Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[Velderan]

Random thought du jour:

I saw a vehicle on the road today. It looked like a regular vehicle, and I was thinking about how it was in good condition. But nothing that special- they were a dime a dozen not that long ago.

And then I saw that it had an antique license plate.

It's that feeling you get when you first notice that the rebellious music you loved as a college student is playing in the elevator.

That’s up there with the endless debate on what is considered a retro video game console. The PS1? You’re nuts! That was released only.. thinks for a minute 29 years ago? Never mind, carry on with your retro PS1 discussion!

 

[Ryujin]

The problem is you usually don't need to do a trade-off. Just bring a rogue or other skill enhanced class, let them most focus on their combat abilities, but make sure you have commonest support skills. Yeah, you may miss some that a really skill focused character will, but unless the GM is just hammered on that, its not going to be that visible, and its rarely going to risk getting someone killed.

Our DM was a pretty role playing intensive guy so not having someone with interaction skills was a necessity. I took a CHA based caster so that I could fill the role and then MCed into Bard to make it really pay off. A few Rituals really beef up the interaction abilities. As in make them pretty much broken. With the combination of Skills and Rituals I filled in all the blanks left by all the fire eating characters. Even our Cleric concentrated more on combat than he did healing.

Well, that's the gig; lots of other games have some pretty easy ways to have your cake and eat it too, or don't actually tie up most of the basic character design with combat. An old-school typical RuneQuest character would probably want to maintain whatever one-handed melee weapon and shield he used, probably a ranged weapon, and give some attention to a backup weapon like a shortsword or a dagger. But that left plenty of training time for Oratory, Persuade, his Perception skills and the like if he wanted to do so.

With the D&D sphere (outside of, to some degree 13th Age since Backgrounds are disconnected from class), you really want to take one of the classes that support skill use if you want to have it good, and those are usually not as direct combatants (though some, as you noted, do a lot of valuable combat support depending on class and the specific system).

I well remember how DragonQuest could be easily broken, for combat. Just keep making up Summoner characters until you got one who summoned a greater demon to train you in the combat skills of your choice and suddenly you were a virtual god. As a result you could take time to train in literally anything else.

I think that TORG was rather unique in that all of the published material required skills other than combat in order to succeed. I lost one of my favourite characters when I forgot that and tried to get into a knife fight with a wannabe High Lord, when interaction skills could have been used to "unskill" him from his ridiculously high skill adds in combat abilities.

(OK, I really lost the character because one of the other PCs turned coat because "It's what my character would do" at a critical point, but I did dumb thing first.)

 

[overgeeked]

"Have you tried selling out the heart and soul of the thing you love? It's super easy. Way more efficient, too."

Nah. I'm good.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ho ho ho, have I reminded you of how much smarter I am than you today? Ho ho.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Our DM was a pretty role playing intensive guy so not having someone with interaction skills was a necessity. I took a CHA based caster so that I could fill the role and then MCed into Bard to make it really pay off. A few Rituals really beef up the interaction abilities. As in make them pretty much broken. With the combination of Skills and Rituals I filled in all the blanks left by all the fire eating characters. Even our Cleric concentrated more on combat than he did healing.

Well, there are two things here, one referencing what I said:

1. You did a CHA based caster. That meant less of your resources had to actually be diverted toward the social array. My PF2e Bard/Champion was like that. If you needed Diplomacy or Intimidation he was right there without materially reducing his combat capability (the way PF2e handles skill advancement helped here, of course0.

2. If you're seriously roleplaying intensive, i.e. going to be spending the majority of the game time on direct roleplay and/or skill rolls, why in the world do a game system where there are whole classes that do almost nothing but combat? I realize the whole "everyone wants to play D&D" but most of those people aren't going to think of that experience being all or mostly noncombat. Its a mildly perverse decision, because it works directly against the strengths of the system.

I well remember how DragonQuest could be easily broken, for combat. Just keep making up Summoner characters until you got one who summoned a greater demon to train you in the combat skills of your choice and suddenly you were a virtual god. As a result you could take time to train in literally anything else.

One of the biggest problems with DQ was that the random elements had too much impact. Only game I know of that was worse was Powers and Perils.

