BTW, this discussion has given me an idea. I wonder if the release of NWN:EE might spark the interest of our local no-reload community to try a no-reload, no-respawn run of NWN? It's not for me, as I would have already lost my current run.
I think this has been once discussed after the announcement of NWN:EE by no-roload players. @Flashburn also participated and I think the consensus was that the first time ever run through NWN without reloads is not impossible and actually quite likely if players are cautious. I'd happily follow such a run, though.
@voidofopinion , Even with all his bonuses, at level five he needed a 7 to save, and rolled a 6. One huge problem was the specter. I'm still not sure why it was there, as I've never seen it before in this encounter. It kept level draining Tomi to death.
Low level mind effects are a pain. Especially when you are not fully in a position to itemize for them. At certain points in D&D it comes down to blind luck. At low levels I am always terrified of any aura ability as it's just a matter of time before you auto check low and all hell breaks loose.
Then a few levels later you have the right spells and equipment to deal with them and they suddenly become completely impotent.
Yes, many enemies have seemingly random alignments in NWN. Aribeth herself changes her alignment and even her race in practically every chapter of the OC. It is clear to me that alignments are not something they focused on when making the OC.
I always felt alignments in NWN were an afterthought. I can only imagine how expensive it would be to add D&D's alignment system in a truly meaningful way. So it boils down to a handful of dialogue options and a few spell/item/mob interactions. However, I had no idea mob alignment was so spotty.
I don't use the base monsters for anything so I never really noticed but now I kinda want to fire them up in the toolset and see just how varied they are.
It does look and sound interesting which is why I tried it initially. My entire experience of it is dying repeatedly in 2’s start but that’s probably more my fault then the games. Might check it out one day starting with 1.
I do want to point out putting in 100 hours hasn't made me in the slightest bit good at the series. If anything it's an indictment of just how miserable I am at it to have put in so much time and yet made so little progress.
Dark Souls has some really interesting and unique things going for it but if you just found it frustrating then there isnt really any big reason to keep on bashing your head against it.
There are far too many wonderful games out there to force yourself into playing something you are not having fun with.
@voidofopinion From a role playing perspective I also think it's important to deal with the fragility of life, not just through death but also through wounding and healing time, especially considering timed events. I understand it's less action packed but it takes a different route for a different type of immersive experience where a character might not charge at the call for initiative but instead retreat and plan carefully. There are also some interesting interviews out there with major David Wesley about his Braunstein game and how it all slowly came together, some good insights.
I really like bonus/malus systems for that very reason.
Characters missing fingers, eyes or limbs. Paralyzed, scarred, deaf in one ear. Compulsive liars, gamblers. Characters with trauma.
A world where every physical and mental malady can be cured by drinking a portion or the snap of a gods fingers creates a stagnant universe where despite literally being dragged through hell and back... Characters come out of it wealthier but unchanged.
How do you make injury meaningful in a world of Mass Heal?
I think this has been once discussed after the announcement of NWN:EE by no-roload players. @Flashburn also participated and I think the consensus was that the first time ever run through NWN without reloads is not impossible and actually quite likely if players are cautious. I'd happily follow such a run, though.
That's 60 hours for the main campaign, 20 for SoU and 25 for HotU.
A lot of time to no reload.
Would be kinda neat to see a full party of forum goers do a no reload run together (dropping out if they die) but getting everyone together to play would be a logistical nightmare.
Although I bought NWN, I never got into it, but reverted back to the BG Trilogy.
When I first purchased NWN I was really disappointed by the waterdhavian creature nonsense but then on a whim I tried the multiplayer and got hooked for 5 years on a persistent world and all the joy/drama that entails.
To be fair, the OC did a poor job of selling the series. Especially when in the shadow of one of the greatest RPG series of all time. But I can't think of a single game that has ever allowed players the freedom to create that NWN has.
@voidofopinion I think it's good to take the rest of the system into account when considering spells, for example greater restoration and regenerate exist in the same world as the heal spell. This means that with a liberally expansive interpretation of what is cured that there would be little difference between spells except that heal is enough for almost everything.
The main differences in regenerate for 3.5 and AD&D are firstly that is takes longer in AD&D which makes it something you only really want to do after combat, material components introduces a limit in how much holy (blessed by your faith) water you have, and a time limit with potential for system shock. If you fail you die, hence you lose 1 point of con, hence you reduce your remaining raise attempts by 1 and lower your chance to receive powerful spells like regenerate. You can see how this older system sort of has interacting components and infinite perfect heal is not so simple.
