Inu

Re: Deep Medieval RPGing I get why people don't want to play through the day job of medieval peasants. Do we play through the day job of most characters in modern-day roleplaying? 'You went to the farm today. That evening...' Or even skip whole years. Or even, god forbid, play someone OTHER than peasants. Don't even have to play nobles. City people exist in the middle ages, after all. And of course, 'historically accurate' doesn't have to mean 100% absolutely historically accurate; and even then, even in historical periods, there were people who broke out of the mold. And in games, much like TV series, a lot more exciting things happen to PCs than to most people. Just like Lenny Briscoe was the busiest homicide cop EVER, the PCs run into more interesting stuff than anyone else in town. That said, I wouldn't want to RP in something that tried to be 100% accurate, because half the sessions would be arguments about what's accurate. Hence, varying degrees of dramatic accuracy are my cup of tea, getting all the way to 'drawing heavily from reality, but still gamey enough to not be worrying constantly about whether I'm getting it right.'

Re: Block vs Dodge Which might just be down to the idea that if you're fighting for your life, you wanna have some say in it -- block lets you roll dice yourself, dodge doesn't. For those working out numbers, how does martial dodge work out against martial block?

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? Hehe. If I wanted definitions that would stand up to any scrutiny, I'd do a lot more research into the topic than a forum warrants. I'm using terms somewhat loosely here, because there's only so much effort I can put in. Of course no country was COMPLETELY independent. No country is today, either, however much some like to think they are. But there were countries that could basically stand on their own, and there were countries that required a more powerful state to prop them up. I even note that I used the term 'real' country mostly as a rhetorical device rather than a technical definition. And yes, there's going to be a lot of modern terminology and rethinking laid over medieval mindsets. Anjou might have thought itself a relatively independent entity, but militarily, it depended on its leige-lord for defence. Which brings us back to what I was saying in the first place: it takes more than one lord to conquer one other lord. Because even if they CAN overrun that lord's defences, it activates the whole web of feudal responsibilities and suddenly you're fighting a whole lot more guys than you thought. So you better bring your buddies, and have a good reason for invading so that your buddies are motivated (above and beyond 'you owe me service', because that often wasn't actually a great way of motivating people to get into wars). If you want to have a more academic debate with precise terminology, let me know and I'll put more time into each post.We'll also need to agree on definitions of lord, conquer, middle ages, king, claim to throne, and of course COUNTRY, which can mean almost anything if you want it to. Frankly, too much effort outside of academic arenas. If you want to have an internet forum debate, with somewhat loose terminology and each side giving the other a bit of leeway in interpretation (because there's only so much time to type, the language probably won't be as precise as it should be), then let's proceed. I don't think what I'm saying is terribly controversial, however, and I'm confused why it's become a thing, but then, I'm responding to pokes and prods at my argument, without a counter-argument being presented (and without all points of my argument being addressed, either). So if you want to continue, can you please elaborate on your points?

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? Real country, in the middle ages (by which I mean proably 800-1300 or so), being a country that was actually independent, not one that was propped up by outside sources. But mainly 'real' country is a snarky term used to cut out the tiny countries which are, of course, exceptions to the rule. ^_- Anyone can take over Luxembourg. An LA street gang could take over Luxembourg. Of course, they'd then get counter-invaded by someone who would then restore the 'legitimate' monarchy, but hey. Even in the modern setting, there's no definition of 'nation' that can really encompass Luxembourg or Monaco without serious gymnastics, aside from circular arguments like 'a nation is anything that is generally recognised to be a nation'. Sucks to be Taiwan, huh? And of course, in the middle ages, if you took over a tiny country, with no legitimate claim to the throne... chances are, you'd get exactly the same sort of counter-invasion. No king wants any kind of precedent set that says that blood doesn't matter, and anyone can be king. Even ones descended from barbarian chiefs (which is most of them). So again, even if you CAN take over Luxembourg, KEEPING it is another matter.

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? William the Conqueror? He attacked with himself AND all his feudal subordinates, and some allies. Again, wasn't just him. =) While feudal subordinates were technically required to participate, if enough of them say no, what's the liege lord going to do about it? They'd also likely have had conflicting loyalties -- many of them would have owed allegiance not only to William, but to the King of France. And besides, William DID have a claim to the throne. =)

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? If it was small enough to be conquered by a single noble, it wasn't a real country anyway. ^_- Not back in the middle ages, anyway.

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? You'd also be unlikely to get teh broad support necessary to get a massive army in the first place. =) A conquering lord without a claim to the throne unsettles kings everywhere. So even an enemy of the country you're about to conquer won't lend you any troops, and will instruct his inferiors not to lend you any, either. It's just not in his interest to set such a precedent. No-one had a personal army big enough to conquer a country, back in the middle ages; they had to come together to do so.

