Poll of the Day > A Geektivus For The Rest Of Us

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sadly all of my tabletop friends are scattered across the country, I really do not have anyone to play those games with on a consistent basis anymore.

I so not even pkay Magic anymore.

Sorry I cannot be of any help.
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Since I'm on and have some time at the moment, here's a little bit of catch-up response-wise:


Zeus posted...

Was watching "Halfway Horrible" (Tales from the Crypt) and recognized the lead actor's voice as also being that of Lex Luthor in the DCAU. So I imdb'd him and apparently he's had a pretty lengthy and varied career (although a lot of it was VA-work)

You can't see it, but I assure you, there was a strong look of disgust on my face when you said that, because I've been a huge Clancy Brown fan since before at least a few people in this topic were alive. He's the goddamned Kurgan for Pete's sake!

And I'm the quintessential 80s kid, so I also knew him from Buckaroo Banzai, the Bride - where he was paired with another favorite of mine, David Rappaport - and Pet Sematary, so I have a hard time actually remembering a point in my life where I DIDN'T know who he was. Especially when he'd keep popping up every now and then in stuff like Shawshank and Starship Troopers in the 90s, and more recently stuff like Sleepy Hollow. And like you pointed out, he's done a ton of voice acting over the years as well.

Then again, I always just used to love blowing people's minds by pointing out that the giant monster badguy from Highlander is also the guy doing the voice of Mr. Krabs on Spongebob.



Zeus posted...

I stumbled onto this clip on Imgur and, while I like it a lot, it's labeled "Lawful Evil"... which... idk, doesn't seem to describe the alignment. Frankly, it seems more Chaotic Neutral. But I'll let the D&D experts here be the final judge.

I can't see it. Imgur is a terrible hosting site, and using NoScript renders it pretty much impossible to see anything there.



shadowsword87 posted...

DnD Expert Opinion: Alignment is awful and can't really be used to describe anyone with even a small amount of character. Also it's vague as f*** so everyone will bitch to their heart's content about what's what so it's not really useful.

See, there you go, spouting your venomous slander again. And on my birthday, no less! For shame!

As always, it's time for my mantra - "Alignment is fine, stop playing in shitty games with shitty players and shitty DMs and you wouldn't be having so many problems with it."



shadowsword87 posted...

Then you have to go to the second layer of Why Alignment Sucks: motive vs actions. Did they do this purely to be an asshole, or was it to entice "chaos" into the system to then be used systematically, or any other reason. Does that matter?

That's an incredibly simplistic (and somewhat incorrect) view of alignment. Intent/motive really only matters for half the equation, while actions ARE the other half.

(breaking this reply here because of GameFAQs' oppressive character limit ~grumble~)


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(cont)

When you're looking at the "moral" axis (Good/Evil), intent is literally all that matters. Why you are doing something matters far more than what you're actually doing. If you commit an "evil" act but with "good" intentions, you're Good. Conversely, you can be the most charitable and heroic motherfucker on the planet, but if your motives are entirely sinister, you're "Evil". The easiest way of breaking it down is to generally associate "Good" with "selfless", "Neutral" with "selfish", and "Evil" with "sadistic" - if a PC hears about a kidnapped maiden being held for ransom, the Good character will go out of their way to rescue her because it's the right thing to do, the Neutral character might rescue her if they thought the odds were in their favor and they could parley it into a reward, and the Evil character might rescue her with the intent to ransom her off himself. Or just because he gets off on killing, and likes the idea of being able to kill a bunch of bandit kidnappers without having to fear legal repercussions afterward.

With the "ethical" axis (Law/Chaos), intent doesn't really matter as much as methodology. Yes, that can map to the more common "I WILL UPHOLD THE LAW"/"SCREW THE MAN, I DO WHAT I WANT!" attitudes that stereotypical players may simplistically stick to, but ultimately, it's more a question of whether or not you're willing to "play by the rules" or "do your own thing". A Lawful character in a kingdom with an oppressive tyrant will try to rally the people to fight back (or somehow legally remove the tyrant from power), while the Chaotic character will sneak into his bedroom at night and stab him in the neck. In that sense, Law and Chaos map much better to a moral system like Mass Effect's Paragon/Renegade far better than Good/Evil does.

Another way to break it down might be, the "moral" axis asks whether or not you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing, while the "ethical" axis asks whether you're doing that thing the right way or the easy way.



shadowsword87 posted...

You don't know the correct answer, and nobody else really does. Everyone just keeps arguing point after point until nobody cares.

To be fair, you'd absolutely know the answer in an RPG where every person is a fictional construct being puppeted by omniscient overlords. It's really only real life where it becomes troublesome to map Alignment to personality, but that's fine because Alignment was never meant for real life anyway, in the same way that the Zodiac and Astrology really shouldn't be used as a means of determining a person's station in life (and also why the pseudoscientific MyersBriggs test sucks so very, very hard).

But much like when people would spam their Livejournal with MyersBriggs test results or casually talk about their birth sign, people dicking around on the Internet and taking "Alignment quizzes" or trying to playfully figure out what Alignment Batman is literally all of them is mostly just harmless fun for people with too much time on their hands who've gotten sick of watching cat videos.

(And as I've said in the past, something like 90% of people in real life would just be True Neutral anyway, since that's basically the default point in the spectrum most normal people would fall into. The more extreme ends of the Alignment spectrum are more the purview of the truly exceptional individuals and who stand out simply BECAUSE they're not common. They're the saints and sinners of their given setting, the Mother Theresas and the Stalins, the patriots and the terrorists, etc. As much as would-be Internet Iconoclasts love to paint themselves as Chaotic Good, they're just as Neutral as the rest of us).


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shadowsword87 posted...

The last few editions have more or less gotten rid of alignment and just have a token part of it.

But it's also telling that, after the attempt in 4e to simplify Alignment down into a scale rather than a 2-axis chart (ie, more like what Alignment was so very long ago in early D&D, when it was just Law vs. Chaos, and Law basically just meant "PC" while Chaos meant "monster you kill for XP"), the outcry over it was strong enough that they felt the need to revert it back to the more familiar system.

Most people LIKE the idea of Alignment as a mechanic. Or, at the very least, as a guideline for RP.



shadowsword87 posted...

What's annoying is that alignment, stats, and the idea of a d20 are one of the things that stuck with the people who don't play DnD, which two of those things have have awful baggage that I wish would go away. The d20 is fine, there are a few people who swear by using 2d10 or 3d6 for their random number generator, but it's not nearly as big as the other stuff.

Once you've taken the step to reject stats, it's an easy step to throw away the dice as well and join us over here in freeform land. Especially if you're emphasizing character, narrative, and ROLEplay anyway over more restrictive rolls and consulting tables and playing Math: the Game.

Though while my beloved Amber DRPG never used Alignment and dropped the dice (hence the DRPG - the D stands for "diceless"), it still kept stats (sort of - they were simplistic as fuck, which is why most players just ignored them anyway). So there's more than one path to the Promised Land.



shadowsword87 posted...

What is frustrating though is how people only know PnP RPGs as DnD. So if you want to run a superhero game, or a scifi game, or a zombie game, or anything other than Fantasy and Fantasy-related games, people assume that it's DnD. That s*** gets annoying.

This is not a new thing, though. It's the same as when older people basically used to equate "video game console" with "Nintendo" back in the 80s or "Playstation" more recently. It's not really an issue if you want to run a Shadowrun game and your new player keeps referring to it as D&D unless you're really pedantic about it. Just be happy they want to play at all, and give them an awesome experience so they want to keep playing - and eventually, they may start referring to all RP, even D&D, as whatever game you've hooked them in with.

And if it's the non-playing bystanders' opinions you're worried about, who cares? Why give a fuck what they think you're playing if it means nothing to them anyway (and they probably assume it involves demon sacrifice and cult indoctrination)?



Zeus posted...

The d20 is one of the coolest inventions known to geekdom.

I came into gaming at a time when the d20 was still more or less the least useful die in the set outside of the d12, because pretty much nothing and no one used the d12 (unless you were like a shitty Barbarian or something). That, combined with the fact that my first two systems used d10s exclusively (MSHRPG as percentile dice, and WW as "roll a shitload of them" - which L5R later copied), I'm far more inclined to think of the d10 as the "default" RPG die. It wasn't until the OGL that the d20 boom really took off.

That being said, I also own a d24, a d30, and a d100 because I enjoy being weird.


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The Wave Master posted...

Sadly all of my tabletop friends are scattered across the country, I really do not have anyone to play those games with on a consistent basis anymore.

I so not even pkay Magic anymore.

Sorry I cannot be of any help.

The flip-side of that is when a fair number of your friends still live close, but you're all old and pretending to be adults with families and jobs and mortgages and such, so it's hard to get more than a couple of you together in one place at one time, and when you do, you mostly just want to have a few drinks and socialize rather than play time-intensive games that require a lot of thought or complex rules (a lot of my friends could barely play Monopoly or Clue, stuff like Betrayal at House on the Hill or Catan is right out).

We manage to play Magic maybe once a year or two at this point. And in spite of a bunch of us playing a more-than-weekly White Wolf game in college, we really haven't managed to get together to RP anything in like more than a decade.

That's actually why I was interested in whether or not that game was any good. It's sort of a simplified solo/co-op RPG/gamebook hybrid thing, which looks like it would be a potential vector for getting people who have never RPed before into RPing, but which is also quick and easy enough to play so that smaller groups of people without a ton of free time can potentially sneak in a game or two here and there.

I was thinking it might be fun to play with my GF (she used to RP a ton as well, and is in the same current RP drought as me), and potentially with my nephew and niece (the way I sort of used HeroQuest as a pseudo-RPG with them) because I don't really see them often enough to run any sort of real RP campaign, especially with so few people. But I'd like to feel out other people's opinions on how good the game is (specifically, thinks like story pathing and balance, which have always been gamebook issues), and also more esoteric stuff like whether or not it's possible to play a more "evil" character or if it's just default assumed you're Heroic McNiceguy the Third with only the purest of adventurer motives.


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Oh, and on the topic of RPish stuff, here's a general throwaway question:

If you were designing a character for a game who was basically a sort of judge who is empowered to travel the land dispensing justice and legal pronouncements that are completely binding, what would you call that person?

I'm trying to think of an actual historical version of that - and I can't shake the feeling that there absolutely is one and I'm just not remembering it - but the only thing that's coming to mind at all are the Magistrates in Legend of the Five Rings. But "Magistrate", while a cool term in itself, is historically almost always applied to judges, lawgivers, and administrators who are linked to a specific locality, similar to a modern judge, and not wandering purveyors of justice who are essentially police, judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one.

