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mlooney

Generic Table top gaming.

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6 minutes ago, mlooney said:

For all it's faults, at least 5e hasn't come out with dozens of character books and character "builds"  aren't  a big thing, and is optional.  3.x had way to many splat books.  Based on what I've seen in One D&D I'm hopeful for 5.5

I'll keep my eye out. I had high hopes for the Pathfinder fork, and it is not bad, nor is it great. I think coming out with a 2nd edition hurt their brand; muddied the waters.

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2 hours ago, mlooney said:

It's been a decade or so since I've played 3.5  Does a 20 auto save or was that a house rule?

20 was auto save. 1 was auto fail. We had a huge discussion about whether we should do away with auto fail one time. Ironically enough I was the deciding factor. It happened in a massive boss fight where the Big Bad was a massive slaad. My sorceress cast a death spell on it with a fort save of 29 (mostly because I couldn't think of anything else to do, I did not expect it to work). The boss slaad had a +200 fort modifier. It rolled a '1' and died.

After that we changed the rules so automatic fail could no longer happen. :danshiftyeyes:

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3 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

20 was auto save. 1 was auto fail. We had a huge discussion about whether we should do away with auto fail one time. Ironically enough I was the deciding factor. It happened in a massive boss fight where the Big Bad was a massive slaad. My sorceress cast a death spell on it with a fort save of 29 (mostly because I couldn't think of anything else to do, I did not expect it to work). The boss slaad had a +200 fort modifier. It rolled a '1' and died.

After that we changed the rules so automatic fail could no longer happen. :danshiftyeyes:

I like the notion that no matter how crazy prepared you are, things can go badly for you; that's how things really shake out. But not 5% of the time. It should be a rare, truly rare event, and how prepared and skilled you are should matter for mitigation. So summing all of that up, the rules normally handle the bias toward preparedness and skill well, and making a reasonable rare exception would be overly complicated for very little benefit, unless you like rolling dice a lot. So probably best to ignore the fantastic fail.

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While a 20 is an auto hit and a 1 is an auto miss in 5e, the same can't be said about saving throws and ability checks.  They are just high or low numbers.  The 1st One D&D release's rule mods made a 20 an auto success and a 1 an auto fail for all d20 rolls.  This was removed in all other drops after much screaming about it by playtesters.

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2 hours ago, mlooney said:

While a 20 is an auto hit and a 1 is an auto miss in 5e, the same can't be said about saving throws and ability checks.  They are just high or low numbers.  The 1st One D&D release's rule mods made a 20 an auto success and a 1 an auto fail for all d20 rolls.  This was removed in all other drops after much screaming about it by playtesters.

A friend of mine told me that in one of the editions you could only hit the Tarrasque if you rolled a '1'. To him that sounded like, "Even your hits automatically miss." I admit that makes the darn thing even scarier.

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12 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

A friend of mine told me that in one of the editions you could only hit the Tarrasque if you rolled a '1'. To him that sounded like, "Even your hits automatically miss." I admit that makes the darn thing even scarier.

The current Tarrasque AC is 25.  This means that a character a 1st level character with a 20 strength/dexterity/spell casting score hits on an 18 or better.  18-19 hits on a 19 or better and below that hits on critical hit only.  At a level more expected to take on a Tarrasque (i.e 20th)  a 20 ability score means you hit on a 14 or better.  Add immunities  and reflective carapace it's not going to be an easy fight.  There is a modern weapon with more or less the same name.  Uberpowerful?  Not really it's a French 20mm single barreled antiaircraft gun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20mm_Tarasque 

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1 hour ago, mlooney said:

The current Tarrasque AC is 25.  This means that a character a 1st level character with a 20 strength/dexterity/spell casting score hits on an 18 or better.  18-19 hits on a 19 or better and below that hits on critical hit only.  At a level more expected to take on a Tarrasque (i.e 20th)  a 20 ability score means you hit on a 14 or better.  Add immunities  and reflective carapace it's not going to be an easy fight.  There is a modern weapon with more or less the same name.  Uberpowerful?  Not really it's a French 20mm single barreled antiaircraft gun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20mm_Tarasque 

The historical legendary Tarasque is indeed French. It is much less impressive than its D&D counterpart.

