The thing with that game I got removed from was also that it hadn't even started yet - the GM apparently wanted to get every little detail of the world perfected before we were allowed to play in it. And I got kicked out for suggesting they allow us to start playing while they continued building the rest. Pff, well, at least I can remember the GM's name to avoid them in future. It's weird - they were fine in the (short-lived) game I played under them before.

But yeah, I agree on the whole "If you want the game to go the way you want, write a book instead" thing. Half the point of these kinds of games is that no-one, neither the players nor the GM, knows exactly how things will go. The GM will describe a scene and the players will act and react to whatever is going on, and inevitably do things the GM didn't even consider, and from such chaos great stories are born (or at least really silly anecdotes you can retell to everyone you meet in the future :D).

In reply to Nothing (msg # 981):

To be fair, there are GMs that think of writing a book, and create the setting and see how players work in them running them through some plot ideas you had. Chained Dragonqueen was one of those that i was in, absolutely loved it. It was one of those games where you don't intend to have a dozen PCs running around under your name, it just somehow ended up that way.

Currently closed, the GM had enough material to start writing her book, which meant fewer time for RPoL. She did communicate openly to the players about it, so we all knew it would happen at some point. Miss my characters, but i saved their sheets and i'll probably have them pop up someplace else in some form or another.

Also did a couple of playtests here too. There are GMs that want to run a game, and there are GMs that are looking for material or simply want to see how waterproof their setting is. But yeah, wanting to have a setting perfect before letting players loose in it is bound to crash in flames the instant someone does something unexpected. "No, i don't care you rolled a Nat 20 and you've done it before, that doesn't work here."

A saying I've always relied on:  "Dice have no sense of drama."

It may be your intent to have the big-bad menace the PCs from atop his massive airship of doom, but be ready for the dice to step in and say "hey, you know that spell the wizard just fired?  Yeah, your big-bad failed his save and fell off the deck and over the side to go kersplat".

Hearing all these stories reminds me of another awesome campaign I played in that was suddenly cut short- one so dear to me that I might have spent birthday money on gods know how much ink and paper to print all I could find of it.  It was, of all things, a Battletech game, where I played a red-headed mech pilot just a bit like Lilah (except more even-keeled, not so much of a temptress witch).  I mean, this is the kind of campaign that only comes around once every few years.   The GM has massive, massive plans for a multi-year- blazes, multi-generational character storylines.

We get going and have a few fights, and things are humming along. Things are just amazing- and then one day, suddenly... the GM just poofs, and we're left hanging for weeks as to what happened.

Finally, one of the others gets an email- the kind you really, really didn't want to get.  It was from the GM's wife, and along with the files he'd had on the game's future and all the planning he'd ever done for it (I mean, he used to set up and run the mech battles for us so we wouldn't spend three months on one fight).

The day he'd vanished, he'd been in a car accident... sadly, a fatal one.

The game was over, like that- just forever frozen in time with the unit landing on the planet, getting ready for a strategy meeting that is never going to happen.

The game is still up, and one of the other players crafted a campaign from the notes as to what might have happened after a few generations from our old characters.

Every so often, I read through the threads with a bit of a drink and just reminisce.  Someday I'll bring back my fiery little pilot, someday...

I might do it tonight if Cetaen hasn't posted.  Cetaen, if you see this, I hope everything's going okay and RW lets you return soon!
This message was last edited by the player at 19:05, Thu 16 Jan 2020.

I was in an unintentional multi-generation thing once.

It was a Gestalt high level campaign, and through clever tactics and spell use we pull a massive win against the baddies.

The enemy army was assaulting a floating city to capture a Titan (a huge construct that was tied to the powers of creation in that setting, and the reason the city kept floating), basically, and the PCs were to hold them back as long as we could. The city's magister is there as well, essentially taking on a party of pretty much all the main villains some 80 feet deep into enemy lines. His daughter was with our group along with her guards to buy time for the inhabitants to finish escaping. They're also trying to kill the Royals ruling the city.

