I'm going to wait for Appleciders is no one minds.Originally posted by Appleciders
I'm going to wait for Appleciders is no one minds.
Fine by me.
Librarians rule, Oook
Oh, I'm back. Sorry.
Which he is.
Last edited by kenobi65; 29 Jun 2012 at 10:35 AM.
Thanks, kenobi, for minding the Thoroncir store whilst I was away.
Here's the lastest on Lego LOTR stuff: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/The-Battl...S27HomeSH39474
Scroll down to the bottom for more.
New EW pics of The Hobbit, due to come out Dec. 14: http://www.ew.com/ew/special/0,,2039...610399,00.html
I am excited beyond words for The Hobbit. It's my favorite of the Professor's works.
I'm looking forward to it and reminding myself it won't be dead on.
Remind me of your house rules on Invisibility-- does any spellcasting disrupt it, or only aggressive spells? Can Deor cast Wall of Force without interrupting his Invisibility?
Invisibility is only cancelled by combat/combat spells so Wall of Force is fine.
But Invisibility barely helps vs. undead.
The latest PJ video diary from The Hobbit, starting with a visit to Comic-Con: http://www.thehobbitblog.com/?p=7753
It all depends on whether the level of not-dead-on leans towards "Hobbits get barrow-blades from Aragorn, not from Tom" or "Elves at Helm's Deep, Denethor is a senile driveller, ghosts bugger Oliphaunts to death, Aragorn goes over a cliff, Gollum turns Frodo against Sam". I'll just try not to pre-judge.
For comparison purposes, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe made a number of alterations without destroying the essential integrity of the story; Prince Caspian occasionally stumbled across the book but for the most part managed to pick itself up and carry on its own sweet way.
Last edited by Malacandra; 25 Jul 2012 at 10:23 AM. Reason: smiley
Librarians rule, Oook
Brace yourself - it might become a trilogy: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hea...er-bros-353719
Mmf. On account of all the stuff Jackson couldn't bear to leave out of the Prof's book, or what of his own he just had to shoehorn in?
Librarians rule, Oook
...yes?
I'll take odds on it being the return journey of Bilbo to the Shire where he has the most wonderful adventures.
In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.
It is interesting how far over the spectrum we all are about the LotR movies. I hated most of the changes Jackson made and all of his additions. I won't go into detail as it causes minor rage. But I loved much about the movies, especially that the look of Middle Earth itself was so dead on, not every creature, but the land and the towns were perfect. If I detach myself from my fanatically love of the source material I recognize that Jackson created the 3 greatest Fantasy movies of all time.
Though the cave troll, Pippin lighting the beacon, the look of the wargs, Elrond and Arwen, the loss of Glorfindel and Narsil's messed up story all bother me along with much else. But damn, Moria looked right, the Argonauth was how I had pretty much visualized it back in 1976. Edoras and Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith were brilliant. Also Gollum is the best CGI in live action character ever and still. So I love the movies while being annoying at many parts.
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As to the game, sorry for the delay post, worse yet I won't be around this weekend, the wife and I will me in NYC and we are leaving the laptops home.
If the decision is made on stay or go, I will try to update tonight at least or maybe tomorrow during the day.
Guys sorry, I haven't disappeared but my free time has. Either tomorrow or Thursday I'll start the battle.
FYI, I'll be out of town (and out of touch) from this Friday (August 3rd) through next Wednesday (August 8th). My wife and I will be celebrating our 20th anniversary on the 8th, and we're going up to Toronto for a few days, with a side trip to Niagara Falls. Elendil's Heir has kindly agreed to run Ceol for me in my absence, though it sounds like I'll at least be able to get in the first few actions of this fight.
Glad to help!
Cool, enjoy. My wife and I just celebrated 20 last month.
Thank you, and belated congratulations!
"Does Deor try to turn the lightning bolt?" That's the kind of crazy-making DM question that really inspires paranoia. That's almost worse than rolling behind the screen for no apparent reason and refusing to explain why. I'm going to have to do that to someone in my own group this week.
