D&D! The Science of bludgeoning Elves to death.

[Thrinaxodevil]

This is where we post our long diatribes about tabletop mechanics! or monsters.whatever.


Case in point! Did you know SOME PEOPLE don’t actually play D&D and just look at the pretty pretty monsters? I KNOW RIGHT?, I cant believe it either!Well for those people here's a quick run down on how SIMPLE D&D can be!

Ignoring all the editions and mechanic drift and blah blah blah blah, D&D boils down to i would say, 5 basic core concepts:Abilities, The attack roll, Days, Race, and Class.Imma do these in several posts so i dont go insane.

Abilities! These are your STATS(yeah i have no idea why theyre called abilities either) and as such dictate alot about who your character is and does. There are 6 of em and you may recognize em from like any of 3 trillion RPGS.

• Strenght
• Dexterity
• Constitution
• Intelligence
• Wisdom
• Charisma

Now, and interesting quirk about abilities, is the way they actually WORK, in a normal game you roll a WHOLE BUNCH of 6 sided dice(3 per ability usually) and then you add up the result to get your number.No one with a brain does that because it leads to pure evil. ANYWAYS, the way they actually work is that Odd Numbers= garbage. Because its every 2 points of a stat over or under 8 that actually matters! anything above 8 is a positive modifier, and anything below it is a negative. So for example 13 str is a +2 and 7 int is a -1. SIMPLE RIGHT!?!?

[The Leader]

NERDS

[The Leader]

Also why is this science?

[Thrinaxodevil]

Because reasons.


The attack roll! Why do i single out the attack roll specifically? Because despite being a Role-playing game D&D has its root in wargaming, so the core conflict resolution is VIOLENCE.

This is actually dirt simple. You roll a d20, then you add stuff, then compare it to your enemies defense(AKA AC).Unless youre playing 2nd edition in which the deadly THAC0 shows up, which while using the same math as we do now, was presented in the most ass backwards way possible

THACO: To Hit Armor Class 0 Starts at 20 and goes down to ??, it was the minimum you had to get on a roll to be able to hit someone with AC 0, which was the middle of the park defense.because of the weird way the math was presented, this meant both AC an THAC0 could be negative. and in fact, negative was BETTER than a positive. It was replaced by the super simple BAB system in 3rd edition. you rolled your twenty sided die, then subtracted their AC from your THACO, then crazy shit happened.or somesuch.

AC: Armor class! in the days of THAC0 it went from +10(which was INCREDIBLY BAD) to -10 (which made you a god). Now a days its a positive number usually 10 to 50, but if you sucked it could get as low as i THINK 5, im pretty sure any lower and you were actually a chair.

BAB: Base attack bonus! went from 0-20(and beyond in epic levels) This simplified the clunky way of doing attack, while still being the exact same math(retarded, i know!) You would roll a d20(as i said previously) you add your BAB then your str or your dex bonus depending on which sort of weapon you where using. and if you beat their armor class, you hit them! YAY!

A fun complication of the D&D attack system is that no matter what a 20 on the die was ALWAYS a hit, and a 1 on the die was ALWAYS a miss! So no matter what you did or how awesome you where, if that die came up a 1 or a 20, you were fucked! YAYYY RANDOM CHANCE!

[Thrinaxodevil]

DAYS! D&D actually handles days in a way few other RPGS do, perhaps due to tracking points being deemed stupid, or because god knows why. Days are actually really important, because they dictate daily resources. Thats right! Casting fireball or flying or kicking a guy across 4 state lines is a DAILY resource. You had a predetermined pool of Spells, or uses of Berzerk rage, or whatever, and once you used up all your uses in a day *POOF* nada! NOTHING. No passive regen, no waiting around till you got it back. Everyone* had to actually END your adventuring day and plop down for you 8 hours of sleep so your wizard could refresh his Nukes in the morning.4e slightly redefined this mechanic by also adding in "encounter" and "at will" powers, which were usable every 10 minutes of rest (i.e. you could use em only once a fight, because WELP, theres no way the enemy will let you sit down for that long without stabbing you) and 24/7 365, respectably.Sadly 4e is bad in all ways and we dont talk about it.



*Everyone that is, except psychics(except again in 4e which ruined everything for em), who actually cast based on points, and do lots of neat shit like mind drain people or overexert their brains professor X style till their brain leaked out their ears for more. Fucking psychics! HOW DARE YOU SUBVERT CORE SYSTEM ASSUMPTIONS!?

[i love my dead gay forum]

post a peer reviewed journal or get out of the science forum, fucker

[Boog]

ACTUALLY how would you say the minutae of simulation in DnD's rules compare to other systems such as Mouseguard, Shadowrun or Call of Cthulhu, that try to limit themselves to one kind of dice and one kind of roll? In terms of options for player actions and such?

[Thrinaxodevil]

Oh Christ, ask a hard question, Mr. Boog! The compared to more modern games overall (i sadly have not actually HAD a chance to play mouse guard and CoC or shadowrun ;- HOWEVER! i have played legends of wulin, which is PRETTY MUCH the anti D&D mechanically.one of the ironic problems of D&D is rigidity, because the core of the system is set pretty firmly in stone (rolld20, add bullshit, compare to other bullshit, YAY YOU HIT)From a mechanical perspective it REALLY restrict combat flexibility. Since D&D is extant is several editions,alot of em DRASTICALLY different from themselves, lets compare 2e to 3.5, and then finally to LotW.