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? Now, in a fantasy game, there may well be a deity-ordained 'rightful king'. After the old king dies, this might pass automatically to the heir, or it might require someone to gain consensus of the governed before they are granted the 'rightful' perk. Can the perk be lost? Could be! If the rightful heir is Ordained By Gawd on the instant of the old king's death, and others in the setting could sense this, it might be interesting to see who wants to go agains the Will of Gawd to get their own favorite target in. On the whole, though, I'd say that this system would remove a lot of intrigue from the setting. Recommended only for games that don't want to involve inheritance politics.

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? Hellz yeah. Even if you do conjure up world-dominating military might from thin air, you have to deal with the WHINING. "Wah, he overthrew our rightful ruler!" "Wah, he's ignoring democratic process!" "Wah, he crushed my family to death with his ubertanks!" "Wah, he's mean!" Endless whining. They invented nukes for a reason, dammit. Perfect civilisation emerging from the Vaults when the radiation levels die down, that's how it should be done.

Re: What gives the "rightful" king the right? Eh, the whole 'God' thing wasn't a justification in and of itself. When you see rule by conquest, you either see such a complete conquest that any resistance is crushed and the old nation effectively ceases to exist (say, William the Conquerer) or you have a current king who is so disliked that everyone's frankly happy to see him go (William III overthrowing James II, who people were convinced was going to start burning Protestants like his mentor, the king of France). In Song of Ice and Fire, the old king was mad and busy screwing with whoever he could get his hands on. He needed killin' -- even his old allies more or less agreed with that. Had the upstart (stag-dude... I forget his name. B-something?) rebelled against a nice, happy king, he'd have faced a lot more resistance. It also helps if the conquerer can make a claim to the throne through some manner of descent. Both conquering Williams in England could make such a claim, as can just about any noble in Song of Ice and Fire. Basically, it's an extension of the old maxim: the ruler holds power by the consent of the governed. This is more direct in a democracy, but is still more or less true in a monarchy. If the heir doesn't have the support of the nobles, he's not going to be king. And yeah, people can have different opinions. In ASoIaF, the Targaryens certainly don't recognise the new guy as 'rightful'. They believe they're 'rightful'. In England, William wasn't seen as 'rightful' by the people until... probably a few generations until they stopped whining about Alfred. This was helped by the fact that he preserved the existing laws and institutions. There have been countries that have had periods of insurrection lasting over a thousand years; those people wouldn't recognise their rulers as 'rightful'. There's another definition: "A rightful king is anyone who is better for me than his rivals." A lot of inheritance struggles have been decided by this rather than the value of their blood. But yeah, the idea of inheritance does mean a lot. You don't tend to get inheritance struggles when there's a legitimate son, for instance. They happen when there's some lack of clarity about who should inherit, especially when the most obvious choice isn't popular (say, King John). Short answer: it's kinda complex!

Re: What is Your Favorite Item?

Re: Hard Science Help It's also psosible that Relativity is completely correct... until you hit lightspeed. In my scifi games, I state that a new model of physics has come in that sit 'above' relativity in the same way that relativity sits 'above' Newton. Newton is still 100% (or, well, 99.99999etc%) correct at speeds significantly below c. Relativity doesn't alter Newton... until you get fast. So this new model only replaces relativity at or above lightspeed. It usually involved hyperdimensional/subspace/hyperspatial/etc properties. The kind of thing that Einstein simply couldn't have taken into account, just like Newton couldn't have taken relativity into account given the instruments of the day.

Re: Hard Science Help Yah, I don't get it either, and to me it looks more like 'because I can make the graph do this, it is so in real life!' but it seems to be well-accepted by scientists, so I shrug and accept that I'm not always going to understand high-level mathematics and physics. ^_-

Re: Order of the Stick Combat Luck is also an option -- it's partly what hit points is meant to represent, after all. =)

Re: Order of the Stick Yup. That's a pretty hefty heal right there... and even then, it only got her to NEAR max hp. No idea what level moustache dude is, but he's pretty beefy if he turned wights. Let's see... wights are a 4HD monster, with no turn resistance. From what I can see in the comic, he only turned two (because that's all that was present). Meh, he could be almost any level (above 4). He didn't seem to be in too much danger from the wights, though, so he's probably at least high single digits, maybe more.

Re: Order of the Stick That's why I saw a True Necromancer. It's a prestige class that requires you to be a cleric and a wizard, then progresses both spellcasting classes simultaneously. You lose some caster levels overall (as I said, a character with 3 cleric levels, 3 wizard levels and 10 True Necromancer levels would only have an effective caster level of 11, whereas a single-class cleric would have a caster level equal to character level: 16). there are a few hybrid classes like that, such as mystic theurge. Y'know, actually, I think she said something about being a mystic theurge in her first appearance. In that case, she just got a bit more casting power. She'd only have to be level 14 to cast the Empowered version, and 16 to cast the Maximised version. I'd put my money on her being around level 14, if she did inded one-shot Haley (though Rich has usually had characters announce their metamagic on casting). In short, yes, necromancers can't cast cure spells. bUt a necromancer who is also a cleric CAN... and even better if they have a hybrid prestige class that lets them be clerics AND necromancers. ^_-

Re: Order of the Stick That would indicate death... unconscious doesn't mean death. ^_- And yes, Belkar is probably the key to saving the day. Assuming he didn't get jumped by the ninjas in the stables (or otherwise distracted by whatever was in there).