(The Judges in FFXII are also sort of flitting to mind, but I'm blocking them out because FFXII is terrible.)


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Oh, that's a druid.
The actual historical thing, not what people think.
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Weeeeeeeell, it's a druid in the same sense that it's closer to the early historical version of bards (as opposed to the fantasy game version of bards), in that both druids and bards sort of grew out of the same social role, which sort of fit that mold...

(see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil%C3%AD )

...but neither really fits precisely, because from what we know druids were mostly settled, while bards didn't really have any legal standing. By the time the druids sort of became what we think of as BEING druids, they'd sort of left a lot of that behind.

(I went through a Celt/Bardic phase in late high school/early college, which was mostly triggered by the King Arthur phase I went through in late middle school/early high school. Which has always led me to associate bards and druids in my head in ways that D&D really doesn't. Which is how I know this. And why I know what an ollam/ollave is.)

But either way, bard and druid are kind of off the table anyway, just by virtue of both of them already being character classes and coming with a lot of pop culture expectations regardless (and on a tangentially related note, it's really annoying that you can't refer to a female Wizard as a Sorceress in D&D because Sorcerer is a separate class with its own connotations).


After originally posting that question, though, it occurred to me that I was forgetting the Justicars and Archons in White Wolf, which are sort of that concept (ie, non-location-based legal operatives with remit to travel and carry out existing edicts and pass judgement on violators or mediate between feuding parties). Though both of those terms are also a) based on real world terms that don't necessarily have the same meaning WW uses them for, and b) sort of flipped the wrong way around (in the real world, "archon" basically means "ruler" while "justicars" would be appointed officials that would serve a ruler in an executive capacity, but in WW the Justicars were running things while the Archons were their lackeys).

It also occurred to me that the Hollywood version of marshals in the Wild West can sort of fit that mold, though that's more Western than fantasy so not necessarily appropriate in that context.


As an aside, though, also since then I managed to find an article online that mentions that Imperial era China DID have Magistrates that served as both judicial agents as well as "investigators", which actually puts the Magistrates in L5R closer to reality than I originally thought they were. Though they're still mostly grounded in a single jurisdiction rather than acting as wandering problem solvers.


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Maybe consider it more like the Vehmic Court, but on a larger scale then?
That's a nice word with no social connections but means similar things.
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If I were creating a character like that from whole cloth I'd call the class something like Lord Judicant or Sovereign Lawgiver, or Hammurabian. Sounds like the legal equivalent of Vagrant Story's Ashley Riot and the Order of the Riskbreakers or well, a Judge from Dredd but I'm at a loss for a cool sounding name or historical precedent irl.

Since generally in history until rather modern times the power to grant Laws was some extension or franchise under the authority of a Sovereign who's own authority was granted either by God, being a God themselves, or by being a descendent of a God, it's probably a deep dive to find some precedent for commoners going about as Journeyman Courts.
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And now that I think about it, the Wardens from the Dresden Files just about fit the bill, but they are also entirely fictional.
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Oh right, I do currently have a weird obsession with a bad space RP game, SpaceStation 13.

Half of the time I deal with putting boxes into a ship, and also stealing boxes from all around the station, then the other half is trying to deal with all of the hellish chaos all around and just trying to survive.

It's fun, and bad at the same time.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

You can't see it, but I assure you, there was a strong look of disgust on my face when you said that, because I've been a huge Clancy Brown fan since before at least a few people in this topic were alive. He's the goddamned Kurgan for Pete's sake!

And I'm the quintessential 80s kid, so I also knew him from Buckaroo Banzai, the Bride - where he was paired with another favorite of mine, David Rappaport - and Pet Sematary, so I have a hard time actually remembering a point in my life where I DIDN'T know who he was. Especially when he'd keep popping up every now and then in stuff like Shawshank and Starship Troopers in the 90s, and more recently stuff like Sleepy Hollow. And like you pointed out, he's done a ton of voice acting over the years as well.

I have an easier time with VAs than normal actors since I have difficulty differentiating faces, etc, but when all I have is a voice I can key into it better. Plus, out of everything he's done (that I can recall seeing, anyway), Luthor left the biggest imprint since he was phenomenal in the role and the DCAU was a pretty big thing which I've revisited quite a few times over the years.

Tangentially, I should mention that I gave up on Sleepy Hollow early into the second season given how badly they handled the fallout and resolution of season 1's cliffhanger. (Plus, generally speaking, it's a pretty awful show -- it and Grimm were the two worst things I was watching that year.) I'm not sure when or where he appears on it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I can't see it. Imgur is a terrible hosting site, and using NoScript renders it pretty much impossible to see anything there.

Well, to summarize, it was a security camera recording of two black youths in a convenience store. One is distracting the clerk by having him go to the far end while his buddy is crouched down in a nearby aisle stuffing items from the shelves into his backpack. Suddenly the lookout spots somebody coming in with a gun and ducks into that same aisle next to his friend, with the two watching a guy with a shotgun hold up the clerk.

The kids decide to interrupt the robbery by splitting up. One slides his skateboard out from the aisle so it hits the counter while he ducks down behind another aisle and, when the burglar looks down the aisle that the skateboard came from, the buddy shoves the thief from behind while the lookout pushes some shelves down on him then grabs the gun and throws it to the clerk before both kids run out (with whatever they stole).

It was labeled lawful evil, but the whole thing seemed chaotic neutral/evil since they were robbing the place themselves but decided on a whim to help their intended victim.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Mass Effect's Paragon/Renegade

tbh, I like the sound of that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I came into gaming at a time when the d20 was still more or less the least useful die in the set outside of the d12, because pretty much nothing and no one used the d12 (unless you were like a shitty Barbarian or something). That, combined with the fact that my first two systems used d10s exclusively (MSHRPG as percentile dice, and WW as "roll a shitload of them" - which L5R later copied), I'm far more inclined to think of the d10 as the "default" RPG die. It wasn't until the OGL that the d20 boom really took off.

That being said, I also own a d24, a d30, and a d100 because I enjoy being weird.

It's less a matter of practicality than it is aesthetics. There's something inherently visually pleasing about a die with that many sides. Even a 12-sided die doesn't come close to evoking as strong a reaction.

Granted, *part* of it likely results from the fact I never properly played any P&P rpg so my connection is divorced from function.
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Zeus posted...

There's something inherently visually pleasing about a die with that many sides.

https://www.amazon.com/Role-Playing-Dice-Spherical-ZOCCHIHEDRON/dp/B0026N9TH4
Not... really. They tend to lose the "this is so cool" after a while.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I was thinking it might be fun to play with my GF (she used to RP a ton as well, and is in the same current RP drought as me), and potentially with my nephew and niece (the way I sort of used HeroQuest as a pseudo-RPG with them) because I don't really see them often enough to run any sort of real RP campaign, especially with so few people. But I'd like to feel out other people's opinions on how good the game is (specifically, thinks like story pathing and balance, which have always been gamebook issues), and also more esoteric stuff like whether or not it's possible to play a more "evil" character or if it's just default assumed you're Heroic McNiceguy the Third with only the purest of adventurer motives.

I want to take a second to acknowledge how much I love the phrasing, since when most people talk about wanting to roleplay with their gf, this isn't what they have in mind =p

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If you were designing a character for a game who was basically a sort of judge who is empowered to travel the land dispensing justice and legal pronouncements that are completely binding, what would you call that person?

Arbitrator has a cool ring to it and lacks the messy common-use nature of terms like judge or magistrate where people associate them with existent roles within a society.
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I do want to ask you PO, when you played an IRL RPG over a decade ago, did you use voices/accents at all?
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Zeus posted...

I want to take a second to acknowledge how much I love the phrasing, since when most people talk about wanting to roleplay with their gf, this isn't what they have in mind =p

We actually met via RP, and used to RP a lot (and nudo used to make fun of me because I mentioned to him once that she was LARPing for a while, and he always found LARP to be silly and ridiculous), so we're both more inclined to think of it that way than the more mainstream alternative sexytimes version.



Zeus posted...

Arbitrator has a cool ring to it and lacks the messy common-use nature of terms like judge or magistrate where people associate them with existent roles within a society.

This actually just reminded me of the "Arbiter" (though not the one from Halo, like 99.44% of people on this board would think when they hear that name, as much as the one from Chess, because I absolutely fucking love Chess and have for years -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutDgLmx-SQ ).

Which I'm kind of amazed I didn't think of before, because not only do I have my aforementioned love for the song, but because I literally had a character named The Arbiter in a previous RP game. You'd think it would spring to mind for me.

Plus, with terms that end in "-er" or "or" there's always the option to feminize them, so something like Arbitrator or Arbiter becomes Arbitrix, Magistrate is Magistrix, Imperator is Imperatrix, and so on. That can give a bit of a more fantasy edge to terms, because we're not as used to hearing the Latin derivations in real life in modern times.


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shadowsword87 posted...

I do want to ask you PO, when you played an IRL RPG over a decade ago, did you use voices/accents at all?

Depends. Most of the time as GM, I generally delivered lines in a sort of third person ("He tells you to travel north, where you'll find the thing you seek"), but occasionally I'd drop into a more direct first-person sort of speaking voice (usually for more ominous or combative lines - "This will be your tomb, fools!"). I rarely did accents because I didn't feel 100% comfortable with them (though I DID have one deliberately annoying NPC who talked like Sylvester Stallone in the later Rocky movies, and my players would moan to themselves whenever they heard me start with the mumbling mushmouth talk, because they knew who it was before I ever described him physically). But if I was doing direct dialogue, I would try to put proper inflection into the words, and might occasionally pitch my voice up a bit (for "innocent" characters) or down a bit (for sinister characters).

As a player (as rarely as it happened ~grumble~), I did feel I was sort of obligated to talk first person (ie, "I do this" instead of "He does this" or "My character does this", and delivering dialogue as I would say it, rather than paraphrasing). I still didn't use accents, though, because I'm not hugely comfortable with them (my accents are stereotypical as hell, and if I talk with them for two long they tend to drift in and out, so I might start off Irish, stray into Russian, and end up Jamaican all in one paragraph). So any given character would just sound like me (this is also partly why I avoided playing as female PCs back then).

