Proposal - Dragon Magazine 369 - Minotaur

[elecgraystone]

Why not use d14s?

Can invisible castle handle d14's without exploding?

 

[stonegod]

Can invisible castle handle d14's without exploding?

Yes

 

[ryryguy]

If we had some way to tell, I'd bet ten to one we'd have half less minotaurs and bugbears without the oversized stuff. It's a nigh certainty.

I think it probably also had a lot to do with being the only +2 STR/+2 CON and +2 STR/+2 DEX races available at the time, too.

 

[TwoHeadsBarking]

Not to sound argumentative, but yes we do and that's precisley why you are wary about the number of people who will be unhappy.

Last I checked we had something like 4 minotaurs and 3 bugbears out of 90 approved character. About 8% of all the PCs uses oversized weapon! It's a lot worse if you consider the STR and Melee based classes. The 4 minotaurs obviously all picked such classes and so they are about 20% of the fighters, STR cleric and Two-Bladed Rangers...

Considering these two races are hardly staples of the fantasy genre, it is a lot.

If we had some way to tell, I'd bet ten to one we'd have half less minotaurs and bugbears without the oversized stuff. It's a nigh certainty.

Ok, not to put down what you did in the census, because that was pretty impressive, but that information was not up to date. I'm not saying you should have done better, because getting information on all the active characters would have been excruciating, but this does mean that those numbers aren't always accurate.

For example, we have one active minotaur, and two active bugbears: Vaunea, Hrav, and Grim. The others haven't posted in months. So that's over half the oversized characters gone right there. I'm pretty sure that L4W hasn't suffered a 50% attrition rate of players, which means your percentages are too high.

Also, should every player race be represented equally? Why? Should we be concerned with the relatively large number of Gith we have around too? Or warforged? Minotaurs may not be staples of fantasy (not sure I agree), but they're certainly more common than those other two races.

Yes, I'm sure oversized played a significant part in their choice of race, but Str/Con and Str/Dex are pretty attractive for melee fighters too. When Hrav was created, Bugbears were the only Str/Dex race available. All of the minotaurs were created before PHB2, so it was either minotaur or warforged for Str/Con, and I get the feeling that warforged are an acquired taste.

 

[elecgraystone]

Interesting, thanks stonegod. Well that's a perfectly fine way to do it for a pbp TwoHeadsBarking. The oversized weapon damage goes up and brutal becomes less effective the way it should with higher damage weapons. It could work. What does everyone else think?

Should we be concerned with the relatively large number of Gith we have around too?

You should! There's at least as many active Gith as there are minotaurs and bugbears combined!

 

[Lord Sessadore]

Yeah, IC just uses a random number generator with an upper bound equal to whatever is after the 'd'. Way easier to program than making a separate random number generator for each common type of die. It can handle d121's if we wanted it to. Or d7's, or d94's, or d1's. Basically any integer greater than zero, as long as it's not too big.

Anyway, TwoHeads is right that while there are a number of approved bugbears and minotaurs, there is only 3 active ones. Still, I'd rather not go around beating even 3 active players with the nerf bat if we can avoid it.

Anyway, I agree with JNC - we should vote on the less contentious content first, including what the OP wanted. Then we can keep talking about what to do with minotaurs, if we want to.

 

[elecgraystone]

Yeah, IC just uses a random number generator with an upper bound equal to whatever is after the 'd'.

I assumed it did, but thought it safe to ask. I've seen random number generator in the past that were set in the dice they could use. Granted those weren't as... modern as IC.

What was the proposal again? Oh yeah, dragon 369!

 

[TwoHeadsBarking]

I have a little experience with the warlord material. One of the players in the game I DMed ran a Tiefling warlord with some of the powers and feats. He used the level 1 and level 9 powers, the warlord/warlock feats, and the Devil's Tongue Polearm. It seemed pretty balanced, and it added some interesting flavor to the character (although I'm a sucker for slightly magical martial characters).

 

[KenHood]

Can invisible castle handle d14's without exploding?

It can, but I would still roll a '1' half the time that I used it.

 

[elecgraystone]

It can, but I would still roll a '1' half the time that I used it.

See, I'd never find out because I'd have rolled that '1' on the hit.