>>93926798>Wizards, no sense of right and wrong
>>93926798>No save to actually prevent castrationThis is like a spell where you just have to pass an intellect test against their intelligence score once to halve their intelligence
>>93926798I didn't even need google to know that this was Shadow of the Demon Lord.
Skidaddle skidoodle your dick is now a noodle
>>93926798Shouldn't this do more damage to females? Anatomically speaking, loss of internal genitalia is worse structural damage to humanoid body than loss of external set.
>>93926798>scat magic>testicular torsion spellsThis fucking game is so embarrassing. What's next, a disembodied magical hand that goes around fisting people?
>>93927234>scat magic Gay>testicular torsion spellsBased
>>93927225We've had this same thread before, and the conclusion is that whoever wrote the spell is a fucking idiot that forgot that women exist.
>>93927248Yeah, I believe that.
>>93926798Give it to me straight, is SotDL actually any good?
>>93927791It's puerile, scatological, edgy for the sake of being edgy, utterly juvenile and derivative. I'll give it credit for having skilled illustrators, but that's just the proverbial lipstick on a pig.In my opinion you'd have a less distasteful, more satisfying time playing Warhammer Fantasy RPG. It handles similar motifs but with more skill and nuance.
>I CAST DESTROY COCK
>>93927791God, no. Its a d20 rehash with the guts ripped out of it, it doesn't even have a skill system so really all you can ever do is fight. It sells itself entirely on being grim and gritty, like someone tried to make a version of DnD that they could convince their warhammer friends to play.
>>93927883ACK!
>>93927791I like it, the class system is my fav thing about it. With the supplements there are hundreds of options and they have good RP and actual combat/utility thingsOnly negative I'd say is the pee-pee poo-poo in the setting, but that's just fluff and up to the DM to include or not. I don't.>>93927886Fool
>>93926798-(i)gha-throd
>>93927791It's really good if you're looking for a fast-paced action-based RPG.
>>93927007It is a level 3 spell, and when players are never expected to have anything beyond one, MAYBE two, level 5 spells, you can imagine the difference in scale. Spells of level 6-10 are basically fluff, found in one-time use scrolls, or are stapled to macguffins. A level 3 spell in Demon Lord might as well be a level 6-7 spell for all it matters in DnD terms. Even at level 10, the normal max for a player character, you can typically expect to be able to cast it 1-2 times at maximum per day. It's a horrific thing to have done to you, but in relative terms losing your dick isn't going to actually do that much damage to you and it's already a fragile organ that would be easy for a stray spell to damage — never mind a level 3 spell specifically designed for such a torturous purpose.
>>93927886>it doesn't even have a skill systemAnd this is supposed to be a downside? Skills are already an annoying contrivance. I much rather have the broader profession system that more naturally informs what my character would be good at in a logical sense. Sure, you have to play some amount of "mother, may I" with it, but as long as you're playing with reasonable human beings it should be easy to figure out when a profession applies. It's much more open-ended than relatively narrow set skills and gives you wider range of things you can be good at in an evocative way.
>>93928679Also it's Forbidden magic, which has relatively big downsides to learn and use.
>>93927225In a campaign of shadow i was in; our characters were at a wedding and a fey casted that on a pregnant womanpretty gnarly moment, i wonder what the fuck is wrong with this DM sometimes, but at least it was very in line with the intended tone of the game
>>93927791My group enjoyed our SotDL campaign but had no desire to play it again. I think most players will enjoy their first exposure to it but once the novelty wears off then only people who really love the flavor will stick with it.Also it's a great palette cleanser if you're usually doing high fantasy and you want something grimier
>>93928679>losing your dick isn't going to actually do that much damage to youDestroying your chances to fulfill the goal of any living being is a lot of damage
>>93928874Psychological damage for sure, but that's to be explored later if that character survives the encounter. 3d6 is nothing to sneeze at, especially when you're dazed for multiple turns afterward.
imagine someone tries that on a dragom
>>93929382I like dragoms
>>93927234That’s already in the game actually. It’s a spectral hand that crushes someone’s bowels by going in through their anus. It’s quite strong especially if the caster has large hands.
>>93926798>>93929455Makes me wonder who is this kind of content even intended for. Mudcore enthusiasts? Gurofags? Avant garde gamers that play it ironically?
>>93929455What game is this?
>>93929512Dorians
>>93927791Garbage game that apes D&D, but "IT'S DARKER AND EDGIER!"Might be fun if you're a retarded teenager, but anyone else is just better off playing D&D... and I say that as someone who thinks D&D is shit.
>>93926798Predictive programming.
>>93927791You know how the phrase "this is Dark Souls of <genre>" became a thing?Well, SotDL isn't Dark Souls of ttrpgs, it's Postal 2 of ttrpgs.
>>93927791I think it's good, although gishes are bullshit in the system, and been playing it for about 4 years now
>>93928884I’d say it’s a worse penalty than blindness or losing a ton of strength permanently or something.
>>93927225>than loss of external set.They're both internal. And, no, given the description this would be nearly instant death for anyone or anything. No surgery exists to prevent the blood loss in time to stop it from resulting in death to whoever this was used on. The stun effect would compound the issue as nobody would know the person was even hurt before they bled out. You can't take chunks of a person's body off and expect them to survive. Nothing short of "magic" would stop this from killing the man.