When I used to play online, I felt a lot more free/comfortable with dialogue (part of the reason why I'm not necessarily a huge fan of playing online with mics), so I'd be much more inclined to pepper dialogue with implied accents (like comics do with Rogue and her "Ah reckon so" sort of Southern accent), foreign-isms (sort of the way comics do with Gambit, where he's speaking perfect English but then ends with a "ma chere"), or even outright foreign dialogue with subtitles (basically, we'd write what we wanted to say in English, run it through Babelfish, translate it into French or whatever, then post it. It didn't result in perfectly accurate translations, but it did a lot to set mood, and meaning wasn't lost because we'd always provide the original English translation to other players - assuming their characters actually SPOKE the language being used). Being online also sort of opened the door for me to play female characters in first person (both as PC and GM), because I feel a lot less inhibited writing out female dialogue than I do trying to speak it in my natural deep, baritone voice (though Brian Posehn playing Calliope in the Force Grey games shows that you can get away with it if you're playing with the right people).

Finally - and I feel like I've told this anecdote before (but let's be honest, I'm old so I've probably told most of my anecdotes before, multiple times, until it gets sort of tiresome for everyone) - I did run one game where I deliberately tried to push the idea of accents and "real" dialogue as a sort of experiment. So not only was I trying to use active voice as GM as much as possible, but I created stereotypical NPCs with blatant accents which I then gave to the players, and I would make them run them as a sort of co-GM whenever those NPCs showed up. And I would give the players extra XP for their main characters if they played those NPCs with consistent active voice and accents, and just sort of threw their hearts into it.

(little bit more on this in a bit, hit character limit here)


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(cont)

The NPCs in question were each deliberately created to serve as rivals to specific PCs. I remember two of the ones I had (one was a cruel local landowner because one player was playing a very Zorro-esque sort of mysterious crusader of the people who was secretly another noble by day, and one was an evil Scottish lord because one of the players was playing a William Wallace-y Scottish Highlander character), but there were four total (I forget the other two, because I'm not sure if they ever even showed up in-game prior to that campaign sort of drifting apart). And I deliberately handed them out so there was no overlap (in other words, Player B would play the rival to Player A's PC, Player C would be the rival for Player B, Player D was the rival to Player C, and Player A was the rival of Player D - that way the relationships didn't reduce down to two players directly opposed to each other all the time, but made the interactions more complex). I basically cribbed the idea of rivals run by other players from Wraith, which had the players play the Shadows (internalized sentient dark side) of other players at the table, and would occasionally try to tempt them into evil or would just berate them.

But basically, I'd give each player a sheet that would say something like "The Baron", under which it would say "French nobleman who is constantly trying to discover the true identity of El Dalberon, the mysterious crusader for truth, justice, and the rights of the oppressed masses." Then there'd be a short summary of RP notes like "You're a slimy manipulator, more willing to send minions to do the dirty work, and apt to collapse and grovel if you're forced into direct combat. You suffer from mood swings, and may have moments of explosive anger or verbal abuse when things are going wrong, but can become almost magnanimous and pleased with yourself when things are going right. You can't stand cats." And so on. Then in sessions before once of the NPCs was going to show up, I might give the player more specific instructions beforehand, like "In this instance, you're trying to acquire an important explorer's journal before the players do. Do whatever it takes to succeed, but you can't afford to skip your meeting with the King later tonight."

Then I left it up to the players to fill in the details of the NPC, how they would do things, and most importantly, how they would speak in that character's voice. The aforementioned "Baron" basically did a voice straight out of Holy Grail, and the scene with the Frenchmen (His intro line was basically like "Ello, I am de Barone"), and it kind of spiraled off from there. One of the other players was "MacBeth" (not that one, just a Scottish assassin possibly from the same family), and basically played the character as Sean Connery's voice with the personality of the character he played in The Rock.

Being able to play super over-the-top worked better because it wasn't their "real" characters they were making look silly. And once they got over the initial self-consciousness, most of them really put their hearts into making the most iconic and memorable performance they could - so much so that the players started looking forward to the times when one of their rivals would show up.

That sort of idea might not work in a more serious game, but it worked for us because that was supposed to be a bit of a silly sort of game anyway. And because they could still be badasses with their main PCs, or explore more serious plots, with the rivals basically becoming more comic relief that could act as tension breaks or "comedy episodes" between more serious play.

The most iconic "war story" sort of memory any of us still have from that game though is the time we all went out for food after a session, and "The Baron" ordered his food in-character, for which he later got extra XP.


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Also, continuing on the subject of RP (mostly because I don't think there's a D&D/general RPG thread going on the board at the moment), here's another question for Shadow/anyone who has a pretty good grasp of rules mechanics in 5e:


Generally speaking, when someone plays a Paladin (either in D&D or another D&D-inspired game), we always tend to visualize that character as being a massive, armored tank (it's even classified as one of the Defender roles in 4e, where characters were divided into categories based on their role on the battlefield, whether Tank/DPS/crowd control/etc). Even in games that have a "Paladin-by-a-different-name" class, they still tend to go with this assumption (like in Diablo III, where the Crusader class is built like a house at the start and is wearing 437 tons of metal once the upper-tier armors become available). They also tend to wield massive weapons, like two-handed greatswords or giant battleaxes). In spite of the fact that actual, real world "Paladins" (ie, the honor guard of Charlemagne) - if they were ever real at all - would have been wearing armor closer to Roman legions than medieval knights. We're just too memetically wedded to the idea of "Paladin = massive holy knight in Quadruple Plate Armor".

But is it possible to make a "lighter" Paladin build in 5e D&D that is anything other than completely suboptimal? Paladins technically have all Armor Proficiencies after all, which should make them as effective with light armor as they are the heaviest plate. Could someone make a Dex-build Paladin relying more on dodging rather than tanking, wearing light armor, and using a Dex-based finesse weapon like a fencing blade or scimitar, rather than wearing a schoolbus and wielding a three-handed doomclub? Maybe using something like a buckler or targe as an off-hand AC booster, or even a main-gauche type of secondary weapon that can alternatively boost AC or allow for bonus attacks?

Could someone build a functional Paladin along those lines (with or without feats or a bit of DM fudging in certain aspects), or would it inevitably be a gimped build with no real combat viability and generally a liability to the team as a whole? ARE light armor and Dex-build weapons actually viable for significant damage in normal melee classes, or are the rules as written basically a "Go as big as your class allows or go home" sort of scenario?

Because it seems like a cool mental image to have a "Warrior of God" sort of character who doesn't show up looking like a medieval knight as much as in a more swashbuckle-y sort of overcoat and "normal" clothes (sort of like the Three Musketeers or Will Turner in the later Pirates of the Caribbean movies), who is still calling down holy power and smiting you with their blade and calling upon their god to heal the innocent or curse the wicked. Or something like the modern stereotype of "Dervish-as-holy-warrior" (which is blatantly inaccurate, but still), with robes and blades and prayers to Allah (or insert-god-here).


As a tangential side-note while talking about builds and Armor Proficiencies, if "going as big as possible is always the best choice" IS how the rules tend to work, wouldn't it be a good idea for every magic user class to take a single level of Fighter or Paladin to get the heavy armor proficiency, and thus become a spellcasting tank with an insane AC rather than a glass cannon? The rules-as-written seem to suggest that would be a completely valid thing to do, even if it is sort of power-gamer-y (meaning some groups and DMs would shit on a player for doing it). Why wear robes with an AC of like 12 (if you're lucky) when you can be wearing full plate and have an AC of 18?


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

But is it possible to make a "lighter" Paladin build in 5e D&D that is anything other than completely suboptimal? Paladins technically have all Armor Proficiencies after all, which should make them as effective with light armor as they are the heaviest plate. Could someone make a Dex-build Paladin relying more on dodging rather than tanking, wearing light armor, and using a Dex-based finesse weapon like a fencing blade or scimitar, rather than wearing a schoolbus and wielding a three-handed doomclub? Maybe using something like a buckler or targe as an off-hand AC booster, or even a main-gauche type of secondary weapon that can alternatively boost AC or allow for bonus attacks?

Sure, it's not crazy suboptimal either. Besides, I've thought about much, much worse builds.

The only thing that's really awkward about it is that you don't get access to the Two Weapon Fighting Style at level 2, which if you really are interested in it, you can still take one level dip to Fighter to grab it.

I guess if you really want to be anal, the starting equipment is technically chainmail so that's no good.

Other than that, I guess I should go through this point by point:
-Most martial finesse weapons actually suck for damage, which is why finesse is so useful. The max damage die you can get is a d8 with a rapier, which isn't great, but it's what any dex character has to deal with, it's not special.
-Shields are actually really good in 5e (which is a +2 AC), WotC has really made it hard getting a crazy high AC. Most monsters have a bounded AC up to 20, with a few, few of them getting all the way up to
a whole 25 AC! This means showing up with 18 AC is actually pretty good and not the default for basically every class.
-The secondary weapon deals it's base die damage (i.e. deals 1d8+0) with the offhand (without Two Weapon Fighting), and the bonus to hit doesn't get proficiency bonus. But this isn't limited to the paladin, it's just how it works. You can do some gross stuff to the system with this though. This won't give a bonus to AC (that I know of, there's always something).

It's absolutely fine, hell the character I'm playing right now can't speak. If you talk to some completely grognardy people about it, they will give you a weird look, but paladin stuff doesn't actually care about your strength... so whatever.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As a tangential side-note while talking about builds and Armor Proficiencies, if "going as big as possible is always the best choice" IS how the rules tend to work, wouldn't it be a good idea for every magic user class to take a single level of Fighter or Paladin to get the heavy armor proficiency, and thus become a spellcasting tank with an insane AC rather than a glass cannon? The rules-as-written seem to suggest that would be a completely valid thing to do, even if it is sort of power-gamer-y (meaning some groups and DMs would s*** on a player for doing it). Why wear robes with an AC of like 12 (if you're lucky) when you can be wearing full plate and have an AC of 18?

That depends on the edition.
In 3.5 you had spell chance failure, which sucked dealing with it. Plus they piled on negative modifiers if you didn't know what you were doing until you cried yourself to sleep.
In 4e it just wasn't an option, plus magic users got their INT bonus to AC, so it was fine.
In 5e there's a "just don't" part. "If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or Attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you cant cast Spells."

As with all of the editions, you could get feats to get more armor proficiency, but feats are precious and few and far between to get AC bonuses in 6 levels.
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Man, I know a lot about DnD and it's mechanics, despite not really liking the fantasy genre.
I guess that's what happens when that's the only game people want to play.
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My favorite current debate in gaming is Fortnite vs PUBG.