The villains failed EVERY objective. Every single one.

I had a Pegasus mount, and i just zip back and forth on the battlefield, managing to barely have enough range to pick up the (injured) magister and hoof it back to the party. I'd buffed the party along with the NPCs as much as i could beforehand, and they were holding the line. Our caster dumped a massive snowstorm on the enemy army, essentially killing their movement speed to keep them from being overrun too, which helped. Some lucky rolls had the enemy rogues taken down before they could land backstabs, nothing i couldn't heal.

And the Titan? Using a small workaround, i managed to teleport it out (had my familiar hold a Teleport charge while casting Greater Teleport myself). GM allowed the two spells to stack, which was enough to teleport it, the Magister, his daughter, the Titan (with all its size penalties) and me away (shouting "I DENY YOU YOUR PRIZE!" as i vividly recall), while the PC party used the portals used for evacuation. In the end, we lost no one. Not even a single NPC. Even the one that was supposed to die survived. And they couldn't even stay long enough to loot the place.

Oh, and with the Titan gone, that meant the city with the main villains and their entire army in it, would soon end up going splat since there was no longer a Titan powering the magical devices that kept the city afloat, so most of that assaulting army was pretty much doomed. Kersplat indeed.

So yeah, the baddies would likely have survived, but that's a pretty abysmal defeat on them right there. Either way, the game petered out a little after that, but we're playing a followup, and our names have been added to the setting's history. It's been a while so it's hard to check, but i think after we rolled up new (low level) characters i read in the lore my old character became a Captain-General of the Royal Guard. Which isn't surprising after she's saved them in that battle :P

---

Un a related note, just finished Book 1 of Practical Guide to Evil. Wasn't kidding about the binge reading, and it's a nice read. I can see how it inspired you to do this campaign ^^
This message was last edited by the player at 03:12, Fri 17 Jan 2020.

Haha that sounds like it was a pretty epic scenario, Adrika :D. I've never played a high-level game. The highest I've ever managed was level seven. That was a Fourth Edition game, of course :D. That was on RPOL - I think the GM kind of burned out a bit and decided to take a break from running games. Maybe one day he'll get back into the mood and we can start a new game.

There is sadly a lack of interest in Fourth Edition - it has an undeservedly bad reputation for reasons I've never quite managed to pin down. There is a lot of "Oh I've heard it's rubbish but I've never actually played it...but lots of people say it was no good so that must be the case, right?" kind of attitude about it. But it has pretty straightforward rules and mechanics, and is reportedly the most balanced of all the editions, giving all classes the ability to feel cool/powerful. Rather than in some other editions where the combat tactics of melée classes basically amount to "I hit it" regardless of level, while spellcasters start off squishy but end up able to bend reality and eradicate entite cities with a single spell, and other such antics (what TV Tropes calls "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards").

Ahh well, one day I will get to play one, some, or all of my characters eventually. And make new ones and play those too. One day. I hope :D.

I've personally no experience with 4E, and really don't have the time to learn a new system with the level of detail required to run a game with it; I would wager that most of the people who, like me, are neutral about the issue because they've never tried the game just don't run it because it's simpler to run something you already know HOW to run. I mean, I've heard good things of 5E more often than 4E, although I've heard good and bad about both, and yet I haven't tried to learn either, nor am I ever likely to learn PF2.

I think the best bet would be for you to run a game yourself with somebody you feel would be suited to running a game, so you teach them the rules while playing, and then have them run a game for you; that seems to me like the only realistic way to get a GM you know is capable and won't simply drop the game on you. At least, that's the best idea I can come up with.

I've played 4e, and to be fair, it's pretty deserving of its reputation.

Okay, so your powers are all divided into 'per round', 'per encounter' and 'per day'. There's lots of moves that can reposition opponents (especially for Monks) so a map is pretty much required to know what the hell's going on and the whole thing just feels like someone tried to make a MMO version of D&D.

