Morrus
Frazzled

Even a sucker punch has a chance to be countered by someone with quick reflexes, and an attack action in D&D does not mean you strike once and that's it, but it is a time segment of around 6 seconds, during which you do all sorts of combat stuff but get #number of attacks chances to actually hit and do damage. Therefore, at first I did like Morrus thought, but the more I think about it, the normal initiative system is more balanced and fair.

Nice article and some interesting comments as well. Morrus, I have a fantasy coin generator too. It's based on the old Dragon Magazine article Coins in a Coffer. It was fun to make! https://www.findgamers.us/coins-in-a-coffer

Thanks to Morrus and BookBarbarian for the comments. I'll have to read the AiME books, and see how I feel... see whether I think low-magic can be done in 5e at all. High magic certainly does seem baked in by default, and that may be quite difficult to overcome for people who want "D&D". If it is as much about expectations as anything else, perhaps that is manageable. Otherwise, perhaps I'll look into TOR. I've learned from experience with Cypher System that getting a group into a whole new ruleset can be a lot more work than I may want to deal with, so I'd prefer 5e AiME if possible.

I just posted an in depth blog post on this topic: http://dicehaven.com/middle-earth/things-learned/ TLDR version: I love Adventures in Middle-earth but it does require a different approach to structuring game sessions and play. Very satisfying though! Thanks for this blog post! I picked up the Adventures in Middle-Earth Player's Guide and Loremaster book this weekend at Gencon on a whim, mostly because I want a strong low-magic setting and that seems impossible using the player's handbook (without disappointing nearly every player at the table). This seems to do that well, with a number of other neat systems. My friends loved the Journey system in The One Ring. (I do think he liked some of the mechanics in TOR better, but I'm definitely set on 5e for a few reasons.) Anyway, I greatly appreciate the post you linked. Morrus, did you ever get around to trying out Adventures in Middle Earth? If so, any comments on the experience?

Morrus

Morrus

Hi. I am only familiar with D&D as far back as AD&D 1st Edition and would very much like to learn about what the game was like before that - Races, Classes, Monsters, Cosmology, etc. Is there anything like a timeline listing when things appeared in the game? I seem to recall Morrus at one time had a pretty impressive timeline chart showing what was released when through all of D&D's history up to that time, but I'm not sure where he's hidden it or even if it's still on this site.

I've always felt that the Final Fantasy style of putting the PCs on one side and the monsters on the other, which was explicitly inspired by American football of all things, is a great reflection of the type of abstract combat that a lot of lazy DMs implement instead of actually tracking positions when using Theater of the Mind. That might well be, but I see the Final Fantasy screen as a division of the game table more than the battlefield. I really hope that FF players didn't see a 50-yard-line down the middle of their screens while fighting, despite the resemblance. Really? It's still more than the sorcerer gets. It's probably not fair, but I was comparing wizards to wizards. Maybe sorcerers don't need a lot of spells, but I was spoiled by D&D's wizards - limited only by the size of their spellbooks. For what it's worth, Morrus, I listened to the first half-hour of the podcast leading up to the end of this post, but still haven't heard about the Greatest D&D Video Game ever. Are there any plans to post podcast timestamps on the Podbean site?

Coding that information wouldn’t be too hard. What would be hard is all the data entry. It would take days of work to enter all the text of all the exploits etc. I haven’t even added the OLD, NOW, and 2000AD careers yet.Hey, Morrus, what does the php spreadsheet look like? I have a lot of the racial, career, and exploit data typed into an excel spreadsheet. Would you be able to use that easily?

Morrus Actually something just hit me. With your approach a person with six dice will have a higher chance of a critical failure than a person with five dice. Maybe a number of ones on two fewer dice than the total with an absolute minimum of two dice. This makes high dice pools almost impossible to critically fail but maybe that is okay for now. Your way isn't the end of the world. I like thinking about the probabiliities etc... Thanks again for the info.

@Morrus Will you post a link to your completed tool? I do PHP as well, this is a tool of mine. I'm sure you'll recognize this Fantasy Coin Calculator from an old Dragon Magazine article. Which brings up a question of my own, have there been any newer articles like Coins in a Coffer? I wouldn't mind adding a new feature or two.

It's going to have to be Morrus, my changes aren't sticking. Morrus, just checking in case you haven't noticed this needs attention, please add http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?593300-Guide-How-to-Win-Fights-and-Intimidate-People-(Another-Barbarian-Primer)&highlight=barbarian to the op. No one else has been able to make it stick. Last time it was brought up was when you weren't here.