Sorry to double post, but I suppose, in this situation, there's nothing for it but to play the character true to himself. Deor would not elect to decline to turn the lightning bolt. Gee, but I hope he's right.
Sorry, with this format, that was just a heavy hint from the ref and nothing more. I wasn't sure if you would recall the ability that might save you and Gilraen a lot of harm. I find this format far tougher then a table game for keeping straight what a character can do. I don't recall Deor using this ability of the Wizard Staff before. While Appleciders might forget the skill, Deor would not and thus the strong hint to give you the choice.
Sure thing- I'm not complaining, I'm amused. DM behavior so often evinces paranoia, and I've been doing the same in my local group lately.
"My rogue searches for traps."
"Give me a roll."
:dice: "I got a 26."
"You find none. You're *pretty* sure of that..."
If it's D20, and you're not rushed, why not just take a 20 on the roll rather than rolling?"My rogue searches for traps."
"Give me a roll."
:dice: "I got a 26."
"You find none. You're *pretty* sure of that..."
Last edited by Hoopy Frood; 06 Aug 2012 at 10:24 PM.
Maybe you did, and the trap is too tough to find.
:: looks over his shoulder ::
Just for fun, I thought I'd share a new character creation process for D&D that a friend introduced to me last week. He rolled 3d6 36 times and filled the results into a 6x6 grid, in order. He then invited us to pick any row, column, or diagonal, forward or backward, as our character stats, with each member of the party selecting one row, column, or diagonal from the same grid. It creates a nice balance-- you've got 28 possible combinations, so you can select something that fits your plans or character concept pretty well, but without quite as much tweaking as the classic "4d6, drop lowest die, put the scores where you want them". Because everyone's selection comes from pretty good rolls, no one player gets screwed by a bad roll, but the average stat scores aren't much higher than normal. Anyway, I found it novel.
That does sound interesting. I might give the players the chance to +2 any stat and -1 another, to give them a little more control over the process.
Yes, intriguing! The trouble with AD&D up to 2nd Edition was that extremely high ability scores made characters so disproportionately powerful, especially at low level, that players could be forgiven for wanting a system that granted such scores.
For paladins, monks and bards you needed high scores just to be able to play one - and to be honest, the 1st Ed monk was miserably weak in combat unless he had at least a 16 Constitution as well as the three other 15s the book obliged him to have.
Playing a cleric or MU, especially with an eye on the long game, you were so much better off with a really high Wisdom or Intelligence respectively - a 16 Wisdom more than doubles the spells you have available at 3rd level in the former case, and as for the magic-user, who wants a 25% chance of not learning fireball? Then, of course, a mage with a 16+ Constitution has nearly double the hit points of one with a score of 14-.
Thieves get numerous benefits from an insanely high DEX, but all classes are far better off with the +3 reaction saving throw bonus and missile attack adjustment, and -4 to AC, that goes with an 18.
And, of course, a fighter with 18s in Strength, Dex and Con so far overshadows one without that it isn't funny. Not only is he taking a lot longer to knock over than Joe Average (even on fighters' hit dice a +4 bonus is a better than 70% improvement, and against low HD opposition he's getting hit maybe a third as often thanks to the -4 AC bonus) but he's chewing through the opposition like a wood-chipper by comparison. To add insult to injury, the 1st Ed rules on dual-wielding are hugely biased in favour of the silly ability scores; you need no less than 17 Dex to avoid a to-hit penalty on your primary attack, ideally an 18 to bring your off-hand penalty down to the minimum... and then if you have 18+ Strength you're applying at least a +3 damage bonus on both weapons. Of course, if your Strength is high enough then even without favourable Dex you're hitting much more often dual-wielding than Joe is with a single weapon.
If it comes to that, a Thief or Cleric with really high stats can function better as a fighter than a fighter without, and still have his day job to fall back on. The math is left as an exercise for the student.
If Gygax didn't want players to obsess about high ability scores then he shouldn't have made them so disproportionately powerful. Of course, he also drew up the Barbarian, a character whose success was so tied to his stats that Gygax even gave him a stat-rolling system intended to grant 18 Str, 17 Dex and 16 Con (IIRC).
