Best Version of DnD?

[Unruly]

See, I'm both a fan of the options and not a fan of the options. At a certain point things go crazy and you get all sorts of power creep because the designers and testers can't test every last combo, but the hive mind of the Internet can. But, at the same time, sometimes a simple reskinning of an existing class or whatever isn't enough to get the character that you want, and homebrewing isn't in everyone's wheelhouse.

 

That said, I recently found a very, very good article on homebrewing monsters in D&D 5e. It's amazing, actually. It's over The Angry GM, and it's called Monster Building 201: The D&D Monster Dissection Guide, and it takes the monster creation rules of the DMG, breaks them down, reorganizes the process to make things more understandable, and then walks you through the whole process of making a monster. By the end, you can actually look at a monster's stat block and work your way through it to see how the D&D team got the CR for it if you wanted.

 

It's given me a whole bunch of ideas for building new monsters to throw at my players if we ever get back to playing. Especially now that I have a good resource for comprehending the monster creation rules.

[TheAuldGrump]

7 hours ago, Sylverthorne said:

 

Yar. I mean.. in Pathfinder, you have some choices. Too many, for some people's liking, I know. I enjoy the flexibility, myself....

One of Pathfinder's hybrid classes is the brawler; essentially takes the mystic foofaw out of the monk and gives them some of the fighter's advantages.

Or you can archetype a fighter.. I seem to recall a bare-fist archetype existing for a lot of classes, come to think of it. I managed to set up an effective weaponless rogue once... there's some neat things you can do with rogue talents in PF. That was amusing, given the character's appearance and the company she kept, no one expected her to haul off and be capable of knocking some poor sucker out in one blow.

 

But for systems that don't give you that flexibility, or something like it? The monk will probably fit better than the fighter, even if you have to rename and re-flavor a few of the special abilities. I don't know from 5e, and haven't tried building a character out of the SRD for that kind of thing (I usually start simple, if I'm mucking with a system I'm not familiar with, and making a brawler out of a monk or fighter isn't simple to my mind), but ... speaking from the GM's perspective, your friend was limiting himself. Especially for a one-shot. That's my opinion, mind; and may be taken with however much salt is needed. ^^;

I have a brawler in my Rise of the Runelords game - when in an actual brawl (pubs, taverns, and houses of negotiable repute) he deals non lethal damage - those fights are for fun.

 

When he is in a serious fight, he goes for lethal.

 

He has the distinction of being the character that has been bailed out more than any other characters that I have had in my game (to the point where one of the guards told him 'we have your usual room ready').

 

And, yeah - even just changing the name has an immediate effect on the way people play the class.

 

The Auld Grump

[PaganMegan]

Eric is surprisingly good as a brawler. Until he started playing McBrawn I had not been that impressed by him, except for tactics. I think McBrawn is the first time I have seen him having fun just being his character, not only in combat.

 

And you left out the bragging! He starts off ALL his fights, fun or deadly, with an Intimidate check.

 

 

[Doug Sundseth]

13 hours ago, Unruly said:

See, I'm both a fan of the options and not a fan of the options. At a certain point things go crazy and you get all sorts of power creep because the designers and testers can't test every last combo, but the hive mind of the Internet can. But, at the same time, sometimes a simple reskinning of an existing class or whatever isn't enough to get the character that you want, and homebrewing isn't in everyone's wheelhouse.

 

I can understand that. But my primary RPG for a very long time was Fantasy Hero, so I got used to saying things like, "Yes, by the rules that totally works. Nope; not going to happen in this game."

 

If I think that my ruling will break a character's build (and if I think the player wasn't trying to be abusive), I have no problem with allowing a rebuild at that point. But I really don't care as much about the "Rules as Written" as "That way lies no fun."

[PaganMegan]

That sounds like a reason not to play Fantasy Hero.

 

I remember Dunc describing character generation in Champions the same way, and Eric used to play Rifts - which may be the least balanced game EVAR.

 

I don't think I have ever seen anything THAT unbalancing in D&D or Pathfinder.

 

Not something that would any GM I have played with could not work around anyway.

 

4e tried to balance everything, and it sucked in the opposite way. It was the least fun I have ever had with a game. The only game that I would call a real stinker.

 

Grump will talk about Mega, or Fatal. Games I have only heard of. He LIKED Role master, and that is a game that I will never, ever play.

[Doug Sundseth]

Hero System (which includes Champions and Fantasy Hero, among others) is quite well balanced for sensible builds. And it does a very good job of warning you which powers are most likely to cause serious problems (like time travel). But it gives you rules for pretty much anything you can think of, and some of those things, especially when combined, can be real problems, especially in games not intended for them.

 

It's kind of like using the C language: you can do nearly anything, including make really bad choices. 

 

Not for everyone, but it's still my preferred game.

[PaganMegan]

Don't get me wrong. Dunc wuvs Champions, but he has horror stories, made worse by his not seeing that they ARE horror stories!

 

He LIKES the unbalanced builds!

 

Grump crunches numbers. He will tell you if a build looks unbalanced. (Eric and points based builds. He will dump two or three stats to get one great one. Then wonder what went wrong.)