In later editions there are at least two vectors of change rather than just one, it's both easier to survive and easier to reverse any ailment including death. I think if you just used one vector then you would still have more sense of risk while making it easier to fail sometimes. Also if you took the resurrection and system shock percentages and transposed them onto 3rd edition constitution it would give players an easy way to increase their own ability to survive while still maintaining limits. Even though typically a 25 in AD&D is more like a 40-45 in 3rd edition.
The other thing to remember is that liberal interpretation of spells and effects usually isn't the right method. So heal cures hitpoints and specific effects like blindness, but doesn't create eyes for creatures without them, and probably doesn't reverse natural defects. Greater restoration doesn't cure all lethal hit points and doesn't restore limbs that cause ability point penalties nor remove those penalties, it does however cure all non lethal hitpoint loss for example environmental exhaustion damage. Regenerate cure all hitpoints but it does allow the reattachment of lost limbs and thereby restore vision for eyes that got put out and ability point penalties resulting from severed limbs.
It's also interesting to note that a priest only recovers spells if they pray to their god at the specified time. That is, to remember the cleric works as a servant of their god, rather than the other way around.
Another factor in considering a specific question like a world of mass heal is to consider the population requirements suggested in the 3.5 dmg to generate clerics of a high enough level. For example a metropolis is at minimum 25000 ppl and there are 4 high level clerics defined by 12+1d6 levels, meaning that there is 80% chance that a level 17 cleric or higher is present in a metropolis. The estimated world population between 1000 AD and 1500 AD is around 400-500 million ppl, Japan has an extremely dense urban population due to mountains and large forests giving a 90% urban distribution, which means in an optimal situation that would be 14400 metropolises, so 11520 clerics in the world at high enough level to cast mass heal, or at maximum potential there is 1 such cleric for every 34722 ppl. Of course that would be at the extreme end of efficiency at an average of 1 mass heal per day.
Once you have metropolises with higher than minimum population and a more realistic urban distribution then things like high level healing get even more rare. Throw in the commandment of thou shall not aid my enemies and similar faith restrictions then you have a setting that already doesn't look like the land of plenty.
Adding in extra material components using the older variant rules and suggested lists also changes spell use, maybe using the mythos/ethos scheme would also change emphasis. For example in the Dark Sun setting a variant exists which diminishes use of some spellcasters, while in Dragonlance you might suggest a limit on clerics.
For some things like raise dead if you take into consideration inflated economies, especially with persistent worlds where gold grows in chests made from dead trees, then you could easily conceive an adjustment to the price. Like diamond gp value of a raise dead as 500 * 1.1^nHD floored to nearest integer or 500 * nHD^2 for higher inflation.
Did physical therapy yesterday. Cleaned the kitchen today and then went about making dinner.
I sat down for no more than 2 minutes because my leg hurt and before I knew it there is a kitchen full of fire and alarms screaming for people to evacuate the building that I cant shut off because they are wired to the mains.
Luckily I keep the fire extinguisher under the sink so I got it all under control quickly but there was so much smoke and flame retardant in the air that it took a good 15 minutes for the apartment to clear out and fire alarms to shut off.
Everyone was unharmed and there is no permanent damage but now on the inside of my nose the only thing I can smell is grease fire and flame retardant.
I think I just IRL rolled a 1 on my cooking skill check...
@voidofopinion Hmmm, indeed. I could finally try that game that scares the hell out of me. I fear I will be changed forever if I attempt it. I’ll have to sleep with the light on, makes Dark souls look like a nursery rhyme. But what the hell aye? No guts no glory. Downloading.....
Flower
@FreshLemonBun That is one pretty amazing extrapulation on clerics and rules and concepts of heal and regen and the rest of it. I truly after all these years never even considered much of what you point out, such as regen could replace a poked out eye where heal wouldn’t. A great read
Did physical therapy yesterday. Cleaned the kitchen today and then went about making dinner.
I sat down for no more than 2 minutes because my leg hurt and before I knew it there is a kitchen full of fire and alarms screaming for people to evacuate the building that I cant shut off because they are wired to the mains.
Luckily I keep the fire extinguisher under the sink so I got it all under control quickly but there was so much smoke and flame retardant in the air that it took a good 15 minutes for the apartment to clear out and fire alarms to shut off.
Everyone was unharmed and there is no permanent damage but now on the inside of my nose the only thing I can smell is grease fire and flame retardant.
I think I just IRL rolled a 1 on my cooking skill check...
Heya void! Sorry about the kitchen! Good to hear no real harm done. Hey that’s twice now I do a post and when I’m done, I find you’ve done one too lol.
Sorry about the kitchen! Good to hear no real harm done. Hey that’s twice now I do a post and when I’m done, I find you’ve done one too lol.
Thankfully no one was seriouslly hurt and the incident has made me realize how unprepared my family is for a fire emergency situation so that is going to have to change right quick.
