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mindflenzing — RPG Monopoly On Cheap Builds
Published: 2013-09-05 17:34:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 2355; Favourites: 10; Downloads: 10
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Description
R.P.G. (Ransack People's Gold) is the tale of four D&D/Star Wars/RPG players and their DM, who wishes he were a player. These intrepid players are, from left to right:Kenneth, the over-achieving, yet under appreciated DM.
Adam, the guy who has a theater background but needs a girlfriend.
Barry, the munchkin power-gamer with a bad case of arrested development.
Josh, the straight-laced guy who just wants to play the game.
Kassi, Josh's homicidally-minded younger cousin, whom he regrets inviting.
As somebody who mostly DMs and really only gets to play modules (as opposed to home games); I find it hilarious whenever the DM has a fit over player characters designed to shut down monsters in one or two turns. Considering how often you find baddies who fly outside of the range of most ranged weapons and cast fireballs, or dominate a new pc each round till the end of the fight without limit, attack while staying invisible with a +60 stealth, or fire six arrows with smite good at your cleric each round; you would figure the DMs would get the idea that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I could understand this mentality if the DM in question didn't get to play as a player but when they trade off DMing and often have min/maxed builds themselves it makes no sense that they hate on the players for what they enjoy as a DM or as a player. As a DM I enjoy occasionally subverting powerful character's abilities but have never found it acceptable to completely shut the heroes down when they try to play to their strengths. It violates rule #1, which is to make sure the table has fun. DMs love to boast about how only one character in the party survived a module but it disgusts them when the players boast about killing a monster in a single crit. As a DM I WANT the players to have stories about how their heroes did heroic things, that's what makes for enjoyable memories and fun stories. Tales of how the party had to quit the module one fight in don't make the teller or listener want to ever play that game.
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Comments: 48
Once I had a friend who had this GM run a Rifts game with only one rule is "More than 20 points on the Universe Mary Sue Limitis test and that character is out".
Out of that another player manage to create a Gizmoteer Glitter Power Murder Wraith Dragon Juicer with an Anti Tank Rifle, and some how manage to get praise for it by that GM because it barely dinged that Limitis test due some fancy wordy background, angst past and real good real life Role Playing. After the game started though things really went sour for that GM, the players on the other hand had a blast fixing the Armor up and letting that beast into the world, never got the end of the story but I assume the planet was blown up.
Moral: Pew Pew Baby! Oh and you can Min Max the UMSL test, I think.
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Great story. It goes to show you that just because there is only one rule does not mean a munchkin will not try to break it.
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Glitter Boy, I meant Glitter Boy. Sorry about that.
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This Reminds me of my favorite argument with my DM. Back when I was a young player using the 3.5 system I built a fighter based around using the various advanced combat maneuvers such as sunder, disarm, and my favorite grapple. He always told me that it was a waste of time because damage is the wizards domain and I should focus my feats on being a better damage sponge.
I didn't follow his advice and indeed it pissed him off how I was now resistant to being swallowed whole disarmed or grappled. Then my crowning moment was when I accdently almost derailed his campign. We had chased down a BlackGuard who had been doing the typical evil pillaging stuff. We chased into a church he was using to summon more undead. Most of the party's tricks where spent dealing with the undead hoard and we were pretty injured when we cornered him on the fourth floor in front of the stained glass window. Villain gave his big evil speech I on the first round disarmed him. I got an attack of opportunity when he failed to grab his weapon. Then on the second round I grappled him into submission and then tossed him out the window and killed him by fall damage. His face was a sight to see he looked at me as if I had just wipped out my penis.
After about 3 minutes of silence he explained that was supposed to be a recurring villain.
It turns out the BlackGaurd had know protection against grappling what so ever.
I think you summoned it up well ultimately that the game is fun is whats important and DM's really can't complain about being cheap when you consider the Cheap Instant kill or disable abilities many monsters have.
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Great story. There are few things more satisfying than wiping the smug look off of the DM's face when you make his big bad NPC your bitch. This is why I tend not to put mine in the same room as the PCs unless they have a very good reason not to try to kill him.
