Let's talk D&D

i miss the talks we used to have...


a few questionS to launch the thread :


1. do you play d&d? if so, tell us about it. if you don't... do you miss It?

2. favorite alignMent?

3. how excited are you about the 5th edition?

4. what setting do you liKe best?

5. can you treat us with a memorable adventure you enjoyed In the past?


discuss my Nerdy friends
 
1) Not for a loooooong time.
2) Chaotic good (ADD is fun! Wheeee!)
3) No idea.
4) Outdoors. Think Minecraft-style habitat.
5) Ran a halfling thief I really enjoyed, but my all-time favorite was a 1.5E Monk with psionics.

--Patrick
 
1. Pathfinder, but basically, yeah

2. Chaotic Neutral, the best alignment for going, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

3. Eh, not really. As far as I know, my group and I are sticking with Pathfinder.

4. We mostly do homebrew settings, but they're pretty much Golarion-like.

5. My old 3.5 crew were in the Grey Wastes for some horrible reason and we were assaulted by a horde of spiked devils. After taking a pummeling from my spell slinging wizard, one of them decided to impale me on his body. This impaling dropped me into the negative hp. So our cleric kept casting heal on me each turn as the fighter, the barbarian and rogue wailed on the things as they passed me back and forth impaling me each turn. I literally went through my entire hp total almost half a dozen times in so many turns.

My teammates fought valiantly for my crotchety wizard who had spent the year and a half we'd be doing this adventure treating them like inferior poop. As thanks for their valour, in the next battle we'd ended up against a corpse gatherer thing. A construct immune to magic that put an epic beating on us. Well, them anyway. I cast invisibility and fly on myself and took off at top speed like the true hero I was.

Alternatively, it was a day where a lot of people no-showed so our DM came up with the meanest, nastiest thing he could think of for my wizard and my friend's rogue. We were investigating a mysterious cottage that appeared outside of the settlement camp our party had been staying in during our campaign. After solving a few puzzles that required the specific skills of both a super genius wizard and a nimble as fuck halfling, we came face to face with the cottage's (fortress on the inside) owner, a rather whimsical lich who gave us one chance at not being his new decorations.

He pulled out the deck of many things. Now, my character is smart, curious and completely sure of his superiority over most mortals (by this point his intelligence was higher than most demigods) to the point that he'd gone on to invent an entire line of brain busting strategy board games that had taken the homeland by storm (we did some fucking weird shit) but he'd never been what you'd call lucky. The lich wanted to play a game, we take turns drawing from the deck until someone either refused or was incapable of drawing any more cards. If we won, we'd be free to go, if we lost, well, he'd deal with us most comically. The rogue was excited, Frednando, the wizard, me, was less so.

We all drew two cards. The lich drew the one that increased your XP and caused you to draw more cards. He gained tens of thousands of xp this way through the most miraculously lucky draws of all time. He also drew a card that changed his alignment, to what, we wouldn't get the idea until later. The rogue, drew a card that granted him a weapon and a card that would cause a close ally to turn on him, this, being something that he'd be able to deal with later and not now, he was excited. I drew both black aces. All of my gear was destroyed and my fucking very body and soul were locked away as an imprison spell (the rescue of Frednando would be an epic multi-week adventure that would come later).

At this point, the lich had suddenly had a change of heart. He gave the rogue some healing potions he had lying around, gave him instructions on how he and the rest of our party could rescue me and sent him on his way before vowing to right the wrongs he had committed throughout his millenia of evil. The fucker had randomly changed from chaotic evil to lawful good.

When the rogue got back to the settlement, he decided to go visit the settlement's archmage, one of the leaders of the expedition, to find out how rad the new weapon he had been granted by the deck was. He was shown up to the archmage's laboratory, without even being made to wait, which was a little unusual. Upon coming face to face with the archmage, was put into a hold person spell where the archmage recounted how he had recently come across evidence of the rogue's nefarious activity (the rogue had talked his way into taking the lead investigator role in routing out the thieves guild that had taken up shop in the settlement, upon dismantling of the guild, the rogue had set himself up as the new boss and had been behind a huge crime spree while maintaining the guise of trying to stop it) and how he had been found guilty and sentenced in absentia.

