Illustration for "A Wizard is You" & RPG chattering

[classicdrogn]

This is the scene from MC Wizanon's nightmare from ... thread 15? 16? Somewhere in there. As such, it constitutes a spoiler, if you haven't been reading along and care... AWIY is a Choose Your Own Adventure fic steered by reader votes on the Tohou-Project /th/ messageboard, following a 17th level 3.5e D&D wizard who appears in Gensoukyo unexpectedly. The comments and discussion are of a level of dickery these boards are thankfully free of as a general rule, but the story itself is of high quality - I like it despite not knowing a thing about the setting, and having a mild dislike for D&D for its wierd mix of nearly all-encomapssing rules if you have enough splatbooks and systemic inflexibility for things that those rules cover poorly.

Someone has set a colossal animated object on Our Hero as of the last couple of updates, in the form of a certain type of garden outbuilding... while there's no indication that his name is Eric, it's been deliberately obscured so I suppose it might well be...

Anyway, Wiz-anon has had a typically rough-and-tumble adventurreer's life, and some of that shows up in the kind of trauma that is rarely played up in actual game sessions - like the encounter relived in this scene. I did post it on the current story thread as well, but figured it could go here for anyone who doesn't care about Touhoes but has an interest in teh D&D angle. It's sketchy, because I know better than to try to ink over original pencils and still don't have a printer to spit out a light blue copy, ink over that, then re-scan and color-key the blue away as is my standard procedure for paper-to-digital art. Anyway, hopefully someone will enjoy it. I'm quite happy with how most of the poses turned out, though the goblin's legs are a little stumpy and wierd.



- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

I think the leg thing is that the shading swirls make my brain think the knees are lower than they actually are... gives off an odd mental glitch that makes me think the knee has a joint at the top and bottom of the knee, even the though that isn't what is drawn.  Another thing is the Illithid has less thralls then I think would actually be there... though that would clutter the scene a bit.  Other than that I think the only other thing off about it is the guy in the background.  I think that is just not reading the scene in a while though.
I'm going to have to ask for an example or six from the line : "mild dislike for D&D for its wierd mix of nearly all-encomapssing rules if you have enough splatbooks and systemic inflexibility for things that those rules cover poorly. "... that is so intriguing vague it makes me wonder.  I find that most of the issues come from inflexibility of the participants or misreading the system.  I mean I figured out the reason that 3rd Ed magical items are financially viable is the merchants get some exp for 'defeating' their customers every time they sell something.

[classicdrogn]

Mmm, I think you're right about the goblin's legs, though the swirls are less intended as shading (though adapted somewhast to be) and more remnants of the sketching process as I found the line I wanted to bring out. As for the scene in question, I only rmemeber the mindflayer, cleric, ranger, wizard, and the one minion being mentioned explicitly - there was something about more minions but they were "down the hall" or something like that - not in the same room or there'd have been more of them watching Mr. Wizard to notice him with his little knife after he got the one pushing him around to take the "I memorized Explosive Runes today" letter.

As for examples of what I mean with D&D ... I think it's really a case of genre mismatch error, because even mid-teens level D&D characters just seem so weak and narrowly-focused. The way ythe magic system is laid out doesn't agree with me much either, my favored style is to have physical combat for the main standard offense, small but cheap healing to patch up between opponents, and big, limited use attack magic to soften up major opponents before closing to melee. Just TRY and make a D&D character that can do that, though... the best success in my build attempts was adding the Bionoid template (adpted from 2e Spelljammer, bsically it's a Guyver unit though with only the power level of the Mark Hamill movie version) a and then 1:3 levels of Ninja (as found in the Rogues & Adventurers splatbook, whose title I can't exectly recall right now - also in Dragon 319 IIRC) and Warlock. That relied on the Bionoid racial abilities for the healing, but covered the rest pretty well - only I know that no DM would allow it, because the Bionoid is such a gamebreaker combat monster, and it also uses a few house-rules to modify the classes, mostly substituting certain class features for various feats. I've repeatedly tried to write a "fake campaign chronicle" fic with this character and a few others, but it never gets off the ground.

Basically, my evul-brane wants to play in martial arts or sci-fi anime, or at least Slayers, and D&D just doesn't do that - no class/level system really does that that I've seen; these days I'm all about the point-buy, with a sharp division between mechanics and the "special effects" descriptions attached by each character to those mechanics. I espescially like BESM, and was annoyed to discover that the third edition had come out and gone out of print while I was away from the scene. I have a good dozen 40pt 2nd Edition character builds, my favorite being a young German mage - I'll quote his basics here:

Name: Herr Zaubermeister Strahl Schienlicht Schraubenformig im Dunkeln

Genre: Occult Horror

Race: Human (Alchemical Immortality)

Occupation: Freelance Demon Hunter

Age: 22

Gender: Male

Height: 6ft. 4in.