@voidofopinion I tried that game about 40 years ago. My house mates still won't let me forget it. I got a neighbour to ring the fire brigade, but by the time they arrived I had put it out. In those days the ambulance automatically came as well which was as well as I had trodden in some hot fat and received minor burns. We had to re-decorate the entire house due to smoke damage and none of my spells were able to resuscitate the kitchen cabinets.
@MrDamage I'm glad you liked that. As I've already explained I find the game design aspects quite interesting and enjoy reading old publications and articles, also interviews and so on about the process. There's a lot that gets lost in translation between editions and variations as well as the specifics of the rules getting obfuscated by sheer quantity as is often the case for 3rd edition D&D.
I also made a typo I see describing regenerate, it should explain that regenerate doesn't cure all lethal hitpoint damage. Essentially heal is always the best method to heal hitpoint damage.
Thank you both for your concern. Everything is good. Lost a pot, a toaster and a kettle as they are now filled with flame retardant chemicals but no one was hurt and I some how avoided getting scorch marks all on the walls. No need to remodel the kitchen which sounds like a nightmare. And our upstairs neighbors didnt even bother to leave the apartment building with their children let alone send a fire brigade/ambulance.
And both fire alarm was going for a good 20 minutes.
Only downside is the next day post smoke inhalation. But that will pass.
3.5e Splatbooks are one of the greatest and one of the worst things to happen to PnP. There is an abundance of information of every race, class, feat, skill, monster, campaign setting and thousands and thousands of additional everything.
If you can think of it then their are rules and options for it in 3.5e.
On the other hand, 3.5e was poorly balanced post 7th level to begin with and with hundreds of splat books adding additional rules and variations to everything it's next to impossible to balance anything.
So with all of that in mind I love your interpretation of the position Clerics hold in the D&D universe. It's incredibly well reasoned and very much backed up by the books.
But 4 clerics in a city that can heal any wound, regrow limbs and raise the dead is more than enough to color a populations perception on life and death. On top of that, if wealth is the major stop gap for receiving healthcare services from the temple then wouldn't that in turn create resentment against the gods and the wealthy who elite who benefit from them?
Having that ability over life and death has massive social implications.
If there were even 1 person in New York (8.5 million pop) who could regrow any limb, cure any disease, heal any injury and raise the dead then the world would go insane.
Sorry to hear that, @voidofopinion , but at least you have won a T-shirt!
Wooo Fire T-Shirt!
I promise not to get this one covered in flame retardant chemicals!
This should be a special achievement T-shirt with red background instead of black. Maybe with some kind of additional graphic such as wife’s rolling pin to the head to denote said achievement.
And our upstairs neighbors didnt even bother to leave the apartment building with their children let alone send a fire brigade/ambulance.
I'm glad that I had good neighbours. We did live in a village at the time and so knew some of them. However village life is very different and everyone helps everyone else, unlike London where everyone seems to be isolated despite being near to others.
Our best friends lived 300metres away and regularly visited us, but knew nothing about it until the next day.
Well, 7:55pm EST... so if it is no longer Monday in your part of the globe... I hope you have a moderately whelmed Tuesday!
So without any further ado... it's the question of the week!
Question: You discover a genies lamp. You rub the lamp and out steps a genie followed by a puff of smoke! He informs you that he is not just any old genie. No no no... He is the GAME GENIE!
He will instantly turn your favorite fictional universe into a NWN style video game. All you have to do is make the wish!
Which fictional universe would you choose and why?
I think a Starcraft game with an updated NWN style toolset and gameplay could be really interesting.
40K Dawn of War 2 was basically a single player RPG and in that regard it worked well. So a full on, proper RPG made using the principles of NWN could be amazing.
Sci-fi doesn't get as much in the RPG sphere as fantasy and when it does it's generally Warhammer 40k or Star Wars and I know it is blasphemy for a Brit to say but I think Starcraft would work much better for a NWN style game if for no other reason than the lore is not so convoluted and overworked as either of the above mentioned lisences.
All the retcons and revisions for the Star Wars and 40K wiki's read like they were written by a stalker ex-girlfriend. Just too much information and all of it contradictory.
I have a quick question for everyone that didn't seem worthy of its own thread: When you first played through NWN's OC and first heard mention of the Words of Power, how many of you thought that this had something to do with the Power Word (Stun, Kill, etc.) spells? That was my first thought. I certainly didn't think it was some stone slab plot item...
I’ve always wanted to see a really good proper sim version of this in RPG. Let us not speak of that button mashing 2d horror that currently exists. With the away teams and stuff, it’s basically a D&D party and so fourth. I always thought it would be cool to man a bridge properly with real players and do some scenarios. But it’s probably incredibly difficult to actually do this properly.