They both suck.

Senate over.
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shadowsword87 posted...

Man, I know a lot about DnD and it's mechanics, despite not really liking the fantasy genre.

Is that better or worse than knowing a fair amount of basics about different D&D edition rulesets in spite of never playing a single actual game of D&D until 2012, a full 28 years after first starting to RP?



shadowsword87 posted...

Sure, it's not crazy suboptimal either. Besides, I've thought about much, much worse builds.

I think I was mostly thinking of it in terms of heavier martial weapons generally being d12 (or 2d6) for damage, while finesse weapons seem inherently weaker (d8 or d6), which seems like you'd wind up with a Paladin who's only hitting half as hard.

I was also sort of trying to process in my head whether or not a Dex-based AC was always going to be significantly inferior to a heavy armor-based one (with plate being default AC 18), since it seems like you'd need a Dex bonus of +6 (and thus a Dex of 22!) to really match the benefits of heavy armor (I'm not counting the shield bonus, since both sides can benefit from it). Though I suppose there's the extra advantage there of light armor not causing disadvantage on stealth rolls or hitting you with exhaustion penalties in places like Chult (or potential drowning issues if you go overboard off the side of a ship).



shadowsword87 posted...

The only thing that's really awkward about it is that you don't get access to the Two Weapon Fighting Style at level 2, which if you really are interested in it, you can still take one level dip to Fighter to grab it.

Presumably that would only be an issue if you intended to go with a Two Weapon Fighting in the first place, since other than that and Archery, Paladin gets the same fighting style choices Fighter does.

If anything, I'd assume that Defense, Dueling, and/or Protection would be better options for that sort of build anyway (depending on how you wanted to play them).



shadowsword87 posted...

I guess if you really want to be anal, the starting equipment is technically chainmail so that's no good.

There are are relatively easy ways around that, even assuming aren't in a campaign where the DM ignores baseline starting equipment and gives you a gold amount to spend on starting gear, so you can buy lighter armor instead. Or conversely, assume that you sold said chain mail (for ~37 gp) and spent the resulting gold on light armor (between 5-45 gp) in a hypothetical "zeroth" session. Or just ask the DM if you can straight up replace the chain mail with lighter armor instead, since you're actually technically losing money by doing so (since chain mail costs more than every light armor alternative - you're basically screwing yourself out of 30-70 gp worth of value out of the gate).

If you've got a DM who absolutely refuses to go with any of those options, you're probably in a "NO FUN ZONE" sort of game anyway, so I'm not entirely sure I'd ever stick around regardless.

But wearing "cloth" armor for the first few sessions until you can get to the first shop, sell the armor you've got packed away in your backpack, and buy some proper leathers or whatever is at least a functional compromise.


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shadowsword87 posted...

-Most martial finesse weapons actually suck for damage, which is why finesse is so useful.

I feel like I'm missing something here, because that sentence doesn't seem to make sense. I'd assume martial finesse weapons sucking for damage would make finesse LESS useful. Because they're always going to be worse than Strength-based alternatives if you have the option (and aren't, say, a Rogue or a spellcaster who can't use them).

Unless what you're saying is that the ability to substitute Dex for Str is itself a positive, because then you're basically able to boost a single stat (Dex) to improve both attack/damage and defense, because in the alternative scenario boosting Str only improves attack/damage, while you're forced to rely on heavier armors (without a Dex boost) for defense.

Or conversely, if you're saying that finesse is a necessity for non-martial classes who are stuck with things like daggers or shortswords because they can't actually wield the Strength-based weapons, which essentially allows the character to offset a weaker weapon (somewhat) by using it more precisely and with more skill rather than with brute force.



shadowsword87 posted...

The max damage die you can get is a d8 with a rapier, which isn't great, but it's what any dex character has to deal with, it's not special.

Yeah, which was the core point of my original question. If trading a Str build for a Dex build
means you're stuck with weaker weapons, and with you not getting the sort of class abilities that, say, the Rogue has to compensate, then choosing Dex over Str is essentially always a poor choice - it implies Fighters and Paladins should ALWAYS go the Str route, and leave Dex for Rogues and Rangers.

Basically, if Dex characters have shitty weapons, and you have a scenario where you can choose to either go Str or Dex, why would you ever go Dex?

My question was mostly whether or not the damage lost was effectively compensated for in other ways, or if it was minimal enough that sacrificing it for flavor isn't TOO bad a choice, or if it's such a catastrophic nerfing that only an idiot would ever do it. I can't really juggle the numbers and multiple data points in my head to really feel out just how drastic a handicap it is.



shadowsword87 posted...

-Shields are actually really good in 5e (which is a +2 AC), WotC has really made it hard getting a crazy high AC. Most monsters have a bounded AC up to 20, with a few, few of them getting all the way up to a whole 25 AC! This means showing up with 18 AC is actually pretty good and not the default for basically every class.

Yeah, I've noticed that in the online games I watch. Even when the PCs get into higher levels and are carrying around significant amounts of magical gear, they never seem to get all that high.

My assumption is that a tanky build with magical heavy armor and a shield could put up a 20+ AC, but almost every other class is topping out somewhere around 16-18 or so.

Then again, most of what I watch is narrative-heavy RP where every player is pretty much suboptimal as hell, so that might just be them all totally sucking.

(Not that I'd even necessarily want an optimal min-max'd build even if I was playing in a game - like I told SoBe back when we were in KoL, that sort of playstyle just saps all joy out of me.)


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shadowsword87 posted...

-The secondary weapon deals its base die damage (i.e. deals 1d8+0) with the offhand (without Two Weapon Fighting), and the bonus to hit doesn't get proficiency bonus. But this isn't limited to the paladin, it's just how it works. You can do some gross stuff to the system with this though. This won't give a bonus to AC (that I know of, there's always something).

Yeah, I've looked into that because of my penchant for swashbuckler-type characters, and I noticed that the rules-as-written sort of make two-weapon fighting kind of awkward to deal with (and also somewhat annoying, like how the literal Swashbuckler subclass - which is sort of built around the idea of two-weapon fighting - can't benefit from the Two-Handed fighting style).

The Dual Wielder feat DOES give a bonus to AC via having the offhand weapon, but for flavor's sake if I was DMing a game and a player wanted to have a main gauche (which is mostly used for blocking, like a shield, but which also has a blade that could theoretically stab), I'd probably homebrew a solution where the off-hand blade gives a +1 boost to AC but can be used to attack on a given turn with a bonus action, with the proviso that in a turn where it is used to attack, the player doesn't benefit from the defense boost. Sort of like a very stripped down version of the Defender magical weapon. Especially since - AFAIK - they don't really give stats or rules for that sort of off-hand dueling-specialized off-hand weapon (in the same way that they don't have basic rules for things like the cestus, katar, hook swords, or wind-and-fire wheels, which are all favorites of mine).



shadowsword87 posted...

It's absolutely fine, hell the character I'm playing right now can't speak. If you talk to some completely grognardy people about it, they will give you a weird look, but paladin stuff doesn't actually care about your strength... so whatever.

To be fair, grognardy people hate Paladins in general regardless of how they're played, so that doesn't mean much.

But yeah, I have no problem somewhat handicapping a character for the sake of flavor. I do it all the time in video games (mainly wearing weaker underleveled armor because I think the stronger armor options look like shit). But I was sort of trying to feel out just how handicapping it would be. Like, "minor inconvenience for the sake of a cool character" sort of handicapped, or "outright fucked, especially at higher levels when you're going to be useless" sort of handicapped.


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shadowsword87 posted...

That depends on the edition.
In 3.5 you had spell chance failure, which sucked dealing with it. Plus they piled on negative modifiers if you didn't know what you were doing until you cried yourself to sleep.
In 4e it just wasn't an option, plus magic users got their INT bonus to AC, so it was fine.
In 5e there's a "just don't" part. "If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, or Attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you cant cast Spells."

Yeah, I was aware of earlier editions having built-in restrictions to spellcasting in heavy armor (or any armor). I played Baldur's Gate, which was running off AD&D 2e rules.

But I was mostly interested in 5e (which is where most of my interest lies these days in terms of D&D edition preference - it just seems like the best system they've ever really had in terms of simplicity, functionality, and accessibility, which is a large part of why I think the hobby has taken off so strongly online recently, even with people who'd never really RPed before). And from what I'd read, it seemed like the only restriction in 5e was that you suffer penalties from wearing armor you're not proficient in, but you can essentially become proficient in pretty much anything with only a single level multiclassed into a class that has the proficiency you want, with pretty much zero drawback to doing so (other than potentially sacrificing your 20th level of your main class, but for most classes the 20th level isn't that great anyway, and realistically you probably won't be PLAYING much after that point, assuming you even get there at all). So I was wondering if there was a rule against that somewhere that I missed, or if it was a loophole that they just expected DMs to disallow if they thought their players were being Munchkins.

Though speaking of multiclassing shenanigans and suboptimal builds, while I was thinking about my Dex Paladin concept, I was also thinking about having it start as a Sorcerer at first level, more or less solely for the cantrips (and more specifically, for Prestidigitation and Mending, just so they could keep themselves and their clothes magically clean in their travels... because no one says a Paladin can't suffer from vanity - and hell, Paladins of a god like Sune might actually require it). Though that could also open the door to cloth armor/Mage Armor shenanigans, which could make said Paladin even more of a Dex-tank.



shadowsword87 posted...

As with all of the editions, you could get feats to get more armor proficiency, but feats are precious and few and far between to get AC bonuses in 6 levels.

Speaking of buying feats, that was another question I sort of had.

When they say you essentially give up a stat boost to take a feat instead, do they mean you're giving up both possible points you get from your "Ability Score Improvement" feature that level, or does it only cost one of the two possible points?

Because I'm assuming it's the former, but the way it's written I could see it being taken to mean the latter as well, and I'm not entirely sure which is correct.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I think I was mostly thinking of it in terms of heavier martial weapons generally being d12 (or 2d6) for damage, while finesse weapons seem inherently weaker (d8 or d6), which seems like you'd wind up with a Paladin who's only hitting half as hard.

I was also sort of trying to process in my head whether or not a Dex-based AC was always going to be significantly inferior to a heavy armor-based one (with plate being default AC 18), since it seems like you'd need a Dex bonus of +6 (and thus a Dex of 22!) to really match the benefits of heavy armor (I'm not counting the shield bonus, since both sides can benefit from it). Though I suppose there's the extra advantage there of light armor not causing disadvantage on stealth rolls or hitting you with exhaustion penalties in places like Chult (or potential drowning issues if you go overboard off the side of a ship).

