You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
[4e] Sword & Sorcery
- Thread starter rabindranath72
- Start date
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
Well, the correct terminology in reference to system would "supports G/N/S playing style", but I consider that splitting of hairs.
The only case where it really makes a difference is when the authors' pretence of supported playing style does not match the actual capabilities of the system. For example, the authors/editors of The Dark Eye propagate a NAR-centered style but the system they've written is purely SIM. (I keep referring to TDE because it's still the most widely played RPG in Germany, despite its enormous inadequacies.)
Of course you can play any kind of game with any system. But the system most probably doesn't support each style equally well.
The only case where it really makes a difference is when the authors' pretence of supported playing style does not match the actual capabilities of the system. For example, the authors/editors of The Dark Eye propagate a NAR-centered style but the system they've written is purely SIM. (I keep referring to TDE because it's still the most widely played RPG in Germany, despite its enormous inadequacies.)
Of course you can play any kind of game with any system. But the system most probably doesn't support each style equally well.
despite its enormous inadequacies
Such as? I'm currently playing through Drakensang http://www.drakensang.com/ which is based on that system. Any pitfalls i should know about? it seems quite good so far...
rabindranath72
Mongoose
kintire said:Well, he would not be able to rage anymore, but he could still fight without fatiguing for hours.
Perhaps in theory, but in practice Conan combats rarely last a minute, never mind an hour. If one ever looked like doing so, you might have to ad hoc something.
Like rebuilding your adversary from scratch!
Sorry but we are getting into physics here, and BOTH systems (d20 Conan and 4e) are going to collapse quite miserably if we start do double-check the facts.
Not internally. Conan's not perfect, of course, but all your efforts to pick holes have produced nothing, except Hit Points, and even there you can appeal to a degree of innate magic. Which is a little weak, but better than 4e which has nothing.
Well, if you are going to invoke magic for Hit Points in Conan (and at least in 4e they are really abstract) and negate the evidence that many things in Conan work like in 4e (they are not holes, they work like it is written in the book, i.e. with limitations per day/month/whatever, which you can ignore of course, but they STAY in the book), I do not have much to add. You have won; I suppose now the thread has survived its utility.
Oh, I forgot a farewell: we'll meet for a meaningful discussion on the forums of the next edition of the Conan RPG, which I bet will not be d20.
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
Oh, for a computer game it's quite okay -- though Drakensang is extremely linear, to the point that you can't return to an area once you left it. Also it is very possible to paint yourself in a corner, for instance if you get hurt in an area where you can't get healing and can't get out before you solve the quest --> dead end.
Anyway, basically it works fine as a CRPG system because you don't have to roll yourself.
Tips for your game:
Don't use shields.
When skilling your characters, you should be aware of the very peculiar skill system of TDE. You roll 3 ability checks (for instance on Courage, Intuition and Agility) and use your skill points to balance any botched rolls. For instance if your Courage is 14 but you roll a 17, you need 3 skill points to still make the check. Any remaining skill points after balancing your rolls improve the result. However, check _penalties_ are applied to _each_ of your attributes.
Having to "roll under" three times in a row makes for a very weird, nearly unpredictable probability curve. For instance, the odds to roll under 13 (which is considered "good" as attribute values go) three times in a row without points to balance is just 21%.
What this means in practice is that you should try to get at least 6 ranks in every skill that you plan to use. Once a skill exceeds 10 or 12 ranks, it's almost impossible to fail.
Drakensang is also in some respects decidedly better than the pen&paper system, for instance because they nixed all the useless skills. In TDE, you normally have hundreds of skills, down to useless crap like Farming or Masonry.
The biggest problem of the system however is that it tries to simulate every smallest factor in a "realistic" way. There are actually instances of rules that have been officially replaced by five times more complicated ones just because with the new rule the respective modifier _might_ be one point different in certain cases. As the saying goes, the system is a lot of effort for very little effect.
