Ew

Oi, more often than not it makes perfect sense--the stereotypical elf is a Wizard, a Druid, or a Ranger for a reason, and having the right set of stats for one of each class's main styles reflects that.

Min/maxers usually are incapable of feeling guilt.

GM stands for Golden Mist. Though my heart goes out to the guy. He had this whole Piss Forest plot set up (spent weeks masturbating to it) and then these prudes come and sit down and blow his hard work to hell.

Jokes aside, I was telling Tony earlier about having to deal with GMs who insert their weird kinks into games; I once played with a guy who had a thing for bondage, it seems, and he created an entire enemy faction based around the fact. At first, I was under the impression that they were, like, Cenobite expies or something, which I didn't mind. That lasted until we entered the "pleasure chamber", which was this huge, grotesque orgy with a humongous, multi-breasted demon at the center. Guy was far too vivid and excited about his descriptions of the place too.

Like, Jesus man, give us some warning before you demon splooge on our faces like that.

just finished White Plume Mountain
Had a blast
Some very close calls
Lots of problem solving
Definitely a recommended module

what's min/max mean?

"This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may only interest a specific audience. (May 2016)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_ ... game_terms

Just preordered Storm King's Thunder!

Just a moment ago there was a discussion on keeping your fetishes off the gaming board. An then... rexxz appears.

It means "This game's combat/skills segments involve pulling your own weight and not being useless, so I've taken it upon myself to make a character who will actually perform the desired combat/skills functions it advertises with at least some level of competence," a.k.a. "I made a character who's not useless when the dice-rolling happens."

It also means that you are a terrible person, but that's okay

There's a vast, vast gulf between "can do job" and "completely breaks the mechanical side of the game and renders everything trivial due to ridiculous min/maxing, plus completely breaks the RP side of the game due to ridiculous character choices dictated by said min/maxing." Unless your GM is also tuning every encounter with the assumption that the entire group has min/maxed their little hearts out, in which case you're ALL horrible people and totally deserve each other.

And yet, stating "If you want to make this class and be good at it, here are some races that are compatible with it!" equates to breaking the game? You are just so funny.

Now the Dragonborn Sorcerer who can constantly recharge his Dragon Breath so that he can attack with it 3x per round dealing 2d10+buttload damage in a Close Blast 5 without endangering allies...THAT'S breaking the game, but you'll notice I didn't mention him earlier--just that "Dragonborn make good Sorcerers."

I'll just bust in to someone's 3.5e game and roll a PunPun build and ruin everyone's DnD experience at that table for life.

It's the whole approach that's the problem. Not "hey, I'm going to think of an interesting character and play that," it's "hey, what's best from a stats perspective?" The DM can literally change everything they want about any encounter; the only thing they can't directly change is the player characters. If you make a shit character who can kill stuff like a mofo, the DM is just going to throw harder shit at you. If you make a character who's not as good but is really really interesting from a story perspective, the DM's gonna tune things so you still have a chance. In both cases you have a fun, challenging experience - but in one of those cases, you just have worse characters.

I realize it's certainly possible for people to pick the best combos and still make interesting characters out of that - but it's definitely going to be less interesting than if someone comes up with an interesting idea first.

I am a high ranked Professional Dungeon Master and I know all the tricks to ruin power hungry players. Anti-magic fields, natural crowd control powers, regenerating HP and absurd AC. Turns out the bad guy could have been reasoned with but you decided to attack for no reason so have fun.

You construct the dice-rolling chassis first, and make sure that it's well-constructed. Then you look at the thing you made and ask yourself, "Who is this, what are they like, and why are they here?" This is how you make a good character both in terms of interesting role-playing (going outside the box is always more interesting than Human Fighter #2819) and competency in skill checks and combat. You can't just stop at Step 1, and neither can you skip it--both are absolutely necessary.

Right now I'm in 2 online games, and I'm playing a Genasi Swordmage in one (fire elemental humanoid guy who uses both sword and magic to act as the group's frontline) and a Tiefling Ardent in another (devil-looking woman who uses psionics to influence the emotions of the battlefield to her advantage). In combat/skills, both characters are top-tier at what they do (tank and healer/DPS, respectively), and in role-playing terms, they're a hapless samurai who is overly verbose and somewhat oblivious, and a zealous "paladin" from an island nation who wants to learn about the mainland respectively. Oddball race/class combos can lead to very interesting characters to role-play as.

You can do it in any order you want, you don't have to necessarily make the character sheet first.

Yeah, phrases like this let me know we're just never going to see eye-to-eye on this one. I mean, obviously you can play however you want to - if you genuinely prefer 4e turn-based strategy game style play, and your friends do too, then have at it. Fun is fun. But that whole style is just the antithesis of what I want out of an RPG experience.

I like both an effective sheet and a well constructed "character", personally.

