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Everyone meet the Emerald Knight.  He's a superhero trained by the previous Emerald Knight.  Specifically, he uses a powersuit that grants him super strength, and the armor is super tough.  It also has a few tricks, like enhanced jumping, it can run up to 30 mph if all he's doing is running, and stuff like that, but he doesn't have weapons he uses other than his fists.  He also behaves like a hero.  He gives the villians a chance to surrender.  He tries to disable them so he can take them into the police station.  He tries to protect the weak to the degree that he'll let the villian get away to save some townsfolk.  He's a very traditional hero.

Now, he's parading around with his own supergroup.  The supergroup consists of a lively bunch.  A genie that can grant wishes.  A half-angel healer/holy powered.  A half-demon with magic powers.  A Ghost Rider ripoff with a more powerful version of the Penense Stare.  A palette-swapped Green Arrow.  An robot-girl that has already been told to be toned down severely to make her play nice with the party (and whose player looks for every opportunity to upgrade her).  The final character is a teleporter that travels through the shadow dimension and can One Hit KO villians.  I may be unfair with the last one because he's only been in the game for one session.  The robot-girl is currently at a power level that works with the game right now, so I suppose I might be being a bit rough on her.

Ignoring the fact that most of the party is more powerful than EK, the real big problem is that the party is so powerful as to make challenges, well, not challenging.  Mobility-wise, we have at least three flyers, at least two super-speeders, and we have at least two teleporters.  Getting to places and villains, not so much a problem.

Power-wise, it's hard to come up with a situation that can make all the heroes hesitate.  We've got most of the classical elements covered.   We've got healing and holy powers covered.  We've got "heroes" that can make enemies crumple in pain and cause them permanent psychological damage.  We've got a genie that can wish things right if people ask.

People created their characters without weaknesses for the most part.  Even Superman, the greatest of Mary Sue heroes, has a weakness.  We don't have anything we can really slam against members of the party to make them think twice.

As a bonus, we've got way too many heroes willing to cause real harm to the villains.  We're supposed to take them in so they can be reformed people!

So, translation: it's a superhero team that mostly lacks real superheroes.  Superheroes that people can get behind, and people can root for.  Heroes are people who overcome adversity, both within themselves and in the enemies to win the day.  People who are perfect at the start aren't heroes.

Posted by: Cyndane at 09:02 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I haven't really had anything to rant about, but a discussion I had yesterday has brought up a(nother) lovely little rant about DnD, divine spellcasting classes.

And, as usual, I'm only going to talk about the base three books in this discussion because it's the last time I think WotC tried to balance their classes.

There are two divine casters in the base Player's Handbook: the cleric and the druid.  The druid is widely considered by people who care too much to be the only class in the PHB worth taking all it's levels.  The other base classes' benefits can be replicated through prestige classes (a rant for another day) or items.  People are absolutely in love with the wide range of abilities that the druid gets, and Wild Shape is a tremendously powerful ability.  With the small cost of one feat (Natural Spell) all your abilities can be used in Wild Shape, and the stats you get in Wild Shape are probably better than your base form.  Dire Bear (or Dire Tiger if you want a high Dex) FTW.

The cleric is widely believed to be the most powerful class in the game.  Proficiency with all armor, 3/4 BAB, spells that rock, and such.  You can be an offensive juggernaut, a defensive wall, a healer, or all three!

But no one wants to play these classes.  Do you know why?  Because they are divine casters, and DnD players nowadays have played too many MMORPGs.  The healer has to be fragile and do nothing but heal.  The fighter has to stand around and take hits and pretend to hurt things.  The mage is supposed to blast everything, and the rogue is supposed to pull in the DPS with sneaky git stabbings.  Now, I understand that the four essential roles in DnD are fighter, divine caster, arcane caster, and trapfinder, as I stated in my bard rant.  Note I DID NOT say tank, healer, mage, and DPS thief.  Many players of DnD seem to be stuck in this mindset.

Which is why no one wants to play a divine caster.  If you play the Druid, you will be expected to prepare mostly cure spells because you're a divine caster.  If you play a Cleric, you'll be expected to stand in the back and just heal people.  If you fight, expect people to be annoyed.  You're the fragile little cleric that can do nothing but heal despite the fact that you a good hit die and can wear bloody full plate, not to mention that you have spells that make you an even better combatant.

I still would have loved to see what people's reactions would have been in the Iron Kingdoms game I was playing my Cleric in.  She was going to take five levels of Cleric before switching to Pistoleer.  Why?  Because I had a character concept, and I wasn't playing her to be a fragile little cleric that stands in the back and heals.  It was a fun character for the short time I got to play her before the game ended.  I never did get to Pistoleer, though.

Next time:  The Great Prestige Class Rant.

Posted by: Cyndane at 12:21 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So, I had an idea last night as I stared at the ceiling trying to sleep.

An idea that would my grand attempt to telling an interesting and odd story in a role playing game.

You know those shows where you've got the same actors from skit to skit playing different roles?  The game will run kinda like that.  The players would create their actor.  Each actor should have a personality quirk that would ideally show through whatever part they were playing in the skit.  Something that the "audience" could latch onto other than their name.  Something that the "audience" can go "Well, that's Henry, so he's going to be a smarmy jerk in this scene even if he's playing the paranormal investigator."

