Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Other TTRPGs

[The Cat]

 

[Totenkindly]

Exactly. Misses and failures can be worked into a cooler description, to make the story more engrossing.

This applies to character abilities and descriptions as well. This is often called "skinning" where you can describe your character in a different way that uses the class mechanics but you are just changing the "appearance" of the character or how they manifest their abilities on the surface. For example, you can model a ray-gun blaster characters on a sorcerer mechanics build (it's just all their "spells" look on the surface like scifi gadgets and tools).

I also do this with my Pathfinder paladin, an Aasimar modeled after Joan of Arc. Aside from talking to her deity comes off as her conversing with voices in her head, I tied everything (including her AC bonus and initiative bonuses) into her Charisma. So I always imagined this would play out differently than a normal Dex based character who is quick on their feet. For her, her otherworldly appearance and raw charisma unsettles whoever gets close to her and her ability to go earlier in a fight or be missed by an attack is in part her enemies either getting hung up on her appearance, aura, or presence, or spending so much time staring / being unsettled that they just don't react as quickly. She's either giving them the creeps OR awe-ing them in some way that makes it harder for them to harm her or move faster than her.

This is more interesting to me than a "fast character," it's like yeah, she's got angel blood in her, doesn't look quite human, and projects "otherness" almost like a fae would.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

The last D&D session is tomorrow. Most of the people are moving away. I'm a little sad about it.
I do have a plan to kill the big bad with poison. We'll see how that goes. It's personal for my character. This guy attempted to kill my Therian mentor and will probably succed.

 

[Totenkindly]

The last D&D session is tomorrow. Most of the people are moving away. I'm a little sad about it.
I do have a plan to kill the big bad with poison. We'll see how that goes. It's personal for my character. This guy attempted to kill my Therian mentor and will probably succed.

Is this the quiet subtle poison that eases them into an eternal slumber, or the "Joffrey's face goes all purple as he clutches at his throat" kind?

I do hope it's the latter, if only for the theatrics.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Is this the quiet subtle poison that eases them into an eternal slumber, or the "Joffrey's face goes all purple as he clutches at his throat" kind?

I do hope it's the latter, if only for the theatrics.

I hope it is, too. One of the poisons comes from a purple worm, so maybe there is a connection with the purple wedding.

 

[Totenkindly]

So our GM has only ever run three gaming sessions so far and his greenhorn status is showing big-time. Even I knew the rules and builds better, and I'm one of the least familiar with Aberrant (the GM has actually played it more).

Note that we were given significantly less build points to even create our characters, so there was no real way for us to truly max out stats like powers/abilities or mega-attributes like Dexterity or Con. (Scores normally run from 1-5 for mega-attributes, which are super-powered versions of the regular attribute.)

During the first session, he was rather put-out that he didn't mentally buff a random guy on the street that my Emotional Manipulator was easily able to jack around because he had few Willpower to resist her ability. It's not a big deal, that guy was just an average street person and shouldn't have had extraordinary willpower, but he seemed bugged.

I guess he was trying to compensate because last night we (a group of supers in our 70-90s) got in a fight with two dudes who showed up in a car to abscond with the kid we were trying to escort to a better, more socially productive life.

These NPCs are literally no-names -- they're not big bads, we don't know who they are, they are like red shirts on Star Trek, basically just XP contributors.

So the chauffer comes around the back of the car and one of our guys (who is a physical fighter with some powers) simply blocks his path, so the driver throws a punch at him. Our player says he'll block the punch, which should have been routine.

The GM doesn't know how to calculate the attack, so the two experienced Aberrant GMs at our table help him. "And how much Mega-Strength does this guy have, if any?"