I think that TORG was rather unique in that all of the published material required skills other than combat in order to succeed. I lost one of my favourite characters when I forgot that and tried to get into a knife fight with a wannabe High Lord, when interaction skills could have been used to "unskill" him from his ridiculously high skill adds in combat abilities.

And at that, it might not have been enough to encourage most people if the card game mini-game pretty much forced you into doing some of those if you wanted to get the right cards to be able to deal with problems.

(OK, I really lost the character because one of the other PCs turned coat because "It's what my character would do" at a critical point, but I did dumb thing first.)

It certainly wasn't a game that was going to reward you for getting into a melee fight with someone too high above your weight class. Not that many games do, but that one would probably do you in faster than most.

 

[Ryujin]

Well, there are two things here, one referencing what I said:

1. You did a CHA based caster. That meant less of your resources had to actually be diverted toward the social array. My PF2e Bard/Champion was like that. If you needed Diplomacy or Intimidation he was right there without materially reducing his combat capability (the way PF2e handles skill advancement helped here, of course0.

I still had to burn points on INT, WIS, and DEX if the character was going to be at all survivable. STR as dump stat but even that could only be so low, if I didn't want to be constantly encumbered just with basic gear.

2. If you're seriously roleplaying intensive, i.e. going to be spending the majority of the game time on direct roleplay and/or skill rolls, why in the world do a game system where there are whole classes that do almost nothing but combat? I realize the whole "everyone wants to play D&D" but most of those people aren't going to think of that experience being all or mostly noncombat. Its a mildly perverse decision, because it works directly against the strengths of the system.

I really wish that we had taken the time to play the Amber diceless RPG, when we all bought it, but that sadly never came to pass.

One of the biggest problems with DQ was that the random elements had too much impact. Only game I know of that was worse was Powers and Perils.

In the group I played with we ended up with both a Were Tiger (me) and a Giant. Parry/Ripost/Disarm was the bane of my existence, but claws could not be "disarmed", short of literal dis-arm-ing

And at that, it might not have been enough to encourage most people if the card game mini-game pretty much forced you into doing some of those if you wanted to get the right cards to be able to deal with problems.

We found that the cards made us think outside the box, so had fun with that aspect as well.

It certainly wasn't a game that was going to reward you for getting into a melee fight with someone too high above your weight class. Not that many games do, but that one would probably do you in faster than most.

Especially not when you're playing a Nile Empire Mystery Man, with Super Dex, Super Spirit, and Super Firearms Skill, then do the dumb thing of getting into melee combat with said heavyweight.

Most of the characters that I played were real glass cannons. Even so the most memorable event from our years of playing was when my Elven Monk disconnected in a Nippon Tech zone, in a garage full of security guards armed with SMGs. Seven or 8 rolls to reconnect that all came up as a 1 on a D20 later and the character was barely winded. GM ruled that my shield was toast though. Always carry your cover WITH you

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most of the characters that I played were real glass cannons. Even so the most memorable event from our years of playing was when my Elven Monk disconnected in a Nippon Tech zone, in a garage full of security guards armed with SMGs. Seven or 8 rolls to reconnect that all came up as a 1 on a D20 later and the character was barely winded. GM ruled that my shield was toast though. Always carry your cover WITH you

We had a very high Nippon Tech ninja was like that. I'm not sure I hit across the whole campaign. That said, because of the first version of TORG's method of bonus damage, if I ever had I'd have annihilated him.

 

[Ryujin]

We had a very high Nippon Tech ninja was like that. I'm not sure I hit across the whole campaign. That said, because of the first version of TORG's method of bonus damage, if I ever had I'd have annihilated him.

Nippon Tech Ninjas. Yeaaaaaaah.

The first adventure we did: We're breaking into a Nippon Tech warehouse. We hit the second floor and two combat robots jump out of closets at us. My Mystery Man goes diving across the room while completely unloading two .45s into one of them. It rolls to a stop, teeters, and then falls over. Our Ninja casually flicks a shuriken at the other one. It explodes.

The bonus damage was weird. I once one-shot a dragon. With a bow.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The bonus damage was weird. I once one-shot a dragon. With a bow.

JRRT approved.

 

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