I have a quick question for everyone that didn't seem worthy of its own thread: When you first played through NWN's OC and first heard mention of the Words of Power, how many of you thought that this had something to do with the Power Word (Stun, Kill, etc.) spells? That was my first thought. I certainly didn't think it was some stone slab plot item...
It could be that is what we were meant to think, it so happens that is not what they were.
When you hear the words spells what is the first thing you think?
I have the first 6 books for the Star Trek Roleplaying Game which uses CODA (also WotC owned) and runs almost exactly like d20.
If D&D can be coded into some amazing RPG's then there is no reason the CODA version of Star Trek couldn't be adapted equally as well!
But it would have to be actual Star Trek... Not JJ Trek...
As for the MMO. I was ears deep in the City of Heroes community at the time and was "fortunate" to be a part of the very, very, very, very early beta for both Champions and Star Trek Online due to being on friendly terms with some of the people at Cryptic. The development of Star Trek Online is a fascinating one.
Essentially Atari had the rights to a Star Trek MMO but did nothing with them. They wanted to get some money out of the license before it expired so they frantically shopped around for a developer they could buy for cheap, knew MMO's like the back of their hand and could deliver a product asap.
Atari then purchased Cryptic who already had their own engine and told them they had 1 year to create and ship a fully functional MMO.
Almost everything you see in Star Trek Online was "borrowed" from City of Heroes/Champions Online at launch. With exceptions to the models, very little if any was new systems, new content.
In fact, in early beta Ship Combat didnt have a ship... It was just the character model floating around frozen while phasers shot out of its head. When the game launched they just turned the PC model into a ship model.
This is why you have 2d planer space instead of 3d space. Because flight works exactly like it did in City of Heroes.
Just one of the many crazy things that happened surrounding the creation of Star trek Online.
@voidofopinion To be fair to Warhammer 40k and Star Wars, D&D (or Forgotten Realms I guess? they kind of go hand and hand really) lore has been rewritten a lot and is rather convoluted, at least from my short studying. 4e apparently retconned most of the lore from 3.5e, only to be mostly retconned back to 3.5e lore in 5e. It seems like a huge mess to me, personally. I agree that Starcraft's lore being mostly straightforward would definitely make playing in the setting much easier for a player because its pretty easy to understand, but its not like FR doesn't make understanding the setting easy, either.
I wrote a big explanation as an answer of sorts to your statement "Sci-fi doesn't get as much in the RPG sphere as fantasy," but I got sick of editing it so I'll just give the TL;DR:
Basically, in RPG's I feel you're essentially playing a superhuman character of myth in the same vein as Hercules, and mythological tales usually get magic involved somewhere along the way. Sci-Fi usually has most of the characters stay within a typical human range of power, so it wouldn't make much sense for a Human to have 18 Intelligence, which is just short of Superhuman intellect according to the 3.5 Monster Manual's Creature Creation section. Meanwhile, Fantasy and Myth typically looks at making things out as superhuman or beyond your typical man in scope. Both Warhammer 40k (by having magic, gods, and superhumans galore) and Star Wars (force is space magic with incredible powers, and Jedi are blatantly superhuman because of it) are more in line to the Fantasy Ideal (and are more examples of Science Fantasy if anything compared to, say, Star Trek). It makes sense for a fantasy hero to be able to slay a dragon, but very rarely does a sci-fi hero face anything of comparable magnitude without a highly advanced ship, and we all know that typically the bigger tech wins in sci-fi. Its not the only reason, obviously, and may not even be a consideration for people who choose to make RPG's, but its the trend I noticed.
I overslept, missed an important meeting and now I am trying to play catch up. So I figured this would be the perfect time to try something new and have someone else ask the question of the week!
First person to post their question gets to set the tone for this week!
If folks are feeling shy then I will ask a question myself tomorrow. However, I have faith that one of you is going to blow our socks off with a real doozy!
A serious type RP server, travelling solo through the woods a cute little chicken shows up and wants to be my friend/ follow clucking about. I considered just hacking it in two with my greataxe as my character would probably do but decided I could use the company. Later on it turns out said chicken was an epic sorcerer(guessing) from its casting at enemies and could of demolished me if hostilities between us had began. o.O
I don't remember the specifics considering I was very young, but my dad got a DM from an old server used to play on to come onto his server (back when it had a some people playing it) and run a quest. In the end, my minotaur weapon master of all people turned out to be the big hero in the end.