Weight: 122lb.

Description and Character Notes:

Name meaning: (honored) (archmage) (ray/beam) (shining light) (spiral) (in the darkness)

A quote: "Halten fur mich Strahl, ich bin nur ein Kerl, verstehen?"
"Regard me as Strahl, I am just a guy, understand?"

Schools:

Ebenholz Vorbereitungenschule von Zauber (aka Ebenholz VvZ)

Ebenholz (ebony) preparations school of magic

Sonderling Universitat Zauberei Ostenberg (aka SUZO)

Eccentric University (of) Spellcasting (at) Eastern Mountain

A true magical prodigy, Strahl was accepted to Ebenholz VvZ at the age of seven, having already skipped 1st & 3rd year primary schooling (started Kindergarten at 4, skipped to 2nd grade at 5, skipped to 4th grade at 6, ended that year in 5th grade) and completed the full seven year course of study with high honors, having taken as many electives as could fit in his schedule at 14. Despite aggressive recruiting (including no less than three kidnapping attempts and one seduction) by magical colleges from around the world, he continued to Ebenholz's sister school, SUZO, having already taken advance-placement courses there to attain the rank of Zauberlehrling upon metriculation.

There his studies focused primarily on influencing the Geist, whether in the form of living minds or natural or undead spirits, and he again graduated with high honors and the rank of Zauberkunstler at 18. Taking a break from formal study Strahl wandered Europe and the Middle East for two years, working as a freelance exorcist and demon hunter, returning to test for Zauberkreiger rank. Upon attaining that certification, he entered postgraduate studies for another two years, achieving the alchemical modifications for immortality and finally recieving certification as Zaubermeister with the casting of a combined Teleport and Illusion that brought the entire staff and student body within the tower where the examination panel was taking place to the grand hall of an amazing palace of crystal overlooking a chasm where dragons played in the thermals and set them down to a feast, only to reveal it all an hour later as a city-sized illusion placed over one of the freshly-harvested fields at a nearby farm, the grand feast of exquisite food and drink nothing more than grilled sausages in buns and plain water.

Academic credentials now fully secured, Strahl intends to travel the world once more, banishing evil spirits where they appear, to find a group of worthy companions, and to have some fun with life since he now has an unlimited time to enjoy it. He'd like to get his body in better tone and improve the rate of his healing as well.

Strahl is really nifty, though a stricter DM might make disallow some of the disads (stacking daily meditation time to activate continuous Abilities) and put him up to 44-48 CP. All of his magic pertains to the mind and spirit, though Geistigfeuer ("ghostly fire," blue fireballs) and Geistschreiten ("ghost stepping," or teleportation) push that a little bit.

Now, all this isn't to say I haven't had some fun playing D&D, it's just that the game group made it fun despite lingering dissatisfaction with the characters as such, and when I get an idea for a neat game character, I reach for my BESM 2nd, or Tri-Stat SAS/Tri-Stat dX, or even the Champions Big Blue Book, not D&D, because with D&D I'm alwyas settling for the class that's least wrong and trying to tweak it the right way with feats, rather than just getting it right. At the same time, though, Tri-Stat is a little TOO simple for my taste with its eponymous three character stats; while the system I came up with on my own for NRSF is deliciously crunchy in all the right ways but too complicated to use in a pen & paper setting, it requires too much record keeping to be practical without computer assistance. The older "Game of STUPIDCOOLNESS" was worse, but intentionallly designed to "play wierd" and make use of those d12s and d30s every gamer has but never gets to roll. Well, D&D Barbarian players use a d12 when they go up a level for HP, but that's pretty much it. I'm afraid all copies of STUPIDCOOLNESS burned with the old comps in my house fire, though - at least, I've had no luck finding any trace of the one or two places I thoguh I'd posted it online.

Anyway, I think I've rambled on quite enough.

- CD,

STUPIDCOOLNESS

Never Ends

But This Post

Does.