Oh, you can't go above 20 of a stat except one specific case when the barbarian is level 20.
Past that, a d8's average damage is 4.5, a d10's is 5.5, and 2d6 is 7. So you're missing out on an average of 1-2.5 points of damage per hit by going dex, which isn't that bad. The reason why Dex doesn't deal that much damage though, is because they have all of the good skills (stealth, slight of hand) and it feeds into AC (so if you do get a magical bonus to dex, it feeds into it).
Plus there's only a single ranged weapon that uses str (javelin), so if you do go a str heavy build anything ranged just sucks (and there are cool ranged builds that use touch attacks by shooting arrows with spells on the arrow, which is awesome).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If you've got a DM who absolutely refuses to go with any of those options, you're probably in a "NO FUN ZONE" sort of game anyway, so I'm not entirely sure I'd ever stick around regardless.

Oh yeah, that too. It was the only "problem" that I could think of building that character though.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

feel like I'm missing something here, because that sentence doesn't seem to make sense

Whoops, it was 5AM when I typed that post up, with lots of edits because I was tired and I literally just finished a DnD game. Yeah I don't know what I was saying.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, I've looked into that because of my penchant for swashbuckler-type characters, and I noticed that the rules-as-written sort of make two-weapon fighting kind of awkward to deal with (and also somewhat annoying

Also the second attack uses your bonus action, which you only get one of those a turn (it's basically a minor action from 4e, fuck that name). Then higher level, that bonus action is really, really useful in doing other stuff than extra bit of damage.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And from what I'd read, it seemed like the only restriction in 5e was that you suffer penalties from wearing armor you're not proficient in, but you can essentially become proficient in pretty much anything with only a single level multiclassed into a class that has the proficiency you want,

But that level can really sucks to not use, but yeah it's pretty easy to get what you want.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though speaking of multiclassing shenanigans and suboptimal builds, while I was thinking about my Dex Paladin concept, I was also thinking about having it start as a Sorcerer at first level, more or less solely for the cantrips

Check out the Green-Flame Blade and Sword Burst cantrips, it's much more fun :D
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Speaking of buying feats, that was another question I sort of had.

When they say you essentially give up a stat boost to take a feat instead, do they mean you're giving up both possible points you get from your "Ability Score Improvement" feature that level, or does it only cost one of the two possible points?

So, here's how it works:
You get an ability score improvement, which are two unique +1's that you can put into any ability score including doubling them up on a stat. If you want to get rid of those two +1's, you can instead take a feat, which some of those feats actually give you a +1 to a stat.
So kind of yes, kind of no.
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shadowsword87 posted...

Oh, you can't go above 20 of a stat except one specific case when the barbarian is level 20.

Yeah, I know - hence the exclamation point.

What I was basically saying is, in order to match the defensive benefits of heavy armor, you basically have to have a Dex higher than what you're actually allowed to have (at least not without magic items that can boost over 20). Meaning that Dex defense (without other Feat/power factors or magical armors) is inherently weaker than heavy armor for defense.

Which is why I suggested that it seems like a Dex-based character is sort of gambling on the extra advantages of high Dex (like better stealth rolls, faster initiative, or dodging certain spell effects) to counterbalance what they lose in terms of damage and defense. At least if you're talking Dex-based Fighter or Paladin, as opposed to classes which are actually built around Dex like Ranger or Rogue (and doubly so if you're a Fighter or Paladin using finesse weapons instead of ranged attacks).

Or if you are deliberately sacrificing solely for flavor purposes. Which was sort of the root of the question - just how much is the player really giving up, and is it minor enough to be worth it for making a cooler character, or is it so crippling that even narrative justification can't really justify it under normal circumstances?



shadowsword87 posted...

Past that, a d8's average damage is 4.5, a d10's is 5.5, and 2d6 is 7. So you're missing out on an average of 1-2.5 points of damage per hit by going dex, which isn't that bad.

See, this is the kind of granular crunch mechanics and math that my head doesn't really wrap around, which is why I asked you the question. ~grin~

Now, if you need to invent 2000 years worth of backstory history for multiple nations in your world, give me a call. :-P



shadowsword87 posted...

The reason why Dex doesn't deal that much damage though, is because they have all of the good skills (stealth, slight of hand) and it feeds into AC (so if you do get a magical bonus to dex, it feeds into it).

Oh, I understand full-well why Dex is balanced the way it is in-game, especially when used as intended.

But I feel like making a Dex-based martial build with classes that are traditionally Str-based loses some (or even most) of those positives. As an example, for my hypothetical (though it's becoming less and less hypothetical, because I'm probably going to stat it out and write it up as a fully playable 4th level character eventually) Moon Elf Sorcerer/Paladin, I'd probably wind up with skills like Arcana, Athletics, History, Insight, Persuasion, and Religion. I don't think there's actually a single Dex skill that I CAN choose for that, let alone one that would fit the concept (and my saves are Con/Wis/Cha, not Dex).

(Ironically, half of those skills correlate to Int, which is actually the lowest stat for the character as it stands in my head. Two others are Str and Wis, which are tied for second lowest, and only Persuasion really benefits from a higher stat, because Charisma is the Paladin secondary stat and the Sorcerer primary, so it's my second highest behind Dex).


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shadowsword87 posted...

Plus there's only a single ranged weapon that uses str (javelin), so if you do go a str heavy build anything ranged just sucks (and there are cool ranged builds that use touch attacks by shooting arrows with spells on the arrow, which is awesome).

Yeah, but the reverse is also true there - if you do a Str-based build but then use nothing but ranged weapons, you're kind of screwing yourself to little gain.

Ironically, most ranged weapons in D&D should require Str (even if you keep Dex to aim). Bows require strength to pull back, crossbows generally require strength to reload, things like slings and darts would do more damage the harder you throw them, etc. Only firearms would be purely Dex in a more realistic setting.



shadowsword87 posted...

Also the second attack uses your bonus action, which you only get one of those a turn (it's basically a minor action from 4e, fuck that name). Then higher level, that bonus action is really, really useful in doing other stuff than extra bit of damage.

That sort of balances out for the Swashbuckler, at least in the sense that they get Disengage as an automatic function of their main attack, so they don't need the bonus action for it. And Rogues can't really do much with bonus actions other than Cunning anyway (at least not with the Swashbuckler archetype).

Granted, you're still losing the option to Dash or Hide (though admittedly, both are less useful for a Rogue who is in the middle of the action rather than taking ranged shots from the surrounding shadows), but I think the real sting is still not being able benefit from the Two-Weapon Fighting style (meaning a real swashbuckler-y build might be better off dipping into at least one level of Fighter - if not actively straddling the two classes as a hybrid Battle Master Fighter/Swashbuckler Rogue, which would also let you pull off some neat dueling moves via Combat Superiority).

As for the other part, ehh. I don't really think Move/Minor/Standard is inherently better or worse than Move/Action/Bonus. I can see why older players dislike the change, but I don't think either is more or less clear or concise than the other. And I'm already used to multiple RPG systems referring to the same concepts by a dozen different names anyway, so I adapt pretty quickly.



shadowsword87 posted...

But that level can really sucks to not use

People always say that (ie, that giving up the top-tier in favor of versatility isn't optimal or really worth it), but it doesn't seem true in 5e.

In the short term, a hypothetical Sorcerer/Paladin may be slightly weaker compared to their allies of same level (or versus a pure Paladin of a given level), but that weakness is offset by greater versatility, options, and extra benefits from saving throws, skills, and abilities. A Paladin might get tons of use out of being able to cast spells like Light, Mage Hand, Mending, Message, or Prestidigitation (not to mention combat spells like Blade Ward or True Strike). And spells like Ray of Frost or Fire Bolt can help if a target is too far away to stab). And ultimately, over time, you're still getting most of the same powers you would have gotten anyway, just slightly later.

In the long term, sure, you're giving up the lvl 20 "god power", but those kind of suck for a lot of classes anyway (and in this specific case, I'm not a fan of the Oath of the Ancients lvl 20 power flavor-wise, so I almost prefer not getting it). And realistically, very few campaigns are ever going to involve prolonged play with lvl 20 characters, assuming they get to lvl 20 at all.


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shadowsword87 posted...

Check out the Green-Flame Blade and Sword Burst cantrips, it's much more fun :D

Mmm... ehh.

Sword Burst is useful as a centered area-effect attack that is also a cantrip (which was a niche sorely lacking before, though Infestation and Thunderclap have also come along since then), but it's more useful for a spellcaster who is getting crowded and wants to potentially thin the crowd (which is honestly a position your spellcaster should never be in in the first place) than it is a spell that's really going to benefit a strong melee build. You're probably generally better off casting the cantrip "Hit With Sword" IMO.

(Or to put it another way, you're supposed to be the Defender or Striker, not the Controller)

As for Green-Flame Blade, it's neat in a thematic way and all (and as an in-joke reference to Star Wars and/or Penny Arcade), but it's a melee-based spell, and I generally hate those (though in a melee build, it would fit better than it does pure spellcaster - and it might be a neat toy for a Hexblade Warlock). I tend to steer clear of anything that requires a melee attack (like Shocking Grasp) or spells that involve concentration unless it's too thematically fitting for a character to NOT take it (like, say, giving Shocking Grasp to a Storm Sorcerer).

But both spells fail the greatest test of all for me. Cantrips are the spells I'm mostly likely to devote more to flavor than utility, because I'm a narrative crazy person. And neither really fits my Paladin build in my mind.

Plus, like I said, most of the reason I originally thought about multiclassing to Sorcerer in the first place was almost entirely just to get Prestidigitation and Mending for character flavor. I just like the idea of a robe/clothing/leather armor-based Paladin who is overly fashion-conscious about what their outfit looks like, and thus half their magic is devoted to keeping it clean and pristine.

(Though to be fair, my Elf Sorcerer/Paladin would get 5 cantrips anyway - 4 from Sorcerer, and 1 Wizard cantrip from Elf. Albeit a shittier cantrip from Elf, because it casts with Int, and as mentioned, Int is the dump stat. Of course, that's kind of negated when you realize spells like Light, Mage Hand, Mending, and Prestidigitation don't actually require rolls in the first place...)



shadowsword87 posted...