Some time more recently, I was playing on the server alone, considering that we had finally gotten it to work again for our own use (and then subsequently found out that not only did the machine we were using get hacked immediately but that it had like 9 different viruses all lodged up inside it. Its okay now, though, and we want to update it to EE but it needs NWNX, and I don't know if the EE version exists on Windows yet, or specifically Windows XP considering thats what our box running the server has), my dad randomly decided to throw in a Pheraxian Negator from the CEP down in town on top of me. Considering my character was low level, they subsequently died once I managed to lure it out of the town that had now been slaughtered. I then brought my level 18 elven druid Buddy McCracken on to kick its butt, but then immediately got annihilated because I forgot to buff. I killed it in almost literally a round on my second attempt thanks to Harm and Premonition. Safe to say it was good times all around.
There was a huge war brewing between the major city where the good aligned characters would RP and the major city where the evil players would RP. Things were coming to a point and as the lord of death my true neutral necromancer demi-god was in talks with both sides to decide where and if he would give his favor. He met with the leaders of both factions, heard their argument for why they wished to go to war and attempt to win him to their side.
He met with the leader of the evil faction that morning and the two old friends spoke of the good times they had shared and after the fondness passed between them he explain how he had no choice. That his faction was falling apart and they had lost every important encounter to this point. If he didnt show that the forces of good could be defeated then darkness would be banished from the world.
My character convinced him to begrudgingly parley and try and save his remaining followers.
Soon after my character met with the leader of the good faction who simply said that evil must be vanquished wherever it is found. But if they wished to talk then he would hear them out... Possibly accept a surrender.
Final confrontation. Both armies are poised and ready to launch into total war. The two leaders make there way to the front line and only one line of dialogue is spoken... "Attack" screams the leader of the forces of good. It was an ambush and they used me to get to their foe at any cost.
It was then that a passing DM sent me 3 little words that would forever change the course of history.
Tell from DM:"How dare he!"
It was all the provocation I needed. I popped auto-quicken Timestop, dropped from the party and unleashed absolutely everything I had against the supposed good guys and laid waste to most of them. The stragglers were mopped up by the awaiting army.
...Complete carnage later and the balance of power received a rather forceful shove back to equality.
It took weeks to work through the fallout both IC and OOC. Political structures shifted. Alliances were forged, friendships won and lost.
That's really cool that your dad ran a server and the two of you would play together!
I often wonder if I had children if they would like video games and role-playing or if they would think that was all an uncool "Dad" thing to get into. Kids are weird.
I ran a server with my wife when I was younger but it was a lot of stress and the cause of some conflict (were both very passionate). But since then we have aged a good decade and almost exclusively play games together.
How was it playing NWN with your dad? Did you run groups together? Did he DM for you?
It just sounds like a really neat family interaction.
Comments
Then a few levels later you have the right spells and equipment to deal with them and they suddenly become completely impotent.
Unfortunately it's a core D&D problem. I always felt alignments in NWN were an afterthought. I can only imagine how expensive it would be to add D&D's alignment system in a truly meaningful way. So it boils down to a handful of dialogue options and a few spell/item/mob interactions. However, I had no idea mob alignment was so spotty.
I don't use the base monsters for anything so I never really noticed but now I kinda want to fire them up in the toolset and see just how varied they are.
Dark Souls has some really interesting and unique things going for it but if you just found it frustrating then there isnt really any big reason to keep on bashing your head against it.
There are far too many wonderful games out there to force yourself into playing something you are not having fun with.
Characters missing fingers, eyes or limbs. Paralyzed, scarred, deaf in one ear. Compulsive liars, gamblers. Characters with trauma.
A world where every physical and mental malady can be cured by drinking a portion or the snap of a gods fingers creates a stagnant universe where despite literally being dragged through hell and back... Characters come out of it wealthier but unchanged.
How do you make injury meaningful in a world of Mass Heal? That's 60 hours for the main campaign, 20 for SoU and 25 for HotU.
A lot of time to no reload.
Would be kinda neat to see a full party of forum goers do a no reload run together (dropping out if they die) but getting everyone together to play would be a logistical nightmare. When I first purchased NWN I was really disappointed by the waterdhavian creature nonsense but then on a whim I tried the multiplayer and got hooked for 5 years on a persistent world and all the joy/drama that entails.
To be fair, the OC did a poor job of selling the series. Especially when in the shadow of one of the greatest RPG series of all time. But I can't think of a single game that has ever allowed players the freedom to create that NWN has.
The main differences in regenerate for 3.5 and AD&D are firstly that is takes longer in AD&D which makes it something you only really want to do after combat, material components introduces a limit in how much holy (blessed by your faith) water you have, and a time limit with potential for system shock. If you fail you die, hence you lose 1 point of con, hence you reduce your remaining raise attempts by 1 and lower your chance to receive powerful spells like regenerate. You can see how this older system sort of has interacting components and infinite perfect heal is not so simple.