"Five," says the GM. Everyone's jaw drops. We've had this discussion in the past -- that Mega-STR kills things because you get five automatic successes for each point you have in it, along with whatever you roll. So this is automatically a +25 success attack. Everyone was aghast aside from the GM, who obviously did not understand the mechanics enough to realize what he had just done. This was the equivalent of having 2nd level D&D characters and essentially some non-descript peasant who they hadn't even attacked just ends up being Superman and walks up and punches one of them as hard as he can. Basically it's like the GM just decided to murder one of the new PCs, it's completely unbalanced.

Poor Frank tried to block/take the blow. It passed his block and hit him in the middle of his chest. We could all hear things crunch and Frank drops to the tarmac like a sack of potatoes, blood coming out of his mouth and nose. In terms of mechanics, it filled ALL of his health levels with bashing and then rolled over to all but ONE of those blocks also with lethal damage. Literally one more point of damage would have killed him. The blow would have killed at least two other members of our group outright.

Fortunately, Irene had emotionally pushed the guy's friend to "want to be a better person" and he was trying to get the puncher to chill, so the puncher ends up grabbing him and running as Dick picks up a car and waves it threateningly over his head. (Dick is our old guy in a wheelchair.) Dick throws the car and it lands on these two guys. AS the puncher crawls out from under the car, Abby (who can morph shape somewhat) kicks him into a concrete wall, knocking him out.

The detective who was trying to apprehend both groups is just standing there with his jaw dropped, then turns and runs back into the prison facility to round up some moral support after Dick tells him, "Just walk away -- and get someone to arrest this trash."

We spent the rest of the session taking Frank to the ER for treatment, and without special healing of some kind, he would need a few months to recuperate from that blow.

Our GM is so dangerous, not knowing the rules well. Like, even I knew that just a point or two of Mega-STR is a killer. The player took it pretty well but he was kind of cheesed off. I'm glad we had two other PCs who actually could deal with that guy because I couldn't do anything.

In his favor the GM has increased our XP awards. Along with being very bright, able to emotionally gauge and manipulate others, and also somewhat disperse her physical form (Density Control), Irene can now fly. And she will soon be better at some things and/or learn a few new things.

 

[The Cat]

Playing in a D&D5e horror with my CoC friends, I'll be playing a Rogue(Scout) with the sage background level one feat of linguist level four feat of blindfighting fighting style, 16 dex,con, &int, 10 str, 8 wisdom, 9 cha expertise in arcana and religion languages known deep speech,and common(born with) abyssal, infernal, celestial, undercommon, and draconic from sage/linguist. The concept is a disgraced academic who learned all they learned out of anxiety due to living in a world where gods, devils, and demons and dragons and beholders and such exist. This person has bad eyesight due to lots of reading and such in the dark and due to hypervigilence and sensetive touch/hearing they have blindsight for 10 feet(their personal space) Their motivation is just to try to live and eak out a simple decent life without having to worry about being approached by a fantastical creature failing to understand that creature and being devoured or worse over a simple misunderstanding. This is a character who goes through life reliving every sensory detail of every bug that's ever crawled on him. And it haunts him.

 

[Totenkindly]

Playing in a D&D5e horror with my CoC friends, I'll be playing a Rogue(Scout) with the sage background level one feat of linguist level four feat of blindfighting fighting style, 16 dex,con, &int, 10 str, 8 wisdom

do you think that's wise, hahaha?

(joke: probably not as an 8)

, 9 cha expertise in arcana and religion languages known deep speech,and common(born with) abyssal, infernal, celestial, undercommon, and draconic from sage/linguist. The concept is a disgraced academic who learned all they learned out of anxiety due to living in a world where gods, devils, and demons and dragons and beholders and such exist. This person has bad eyesight due to lots of reading and such in the dark and due to hypervigilence and sensetive touch/hearing they have blindsight for 10 feet(their personal space) Their motivation is just to try to live and eak out a simple decent life without having to worry about being approached by a fantastical creature failing to understand that creature and being devoured or worse over a simple misunderstanding. This is a character who goes through life reliving every sensory detail of every bug that's ever crawled on him. And it haunts him.