I'll have to agree with my man Failsafe here. I'm building a character with a personality, not a math equation. In preparation to my upcoming campaign, I'm writing the backstory of my wisard, her ideals, faults etc, I also picked her first spells to fit the type of character I want to play (a destruction mage), I do care about the race/class maximization but most nerdy calculations are really fucking secondary to me. The adventure, the roleplaying etc are the important stuff. If your campaign is 80% combat, well ok have fun with algorithms and excel sheets but shit, that's doing it wrong.

rexxz, we should start an online campaign. I'll play ortab (aka a gnome monk).

Well sure, nobody wants to play a halfling warrior with 1 strength and 1 constitution no matter how cool his backstory is.

Actually scratch that, I now want to roll Burblap the Boastful, hide my character sheet from the party, and taunt and pick fights with everyone I possibly can while going on and on about what a fucking badass I am. Then I immediately get killed in the first round and make my "friends" clean up the mess.

Isn't that just ortab playing Hero Quest?

Yes, I also have an uncontrollable neurotic urge to kick down doors and yell challenges through them without looking.

Fuck all y'all, my RPing skillz are fucking peerless. By which I mean that my RPing is basically doing the same shit I do in my real life.

My character would try to commit suicide, but knowing my luck, I'd blow the roll and be stuck in the game.

Being newb, rolling first was a perfectly fine way to start a character. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing anyhow. The character came later once I'd played a scenario through. Now I like him quite a bit and have the hang of it enough to have come up with a completely different character who I haven't rolled for at all. She seems like a lot of fun to play. I play with a guy who just rolls characters for fun. And I was just reading whole tables of characteristics that will build a character's backstory with rolls. You can cherry pick, too, obviously. The variety and ideas were really cool jumping off points. It's really easy to play in a fun way. Why do something retarded like min/max? Run and gun lameness. No drama, no hard choices, no variety, just butt charge and OP glory.

I'm really glad that GM's have the ability to adjust when someone sits down with one of those boner ideas.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned, (please feel free to link me or point it out if it has), but has anyone here ever played, looked at or purchased MYFAROG?
I've played D&D a few times, (not nearly enough), and some of the Cthulhu RPGs, (that I much prefer and would love to play more), but when I heard about that guy doing MYFAROG I was curious because he seems to really know and love his RPGs so has anyone ever looked into it and if so what did you think?

Haha, Slaneesh approves!

But i guess that stuff all depends on having a group who are all on the same page. When I used to play we would, seriously, bypass most dice mechanics as an impediment to actually getting on with the story. The boob demon thing is similar - if everyone is expecting an ultra dark, fucked up kind of thing it's great. If you get Bob from accounts tagging along and this stuff offends his sensibilities, not so good.

Which is why these days I'm only really interested in playing the 40k setting - it does what it says on the tin in that you have to expect something completely OTT grimdark.

Yeah, well, I just think that a bit of content warning never hurts. Like, I GM this game called Don't Rest Your Head, where you play traumatized insomniacs with powers born from their mental instability (pretty dark stuff as it is), and there was this one girl whose PC couldn't sleep because she lost her pregnancy to a stray bullet during a bank robbery (pretty fucked up, but perfectly fitting for the tone of the game). Now, because I generally like to include flashbacks and hallucinations related to PC backgrounds in this game, I just told everyone that there might be one or two scenes with sinister, fetus related stuff in them, and asked if they were okay with that. This is mainly because I didn't wanna be the guy who threw an instance of a character hearing distorted baby wails and seeing blood dripping from her crotch and then being called out for being a f'd up son of a bitch.

It's not too hard, really. Wanna have a "mature" style adventure with lots of kinky sex in it? Cool, but tell me first so that I can get the hell out before it starts.

I believe the guy who created MYFAROG is the same guy who has the "Thulean Perspective" youtube channel. He really seems to know his stuff as far as history and medieval warfare. The game is centered around Scandanavian/Viking legends I think. I have personally never played it but I have heard (mostly) good things about it and would be interested in checking it out.

Oh, Varg Vikernes? I think I've heard of him before. Wasn't he the same guy that designed Mage Knight?

That is so awful it's kind of hilarious.

Ah, thanks. I should've googled harder. I already know more than enough about his political/philosophical/social/cultural views and such from interviews, documentaries, his own YouTube channel etc but I was just wondering more about how well made the game was, if it was being played much (by people other than him with his kids) and if so how it played. Looking at this and the linked article, it looks as though it's far too number-based and oddly specific for it to be much fun or to get a fluid game out of, (as well as the obvious issues of prejudice that are present in everything Mr Thulean Perspective does).

Goddammit. I know this is funny, but I don't get it. I hate that feeling.

ah! back when I played 3.5 we were given a set amount of points to divide amongst abilities (str. int. cha. etc)
one player made a character with a 36 strength, 2 int, 2 cha, 2 wis, etc.
pretty hilarious... but the DM canned it pretty quick

now playing 1st ed we had to role for each skill... so no way to choose how you divide points. its the luck of the roll.