This is when the archmage disintegrated the rogue.

Deck of Many Things man, fuck.
 
i miss the talks we used to have...


a few questionS to launch the thread :


1. do you play d&d? if so, tell us about it. if you don't... do you miss It?

2. favorite alignMent?

3. how excited are you about the 5th edition?

4. what setting do you liKe best?

5. can you treat us with a memorable adventure you enjoyed In the past?


discuss my Nerdy friends
1.) I miss it. Haven't really gotten to play in years.
2.)Alignments are specific to characters. I can make it all work, from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil.
3.) 5th Edition has a lot of changes I -really- like, especially with how Channel Divinity is handled now.
4.) Ravenloft is probably my fav setting, which is a shame because they seem to have abandoned it.
5.) Nope.
 
a few questionS to launch the thread :
1. do you play d&d? if so, tell us about it. if you don't... do you miss It?
2. favorite alignMent?
3. how excited are you about the 5th edition?
4. what setting do you liKe best?
5. can you treat us with a memorable adventure you enjoyed In the past?
discuss my Nerdy friends
  1. Probably not for 20 years. Not really.
  2. When I was a kid, I got a kick out of playing CE. I thought evil was "KoOl". These days, I'd probably play CG. I'm still a bit ambivalent on rules if they don't make sense for the greater good.
  3. Meh
  4. Homegrown settings
  5. Nah.
 
Best character I ever made was actually for a GURPS game. He was a chronothief, a thief that had the amazing ability to steal items from the future... but only from himself.

It worked based on the basic property of adventurer item inflation. This theory states that since adventurers are constantly upgrading their gear, any gear they possess in the future is going to be of better quality than the gear they possess in the present. So in a great time of need, he would blink into the future to steal an awesome amazing sword from himself.

Unfortunately, this tended to only last a few seconds, as soon after a past version of himself would appear and steal the very same sword from him.
 
1. do you play d&d? if so, tell us about it. if you don't... do you miss It?

2. favorite alignMent?

3. how excited are you about the 5th edition?

4. what setting do you liKe best?

5. can you treat us with a memorable adventure you enjoyed In the past?

1) I haven't played in well over 2 years. Unfortunately I just don't have the time. My wife isn't very understanding of my desire to sit down and play this with my friends. She would rather insist that I include her, which in itself isn't such a bad thing, except it does limit our availability even more. I've been wanting to sit down and plan my own game so I can run it when I'm able, but with work, kids and school I'm lucky if I have an hour to myself every few days. And of course I miss it. I want to get wrapped up in another adventure. And do I really want to DM? A bit I guess... but I'd love to play too. That's what I miss. The opportunity to do both. Gah. I have so many ideas, and so many characters I want to play. I'm just.... stuck in life. Fuck.

2) I can have fun with any alignment. I think OotS has proven that every alignment can have great characters. Actually one of my favorite characters was Lawful Good. And that really annoying lawful good where all she wanted to do was boss everyone around and make them do the "right thing".

3) I'm excited about 5th edition. I know I would test play it right now, but I just don't have the time. I hope that it's a return to some older editions, and still manage to keep alive some of the simplicity of 4th. I quite enjoyed huge lists of skills and abilities. I've always been disappointed with the most recent skill set. It was like what... 7-10 skills you could rank up in? 3rd edition at least had a good set available. And oh man... the fun I had making a character in 2nd edition. Those were the days. "

4) My favorite setting has always been Ravenloft. I've always just liked bleak settings where the PCs have to be the best thing in the world because everything else is so wicked and evil. And then my second love is Eberron. Such a wonderfully crafted world.