I have to admit, I have never seen a Scout spec like this before.

May you be eaten first, so as not to prolong your suffering.

 

[The Cat]

do you think that's wise, hahaha?

(joke: probably not as an 8)


I have to admit, I have never seen a Scout spec like this before.

May you be eaten first, so as not to prolong your suffering.

This character has spent some time captured by a pretty messed up cult, so he's broken in a few ways wisdom and charisma went down during his ordeal but his constitution dexterity, improved, but he was always a geeky kid.

Well the goal is to be able to understand what they want, infiltrate their organization learn all the cool messed up stuff i can, dip before the cult self destructs, and writes pulp horror based on what they learn. Essentially theyre a bard who's afraid of strangers loud noises and crowds, magic and stds and has had a voice in their head since they were born filling them with cosmic horror and existential dread, and a constant never ending thirst...for knowing... and pub food. He's pretty sure something is inside him, like maybe some sort of parasite or a tentacle. They did something. I don't know what, but it feels like it could be some kind of malicious missing letter of the alphabet. Y-you can become infected by math can you?

 

[The Cat]

I finally lived! Everyone did. We escaped the Zepplin before it titaniced into space. It was pulp Cthulhu so we were a bit beefier. The Captain Ace Freely and Dr. Ruby King formed a pretty quick friendship and ended up working as shady pulp adventurers for a sus millionare. it was a lot of fun

 

[Totenkindly]

Currently playing Pathfinder 1e.

Intervened with four thugs at the top floor of an inn who were breaking into a room. They ended up being rather tough (more than they should have been), but we wore them down after inflicting stuns, blindness, and other status effects. We tell them to surrender repeatedly but they just refuse to and keep fighting.

When the fight is going badly for them, one of them decides to run, since he was badly bleeding... and completely bulloxes his backflips to leave combat so the dwarf monk punches him in the back of the head as he flees. The guy then runs down a hallways at a glass window -- and barely breaks through because the frame is tougher than he thinks. he goes through the glass anyway as we're all watching in shock + amusement, cutting himself up and tumbling from the 3rd story to the grass, prone. He's still conscious somehow down there but barely and plans to get up and run into the night.

The flame cleric goes to the window, looks out, sees him there now lying in the grass outside the inn, then raises a hand and then brings it down. FLAME STRIKE. A huge pillar of flame roars out of the sky right next to the inn, in a 20' circle, right on top of this guy (complete overkill). The thug misses his reflex save and goes toastio's from 53 points of fire/divine damage.

The flame cleric turns around and dusts off his hands.

The Aasimar paladin goes up to the stunned brigand and proceeds to beat him repeatedly over the head with the flat of her falchion until he collapses. She then turns to the bleeding woman they had been holding hostage and says kindly, "are you okay?" ala George McFly.... in Abyssal. The woman freaks and runs across the room looking for a safe place. The war cleric (a different guy) manages to snag her and tries to calm her down.

This whole thing is hilarious. (Flame Strike is the cleric's signature spell but it's AoE and he always uses it on a group, rarely for single target.)

EDIT: The dwarf goes in the room to subdue the leader, manages to bludgeon him with non-lethal (?) damage (but almost 120 points of it!) with some residue fire damage from his flaming fist, and because the guy was already badly hurt, he drops... yay? ... and then everyone sees he is not breathing. Talk about a heavy touch, doh!

 

[Totenkindly]

Never get too cocky in an RPG.

We're Level 13 (?) now in Pathfinder. Each one of the PCs is a Mary Sue in their own way due to builds. I'm a crit-generating outsider butcher, another is a skill and investigation wonk, another is Mr. Charisma, and the monk is well... a monk.

So we're doing a mini-arc outside of our regular story, people weren't taking it seriously. First an NPC got dragged off in the swamp unexpectedly by a 50-long crocodile (yeah, one of those nasty things bigger than a megalodon -- we couldn't do much but Obfuscating Mist and watch him go).