>>93929455What's that? I don't remember anything like that in any of the books>>93929588Have you tried the new rules in Uncanny Arcana? I heard it's sort of backporting stuff from WW
>>93927791If you can get past the juvenile poopoo humor, it's fucking great. It's the sort of game that simultaneously rewards build autism, but doesn't punish people for just picking flavorful options. There are very few outright bad options as your leveling up. Martial characters are still beefy as fuck into later levels (in the game I ran out front line fighter was routinely throwing around 20d of damage) and support casters are a lot of fun to play as well, one of my favorite PCs I've ever played was in this game, a 12 inch tall pixie who couldnt do damage but was still kind of broken.As a GM, I found the fast turn/slow turn system to be the easiest combats I've ever ran, we had a huge 20 participant fight in a cult chamber that ran like butter. Good, quickly readable adversary statblocks, as well, which is a grip I have with a lot of games.So yeah, its good, but if the edgy humor is a sticking point, it'll probably be a hard sell.
>>93929518Candyland
>>93929599It really depends on your character's goals in life. You could be playing a character who has already had children, already couldn't have any (as several races do not reproduce sexually anyway), or simply does not care about "genetic destiny" in any way. It's a near-apocalyptic world, so there really isn't much inherent virtue in reproducing. There's also magic that can restore mangled or lost body parts, which can become a separate adventure in itself. A quest to find a healer because your character cares more about the so-called goal of any living being than whatever other silly quest they were on can make for an entertaining plot. Juggling whatever other responsibility they had with their personal strife over having been maimed in such grotesque fashion is at least thought-provoking. In the end, becoming blind or permanently enfeebled is going to be more a setback than having your wiener fall off or get torn up. Bodily harm is to be expected when you enter combat, and it's not like there's anything sacred about your genitals to begin with. If you characters entered mortal combat with powerful magical beings who can control fire, warp the mind, perform superhuman feats of skill, raise the dead, etc. then you really shouldn't be shocked when any particular body part gets put through a proverbial meatgrinder. That's just naive at best, bordering on plain ignorance.
>>93929637>Have you tried the new rules in Uncanny Arcana? I heard it's sort of backporting stuff from WWNo theose talents look like they make gishes even more busted with certain talents like 1 boon to weapon attack rolls and stuff, I just homebrewed half magic warrior paths based off the warrior variants from Bred for Battle and called it a day since every other novice path can go magic no isses.
>>93926798I
>>93929574What's the Postal 1 of RPGs?
>>93929682I haven't checked the talents. I was thinking of the Power gain change.
>>93929735Good question. FATAL is obviously Postal 3 of RPGs (even though chronologically it's older than SotDL). Postal 1 would be, hmm... bit of a wildshot, but unless somebody else has better suggestion I'm gonna say Ironclaw. Ill-reputed for its theme, but theme aside it's simple consistent game
>>93929714G
>>93929949G
>>93929953E
>>93929962C-c-c-combo breaker!
>>93929512Edgy boys and scatological comedy enthusiasts
>>93929714>>93929949>>93929953We did it Reddit!
>>93928884Oh yeah sure bud, having the end point of an artery that's also right next to both your femoral arteries violenty explode won't have any impact on your physical wellbeing at all. Especially in a world without modern medicine...
>>93929617>No surgery exists to prevent the blood loss in timeTimely cauterization might do it for a man. Maybe.
>>93930535I never said the damage listed wasn't appropriate, but rather there doesn't need to be any more than that and that it's no worse than losing your sight or becoming permanently enfeebled in the long term assuming you survive it. That's why I say "psychological damage," as you can at least survive the initial damage with no lasting repercussions beyond the inability to reproduce. Blindness is going to hamper you in a more effective way.This is a particularly violent genital eruption, sure, but the damage listed is perfectly appropriate for the described effect. 3d6 is already plenty considering that your average person in that world only has like 10-15 health. This is fair for a level 3 spell to be doing to a person. A level 3 spell isn't exactly common outside of dedicated casters, and this is a spell from the single nastiest tradition, so it should be able to easily mangle and kill a commoner.>Especially in a world without modern medicine...No, instead they have magical healing, including uncommon/rare bodily restoration spells and potions that are fast-acting and relatively common, as well as emerging medical techniques and dedicated professionals like the Red Cloaks with their (for the time period) advanced medical practices.
>>93927791Yeah it's a pretty good system, been running it for awhile.
>>93929455I'm not even surprised. I hate to think what kind of actually thinks this shit is a great game.
>>93931991>>93929455There is no such spell in the game.
>>93927877>fluff fluff fluff fluffbut is the game good?
>>93932674Yeah, the mechanics are simple and solid, and it's easy to reach people. Actually kind of hard to build a bad character.
>>93927877>>93927886But what if I like grimderp, over the top, 3edgy5me stuff?
>>93932783This isnt just "Wow thats evil" its literal poopmancy and cock explosions. Its so edgy its comedic if it wasnt so unoriginal.
>>93932878What other games have poopmancy and cock explosions?
>>93933125GURPS
>>93926798Plus they've got a 48% chance of committing suicide afterwards.