3rd Ed still hands out nice bonuses for good stats, but at least these start kicking in at lower level and, while an 18 is still really nice to have, the benefit isn't out of all proportion to what a 14 gives you; whereas in 1st Ed the best thing a 1st-level fighter with a 15 Strength can do is mop the sweaty brow of the lucky guy who rolled an 18(00), because the latter is knocking over roughly five orcs to the former's one.
Librarians rule, Oook
Or as it is indeed heroic fantasy, embrace the idea that characters are heroes and no Joe Average. You all know by now that with the stats in this game, and it has been true of all my D&D games for 30 years at this point, that your characters are heroic. The upper 1% of humanoidanity (if you will). I never really enjoyed the games where I was a fighter of slightly above average stats. A little stronger or maybe hardier then normal. It was more fun to be heroic in stature and not just brave.
I know the Monk was a complete mess in 1st addition, but thankfully I never worried about the Monk class anyway. It was always a bit of a joke class in any world with lots of magic available despite the other issues. In a low magic world, it still took really excellent stats to make it work and in that case I would still rather be a Ranger or Bard honestly. I think the Monk was an afterthought Gygax through in based off an early Dragon article for players that loved Martial Arts movies.
Maybe. I originally had a similar thought, because 3d6 usually gives such low ability scores and I reacted against that, but you might be surprised how consistently high scores the system produces. I tried a "4d6, drop lowest die" grid, and there were half-a-dozen full ability sets with no scores under 13.
This game is my only experience with 1st edition, but it does seem like ability scores in earlier incarnations of D&D were much more important. In 3.5, you can skate by a little or tweak your character to make something work, with the exception of spellcasting-tied abilities.
The system above is similar to, but much more restrictive than, a method I saw once - I thought it was in 2nd Ed DMG, but I just checked and it isn't - which entailed rolling 36 sets of 3d6 and taking the six rolls you liked best. As to "high", that depends on your definition of same. Given the probability distribution of 3d6 (which I also leave as an exercise for the student), a set of 36 rolls is still odds-against including an 18 or 17, although it will probably include one score of 16+ and about two 15s... the chances are against these high scores falling together, of course. Equally, a 5 is as likely as a 16, a 6 as likely as a 15, an 8 as likely as a 13 - and most players would view a 13 as no real asset but an 8 as a definite penalty.
Some of this is, of course, an artefact of the 1st Edition rules as mentioned above. The ability score requirements for a ranger don't appear onerous until you actually look at your chances of rolling 13 or better in two specific stats and 14 or better in two more... and then you realize that rangers would come up only once out of every 500-odd attempts (rolling 3d6 in order). I neglect here the probability of rolling a 5 or less in either of the two irrelevant stats, which by the book would force you to be a cleric (Dex) or assassin (Cha) whether you wanted to or not.Illusionists would be rare (1 in 200), paladins similarly so, monks and bards would be a mere curiosity mentioned in the rulebooks and present only as NPCs... the only subclass that would be even remotely common would be the druid whose key stats are no more than about 20 - 1 against.
So that would make nearly everyone a vanilla fighter, cleric, magic-user or thief, and precious few of those actually very good at their trade. I wrote a spreadsheet (OpenOffice's clone of Excel) to generate matrices like these, and I have one open at the moment. Looking down the list, I can see...let's have a look...