Besides, if the DM hates your win button combo he can throw a few enemies immune to it at you. Magical Beasts, the Undead, and Constructs tend to thwart non-damage strategies for beating humanoids. The PCs, though, lack the ability to adapt their builds to stop the DM's giant bag of autokill tricks. If you make a build to negate negation and autodeath your character is pretty lame when the DM throws a fair fight at you.
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it would help if half the conditions in the game weren't "Save or SUCK" or "save or DIE".
Ah well. Guess that's why they keep making editions.
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An when you get those as a player you then find out that a third of all monster archetypes are immune to the effect. I like the way that 4th Ed nerfed so many nasty conditions so that they did not cause players to sit out the whole game because of one roll (not unlike the board game Monopoly) and even made it so that the heroes could inflict bad status on the monsters without breaking the game.
They have been generally making D&D less of a game of random and anticlimactic death as the editions go on. Though it tends to make the old school grognards unhappy to see any PC survive a newer edition of the Temple of Elemental Evil module.
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True and true. Meatgrinder dungeons have their appeal. Still, that's what fourth-core is for.
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I heard that the Dungeon Crawl Classics line that Goodman Games put out was every bit as deadly and unbalanced for 4th Ed as it was for third, though the closest I came to playing it was to hear a recorded session or two from the Gamers' Haven Podcast.
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Hilarious. I have this problem so often running a game.
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It's hard to judge what will make a fight more challenging vs what will make it unwinnable. This is why I tend to keep monsters/spells/super cheap tactics in reserve so I can up the difficulty by degrees as the fight goes on.
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or uh...Hear hear! (pretend that was a typo. I'm not usually that illiterate)
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My funny bone has been scratched today. Man, I've missed RPG!
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Happy to oblige. It had been awhile since I last posted an RPG strip.
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I think we just really want the PCs to be more involved as a team in taking down big baddies like that, instead of one guy going solo against a big baddie and just wiping him aside. Those guys who have min-maxed so much that they overspecialize in one thing and when they do it really well without fault- we hate those guys. It makes us DMs feel like we need to compensate for that one guy in fights to make sure our encounters don't become non-existent and unmemorable.
As a whole, I do come down on both sides here. The PCs should easy up on the DMs with their character builds (or just having characters that are just wtf), as should the DMs provide a fun and fair environment where each character can use their skills to overcome problems- it's part of what makes the game fun.
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I mostly run for munchkins so I understand that but I'm not so much talking about home games but modules. Modules where some @sshat writes a fight where there are 2-3 creatures that can dominate twice per round ad infinitum, or you have to make a DC 40 spot check to avoid falling into 60ft pit with a Gelatinous Cube at the bottom. Besides, if you make something that nukes conventional tactics you want to put in other options that can be readily accessed by the party. Or if you don't have other options at least don't also nuke the creative party's backups like having a flying monster use dispel magic on every single potion of fly the party has or making a fight with high level Quicklings who get several uses per day of dimension door as a supernatural ability to prevent them from being grabbed or entangled.
In a home game I generally agree that players should not min/max (unless their group is all min/maxers or badly imbalanced). In organized play it is frequently a brutal free for all where the writers are out for blood and you cannot count on your fellow party members to bring their "B" Game, let alone their "A" Game. In years of organized play I found relatively few occasions where the entire party is well built and covers all the necessary abilities. I can't tell you how many times I've seen one character HAVE to do all the heavy lifting. My Tiefling Ranger/Monk/Barbarian has effectively soloed at least 4 modules because other characters lacked any ranged attacks, could not hit if they tried to do nonlethal damage, could not see in the dark and nobody had a light source, were casters who were out of offensive spells, or were just plain afraid of dying. I have a bow-wielding Inquisitor who had to fight a Werewolf (four levels higher than her) solo for 6 rounds because the rest of the party lacked the diversity of skills to make it past the first obstacle in a chase scene. I have a (at the time 3rd level) Fighter who had to basically solo an 800 hp undead creature for nearly 30 rounds because the rest of the party was sub-optimal builds and could neither deal damage nor take it. I have a Shaman who had to keep a party of 5 poorly built brand new squishy dps characters alive with only one melee character in the party. The point is, when you do organized play, you character will frequently find that they are the only one who can put points on the board whether it is due to poorly build allies or due to cheap module design the fact remains that sometimes you either win the fight by yourself or fail the mission as you run away leaving your allies' corpses to rot.