That's part of the reason why 5e went back to basics, honestly, so yeah... upsides and downsides.

---

As for high level games... you're not missing much. The thing about D&D is that most of your combat capability is dependent on gear, so at some point you reach a level where you could simply deal more than your max HP in damage in a single round, and it just turns into an Initiative Lottery where everything under 40 AC is a death wish. I think D&D is at its best when you stop leveling at 9-12, which is why E6 games are fun: you cap out at a level where you can get your first taste of that level of power, without having all your bases covered. Going around casting Heroism, Holy Aura

Gestalt games especially are mostly to just play a party of wrecking balls fighting other similarly beefed up monsters, but it's a kind of... damage multiplier really. Sure, you get the class abilities of two classes for the price of one, so at level 8 you could be a Paladin 8 / Sorcerer 8 with full BaB, good Fort and Will saves and adds their casting stat on top of said saves.

Personally, i was a Paladin/Cleric at the time, with prestige classes in Knight of the Raven ( https://dndtools.net/classes/knight-of-the-raven/ ) on the Cleric side and Cavalier ( https://dndtools.net/classes/cavalier/ ) on the Paladin side. One of my favorite tricks was casting Anti-magic Field (my mount was physically there, so unaffected) and then charge in, using the combination of a x5 multiplier (x4 actually, still needed a few levels to max out) on a lance charge against an opponent... that had all their protective magics suppressed because Anti-magic Field.

Ingame i was the leader of a Paladin Order that was sent to arrest the party, but she had her doubts that they were truly guilty (they agreed to have her cast a Geas on one of them to 'not lie'), so she made an agreement to tag along and see for herself what they were up to. She focused on teleportation magic too, so her tactics consisted of sending her raven to scout, studying the target location through the eyes of her raven, buff up her squad and then Greater Teleport everyone through to completely blindside her enemies. Never got to show it since the party decided to negotiate instead of run, but yeah, that was a nice setup to have.

I'm... actually in a third camp- I tried 3rd edition, got the player's guide, and then never got to play a game of it.  I went to a local game convention close to me, played Pathfinder, and got hooked, haven't looked back.  4th just doesn't appeal to me- haven't gotten my teeth into 5th edition yet, but I'm hoping to soon.

It just seems like I pick up all sorts of player's guides- Hackmaster, EverQuest, L5R 2nd Edition, D&D 3rd, Big Eyes Small Mouth, Dragon Age, Champions both regular and d20, and more- and then I never, ever get to play session one.  If I remember, I got to play L5R once, BESM once, and then... nothing.  I have a shelf full of sourcebooks for dead games- I kind of think of it as a hobby of mine, at this point- besides, maybe I'll find something inspiring for a character idea in there.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:16, Fri 17 Jan 2020.

Yeah, 3 onto 3.5 had its doubtful moments, Pathfinder was actually made by fans as some sort of D&D 3.75 and is pretty much one of the most active ones. It's got its faults, but the avalanche of (often poorly balanced) D&D 3.5 material makes Pathfinder my preferred system of the two. And they're compatible, so you can use 3.5 stuff in Pathfinder -- with GM permission of course.

I've played a bunch of systems, latest joining is a Stars Without Number game, but yeah, i know the feeling. It's why i don't look at systems, but setting when deciding whether or not to RTJ.

Also, post #4000! \o/
This message was last edited by the player at 18:14, Fri 17 Jan 2020.

Hm. I think I said at some point back in August that I'd be disappointed with ourselves if we didn't reach... what was it, 3000 or 5000? I can't remember right now.

Either way, I'm happy we've made it so far, but I never doubted we would - you all are much too good players to expect otherwise. :)

As for the edition discussion, the big boon Pathfinder got is that, while some of the people who played 3E stayed with it when it upgraded, many more went on to 3.5; and of those, a ton migrated to Pathfinder. Meaning that, in addition to its own fanbase, the system also collected a lot of people from preceding editions, helping it be as popular as it is because, for some people, it was less "learn a new game" and more "learn a couple new rules to add onto the game I already know".