>>93927791I'd say so. It's simple without being boring and still has a nice bit of crunch to work with. It's lethal and risky but never feels unfair or mean-spirited. It's really elegant overall and everything is designed to not slow the game's momentum down, whether that's initiative or modifiers. The mechanics are just where you need them and then it steps back for when it's time for RP and narrative stuff. Character progression has you choose 3 classes at 3 different tiers, which gives you a load of flexibility and there aren't any restrictions between them. No matter what you choose you'll be competent and it's a great way to get mechanical backing for your narrative choices. Magic is always a blast to play around with. Martial caster balance is great and nothing ever feels like the objectively best choice. The setting is a lot of fun and full of really cool histories and metaphysical stuff. There is a load of flexibility in its tone and content, it's a horror game but doesn't cater to a single type of horror and you lets you make those sort of choices yourself. It's often dark and gritty but there is never a lack of hope or a pointless sense of nihilism to it. There is more content then you'll ever need but it's all in small cheap supplements so you never end up buying a book and hating half of it and feeling like you wasted a chunk of cash, most of its the price of a cup of coffee, and 95% of it is really well balanced. Hard not to like thatMy only issues with it are the very rare Path or Ancestry that's way too good/bad and there occasional unclear ruling but that stuff is few and far between. And the only broken ancestry did get fixed, albeit in a supplement. I can't see another game supplanting it for a good while in the horror fantasy genre. I also think the amount of edge and whatever is massively oversold but there is some of that. So if it's not your deal you'll have less to use but you'll never use all of the stuff you do like so it's not a big deal
>>93926798And that's why you don't wear your pager on your belt
>>93929637Nta but the Power changes do help solve some of the issues the game has. Although Gishes themselves aren't a problem most gishes flat out suck dick which the Power change somewhat remedies. The problem is there are a hanful of gish options that are busted, but there are a handful of busted martial and magic paths too. The Talents are for some stupid reason free and should just replace level 1 spells at least, but as they are it's just a boost to magic users that didn't need it.
>>93929455>literal shitposting
>>93927886It's got Professions though, which are skills but better. If you care about non-combat shit you should like Professions more because they're a more flexible mechanics that allows better representation of who your character is and what they're good at.
>>93930539that'll burn the pee-hole shut. that was something that could kill aspiring eunuchs in china. 3 days after they cut your junk off you either peed or you were fucked.
>>93933182Which book
This thread was surprisingly topical IYKYK
>>93927007The save is that you should have increased your Strength score, pussy
>>93927791Only ever ran one shots with it, but they were super fun. Building a character is very flavorful.
>>93927791It's not interesting or even particularly well designed. It feels like a bad compromise of having potential to be an OSR system but it's made to appeal to idiots that exclusively play 5e in the end.
>>93932674Fluff is the game too.>B-but my game ran in a generic system like GURPS-You don't play games.
>>93928700>>it doesn't even have a skill system>And this is supposed to be a downside? Skills are already an annoying contrivance.Retard, if you can already accept combat as a heavily abstracted resolution mechanic, you can do the same for skills.
>>93937266You mean like professions are?
>>93934607I dunno, I've had gishes in my game under the old system that were not only competent, but sometimes the best member of the party. Gishes may get screwed over on Power or spell breadth a little, but they get to have good combat ability, good health gains, and are in a position to cast their smaller pool of spells in effective ways. I had a guy who just took healing magic and was an absolute terror of self-sustain in combat while also being a great supporter.
>>93937266And that's why I like Professions more than Skills. Skills are just too fiddly and bland. They don't have the same flavor as Professions either.
>>93937294Most gishes are not the gishes most people play, because most gishes suck ass. Most people play the dedicated Paths for it rather than mixing Paths and it's the the odd dedicated Path that's broken rather than gishes on the whole.
>>93937315I'm not even talking about broken. I just mean that mixing magic and non-magic paths can still be really effective. The gish in question I was describing only had 2 power, but he used the spells he had very effectively because his martial paths made him a brick shithouse that could take and deal damage with the best of them. He had fuck-all utility outside of healing, but he specifically focused on a narrow category of spells to get the most out of them. Gishes didn't really need more options to work. You already get the benefit at getting to have SOME magic in addition to not dying as easily to a stiff breeze. Any amount of magic more than the common man is a great boon so long as you don't get disarmed of your casting implement or gagged.
Is it as painful as it sounds?(I’m not anti-tranny but the image made me laugh hard)Apparently it is crippling and you can’t do anything
>>93936771Still way too easy to use. No reason not to spam that spell to defeat any enemies you might even if they kill you.
>>93937357What's the build?
>>93937357>I just mean that mixing magic and non-magic paths can still be really effectiveIt's really fucking rare. Almost every magic path is gimped to fuck if you do it because they scale off of Power. There is very little reason to do it in general because you'll just benefit more from a martial path that you'll be consistently using and improves basically everything you've already taken. >>93937415Yeah, that's fuckin' how spells work. You cast them to kill enemies.
>>93937649Inb4 spellguard + anything
>>93926798Kabbalistic Dark Magic
>>93937415You can cast it twice a day at max level and it's really a CC spell rather than a damage spell. Even in Forbidden it's not particularly impressive for damage.