5) I think one of my favorite memories was a few years ago when I played a sword mage named Denan. Denan was a good fellow, neutral good actually. He just sit back and let everyone else sort of take the lead, but he was always there to back folks up. Also in the party we had a very snappy, racist Elf wizard. And then there was our adventuring loony... who was always good for a laugh as he bravely stepped into every situation half blinded by a desire for chivalry. In one session we got into a situation where we pretty much were tricked into summoning an avatar of Orcus. The avatar was basically about to destroy us when our Loon stepped up and announced that for the safety of the party he would agree to be Orcus' herald. The avatar agreed and marked our knight as a chosen of Orcus and left us. the Elf quickly announced he would no longer adventure with a chosen of Orcus and told him to hit the road. As my character I lost my shit on him. It was probably one of the most amazing in-character rants I had ever made. I was completely immersed in my character and I sat there and berated the Elf for about a minute and a half. Basically explaining to him that our Knight just sacrificed himself for the good of the party, and I would be damned if I let him out of my sight until we managed to undo what he just did. And if the Elf didn't like it he could GTFO.
 
i miss the talks we used to have...


a few questionS to launch the thread :


1. do you play d&d? if so, tell us about it. if you don't... do you miss It?

2. favorite alignMent?

3. how excited are you about the 5th edition?

4. what setting do you liKe best?

5. can you treat us with a memorable adventure you enjoyed In the past?


discuss my Nerdy friends
1. Did. I miss it quite a bit, but I don't miss most of the people that I played with.

2. Chaotic Good. I normally ran rangers.

3. Not at all. I have not bought a book since v.2

4. Mostly played homebrew campaigns. But I really dug the Dragonlance campaigns from the old Gold Box SSI computer games.

5. In part with answer 1. I had to kill party members for being bullying, time wasting, punks...
 
So what kind of new stuff are they incorporating into D&D Next. I haven't had the time to really delve into the available playtest materials. I took a peek and it seems like they are combining 4th edition with 3rd edition. I saw the "spells per level" chart and got a little excited.
 
So what kind of new stuff are they incorporating into D&D Next. I haven't had the time to really delve into the available playtest materials. I took a peek and it seems like they are combining 4th edition with 3rd edition. I saw the "spells per level" chart and got a little excited.
Limited spells are back, but you also get cantrips and orisons, which are weak but infinite use spells. So you might only be able to cast Sleep X times per a day, but you'd be able to use Ray of Frost as many times as you want. You can also cast ritual spells, which have a long setup time but don't count against your spells per a day. I feel like this is the best of both 3rd and 4th editions, as far as magic goes anyway.

The biggest change for Fighters is that they gain extra abilities as they level in the form of expertise dice, which can be used for special maneuvers, which can range from doing extra damage to preventing attacks from hitting friends. These are regained like spells via rest.
 
Me and my friend are planning to co-DM an epic campaign sometime within the next week or so. I'm kind of nervous but excited about it. We'll be both alternating between player and DM roles, with the other running the game in the off week.

Story? All right.

Back in the early 2000's my old group were fighting some evil spellcasters and we stormed into their mansion to take them down after tkaing out their guards. We have this epic fight and at the end we're all down on hit points and I remember our CN party ranger had exactly 3. While we were searching for clues the ranger takes off on his own to 'loot the sorcerers bedroom' and he came across the evil sorcerer's pet badger. No not a dire one. just a badger. he declared 'I charge attack and kill it' and rolled, he got a 1. The DM the says 'I.. guess it flies into a rage and bites you' and rolled. A natural 20. he rolled again as we all started grinning at the rangers player who had this 'oh f**k' look on his face. The dice came up 20 again. Damage time and he rolls max. All this in the middle of the board, so no takebacks.

And that is the story of how a 12th level ranger got killed by a badger. We found him with a badger sat on top of his corpse after the DM explained the badger, being a cornered badger.. had given his unconscious body a good ravaging to death and since he hadn't told anyone where he was going there was nobody to help him (since the player had intended to keep any loot for himself.. not the first time he had pulled that one). We all decided that the badger must have leveled up and was a bada*s and left him there.
 
Me and my friend are planning to co-DM an epic campaign sometime within the next week or so. I'm kind of nervous but excited about it. We'll be both alternating between player and DM roles, with the other running the game in the off week.