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

So how much AC do the various aircraft they are shooting at have? :danshiftyeyes:

Depends on how you define AC. If in terms making them hard to hit, massively high.  If in terms on taking damage from close order explosions or even direct hits, depends on the aircraft.  Either way you've got to toss hundreds of round up into the air to hit an aircraft.  While modern radar assisted guns reduce the number of rounds needed, it's still in the dozens and that assumes a low and slow aircraft, normally helicopter.  On the other hand largeish drones are being taken out via AAA fire in Ukraine.  Given that they are low and slow and don't attempt to "doge" out of the way they are fairly easy to hit.  Small drones, not so much.  It's seen videos where they are taken out like skeet by shot-gunners.

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Red, of Overly Sarcastic Productions, gave an interesting rundown on the Tarasque.  Mentioning the D&D variant before going into the French legend that included the Biblical St Martha.  

Why did I not hear of this in my High School French class or in Sunday School?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4sVmnfz9Wk

 

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1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Red, of Overly Sarcastic Productions, gave an interesting rundown on the Tarasque.  Mentioning the D&D variant before going into the French legend that included the Biblical St Martha.  

Why did I not hear of this in my High School French class or in Sunday School?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4sVmnfz9Wk

 

"He's a dude, but he glows and his head is floating.  It's another dude, who also glows and his head also floats and he's wearing a dress."

I forgot just how many monster manuals they put out for 3.5.  At least they give them better names that "Monster Manual II, Monster Manual III".  They also really only put out 3 new monster books and even they have non monster bits in them.

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33 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

This sounds like somthing from the politics thread.

 

Ah, yeah, well, yeah, something like that.

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On 6/9/2023 at 2:04 PM, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Why did I not hear of this in my High School French class or in Sunday School?

Well I hear that there is an almost criminal lack of D&D games in Sunday School's curriculum.

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16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Well I hear that there is an almost criminal lack of D&D games in Sunday School's curriculum.

Way back in the day, like 76 or 77 the DM for one of my games was an Episcopal priest, just for what it's worth. 

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I just got the Mongoose Traveller World Builders Handbook.  I know what I'm going to be doing for the next several weeks, coding up a Perl script to generate subsectors and output a LaTeX document.

 

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On 6/30/2023 at 2:10 PM, mlooney said:

I just got the Mongoose Traveller World Builders Handbook.  I know what I'm going to be doing for the next several weeks, coding up a Perl script to generate subsectors and output a LaTeX document.
 

Is it much of a change?

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Depends on what you mean.  It's a massive change compared to the traditional Traveller means of generation a main world of a system.  It's the most complex of any of the expanded system generation books.

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The more I read the Worlds Builder's Handbook the more I realize that I'm going to need to write scripts to even use it.  They even mention in the intro "This World
Builder’s Handbook takes a different tact than the DSE, focusing on a methodology more structured and compatible with formulas and automation (although any automation of the math and programming are outside the scope of this book)".  The more I read it, the more complex it seems to be.  

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I think I'm scared now, give how complex some of the math has been so far
 

Quote

MEAN TEMPERATURE
Warning: This section is the most mathematics-heavy of the book, though there will be tables to bypass the need to calculate everything. A Referee could spend an inordinate amount of time accounting for complicated but essentially insignificant temperature profiles. In most cases, the only temperature needed for describing a world is the basic temperature, which can be used as the mean temperature.  

 

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And we have this:

 

Quote

Rule five: All of the equations below except the mean temperature are probably wrong, at leastunder certain conditions. Climate scientists with supercomputers do not always agree on models for temperature effects and even when their models agree, the results can be indeterminate.

 

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35 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I do not object to math heavy games, at least not their existence. But I feel no urge to play them.

Traveller has always been math heavy, but not during play.  The math takes place during design phases.

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56 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Someone clearly put too much thought into it. Sounds cumbersome.

 

Yeah.  I'm not sure if I'm going to implement the whole of the temperature thing or not.

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