In later editions there are at least two vectors of change rather than just one, it's both easier to survive and easier to reverse any ailment including death. I think if you just used one vector then you would still have more sense of risk while making it easier to fail sometimes. Also if you took the resurrection and system shock percentages and transposed them onto 3rd edition constitution it would give players an easy way to increase their own ability to survive while still maintaining limits. Even though typically a 25 in AD&D is more like a 40-45 in 3rd edition.
The other thing to remember is that liberal interpretation of spells and effects usually isn't the right method. So heal cures hitpoints and specific effects like blindness, but doesn't create eyes for creatures without them, and probably doesn't reverse natural defects. Greater restoration doesn't cure all lethal hit points and doesn't restore limbs that cause ability point penalties nor remove those penalties, it does however cure all non lethal hitpoint loss for example environmental exhaustion damage. Regenerate cure all hitpoints but it does allow the reattachment of lost limbs and thereby restore vision for eyes that got put out and ability point penalties resulting from severed limbs.
It's also interesting to note that a priest only recovers spells if they pray to their god at the specified time. That is, to remember the cleric works as a servant of their god, rather than the other way around.
Another factor in considering a specific question like a world of mass heal is to consider the population requirements suggested in the 3.5 dmg to generate clerics of a high enough level. For example a metropolis is at minimum 25000 ppl and there are 4 high level clerics defined by 12+1d6 levels, meaning that there is 80% chance that a level 17 cleric or higher is present in a metropolis. The estimated world population between 1000 AD and 1500 AD is around 400-500 million ppl, Japan has an extremely dense urban population due to mountains and large forests giving a 90% urban distribution, which means in an optimal situation that would be 14400 metropolises, so 11520 clerics in the world at high enough level to cast mass heal, or at maximum potential there is 1 such cleric for every 34722 ppl. Of course that would be at the extreme end of efficiency at an average of 1 mass heal per day.
Once you have metropolises with higher than minimum population and a more realistic urban distribution then things like high level healing get even more rare. Throw in the commandment of thou shall not aid my enemies and similar faith restrictions then you have a setting that already doesn't look like the land of plenty.
Adding in extra material components using the older variant rules and suggested lists also changes spell use, maybe using the mythos/ethos scheme would also change emphasis. For example in the Dark Sun setting a variant exists which diminishes use of some spellcasters, while in Dragonlance you might suggest a limit on clerics.
For some things like raise dead if you take into consideration inflated economies, especially with persistent worlds where gold grows in chests made from dead trees, then you could easily conceive an adjustment to the price. Like diamond gp value of a raise dead as 500 * 1.1^nHD floored to nearest integer or 500 * nHD^2 for higher inflation.
Did physical therapy yesterday. Cleaned the kitchen today and then went about making dinner.
I sat down for no more than 2 minutes because my leg hurt and before I knew it there is a kitchen full of fire and alarms screaming for people to evacuate the building that I cant shut off because they are wired to the mains.
Luckily I keep the fire extinguisher under the sink so I got it all under control quickly but there was so much smoke and flame retardant in the air that it took a good 15 minutes for the apartment to clear out and fire alarms to shut off.
Everyone was unharmed and there is no permanent damage but now on the inside of my nose the only thing I can smell is grease fire and flame retardant.
I think I just IRL rolled a 1 on my cooking skill check...
Hmmm, indeed. I could finally try that game that scares the hell out of me. I fear I will be changed forever if I attempt it. I’ll have to sleep with the light on, makes Dark souls look like a nursery rhyme. But what the hell aye? No guts no glory.
Downloading.....
Flower
@FreshLemonBun
That is one pretty amazing extrapulation on clerics and rules and concepts of heal and regen and the rest of it. I truly after all these years never even considered much of what you point out, such as regen could replace a poked out eye where heal wouldn’t. A great read
Sorry about the kitchen! Good to hear no real harm done. Hey that’s twice now I do a post and when I’m done, I find you’ve done one too lol.
And as for posting in sync
I also made a typo I see describing regenerate, it should explain that regenerate doesn't cure all lethal hitpoint damage. Essentially heal is always the best method to heal hitpoint damage.
@voidofopinion I hope everything turned out okay.
Thank you both for your concern. Everything is good. Lost a pot, a toaster and a kettle as they are now filled with flame retardant chemicals but no one was hurt and I some how avoided getting scorch marks all on the walls. No need to remodel the kitchen which sounds like a nightmare. And our upstairs neighbors didnt even bother to leave the apartment building with their children let alone send a fire brigade/ambulance.
And both fire alarm was going for a good 20 minutes.
Only downside is the next day post smoke inhalation. But that will pass.
@FreshLemonBun
3.5e Splatbooks are one of the greatest and one of the worst things to happen to PnP. There is an abundance of information of every race, class, feat, skill, monster, campaign setting and thousands and thousands of additional everything.