Then we saw a woman up ahead tied to a tree around which were chanting figures and a lead witch. I'm the combat monster, but hey let's take a round or two to size things up, buff people, etc? But no, as soon as I and my fire-spewing cleric spend their turns buffing the party, they all just charged in like mother-freakin' Leeeeroy Jenkins. Based on other battlefield control spells and my paladin taking a round to cast Fly on herself to avoid the blockage, by that point one of has lost half her hit points and had been Blinded, and three characters were deaf (which means they could no longer get the Bard buff unless he changes from music to dance), and everything kinda went to shit. Even the monk wasn't doing so hot.

We're gonna start in another minute, with MY two characters finally getting to the edge of the battle where the rest of the party is getting pwned. I guess we'll see if I can pull this one out of the crapper.

 

[Totenkindly]

So we turned the tide. My cleric summoned an earth elemental which can smack things and move them on the battlefield. Meanwhile, my pally can essentially tank and kill -- so she moved in, smacked critters, drew their attention, and then after the monk took out one of them from behind, she used her swift Grace spell (which prevents her movement from drawing opportunity attacks) to fly and drop down in front of her friend who was sickened, blinded, deafened, and something else -- bringing her falchion down on one of the snake-guy's heads. Meanwhile the NPC pally laid hands on her from behind, so the friend is no longer blind or sickened. (life really sucks when you can't see OR hear what's going on in a fight, doesn't it? You can't even see if your friends are helping you.)

Funniest part, my fire cleric really wanted to drop his last Flame Strike to hit as many people as possible, but it would have always clipped his friends. He didn't want to waste it on the leader, standing a bit away -- and then watching her cackle after hurting his friends, he was like, "I just want to see the look in her eyes when this goes down," and summoned fire on her anyway. I was worried the leader had Improved Evasion (so she could dodge the fire and not take ANY damage) but she didn't... and she rolled a 1 on her save -- which in game terms was, "her cackles fall out of the air as her jaw drops and eyes widen as a 40' pillar of fire crashes down in a 20' radius all around her." It was a LOT of damage -- and totally hilarious to see. She was very unhappy after that, especially when another character breathed acid on her, and immediately summoned an air elemental -- and now she fled. What a tramp!

 

[The Cat]

I think this is happening with shows and movies rn. Why is phase four and Star Wars seeming like cheap hollow echoes of what shows and movies could be? One certainly wonders...​

 

[Totenkindly]

22 Ridiculous Tables From the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons DM Guide

How else were you supposed to know how many foreign languages your magic sword spoke?

gizmodo.com

 

[Totenkindly]

So I gotta say: What numbskull at Unity wasn't paying attend to a little company called "Wizards of the Coast" just some months back and totally missed the fallout from that chicanery?

It's almost the same old shit again, except with more money involved.

Why every game developer is mad right now, explained

Unity's new pricing scheme has brought developers together in a remarkable show of... well, you know.

www.pcgamer.com

 

[The Cat]

So I gotta say: What numbskull at Unity wasn't paying attend to a little company called "Wizards of the Coast" just some months back and totally missed the fallout from that chicanery?

It's almost the same old shit again, except with more money involved.

Why every game developer is mad right now, explained

Unity's new pricing scheme has brought developers together in a remarkable show of... well, you know.

www.pcgamer.com

This is gonna be tried with pretty much every game thing for the next little while.

 

[Totenkindly]

Welp, and there it is:

 

[The Cat]

Welp, and there it is:

View attachment 29428

Which also ties into lessons learned from the response to the ogl debacle.​

 

[Totenkindly]

OMG. We were just playing Aberrant and old man Dick (in our group) went to repeatedly claw a woman, and her defense only applies to the first swipe. He hits multiple times. The DM said, "She will unable to resist that," and I blurted out, "No one can resist Dick..." --- not realizing how that was going to come out.

dayum. Can't stop laughing.