People are inherently resistant to change for a large number of reasons, both valid and less so, thus new things can't just get away with being "ok" if they want to supplant the old, they need to be amazing. And that's a difficult result to achieve.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:00, Fri 17 Jan 2020.

Hi all - I just wanted to apologize for my absence.

I'm going to get back on it and back in it now.

Welcome back! Hope everything is going ok :)

Hey Cetaen, welcome back ;).

On the DnD editions thing, I see a lot of people only focus on the numbers and the mechanics. The "Fourth Edition is like an MMORPG" is something I see a lot, and likely from people who haven't really thought about what they're saying. If you think about it, the original DnD was a lot more like a modern-day MMORPG than the newer ones - you went into a town and found an NPC who had some kind of problem (family member kidnapped, monsters attacking, evil overlord trying to take over the town, etc). You would agree to help them with said problem and that would require you to go into the nearby dungeon (or maybe you weren't really given any reason by an NPC - you went into a dungeon just because it was there, and that was what you did), which you would enter and fight your way through lots of monsters, gathering loot and levelling up, until you reached the big boss at the back. You would destroy that and get more loot, then go back to town, sell up, and go in search of another dungeon in which to repeat the process. Things like proper RP and character development didn't really seem so important and more focus was made on having the "right" classes in your group to be able to do stuff. Rather than play in a single, ongoing campaign you would have different people running what were effectively one-shot dungeons and bring along whichever of your characters was best-suited to the task (in terms of level and abilities) for any given dungeon.

Fast forward thirty-odd years and now we focus more on the RP and stuff in DnD, while MMORPGs are concerned with going into a town, finding an NPC with a problem, going to the nearby dungeon in a group of the "right" classes/levels/gear, clearing out said dungeon by killing monsters and looting stuff, then going back to down to do the hand-in and get another quest. DnD isn't like an MMORPG, it's the other way around, and maybe Fourth Edition made that more apparent by actually using some of the terminology that has come about in the MMORPG-filled years since the original DnD was released ;).

I mainly like Fourth because the mechanics are a lot simpler - there's a lot less fiddly stuff on the occasion mechanics do come up. Which is mainly in combat, I suppose. Outside of combat, I suppose there's the occasional skill check or whatever. I've seen people say "You can't RP with Fourth Edition like you can in the others" and that's just...what? You can RP as much or as little as you like in any system, DnD or otherwise. That's just an argument that makes no sense to me.

Anyway, people will probably play whichever edition they know best, which may well be the one they encountered first. Which is fine, of course :). It just kind of bugs me when people complain about something they've never actually tried for themselves and are just repeating what they've heard. Not that I'm saying anyone here has done that, it just seems to be the case elsewhere. I recently sought out and joined a Discord server dedicated to Fourth Edition and it's nice to see that there are actually people out there who like this edition too :).

Nothing -

Cetaen can see through the darkness, so it is not a hindrance to him.

I described the draining as "cold", because vitality is being sucked out of him. I thought that might feel cold to the one being drained.

In reply to Nothing (msg # 993):

Well, yeah, but also no.

D&D plays like a game, you won't hear anyone claim otherwise. Only, where up to 3.5 it played like a JRPG (party on one side, enemies on the other and take turns hitting each other and casting spells), due to the repositioning and the way the Player's Guide simply read, it felt like they were trying to turn it into a MMO: You were no longer sitting around a table, it felt like you were sitting behind a screen clicking stuff on hotbars with icons. The feel of it was just way different, and a lot of people simply didn't like it, myself included.

Now, i'll be clear and say there are worse systems out there (for example, as much as i love the versatility of HERO making a character in it is like trying to master nuclear physics) and if i saw a game with a promising setting using it i'd still consider joining, but to me it just doesn't feel like D&D.