 

On the other hand, Grump likes his characters to REALLY suck at something, but trying to do it anyway. Why bother being bad at Diplomacy if you are never going to use it? Why bother having a low DEX if you are never going to spill your drink? Low STR? Try to carry a LIBRARY in your backpack! High INT and CHA? Go for a REALLY low WIS and fall for EVERY sob story!

[TheAuldGrump]

Fantasy Hero isn't that bad, really.

 

It just did not get a strong local community, and, yeah... someone setting out to break the system really could.

 

But they kinda had to set out to do the breaking - rules lawyers and twinks can happen in any game.

 

3.X is better balanced, but also less flexible - so, yeah, a GM did have to watch out for the twinks - the character generation is less structured in Fantasy Hero.

 

For that matter, GURPS can be broken by dedicated twinks.

 

Don't blame the game for the players.

 

Rifts on the other hand... yeah, no excuse - Palladium did not even try to balance things.

 

The Auld Grump

[Unruly]

FATAL is basically a joke of a game. It's also seriously demented. I kid you not, there are a lot of spells and abilities whose sole purpose is to shove things up butts, literally, and there's even a stat that you have to roll called anal circumference. I've never played it, but I've seen excerpts of the rules and it does not look like fun at all.

 

That said, I also have a few GURPS books, and I do want to eventually, sometime, when I have the hours and hours required to do it right, play the game. I had bought it with plans to make a Cyberpunk setting that wasn't Shadowrun and I didn't have access to Cyberpunk 2020. I got the 2 core books and High Tech, which doesn't cover as much as I thought it would. But by the time I had the funds to buy Biotech and Ultratech they were out of print and only available as PDFs. Which seems to be the ultimate fate of every GURPS book except the core two. Steve Jackson Games should really do a print on demand option, I think. 

[TheAuldGrump]

1 minute ago, Unruly said:

FATAL is basically a joke of a game. It's also seriously demented. I kid you not, there are a lot of spells and abilities whose sole purpose is to shove things up butts, literally, and there's even a stat that you have to roll called anal circumference. I've never played it, but I've seen excerpts of the rules and it does not look like fun at all.

 

That said, I also have a few GURPS books, and I do want to eventually, sometime, when I have the hours and hours required to do it right, play the game. I had bought it with plans to make a Cyberpunk setting that wasn't Shadowrun and I didn't have access to Cyberpunk 2020. I got the 2 core books and High Tech, which doesn't cover as much as I thought it would. But by the time I had the funds to buy Biotech and Ultratech they were out of print and only available as PDFs. Which seems to be the ultimate fate of every GURPS book except the core two. Steve Jackson Games should really do a print on demand option, I think. 

F.A.T.A.L. is pretty much unplayable by anyone with even a modicum of self respect - when it comes to ridiculous systems though... look up Spawn of Fashan - I was honestly hoping that a D20 version would come out at the peak of the D20 glut - and I would have bought it! I have seen one (1!) legitimate copy, in over thirty years since its release.

 

It was bad - but a much, much happier bad than F.A.T.A.L.

 

Kids doing party stuff right now, so the LARP part of the evening is waiting until the apples have been bobbed. Megan is doing the Witch's room - pitch dark room, and gross things being passed around, while Megan gives the PCs a prophecy. (Peeled grapes for eyeballs, spaghetti for veins, rubber glove filled with cold jello for her severed hand....)

 

The Auld Grump

[Unruly]

Oh god. I just looked up an in-depth review of Spawn of Fashan. It's hard to say if I'd rather attempt playing it or FATAL.

[TheAuldGrump]

Tired Grumps that have had too much mead have strange dreams....

 

I dreamed that I was running a Patfinder game, the god of which was called The Management - for both Good, Evil, and all alignments in between.

 

Wizards cast spells by accessing source code, while clerics had to deal with outsourced Product Support....

 

The Auld Grump

[BlazingTornado]

I'm no cartographer. I wouldn't even know where to begin designing my own locales. I'm way better at having a general idea of the type of thing I want, then finding battlemaps online that fit my idea well enough and working it all together....

 

But this newest thing I have planned is proving to be harder to find than I thought... a decent castle or keep that has a layout that works for both good encounter set-ups and still remains enough of a castle/keep that the players can settle in it as their own.

Anyone know of any?

[Doug Sundseth]

1 hour ago, BlazingTornado said:

I'm no cartographer. I wouldn't even know where to begin designing my own locales. I'm way better at having a general idea of the type of thing I want, then finding battlemaps online that fit my idea well enough and working it all together....

 

But this newest thing I have planned is proving to be harder to find than I thought... a decent castle or keep that has a layout that works for both good encounter set-ups and still remains enough of a castle/keep that the players can settle in it as their own.

Anyone know of any?

 

Not too hard to find floor plans of historical castles.

 

For big names, you could start with the Tower of London, Krak des Chevaliers, Kyoto Castle, Beaumaris, Chateau Gaillard, Burg Trifels, ....

 

It might help to have some idea what sort of encounters you're looking to run. An assignation in a formal garden might not work especially well in the same castle that you're running the escape from the dungeon or the aerial raid on the great hall.

[TheAuldGrump]

Look at Darkfuries Publishing. Their Masterwork Maps series is very good. They have both collections of smaller scale maps and a few individual maps in scale for battle maps.

 

 

The Auld Grump