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Post by hamurai on Nov 10, 2017 7:32:18 GMT -6
Welcome Xurith!
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Post by hamurai on Nov 8, 2017 23:37:24 GMT -6
Interesting table, krusader74. Some years back I would have taken and used it quickly. These days I tend to run my fights fast-paced, so everything which causes players to roll an additional time (or even twice) and look up the number on a table slows the game down. I have to admit, though, that this depends heavily on the game. I do love DCC and its many crit and fumble tables, I just wouldn't want to introduce them to OD&D, for example.
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Post by hamurai on Nov 7, 2017 23:28:07 GMT -6
Look at the 5E description as one possibility to treat liches. Players may of course know this description, in fact many will probably look it up when they know they'll face a lich soon. As a DM, what I do is I change some aspects to my liking, or I change them all, and watch the jaws drop when the players realize what they thought they knew is not applicable. I treat these descriptions as folklore, some of it may be true or at least hint at the truth, other things are totally made up. Wonder preserved.
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Post by hamurai on Nov 6, 2017 23:22:52 GMT -6
Yes, Stormcrow , that is why I suggested "luck point," above. In Barons of Braunstein it's called exactly that, as you can see on the character sheet:
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Post by hamurai on Nov 5, 2017 23:29:39 GMT -6
I think the Cantrips were a good addition, although the damage of the attack cantrips seems a little high for spammable attacks. (We also used a houserule in some games which allowed wizards a spell attack for free, for d6 damage - I introduced it because the group was rather low on damage overall and the encounter balancing wasn't too much fun.). Then again, most cantrips that allow a save are often enough useless, so only a handful ever gets used. I do enjoy the other, non-combat cantrips a lot, apart from (as has been mentioned already) Dancing Lights, which is often just too much. As a DM I have the monsters see the lights, though, and prepare ambushes. That keeps the players from lighting the entire dungeon up per default.
Cantrips and the resting rules all play their part in the balancing, but as far as we've played (most campaigns stopped at 4th level) the resting rules didn't get used a lot because of the cleric's mighty healing abilities (Cure Wounds for 1d8+5 is a lot of healing at lower levels) and because we played shorter adventures. I guess they'd get used a lot more in nice, long dungeon crawls and megadungeons.
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Post by hamurai on Nov 5, 2017 1:36:17 GMT -6
I wasn't able to convert it perfectly, but enough to tinker with it, I think. Shoot me a PM if you'd like me to send the file so you can check it out
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Post by hamurai on Nov 4, 2017 1:46:55 GMT -6
We've often used the house rule that rolling a "crit" in combat allows another action at the end of the turn, reasoning that the character maneuvered cleverly and got lucky. That worked well and added some tactical advantage when you could move again, for example. Of course, some players always opted to attack again.
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Post by hamurai on Nov 3, 2017 0:14:39 GMT -6
Hi muddy! Welcome!
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Post by hamurai on Nov 1, 2017 9:53:27 GMT -6
Well said! I agree, many games these days promote the "more is better" approach, but in the end, you hardly need the material. I made that mistake back in the 90s when we played the World of Darkness games, but I've gotten rid of most of the books by now, apart from some "core" books. Right now I only have two games/systems with more than 3 books which I'm keeping, that is D&D (because I'm still in two active groups as DM and player) and Cypher System (mainly because I backed a Kickstarter a while ago and because we often use the diverse books for one-shots in between of our campaign games). Most of my collection is core rule books for many different games which I have or had a thing for and which I use as inspiration for house rules and setting ideas. And some I'd love to play but miss the group
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Post by hamurai on Nov 1, 2017 2:24:37 GMT -6
You get a "like" for: - Sympathy, as I can imagine how hard some choices are. I'm currently checking with what I can part, too. - DCC - one of my absolute favourite RPG's ever. - Ravenloft - I love it. That said, good luck with the sorting and listing and whatnot
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Post by hamurai on Nov 1, 2017 2:17:01 GMT -6
It's basic rules you can get for free with a different layout. I had a look at it at a friend's and apart from some CC artwork, new font and layout, it's nothing new. That's why I felt the price was way too high. Maybe it was because I had already done something similar myself for me and my group
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Post by hamurai on Oct 31, 2017 11:08:05 GMT -6
I have some stuff under the name of Ogre Mage Games up there. I'm working on a big update for the "iDC", my card & dice-based solo/coop dungeon crawler. The old version is PWYW, if you want to take a look at it.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 31, 2017 2:06:08 GMT -6
I've never offered a physical copy there... It should be possible, at least I've seen others offer physicsl products without an electronic edition. Maybe you still have to wait to get the e-edition approved? Afaik you also have to first order a physical proof yourself before you can sell it.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 26, 2017 8:56:08 GMT -6
Not sure what exactly you're referring to, but off the top of my head I'd guess it could mean that you don't need to find a trainer to level up, you just need the XP.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 23, 2017 23:22:40 GMT -6
Glad you like it! Hopefully others can draw some ideas for their campaign, too.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 23, 2017 15:06:01 GMT -6
- Light a feint spark that can catch fire - If he is feeling like a prankster/traitor, blow a gust of wind on a companion's torch then run off Aren't these pretty practical for adventures, too? Oil Flask + "Spark" = Boom! Blowing out a torch can mean darkness for the enemy, too. As talysman pointed out, the MU can fight, too. Especially at low levels there's not so much difference between a MU and a FM. Anyway, if you give MU's such magical "tricks" or cantrips or whatever you call them, I wouldn't over-regulate the effects. Give the player an idea of the magnitude of these effects and let them get creative. Maybe require the player to come up with a gesture to cast it. You could allow these effects to be cast spontaneously, maybe requiring and INT check to make them a little less spam-able, or give them a casting time of a full round or two.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 23, 2017 1:36:11 GMT -6
Yep, that's the idea.