In reply to Adrika (msg # 995):

Just as a note, Adrika and Nothing, as a person who's fully neutral on the 3E vs 4E fight, I'm fine with the two of you debating the merits of the two, but try to stay friendly about it, yes? I know the debates about that can get heated, and I wouldn't want said heat to form here.

Oh I'm not trying to get insulting or anything. I'm just trying to express why I prefer a certain system and that I don't really understand all the hate it seems to get. And everything anyone seems to say only relates to the way combat works - as with most other tabletop RPG systems, there's more to the game than just fighting. The tabletop campaign I've been runing hasn't had an combat in several sessions now - they've been trying to escort a load of people to a new home and had to deal with some NPCs and a cursed item along the way.

Fourth is simpler in its combat mechanics than its predecessors, I find - there are a lot less fiddly numbers you need to remember in order to do anything, so you can just go "I want to use X power on this guy" or whatever, rather than...well, you saw how long it took me trying to figure out how big the area of my darkness thing is, right? And that was only the stuff that got posted in the group-wide threads, never mind all the discussion tha went on between me and the GM :D.

I don't like 4e because of the mechanics, so put me in that camp. While ideally D&D has 3 pillars that are equal in measure, I find that most of the groups I've played with in any version of D&D spend the majority of their game time in combat.

It's not even that the combat systems are bad... they're just... boring. There is no variation or chance to really be creative with it.

*shrug* if you like 4E, I'm glad it works for you. My group tried it when it first came out and it literally caused the group to split apart. So what was left of us went back to 3.5/PF until 5e playtesting started.

Same here. I've got no problem with people liking 4e, the same way i don't have a problem with people NOT liking it. It's an opinion. I even admitted as such by saying i'd consider joining a 4e game if the setting called out to me, without the risk of bursting into flame for my heretical claims.

Hell, strictly objectively speaking it's not even that bad of a system, i think its main sin was mostly not feeling like a D&D game. And D&D, more so than other systems, relies heavily on its established players from previous editions to keep going. Were it released as a separate game that also happens to use a d20 system (d20 Modern comes to mind), it wouldn't have garnered this much of a bad reaction, but in this case it was like swapping out the house you grew up in for a modern condo apartment on the 10th floor: Sure, everything including the furniture is streamlined, but you can't pretend it's the same place anymore.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 01:37, Mon 20 Jan 2020.

Yeah, I think that was one reason it was so unpopular. They tried to change stuff that had been considered problematic in previous editions and people kicked off and said they didn't like it because it was different, so they've now abandoned it and (as far as I can tell based on gameplay streams I've watched) sort of bodged together a bunch of older-edition stuff into Fifth Edition. But there are definitely DMs out there who, even though they now run Fifth, enjoyed Fourth and may even use some of its mechanics in Fifth (Minions, for example). I believe the Warlord class was also very popular - I'm not sure exactly what it is about the class that people enjoyed so much (thematically they're like the charismatic leader who supports and encourages/buffs their team whilst drawing attention of enemies onto themselves, and have no innate magical ability), but I see it mentioned a lot in discussions of what people enjoyed about Fourth, and miss in Fifth as they no longer exist there.

At least spellcasting is about ten times easier/simpler than in any other edition - I don't think anyone can dispute that ;). And melée classes have more opportunity to be interesting and do more in combat than just "I hit it for X damage" - they can apply status effects and stuff too :).

Prefacing that I have no idea what the class is about nor have ever read anything about it anywhere, so I'm going just from what you're saying here, I can see the appeal already.

Essentially, one of the primary problems that martial (ie, non-spellcasting) classes tend to have in D&D is (1) an inability to do anything useful outside of combat (like successfully influencing negotiations and other roleplay-heavy scenes, something which generally requires high CHA), and (2) an inability to do anything in combat other than "attack, attack again". This is probably the hugest problem of all those D&D 3.5 has, because it was backed in from its very inception by game designers who just disliked the idea of giving non-mages the ability to compete with mages, and thus made that nearly impossible to do on the design level.