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Oi, modules sound remarkably ballbusting. o__o;
And geeze louise, all of those sound quite brutal. D: I'm feeling a little better how I house rule most of my games...
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Some of them are. When you see whole parties of appropriately leveled characters run by power gamers who have been playing D&D since the 1970's get wiped out you realize that many module writers just hate people. On the other hand, some are easy enough for newbies with pregens to complete. Two of the biggest problems are: #1. Many writers have no clue how to scale fights based on the number of players at the table. For example, it does not matter how many players you have, if it now takes everybody a 17 or better on the die than only a party heavy on aoe spells can win. Or worse yet, if the additional players raise all the skill DCs for skills that you cannot aid another on untrained. Which leads us to #2. You can pretty much never guarantee that certain spells/skills/etc will or will not be at a table that will run the module. The entire party could have potions of fly and bypass all the instant death traps on the ground, or they could have no means of flight rendering the surprise drop from 10,000ft a guaranteed party wipe. The party might have no face character and thus cannot complete the module or they could have a professional con with magical talent who can jedi mind trick the location of the enemy leader from a suspicious NPC and bypass almost the entire module. A surprise trip to hell means little to groups with the old golf bag o weapons and Resist 30 Fire, but will wipe most groups. Add to that the fact that groups like Paizo will ban you from running if you modify any module and you have a recipe for fights that are usually grossly imbalanced in one direction or another.
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I have to admit, I'm running a game now and have been blessed with more story focused players, so off the wall min maxing is not an issue... currently.
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If you get power gamers one of the first things you do is make sure not to put powerful things in their hands without fully considering the ramifications. A player might ask for something seemingly simple like the ability to turn a single normal sized marble into a 4" radius marble and back at will. He will then proceed to trick monsters into swallowing it with use of illusion magic or shoving it into open wounds and then growing the marble to explode the critter it's inside of.
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Ha! Brilliant, and yet, wouldn't doing the same thing all the time get boring fast?
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It's the sort of trick that you generally save for important NPCs sometime after the DM forgets that he gave it to you. I first saw a similar tactic when I saw a friend begin to polymorph medium sized creatures into grapes so that when an NPC bit into one it would kill the polymorphed creature causing it to return to full size... in somebody's mouth. As a DM I think I would proceed to make every offering of food for that PC be in tiny bite-sized pieces and then laugh manically while his food paranoia grew and only kill his PC when he finally let down his guard.
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Bah ha ha! Oh, I love how your devious mind works. I dunno, while that is an interesting use of polymorph, I had assumed that you could only turn people into live creatures with that spell. I'm far from a rules lawyer though, so I could be mistaken.
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Not sure. I never saw the 3.0 rules for the spell and I figure the 1st and 2nd probably left that kind of thing up to the DM to decide. I'm pretty sure you couldn't do that without a really high level spell after 3.5, at least not at an organized play table.
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We play an in house 3.5. We're stubborn and refuse to buy 4.0...
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Since they are already well into development for 5th Ed, there's little point in starting 4th now. I will say that 4th is the only tabletop RPG that pretty consistently delivers epic fights where groups have to work together and where your chances of survival are not based on what spells you came into the fight with. In various incarnations of 3rd I've played the fights generally lasted 2-5 rounds and always went really badly for one side or the other (especially if one side prepped their spells for the other). 4th does end up feeling a bit like a combat-centric mmorpg, minus the level grinding. The powers for players all have very specific combat/non-combat effects but that allowed you to play crazy things things at first level that would break any other edition of D&D (like: Self-Mummified Monks, Mechanical Fireball Dispensors, Werewolf Rangers, Psionic Jedi Knights, or Pixie Vampires). As an altaholic the thing I always hated about 3rd Ed was that all my builds required levels in multiple classes and a ton of feats to be viable. In 4th I usually had everything I needed for my character to do what I built them for by 1st or 2nd level.
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To each their own, I say. The reasons you listed for 4E being awesome are all reasons that turn me off it. If I want to play an mmorpg, then I'll do so and enjoy a sweet looking avatar. When I play D&D I like the focus to be on the story and who my character is, rather than just what they can do.
