General Discussion

[Murphie]

Re: D&D

I mean, I'm sure I can figure this out. If I could understand original D&D, AD&D and 2nd Edition, then I can understand this. Those systems had almost intentionally convoluted rules. But then again, I was a teenager, and had all of the time in the world to figure it out (then again, I didn't have online resources then - that's right there was, save for BBS's, no internet for me to go to for answers. /shudder).

[Armando]

Re: D&D

Basically when you attack you roll a D20 and then add whatever modifiers the scenario calls for(attack bonuses, penalties, the DM's you-can't-have-nice-things modifier, etc). Whatever that totals up to has to equal or exceed the enemy's Armor Class.

I understand up to that point. It's the little details that are a pain in the ass to track down. I can't really make an educated choice on my stat investments if I don't understand how those stats translate into damage/Attack Rolls/Armor Class, for example. It's not that the info isn't there, it's just really frustrating to hunt down and put together because that's not the purpose of the site.

Guess I'll have to google around.

[Firewind]

Re: D&D

4th edition actually streamlines a lot of the combat rules and is actually far better for new players who have never played D&D before though I think I might actually be the only person here who plays it

You use your class Base Attack Bonus for attack rolls. Say you're a Lv5 Fighter, it has a +5 BAB so you roll a d20, add 5 and that if your attack roll.

A BAB that has slashes means multiple attacks, So +6/+1 means you get 2 attacks. d20+6 and d20+1.

Now Strength and Dexterity give a bonus to your attack rolls for melee and ranged weapons respectively. You can also take a feat that lets you use Dex for melee attack rolls. So say if our Lv5 Fighter has 20 Strength, his Strength mod is +5.

So as go d20+5+5

Damage rolls are based in your weapon plus any relevant modifiers.. Let's give our fighter a Greatsword which has 1d10 damage.

So for a damage roll we simply take the die and add out Strength mod (Dex for ranged weapons and melee attacks with Weapon Finesse) So our fighter hits for 1d10+5 Damage.

Now if we give him a Magic Weapon say a +1 Greatsword, we add the +1 to both Attack and Damage rolls. It's always worth getting more plusses since they directly increase your damage.

So our Lv5 Fighter with 20 Strength and a +1 Greatsword...

Gets an Attack roll of d20+11 in total.
Gets a damage roll is 1d10+6 in total.

This doesn't include feats that give damage and attack bonuses but you get the picture.

[Murphie]

Re: D&D

That is indeed pretty simple to figure out. Thanks, Firewind!

[Firewind]

Re: D&D

What you have to remember is that Wizards suck at making any sort of set of condensed reference pages like with what Games Workshop do with Warhammer. They have a set of pages where all the rolls you will make a in a typical game and all the mods are there for all to see. D&D does have that. I once remember forgetting how to resolve saving throws caused by spells because it's not actually clearly written anywhere in the PHB or DM Guide.

Believe it or not it was worse in AD&D you could have as many as 20 different variables effects attack rolls and it was simple to forget a modifier so battles would take hours to resolve. You know that system they use in Baldur's Gate? That is AD&D. Turn on the rolls so they display in the chat log and imagine having to do all of THAT by hand. That is how bad AD&D was

EDIT: I mentioned 4E because basically in that game, defenses are static so you always know what you need to roll to hit and abilities have thier information clearly noted so you know what stat you are using and what mods to apply. Attack rolls scale with level. 3.5 has stuff all over the place XD

Wizards do seem to ge getting better at making things less complicated though. 5th Edition playtesting is soon so I'll have to let you all know how that is. I was really impressed with 4th edition. While it lacks the customisation that 3.5 has (though to be fair that's becaise 3.5 has a ridonkulous number of sourcebooks), it does streamline a lot of unnessecary things. It's like going from Morrowind to Skyrim, both systems are great but I really like how SKyrim keeps things simple.

[Murphie]

Re: D&D

Believe me, I jumped to 2nd Edition the moment it came out. AD&D was seriously completely unnecessarily convoluted.

[Taskmage]

Re: D&D

Sshhhh Speak not the name of 4E in Yyg's presence. He may fly into a rage.

[Armando]

Re: D&D

Lmnop used to talk to me about D&D every now and then. He used to tell me 4th Ed was a lot more streamlined but not as much fun to min/max. On the other hand he used to say 3rd edition had serious balance issues. What's AD&D? Is that something completly separate from 3rd edition and 4th edition?

Sshhhh Speak not the name of 4E in Yyg's presence. He may fly into a rage.

How many times a day can he do that?

[Murphie]

Re: D&D

When the game was first introduced, there was D&D. Then they came out with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, but kept the base D&D going. For AD&D 2nd Edition, the base game was, again, still running. For 3rd Edition, they discontinued the original game, so they dropped the "Advanced."

[Taskmage]

Re: D&D

How many times a day can he do that?

It's a per-encounter ability, so it depends.

[Murphie]

Re: D&D

Nerds.

[Firewind]

Re: D&D

Lmnop used to talk to me about D&D every now and then. He used to tell me 4th Ed was a lot more streamlined but not as much fun to min/max. On the other hand he used to say 3rd edition had serious balance issues.

Well there are less classes that completely break the game. Slayer, Scout and Artificer are the only offenders really while in 3.5 the game breakers are basically "Any class able to cast magic but especially the Druid and Cleric", which is a lot of them since magic in 3.5 essentially scales quadratically while weapon damage classes find their damage scaling linearly. The rest of the OP stuff is non-core anyway so a DM can easily ban it. Wizards also actually listen to player feedback and release rule changes in their site for balancing stuff. The pdf is always free.

Basically the min/maxers hate 4E because it's harder to munchkin your way through every encounter really.

[Murphie]

Re: D&D

It's weird to me that the focus on the game seems to be far more hack and slash these days. Do people still RP?

[Firewind]

Re: D&D

It depends on how combat heavy the campaign is really. I do plenty of RPing in 3.5 and 4th Edition D&D, it's mostly down to what the DM and gaming group prefer basically. Hack and slash is fun and combat is fun, a good DM will get the right balance in his/her/it's campaign

[Yygdrasil]

Re: D&D

Sshhhh Speak not the name of 4E in Yyg's presence. He may fly into a rage.

4E is a piece of shit. That is all.

You want nothing more than pretty (see also: recycled) pictures and a lack of at least 20% of the rules that make the game fun and customizable... go play 4E and never speak to me again.

Gary would never have stood for this. His grave... it spins.