TheGreatDarkness @ TheGreatDarkness @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

Not on 3.5 per se, but I had years long GM burnout after running my first Pathfinder 1e campaign. Bad memories from it were what actually kept me from giving Pathfinder 2e a chance for a long time.

Does the existence of a whale make it wrong to call an elephant big?

OSR has a vocal minority or reacitonaries giving it bad name. But even among perpetually online, they're a minority. Facebook had two OSR fan groups - one for reactionaries (it's now deleted) and other being very welcoming and progressive. The latter had ten times as many members.

PF2 is probably best game to play shonen protagonists, I'll give it that.

Being less complex than 3.5 isn't indicator of being simple, that bar is on the floor.

Okay, explain to me why do you need rules for holding your breath in 5e. Because that's a good example of too many rules, in OSR you would use something already existing.

And you do you, but really the OSR tend to teach players to find ways to avoid rolling altogether by stacking deck in their favor before attempting something.

Played in few one-shots, wish I could get into a longer game but I'm busy between running 5e, playing Vampire and trying to get second campaign in fate or BitD going.

Also because if they made a simple system, they wouldn';t be able to sell more books.

On the other hand, if you had basic rules be flexible and understandable enough, you could by common sense apply them to most of situations and devs could focus on polishing the edges where you would need a specific rules, which should be few and far in-between.

But at this point why even have rules? A “good GM” can just entirely improvise a system. On the other hand,. if you're the slave to rules, are you even still the GM or just a refferee? It's a sliding scale people fall on, honestly. 5e tried to have it cake and eat it too, insert itself in the middle. You could argue it succeeded, but that makes people naturally drift away from it in either direction. I just think we tend to forget the scale goes both ways and there are more options than Pathfinder with rules for everything.

You see, OSR fans would argue both 5e and Pathfinder have broken core rules engine because if it was well designed, you could apply it to all situations and wouldn't need separate rules for every minutia. By these standards 5e is crunch heavy with unnecessary things like "how to hold your breath"

I once again recommend the video, as it adresses both your points.

For the love of god, try games that aren't 5e or Pathfinder

Some good inspirations:

Master Cyclonis from Storm Hawks is basically what happens when you put personality of generic evil overlord into a body of snarky teeenage goth girl. She has a tendency of putting people off in a "expected someone taller" way.

Arcane actually has a lot of interesting female villains, with Jinx as a villain protagonist on a downward spiral, Sevika as a ruthless, but loyal criminal enforcer and Ambessa Medarda as a cutthroat politician.

Avatar: the Last Airbender, has, of course, Azula, who is damn good complex character.

Lady from the Chronicles of the Black Company is one of best written evil overlords in fantasy genre.

That's why I've said "as written". I'm sure this was designed by people who hold the mindsets that doesn't do reflavoring (the recent feat allowing you use deck of cards as spellcasting focus from Book of Many Things is another good example) and also thinks Fighter and Barbarian and Monk are just "guys at the gym". Sadly same sentiments were in WotC since 3rd edition, hence why options martial should get were all given cringy anime names and relegated to new classes and explicit called magic by the text.

Back in reddit days this community made it very clear that Rangers are casters to them, up to having memes about it.

Nah, a lot of the anime are having their own magic systems - chakra, nen, stands, pacts. It's common to sometimes make mundane look like supernatural (Demon Slayer), but generally if someone teleports most anime would qualify that as a magic use.

While I agree with the Steel Wind Strike being an insult to put on a wizard and none of the martial classes, this is a bad argument because pretty much every anime swordsman who would pull out a shit like Steel Wind Strike as it is written, is explicit supernatural. I get your sentiment but this is a very flawed, easy to dismantle argument.

And that level 6 feature alone is a slap in the face to Monk players.

My last session the party spent 3 out of 4 hours of the session sitting down to discuss their various issues that accumullated over the course of the campaign. It was nice, I had very little to do and enjoyed their roleplay.