Likewise, the combat system is awefully complicated, with about a hundred different weapons that all are the _tiniest bit_ different, for instance one might have a -1 initiative penalty and the other does not, or one gives you one extra point of damage for every 3 Strength points above 15 while the other gives you an extra point of damage for every 4 Strength points above 14. Notice something? Considering that it's nigh-impossible for a mortal human in TDE to increase _any_ stat beyond 18 or 20, this "new and improved" damage bonus rule is utter ass-wipe. It goes on like this; there are 3 or 4 different "Reach Classes" that can vary depending on the skill with which you use a particular weapon, and so forth.
Armour carries an Encumbrance Penalty and there is no Armour Proficiency in the sense of D20, so you have to split the ACP evenly and deduct that amount from your Attack and Parry scores.
Note that Shields also have Encumbrance, effectively negating the Parry bonus while gimping your Attack right into the basement.
But on the other hand, each weapon skill (Swords, Maces etc.) has an "Effective Encumbrance" that allows you to ignore 1-3 points of the Armour Encumbrance. And there is a whole stack of armours that have lower Encumbrance than Protection scores. So by choosing the right armour and right weapon, you can effectively ignore most of the Encumbrance, or at worst take a -1 penalty to Attack and/or Parry while enjoying the benefits of DR8. All that fiddling and headache just for a stupid -1 penalty!
Another TDE inadequacy is the actual combat sequence itself, featuring not only active defense (which in itself doubles the time required for each attack), but more importantly the Attack and Parry rolls are _completely detached from each other_. It's not an opposed check, so no matter how well you roll your attack, even the most threadbare Parry will negate your hit. For instance, if two duelists each have Attack and Parry 15, the chance for a successful hit is just under 20% each time.
So every fifth strike hits, and then you roll damage (weapon damage is typically around 1d6+4) and deduct the target's DR, which can, as stated above, very easily reach 7 points. So every _hit_ will on average do about 1 point of damage. That's 0.2 damage per round. Now go figure how long a fight between two 40HP-characters will take.
But the whole system breaks down immediately as soon as two or more attackers gang up on a single defender. Since each Parry takes an Action and you only have two Actions per round, he simply can't defend at least one attack per round. If you ever get into such a situation, kiss your character good-bye and load the character generation program on your computer. Because oh, I think I haven't mentioned it, character creation is so friggin complicated (the skill purchase list alone is a table of about 300 cells) that you WILL need a computer if you want to do it correctly.
So yeah, well, sorry for the rant but those are _some_ of the inadequacies of the Dark Eye system.
Anyway, basically it works fine as a CRPG system because you don't have to roll yourself.
Tips for your game:
Don't use shields.
When skilling your characters, you should be aware of the very peculiar skill system of TDE. You roll 3 ability checks (for instance on Courage, Intuition and Agility) and use your skill points to balance any botched rolls. For instance if your Courage is 14 but you roll a 17, you need 3 skill points to still make the check. Any remaining skill points after balancing your rolls improve the result. However, check _penalties_ are applied to _each_ of your attributes.
Having to "roll under" three times in a row makes for a very weird, nearly unpredictable probability curve. For instance, the odds to roll under 13 (which is considered "good" as attribute values go) three times in a row without points to balance is just 21%.
What this means in practice is that you should try to get at least 6 ranks in every skill that you plan to use. Once a skill exceeds 10 or 12 ranks, it's almost impossible to fail.
Drakensang is also in some respects decidedly better than the pen&paper system, for instance because they nixed all the useless skills. In TDE, you normally have hundreds of skills, down to useless crap like Farming or Masonry.
The biggest problem of the system however is that it tries to simulate every smallest factor in a "realistic" way. There are actually instances of rules that have been officially replaced by five times more complicated ones just because with the new rule the respective modifier _might_ be one point different in certain cases. As the saying goes, the system is a lot of effort for very little effect.