Story? All right.

Back in the early 2000's my old group were fighting some evil spellcasters and we stormed into their mansion to take them down after tkaing out their guards. We have this epic fight and at the end we're all down on hit points and I remember our CN party ranger had exactly 3. While we were searching for clues the ranger takes off on his own to 'loot the sorcerers bedroom' and he came across the evil sorcerer's pet badger. No not a dire one. just a badger. he declared 'I charge attack and kill it' and rolled, he got a 1. The DM the says 'I.. guess it flies into a rage and bites you' and rolled. A natural 20. he rolled again as we all started grinning at the rangers player who had this 'oh f**k' look on his face. The dice came up 20 again. Damage time and he rolls max. All this in the middle of the board, so no takebacks.

And that is the story of how a 12th level ranger got killed by a badger. We found him with a badger sat on top of his corpse after the DM explained the badger, being a cornered badger.. had given his unconscious body a good ravaging to death and since he hadn't told anyone where he was going there was nobody to help him (since the player had intended to keep any loot for himself.. not the first time he had pulled that one). We all decided that the badger must have leveled up and was a bada*s and left him there.
Did someone at least taunt the player by sneaking up to his ear and starting into a glorious round of "Badger badger badger badger..."
 
I believe so! It was a meme at the time.

To this day he swears it was a dire badger.. but we all know the truth.
 
Oh?

--Patrick
You get greater flexability right out of the box... you don't need supplements to make guys like fighters and barbarians viable, because they've been reworked to have more useful tricks. Deity worship is no longer restricted by alignment; all gods have multiple aspects. Clerics and wizards still have infinite use cantrips so they can magic things without running out later on. Really powerful spells are usually restricted to rituals. The whole thing has just been rebalanced very well.
 
You get greater flexability right out of the box... you don't need supplements to make guys like fighters and barbarians viable, because they've been reworked to have more useful tricks. Deity worship is no longer restricted by alignment; all gods have multiple aspects. Clerics and wizards still have infinite use cantrips so they can magic things without running out later on. Really powerful spells are usually restricted to rituals. The whole thing has just been rebalanced very well.
I think the most important thing I'm looking for in a game is customization. And it has to be customization that has an impact on the game and the rules.
I mean it's one thing to say "My character has this, this and this" adding flavor text to him/her, but if they don't have an overall impact, even if a small one, it won't keep the game fresh and new. I feel that of all the published editions I think that 2nd had the best of that realm. I'm hopeful that the next one will be just as good.
 
I think the most important thing I'm looking for in a game is customization. And it has to be customization that has an impact on the game and the rules.
I mean it's one thing to say "My character has this, this and this" adding flavor text to him/her, but if they don't have an overall impact, even if a small one, it won't keep the game fresh and new. I feel that of all the published editions I think that 2nd had the best of that realm. I'm hopeful that the next one will be just as good.
I think the Deity rules kind of exemplify that: A sun worshiper (get attack spells) has very different spells and abilities than a war god worshiper (gets abilities that make them better at melee) and both are different than a follower of the Reaper (gets undead creation, control, and necromagic). A lot of stuff is tied into Divine Intervention... the sun worshiper might get an PBAOE attack, a war worshiper might get smites, and a nature worshiper might get extra heals/damage prevention. Paladins are like this too, as the oath they follow determines what they can and can't do. Basically every class gets choices on what they can and can't do, which means your character might not be at all like another character of the same class... and this is without taking a prestige class.
 
You get greater flexability right out of the box... you don't need supplements to make guys like fighters and barbarians viable, because they've been reworked to have more useful tricks. Deity worship is no longer restricted by alignment; all gods have multiple aspects. Clerics and wizards still have infinite use cantrips so they can magic things without running out later on. Really powerful spells are usually restricted to rituals. The whole thing has just been rebalanced very well.
So it's Pathfinder?

Paizo does such a good job, and WotC screwed up D&D so bad with 4e I just can't bring myself to care about 5th edition. At this point it's just the incredibly strong association of the name that's keeping it alive.
 
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