While I appreciate epic combat, and I understand that modules cater to this and can be a ton of fun, I think it's silly to expect the PCs to always handily defeat the NPCs. It's only reasonable that a good DM will have an Empire Strikes Back night once in a while, and that defeat does not always have to equal a TPK. But again, this is more appropriate for a house game rather than quick one shot runs through a module or a Pathfinder or Shadowrun type set up.
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I mostly only play module (and run home games) so I never get my character's backstory touched upon... ever. For organized play you get exactly as much character development in 3.5, Pathfinder, or 4th Ed. I would argue the biggest difference in mindset was not roleplaying but in approaching threats. In 4th players tend to feel like any hostile action they took would trigger a difficult and organized fight so players were less likely to try to knock out guards or chase scouts than they were in 3.5 where such fights were almost not worth rolling dice for. 4th Ed gets a fair number of arguments over realism vs rules-as-written but then I've been in the exact same arguments in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Eds. From the players I know who've actually run 4th and don't like it, the most common complaints are: 1. Fights take too long, 2. Fights not lethal enough to make heroes afraid of engaging in combat, 3. PCs feel too much like superheroes for campaigns that want to emphasize the element of survival. All the guys I know who love d100 system games like Warhammer 40K Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu hate 4th. I don't much care for that style of playing but then I also love games like Hellas (a.k.a. Greeks in Space) and Hong Kong Action Theater in which characters only die for cinematic reasons and rule of cool is king. Of course, many of the things I hate about certain systems are what other people love about then and vice versa. There is no such thing as the best game system, only the best game system for a certain group and the type of story they want to tell in a given campaign.
In 4th Ed home games I have made unwinnable fights. It is the nature of 4th Ed that characters do not become permanently weaker for trying to win them. In 3.5 and Pathfinder Organized Play I've seen many total party wipes and characters actually get weaker from one level to the next because of the horrific expenses and penalties for loosing fights where the deck was stacked heavily against the party by player hater module writers. Then again, I've seen campaigns implode in 3.5 home games when the DM's unwinnable storyline fight is won with the extended crit table, or the use of spells the DM was not familiar with. In 3rd Ed modules at least, it tends to come down to one character pulling the entire table both in and out of combats because everybody is afraid of the consequences of doing things their character is not good at.
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You make many excellent points, and I totally hear where you're coming from and can see how, if that's the sort of game play you're into, that it's a strong system. I think it might be fun to try that sort of thing, though admit that I'd be the weakest link the first times out.
Me? I like a touch of realism in my games. In real life, sometimes you came out of a battle crippled. I think with a Game, a good DM should give the players a chance to overcome such set backs. At least, that works for house games where you continue on with the story line. But that's just what I like. I play D&D to hang with some awesome peeps once a week, and enjoy the same storyline together, while cracking silly movie quotes and pop culture references. Oh, and beer and pizza never hurt either.
I'm currently running a game based on a Song of Ice and Fire that takes place years before the starting point of the HBO series. Had to do some adaptation, but in this case, I needed the players to feel like their lives are in danger to some degree to stay true to the gritty, realistic setting.
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For new players I recommend playing classes from the Essentials line. The Fighter plays almost exactly like a 3rd ed one, only there is a reason for the DM to attack him over his allies. I like classes with crazy complexity so I tend to play classes from or using powers from the later books. Some of them are so complex that I keep several colored soda bottle rings and paper tents around so everybody is clear on all the bonuses and penalties I have on the board. When I play Leaders and Controllers in 4th it reminds me more of playing tabletop war games than MMORPGs. But then I love tabletop wargames and I love the tactics and strategies that you can deploy in the middle of a fight instead of having to have certain potions/scrolls/spells/consumables/feat chains prepped in advance in order to use interesting tactics in a fight.
Deadlands is like that, especially if you don't take the healing spell. I knew a group where their party got stuck in a mountain cabin for the entire winter because two of their characters were deteriorating on their weekly natural healing checks from injuries sustained in a grizzly bear attack. High Lethality works well in games like Warhammer RPG and Call of Cthulhu where you are supposed to be paranoid and jumpy rather than blindly heroic. You would never want to play a zombie survival game with 4th Ed because it would not have the right atmosphere.