If you can think of it then their are rules and options for it in 3.5e.
On the other hand, 3.5e was poorly balanced post 7th level to begin with and with hundreds of splat books adding additional rules and variations to everything it's next to impossible to balance anything.
So with all of that in mind I love your interpretation of the position Clerics hold in the D&D universe. It's incredibly well reasoned and very much backed up by the books.
But 4 clerics in a city that can heal any wound, regrow limbs and raise the dead is more than enough to color a populations perception on life and death. On top of that, if wealth is the major stop gap for receiving healthcare services from the temple then wouldn't that in turn create resentment against the gods and the wealthy who elite who benefit from them?
Having that ability over life and death has massive social implications.
If there were even 1 person in New York (8.5 million pop) who could regrow any limb, cure any disease, heal any injury and raise the dead then the world would go insane.
I promise not to get this one covered in flame retardant chemicals!
Our best friends lived 300metres away and regularly visited us, but knew nothing about it until the next day.
Well, 7:55pm EST... so if it is no longer Monday in your part of the globe... I hope you have a moderately whelmed Tuesday!
So without any further ado... it's the question of the week!
Question: You discover a genies lamp. You rub the lamp and out steps a genie followed by a puff of smoke! He informs you that he is not just any old genie. No no no... He is the GAME GENIE!
He will instantly turn your favorite fictional universe into a NWN style video game. All you have to do is make the wish!
Which fictional universe would you choose and why?
My own, because then I wouldn't have to do any work.I don't know why, but I always wanted to see the Starcraft setting converted into a D&D ruleset. I want to fight a 72 foot tall alien monster that can casually tank nuclear warheads with at least 380 gigatons of energy behind them. I'd also like to have a Zergling as an animal companion, though granted they'd probably count as Aberrations and Druids as a whole would probably stop existing. Eh, all well, I can just play as an alien psionic mage that can create energy storms that destroy someone's mind as well as their internal and external body simultaneously while also being incredibly skilled in martial combat. For some reason they don't use their martial prowess to their advantage in universe, but I'd certainly go for a battlemage playstyle when you're a Wizard and Fighter put together.
I think a Starcraft game with an updated NWN style toolset and gameplay could be really interesting.
40K Dawn of War 2 was basically a single player RPG and in that regard it worked well. So a full on, proper RPG made using the principles of NWN could be amazing.
Sci-fi doesn't get as much in the RPG sphere as fantasy and when it does it's generally Warhammer 40k or Star Wars and I know it is blasphemy for a Brit to say but I think Starcraft would work much better for a NWN style game if for no other reason than the lore is not so convoluted and overworked as either of the above mentioned lisences.
All the retcons and revisions for the Star Wars and 40K wiki's read like they were written by a stalker ex-girlfriend. Just too much information and all of it contradictory.
I haven't finished the OC but if you say "D&D" and "Power word" then I think the spells.
*runs*
I’ve always wanted to see a really good proper sim version of this in RPG. Let us not speak of that button mashing 2d horror that currently exists. With the away teams and stuff, it’s basically a D&D party and so fourth. I always thought it would be cool to man a bridge properly with real players and do some scenarios. But it’s probably incredibly difficult to actually do this properly.
@Tresset
Yes lol
When you hear the words spells what is the first thing you think?
Wizard?
Druid?
Ranger?
Cleric?
Bard?
Paladin?
Sorcerer?
Magic?
Divine?
Bees?
List?
Speak n?
I have the first 6 books for the Star Trek Roleplaying Game which uses CODA (also WotC owned) and runs almost exactly like d20.
If D&D can be coded into some amazing RPG's then there is no reason the CODA version of Star Trek couldn't be adapted equally as well!
But it would have to be actual Star Trek... Not JJ Trek...
As for the MMO. I was ears deep in the City of Heroes community at the time and was "fortunate" to be a part of the very, very, very, very early beta for both Champions and Star Trek Online due to being on friendly terms with some of the people at Cryptic. The development of Star Trek Online is a fascinating one.
Essentially Atari had the rights to a Star Trek MMO but did nothing with them. They wanted to get some money out of the license before it expired so they frantically shopped around for a developer they could buy for cheap, knew MMO's like the back of their hand and could deliver a product asap.
Atari then purchased Cryptic who already had their own engine and told them they had 1 year to create and ship a fully functional MMO.
Almost everything you see in Star Trek Online was "borrowed" from City of Heroes/Champions Online at launch. With exceptions to the models, very little if any was new systems, new content.
In fact, in early beta Ship Combat didnt have a ship... It was just the character model floating around frozen while phasers shot out of its head. When the game launched they just turned the PC model into a ship model.