So, here's how it works:
You get an ability score improvement, which are two unique +1's that you can put into any ability score including doubling them up on a stat. If you want to get rid of those two +1's, you can instead take a feat, which some of those feats actually give you a +1 to a stat.
So kind of yes, kind of no.

Yeah, so like I said, you're giving up the entire Ability Score Improvement (and both points you get from it), rather than simply giving up one of the two +1s.

Tangentially on this subject, do you think it's generally better to take the Ability Score Improvement or a Feat (if there's a Feat available that compliments your build)? Feats obviously improve you in specific ways or give you more fun abilities to play with, but boosting stats can improve you in multiple ways (including ones that aren't immediately obvious).

I know it seems like a lot of online players always go for the Feat, but a lot of online players are also horrifically suboptimal.


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Ohh, and:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

(Or to put it another way, you're supposed to be the Defender or Striker, not the Controller)

One thing I realized while I was working out the details of a Dex Paladin in my head was that they were sort of sliding out of the Defender role Paladins were usually slotted into, and more into the Striker role.

Interestingly enough, it seemed to be sliding a bit towards what the Avenger role was in 4e (a Divine-powered melee character who acted as a Striker). Doubly so if you slap Oath of Vengeance onto it. If Wil Wheaton ever showed up for a Penny Arcade game again to play Aeofel (who was a 4e Avenger), a Dex-based Oath of Vengeance Paladin would probably cover most of his bases in terms of translation into 5e.


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*sidesteps into this topic to read 5th Edition talk*
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One last thing to bring everything together:

I can't give my Elf Paladin a Moonblade as a weapon if I make her Chaotic Good, rather than Neutral Good. So there's an example right there of 5e still putting weight on alignment. ;-P


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

See, this is the kind of granular crunch mechanics and math that my head doesn't really wrap around, which is why I asked you the question. ~grin~

Now, if you need to invent 2000 years worth of backstory history for multiple nations in your world, give me a call. :-P

It's basically just knowing what tools to use, and this case it's anydice.com because it's so damn good. Even then, the math is really straightforward (take the number of the die, divide by two, and add a half, that's the statistically average roll).

I have heard about someone using various GMs to act as a largescale political entity to react to the PCs running around. That way it's not just one brain with different hats on, it's unique brains reacting and also having fun. The next time I run a game, I may take you up on that offer.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I don't think there's actually a single Dex skill that I CAN choose for that, let alone one that would fit the concept (and my saves are Con/Wis/Cha, not Dex).

You would also get 2 or so skills from your background, which you can use to grab stealth or whatever else. You just need to pick a background that gives you it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

People always say that (ie, that giving up the top-tier in favor of versatility isn't optimal or really worth it), but it doesn't seem true in 5e.

More that when you're rolling around punching orcs and smooth talking people, and the next level you get sweet new spells and some new class abilities, you instead decide to de-power yourself for flavor reasons while everyone else gets fun stuff.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As for Green-Flame Blade, it's neat in a thematic way and all, but it's a melee-based spell, and I generally hate those (though in a melee build, it would fit better than it does pure spellcaster - and it might be a neat toy for a Hexblade Warlock). I tend to steer clear of anything that requires a melee attack (like Shocking Grasp) or spells that involve concentration unless it's too thematically fitting for a character to NOT take it (like, say, giving Shocking Grasp to a Storm Sorcerer).

Consider it like this: you spend your action to make an attack no matter what. If you cast this spell instead you still get a single attack, but if you hit, you get an extra d6 of damage. You still would get whatever damage from smacking someone with a big sword, there's just some nice extra damage, that's all.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Tangentially on this subject, do you think it's generally better to take the Ability Score Improvement or a Feat (if there's a Feat available that compliments your build)? Feats obviously improve you in specific ways or give you more fun abilities to play with, but boosting stats can improve you in multiple ways

Yeah, but there are some feats that are just too good to pass up.
Like Sentinel, which says if you hit someone with an attack of opportunity, their speed just automatically goes to 0. It's really fun.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I know it seems like a lot of online players always go for the Feat, but a lot of online players are also horrifically suboptimal.

Outside of high level spells (and broken subclasses), there's not a lot of mechanics to really break the game. It's what you got.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I can't give my Elf Paladin a Moonblade as a weapon if I make her Chaotic Good, rather than Neutral Good. So there's an example right there of 5e still putting weight on alignment. ;-P

Boo, hisss.
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shadowsword87 posted...

It's basically just knowing what tools to use, and this case it's anydice.com because it's so damn good. Even then, the math is really straightforward (take the number of the die, divide by two, and add a half, that's the statistically average roll).

Yeah, but I mean in the sense that your brain thought to consider the average rolls in the first place, whereas I was just looking more at the surface level max potential damage as a difference, because my brain doesn't go deep into the math (hence the love of freeform).



shadowsword87 posted...

I have heard about someone using various GMs to act as a largescale political entity to react to the PCs running around. That way it's not just one brain with different hats on, it's unique brains reacting and also having fun.

I once ran an Amber game with a friend of mine, where we split up all of the major NPCs and locations in advance, and then each came up with multiple plots and storylines happening behind the scenes, with the idea that the players would stumble their way into whatever story hooks they managed to find, and would point the narrative in whatever direction they wound up taking without there being ONE TRUE PATH they had to follow.

The interesting dynamic there was that my NPCs and plots were effectively running antagonistically to hers, so, say, for instance, one of my NPCs planned to conquer a city while one of hers wanted to burn it down. Eventually, their preparations would come into conflict, and they would wind up directly opposed, with one winning and one losing. All of this happened "behind the scenes" so the players wouldn't see/know any of it, but they WOULD see the consequences of the interactions (ie, if they visited that city, it would either be burned down or conquered - and if they investigated, they'd find evidence that both of the NPCs were involved somehow).

The upshot of which being that it becomes extremely hard for players to know exactly WHICH plot any given clue they find or event they participate in is actually tied to - which is 110% thematically appropriate for an Amber game.

You realize someone is spying on you - are they an ally, an enemy, or a neutral who is trying to ascertain your own position on the board? Someone else is killed - were they killed by one of your enemies, one of your allies, or someone you've never even met before, with goals you know nothing about, concerning places you've never even heard of? And worse, what if you're investigating Plot A, when someone from Plot B shows up and hides a crucial piece of evidence on you, which in turn leads someone from Plot C to start looking for you, because they need it. And then Plot D kicks in and sends assassins after you because of something your grandfather did 50 years ago. And you haven't even NOTICED Plot E, Plot F, or Plot G yet - but they're still running even if you never, ever discover them.

It gets even worse when you're in a game that spans an infinite multiverse and have the people you meet are trying to conquer all of reality in one way or another, and everyone holds grudges and plays out vendettas over thousands of years.

It was pretty fun, both to organize and run, as well as play in.

One other advantage of that sort of dual-GM set-up was that we could both also be PCs in the game as well as GMs - when I wanted to play my character she GMed, and when she wanted to play I GMed. And I could still surprise her because she didn't necessarily know all of my plots or NPC motivations in advance, and vice-versa for her surprising me.


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shadowsword87 posted...

The next time I run a game, I may take you up on that offer.

Well, unfortunately the fact that we don't live near each other, along with my pathological distaste for online play via mic/cam/etc, means I can't really offer to be a traditional co-GM for you. But I'm always willing to brainstorm and offer advice or evil opinions to any GM who is looking for ideas.

Or, conversely, I'm always willing to act as a "player" in a sort of asynchronous sort of game where I'm fed information and can make decisions from an NPC perspective which affect someone else's game. Like, for example, I'm cast in the role of a stereotypical evil fantasy emperor who only ever receives reports from my underlings (who may be lying to me or omitting details deliberately), and I have to decide which neighboring kingdoms I want to declare war on, which ones I want to ally with (or pretend to ally with), and whether or not I should send assassins after this annoying group of mercenaries who seem to be stirring up trouble in the southern regions of the empire, and whatever I decide to do or commit to affects how various events play out in the campaign you're actively running for other PCs.

Or you could just say something like "I need half a continent's worth of kingdoms and their prevailing cultures, complete with at least three different gods and two new languages, and a dozen major NPCs to go with it" and I can help come up with ideas, because that's always been the part of world-building I enjoy most (there's a reason why I have dozens of kingdoms/realms/worlds and hundreds of NPCs who've never actually been used in a single game with actual players - I used to spend a LOT of time just doing that sort of thing for the fuck of it).



shadowsword87 posted...

You would also get 2 or so skills from your background, which you can use to grab stealth or whatever else. You just need to pick a background that gives you it.

Yeah, but I always start working out backstory in my head before I ever even consider race and class (let alone skills), so while I COULD theoretically pick a Dex skill heavy Background (like Urchin) to game the system, I'm pretty much psychologically incapable of ever doing so.

In the case of the semi-hypothetical Paladin, I basically wound up with Arcana and Insight via Sorcerer, then took Athletics and Religion from Paladin (and neither of those classes has a single Dex skill to choose from even if I wanted to), and got History and Persuasion from the Noble Background.

From a narrative perspective, I see it as a character who grew up as an elf noble and was thus schooled in history and rhetoric/noblisse, and then took higher level classes in arcane theory to supplement their inherent magical bloodline abilities (with Insight representing the more intuitive awareness that comes from mystic ability and Arcana being the more mechanical/practical/academic knowledge of magical theory). And then, upon becoming a Paladin, undergoing both rigorous physical training as well as doctrinal and theological education in their given god/belief system to prepare them for their duties.

If I had carte blanche to swap out any of those skills for Dex skills, about the only one that makes sense would be to potentially drop Athletics in favor of Acrobatics, but Athletics kind of works better thematically anyway.


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shadowsword87 posted...

More that when you're rolling around punching orcs and smooth talking people, and the next level you get sweet new spells and some new class abilities, you instead decide to de-power yourself for flavor reasons while everyone else gets fun stuff.

Yeah, but the trick is, you're not really "de-powering" yourself per se.

As an example, I'll use my Paladin again. But while the "canon" version of it multiclasses out of Sorcerer and into Paladin at character level 2, for comparison's sake I'll present it as if a level 3 Paladin multiclasses into Sorcerer at character level 4.

Essentially, a lvl 3 Paladin leveling up to a lvl 4 Paladin gains another d10 hit die, an extra Paladin spell (but not a new spell slot), and an Ability Score Improvement/Feat. These are, admittedly, all nice things.

