Generic Table top gaming.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

5 hours ago, mlooney said:

Just for the record, character death in the current playable versions of Traveller is a very optional rule.  And even in Classic Traveller there was an optional rule that made failing a survival check just mean that you aged 2 years instead of 4 and started play at that point. 

An old friend of mine somehow managed to cram the entirety of Classic Traveller's character generation system into an ABC-80 with 32K of RAM. It was amazing. We could generate characters very quickly and could even automate the process entirely. Near as I could tell it was entirely bug free.

Then my friend had a brilliant idea. He wanted to make an invincible supercharacter. So he set the function that rolled 2D6 to get an automatic outcome of 12.

(Stats are rolled with 2D6 in Classic Traveller, which was just where the fun began.)

So this guy with perfect and more than perfect stats enlisted in the Navy. He of course made all his commission and promotion rolls. He accumulated massive amounts of skills and laughed at survival rolls. He was unstoppable. And when the time for aging rolls arrived, he obviously breezed past them as well.

That was when his one little problem arrived. He was finishing his seventh and supposedly last term at age 46. He was looking forward to some truly epic mustering out benefits. But then it developed that he was not mustering out after all.

You see, if you rolled a '12' on your survival check, it meant that you were automatically re-enlisted for another term of service. Even if you were 46 or older. So the Navy refused to let him go. The same event of course repeated when he turned 50. And 54. He suffered mandatory re-enlistment again and again. And of course he never aged due to his amazing rolls. He was literally unstoppable. He couldn't stop even if he wanted to.

By the time he turned 134 years old my friend gave up and ended the program. At this time the guy had the skill set of a particularly obsessive-compulsive demigod and had presumably been promoted to command every single naval force in that entire galactic spiral arm regardless of its government of origin. His piloting skill was so high that he could make a moped perform a hyperspace jump. He was a living legend that wouldn't and couldn't die. He was tougher than Kimball Kinnison and John Carter of Mars put together. I think he had maybe one stat that wasn't an E or an F.

This guy would clearly have been an amazing PC but he would never arrive at that point. The Navy knew a good thing when it saw it. It was never letting him go. And I am kind of having a hard time blaming them.

[mlooney 3,417]

9 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

An old friend of mine somehow managed to cram the entirety of Classic Traveller's character generation system into an ABC-80 with 32K of RAM. It was amazing. We could generate characters very quickly and could even automate the process entirely. Near as I could tell it was entirely bug free.

I wrote a Traveller character generator for a C-64.  Fairly easy to do once you get the concept of arrays down.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

13 minutes ago, mlooney said:

. . . .  Fairly easy to do once you get the concept of arrays down.

But my boss won't give me a raise

 

[mlooney 3,417]

/me is that a pun?  Not sure.  Gonna give you a star with a footnote.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

4 hours ago, mlooney said:

/me is that a pun?  Not sure.  Gonna give you a star with a footnote.

Appropriate, since we were talking about Traveller.

[mlooney 3,417]

I need to start coding the massive star system generation blob that is the  World Builder's Handbook.  Of course I have Pennsic in just a few weeks, so I'm not really able to crunch down on it like I would normally.

[ProfessorTomoe 1,308]

On 7/10/2023 at 3:41 PM, Darth Fluffy said:

Take down opponent by resurrection

Now that is funny.

[mlooney 3,417]

3 hours ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

On 7/10/2023 at 3:41 PM, Darth Fluffy said:

Take down opponent by resurrection

Now that is funny.

As a long time DM I would rule that you can't do that.  Something about tanning the leather prevents it from becoming flesh again as my hand wave.  Of course, no player has tried that, they tend towards the various create/destroy/purify water spells cast on a living target as their low lever one shot kills effect.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

20 hours ago, mlooney said:

As a long time DM I would rule that you can't do that.  Something about tanning the leather prevents it from becoming flesh again as my hand wave.  Of course, no player has tried that, they tend towards the various create/destroy/purify water spells cast on a living target as their low lever one shot kills effect.

Easiest way is to say that the animal is happy in Elysium where it is and refuses to be resurrected. It's been a rule in the game for a long time that you can't raise or resurrect anyone or anything against their will, presumably to keep players from repeatedly raising and killing an enemy until their limit has been reached and they cannot be raised any more.

As for me, my necromancer preferred to use Finger of Death or Wail of the Banshee as her one shot kill effects. They were quite effective, particularly at the insane DC she had her saving throw at.

[mlooney 3,417]

19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

As for me, my necromancer preferred to use Finger of Death or Wail of the Banshee as her one shot kill effects. They were quite effective, particularly at the insane DC she had her saving throw at

Those are great at higher levels, but I have to deal with lower level characters that want magical instakills.   

[The Old Hack 2,448]

On 7/15/2023 at 3:16 PM, mlooney said:

Those are great at higher levels, but I have to deal with lower level characters that want magical instakills.   

You could magically instakill them? Then if they complain, tell them to be more careful what they wish for.

[mlooney 3,417]

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

You could magically instakill them? Then if they complain, tell them to be more careful what they wish for.

Yeah, but I try to restrict the spells a NPC magic user has to those listed in the Monster Manual and very few, if any, have water based spells, much less "create water"

[mlooney 3,417]

One D&D's 6th play test is out and the comment section is live now.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/ua/

[Darth Fluffy 302]

Intoximancy for 5e

I dunno. I read the author's comic, it's so-so.

 

[mlooney 3,417]

Hmm.  I restrict drunken master to monks..

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, mlooney said:

Hmm.  I restrict drunken master to monks..

I personally restrict Drunken Master to Jackie Chan movies.

[mlooney 3,417]

Drunken masters aside, there doesn't seem to be the mass of "prestige" classes (now subclasses) for 5e as there there was for 3.x.  Of course there wasn't a "gold rush" of products for 5e like there was for d20.  Lots were produced, but mainly adventures and monster books.

[Darth Fluffy 302]

20 minutes ago, mlooney said:

. . . and monster books.

. . . books with huge bindings that would climb over lesser books.

. . . or mimics in a book.

[mlooney 3,417]

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

1 hour ago, mlooney said:

?

 

[mlooney 3,417]

Mimics are a monster that disguises  it self as a chest or other piece of furniture.  This one is a bit larger than normal...

[Darth Fluffy 302]

Mimics - got to love the crochet patterns.

Mimic miniatures

Mimic books

This tree is one of my favorites. - Durkon was right!

[ijuin 572]

1 hour ago, Darth Fluffy said:

 

This tree is one of my favorites. - Durkon was right!

Trees are SO dangerous, in fact, that after we kill them, we burn the corpses just to make sure!

[mlooney 3,417]

The game store I used to go to had a full sized chest mimic for sale.  Well, a foam version of one any way.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

9 hours ago, mlooney said:

The game store I used to go to had a full sized chest mimic for sale.  Well, a foam version of one any way.

So it was literally foaming at its mouth?