I imagine that would probably require a serious restriction on magic since Spells like True Resurrection and Wish would take all the meaning out of killing political adversaries.
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That's exactly right! I want them to have their moments of heroism, but to be thinking tactically. You win or you die, ha ha. And converting all the Valyrian steel weapons into Legacy weapons was a good solution, allowing them to grow with them while still making it so that these items aren't falling from the sky or heaped in piles at ye olde magik shoppe.
As to the actually slinging of magic, we're just avoiding overly flashy spells, and casting classes have to equal to only half the character level. Besides, Wildfire (with some planning) can be as fun as a Fireball...
It's pretty refreshing actually. Sort of feels like a new game. We just wrapped up a campaign that had been going for 2.5 years and was being run classic, so this is neat.
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They have a system like that for 4th for inherent bonuses to your weapons, armor and non armor defenses get the equivalent of a +1 twice per tier so that your attacks and defenses are on track with the internal math of the game. This way "Magic" equipment can be forgone or made more rare and special.
Do you comp them something for losing half their caster levels (like maybe attack bonus or combat feats)? I would figure that something more like limiting caster classes to half your total level or maybe just capping the maximum level spells that characters can cast (which also pushes casters to multiclass) might be more balanced.
It certainly can be a very different type of game. I've played Savage Worlds and Dragon Age RPG games without casters and they play very differently than when you have magic, especially without healing magic. Then again, the monsters not having spells, supernatural abilities, and magical diseases helps to even the playing field.
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Oh, nice to know! Its nice to hear that they have some options for picky people like me. Though I'll probably wait to see what 5 is like before I run out and spend money on any books.
I don't see the need to. They take other class levels instead. Whether it's fighter, or rogue, or aristocrat makes no difference to me so long as their caster level does not exceed 1/2 their character level. So I guess I should have said I was limiting the caster levels. I can see how my wording of it was confusing. It was a solution presented in Complete Warrior and seems, so far to be working well. Granted, we've only played 3 games, so it's still early.
The only monster in the game is Aerys the Mad King... but yes, the absence of diseases, constructs and hordes of undead does curb the dire need for in combat healing. There is some healing... I gave maesters (expert class from the DMG) some capabilities that rely on skills, knowledge and resources.
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I don't know about 5th. I signed up to playtest but could not get a group willing to try it so I stopped reading the playtest rules.
Basically accomplishes the same thing. I was concerned that you were talking wizards getting nothing for half their levels (since really all they get are spells and caster levels).
You used to be able to heal some with heal and herbalist back in first and second edition. It took the edge off of not having a cleric, provided the DM did not throw lots of hard fights at you.
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I take it your new role as "only non-magic character in the party" has been creating some tension?
(I do miss playing Tsen, but at this point there'd probably be no damn point in coming back anyway, even if I *could* drive. Or walk. Or feed myself.)
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I will be taking a level of Wildblood Sorcerer for access to the Mage Armor and Shield spells. I actually have not played any games that you haven't due to my back injury. Also, they do want you back if you are able.
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HAHAHA wow fail. So hey now Dad has a kidney stone. I've been singing "another one bites the dust" since I found that out. Mom can't injure herself or we'll be kicked out of the house, so who wants to take bets on how David hurts himself next? Since the entire family is apparently dropping one by one.
Well I'll be coming back when I'm able... just by then it'll be so long everybody will be like "WTF, where the hell was Tsen all this time?" And also I'll be sorely underlevelled, stuck at the baseboard level. Bye-bye higher EXP from trap disarming...
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Unfortunately for you, this will just make him more belligerent.
You'll probably still have more XP than the Cleric.
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Well, yeah. I got jury duty summons on top of all this shit, and the stupid thing has a perforated card I can fill out to say I can't do it, but no instructions on what the hell to do with it, and I can't find anything online, and I'll have to make a bajillion calls from the middle of the office during my lunch break (because I can't go anywhere private because I can't walk), and Dad was so mortally offended that I was stressed out and pissy that he started yelling at me for being upset.
............By two months from now??
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Ouch.
Have you seen our cleric in action?
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Too much togetherness, way too much togetherness.
...That's sad.
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I hear you on that.
Yes, yes our Cleric is.
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Even with those holy symbols.
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