This is why you have 2d planer space instead of 3d space. Because flight works exactly like it did in City of Heroes.
Just one of the many crazy things that happened surrounding the creation of Star trek Online.
I wrote a big explanation as an answer of sorts to your statement "Sci-fi doesn't get as much in the RPG sphere as fantasy," but I got sick of editing it so I'll just give the TL;DR:
Basically, in RPG's I feel you're essentially playing a superhuman character of myth in the same vein as Hercules, and mythological tales usually get magic involved somewhere along the way. Sci-Fi usually has most of the characters stay within a typical human range of power, so it wouldn't make much sense for a Human to have 18 Intelligence, which is just short of Superhuman intellect according to the 3.5 Monster Manual's Creature Creation section. Meanwhile, Fantasy and Myth typically looks at making things out as superhuman or beyond your typical man in scope. Both Warhammer 40k (by having magic, gods, and superhumans galore) and Star Wars (force is space magic with incredible powers, and Jedi are blatantly superhuman because of it) are more in line to the Fantasy Ideal (and are more examples of Science Fantasy if anything compared to, say, Star Trek). It makes sense for a fantasy hero to be able to slay a dragon, but very rarely does a sci-fi hero face anything of comparable magnitude without a highly advanced ship, and we all know that typically the bigger tech wins in sci-fi. Its not the only reason, obviously, and may not even be a consideration for people who choose to make RPG's, but its the trend I noticed.
Happy Monday one and all!
I overslept, missed an important meeting and now I am trying to play catch up. So I figured this would be the perfect time to try something new and have someone else ask the question of the week!
First person to post their question gets to set the tone for this week!
If folks are feeling shy then I will ask a question myself tomorrow. However, I have faith that one of you is going to blow our socks off with a real doozy!
Some time more recently, I was playing on the server alone, considering that we had finally gotten it to work again for our own use (and then subsequently found out that not only did the machine we were using get hacked immediately but that it had like 9 different viruses all lodged up inside it. Its okay now, though, and we want to update it to EE but it needs NWNX, and I don't know if the EE version exists on Windows yet, or specifically Windows XP considering thats what our box running the server has), my dad randomly decided to throw in a Pheraxian Negator from the CEP down in town on top of me. Considering my character was low level, they subsequently died once I managed to lure it out of the town that had now been slaughtered. I then brought my level 18 elven druid Buddy McCracken on to kick its butt, but then immediately got annihilated because I forgot to buff. I killed it in almost literally a round on my second attempt thanks to Harm and Premonition. Safe to say it was good times all around.
Fantastic question and so hard to pick just one!
There was a huge war brewing between the major city where the good aligned characters would RP and the major city where the evil players would RP. Things were coming to a point and as the lord of death my true neutral necromancer demi-god was in talks with both sides to decide where and if he would give his favor. He met with the leaders of both factions, heard their argument for why they wished to go to war and attempt to win him to their side.
He met with the leader of the evil faction that morning and the two old friends spoke of the good times they had shared and after the fondness passed between them he explain how he had no choice. That his faction was falling apart and they had lost every important encounter to this point. If he didnt show that the forces of good could be defeated then darkness would be banished from the world.
My character convinced him to begrudgingly parley and try and save his remaining followers.
Soon after my character met with the leader of the good faction who simply said that evil must be vanquished wherever it is found. But if they wished to talk then he would hear them out... Possibly accept a surrender.
Final confrontation. Both armies are poised and ready to launch into total war. The two leaders make there way to the front line and only one line of dialogue is spoken... "Attack" screams the leader of the forces of good. It was an ambush and they used me to get to their foe at any cost.
It was then that a passing DM sent me 3 little words that would forever change the course of history.
Tell from DM: "How dare he!"
It was all the provocation I needed. I popped auto-quicken Timestop, dropped from the party and unleashed absolutely everything I had against the supposed good guys and laid waste to most of them. The stragglers were mopped up by the awaiting army.
...Complete carnage later and the balance of power received a rather forceful shove back to equality.
It took weeks to work through the fallout both IC and OOC. Political structures shifted. Alliances were forged, friendships won and lost.
All because a DM whispered those 3 little words.
Sounds like the Link's Awakening chicken on steroids and access to 9th level spells!
@DerpCity
That's really cool that your dad ran a server and the two of you would play together!
I often wonder if I had children if they would like video games and role-playing or if they would think that was all an uncool "Dad" thing to get into. Kids are weird.
I ran a server with my wife when I was younger but it was a lot of stress and the cause of some conflict (were both very passionate). But since then we have aged a good decade and almost exclusively play games together.
How was it playing NWN with your dad? Did you run groups together? Did he DM for you?
It just sounds like a really neat family interaction.