LoamImprovement @ LoamImprovement @ttrpg.network

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164

Joined

2 yr. ago

Now, as ever, 'For the lulz.'

Lol I knew it was a scam because nobody fucking sends me mail.

That's fair.

Yeah, somebody's wearing rose colored glasses. High school was fucking miserable. My junior and senior years I had no less than two hours of homework every night on average from the AP courses I was taking, on top of working a part time job every weekend and all summer to pay for the car I was driving. I never fit in because everyone else was talking about some pop culture, music or TV I had no time for because I was completely occupied.

My best years were in college. All that unstructured time and autonomy over my bodily functions rocked. Shame it came with a $50K pricetag I'll never pay off.

Yep, lucky is too good and too ubiquitous for every player with access not to pick it up, it's the exact opposite of feats like Weapon Master.

Also banned some of the supplementary stuff at my table. cough strixhaven cough silvery barbs cough

Yep, got tired of inkjet printers running out, clogging, print heads gumming up, just failing in so many different ways. I've had my laser printer for about 5 years and it's still rolling on the sample toner cart. Granted, I don't print all that often, but that's another reason I like this printer so damn much.

Personally, I forgo rolling altogether because the requests to roll stats tend to come from the players who want to minmax, and I allow plenty enough of that with the feat rule I described above.

If you have a table that absolutely insists on rolling, have them roll together and use the same array for every player, then nobody but the DM can complain about someone's character being OP lol.

One rule I've considered using is, if you fall to 0 HP, you can forgo making death saves and immediately take a full turn, but you die at the end of that turn, no save or healing allowed. It would also allow PCs to get last words where they otherwise wouldn't be able to speak.

BA potions are another one I usually include as well, even the nonhealing ones. I had a gut reaction against a fighter PC using a potion that applied greater invisibility and then making six attacks at advantage using action surge, but I thought, "fuck it, they're expending a valuable resource to have this moment, let them have it," and it was good.

I actually don't mind killing PCs with some of the above here - not saying that I seek out opportunities, but I've played with squishy casters who are bold and/or dumb enough to wade into the enemy's back line to take advantage of short range AoEs like Burning Hands and Thunderwave, and you better believe their response is to beat the ever-loving shit out of that caster so they don't get up and do it again. And past the opportunities that cocksure players give you, it is 100% okay if a character dies, even one that a player has invested in - adventuring is dangerous and combat is especially brutal; the dragon's not going to reposition themselves to exclude a downed PC from their breath attack, the vampire's not going to pass up an easy meal from an incapacitated caster. If your games are going to be impactful and climactic, the stakes need to be real, and you can't pull any punches.

But there is an important caveat in all this - what's not okay is trivializing PC deaths, whether they died through pure chance, or wildly unbalanced encounters that end in TPKs, because that (especially the latter) ruins games and creates players who invest nothing in their characters, or worse, start to see everything as a numbers game and work to build the murderhoboiest character they possibly can. If a PC dies, it needs to be a scene. After combat's over, make a point of narrating the aftermath. Give the PC last rites, have the surviving members of the party talk about their favorite moments. Some of the best, most heart-wrenching sessions I've run are the ones where a character dies.

I tried the free feat at level 1 for a couple campaigns, and while players enjoy it, I find it tends to tip the game balance off a bit, such that lower CR encounters are a little underwhelming. You might not find it a problem in your games though, depending on how munchkin-y your players are.

Definitely agree martials need maneuvers - I highly recommend Laserllama's martial homebrews for experienced players, gives those classes a lot more flavor and flexibility.

Agree on the invisibility, and that's a poor running of invisibility by most GMs - it absolutely does not mean automatically hidden in the same way that a creature in total darkness is not automatically hidden, nor should it be construed that way - the Invisible condition clearly states:

An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or a special sense. For the purpose of hiding, the creature is heavily obscured. The creature’s location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.

It is incredibly frustrating to have inexperienced GMs run invisible creatures as being able to take potshots at the PCs with zero fear of retribution except by wild swings at empty space, hoping to get lucky. Aside from the advantage/disadvantage on attack rolls, all being invisible does is allow a creature to hide without needing any kind of cover because they're already heavily obscured, and prevents creatures from perceiving them with normal vision. A perception check against the hidden creature's stealth roll, truesight, blindsense/sight, tremorsense, and the creature making any sort of noise (such as with an attack) immediately reveals the invisible creature's location.

That sounds like a good way for the PCs to become rulers of the underdark.

Thanks, PipedLinkBot

It is so bad. Civvie does a video on it.

https://youtu.be/UajWzGByMkM?si=7DVUszIYRedhyi1A

Well, a lot of the time, it's difficult to know who will be a problem player before any actual play has occurred, but there are always a couple red flags you can look out for:

• Ask the player what kind of character they want to run in your game. If they give you a description that's in stark contrast to the setting you've described, the two of you may have clashing expectations pertaining to the campaign you want to run, and you and that player might struggle to tell and enjoy a coherent story. Offer a few suggestions to help that character better fit the setting, if possible, and if it's just way out of left field, ask if there's maybe another character they'd want to play that fits the tone of the campaign. If they're unwilling to compromise, they're probably not a good fit for your group.
• During session 0, pay attention to how they interact with the other members of the group. Are they making inappropriate or off-putting jokes? Do they talk down on other players, or their character ideas? Do you just get a weird vibe? If you're closer friends with another member of the group, bring it up after the fact - just ask what they thought of the new guy. If you feel like something's up, you'll likely hear it from other people too.
• Following session 0 and the commitment to create characters prior to session 1, ensure that your player responds in a timely manner. If you're closing in on session time (24-48 hours or so beforehand) and you still don't have a sheet, ask if they need any help with character creation. Sometimes they do genuinely need the assistance figuring out features or setting something up in a VTT, and on rare occasions you might get a reasonable excuse from the player for not being prepared or able to make session 1 - life comes before the game, after all - but if you get a lukewarm response from them or an apology and some vague pledge to be ready by game time, take it with a grain of salt; those players tend to be very flaky, and even if they make session 1, you may have attendance issues down the line.

I highly recommend checking out the Laserllama martial reworks, they all offer a choice of exploits that do all of those things.

I mean, that sounds very much like a paladin in unapologetic violation of one or more of their oaths.

Yeah, the new W:TA book makes a note of how while the writers and publisher are legally prohibited from using real corporations like Exxon and Nestle, the players are not, and are encouraged to utilize those corporations and their real-life atrocities for gameplay purposes, and I think all the books specifically call out that this game is not something fascists will enjoy. Socioeconomics and Politics are part and parcel of WoD settings, and it'll be a poor game that takes a milquetoast stance on the economic violence inflicted on people by the banal evil of hypercapitalism, the same way it's a poor game that doesn't push characters in dark, bleak directions for everything from power to survival.

Yeah, based on past experience and the sheer amount of development hell this game has gone through, I'm pretty certain the only way this game is ever good is if it can pick up a community that supports and refines it to a lovable mess, the same way VTMB1 was. It was (and but for the scant recent announcements, still is) in such a state of uncertainty that they fucking refunded the preorders, and while it might just be a show of good faith, that doesn't ever happen unless the publisher has no hope the game will ever see the light of day.

I would love to be wrong and pleasantly surprised if/when this game does finally hit the storefront, but until that day I'm going to wallow in the knowledge that the game will never be as good as what we imagine it could be.