>>93929512I personally think it's interesting to have profane magic actually involve profane acts. We just don't use that single, already penalized for being explicitly evil school of casting in an otherwise very solid system that shits (hehe) all over 5e at its own niche.
>>93937361Nowhere near as painful/powerful as the [Spontaneous Kidney Stone] curse.
>>93937649It's been a minute, but I think it was Priest of the Honored Dead/Slayer/Pit Fighter. It might have been something else in place of Slayer, but it was definitely martial Expert and Master. Priest was his only source of Power, so while you could technically call that a gish path, that isn't really the same as, say, Adept or Spellguard. He had one Power for half of the game, but he made a good pocket healer and frontline bruiser. Had he never gotten a second point of Power, he would still be useful because he had proven he was effective even with just level 1 spells. It curbed the need to constantly keep stocked up on healing potions and allowed them to spend money on other things more freely. I think he was the longest lasting character as well because he was just so damn bulky and his magic being all healing really pulled them through some scrapes. There was some luck at play in his survival occasionally, but he was generally not the first to go down and he kept others in the fight. >>93937683There are plenty of uses for spells beyond killing, and having an extra pinch of magical utility is rarely bad. Sure, you could take three martial paths and be better at straight killing, but that's not the end-all of RPGs unless your GM makes it so. I rarely make combat the only thing worth engaging with though, so there are reasons to have additional abilities. You don't need a ton of Power to have useful spells. Having just a dash can give you an edge in unexpected ways. A Rogue who takes magic for a couple of tricky spells can be a great boon to the party and a particular asset because they can cast spells with a boon, which is quite rare.>>93937684I did have a Spellguard at one point, but it wasn't this player. I actually nerfed Spellguard in that other case though because it is blatantly broken. I had another player use an Adept/Monk, but I had buffed Adept slightly.
>>93929531If you ignore the official setting like you usually do with D&D the core mechanics are vastly superior>All 4 core stats are actually balanced since they rolled CON into STR and split CHA's functions between WIL and INT>Boons/Banes are Advantage/Disadvantage but not retarded>Tiered classes at specific breakpoint levels are much more compelling than a gimpy "optional" multiclassing rule that is just kinda done whenever and mostly favors single-level frontloaded dips>Death is more of a threat between spells that bypass the incapacitate stage if they down you and only one instance of damage being needed to coup de grace, and most healing scales with total HP so you don't have a support meta that involves drip-feeding people after they fall>The splats are actually useful for things beyond powercreeping magic items and subclassesThe only thing is that the corruption/insanity mechanics are a bit tied to the setting lore so will need to be reflavored or possibly disregarded (although this will ruin a few lists that use them as ability fuel but there are plenty more to spare) for a homebrew setting.>>93937883Hot take but I think a base Magician that knows how to get the most out of Cantrip and the spell swap rule is stronger than Spellguard because of the pure quantity of your spell toolkit. Yeah Spellguard wins in action economy but they can burn out pretty fast unless you're taking something like Lorekeeper to supplement it.
>>93937977>I think a base Magician that knows how to get the most out of Cantrip and the spell swap rule is stronger than SpellguardAbsolutely agree. People really sleep on utility spells and having tons of answers. I actually limited spell-swapping + Cantrip to curb that in my games. Spellguard is broken in direct combat scenarios and with a few specific things in particular, like getting the most efficiency out of Battle magic, but Magician can do some heinous things.
>>93938007I will say Spellguard completely shits on Adept for the niche they both try to cover so I like the idea of buffing the latter some and emphasizing its focus on consistent spells over melee, and yeah I thought the pre-errata swap rule that made you have to keep the same level of power was perfectly fine.
>>93927791Let me put it this way, it ain't no ACKS
>>93937883>There are plenty of uses for spells beyond killingObviously, I was being facetious.
>>93937977The most current spell swapping rules are busted as fuck
>>93937883Well, yeah, most Priests lean martial and that's a strongly martial Priest with strong martial paths. You're talking about an exception here. Novice first is the only way it ever really works. Every other scenario horrifically gimps you. It's not even a question of opinion, you're mathematically and inarguably fucked going Warrior > Paladin than Priest > Paladin, for example.
>>93937977Corruption is trivial to remove. You just ignore it and nothing breaks. Insanity is a balance mechanic for a lot of enemies but just rename it Stress.
>>93938174In that particular case, yeah, it's especially bad because Paladin specifically needs castings to expend for its talents. It doubles down on alternative casting, but I had a player go Rogue > Artificer (and no, he didn't take Magic as his Roguery Talent, though he did plan to at level 8) and still be useful because Artificer's bag of stuff is usefully regardless of Power. Novice magic into martial is a lot easier to make work, but you can potentially make it work on a case by case basis if you start martial. I personally think of it as a fair trade-off where going martial > magic just means whatever spells you pick up are effectively once-per-rest talents rather than meant for regular slinging. You get some decent bulk and fighting ability up front but your casting is more of minor supplement.
>>93937739>You can castrate two enemies a day>This isn’t considered a big deal
>>93938283It's a big deal, it's Forbidden, it's just not a big deal for killing.
>>93938271In any case. Artificer in that scenario is still demonstrably much much worse, it's just basic math. I'd also strongly argue it's a terrible trade because marital paths don't scale like that and grant consistent benefits. Power is a fucked mechanic.
