Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[IronyOwl]

So the background for this takes a bit to explain. In D&D, as many of you probably know, a Bard is a person who uses magic and performance together to cast spells and fascinate people. Normally this is through music. It can also be through comedy, or through poetry, or whatever. This lead me and my friends to some hilarious ideas, like a Monk/Bard with Perform: Pro Wrestling or Perform: Calling Your Attacks Anime-Style, or a Fighter/Bard with Perform: Guitar and a Heavy Metal Axe-Guitar, or an Assassin/Bard with Perform: Mime, or just a plain Bard with Perform: Striptease.

So. The RTD idea. Everyone Is Bards: The RTD. Any character concept, as long as some sort of performance is involved. Flamboyant magical powers, ridiculous fantasy adventures, and other things of that nature.

Would anyone be interested in playing something like that?

I'm almost positive someone mentioned an idea like this before. I forget exactly where they were going with it, and I don't think it ever got off the ground, though.

[Tiruin]

lawastooshort did it.

Though it was named Roll to be a Minstrel.

[Greenstarfanatic]

Furtuka, mind you don't need to know Equestria, in fact if one of your buddies are Brony enough to jump in on the game fun, they can guide you, or you can simply fly Blind in the style of Masaki Andou.

Either way, I can be the resident Brony IT guy for the group.

[IronyOwl]

lawastooshort did it.

Though it was named Roll to be a Minstrel.

Oh. How'd it go?

And didn't someone else (Dwarmin, maybe?) have an idea for something called Roll to Bard or something close?

[Caellath]

Oh. How'd it go?

And didn't someone else (Dwarmin, maybe?) have an idea for something called Roll to Bard or something close?

Roll to Minstrel was a lawastooshort's idea based on different types of minstrels, but they were mostly based around a central idea of their speech, if I remember correctly; it was never posted.

Minstrel of Swearing, Minstrel of Speedo, Minstrel of Purple Prose, Minstrel of [Insert something here]...

[Tarran]

And didn't someone else (Dwarmin, maybe?) have an idea for something called Roll to Bard or something close?

Yes. More than a year ago. I'm amazed that you remembered that.

[ExKirby]

Gentlemen! I have decided LIVE TEAM DEATHMATCH.

https://app.roll20.net/join/29167/1sSucw

[Greenstarfanatic]

Aww...I missed it...

[ExKirby]

Aww...I missed it...

Well, you needn't worry, because I've decided I'm doing it AGAIN! And the time is NOW!

https://app.roll20.net/join/29167/1sSucw

[anailater]

Great fun Kirby!

[IronyOwl]

Alright, another weird issue that needs working out. I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but if somebody has any insight in the meantime, that'd be helpful.


Basically, it's the same thing as before, with the different damage types. Currently they are:

Physical: Slashing, Piercing, Crushing
Elemenetal: Fire, Frost, Shock
Divine: Dark, Light, Nature

However, there was a slight issue- I made too many magical types, so the odds of encountering, say, a Nature-dealing enemy would probably be waaaaaaay less than encountering a Slashing enemy.

There was an easy fix for this, though- I rolled Elemental and Divine into a Magical category on par with Physical, meaning each magic type is treated as about half as rare/half the value of physical ones.


As an example, consider resistance against slashing versus resistance against all Physical damage. Slashing is 1/3rd the Physical category, so assuming no discounts or price hikes anywhere, getting resistance against all Physical damage period ought to be about 3 times the price as the same amount of resistance to just Slashing, right?

So in the case of Magic, there's more categories, so each one is cheaper. Getting resistance to all Magic is the same as Physical, which means that resistance to all Elemental or Divine is half that of all Magic, and Dark or Fire is one-third that of all Divine or Elemental; and one third of one half is one-sixth, compared to physical's one third. Put more simply once again, there's twice as many magic types to worry about, so each one is half price to defend against.


So the net result is, essentially, that the game assumes running into a spearman or archer is about twice as likely as running into a druid or treant. So far, so good.

The issue comes when the players are selecting their own damage types. I hadn't really been thinking about this from the other end, so when I sat down to figure out weapons, a rather jarring reality occurred to me- fire mages are easier to counter than swordsmen. Uh oh.

So, I'm really not sure what the correct response to this is. Two have occurred to me.

1. That's fine. Sure, fire mages are easier to counter than swordsmen, but they're also less common, remember? The odds of any one player being a necromancer or frost mage are lower than being a warrior or thief, so it all evens out exactly like it should. There's no reason damage should work on a different system than resistances.

2. That's dumb. The "extra branch" system should be scrapped and each category of three treated equally- that is, Physical, Elemental, and Divine are the three equal overarching damage categories, with each individual damage type being treated as 1/9th the total resistances possible.


What are other peoples' opinions on this? I think I've dismissed the notion of doubling magic damage to compensate.

[scapheap]

Maybe adding effects to magic? I mean with physical there poison and bleeding with magic it magic so it could have anything (with in reason).

[monk12]

Is this game PvP or PvE? Because if it is the latter, then it doesn't particularly matter what the players choose because, as GM, you're responsible for making sure they run into threats that are appropriate for their abilities- enemies weak to the burninating so they can die horribly, and enemies resistant to the burninating so they can force the players to think outside the box.

If you expect players to be fighting players (or if you just want to be able to fairly generate enemies using the same system) then yeah, you could rely on the fact that since various magics are easier to resist players will be more prone to play physical classes, which in turn lowers the likelihood they take magical defenses which in turn opens the niche for the odd magic user, but THAT'S BORING. YOU KNOW WHAT'S NOT BORING?

Maybe adding effects to magic? I mean with physical there poison and bleeding with magic it magic so it could have anything (with in reason).

ADD EFFECTS TO EVERYTHING!

Okay, so, you may not have noticed, but I'm typing this while really tired, so I might ramble here. Basically, give all attacks two effects, a primary and a secondary. The primary effect is the obvious "I hit you with a sword" damage, but the secondary effect can be anything, including another source of damage. Thus, even though there might be a relative paucity of fire mages, their absence would be compensated by all the warriors running around with flaming swords that deal Slashing and Fire damage. I'm envisioning most weapons being focused around damage, while magic-users would have access to abilities that, say, deal Fire damage as the primary effect and the secondary is a DoT effect, or a multi-target special ability, or something. Which is not to say that they wouldn't also have abilities that deal Fire and Frost, or Fire and Piercing (Fire arrow attack!) or Fire and MOAR FIRE!

[miauw62]

Probably a relatively insignifcant and stupid idea, but i think YOU ALWAYS ROLL ONE would make a nice minimalist.

[Dermonster]

Minimalist RTD's need to die.

I want semi-generic fantasy back