Likewise, the combat system is awefully complicated, with about a hundred different weapons that all are the _tiniest bit_ different, for instance one might have a -1 initiative penalty and the other does not, or one gives you one extra point of damage for every 3 Strength points above 15 while the other gives you an extra point of damage for every 4 Strength points above 14. Notice something? Considering that it's nigh-impossible for a mortal human in TDE to increase _any_ stat beyond 18 or 20, this "new and improved" damage bonus rule is utter ass-wipe. It goes on like this; there are 3 or 4 different "Reach Classes" that can vary depending on the skill with which you use a particular weapon, and so forth.
Armour carries an Encumbrance Penalty and there is no Armour Proficiency in the sense of D20, so you have to split the ACP evenly and deduct that amount from your Attack and Parry scores.
Note that Shields also have Encumbrance, effectively negating the Parry bonus while gimping your Attack right into the basement.
But on the other hand, each weapon skill (Swords, Maces etc.) has an "Effective Encumbrance" that allows you to ignore 1-3 points of the Armour Encumbrance. And there is a whole stack of armours that have lower Encumbrance than Protection scores. So by choosing the right armour and right weapon, you can effectively ignore most of the Encumbrance, or at worst take a -1 penalty to Attack and/or Parry while enjoying the benefits of DR8. All that fiddling and headache just for a stupid -1 penalty!
Another TDE inadequacy is the actual combat sequence itself, featuring not only active defense (which in itself doubles the time required for each attack), but more importantly the Attack and Parry rolls are _completely detached from each other_. It's not an opposed check, so no matter how well you roll your attack, even the most threadbare Parry will negate your hit. For instance, if two duelists each have Attack and Parry 15, the chance for a successful hit is just under 20% each time.
So every fifth strike hits, and then you roll damage (weapon damage is typically around 1d6+4) and deduct the target's DR, which can, as stated above, very easily reach 7 points. So every _hit_ will on average do about 1 point of damage. That's 0.2 damage per round. Now go figure how long a fight between two 40HP-characters will take.
But the whole system breaks down immediately as soon as two or more attackers gang up on a single defender. Since each Parry takes an Action and you only have two Actions per round, he simply can't defend at least one attack per round. If you ever get into such a situation, kiss your character good-bye and load the character generation program on your computer. Because oh, I think I haven't mentioned it, character creation is so friggin complicated (the skill purchase list alone is a table of about 300 cells) that you WILL need a computer if you want to do it correctly.
So yeah, well, sorry for the rant but those are _some_ of the inadequacies of the Dark Eye system.
There is no binary, it is all a spectrum. 4E takes the artificial-seeming structures of the game system and makes them both more ubiquitous and in-your-face than d20. That's not to say that d20 Conan has no inconsistencies.
And Hit Points are always a sore thumb, and an entire huge discussion thread of their own.
- Spade
Thank you Clovenhoof for the G/N/S clarification.
And Hit Points are always a sore thumb, and an entire huge discussion thread of their own.
- Spade
Thank you Clovenhoof for the G/N/S clarification.
Well, if you are going to invoke magic for Hit Points in Conan (and at least in 4e they are really abstract)
Hit points, as Spade says, are ALWAYS a problem. The solution to this problem is, as I said, far from perfect. The solution is NOT "introduce a whole load more problems"
negate the evidence that many things in Conan work like in 4e
Again, I am losing track of what you are going on about. Many things in Conan work like 4e? Well, Hit points do. The basic dice mechanic is the same. There are a considerable number of similarities in fact. But there are some big, big differences too.
(
they are not holes, they work like it is written in the book, i.e. with limitations per day/month/whatever, which you can ignore of course, but they STAY in the book),
aaaaand I've lost you. They are not holes in 4e, they work like they say in the rulebook. But they DON'T work for simulating Conan. As for all this stuff about "staying in the book" I have no clue what you are talking about.
Oh, I forgot a farewell: we'll meet for a meaningful discussion on the forums of the next edition of the Conan RPG, which I bet will not be d20.
Given the way this discussion has gone, my hopes are not high.