2e handled combat flexibility in a REALLY weird way, completely unrelated to the actual dice roll mechanic(see what i mean about rigidity?)You basically had weapon and non weapon proficiencies, which all used up the same slots(basically skill points, but a bit weirder) SO if you had a whip, and say, wanted to learn how to trip someone, you had to spend proficiency slots mastering the whip, but once you did so? BAM , you just did it, no real roll on your part. It wasnt particularly good from simulationist perspective (what if h im stronger than he is, what if its raining?) but as an attempt to add combat variety it wasnt horrible.

3.5 did combat flexibility by outlining a specific set of things you could DO in combat, it was a LONG list and they all worked in COMPLETELY different ways. Maneuvers used their own per turn resource system, and were vaguely tied to weapon and a skill. Trip Sunder bullrush and such were tied to skills, but required brute specialisation to even work particularly well. Skill tricks worked similarly to the 2e proficiencies and let you spend skill points on concrete effects. IT was a HUGE clusterfuck and while any one thing worked well they each worked on a tacked on system effectively unrelated to the core d20 roll.


Legend of the wulin! Now this is a game that has a TON of flexibility. It only has one dice roll (a pool of d10s determined by your "rank") and its used for everything.EVERYTHING. You roll it to attack, you roll it to make a social check, you roll it to make tea and be a doctor and kill a guy, all the same time. Because the core roll applies to ANYTHING and everything, theres no mechanical restriction on what you CAN do in any one situation. you just roll and add any relevant skills or kung fu as it applies.


So thats the basic difference i suppose, D&D has to deal with non attack roll by taking on a whole nother set of subsystems that DONT roll the same, while most modern games are built directly with the idea that the core roll can resolve anything.5e is trying to resolve this by making the skill system more robust( and sadly, not a straight d20 roll) and so far its not looking like shit. Such is the world of mechanically rigorous tabletop games.

[outhouseinferno]

Pretty much the more rolls you do the more annoying it gets. No matter how much reality it adds.

[Thrinaxodevil]

Pretty much. Though there’s a threshold at which the added complexity of different dice rolls is acceptable(D&D hugs it PRETTY TIGHT, on which side of the line it actually is is of course personal opinion)instead of mindnumbingly frustrating.

[Thrinaxodevil]

May 2, 2013 7:47:32 GMT mantits said:

Oh I only get 5th edition news second hand from the internets and said news goes up and down between promising and silly sounding

I heard something about them promising "cooler modrons" but come on.



That was already impossible

Man who ever youre getting your D&D information from is dead fucking wrong.

Theyre not promising ANY mordrons.There are no promises. It was a poll They were asking what people THOUGHT about mordrons.Thats all there has been. Polls asking for opinions on what represents the iconography of D&D. Well, that and posts by ed greenwood about how Forgotten realms is gonna totally be epic this comming new edition.

Also, Implying D&D has "one" setting is like implying Cheesecake only comes in bags stepped on by old ladies. It has 300 billion settings. it will ALWAYS have 300 billion settings. And even if youre talkign about 4es core setting its DEAD wrong, 4e does a lot of weird metaphysical extra planar stuff that i could not loathe with any more intensity. Youre prolly confusing D&D with pathfinder.

[mantits]

Wait if you're annoyed I overlooked the content that annoys you, shouldn't that cancel out into some sort of fatherly pride?

I was exaggerating when I said their setting was just whatever because I just don't get the same sense of diversity and thoughtfulness as I did from 2e.

That would mainly be because 2e had ten years to breathe while 3, 4 and 5 will have all been crammed into the same 15.

[Thrinaxodevil]

2e had some massive problems, to pretend it didnt is silly, while it did have 10 years to "breathe" it also had some amazingly poor decisions, to speak nothing of the art direction. for all you complain about modern D&D "killing the whimsy" 3rd edition cemented alot of the iconic look for monsters. 2e had no less than 5 completely different interpretations of thri-kreen. while one of them was GORGEOUS AND AMAZING. having all the other ones just unecessarily muddled everything. as is lumping in 5 with 3 and 4, its purposely completely divergent from 4e and 3.5.



Also no, you have to take the bad with the good man, ALL ASPECTS ARE PART OF D&D FOREVER!

[mantits]

My snobbish feelings on Thought Crawlers and Boogersaurs aren't that indicative of my overall opinions. I picked out some of the few things I didn't like because sometimes that's more fun to write about.

I actually do like the artistic direction most monsters and races have gone, but there's only so many ways I can say something is TTLY RAD. I've wanted to do more reviews, but only when I had something interesting to talk about, like their little known mythological ties, how they relate to real animals or new things people could do with them in a story.

In fact the current look of Thri-Kreen is probably my favorite of them.

[Thrinaxodevil]

*looks at distrustfully* are you suuuureee..... Not even a LITTLE bit of a bad opinion about warforged or dragins?

and my favorite thri-kreen is the one with the huge abdobutt and the antennas