--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

Just what it says on the tin.

http://www.touhou-project.com/th/res/144306.html]%[link=http://www.touhou-project.com/th/res/144306.html]http://www.touhou-project.com/th/res/144306.html]

- CD

ETA: Imageshack copy of just the image, for when it eventually falls off the /th/ board

%[link=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/64/yopoppawasadoghouse72.png/]
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

Slayers is epic level DnD characters wandering around... its the literal concept behind it.  So being disappointed that your mid teens characters don't measure up is actually the point.  There are reasons she has cultists at age 12 thinking she is the godess off destruction... all those bounty hunters she keeps one shotting are in there midteens.
They did make your target wanted character type... they are called Psionic Warriors.  Just use the 3rd edition version of the psionics hand book.  the 3rd and a half edition one is fully capable of making you ban psionics forever... seriously they snorted DBZ tapes when they wrote that thing..  The self healing thing is a first level power that needs an 11+ Con score and does one of three things (heal 1d8 on self, heal one point temporarily lost ability score, or +1 bonus on your next save versus posion or disease. )
Psionics are set up different from other casting classes... for instance no waste,  Abilities manifested from your power point pool (P^3).. first level cost 1 point 3 for second and so on.  There are a load of feats that are usable as long as your P^3 is high enough.  For instance, a 1st level takable one that as long as you keep a single unspent point around you get +4 armor (works versused noncorporal threats, basically always on mage armor) ability... there are furthur feats to add +2 to this as long as you keep an increasing amount in your P^3, highest applicable version works.  Add in fun things like being able to charge up walls and across the ceiling (as long as you stop on flat ground, otherwise gravity happens) and the fun of the prestige classes like the one that allows you to manifest 0-3rd level powers for free... or be fire (fire fire bolts, walk on firey foot steps through the air, toss people around with a fire whip made of fire, and turn into a fire elemental of your hit dice). Control fire (length concentration, 2nd level) lets you make things out of fire (with a scupture check) and you can off entire encounters with their own torch... lots of fun there... not counting the fun of control sound.  Its also intresting because each school of psionics has a different main stat... meaning you have to actually ponder which stat gets that every 4 levels increase.
Anyway, point buy systems have a fatal flaw... its far, far too easy to end up spending points on things that never come up again... or be forced into builds by the GM.  Personally I don't plan ahead that far, mostly because I do builds in response to what is happened to the character.  That would be because of something the dice do to the game... trends.  The first time I played my guy could only die to area effect attacks and only when level 6... It got so bad my guy  got a bonus feat in 2nd edition.... may gain level 6 cleric instantly without training the second he gets enough exp.  Considering this was a DM that favored takes X amount of days/weeks to gain level X by training... that character broke the system by existing.  Also, whenever he ran into a roll percentage effect he'd automatically roll whatever number caused him to shrink permently.
Other things include, everytime someone declared they where moving silently they walked into a physical trap, then died to the second one... after the sceond guy died that way (same player) all the psionic characters (who don't get move silently even as cross class) came to the conclusion that 'moving silently' was a code phrase for martyring myself to traps.  A running not gag of if your characters stats added up to something in the mid 70s or higher... they would die horribly to a freak run of 1s and 20s with in an hour and a half.  No exceptions... I saw a man near tears for rolling a character with 15, 16, and the all 18s as stats.  It was a beutiful death sentence.
I tried hunters once (the human side of White Wolf) and discovered a trend of alignment good (will attack me for real), neutral (knock out me out), evil (will manage to get killed the round before I get there or be completely unable to hurt me... or just though I was completly hilarious,)  It was at that point I learned the Meow Mix song was actually a detect alignment spell.  No, its more the RNG messing with the dice than the GM/DM... I've always wanted to play Paranoia... in part because I'm convinced I will somehow manage to get Freind Computer to order itself to the execution chamber entirely by dice rolls and warped logic, by accident.
As spell check is starting to ignore me I'll end this...I'll agree its likely an issue of scale your having in DnD... have you actually tried making a character that does what you want it to and seeing what level it ends up?

[classicdrogn]

Slayers is epic level DnD characters wandering around... its the literal concept behind it. 

Umm... is that canonical? Because if so, they did a really bad job of it; I can't think of a single thing in slayers that actually follows D&D mechanics - and I don't think 2e had such thing as "epic level characters" the level caps were rock solid and topped at 20. Maybe under 1st edition, I recall there were High Level and Immortals expansions, including one that declared that the official way to win D&D was to reach the max level (36th, IIRC) as a mortal, then reach the top Immortal divine rank, then be reincarnated as a mortal again. Even so... the creatures are nothing like D&D, the spells are nothing like D&D, they cast whichever spell they want when it's appropriate.... did 1e have something like 3e Sorcerers? Even then, the Slayers magicians are too good at physical combat to be operating under D&D rules. Certainly, there's no city-buster combat spells. Record of Lodoss Wars, now there's a D&D show, but pretty much everyone knows that, as it's incredibly obvious when you watch.