How long till we should see the POD on Drivethru? It took 16 days for chapter 1. Start looking for it in about 2 weeks. That includes the time for the proof copy to be printed and sent to @Morrus for approval. EDIT: Ninja'd by @Morrus with a better explanation. Figures. :D And welcome to the boards, Benathalis. Have some xp.

Morrus Not to get off track here too far but assuming I wanted to play a sci-fi game some time where does N.E.W. fall on the metagame axis?

It's still there (and still dead-ish). Just bumping for Morrus attention.

Morrus: Delta Green was originally a Call of Cthulhu setting (that, over some time, produced quite a line). Now, it's a stand-alone game working on the Basic engine. Just for completeness' sake!

First of all, thank you Morrus for the report! .... But did you also get to test the new warhammer fantasy rpg?

Knightfall I don't see why not Morrus?

Sometimes a PC initiates combat and then the DM asks for initiative. That player then argues they should go first. Surprise rounds etc. have been (IMO) inelegantly used in these situations over various editions. I’m toying with a minor house rule — if somebody unexpectedly starts the fight, they don’t roll initiative. Everybody else does, then the person who started it goes first, with their initiative one point ahead of the first person to react. Might try that next game session! . I think I would resolve the Players stated action and then roll initiative.

No, but more info coming soon! http://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/you-keep-using-that-word-gif-3.gif

Sometimes a PC initiates combat and then the DM asks for initiative. That player then argues they should go first. And the next encounter, when the people talking to the party suddenly attack them, the same player cries "Why are they going first? Why don't I get to roll initiative?" :-) What is wrong with the surprise rule?

This seems like an unusual standard to hold D&D rules to. Its not I just wanted to see how far I could blow out the Tinkerer class just because. Tinkerers are not hte industrial revolution they are just fast at making stuff and they do not get it for free which is the balancing thing. Even using RL examples like the Venetian Arsenal they can't out produce mundane means unless you have a lot of them (1 for 1 they can). If you wanted a magitech campaign they are fine for example they might not fit a low magic setting though. But using a bit of imagination you could have tinkerer powered orbital shipyard in Spelljammer where they could crank out ships, it fits the setting and if you have all the worlds to ply getting a few tinkerers would not be that hard. You could also have something like Leonardo Da Vinchi's workshop, Tinkerer+artificer tag team combo on Eberron, tinkerer constructs the airship the artificer empowers it. They are not as efficient as RL industry but are better than...

Sometimes a PC initiates combat and then the DM asks for initiative. That player then argues they should go first. The DM then explains to that player that while their PC does indeed begin taking whatever action they have chosen to initiate combat, the way we find out whether the PC completes its action uninterrupted or the action is interrupted by the action(s) of one or more characters or monsters is by making an opposed Dexterity check called Initiative. Surprise rounds etc. have been (IMO) inelegantly used in these situations over various editions. I agree. Not only is it inelegant to use surprise in such situations, but in 5th Ed. it also requires a tortured reading of the phrase “notice a threat “. I’m toying with a minor house rule — if somebody unexpectedly starts the fight, they don’t roll initiative. Everybody else does, then the person who started it goes first, with their initiative one point ahead of the first person to react. Might try that next game session! ....

Sometimes a PC initiates combat and then the DM asks for initiative. That player then argues they should go first. Surprise rounds etc. have been (IMO) inelegantly used in these situations over various editions. I’m toying with a minor house rule — if somebody unexpectedly starts the fight, they don’t roll initiative. Everybody else does, then the person who started it goes first, with their initiative one point ahead of the first person to react. Might try that next game session! . What I do is if the enemy isn't expecting it and the other PCs aren't, either, I give that one PC a surprise round. If the enemy is on guard, but isn't ready to draw their weapons in an instant, I will give the PC in question a circumstance bonus to initiative.

That's helpful - where did you find that? The figures I've found for 2017 said 174,000 turnstile, and "900+" exhibitors. Local german newspaper...I´m living in this area and I´m going to Essen for the last...20 (?) years. :D

Sometimes a PC initiates combat and then the DM asks for initiative. That player then argues they should go first. Surprise rounds etc. have been (IMO) inelegantly used in these situations over various editions. I’m toying with a minor house rule — if somebody unexpectedly starts the fight, they don’t roll initiative. Everybody else does, then the person who started it goes first, with their initiative one point ahead of the first person to react. Might try that next game session! . From a player's perspective, I'd see that as incentive to start a fight if I thought there was a chance a situation could come to blows. That may be good or bad depending on the type of game you're running.

