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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • On the one hand, it’s fun to fuck with players. “So you enter the room? Cross the threshold of your own free will? Ok who’s wearing metal?” when none of that matters, but you write it down anyway.

    On the other, sometimes I’ve had to be like “ok guys seriously there’s no traps here. Put away the ten foot pole and chickens let’s just move along”







  • That means that a goblin with a dagger is a real threat, especially if he has friends, because you might be able to hit his buddies with a 4 on the die, but he could definitely work together with his friends to get a crit on you. And if he has a dagger with runes on it, or poison, or something like that, your day just got really bad.

    That sounds interesting, that weak monsters can work together to be mechanically threatening. I’ve heard about PF2e having more teamwork, but I’m not familiar enough with the system to comment on it. I have noticed that D&D tends to be very much “everyone does their thing on their turn, and then spaces out until they get attacked or are up again”.

    I like how Fate lets anyone “create an advantage”, so your party face that can’t throw a punch can use their “Bravado” skill (or whatever) to distract the enemy, so someone can use that to land a big hit. I imagine PF2e has stuff like that



  • Game designers, talk to me, what the hell is going through that thick skull of yours. Either I need the ~~~Item ~~~ to win the fight or I don’t, what’s the fucking deal.

    I imagine some people just use items willy-nilly and are happier for it. Since every encounter is designed to be won without using any items, you might as well use them all. But that feels bad, Several kinds of bad. For me, anyway.

    A related problem is when you do use the item, and then later it’s like “Oh, you used that? Well, now you can’t get the ultimate sword you could have traded it for.” Also related, “if you open the chest in act 1, you don’t get the mega-sword in act 3”.

    At least actual D&D has a DM that can pace fights&rests so that spell slots are there when needed and empty when not (ideally). But BG3 isn’t clever about rest placements so the only intelligent thing to do is to short rest after every fight, but then what was the point of re-using D&D’s combat system?!

    I am strongly in agreement.

    I imagine they started out with actual time pressure and limited food supplies, but I imagine then they realized most people hate that. Most people hate timed quests. Imagine being eight hours in, enjoying act 1, and suddenly the game is unwinnable because you ran out of food. There’s no human DM to be like “Seriously guys, the necromancer is mere hours away from the macguffin. You can’t rest another day”, or “You sure? Really? No take backs? Fine. The next morning you are awakened by the sky blackening and blood raining from the heavens. You think maybe the necromancer you were chasing got the macguffin while you were taking a day off.”


  • My character has grown in power, why is the rat from the beginning still able to down me?

    I read an article online somewhere about bounded accuracy, and it brought a question like that as a litmus test for if you like the idea. Should a novice archer, no matter how lucky they are, be able to shoot the ominous black knight? For a scratch? Or a lucky hit in the throat?

    D&D 3e says no. You can only hit them on a natural 20. I think PF2e also says no in the same way.

    D&D 5e tried to say yes, the archer should be able to hit the knight. The knight’s armor is probably ~22, and the archer is rolling at +5, so there’s decent odds. But he certainly won’t be able to kill him, because HP is what scales up with power.

    Other systems are more deadly.

    Personally, I don’t like the “these goblins can’t even touch me anymore” mode that much. I prefer less superhero heroics, where a goblin with a knife can be a real threat




  • How often do pathfinder games do the thing like “The soldiers in the first area attack at +4, but these basically identical soldiers two plot beats later attack at +12, because you’re higher level and I want the math to be challenging”? Because I’ve always disliked that in games. That’s more of a video game trope, but I’ve seen it leak into tabletop games before. I liked the idea of bounded accuracy, and how a goblin is always a goblin. You don’t need to make mega-goblins to fight the higher level party, because even the little ones can still hit and wear you down.



  • I remember trying to explain world of darkness to a DND friend in college. I was like, "you have these cool powers, but it’s mostly a question of should you use them or not. Like if you just dominate everyone, that’s fucked up and eventually someone will find out and bring you consequences "

    He was like, “that sounds totally broken, lol”

    It’s a different mindset for sure.






  • I also dislike dnd’s spell slots for this reason. Unless you know for certain how the game is going to go, it’s really tempting to hold onto them “just in case something really hard shows up”.

    It doesn’t help that in many DND video games, encounters are designed to be won without spell slots, because you don’t know if the player is going to get here first or last fight of the day.