Gradually, the story will be revealed in the skits.  I don't expect the story to be revealed in the first few skits, but people should be able to eventually look back and see how I was hinting at it.  I just hope that people will find the story as interesting as I do.

My mechanics ideas are in the cut.

This morning's rant is brought to you by Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind, for the record.


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Posted by: Cyndane at 11:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Morning #3, and I'm still going strong.  Hooray for me!

For the record "True Colors" is a much better song to have going through your head when you wake up than YMCA.

Today's chat is going to be about the Bard in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, which will be abbreviated as DnD from here on out.

In your typical DnD party, there are four essential roles to fill: fighter, full casting arcane caster (typically wizard or sorcerer), full casting divine caster (typically a cleric, and if it's not a cleric focused on healing, may your deity help you), and a sneaky git (anyone with the Trapfinding ability).

While I could rant about the divine caster requirements in a party, today we're focusing on the bard, and why it isn't what you think it is.

The rest of the this entry is hidden beyond the cut.
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Posted by: Cyndane at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's my second morning fireside chat.  I'm two for two!

1.  I really like Legend of the Five Rings, which will hereafter be called L5R.  It's a point-based system, which I like more than level-based systems.  It's very hard to make a social character in most level-based systems.  Sure, you can usually make a kinda social character, but in level-based systems the emphasis is on combat ability.  In L5R, not only can you make a social character, you can have your social character get better at social activities!  That's because L5R is a hybrid point/level system.  It's point-based at its core, but once you've gained enough points, you get new abilities based on what school your character attends, which tends to be split by clan into fighter, social, mage, and miscellaneous.  That's the thing right there.  My character can get mechanical benefits for being social-oriented.  Usually, being of a social bent means I add more numbers to my social roll and that's it.  Fighters get neat abilities or the ability to cleave people in half with their raw number of dice.  Social characters?  Not even GMs will let most social character influence NPCs terribly.

Another thing, in D&D and most other systems, it's frowned upon for the social character to use their diplomacy system to make it so that PCs will like the social PC more, but the fighter can use Cleave, High Jump, The Empire Rests on Its Edge, or whatever it has to attack the social PC should the fighter decide to do so.  All in the name of balance.  Bow down before the concept of balance!

Point number 2 (and it's a short one): YMCA is the most irritating song to have running through your head as you wake up.

#3 (and the last one for the day): Saints Row is much better than your GTAs.  The GTAs that I've had the misfortune of playing take themselves way too seriously.  Saints Row is a much more accessible parody of the gang warfare type games.  The humor is great, the customization is fun, and the missions are memorable.  It has it's problems, like annoying AI and very linear missions (nothing a rocket launcher can't solve for the most part), but I can overlook those because the rest of the game is so much fun.

Tomorrow (or maybe later today): D&D's bard.

Posted by: Cyndane at 11:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The first morning rant!  Hooray!
I'm partly doing this to let other people see the pearls of wisdom I come up with in the morning.  This process usually consists of having various ideas in my head when I wake up and then pondering them as I take a shower.

Point #1: My kingmaker character.  I'm not going to go into what's up with the kingmaker story-wise, but I had an idea for an outfit that a noble would give the kingmaker to try and woo her.  An outfit that she wouldn't wear, of course, but it gives me another mini-plot idea.  The initial idea of the color scheme was dark red and black, but when I actually type it up, I'll probably change the color scheme because A) I don't think the colors would look nice on the character and B) I don't like the colors dark red and black together.  The boots were high-heeled, thigh-high boots.  The gloves went half-way up the upper arm (which I'm pretty sure there's a good term for that which I'll have to look up).  For the main outfit (starting from the neck down), a the dress clasps around the neck (leaving the shoulders bare), and the dress clings to every curve as it goes down the front (emphasizing the hourglass figure), leaving the back completely open.  The dress wraps around just above her rear so that the rear is covered, but the dress shows the curves of her rear just as much as the rest of her.  The dress then does that two-flap thing, one in front and one in back (kinda like a dual-slitted chinese-dress-like-thing) so that her legs still have room to move and be seen.  There's also a semi-expensive jewel that rests in the decolletage of the dress that's meant to draw the eye to the bust area.  I have no idea where this idea came from, but it makes me giggle just thinking of the kingmaker's reaction to such an outfit.

Whew, that was long.

2: Projectra.  Projectra is a superhero in a game I'm playing/running.  Her player had to tone down Projectra for being so much more powerful than every other PC.  Toned waaaaaay down.  Anyway, the player of the character wants to upgrade the character during downtime, which strikes me as a bad idea.  We wanted her toned down, so you're going to try and upgrade her?  No!  Bad!  Heroes don't normally get upgrades until they are needed because the bad guys came up with something that the heroes can't counter with their current toys/powers.  Necessity IS the mother of invention.  Especially with bloody plasma weapons!  You just come off as a fanboy that wants every bloody mecha toy there is for your character.  STICK WITH YOUR THEME!  Don't keep making your character more powerful just because you watched another mecha anime.

3: Epic D&D characters.  With epic D&D characters, they have most of the toys that they want by then.  How do you bribe them with the shinies that you know they want?  Unless you specifically tailor items to be better than what they have, they're just going to sell the stuff.  Maybe creating a spell or feat that lets you transfer bonuses between items.  I'm not sure how one would balance such a thing, though.


My points got shorter and shorter as I typed them up.  Oh well.

Posted by: Cyndane at 12:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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