It is readable and useable. What an odd thing to say. I added a ":P" to make the joke-y tone more clear.

Just butting my head in, but the Galactic Sentience Catalog of over 40 new races is coming out very soon. Oh cool, thanks ;) I really REALLY like the Starship Recognition Manuel BTW...

Oh, cool. Where did you find that? My Google fu failed me! It's not official, so it's not something where I really trust the number, but it does match my own perception. http://denaghdesign.com/pax-unplugged-it/#identifier_0_687 It's a great convention, excellent site, and having the PAX name on it sure helps, but I think the timing of the convention (right after American Thanksgiving) means it won't be able to break into the top tier of gaming conventions.

Turns out D&D with a lot of the magic stripped out doesn’t work too well, at least in our experience. Magic or spells? It seems to me there is a lot of magic in LotR, just not a lot of spells. I have run D&D games where we had no magic users and it seemed to work completely normally. But we've always had some magic. I never really thought about it, but I have always, unintentionally, run low magic campaigns as my players tend to go for martial characters or at most a multi-class martial/magic. I haven't had a full caster in my group since 1991! Maybe that is why I never really encountered the linear fighter / quadratic wizard problem

But they aren’t making 5E. They’re making Pathfinder. That’s a bit like saying “I’d be more excited about ice cream if it was a steak”.Actually I'm lactose intolerant so I could get behind that...

Yep, we played it weekly for about 3 months. Our impression was that we felt The One Ring was a better system to run Middle Earth in. Turns out D&D with a lot of the magic stripped out doesn’t work too well, at least in our experience. Would you mind elaborating on your thoughts about magic? How do you find that it doesn't work well? I am interested in running a low magic game* and, after pouring through the forums, have consistently seen AiME pointed to as the best example of low magic rules. Having read the AiME player's guide and the chapter on magic in the loremaster's guide, I would like to use some of its ideas in my campaign--maybe having classes with access to thematically limited or reskinned spells instead of the AiME default. I'm not really planning to set my game in Middle Earth, so using The One Ring wouldn't help me. I'm just curious to know where AiME's low magic rules go wrong. Thanks! *by low magic I mean rare magic but not necessarily weak magic.

But they aren’t making 5E. They’re making Pathfinder. That’s a bit like saying “I’d be more excited about ice cream if it was a steak”. The analogy is more like "I'd be more excited by this ice cream if it was Strawberry rather than Macha Green Tea flavored, or the Chocolate that WotC is producing" They are making D&D, the comparison is like to like, just differing in details. Haven't played any, probably won't. I was interested in the life path character generation, but that has proven not to be very fun at all, and not at all streamlined. Still better than abstract point buy systems, but half-baked. What I really love, however, are the Archetypes, and how they replace multiclassing and Prestige Classes entirely.

It would still be *called* Pathfinder, but that’s just a label. It wouldn’t be Pathfinder in any meaningful sense. I'll be honest, with only one edition of Pathfinder released, and that edition derived from another game anyway, I'd have trouble defining what the intrinsic characteristics of Pathfinder are.

But they aren’t making 5E. They’re making Pathfinder. That’s a bit like saying “I’d be more excited about ice cream if it was a steak”. But they could make Pathfinder more like 5e. Nothing is stopping them other than their design intent. A brand has no immutable characteristics other than what its owners choose to give it. They could make PF2e a d100 roll under system, and it would still be Pathfinder.

You choose how much you want to pay. You pay an amount of your choice per item, up to the monthly limit you set. So if you decide you want to pay $2 per item, but no more than $8 per month, you'll be charged $2 per item, but no more than $8 per month. In other words, it's pay-what-you-want. Got it thanks. Thats what I suspected but definitely clarifies things. Found a couple things on there Im gonna pick up tomorrow.

Oh, absolutely. If what you want is 5E, and your main criticism is that something isn’t 5E, Pathfinder isn’t for you. What CapnZapp has expressed a desire for isn't 5E, but a game incorporating the OGL lessons from 5E while providing a different, crunchier experience. This is something PF2 could have been.

I do kinda feel like “D&D Advanced” is the pitch which would appeal to me. I haven’t seen it yet (my preorder is yet to arrive, and I can’t read long PDFs) but it’s still my major anticipated game for that exact reason.I think a lot of folks would like that option. I don't think that is what PF2 is, however. It seems much more aimed at streamlining PF's complexity while maintaining its fiddliness appeal and baking in the setting lore more than PF1. Does that make it a Fantasy Heartbreaker? Possibly, though it would still be the largest and most successful one.