Archpawn @ Archpawn @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

And isn’t there The Tarasque who is basically a you fucking loose statblock

Mostly. They really bungled it in the 2014 statblock. Other editions gave it some combination of ranged attacks, regeneration, a way to cancel flight, and a burrow speed. In 2014, it had none of these. A level 5 Wizard could borrow a Repeating heavy crossbow from an Artificer, repeatedly cast Phantom Steed to stay out of its range, and take it down on its own. Or instead of a wizard, use an Aarakocra from Elemental Evil Player's Companion with 2 levels in Rogue (so it can learn Cunning Action), and it will be able to fly faster than the Tarrasque. Unless you use Chase rules.

In 2024, they have a ranged attack and a burrow speed, and they're significantly faster. It's hard to just attack from a safe distance and they can always just head underground. But if you can get 150 feet in the air, you're at an impasse where neither can hurt the other. And a high-level party has a lot of crazy tools at their disposal.

The problem isn't enemies that are too hard or too easy. The problem is the GM not knowing ahead of time which it will be.

Did someone make alternate dice rules? Those are insane. Nine pages of rules, and it's effectively impossible to figure out your odds of success.

I forgot to add, it needs to be free. I did download GURPS Lite a while ago. I can't remember exactly why I didn't like it, but one problem I see is that it has a specific list of weapons. You can't just make your own with whatever set of attributes you want. And there's going to be statistically better and worse ones, so you have to choose between the weapon you think is cool and the one that deals more damage. In contrast, Mutants & Masterminds has weapons with a point buy system same as the characters. Though it's extremely bad at explaining that. It just has a list of Devices and their costs, and you have to notice that the example characters have weapons that aren't in the list, and that they cost the same as if you just build them into a player but with Equipment Points instead of Power Points.

Also, Lite at least doesn't seem to have any way to build characters with interesting powers. I don't really care if it's superhero-themed in particular, but I just think M&M's system of design your own spells is better than D&D or Pathfinder where you just have to pick one out of a list or or make your own and eyeball it.

I forgot to add, it needs to be free. It looks like that one isn't.

I have one that's supposed to walk you through it. I don't know how user-friendly that is in practice though.

Mutants and Masterminds is kind of interesting. I like how it's designed so character creation is entirely point buy. There's no classes. No spells. You pay for skills and abilities directly. There's basic powers, and modifiers you can use to make them more interesting. It's also geared towards balance as opposed to simulation, which means you can make whatever type of character you want instead of having to stick with what's optimal.

Unfortunately, it's not well-done. For example, they frequently forget the game uses a log scale and cut numbers in half. Someone with a Dodge rank of -2 who is Vulnerable has their active defenses halved, which brings their Dodge rank up to -1. Equipment is 3 to 4 times cheaper than Devices, with the only differences being flavor (Equipment is something a normal person can get) and a different method of calculating Toughness that very often makes Equipment stronger. I ended up making a list of house rules trying to fix all of them (and admittedly including a few alternate rules that aren't clearly better or worse) that's so long that it would probably be easier to make a new RPG.

I don't suppose I can get any advice on something I would like? My requirements are:

1. A point buy system that lets you make any character you want.
2. Costs are based on making characters balanced, and not how literally expensive a piece of equipment would be and that sort of thing.
3. Must be balanced as far as reasonably possible without massive flaws like M&M.
4. I'd really like having a wide variety of characters you can make and things you can do. Make it so you can just play a Swarm, or a character of any size class, or anything else you can think of.

EDIT:

5. Must be free. I'm not going to pay $20 for a system I don't even know I'll like. And honestly, I'm too cheap to pay for anything I don't really need.

It's a "new adult body", not a "newly adult body". I'm not sure having a new body resets your age. Though if nothing else, getting a long-lived body means you won't have to cast Clone as often.

Also, I looked into it and it looks like the people she's talking about died before 5e. In 3.5, it was a lot harder to undo aging. There was an epic feat for it, and I suppose Clone and Reincarnate arguably might work, but it didn't say they do, and neither could bring someone back that had already died of old age.

23 years. I'm assuming you're going for Squalid living conditions rather than Wretched, so you can only save half your money. But you'd still be able to afford Poor conditions for most of your life. If that's not worth it, why even bother the first time? Just do the minimum it takes to get to a good afterlife, like go grab a sword and go on a suicide mission for a good god.

Of course, really what you'd do is spend 3.5 years saving up 250 gold, then learn a tool proficiency, and now you're a skilled worker and can live a Modest lifestyle and save 1 gp per day, and save up the rest of the money in 2 years.

plus another 400 to pay the caster.

How do you know how much to pay the caster? I thought 5e didn't have an equation for that. Adventures League has a few spells you can buy, which mostly follow the equation level^2 + 2consumed component cost + unconsumed component cost/10. Using that, Clone should cost 2840 gp (including components).

Edit: I mean 10level^2 + 2consumed component cost + unconsumed component cost/10

But poison is purple. It's acid they'd get it mixed up with.

But you could have just used a shade of red that looks the same. It would be just as safe, and have red health potions.

How common is using Clone to live forever? The spell is cheap enough that even poor people can afford the material components (so long as they don't mind a squalid lifestyle), but I'm guessing there's not enough casters for everyone.

Once you're a high enough level you can cast Plane Shift and visit. Arguably, you can just use Sending. It can contact other planes, but I'm not sure if their soul in the afterlife technically qualifies as the same creature.

I'm not sure if that's a joke? If you have red/green colorblindness, you wouldn't be able to distinguish yellow either. You'd just see blue and not blue.

That's hard fantasy. Soft fantasy can be good too.

But then they're too awesome to use, so you never use them and never find out the enemies can use them against you.

I'd have made the heads go in rainbow order (though there's not enough of them to technically do the pride flag), and maybe give each one of them a different pride flag on their necks. Still cute though.

Then make an Alchemy Jug. I don't need the sheep for an infinite money glitch.

Good to know. I was worried someone didn't sheer their sheep and it was getting really hot under there.

What if you're double gay for unrelated reasons before they cast the spell?

I guess you'd need flight too, so Phantom Steed wouldn't be enough. They probably wouldn't be able to reach a city in time.

Also, it only really works in open areas, so you'd have to avoid any caves.