Friendship is Dragons
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Page 1008 - Prop Comedy
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25 Comments:
Please, that's an easy one. When is a cannon not a cannon? When it's been retconned!
Because I knew how to move and position myself really well to avoid getting hit, I was able to keep our melee teammates up and running the entire time, which really turned around the fight to our victory. I also pointed out to allies where the best spots to stand for flanking were (using single sentence commands to keep my speech as a free action). The GM got so fed up with me that he just ended the fight right there and gave us no loot.
I can sympathize with the GM, actually. We had a guy in our game once who liked to manipulate all the mechanics of the game in his mind. The entire exercise was a process of modeling the situation, the options, and working the desired outcome. So that when you did *exactly* what he told you to do, *exactly* when he told you to do it, the fight ended *exactly* as he predicted.
For instance. When faced with two full-size adult trolls in an underground burrow, the player spent twenty five minutes at least calculating all the possible ways we could combine our actions to kill the trolls in the fastest time. At the end, he positioned us like chess pieces, used spectral hand loaded with about half a dozen kill spells at once, and told us what we'd do, what powers we'd use, and what order we'd do them in.
To absolutely no-one's surprise, the trolls went down in the first round, and were so badly gibbed they would not be able to recover before we made certain they stayed down.
But was it *fun*? Not a chance.
GM's (and other players) don't really enjoy that kind of gaming experience. They don't like a guy who can plot all the ways to rules-lawyer a win out of gaming the system. Maybe it's all just a mathematical challenge to them. But to everyone else, it's crimping their style, and cutting into their enjoyment.
My recommendation? Stop rules-lawyering the game. Yes, you may wind up with a sub-optimal game experience, mechanically. But you and your friends will enjoy it a hell of a lot more.
For instance. When faced with two full-size adult trolls in an underground burrow, the player spent twenty five minutes at least calculating all the possible ways we could combine our actions to kill the trolls in the fastest time. At the end, he positioned us like chess pieces, used spectral hand loaded with about half a dozen kill spells at once, and told us what we'd do, what powers we'd use, and what order we'd do them in.
To absolutely no-one's surprise, the trolls went down in the first round, and were so badly gibbed they would not be able to recover before we made certain they stayed down.
But was it *fun*? Not a chance.
GM's (and other players) don't really enjoy that kind of gaming experience. They don't like a guy who can plot all the ways to rules-lawyer a win out of gaming the system. Maybe it's all just a mathematical challenge to them. But to everyone else, it's crimping their style, and cutting into their enjoyment.
My recommendation? Stop rules-lawyering the game. Yes, you may wind up with a sub-optimal game experience, mechanically. But you and your friends will enjoy it a hell of a lot more.
Good thing I wasn't the GM. After about two minutes, I would have had gone, "Okay, he's too busy thinking and loses his turn. Next player...!" 25 minutes just for planning? the COMBAT wouldn't have lasted that long, I would think
Kind of the opposite of bending the rules... my GM got so fed up with me pointing out that you can't critically fail a skill check that he outright shouted at me "YOU CAN IN MY GAME!"
Of course, since then, he's never enforced a critical failure on a skill check...
Of course, since then, he's never enforced a critical failure on a skill check...
I'm not really a fan of crit mechanics in any game, actually. They're supposed to be these big dramatic shifts in the flow of the scene, but in my experience drama and random number generators don't go very well together. It's kind of anticlimactic to get a crit in the second round of combat and then never get one again.
I'd be more a fan of a system where you spend points to turn a regular success into a critical success at appropriate moments, except that my group doesn't do well with that sort of resource management.
I'd be more a fan of a system where you spend points to turn a regular success into a critical success at appropriate moments, except that my group doesn't do well with that sort of resource management.
Strictly speaking, any 'margin of success' game that has a points mechanic which directly contributes to that margin would loosely qualify (such as Fate, where the points increase your result by a flat +2 and you get a super-success by beating the target by 3), but I can't think of any off the top of my head where there's no such thing as a critical success unless you spend a limited-use resource to make it so.
I've been debating about doing something where everything 'auto crits' at the end of the encounter- like, if the enemy has less than a fifth of their HP left, it's easier to attack old wounds and deal more damage.
Yeah... My DM for a 5e thing says crit 1 and 20s are automatic fails and successes on EVERYTHING. As a wizard with +15 to deception and a spell save DC of 22, this gets annoying.
This worked out well enough, but perhaps the most ludicrous extreme was late in the campaign when I got the Shield spell, which gave complete protection for one PC for two turns. I was in a 2-PC party at one point (narratively, the two PCs were at least very good friends). So, I kept alternating casting it on myself and my ally. It burnt MP like heck, but I'd built to have large MP reserves. The GM just gave up, mid-combat, and declared we had won.
Then there was the time I made a character focusing on the Agility stat, which in that system determined initiative. High enough initiative and you can go twice in a turn. Not only did I tweak that to the maximum some of the system's developers had ever seen (Agility's unboosted maximum is 30; including initiative-specific boosts, my PC had over 60), giving my PC 5 actions per turn, but his weapon was also Agility-based (so each attack was relatively powerful) and let him attack twice per action. (Anticipating this was why I flavored it as a machine gun handed down from his ancestors - though with the upgrades he applied over time, Theseus's Paradox was in effect by the campaign's end.) Several of the minions the GM deployed, which the system balanced to be handled by area of effect attacks, were taken down one at a time by my PC as fast as other PCs' area attacks could.
The GM was cool with it, but we were playing where the system's developers could see, giving some of them fits about breaking what they had made. We may have caused some errata.
It's adapted from her exaggerated 'subjugated cart pony' expression in the movie :) (the "Pinkie! Stop smilin'! Ya ain't foolin' nopony!" look)
Not at all easy to convert back to regular show style, I'll say - the way their faces work is totally different.
Not at all easy to convert back to regular show style, I'll say - the way their faces work is totally different.
That's kinda difficult, not just for MLP but for any fanbase at all. Such things have their own "pick two" rule:
1. Large population
2. Produces content
3. Well moderated
If it has lots of people and makes lots of content, it'll all be about things you don't want to see. If it has lots of people and high posting standards, it won't produce diddly and they're unlikely to share anything with you. If it's producing and it's all quality stuff, the forums/chatrooms will be an empty wasteland aside from the creator's fans and in-group. This site is the third variation, where only fans of the comic post here and off-topic discussion is generally frowned upon.
1. Large population
2. Produces content
3. Well moderated
If it has lots of people and makes lots of content, it'll all be about things you don't want to see. If it has lots of people and high posting standards, it won't produce diddly and they're unlikely to share anything with you. If it's producing and it's all quality stuff, the forums/chatrooms will be an empty wasteland aside from the creator's fans and in-group. This site is the third variation, where only fans of the comic post here and off-topic discussion is generally frowned upon.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1534248363490282/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hoosierhooves/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/156550574466826/
They'll post some Adult-ish content (mainly risqué MLP parodies) once in a while, but they're all pretty much about Hoosier hospitality.
I just noticed...kudos on the avatar and name, BackSet!
Pinkie Pie may be a challenge to write around in a D&D situation, but she's totally worth it.