Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guimo" data-source="post: 4288899" data-attributes="member: 69007">I'm still waiting for my 4e books and have tried to keep away from prereleases and any compiled stuff so excuse any barbarism I can mention.I've been playing roleplaying games since 1990 and have been DM in enough adventures to understand that any book in any RPG are just a set of rules ready to be broken. If anything takes longer than 5 minutes to understand, discard it and make a house rule. If you tell me 4e is easier to understand for everyone then it is a plus and not a hindrance. If you say its not as complex but it can manage almost everything then its a plus and not a hindrance. And if you think something is a hindrance then take a pen and start making house rules.One of the best games we had with my party was when a friend found 10 pages from one of the first TSR attempts on a space RPG (Star Frontiers was the name?). Those pages barely had some information for some races, some combat, some weapons and some skill descriptions. The rest was pure imagination. It was one of the best adventures we played ever. Starships, drug dealing, large corporations. It was pure teamwork and loads of fun. I remember playing this awesome strange blob like race called Dralasith, able to take strange amorphous shapes but gaining no real combat advantage from any form. I used some PlayDoh to represent myself. Fun, fun, fun.At the same time one of the most boring games I ever played was with a party where the cleric only wanted to heal himself first and always saved a heal spell for himself because he was more important (yes... he was Lawful Good go figure) because the DM had ruled that only people who survived the combat received XP, so players tried to stretch the rules at any length in order to make their characters survive. Things like: My character wont get hit by this lightning bolt I fired against the wall because I fired it with a 37.5 degrees of inclination and when it rebounds again on the ceiling it will pass over my head hitting the rogue behind me (I was the rogue)... Discussions and more discussions... lost time... Boring boring boring.I have played with parties who didnt liked miniatures at all, parties who used them on a minimum level and parties who brought bucketloads of miniatures (literally... all the trunk of the car of their DM was full of minis).I have played in parties where you were able to play many sessions without a single combat being fought and parties where having a session without a good fight was considered a wasted session.So, at the end, it all depends on your party and what each party considers funny. Lots of different people in this small world.I really dont understand how skills work in this new system as I havent read the rules yet but I liked the 3e method. I think it wasn't a waste of time at all. It all depends on how you want to consider skills. For us, each skill had its benefits. In order to create a set of magic armor or weapon +5, you had to succeed a check of at least 60 (50 for +4, 40 for +3, 30 for +2, 20 for +1) and take the appropiate time (you have to craft a masterwork weapon to imbue powerful magic). Of course you can do some math and understand that being a level 20 character with 23 in your weaponsmith skill and +5 for your ability bonuses and rolling a 20 in your dice will just bring you to 48... how to get the remaining points? Quest for an item or artifact, quest for a tutor, quest to build the best forge so that you can get more bonuses, adventure, roleplaying... being recognized as the best weaponsmith in the world... priceless...Same with Diplomacy, stealth, heal (nice rule, healers were able to bring you back even if you were past -10 depending on your skill level), perform (able to charm creatures depending on levels and your skill). We had this Kender once who had such good Gem Cutting skills that increased all the party treasure value just by giving him any gem and enough time. Loads of money... if you were able to find the kender and make him return the gem he found in your pocket of course...So, never follow the rules. Bend them, break them, ignore them, import rules from other games and adapt them to your game. If anyone wants to play a swashbucker go on and help him make the best character and create moments he can use the character (like the Samurai someone mentioned, it sucked, but depends on the DM to make it memorable). On the end the objective is that all the players in your party have a good time and keep coming each session. Play by the rules... die by the rules.Luck!Guimo</blockquote>

Verification