Conversely, a lvl 3 Paladin leveling up to a lvl 1 Divine Soul Sorcerer gains a d6 hit die, but also gets 4 cantrips (from either the Cleric or Sorcerer list), as well as 2 Sorcerer (or Cleric) spells, an extra Cleric spell that doesn't count against their limit, AND the ability to add 2d4 to a failed attack or saving throw once every short or long rest. On top of two more Skill proficiencies and an extra saving throw proficiency. That is a LOT of power.

Yes, the multiclassed Paladin will always potentially have from 1-4 HP less than the "pure" Paladin of the same level (though if you're using random rolls that might be absolutely meaningless), but the trade off is a much greater degree of flexibility (and potential ability synergy).

If we look at it from the other perspective, where the Paladin effectively "multiclasses" at first level before starting on their Paladin path, you have a character who starts out with a TON of advantages that other players lack, in exchange for slightly slower power gains later. The multiclassed Paladin never really "loses" anything the pure Paladin has (except for the lvl 20 power), but simply gets all of the same things one level slower.

Or to put it another way, you're still getting fun stuff at the same time everyone else is getting fun stuff. You're just getting your level X fun stuff while they're getting their level X+1 fun stuff. But you also have your extra fun toys on the side that you got earlier. You've traded a slightly slower start for much greater versatility.

On a side note, this is why I find what Patrick Rothfuss is doing in the Penny Arcade Acq Inc C-Team games interesting - he's basically playing a guest character who appears periodically, and every time he shows up he's taken another class. So when the main party was level 5, he showed up as a Bard 1/Paladin 1/Rogue 1/Sorcerer 1/Wizard 1. And he's said he fully intends to go through every class before he's done.

At a certain point the synergy stops being useful (ie, he's already proficient in every saving throw other than Str, and he's eventually going to run out of skills to take), but I'm kind of curious to see whether or not a character that spread out can still be useful, or if there's eventually a point of diminishing returns where they kind of become completely useless.


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shadowsword87 posted...

Consider it like this: you spend your action to make an attack no matter what. If you cast this spell instead you still get a single attack, but if you hit, you get an extra d6 of damage. You still would get whatever damage from smacking someone with a big sword, there's just some nice extra damage, that's all.

Yeah, but if you're a spellcaster there are likely far better options than making a crappy melee attack to attach the extra damage to, and if you're a Paladin then you're probably already slapping smites onto those attacks for more damage. So it doesn't seem like it necessarily fits with the build I've been discussing.

It seems to me that it exists solely to be given to Bladesinger/Hexblade type characters who are deliberately hybrid magic/melee, but who don't necessarily already have alternative means of boosting damage (like, again, Paladins). Which is fine. I'd probably be more inclined to like it as a spell choice if I were playing one of those classes.

Then again, if I was playing Wizard or Warlock, I'd be far more likely to be playing pure blasting classes than I would either of those anyway.



shadowsword87 posted...

Yeah, but there are some feats that are just too good to pass up.
Like Sentinel, which says if you hit someone with an attack of opportunity, their speed just automatically goes to 0. It's really fun.

Sure, but I was mostly talking about the purely mechanical/mathematic sense. ie, whether or not the 2 stat points you're losing hurt you more than the average Feat can help you, or if a lot of the Feats are overpowered enough that it's almost always worth taking them if you have the option.

In my case, I was thinking about giving the Paladin Athlete at level 4 and Martial Adept at level 8, mainly for thematic/flavorish purposes rather than straight powergaming logic.



shadowsword87 posted...

Outside of high level spells (and broken subclasses), there's not a lot of mechanics to really break the game. It's what you got.

And, to be fair, there's also the fact that good DMs will cater their games to the players. The main reason why groups like the ones on Critical Role or Dice Camera Action weren't TPK'd a long time ago is because their DMs tailor their adventures to the group as played, rather than for a hypothetical fully-optimized group of similar classes and levels.



shadowsword87 posted...

Boo, hisss.

The weird thing with that particular case is that there are Chaotic Good elves with Moonblades in previous editions of the game, but for some reason they made the one in the 5e DMG limited to Neutral Good only. Which is doubly odd with the focus on elves being more of a Chaotic race in general.

My assumption is that they were trying to emphasis the need for the wielder to be dedicated to improving elf society as a whole rather than simply being a lone wanderer with selfish motivations, but "Good" sort of fits that particular mold well enough without having to force a "Neutral" as well (and what makes it especially odd is that you can't be a Lawful Good elf either, in spite of that seemingly being the ideal person to own such a blade).

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Plus, with terms that end in "-er" or "or" there's always the option to feminize them, so something like Arbitrator or Arbiter becomes Arbitrix, Magistrate is Magistrix, Imperator is Imperatrix, and so on. That can give a bit of a more fantasy edge to terms, because we're not as used to hearing the Latin derivations in real life in modern times.

Oh, so that's how we get Dominatrix.

And, with right-gendered forms, Lord Dominator from Wander Over Yonder should technically be Lady Dominatrix, which would put a different spin on the children's cartoon.
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Zeus posted...

And, with right-gendered forms, Lord Dominator from Wander Over Yonder should technically be Lady Dominatrix, which would put a different spin on the children's cartoon.

And if you know anything about most cartoon animators, that is almost certainly not an accident.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Zeus posted...

And, with right-gendered forms, Lord Dominator from Wander Over Yonder should technically be Lady Dominatrix, which would put a different spin on the children's cartoon.

And if you know anything about most cartoon animators, that is almost certainly not an accident.

Well, within the context of the show, Dominator's gender was apparently a plot twist since her combat armor is large and bulky and her voice is different while in the armor
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Stopped at some local thrift stores this evening and picked up some interesting finds, some of which seem noteworthy here:

1) A copy of R.A. Salvatore's Homeland, the first book in the Dark Elf trilogy. I know that there's been a fair deal of contempt surrounding half-drow in this topic at times >_> tbh, when I was younger, I read some of the other Forgotten Realms novels which featured Drizzt. Haven't read a D&D novel in like over 15 years now, so it should be amusing. Only paid 50-cents so even if it's a disappointment, no real loss.

2) Season 1 of Dragon Ball. Was really cool to find this. I prefer DB to DBZ and it's been ages since I saw the early stuff. Supposedly it's digitally remastered and uncut, which I presume to mean that we actually get to see Goku play pat-pat which may have been cut from the US version. Only cost me $4, which seems a more than fair price.

3) A Jan 2011 copy of Shonen Jump, purchased solely because it still had a copy of Winged Dragon of Ra inside. Just picked it up out of curiosity and noticed it when flipping through the pages. Kinda neat throwback. Also read the first two chapters of Psyren and, while it was so-so, the story intrigues me enough that I'll probably try to watch the anime or read the manga. Whichever takes less effort.

4) The Best American Comics, 2010. I noticed it on the shelf and just flipped through it, found the excerpt from The Lagoon, liked it, and then found part of the excerpt from Asterios Polyp, liked that as well. Took photos with my phone and meant to look up more about those particular comics then realized that the book was only a buck or two so I just picked it up. Apparently it also includes an excerpted chapter from Omega the Unknown (the reboot) which is a neat... I guess it's not old enough to say blast from the past, but I read the TPB some years ago. And, speaking of years ago, I bought the 2007 edition on clearance at a Borders. Remember Borders? >_>
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Zeus posted...

A copy of R.A. Salvatore's Homeland, the first book in the Dark Elf trilogy. I know that there's been a fair deal of contempt surrounding half-drow in this topic at times >_> tbh, when I was younger, I read some of the other Forgotten Realms novels which featured Drizzt. Haven't read a D&D novel in like over 15 years now, so it should be amusing. Only paid 50-cents so even if it's a disappointment, no real loss.

I don't remember ever being dismissive of half-drow here or anywhere else, but I know over the years I've been dismissive of D&D novelizations in general and the Drizzt books specifically, because they always seemed like such genre-trash wankery. The sort of books non-reader teenagers would read because they didn't know any better. I always assumed that they were probably terribly written (an assumption not helped when I DID buy the Baldur's Gate novelizations and they were terribly written).

That being said, I never actually READ them. So I was mostly basing my assumptions on hearsay or just totally irrational distaste for the concept or of the professed fans of same.

But I actually started reading the Drizzt novels a few months ago for the hell of it (in the same way I read the Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy and Legends Trilogy a couple years back, which I think I mentioned here), and literally finished The Halfling's Gem like maybe two days ago.

And ehh. They're not bad. Nothing I'd devote my life to obsessing over or fueling a desire to play D&D as an endless succession of "good" surface Drow Rangers or anything, but nowhere near as bad as I always assumed (and good enough to get me to buy and read all six of the first two trilogies, so there's that).

I'm at the point now where I'm dithering over whether or not I want to commit to the Legacy of the Drow quadrilogy, but I think I probably won't. From what I understand (and what I get from skimming book descriptions for later books), the franchise eventually starts getting bogged down in its own history, and in complications introduced by the game itself (like mandated references to the Time of Troubles or the Sundering). I've also heard that the overall quality gets worse over time, either because Salvatore starts running out of ideas, has a harder time syncing his plots up with the metaplot, or just because he's tired of writing Drizzt (which is apparently something he's said before), but can't stop because moneymoneymoney.

For everyone else's reference, though, if someone DOES want to read those books, I noticed there's a collected anniversary set that came out at some point (I saw the whole thing in Barnes & Noble yesterday). The first book is the Dark Elf Trilogy, the second is the Icewind Dale Trilogy, the third is the Legacy of the Drow quadrilogy, and the fourth is the Paths of Darkness quadrilogy.

As an aside, I almost feel like it's better to read Icewind Dale before Dark Elf regardless of book numbering now, because chronological by publishing is almost always better than chronological by setting when it comes to reading order. I feel like you sort of care more about Drizzt's origin when you already know him, then flash back to how he got where he was when you first meet him.



Zeus posted...

And, speaking of years ago, I bought the 2007 edition on clearance at a Borders. Remember Borders? >_>

Very much so. I used to love going to Borders (they usually had better selection than B&N), and I was sad to see them go. Amazon is super-convienient (and I am literally throwing items into my cart for an Amazon order while I type this post), but I still love being able to go to a real bookstore and browse real books, and maybe find things that I never would have known existed otherwise.


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And continuing the D&D theme, here's another question mostly for Shadow but which anyone can generally answer:

If you were a player or a DM trying to come up with a god to slot into the Seldarine (the elf pantheon, for those who don't know) who mostly has the same sort of ideology as the 4e version of Pelor ("Protect the weak, help the helpless, smite the shit out of evil"), and you decided you wanted them to be a child of Corellon (the god of art and magic who created the elves in the first place, and head of the elf pantheon), would you be more inclined to make that god male or female?

