[Virtual TableTop] P&P RPG

[Tyroki]

Yeeeeah...

I really haven't been liking what they've been showing with Pathfinder 2.
It feels incredibly out of touch, and far too close to 4th Ed for my liking.
The devs even tried to stop people from comparing it to 4th ed by saying it wasn't constructive at all, which was a huge red flag, because the comparison is pretty damn apt.

People moved to Pathfinder because they weren't keen on 4th ed and wanted to maintain the 3.5-esque experience. With Pathfinder 2 functioning quite similarly to 4th, it's really shaken people up. Especially knowing that Pathfinder 1 will not see any new first party content.

I can understand needing to make a new version to keep things from going stale, but flying close to a system a lot of people fled is just crazy.

That being said, there was nothing stopping the 3.5ed holdovers from continuing to make their own content. Same will go with Pathfinder 1.0. There are always personal creations and third party content.

[Balmung]

Never use any third party content myself, we just kind of ignore it at our table.

We can change some settings or whatnot, but yeah.

Anywho, 5th edition has been great to me. Still enjoy Pathfinder and all the classes.

[Mr.Anderson]

Well if you want me to DM it'll have to be 3.5e or 5e until I can get my hands on some Pathfinder. But I'm totally down for Pathfinder and Spheres of Power.

I think 4e had one MAJOR problem
It was basically designed to run on a computer or at the very least with a companion app, but they never actually released the companion app/program/website.

This lead to a couple of things..
1) Completely grid based. Everything was expressed in squares.
2) Loss of natural language. Talk in distances, daily powers, per encounter powers.. powers.. etc
3) 'Portability' of player characters. Not sure how this is a problem, but apparently people would show up with their own character that (doesn't even matter if they're lying or not) had insane magic items or something and they would say their previous/regular DM gave it to their characters. So instead the rules hinged on getting certain power of magic items at a certain level. I haven't read the rules, but I was told there's the advice to just give your players the magic item they want (within this 'level' reason) instead of gold etc and allow them to exchange gold rewards for magic items right there and then.

And probably some more stuff, but I also want to draw attention to some good stuff I heard about which turn out to have come from 4e. Like the 'bloodied' term and some monsters getting a special one time action (I believe lizardman get to make an attack once they hit below half HP). The idea of minions, weak enemies that accompany a boss or lieutenant. They have 1 HP so they can be killed in 1 hit, but they do even out the action economy. The fact that, even as a non-magic user, you'd basically be doing it wrong if you just swung your sword even at the lowest level; you could always use a power (as much as I despise the word). And of course the skill challenges.

[Tyroki]

You are correct.

4th Edition was based on video games, and the mass majority of what they did was to allow newcomers to play as if it were a video game, but at the table. 4th was supposed to be really newbie friendly and help bring people to the table, and while it did that to a degree, it also lost Wizards a huge chunk of players to Pathfinder.

Bloodied is a good term, but such a small thing in the long run.
One time attacks at a certain threshold is, as the rest of the system, hugely based on how video game bosses tend to function when you get them to a specific amount of health.

Mooks accompanying a boss isn't even that big a deal. 5th can do that quite happily, and they'll mess you up too if the numbers are high enough. But that puts a variety of people off too.

Constantly using a power is great, and I believe that's why the Spheres guy wanted to do something different to Vancian magic in that vain. Spheres always gives spellcasters (even half spellcasters) something they can do at all times, and then resources they can spend to amp things beyond the basics. Personally, I like it as a concept much more than Vancian. There is also Sphere's of Might for the melee characters, but again, I'm not sure on that one yet. I've barely started to read it.

Finding the PDFs through google is simple enough.

Again. I'm down.

[RDKnightZac]

Tabletop games you say? I might dabble in those, I say, looking over at the 50+ character sheets I've made, 30+ of which are for characters I haven't even gotten the chance to play yet. >_>

[Tyroki]

Tabletop games you say? I might dabble in those, I say, looking over at the 50+ character sheets I've made, 30+ of which are for characters I haven't even gotten the chance to play yet. >_>

Huh. I normally make characters at the time. I never really thought to premake characters, rather tailoring the character to the setting.