>>93938283When killing the fuck out of a commoner is super easy with how damage scales in this system? Yeah, that's fair. You can't get level 3 spells until level 5, which is halfway through total character progression. Forbidden magic is all about fucking people up in horrific ways. It's specialized for it. That would be like wondering if it's a big deal that Destruction magic can blow a man into a red mist at level 3.
>>93938298I'm a bit biased because I prefer taking dips into magic rather than dedicating yourself to it to be costly. I don't think gishes should get to excel at both areas. If you want to be mathematically better at gishing, then starting with magic isn't a bad idea. If you start magical novice, then you can still be an effective gish, but you aren't TOTALLY fucked if you pick up magic at expert. Artificer loses out on total casting efficacy and their Store Spell talent loses a lot of luster (having maximum 4 spells you can put into it at level 9), but if you pick the right ones it can still be handy. Sure, it's mathematically weaker on its own than if you had more Power, but it should be. You still get a frontloaded bonus from Rogue or Warrior that makes you either more generally capable of things (albeit momentum-based) or a lot tankier and with consistent damage. Taking a novice martial means that while you won't scale up as well, you'll have a solid baseline.The player in question had Delay and Time Loop has his two spells, and Time Loop + Store Spell was basically treated like a once per day crafting of a decently useful enchanted item. It was a novel concept and he was still a good contributor to conflict and he managed to get some excellent roleplay out of it as a dinky small-time inventor who had fucked his way into time manipulation after starting his career as a smooth-talking charlatan. It worked for the setting they found themselves in and his use in and out of combat was still surprisingly good. I'm not saying it'll always work out that way, but Power really isn't that fucked. It works as a balancing mechanic.
>>93938376It's a massive hit to your efficacy. It's not just a little, it's a huge gap. It doesn't matter what anything else gives you because that's not how Paths function. They're standalone pieces of content and therefor should be consistent as you can't guarantee any combinations. Power is a badly designed mechanic and Schwalb knows that's the case because he got rid of it in every game he made after and now SotDL too. It's a balance mechanic that only serves to penalise certain options without actually balancing shit.
>>93938412>They're standalone pieces of contentI just don't see them that way. Power should be something you specialize in if you want to be an efficient caster. Gishes being good at both is not good balance in my eyes. If you want to gish, then you need to focus on being better at one side or the other, which you can already do. A small dip should not make you a good caster, but it does give you a magical trick that a mundane man cannot replicate. I mentioned Time Loop specifically as a spell a player knew. A non-magical character won't have something like that and it presents uses in and out of combat both in guaranteed effectiveness and also roleplay usage. Paths do not exist in a vacuum and the sheer awe factor of wielding any magic at all counts for something. I think that is a valid avenue of balance.
>>93938499It's a fact of the game design. Paths generally don't rely on other Paths to function. They are by definition standalone. Warrior gives you the same stuff that's just as good no matter what else you take. Magician can vary in strength based on your other choices. This is way worse in Experts where going go magic into magic it's like 5 times the castings with a higher average rank of spells than martial into magic. The martial Path gives you the same whatever you do but magic Paths get borked hard by it. It's just the system math. There is no way you can balance that because the Path has changed. It can't be appropriately strong in both scenarios because what it has granted has vastly shifted. It is almost universally true that casters underperform with less Power because they typically rely on castings in some way, even if it's just buffing spells. You get loads fewer castings and thus you use your Talents less. Compounded by just having worse spells over all and less over them. A couple of strong spells does not make the system work well, it just means there are a couple of strong spells. Time is probably the most maligned Tradition in the game for being OP. It making a weaker PC competent is more of an evidence to it being too good. You wouldn't run into this with most other Traditions.You don't need to focus on one or the other to gish because there are plenty of paths that grant you both of these things, even in the core book. Just go Rogue > Spellbinding > Magus, or Priest > Paladin > Mage Knight. You can get 5 Power with martially inclined Paths and not have to deal with shooting yourself in the foot.
How are we still arguing about power in current year? It's obviously a wank mechanic
>>93927887>TROONIUS OUTUS!!!!!!
>>93938591>It can't be appropriately strong in both scenarios because what it has granted has vastly shiftedI personally think that is fine, but I'm biased as one of the opinion that magic is and should be special. Getting good at fighting isn't equivalent to getting good at fucking with the laws of physics with a word and twiddle of a wand. They should be somewhat mismatched, but ultimately and technically playable together. You CAN make it work, and that's what matters to me.>You don't need to focus on one or the other to gish because there are plenty of paths that grant you both of these things, even in the core bookThat's also to my point. There do exist options for decent gishing. That's why Power really isn't a problem. If you, as the player, choose not to take things to enable your casting then it is on you. This isn't even a case of trap options. There's no hidden caveat that fucks you up. You take less Power, you get fewer spells and castings. That's just logic. You're still getting something you wouldn't otherwise get because, on the whole, Novice paths are still all good and give you good things. Expert paths being a place to pick up magic will be less efficient, but what they provide isn't nothing even if they are kind of fucked on some of them. Yeah, Warrior > Paladin > other martial will kind of suck, but that is a just a blatantly poor choice. You can still be a religious warrior without being a Paladin though, so you can still fulfill the flavor fantasy in other ways without gimping yourself.You can choose to take less Power but still get to, at least once per day, do something most mortals could only imagine though. I think that still fulfills a certain fantasy niche. My argument was never that all combinations are equal, but that Power as it is in Demon Lord evokes a certain kind of fantasy and balance level that I particularly like.