Re: Order of the Stick Hm. Orb of electricty is a level 4 spell, does 1d6 per level (max 15d6). Tsukiko is almost certainly a True Necromancer, a hybrid arcane/divine class that requires you to be an arcane and a divine spellcaster before taking it, so her caster levle is a bit low (but as she's cast both cures and fireball, she has to be a hybrid). Probably 3 wizard/3 cleric/X True Necromancer. If she's high enough level to cast Maximised Orb of Electricity (she'd have to be character level 18, for spellcaster level 13), she could do an instant 78 points, no save. That's a lot of hurt. Given that V has been scribing level 7 spells (implying level 13), a level 18 villain isn't too far out of the question... but probably a bit big. Even if Tsukiko isn't that big (level 16, spellcaster level 11), she might be casting Empowered Orb, for an average of 58 damage. If she's only level 12 (caster level 10), she can do 35 damage on average with a raw cast of the spell. Can always get lucky (and her earlier spells might have done SOME damage to Haley). If Haley is a level 13 rogue with +1 constitution (for the sake of argument), she has an average of... 61 hp. Wow, that's less than I expected. But then, I usually give higher-than-average hp pools when I run D&D. So suddenly, her one-shotting the rogue isn't so far-fetched, now that I run the numbers, as long as Tsukiko is big enough. And, of course, Haley might not be out yet! (Of course, Tsukiko probably is pretty high level. She took three fiery arrows on a sneak attack. If Haley is level 13, that's an average of 95 damage, not counting strength or enhancement bonuses. Drop it to average 84 damage if the fiery is merely cosmetic. A 3 cleric/3 wizard has average 25 hp with no con bonus, with 3.5 more hp per True Necromancer level. The Empowered Orb option will give her 63hp... plus maybe 32 for high Con, putting her in survival range, especially if Haley rolled badly.) So hey, it might well work out with the rules after all. But then, how did they keep a level 16 True Necromancer locked up, when they clearly didn't have any high-level people in the city aside from a couple of Paladins? And that, my friends, is probably more D&D geekery than you will ever want to see in your entire lives.

Re: Order of the Stick I'm pretty sure Electric Orb's one of the ones from Complete Arcane or some such. I didn't pay much attention to the Orb spells, because I didn't think they were very good. Certainly not very high level or very damaging. Power of plot. (Haley shoots the chick a whole buncha times, but gets taken out by one spell. Rules are no help here. If, that is, Haley actually got taken out.)

Re: Stalin's Super-Apes on TV! Am I the only person who sees the name 'Stalin' and think it's misspelled, and needs another 'r'? Maybe I've been reading too many comics lately. As for the Nazi interest in the occult, the party certainly used mysticism, pseudohistory and whatever else caught its fancy to promote itself (and Germany) whenever possible (latching onto things like the German Futhark, which was meant to be the oldest form of writing or some such nonsense). Since most people seem to think Hitler = Nazi Party, naturally everything the Pary does gets ascribed to him personally. As for what Hitler personally believed? Difficult to separate. He was very media conscious -- it's said he never married Ava Braun because he wanted to have the appearance of an eligible bachelor; it improved his popularity among German women. That or he was gay. Pick one. Regardless of the truth of that particular element, the fact that it was a convincing argument at all shows that he was very image-conscious (and people think this is a modern phenomenon, pfah). If he were interested in the occult, he may have tried to hide it so as not to turn people off. Who knows.

Re: How would you build missles comic style Since continuing uncontrollable effects need a condition in which they stop working, you can say that the missile is destroyed (Attack ends) if the target makes a very good acrobatics check (making it fly into an object and explode), or other situations (such as spoofing it with flares). Might also add in that the attack is suppressed (not happening that round, but not going away, either) if the target flies faster than X inches per turn -- IE, outrunning it.

Re: How would you build missles comic style 3d6RKA AP, uncontrollable, 1 continuing charge lasting one minute, physical manifestation.

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: Weapon Familiarity and Reality Weapon proficiencies can vary dramatically from game to game and genre to genre, too. If I were running a renaissance-era game with a heavy focus on duelling culture, no way would I have any proficiency so broad as 'blades'. In fact, I'd probably not even have 'swords' -- I might have a half-dozen different proficiencies just for swords. ^_- But only if each type of sword were slightly different. A total waste in a generic fantasy game, but possibly worth going into if swords were a big focus, such as in a duelling culture.