweet spot.

[chaoslord29]

I'd consider Rule -1 to be a better guiding light, realistically. Rule 0 is just a blank check - the DM's word overrides the printed rules at any time. Rule -1 says that a DM who abuses Rule 0 ends up without any players. Listening to the players (and getting them to talk to you, I find this is often harder) is crucial to finding that sweet spot.

I thought Rule 0 was "Always have fun" . . .

It's my Rule 0 for real life

[TheGlyphstone]

Make that Rule -2 then. 

When most people talk about Rule 0 as it relates to RPGs, they mean:

Rule 0: The unwritten rule in tabletop role-playing games (such as Dungeons & Dragons) which grants the game master the right to suspend or override the published game rules whenever s/he deems necessary.”