I wanted to keep it simple for me - I had to write down just one number per NPC. Money and possessions was not interesting for my purpose, just to see if they survived or not. I made a numbered list (1-100) so each survivor had a number (to be the random d% target of something), behind that number I wrote the one stat. A little space behind that number allowed me to add more details, like when they found a weapon or armour, or when for some reason some background story came up I wrote down their name or family ties or whatever.
In battle the townsfolk also just rolled the one stat, to keep it as simple as possible when handling about 100 people at once. They used the stat to attack and they dealt 1 damage when unarmed and 2 damage with any sort of weapon.
After the battle the survivors gathered in the caves and started to tend to the wounded, to mend arms and armour, to fortify their position and to explore the cave system. Then it "turned out" some of the survivors were actually rather capable of these things, like a healer/cleric had survived, and some discovered their talent for handling weapons and killing stuff (FM), or it turned out there was a wizard's apprentice among the survivors (MU) and so on. I have also once used that system as a funnel, and by the time the survivors gathered in the cave system, the players already had some favourites among the townsfolk who they'd choose as their characters as they already had names, a thing or two to brag about from the first battle, some items and coins they'd looted and so on. They rolled the stats and I allowed to replace one of these stats with the "townsfolk stat" if they wanted to, to have some link to the survivor ("My wizard's apprentice survived by his intelligence alone!").
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Post by hamurai on Oct 22, 2017 9:13:09 GMT -6
First of all, I don't roleplay every encounter with an NPC. Not all interactions demand 1st person speech and doing voices. By now I know my group well enough and I know when they want to roleplay a conversation and when not. When they do, they tell me which NPC they'd like to talk to - the armorer, the barkeep, the tavern wench etc... If I believe that's a character I'd like to flesh out, I give them a first description and when my players start talking, I take a deep breath and "sink" into the role of the NPC. My players tend to ask for details about the person during the conversation, those I make up on the fly or just deny them more details as "Nothing of interest". If I don't think the NPC will be of much importance (or just if I'm lazy or out of ideas), my players tell me they'd like to talk to the NPC and I ask them to describe the person. They have some ideas about how each NPC/role in town will look like, so why not harvest their ideas and expectations? Sometimes I have one player tell us the NPC's race, the next tells us the gender and age, the next tells us something which immediately jumps out when looking at the NPC. Sometimes my players even get/have to come up with the name. I know they write down the names and NPCs they believe important, so I don't even have to do the book-keeping unless it's a "hidden major" NPC. I've even had players roleplay the NPC! For example, one player wants to meet the local thieves' guild - often enough that's the rogue's job and the rest stays behind and does - what? So my rogue player encounters NPCs played by the other players. That way, the players can interact with each other more, everyone has something to do even though it's the rogue's "private" thing and I get to relax and watch the show. When it comes to important details, I let the players know what I want the NPC to say or know. For example, the stock of shopkeepers when it comes to rare items, or the information which helps move the quest along and so on. It's a little strange at first, but give it a try! Many of my players have enjoyed roleplaying minor named NPCs and if these are recurrent, the player gets to play to role again often enough. That way, they even have fall-back characters if they retire their character, or if they die.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 22, 2017 6:27:48 GMT -6
I've always argued that HP are a combination of physical and mental endurance and that's why I prefer using the d6 HD for all classes. What the fighting-man has in physical endurance, the magic-user has in mental endurance. That, plus the luck you mention, is how I describe HP to my players.