>>93937977Man, one of my first campaigns a player went magician>wizard. Endless fucking spells. Almost a spell for any scenario.
>>93938174Iirc Uncertain Faith has Crusader path which is similar to Paladin and better suited for martial novice pathsBut yeah I also disliked how warrior>paladin gimps you
>>93937977>knows how to get the most out of Cantrip and the spell swap ruleHow so? They don't get anything extra out of it IIRC. Spell swapping doesn't say you can discover a new tradition. Cantrip specifically cares about learning a level 0 from discovering a tradition, so spell swapping wouldn't trigger it. You end up with the same total spells.
>>93937223OSR is really meaningless at this point, huh?
>>93938068Alright, you've sold me on it, sounds great!
>>93938068oh, then maybe it's not that bad
>>93937281>>93937298>Playing "Mother may I" with the GM the moment you attempt ANYTHING that exists outside the strict definitions of your profession with zero granularity to gauge competency at a given task is better than listed skills because... I hate numbers!Okay retards.
>>93940168what kind of person are you that asking "is my thing relevant here" "yes/no" is some kind of horrific alt-game you've come up with a name fordo you not have conversations with your GM? do you not normally ask questions for more information anyway?
>>93940197A lot of people unfortunately have early experiences with bad/power trippy GM's, but instead of realizing that it was a bad gm, they think that if they find a rules set "complete" enough, bad experiences like that won't happen again.It's sad, and you should feel no anger towards him, only pity.
>>93940197>>93940223Strawman and projection, classic combo. But yes I'm sure Shadow of the Demon Lord is so much better than other RPGs with devoted skill system because "skills don't matter" anyways, and all that matters is if you mindlessly kill shit and cheer at the dice, right?
>Sharts of the Turd Lord
>>93938143Yeah, and a few of the Occult Philosophy spells were dumb, dunno why it needed to be changed when the core book spell swapping rules are fine
>>93940237But SotDL *has* a devoted skill system. And in both the longer campaigns that I was in, combat was the exception, most of our games were in in investigation and exploration. But you don't care about that, you keep yelling about "mOtHeR mAy I" because you don't understand that the rules aren't ever going to be able to "protect" you from a bad gm. I'm sorry you've been hurt, anon, but don't worry, with introspection and hard work, you can get better.
>>93940352>But SotDL *has* a devoted skill system. It's not even a "system", really. It barely even plays a role in character building. At best it can be considered a useful contrivance to set a precedent for applying boons and banes outside of combat, nothing more.>And in both the longer campaigns that I was in, combat was the exception, most of our games were in in investigation and exploration. But you don't care about that, you keep yelling about "mOtHeR mAy I"Your personal anecdote means absolutely nothing to me because my criticisms of the game are apparent on a system level.>because you don't understand that the rules aren't ever going to be able to "protect" you from a bad gm. I'm sorry you've been hurt, anon, but don't worry, with introspection and hard work, you can get better.Swallow broken glass.
>>93940461>If it doesn't have pages of dcs, autistic subsystems, and edge cases then it doesn't count as a skill system!k
>>93940498A "skill system" inherently implies a degree of granularity, rather than something anyone can hack for their B/X game.
>>93940558Not really. "Skill system" can mean a lot of things and even a loose one can still fit the bill. Professions, for all intents and purposes, work as skills. It's still a system in that you can't just make up knew ones on the spot and pretend you're good at things. You get new Professions at set points in progression and while some may seem them as flavor text, they can be really important as context-sensitive bonuses. Rarely will you need more than that because the primary stats are already elegant enough to use as your bonus to relevant rolls.The>d20 roll>flat stat bonus>contextual +/- d6 bonus (talents, afflictions, Professions, situational bonuses or information, etc)work just fine when the default target number is 10.
>>93940686But if I don't have hyper autistic lits of dcs that tell me exactly how hard a sneak or lockpick check is, I'm just playing mother may I with the gm, and he might be meeeeean to meeeeee!
>>93930539Cauterization is a Hollywood myth, you can only use it in advance surgical procedures. There is no way to burn close internal damage like that. The man's penis goes deep into his body along with the parts of the testis that would be affected. He'd be deader than disco. It would be like ripping out portions of his intestines.
>>93941199It seems pretty clear that the intent is mostly affecting the superficial external parts of the reproductive organs. Either way, 3d6 is enough to severely injure or kill most normal people.
>>93941604Also it's magic. It's not like they took a knife to you, part of you magically dies and drops off.
Does Shadow of the Weird Wizard solve the edgelord problem with SotDL? I find the system somewhat appealing but I had my fill of grimderp stuff in my 20s.
>>93943485Yeah.
>>93939290Crusader has all the same problems. It's not really a Path problem but a core design problem.
