11-18-2016, 02:55 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
About what he's talking is a little more than that. He wants something that tells you that if you don't have someone with Illusion spells or abilities in your party, throwing a Snorkelwanger at them could wipe them out since they have no way of countering it.
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11-18-2016, 03:40 PM | #12 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
I would love to a whole bunch of new hex-based multi-hex flat top-down Carboard Heroes at appropriate scale for GURPS for various animals and monsters.
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11-18-2016, 03:41 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
D&D 4e went a ways towards making a varied encounter quickly by identifying some general combat roles, and labeling monsters with them. I think it went a bit far by being very prescriptive, but the role isn't actually a game mechanic.
Basically it loosely groups monsters into Artillery, Brutes, Controllers, Skirmishers, and Soldiers. Artillery monsters excel at raining death from a distance, but avoid melee. Brutes are big meleeing sacks of hitpoints that hit hard but have low skill. Controllers change the state of the battlefield (make hazardous terrain, provide cover, move people around, heal, etc). Skirmishers are fast and lightly armored hit-and-run mobility fighters. Soldiers engage toe-to-toe like Brutes but seek to block movement rather than explosively destroy. A crucial game-mechanical difference between brutes and soldiers is that brutes take damage smoothly and deal it out spikily, while soldiers take damage spikily and deal it out smoothly. IE brutes get hit almost all the time, but they have so many HP that individual hits don't matter as much - soldiers hit almost all the time, but they don't do tons of damage so individual hits don't matter so much. Meanwhile brutes rarely hit but deal a ton of damage when they do, while soldiers rarely get hit but suffer it rather more due to less HP. Relative to a brute - a soldier still has more HP than any other role, usually. Even vaguely classifying monsters into categories like this means you can look at an encounter and say "Oh, this fight is all skirmishers. Let's throw some soldiers in too to try and make the PCs stand still while getting harassed by skirmishers." Or, you can say "This fight is all skirmishers, lets put lots of interesting terrain around for players to chase them around/corner them in/get shoved into by monsters doing a hit-and-run". That right there will give a lot of variety even if your skirmishers are orcs, and your soldiers are orcs, and your brutes are slightly bigger orcs.
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11-18-2016, 04:26 PM | #14 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
Well to some extent the GM has to exercise judgment. It should be pretty obvious that you only use major ghosts if the party has characters that can deal with incorpreal critters and possession (or if you want to communicate that they really ought to have had a way to do this before they went into the Haunted Downs). Is a list with things like "Monsters with Possession are countered by a delver with Exorcism" something people would find useful?
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11-18-2016, 06:18 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
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11-19-2016, 12:58 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
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11-19-2016, 11:35 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Spain —Europe
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
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"Let's face it: for some people, roleplaying is a serious challenge, a life-or-death struggle." J. M. Caparula/Scott Haring "Physics is basic but inessential." Wolfgang Smith My G+ |
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11-19-2016, 02:18 PM | #18 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Re: What I'd like to see for DF
Henchmen is nice, but it isn't fast. You still have to worry about gear and making picks. I often use the generic NPCs in the back of Mirror of the Fire Demon since it already has those picks made for me, thus speeding things up.
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fantasy, monsters |
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