So yeah, well, sorry for the rant but those are _some_ of the inadequacies of the Dark Eye system.
Many thanks!
One thing... are shields really that bad? I've got all melee characters using them, and survivability seems way up.
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
One thing... are shields really that bad? I've got all melee characters using them, and survivability seems way up.
Shields suck by default, _but_ they become worthwhile and effective if you take the Shield feats/special abilities (Shield Combat or whatever they are called). Your Attack still drops by 2 or so, but the feats grant you additional bonuses to Parry and (with SCII) an extra Parry per round.
To optimize a character for "Sword'n'Board" fighting, you do the following: take a one-handed weapon with abyssmal Parry (such as Axe or Flail) and pump as much of your weapon skill as possible into Attack. Your Parry with that weapon would be horrible but that doesn't matter because you have a shield for that.
The advantage is that you can have a pretty good defense (Parry 20) pretty early on, but the drawback is that once you reach that point, you don't really get better anymore. You become a solid fighter but that's it. Anyone with higher ambitions will at some point be better without shield than with one.
(So that's actually somewhat like in Conan, except that in TDE you have to burn a bunch of feats which are useless as soon as you switch to a different comabt style)
A combat style that seems to have more potential would the Two Weapon Combat. It also takes several feats, but grants you an extra _Action_ which can be either Attack or Parry. It takes a bit more to pull off but opens a longer and more effective path than shield combat.
And of course, two-handed weapons are much better when dealing with high-DR opponents. But you know that drill from Conan as well.
rabindranath72
Mongoose
My bad, I am not english. I meant that things which do not "make sense" in the Real World and depend on in-game interpretation are also in d20 Conan by-the-book (noble's monthly abilities, rage, hit points, some feats etc.) Except GM fiat, they work as written, and hence do not "make sense".kintire said:aaaaand I've lost you. They are not holes in 4e, they work like they say in the rulebook. But they DON'T work for simulating Conan. As for all this stuff about "staying in the book" I have no clue what you are talking about.
A measure of in-game interpretation is always necessary, and this is a strictly personal thing, so there are not "right" or "wrong" ways to address it. If you are happy with the "magic explanation" for hit points, that's fine; someone else might have a different explanation, and it's also fine. The end result (the mechanics) are the same.
treeplanter
Mongoose
Still a once-per-day rage is lot cooler than immitating a Badger once per day
rabindranath72
Mongoose
It's a Wolverine, not a Badger. Go tell it to Logan :twisted: :wink:treeplanter said:Still a once-per-day rage is lot cooler than immitating a Badger once per day
treeplanter
Mongoose
LOL true, just saw X-men origin on friday. So clearly my next 4ed character is a Ranger who fight with 2 claw and abuse the dire wolverine strike, soooooooooooooo cooollllllllllll mouahahahahha
He might look something like this. :twisted:treeplanter said:LOL true, just saw X-men origin on friday. So clearly my next 4ed character is a Ranger who fight with 2 claw and abuse the dire wolverine strike, soooooooooooooo cooollllllllllll mouahahahahha
rabindranath72
Mongoose
Coooooooool! The "Wolverine" name in english is quite evocative (in terms of vocalisation). The italian name for the animal is "ghiottone", which literally back-translated would be something like "glutton" :lol:treeplanter said:LOL true, just saw X-men origin on friday. So clearly my next 4ed character is a Ranger who fight with 2 claw and abuse the dire wolverine strike, soooooooooooooo cooollllllllllll mouahahahahha
Clovenhoof
Mongoose
Interesting! In German the animal of the same name is also called "Vielfraß", i.e. glutton. (They don't translate the character's name however.)
However, since I don't like all that superhero crap, I'm gonna pass on that flick.
However, since I don't like all that superhero crap, I'm gonna pass on that flick.
Similar threads
- Replies
- 4
- Views
- 212
- Replies
- 132
- Views
- 14K
- Replies
- 55
- Views
- 3K