Imagine if there was a spell or a cursed object which transformed the recipient into a femaleI mean an actual biological femaleIt could be rare and obscure, nobody knows much about it since obviously who would use such a spell but imagine, for the sake of fleshing this scenario out, if you were inflicted with a spell like thisYou would be otherwise fine but you would just have a female bodyImagine after clearing a dungeon you journeyed with your party to a centre of learning, a university if you will, in order to seek out the expertise of those who have studied such things The spell can be cured but not if you're pregnant and unfortunately that night in which you confided your grief and anxiety to your best friend was the night that caused you to become impregnatedWhat would you do?
>>93943880Yeah I don't remember it exactly and don't have the book at hand.
>>93939331Just by starting Magician with 4 traditions you get 4 throwaway power 0 spells that you can swap up to your current maximum power at breakpoints when you earn more spells, and you get two more of these at level 2. With other paths the choices of what you throw away to swap up begin to get tough as losing all your power 0/1s makes you run out of steam even faster.
>bullshit spellswhy do you think mages should be all hunted?
>>93943887W-wrong thread?>What would you do?Simple, I would just became the best mom ever.
>>93927234So this is the competition to the esteemed lord Raggi... heh... not bad...
>>93943887Get changed back right away because we both know that men can never be women.
>>93943987Ah, I see. You were talking about swapping up. I thought you were making the mistake of thinking you could "cheat" to get extra level 0s.
Spell that makes you poop.
>>93943485sotdl is really only edgy in its setting, just take it out of its setting and disallow players from using forbidden evil traditions.
Can I be a cool necromancer and summon an army of skeletons in demon lord or do they all have to be something like poop skeletons?
>>93937361It's pretty fucking painful, but it didn't stop me from taking the dog for a walk.
>>93943887I seek out a wizard capable of casting Fetus Deletus.
>>93945305Nah, just a matter of knowing to always take a new tradition when it's offered as an option, at least until around power 3-4. This also lets you be a lot more pick and choose with your swaps for the best options at each power rank.
>>93950433Yeah, Magician is the best as far as being an absolute generalist, though Wizards players in campaigns I've been in tend to not make full use of it deliberately because they'd rather theme their spells.
>>93948950You can have regular skeletons, but an army of them tends to be a little beyond general player power. You can get a small entourage of them, but a full army typically fulls under a level of spell beyond typical player reckoning unless they get a special incantation or relic for it. Your quantity of controlled summons is usually limited by your Power score, which caps out at 5 under most circumstances, and some of those summons take up multiple slots. You can get talents that increase that limit though.
>>93948950Yes.>General rule of thumb when taking the necromancy school is you can control a number of corpses equal to your power score, which maxes out for a normal player character at 5>There are rules for custom-raising NPC bodies that would have unique traits, depending on their challenge rating they can count as multiple bodies for purposes of control>You can take a power 2 Necromancy spell that on cast doubles your undead cap until you rest>At level 7 you can take Bone Collector for your Master list to let you craft skeletons up to your power score in addition to your corpse army or Necromancer to double your normal undead cap (I assume this is additive with the aforementioned spell so that they end up roughly equal in bodily contributions)>Finally, there's a power 5 Necromancy spell that lets you summon a horde of 2d6 ghouls that collectively only count as a single undead for purposes of controlSo a max-level specialized Necromancer who rolls well can have an entourage of 26 zombies (5 from power +5 from the buff +5 from your master list +(2d6-1) from your army of the dead).
>>93927007>>93928679>>93928778I'm not going to play a game where my character's dick can just fall off. What the fuck. What is wrong with this game and its players? What the fuck.
>>93952041You can fix it anon, maybe the GM will even let you purchase an upgraded model
>>93952041meh, it's one spell in a horror game. I never use all the options in any other horror game I play so this isn't any different.
>>93952041>I'm not going to play a game where my character's dick can just fall offKeep calm, but that's just as likely to happen in literally any other game with combat if you encounter an enemy that wants to cut or magic your dick off. At least here, you know there are enemies that may be carrying 'Dick Explodis" that specialize in exploding your dick.
>>93953331>Keep calm, but that's just as likely to happen in literally any other game with combat if you encounter an enemy that wants to cut or magic your dick off.What? No it isn't.
>>93958594If a fighter specifically aims his sword at your dick, then he should realistically be able to slice it off. If a sorcerer aims a powerful blast at your chunk, then why shouldn't it be blasted off? They're just called shots. There is little difference between that and a niche spell designed for inflicting specific bodily harm. You're naive if you think otherwise and have just never been faced with a sadistic enemy who wishes to harm you in any more specific a way than whacking your meat points.
>>93958873Not in the rules. And don't pull out some obscure homebrew crap, you know what I mean. This demon lord shit has it as part of the rules. It's not rocket science, man.
What I am learning is that not only is SotDL a game about making people poop themselves, but it's a game whose fans, when they run other games, have the monsters cast spells that make you poop yourself or your dick explode.I a certain sense SotDL is doing the world a real favor by existing, but I sure don't need to hear about it.
>>93958873>If a fighter specifically aims his sword at your dick, then he should realistically be able to slice it offThis is how you get a party of "I aim at his eyes/fingers every single round of combat forever" players. It doesn't fit rpgs.
Anyone been playing Weird Wizard? How'd you compare it to SotDL?
>>93926798What level spell is regeneration?