Anyway, given that this problem is huge and so heartfelt that a ton of the "fixes" and house-rules for 3.P are about fixing it (in fact, that's why we're using Spheres of Might here, because it grants the ability to solve this issue), I would wager that the Warlord, since you're saying me it's a non-caster focused on support and with high CHA, did some work in helping solve that problem, so people would want something like it to stick around.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:10, Mon 20 Jan 2020.

That sounds fair, yeah, maybe that's it. I'll point out that one of the main things about Fourth Edition is that they deliberately made all classes roughly equal in terms of power. Yes, the Wizard can chuck a fireball that explodes and burns everyone in an area whilst also knocking them over, but the Fighter can also just march in and swing their weapon around in a wide arc, dealing damage and knocking everyone over too. Same end result, different damage type (and attack range) ;).

Warlords aren't the only Fourth Edition class that could potentially have high Charisma, though it's true there are few that might - I'm pretty sure as a Rogue you can do it took, the whole "suave and cunning deceiver" type who bluffs their way through any situation. Skills work somewhat differently in Fourth too - everyone has access to the exact same skill list, and unlike older editions you don't earn spendable skill points as you level up. Instead, your skill rating is based off the Mod of its associated stat (so Bluff is Charisma, Endurance is Constitution, Stealth is Dexterity, etc) plus half your level (so everyone's skills slowly increase as they level up). Depending on your class you can choose to be "Trained" in a number of skills at character creation - which skills obviously depends on the class. Being trained gives you a flat +5 bonus to the skill. And as well as this there are Feats you can take to increase skills further (Skill Focus, which gives another...+2 or +3, I forget, to skills in which you are already trained). And there's another Feat called Jack-of-All-Trades, which gives you a +2 bonus in all untrained skills.

And on top of this, there are also various magical items that can boost skills, though I expect that's a standard across all editions - gear that makes you better at stuff :D. So you can potentially get even one of your crappier-level skills to a decent height if you want to. And Fourth doesn't restrict you from making any kind of skill roll based on race or class or whatever - everyone has the same skill list and can roll any skill they want. It's just the bonus that will be higher or lower based on your stats and stuff.

In reply to Nothing (msg # 1002):

Most skills work like that in Pathfinder as well; a handful require you to be trained in them (things like Knowledge or Use Magic Device, mostly, where your character need to have studied something to be able to use that skill), but for the rest, you can use them even if you have 0 skill ranks in it; and class skills just get a +3 bonus if you have at least 1 rank in them. So... I guess 4E went further in the direction of letting anybody try anything, but that's hardly a big difference in my eyes.

Yeah, Warlords are basically Drill Sergeant-type leaders, commanding the party, and the party got bonuses to attack, or damage, or defense etc. depending on which abilities the Warlord was using. A Cleric was obviously going to be better at healing others, but they were a good attempt at creating a non-magic healer/buffer class and ideal for GMs trying to create an NPC General.

Combat Leader gives you and everyone within 10 feet of you a +2 Initiative, allies in sight who spend an action point to take an extra action get some free HP, Furious Smash is an at-will vs. Fort that damages your target, and an ally of your choice (either next to you or next to the target) then gets to add your CHA mod to their attack and damage for their next attack against it. And those are at 1st level.

A popular saying i've heard about the class is "A barbarian hits you with their axe, a Warlord hits you with their barbarian" and that... pretty much summarizes what the class' focus is really. :P

Interesting; seems something like what a Spheres of Might Warleader would be capable of. It's certainly an interesting concept when it's executed properly.

Speaking of proper execution, this thread went past 1000 posts four posts ago, so I think it's time to execute it and give birth to a new one.

Thread closed, but feel free to continue this discussion in the next one - I'm really enjoying it, and find it quite interesting.