That's a lot of character sheets.


.......


.......

Anything Tome of Battle in there?

[RDKnightZac]

Not as of yet. I've only dabbled in 5th Edition, Pathfinder, FATE, Monster of the Week, and World of Darkness so far, but I'm always willing to learn new systems. Also, if ya'll set up a game that happens to land on a Monday or Wednesday, I'd be happy to join in.

As for the amount of characters...well, sometimes it's just something I do for fun when I'm bored but mostly it's just so on the off chance a character bites it, I have back-ups ready without having to make people wait.

[Tyroki]

Tome of Battle is the Weeaboo's Guide to Combat for 3.5
It was an attempt to bring martial classes closer to magic, by basically making them play out like they're in some sort of Shounen anime. Some liked it, some didn't. Personally? I loved it.

When you can play a story-nerfed Pixie Swordsage that goes around punching people to deal with problems with massive damage for a single hit, all is right with the world. It was good times. Apparently Dreamscarred Press have rebuild it for Pathfinder 1.0, so that's a thing.

[Mr.Anderson]

I actually have 2 books of the Quintessential series, one of which is The Quintessential Samurai. Probably not quite what Tome of Battle is, but a Weeaboo's Guide to Combat for 3.5 nonetheless. I've flipped through it a few times and there's surprising accuracy mixed in with the pop culture views of ancient Japan.

I believe it's also a suggestion in the 5e DMG, but I like the idea of honour points. Something I'd definitely want to try and include in the game.

Wednesday is my regular streaming day, but I can shift stuff. Since I'm off on Thursdays I can stay up late (I'm in GMT+1). I'm available from ~21.00 UTC on Wednesdays

Edit:
To keep things moving along, on which days could you play?

[Tyroki]

I have no life, but I'm GMT +12 and try not to stay up too far beyond 1am. I also have to quieten down when my brother hits the hay, but the same vice versa if I'm tired first. Our walls are like paper.

On books, I don't buy them. Firstly, getting them too me is too damn expensive, and secondly, finding a pdf via google is usually easy enough unless the book is really obscure. d20pfsrd also does a good job of letting you find rules quickly because all that's missing is the fluff.

[RDKnightZac]

21:00 UTC would be 4:00pm EST so yeah, I could make that. You thinking Roll20?

[Tyroki]

4pm EST is about 10am my time.

Sometimes I'm awake, sometimes I'm not awake for another hour.

[Mr.Anderson]

Well I'm available on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday (if maybe not at all times due to work or training). So if we could work out when we can all play, we can then decide the system and who's going to DM.

Strawpoll

[RDKnightZac]

I'm available all day Monday and Wednesday for playing, so whatever time is good for everyone else I can work around.

[Tyroki]

I'm mostly interested in giving Spheres a try. Everything else is in the air ^-^

[Mr.Anderson]

I'm mostly interested in giving Spheres a try.

So you won't be DMing I take it?

[Tyroki]

I've only ever DM'd twice. The first time for a beginners box run, and another for that basic but fun Goblin campaign.

Sooo... probably not.

[Mr.Anderson]

Hey, that's roughly twice more than I have. Though I do have an idea what I'd certainly include in a campaign I'll run....

4pm EST is about 10am my time.

Also I just noticed you ignored UTC (which I'd imagine you'd be able to convert quicker) and went for x EST is y my time
Also time-zone-buddies!

[Tyroki]

I regularly play video games with Texans. I'm fairly used to dealing with EST.

[Mr.Anderson]

OK, so assuming, for the moment, that we'll play PF with Spheres of Power. What expectations are there?

• Do we want gritty realism, high fantasy, political, a nice mix?
• Do we want a 'session 0'?
• Do we generate characters in advance or on the first session?
• Do we employ all the tips and tricks to diminish the DM's (presumably mine) workload?

etc etc