Losing HP can mean you have to dodge real hard and strain yourself, or the axe may have missed you but the shock was so intense, you lose HP. Or maybe the gods intervened and now your "luck" is lower than before.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 22, 2017 6:17:34 GMT -6
Here's an idea for a quick one-roll-generation of "townsfolk" I came up with for a big battle where civilians were involved:
Roll 3d6 for a stat I called "survivability / dumb luck" (you can also call it skill, if you like). Whatever the townsfolk had to do, be it feats of strength or dexterity, common sense or knowledge, they'd roll under that stat. Those with higher stats quickly left those with low stats for dead. AC started at 9 but since it was a battlefield they could (after starting with nothing but cutlery or a pitchfork) loot the dead for weapons and shields and even armor, if they were lucky enough to find a fitting set which was still good to use, and if they found some time to don it. From the surviving townsfolk, hirelings and heroes (if they had accomplished something other than just survive, for example kill an enemy)were made.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 21, 2017 9:11:36 GMT -6
Maybe you can sell some of your loot directly to German users here O:) If it's going to be over the 400 € you indeed might want to consider selling it through some other channel. Or have family members sell some of it separately?
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Post by hamurai on Oct 21, 2017 2:00:01 GMT -6
Nice idea! I'd give them all worst AC too, though. Maybe they live long enough to find a shield somewhere...
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Post by hamurai on Oct 16, 2017 22:27:07 GMT -6
Get well soon, Marc! Also, thanks for one of the RPG's that brought me to this amazing hobby!
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Post by hamurai on Oct 15, 2017 1:38:39 GMT -6
Nice, congrats!
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Post by hamurai on Oct 12, 2017 6:07:48 GMT -6
Thanks for sharing!
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Post by hamurai on Oct 11, 2017 7:34:10 GMT -6
You should really try it! Some of the effects are very inspirational and say a lot about the way magic works and about the world(s) of the game. That said, some might be inappropriate for some settings and some might break a spell. We've now decided to roll for the Mercurial Effects but if an effect would effectively make a spell unusable, a player may "drop" the spell to open the spell slot again for another spell. That way, one spell might not be workable for a character, but he can still get other spells which might. And there might even be a way to change the fate and the mercurial effect if the player really wants to have a spell. And that would be a quest in itself, of course.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 9, 2017 11:02:32 GMT -6
Agreed, magic rules are enormous in DCC and the spell effect charts take up the biggest part of the book. We always had the rule "If you want to play a wizard, you have to know your stuff. The DM won't help you." - that scared many players away from magic classes. I always liked it; as I own the PDF I printed the spells I needed and glued them in my character book. Feels even more like a grimoire then. I can certainly understand why you'd ditch Mercurial Magic but we tried it once and decided we liked it better with those rules. It adds a lot to the weirdness of the game (unless it breaks a spell, that's beyond weird in my book). Here's a memory explaining why I like the weirdness of Mercurial Magic: I still fondly remember a wizard (Xergal of the Dung Plains) I played, he had a Horned Slug Guardian Familiar named Vandy with a "sexy" personality. When casting his Magic Shield spell he would blink in and out of his plane of existence and would be even harder to hit. Downside was, there was a 1% chance that he'd not come back after blinking out - and one day during battle, he cast Magic Shield and was gone! Just didn't reappear. Our judge rolled on some tables and ruled that instead of my wizard something else phased into our world and I got to play an extradimensional "tourist" for some time. It joined the group and being from a high-tech dimension, could "science-magically" understand and speak all languages. The group went through some effort to find out if my character was still alive. In the end, after a small campaign of its own, we managed to recreate the situation when my character got lost (wasn't that easy to get the Man-Bats in the right spot to fight again), the "tourist" activated some contraption and "woooosssh" - my character returned from his weird journey into some strange dimension (and the tourist got home, we guess)! Vandy the sexy slug was happy, and I got to invent and tell a completely over-the-top story about what had happened to my character. We loved that!
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Post by hamurai on Oct 8, 2017 17:44:54 GMT -6
I love DCC's magic system, but sometimes the Mercurial Magic rolls can make spells entirely unusable. For example an Invisibility spell with the side effect of a light shining around your head. Pretty much a broken spell. Wouldn't be too bad if spells weren't really limited.
When I was GM I allowed a re-roll on a similar occasion (broken spell) and once I allowed the wizard to go on a quest and complete a ritual to change the Mercurial Magic effect on one spell (because it was really making the spell suck). Sure, part of the fun is the weird aspect of magic in DCC, but for me, player fun trumps here.
So my question is, how do/would you house rule to prevent such a situation?
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Post by hamurai on Oct 3, 2017 23:05:56 GMT -6
XP for gold is great when the group has the goal of achieving wealth and fame by exploring dungeons and winning treasure. I have to admit I never wondered about the gold/kills XP ratio. My guess would be, purely from memory and gut-feeling, 5:1 (treasure:kills).
It's not so useful when you play campaigns focused on diplomatics, on wilderness survival or town-management, for example. So I think it really depends on what kind of game you want to run. If you're going for old school dungeon crawling, by all means use "XP for gold". If your group is trapped in the rain forest of a far-away land and fighting for survival, collecting coins shouldn't be on their to-do list unless they start trading with the natives. In that case, award XP for milestones like building shelter, learning important facts about the local weather/flora/fauna, finding a clean water source and so on.
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Post by hamurai on Oct 3, 2017 2:21:57 GMT -6
Inspiring, thanks for sharing!
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