Even if it's true the fact that a D&D character has to be at epic levels to pull off the kind of things that happen in the first episode of an adventure anime is only proving my point that it is a poor systemic match for the kind of game I want to play. Couple that with how long it takes to get to such levles, and I'm sure you cans ee why "Sure, I'm playing a gimp now, but just wit till he hits Lv30! With the finished build, he'll be so awesome!" just isn't a satisfying statement. And yes, I know it's possible to exploit various rule combinations, like the 6th level Kobold with effectively infinite stats, HD, and every Feat, Extarordinary, Spell-Like, Psi-Like, or Supernatural ability useable at will (google "Pun-pun" for the method) but if you have to exploit rule gaps and logic loops to make a strong character, that's again, saying bad things about the rules.

As for the various tales of gaming woe... that sounds a lot like dice getting in the way of the game to me. If I was running those sessions, you can bet I'd have been fudging in the party's favor rather than let a fluke string of bad rolls repeatedly kill them off. Likewise, letting a player build a character who turns out to have hhis cool abilities useless because the circumstances where they apply never comes up is just a putz move - justified perhaps if you tell the players you plan to run a low-magic fantasy game and the player insists on putting everything into firearms, driving, and computer skills and writes a background saying he was just cornered by the apocalyptic zombie horde before falling into a random portal, thereby getting stuck in a world with no ammunition factories or automobiles, and no electricity let alone computers - though now that I write that my evul-brane wants to make the concept into something that would work - but as long as the point-buy character fits with the rough theme of the campaign, making the challenges fit the players is the whole point of HAVING a GM in the first place. Otherwise you might as well just watch a movie or read a book, becasue the plot isn't going to adapt to your actions any more than they would.

Reading this over it sounds horribly confrontational and abrupt, but I've noted before that you (Necratoid) seem to come at things from the exact opposite direction I do; which makes argument perhaps inevitable but highly valuable all the same for the ability to see "the back of my own head" so to speak in trying to follow your logic, and "see the tip of my nose" as I try to quantify and lay out my own. (At which I still feel like I've failed, since there's still just something I can't identify that screams "No! No! No! Not right!" at me when tyring to work in D&D rules) Of course, this is the internet, so obviously anyone who disagrees with me is wrong and bad and unworthy (yes, I'm kidding!) no matter what logic or anecdotes or bare facts say.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Disruptor]

Lina Inverse is a super-hero. The Slayers setting would be more in line with a Super Hero RPG. Amy Winston/Amethyst along with Gemworld point to the fact that Slayers is actually fantasy super-heroes. Take a look at what all Lina can do. She can fly, she can blast stuff with energy, fairly strong(tossing a boulder at a werewolf). Lina Inverse is Supergirl

Record of the Lodoss Wars would be more in line with Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition.

The Young Ones from the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon can't be done in D&D 2nd either. You need to use a modified D20 system, like BESM D20 or Mutants & Masterminds.
--------------------
Tom Mathews aka Disruptor

[robkelk]

Considering Slayers predates D&D3e, it was written (and turned into an anime) long before the epic-level D&D rules were written.

Likewise, Record of Lodoss War predates AD&D Second Edition.

It's possible that the stories inspired the games, but unless somebody at TSR had a time machine, the games didn't inspire the stories.

Oh, yes... Back in the day, before all these new-fangled things like the World-Wide Web were around, I often remarked that Lodoss showed a typical D&D campaign while Slayers showed a typical D&D PC party (of the munchkin sort, but that's all there was back then)...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[classicdrogn]

I had the BESM Slayers book, but never got to read it before everything burned since I got it just before moving and then never unpacked that box - I found a scrap of the cover in the ashes and yelled obscenities for a few minutes.

Ugh, i need to stop talking about that. I'm still hung up on the lost stuff, and it just puts me in a worse mood the more often I think about it, even a year later.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Necratoid]

You'll have to tell me if I'm off base here, but from what I can tell, its not the point buy system specifically you like so much... but the GM story telling style.  Point buy systems, from what I've seen, tend to rely on the cinematic story telling method rather than interactive or hard data keeping.  Things like a resource stat rather than actually solid monetary values.  You roll the dice and depending on the number of successes you succeed or fail, the margin of fail to win determines how things turn out.  Its sounds like you feel the flow of the narrative is interrupted by the tables and specific rules for events in DnD style games.