Because it occurred to me while playing around with the Dex-based Elf Paladin idea that there really aren't any good elf gods for more traditional Paladins. They're a bit too "pansy" in general, with all of the really good "SMITE THE SHIT OUT OF EVIL" gods kind of being tied way too strongly to human culture. So I was sort of making a "Pelor, but not really Pelor" sort of god of protection in my head, but couldn't decide if it should be Corellon's son or Corellon's daughter.

(and since I already sort of have a name in mind for the god, it sort of influences whether or not I go with the more masculine -il or more feminine -iel as a suffix on the name to imply gender)



Also, as a complete aside (well, not a complete aside, it sort of ties into the whole worldbuilding thing we were talking about), before I started thinking about working out the Paladin in my head, I was thinking about the idea of constructing an entire fantasy calendar and zodiac based on different assumptions (namely, a universal 30-day month model with each month consisting of three "tendays", with solstices and equinoxes as separate days, ignoring the unaccounted for 1.25 days because fuck it, it's not Earth).

Granted, I know this isn't even remotely an original idea (most of that is actually how the Faerun calendar works, for one thing), but what mostly spurred me off on the idea was basically making a zodiac where every sign was a reference to some facet of my previous gaming life, with 30+ years worth of ideas to pull out of.

So, for example, one of the zodiac signs would represent Amber DRPG, since I played a ton of that. And one of my PCs from that was basically akin to what is an Arcane Archer in D&D, so now she's a Sagittarius-like zodiac sign called "The Huntress". Meanwhile, from my time playing White Wolf I took my one Changeling character, and since she was a Sidhe who fought with a rapier, now she's The Swordmaiden (since that's actually a term I used to refer to her by when I was playing her). And so on and so forth.

And I was basically thinking about this in spite of knowing I'm literally never going to use it in a game or as backstory for a novel or whatever. It's just random musing that will never go anywhere, which exists solely because I have more creativity bursting the seams of my brain than I ever really get to use these days.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

over the years I've been dismissive of D&D novelizations in general and the Drizzt books specifically, because they always seemed like such genre-trash wankery. The sort of books non-reader teenagers would read because they didn't know any better. I always assumed that they were probably terribly written (an assumption not helped when I DID buy the Baldur's Gate novelizations and they were terribly written).

From what I can recall of other D&D novels, at least some of them are written pretty poorly -- or, at least, not properly edited (or maybe not even properly proofread). But that's largely true of most genre fiction, and the D&D novels are more pulp than others. Honestly, half-makes me want to take a serious stab at fiction one of these days but I've never been that fond of the idea of writing filler or going into overly long descriptions which often pad out these stories.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As an aside, I almost feel like it's better to read Icewind Dale before Dark Elf regardless of book numbering now, because chronological by publishing is almost always better than chronological by setting when it comes to reading order. I feel like you sort of care more about Drizzt's origin when you already know him, then flash back to how he got where he was when you first meet him.

Which is actually an interesting point in itself given how many standalone works of fantasy start with the hero as an inexperienced youth when perhaps they should start a bit older and more experienced. Granted, a too-large segment of fantasy kind of sets up heroes as reader-inserts so that may not be entirely viable.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If you were a player or a DM trying to come up with a god to slot into the Seldarine (the elf pantheon, for those who don't know) who mostly has the same sort of ideology as the 4e version of Pelor ("Protect the weak, help the helpless, smite the shit out of evil"), and you decided you wanted them to be a child of Corellon (the god of art and magic who created the elves in the first place, and head of the elf pantheon), would you be more inclined to make that god male or female?

Because it occurred to me while playing around with the Dex-based Elf Paladin idea that there really aren't any good elf gods for more traditional Paladins. They're a bit too "pansy" in general, with all of the really good "SMITE THE SHIT OUT OF EVIL" gods kind of being tied way too strongly to human culture. So I was sort of making a "Pelor, but not really Pelor" sort of god of protection in my head, but couldn't decide if it should be Corellon's son or Corellon's daughter.

Personally, I would really need to know more about the existing pantheon. If it's a predominantly male pantheon, I would likely just slot in a male. Likewise, I associate more aggressive tendencies (like "smite the shit out of evil") with males -- partly due to hormones and partly due to social acceptable behavior where a more peacekeeping role I'd be tempted to just flip a coin unless I had a very specific character design in mind.

For general characterization, I'm tempted to make suggestions but I'm not sure what would really fit within the existing canon and, quite honestly, I hate additions who feel off-type.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Also, as a complete aside (well, not a complete aside, it sort of ties into the whole worldbuilding thing we were talking about), before I started thinking about working out the Paladin in my head, I was thinking about the idea of constructing an entire fantasy calendar and zodiac based on different assumptions (namely, a universal 30-day month model with each month consisting of three "tendays", with solstices and equinoxes as separate days, ignoring the unaccounted for 1.25 days because fuck it, it's not Earth).

Fantasy calendars have always been a bit of a sore spot with me. While they make sense from a worldbuilding perspective, I find them unnecessarily confusing as a reader because I often can't remember the context (ie, the order of days and months, how months correlate to times of year, etc).

More annoying still wold be the notion that there likely wouldn't be any accepted universal calendar in a fantasy setting since nations would more likely style the days and months after their own kings and/or gods.

In general, it partly falls into the notion of, "Should a horse be called a horse?", where language should have developed differently within that world but, for the benefit of the reader, English words are used to describe the vast majority of things. The only real tipping point comes when readers *know* that the given word is associated with something decidedly real-world where you're either stuck incorporating a variation of that source into the work or coming up your own stuff to avoid spoiling the immersion (or people just do that for the sake of immersion).

That said, you presumably have a great deal of latitude when it comes to hours, days, and months since they don't actually need to correlate with any fixed thing because the size of the fictional planet and its orbit can be different. But, at the same time, readers are used to the notion of a 24-hour day and a 12-month year so eschewing that can be distracting.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And I was basically thinking about this in spite of knowing I'm literally never going to use it in a game or as backstory for a novel or whatever. It's just random musing that will never go anywhere, which exists solely because I have more creativity bursting the seams of my brain than I ever really get to use these days.

Same boat. I don't have much follow-through with that sort of stuff.
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Zeus posted...

Personally, I would really need to know more about the existing pantheon. If it's a predominantly male pantheon, I would likely just slot in a male.

In 4e it's literally just two gods that are explicitly spelled out - Corellon and Sehanine (who is female). In other editions/settings, the pantheon as a whole tends to be relatively balanced between male and female.

(If you really feel like deep diving, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf_deities)

On the flip-side, even the Drow, as matriarchal as they are, have at least a few male gods (and genderless protoplasmic ooze monsters) in their divine hierarchy. The elves are pretty egalitarian in general (which makes sense, since they're probably the most heavily-influenced by Tolkien race in D&D, and the Valar of Middle Earth were basically paired off 7/7 male/female - by contrast, dwarves are like 99% beards and axes).



Zeus posted...

Likewise, I associate more aggressive tendencies (like "smite the shit out of evil") with males -- partly due to hormones and partly due to social acceptable behavior where a more peacekeeping role I'd be tempted to just flip a coin unless I had a very specific character design in mind.

To be fair, this is more a "smite evil in the cause of protecting innocents" case - like I said, for Pelor at least (who I'm using as a rough model for this), "protect the weak" and "help the helpless" are still in there as part of his tenants. For a real-world comparison, we're talking more Hospitallers than Templars or Teutonic Knights. It's more "defending", "protecting", or even "preserving" than it is "avenging" or "exterminating".

Another note to keep in mind, though - in the existing elf pantheon, their actual god of war and justice (who is probably the most violent and least "elf-y" of the entire pantheon) is female, while their god of healing and "mercy" is male. So the usual human (or real world historical) assumptions about male and female traits doesn't necessarily carry over.

(On the other hand, in the Greek pantheon Athena was the goddess of "good" war while Ares was the god of "bad" war, while their god of healing and medicine was male, so maybe it's not as unrealistic as one might think.)



Zeus posted...

For general characterization, I'm tempted to make suggestions but I'm not sure what would really fit within the existing canon and, quite honestly, I hate additions who feel off-type.

Feel free to throw out whatever ideas or suggestions you like. At worst I just ignore them all, at best, I might take an idea, or an idea might trigger an entirely different idea or way of thinking for me.

That's part of what I love best about brainstorming. Multiple people throwing out ideas, one idea playing off others, setting off a chain of new ideas and modes of thinking, changing perspectives, and generally creating a wealth of ideas to pick and choose from.

Plus, like I said, in the grand scheme of things this probably doesn't really matter, since I likely won't ever do anything with the idea anyway in the long run.


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Zeus posted...

Fantasy calendars have always been a bit of a sore spot with me. While they make sense from a worldbuilding perspective, I find them unnecessarily confusing as a reader because I often can't remember the context (ie, the order of days and months, how months correlate to times of year, etc).

More annoying still wold be the notion that there likely wouldn't be any accepted universal calendar in a fantasy setting since nations would more likely style the days and months after their own kings and/or gods.

I think that's actually why a lot of fantasy settings that go with their own calendar tend to bypass the real world influence entirely. ie, whereas our calendar is six months named after gods (some relatively obscure), four months that are literally just numbered 7-10, and two named after the guy who created the calendar and his adopted dad, worlds like D&D's Faerun or Tamriel in the Elder Scrolls just give all their months seasonal-sounding names like Deepwinter, First Seed, Summertide, Frostfall, and so on (or conversely, the way Native Americans named the various full moons of a year Harvest Moon, Hunter's Moon, Wolf Moon, Blue Corn Moon etc).

As for being universal, it kind of makes sense in a setting where you're explicitly saying that "Common" exists as a language and has spread to nearly every civilized land the players will ever reach, because in turn traders would almost certainly refer to months and other units of time in conversations, which would then culturally spread over time. So while you might still have various regions referring to a given month by its original regional name, those people would also fully recognize the more common usage - and in time, the common usage would likely grow to replace the regional (which is what happened in our world).

(And that's assuming a setting doesn't have a long-dead ancient empire in its past that ruled over 90%+ of the continent at one point before disintegrating, leaving behind cultural remnants embedded in language and behavior across a wide area. See also, Rome's influence on modern Western culture. For instance, in Tolkien, most "common" tongue and shared cultural usage in Middle Earth is a remnant of Numenor, as spread by Arnor and Gondor at their heights of power.)


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