Taking ability scores in the 1st-edition order (S I W D Co Ch) I can see one possible druid lurking on the bottom-left to top-right diagonal. He barely makes the minimum wisdom for the job and can rejoice in a 5% spell failure chance. That 16 might go better as someone's Strength score - too bad there's no worthwhile Dexterity or Constitution to go with it (the right-hand column top to bottom just makes the necessary grade for a half-orc if you don't mind trading opprobrium and a level cap for a point of Strength and Con. The latter doesn't help you much, but hey, in theory you'll be one of the few people you'll ever meet with a 17 Strength!). For anyone but a druid a 16 Charisma offers nothing but bragging rights - I mean, making a favourable impression on the town mayor might be a long-term benefit but it's not going to help much when you're up to your arse in skeletons, stirges, slimes and numerous other enemies that aren't even capable of social interaction if they wanted to be.Code:10 11 7 6 12 16 12 10 8 13 10 10 13 9 9 12 14 11 10 10 12 7 14 6 9 10 16 10 7 13 11 8 8 12 12 14
The best Wisdom score in that matrix (in row 5) comes saddled with a deplorable Constitution. 16 Wisdom's not bad. You have up to four bonus spells (two each first and second) by the time you hit third level, and you get a +2 bonus on will-related saving throws. You've even got many levels to see about finding some more Wisdom from somewhere to let you acquire 6th level spells if the game lasts long enough to need it. But that 7 Con... bearing in mind you will see many more 7s than 16s rolled... you've just barely avoided a hit-point penalty, and if you ever need a raise dead cast on you, you've a whole 60% chance it will actually work. Woe betide you should someone point a polymorph wand at you and turn you into a toad; there's a 45% chance you'll be a dead toad, or if you survive, a further 45% chance you'll die when someone turns you back to human. Not good.
Column 3, bottom to top, gives you the best Intelligence in the matrix, and five unhelpful stats, although an 8 Strength is just high enough not to see your weedy hand-to-hand damage lowered any further. Again with a Constitution of only 8 the less System Shock or Resurrection Survival you have to undergo the better, for there's an excellent chance that your first experience of it will be your last. That 16 Intelligence will let you learn spells all the way up to 8th level in due course... such a shame that you have a 35% chance of finding any new spell you stumble across completely incomprehensible. Surprisingly, you're only a little worse off with an Intelligence of only 13, although by "a little" I mean "failing to learn spells nearly half the time". But none of the rows or columns with a 13 or 14 in second position offer that much comfort.
The only way anyone possibly gets a hit-point bonus at all is by picking row 3 or 4 and being a dwarf or half-orc - and, merciful heavens, the other scores just about allow it. Column 3, you say? Okay, but your Strength is too low for a fighter, your Intelligence for a magic-user... if you really want to be a thief then at least you have only a 5% penalty to Move Silently.
You'd get a better thief out of Row 5, backwards - your stats are well up to par for a hobbit (too stupid for an elf, sorry!) and at least the Strength penalty doesn't hurt you. 17 Dex is an almost godlike ability score compared to the other characters we're getting out of this matrix and as long as our prospective hobbit doesn't actually get into a fight he will make a respectable sneak and trap-springer. Of course, 1st-level thieves being what they are, there's a 75% chance the first one he tries will blow up in his face, and with unenhanced thief hit points it won't take much to put him down, but that's a chance you have to take.
Hope this analysis has been amusing and entertaining, and just for the record, the scores in that matrix are a hairsbreadth over average.
Last edited by Malacandra; 17 Aug 2012 at 03:20 AM.
Librarians rule, Oook
Time on your hands today, Malacandra...?
Just kidding! Thanks for that analysis.
Heh. Sorry, I've always been like that.
I'm off on holiday today, two weeks in France, may not have internet access. They have wifi at the campsite but their charges are confiscatory, so unless I can get a service for my Android I'll be out of contact. Back in September!
Librarians rule, Oook
Hope you have a great time. We'll miss you.
Happy birthday Mr Dungeon Master!
Librarians rule, Oook
Hear, hear!
Thanks guy. I hope to be around a bit more after this weekend.
Birthday felicitations! May the hair on your toes never fall out. :-D
My wife is reading this author's The Snow Child: http://www.amazon.com/Eowyn-Ivey/e/B..._athr_dp_pel_1
Happy Hobbit Day to all.
I have finally posted in the game thread. Sorry for the long delay. Life has been abnormal including and IRS pre-audit. Arghhh!
Yeah, I bet that was fun. Thanks for the update!
Librarians rule, Oook
I made a promise to my son when we went to Mystic that we would make a toy boat when we got home. He asked for a Frigate. So I finished sewing the sails today.
Very nice! USS Monmouth?
My son hasn't named it yet. We need to add either a keel or some heavy ballast it turns out. Once we put the rigging on it was no longer stable. The first creek test was a failure.
Very, very cool!
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