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rjshae

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Everything posted by rjshae

  1. rjshae
    Monks convert a portion of Stamina damage, pre-subtraction from their own Stamina total, into Wounds (their resource). Their actual Stamina and Health are not higher than normal, but this class ability effectively makes them more durable -- until they have maxed out the number of Wounds they are able to absorb. If I read this correctly, then having a monk companion will require more returns to camp than normal (for health recovery). That's exactly the reason I don't like playing monk characters: they always seem to require proportionately more party healing resources. Guess you can call that gaming the system, but that's been my experience.
  2. rjshae
    SoI think that sometimes developers simply don't take oddball things into account while designing the game. The players may come up with solutions that the developers hadn't thought of. It's not necessarily intentional on their part.
  3. rjshae
    Alas, party-based FRPG with pre-gen'd characters have been few and far between lately. I'd have to go with Varric, Isabela, and Bethany Hawke from DA2, Mira from KOTOR2, and Coran from BG. For some reason I like friendly, roguish characters.
  4. rjshae
    Lots of good ideas here. Camps can also be relevant for treating poison and disease. If camp rest is not sufficient then the sick character may need to be taken to an inn or hospice. A really serious case should motivate the party to visit a skilled healer. In the case of Wilderness Fatigue, this can be simply treated like a non-infectious disease that has a slow incubation period and moderate health effects, but which is extremely difficult to recover from without resting up at an inn. Possibly Rangers and Druids are virtually immune to this condition, but perhaps that's just a side-benefit of a 'Survival' skill.
  5. rjshae
    My understanding is that Josh's current melee system does allow for a rare miss. Hence, saying that archers will always hit their target contradicts this implementation. Logically, distance will reduce the chance for a hit, so that, based on the sliding damage window concept, that would seem to increase the odds of a clean miss.
  6. rjshae
    I'm sure they could do some sort of twitchy 3D animation for portraits. But would it have any benefit? I'm not sure I see the point.
  7. rjshae
    If that's the example, then I'd rather they didn't.
  8. rjshae
    How does degenerate gameplay devolve into degenerate discussion? Now we know.
  9. rjshae
    Apart from quantum entanglement...
  10. rjshae
    If he had a functional attack roll. One of my peeves with D&D has always been "touch attacks", ranged or otherwise. If you wanted to rely on your attack roll then you probably wouldn't have rolled a class with the worst one. Personally, I've always avoided even bothering to learn those spells. HERO/Champions had a nice approach to this problem: if you want to target a character with a ranged spell, then you had to do a ranged attack and suffer the chance of a miss. But you could pay a little more for the power (+1/2) and target the hexagon containing the character. That way you only had to do a ranged attack against a stationary, unarmored target--the area above that spot on the floor. The target, of course, could still apply any resistances to the effect. Maybe something like this could be implemented as a meta-magical ability? I.e. you memorize a ranged targeted spell at a higher level and gain the ability to ignore the defender's dexterity/shield defenses? Like a "precision guided spell". Alternatively there could be a separate combat skill for targeting spells & guns -- essentially line-of-sight weapons. (Crossbows too?)
  11. rjshae
    ^^^^ Yup, you almost have to design an entire game around a cursed object for it to work well. Curses are much more interesting when they have a deep story behind them that the player can help resolve. Otherwise they're essentially just nuisance pranks.
  12. rjshae
    I like to think that the designers know what they are doing.
  13. rjshae
    He's not asking that all spells be removed, hes asking that the game be completable without them, which it probably will be anyway. You shouldn't treat every religious person as if they are identical zombies - far from it - and while there are certainly obnoxious people out there, there are plenty of reasonable people out there who are religious and willing to let others get on with their lives. It's just that the idiots who cry witchhunt if they see someone reading Harry Potter on the bus are just a lot more vocal than everyone else. The only way that you can stop this being an issue is to have some dialogue with religion - not the extremists of course, but if a regular people are engaged, see something for what it is then it leaves the extremists without a leg to stand on. I don't believe I did treat this person as an identical zombie; I am arguing that the game shouldn't be designed around one player's moral principles. Get it? I'm disagreeing with the message, rather than the messenger.
  14. rjshae
    Hahaha... amusing stuff.
  15. rjshae
    Did you ever see the film "Mazes and Monsters" (1982) with a very young looking Tom Hanks as a roleplay-addicted college teen? Not a great IMDB score by any means, but it came about from all the negative press D&D received around that time. It's a crying shame there was so much misunderstanding back then. I'm just grateful it was able to withstand the test of time. Yes I did. The fact that some of the most decent people I ever knew were gamers flew in the face of all that nonsense. But it did leave me deeply skeptical about organized religion.
  16. rjshae
    No offense, but I don't see a particular need to design the game in order not to offend the religious beliefs of one person. There are other games out there from which to choose. Try Wasteland 2 or such. P.S. The moral panic over D&D permanently burned out my interest in placating the religious groups over gaming. If we let this one slip through, then more demands are sure to follow. Just... no.
  17. rjshae
    Slide rule, assuming you don't count the pencil and paper.
  18. rjshae
    I believe it can be used for both. Yes, that would be a consistent way to use it. Perhaps a divination spell could also be used to "sense danger", reducing the odds of a surprise attack along a dangerous trek? Potentially divination could also be used to find a safe place to build a camp, lowering the odds of a monstrous encounter. Another use would be to predict foul weather, if the game incorporates environmental effects.
  19. rjshae
    I can't say I'm all that interested in watching somebody else play a computer game, but I would enjoy reading Mr. Chris Avellone's reflective game design comments in the aftermath, if he has an interest in such.
  20. rjshae
    One of the elements I recall with a certain fondness from the table-top experience is the role that cleric divination spells played in the game. Being able to stand before the entrance to a dungeon and augur whether it would be a favorable or hazardous experience, added a lot to the magical flavour of the game. Now I wonder whether something similar could be done with a CRPG, albeit in a more limited fashion. Could a divination spell be used, for example, to determine whether a particular site is something that we are capable of handling, or is it much too dangerous for our current party level. Likewise, are we on the "correct" path for our destiny? Or is this just a side trek? What do you think? Does divination have any role in a game of this type? How can it be implemented in a sensible manner?
  21. rjshae
    Tenser's floating disk.
  22. rjshae
    I don't see that a thrown javelin is quantitatively any different than, say, a hurled axe or dagger. Now granted, it's probably not the ideal weapon for a party of adventurers to lug around, but it might be a nice change-up for an enemy attack.
  23. rjshae
    I do hope you're talking about goats here...
  24. rjshae
    The context matters here.
  25. rjshae
    First we need to know if it naturally regenerates at all. My preference would of course be: no. Zero regeneration is essentially the same as slow regeneration unless the combat is really, really long and characters can pull out and rest. Hence: no, you only need to know if it is slow(zero) or fast. But no matter.
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