I'd like to include legendary challenge rolls which the target is 20+
>>93959536It's very good IMO. A pretty major mechanical improvement on Demon Lord and different enough that I don't think they overlap enough to make either feel redundant in. Mechanically it's more robust than SotDL is and there has been a lot of iteration on what SotDL had. The two games aren't cross compatible with each other because SotWW has done a lot to change the rules. Stats work a little differently; there is a new type of roll; every modifier like obfuscation, cover, light, afflictions work differently; it doesn't have mechanics like insanity, madness, or corruption; the core action list is different; reactions are a bigger deal now; and a few other bits. Pretty much every major element had a lot of changes to it. There are changes to the structures of ancestries, paths, traditions, monsters, and equipment means that there isn't a single thing in the game that is the same as in SotDL. Even accounting for Paths that are called the same thing and filling the same niche in the set. Spells aren't tiered by rank, but by tier, and each Tradition has a talent pool that replaces what would be Rank 0 spells. It's just a very different game over all.Setting-wise it's non-horror so it's not as dark but it's also a different setting. It's got some basic building blocks from SotDL but is doing its own thing overall. The starting point for the setting is SotDL's cosmology which is all still intact rather than Rul itself and stripping things away. If you like SotDL's setting you'll find a lot of things to like here too. Tonally the game says this about it "Shadow of the Weird Wizard sheds much of the bleakness and foulness of Shadow of the Demon Lord to offer a game suitable for just about anyone. In this game, you play heroes who struggle to help those in need against the sickness, despair, and corruption found in the world. While you can make the game more gruesome if you wish, the intent is for you and your friends to do good deeds and feel great about doing them"
>>939596914
>>93960631Does it get rid of the dick targeting spells and the poop stuff?
>>93960797Nooooo. It's a non-horror game that's still got all the horror shit in it. Fuckin' obviously it gets rid of the horror shit, dipshit.
>>93927234Jewish games man
>>93940288I wish Hadrian had finished the job
>>93960841What's your problem, stinky? It's still called Weird Wizard and that stuff is weird so I didn't assume it got rid of pee pee poo poo.
>>93960631Interesting. I backed the basic tier on Kickstarter but haven't really checked it out. Just flipped through some parts of the core and the ancestries
>>93960631I'd like to include legendary challenge rolls which the target is 20+
>>93963814Where is that found? All other TNs for challenge rolls is usually 10 from what I understand.
>>93927791I like it as a mechanically grittier and slightly faster and more interesting version of 5e. Characters can still get powerful but its definetly not the 5e bullshit of overpowered superheroes by level 5.My biggest fucking grip with it is on challenge rolls vs attack rolls being unclear as fuck on when to use them outside of combat.
>>93963968I think RAW, most things out of combat are a challenge roll outside of social rolls, but personally I use Agi vs Perception for hiding/sneaking and Perception vs Agi for searching for hidden creatures.
>>93963968I think it's>Challenge roll when not opposed by creature.>Attack roll when it's against something that tries to oppose it In combat or out of combat doesn't matter.
>>93963886Something from lancer which uses the same Dice system
>>93965375Mind describing the mechanic? Is it basically just a TN of 20 for very difficult or legendary feats?
>>93963814Okay? I'm not stopping you.
>>93952041It's a Superhero game. Desire's End is the first step towards exaltation and real supreme power over life and death in the universe.
>>93965984Lancer uses the same d20+mod+boon/bane only it's renamed as accuracy and difficulty DIFFICULT, RISKY, AND HEROIC ROLLS Before you roll a skill check, the GM can decide that the action you’re attempting is DIFFICULT or RISKY (or both). A DIFFICULT roll is harder than usual and adds +1 DIFFICULTY. A RISKY roll has clear and obvious complications, even on a success. For example, if a pilot is trying to sneak into a heavily guarded facility, the GM might decide the roll is RISKY– even if the pilot manages to sneak in, they’re likely to have limited time to sneak out. When rolling a RISKY skill check, a character always suffers the consequences (or a lesser version of them) on any result under 20. A RISKY skill check still succeeds as usual on 10+, but the character suffers consequences anyway.If an action is so hard that success seems outlandish, the GM can make it HEROIC. A HEROIC roll is only successful on a result of 20+, and the character making the attempt also suffers consequences if the result is less than 20. If the GM wants to push things even further, a HEROIC roll can also be DIFFICULT. Pilots that accomplish such tasks are the stuff of legend.
>>93938644It obviously isn't. Just because there are a few bad combinations with it's implementation doesn't mean it's a bad mechanic for the purpose of balancing your options.
>>93971874Fuck off bumpfag, you're retarded and no opinion you have is worth engaging with
>>93940288What book is that from?
>>93968233I see, that does add two more difficulty levels for challenge rolls without just making multiple varying TNs, thanks for sharing
>>93968233>A DIFFICULT roll is harder than usual and adds +1 DIFFICULTYwhat does that mean mechanically?
>>93980374My assumption is that it adds a bane die?
>>93980398>>93980374Yes, Difficulty is a Bane, Accuracy is a Boon
Why is 4chan of all places so upset by this? The spell school is FORBİDDEN magic. Disgusting profane shit. Pretty tame nurgle shit.
>>93980534>Why is 4chan of all placesSpeak for yourself, not everyone is into being a disgusting freak.
>>93980534NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOUR EVIL FORBIDDEN MAGIC CAN'T BE DISGUSTING
