A Thread For Random RPG Musings

[Cygnia]

 

[Ragitsu]

"You...how did you survive the banshee's wail?"
"I have a young daughter; that is nothing by comparison."

[Cygnia]

[tkdguy]

3 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

Spoiler

Am I the only one who saw butt cheeks upon seeing this picture?

 

[L. Marcus]

Hmmm, yes.

[Old Man]

5 hours ago, tkdguy said:

 

  Hide contents

Am I the only one who saw butt cheeks upon seeing this picture?

 

Spoiler

Yes.  You're supposed to see boobs.

 

[Ragitsu]

On 10/26/2023 at 6:50 PM, Old Man said:

 

At least the Cleric is beholden to a mythos/deity while limited to an Alignment (plus, they are frequently associated with a clergy...which typically involves a degree of study to go with those countless prayers). The Sorcerer, however, yes, is a video game-y blast-happy class that requires not a whit of study and the Warlock's fealty to an entity is - the overwhelming majority of the time - nominal.

[Old Man]

15 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

At least the Cleric is beholden to a mythos/deity while limited to an Alignment (plus, they are frequently associated with a clergy...which typically involves a degree of study to go with those countless prayers). The Sorcerer, however, yes, is a video game-y blast-happy class that requires not a whit of study and the Warlock's fealty to an entity is - the overwhelming majority of the time - nominal.

 

And yet Warlocks suck, except for hexblades, and Sorcerers just suck all around.

 

If only there were a game system where the relative power level of the spellcaster could be balanced against its limitations.  Perhaps a system involving points...

[Cygnia]

 

[Cygnia]

[Duke Bushido]

Man, that mermaid in the desert brings back some old school RPG memories!  So many random encounter tables and random beast generators....

 

 

Edited November 8, 2023 by Duke Bushido

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]

[Scott Ruggels]

Looks accurate. 

[Khymeria]

D20, when you absolutely, positively want to look unskilled at your specialty, accept no substitute. 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Khymeria

[Cygnia]

[tkdguy]

Crafting terrain from what?

 

 

[tkdguy]

I was just listening to the song "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" and got an adventure idea about a UFO cult with the leaders scamming the followers. The "aliens" are part of the con.

[tkdguy]

How about a wizard who has a serious speech impediment, so he can't cast spells with incantations? Easy to model in HERO, not so much in D&D.

[Rich McGee]

3 minutes ago, tkdguy said:

How about a wizard who has a serious speech impediment, so he can't cast spells with incantations? Easy to model in HERO, not so much in D&D.

How so?  Hero's approach is pretty obvious, but D&D is a point-free system where GM fiat covers a multitude of needs.  The GM can offer one of two obvious choices: 

 

1) Just don't let the PC cast anything with verbal components, and maybe they can't use items with command words either.  This is obviously quite challenging and likely to render them really ineffective, so don't run mini-maxed high-danger-level games with the poor wiz.  Think Rincewind, magician in name only, or maybe someone who's really into angsty tragedy characters can make it work as a backstory for a wizard who was tortured and mutilated to deny them they powers.  Tone your game down to a low-combat, high-social/politicking format and do something different.  You might want to to give the PC a familiar capable of speech, a simple magic item that lets them speak through it, or some other way to communicate without relying on NPC literacy and/or hand signs/pantomime.  Nothing that can cast spells that way, of course, that would defeat the original concept.

 

2) Make the impediment less severe, pick a failure percentage, and whenever to try to cast a spell roll and see if that attempt works or just fails without burning the slot.  Depending on how high you set the percentage that might still be a huge drawback or might just make you unreliable and erratic if it's down around 5-15%.  Maybe it only effects actual casting (letting them use non-scroll items with command words) or maybe it effects all speech, maybe checking for listeners failing to comprehend or just turning that percentage of words incomprehensible each time they speak.  You might need to write the whole campaign with the PC in mind (and perhaps a bunch of other PCs with similar issues that make their class more difficult - an "Iron Man" variant) as above, or if the percentage is low it becomes a quirk. 

 

Probably award extra XP for struggling through it, either irregularly as they accomplish specific things or just as a fixed percentage of XP earned.  I like that idea a lot better than the way older TSR editions rewarded extra XP for having terrific stats that fit your class best.  That was totally unbalancing, for what little the game ever cared about balance. 

 

Or just say life's unfair and do nothing for them.  The player presumably wanted this and will play it without rewards rewards.  I've seen plenty of people just choose to start PCs with a missing eye, hand, etc. to make them more unique, something TSR D&D was not great at.    

[Rich McGee]

19 hours ago, tkdguy said:

How about a wizard who has a serious speech impediment, so he can't cast spells with incantations? Easy to model in HERO, not so much in D&D.

Thanks for the inspiration, however accidental.  You inspired me to do a whole post on my underused RPG blog on the subject of items to help with this sort of thing and a bit of worldbuilding explaining why there'd be a demand for such.

[tkdguy]

23 minutes ago, Rich McGee said:

Thanks for the inspiration, however accidental.  You inspired me to do a whole post on my underused RPG blog on the subject of items to help with this sort of thing and a bit of worldbuilding explaining why there'd be a demand for such.

 

Glad I could help. Thanks for your input. If I were running an AD&D game (note that I play 2nd Edition and earlier), I may use a spell failure chance for spellcasters with speech impediments using the intelligence table. In 1st Edition some illusionist spells didn't have verbal components, but most other types did.

 

This all came about when I was worldbuilding with my gaming group last weekend.  My contribution was that the world's greatest wizard in history struggled to cast spells with incantations because he talked like Elmer Fudd. Still, he was able to banish the BBEG. After that, he could "bweathe a sigh of welief and west fwom his wabors."

[Cygnia]

[Cygnia]