Personally I find, at least with d10 style games, that this means I don't need dice at all... I need coins to flip.  Unless I put all my exp into a single stat and speciallize... then I get bonuses for how well I suceed... more coins to flip, but only sometimes.  Its closer to chosing your own adventure than roll playing for me.  Its hurry up and wait manifest.  At least with DnD I can micromanage my character sheet or plot specific actions, then remember/look up/ask what specifically I need to roll to do so.  On other people's turn I can think of what they should be doing.  Its why I actually like to have the occasional quick time event during over long FMV segments in game, I get bored doing very little.

With cinematic play I put out an often vague action and get told what I did relative to the narrative.  two minutes of press 'X' to attack and steer around... spend twenty minutes or so of unskipable videos.  Basically, I find it fairly mindless.  I am extremely bad at mindless and reptile brain level functioning.  I have to be doing something else at the same time.  Its the reason I can't do traditional meditation... attempting to clear my mind just fails.  If I clear out the front of my mind, something else moves to the forefront.  Then something else and so on.  I need a check list.  I need a reason.  Turning off my brain is not going to occur.  On the other hand let me grind levels in a game, thus tying up parts of my mind with busy work and I can clear my mind.,, or close enough to it.  I had to with drawl from a class once as we got the notes handed to us and were suppose to watch the teacher lecture (in a droning tone) for the entire class... I remember sitting down and sitting up at the end of class... for all I know I was abducted by aliens in the middle.

---

Maybe I should try rephrasing what I meant.  Its not a matter of PK DM, the DM did actually fudge things for the players, if it was stupid.  For instance, minor dex checks that could lead the party to lpointless lethal falls and such.  The high starting stats were just cursed to the point of semioffical house rule.  Rube-Goldberg killed those characters just as much as direct lucky atatacks... like a player cuts off someone's sword hand midfight, the direction it goes flying is randomly dice determined by a d8... it heads torwards the high stat player... who badly fails a reflex to dodge the blade... so it gets and attack role... which is a triple 20/critical... and that is how the party got a vorpal sword.  It wasn't that the DM wouldn't allow resurection or anything... it was a running gag that those characters died repeatedly and pointlessly.  It was a house rule that you didn't bother to res them as they'd just keep dieing in often silly ways.  It was just distracting.

As I said before, I find campaigns have treands to them.  Another example was that the DM had a campaign where nothing much was critable.  It had lots of undead varients at us from any random source he ever saw.  One of the characters had a mercural great sword (it has a hollow in the center full of mercury and it increases the weapon's momentum)... which required an exotic weapon profieceny to use... you also had to get lucky to find one.  it did 2d8 damage (later books labeled it as 2d6) and 4x crits, but only on a 20 did it have a critical risk.  We had the party's main tank with that thing (and a magicly raised to 20 strength).  Creatures that you could crit got rare enough that the player would ask if any new thing was critable (this included some of the undead)... if it was that sword would critical hit.  It was not enchanted, but with its hunger for crits it was almost an deranged ego weapon.  One time we ran into something stupidly above (8-10 levels) the party's levels and it got to buff itself full on before attacking.  It knew it had us.  Woe betide it, it was critable and having over a hundred HP survived the first crit.  The DM praised the dice gods it couldn't risk death from massive damage...  then it wiffed on its attack that round.  The sword critted a second time... and the DM started laughing (hands in the air gazing at the ceiling) about why we would ever fear it.  Granted it was a large war party of 12 or 14 of us, so we could have taken it with losses, but the sword's critical hunger must be fed.

--

Slayers is inspired by not a hard rules variant of DnD.  Other things (it was a parody of high fantasy in general) are involved, but the feel of it is epic level, player characters doing stuff.  This included the DM fudging the rules for the sake of the campaign.  Take, for instance, in Try the point when Lina responded to immune to everything, wall of plot armor Dark Star and Lina goes screw it and decides its Giga Slave time.  I can just see a different DM with the group running TRY... at that moment Lina starts casting asks to see the what spell she is casting... Realizes that its not the Slayers section of the staff that is in danger of oblivian, but his own personal section of the staff.... Almayce is opening channeling the DM's reaction as he is reading said spell and realizing his entire campaign's railroad is about about to drive over the Yellowstone Caldera as it spontaniously erupts.

There are a couple of blatant tells for DnD influence... for instance orcs in Slayers are dumb as rocks and are pigheaded (literally), this is not Lord of the Rings (the standard for old style orcs), but how orcs started off in DnD and as far as I know, exclusive to early.  Fireballs are explosive and not flaming sling stones.  The way Naga and Lina handled a hundred level dungeon, they earth magiced a hole to the bottom levels and levitated downward.  All the good stuff is at the bottom of the dungeon after all.  In the Slayers' Nintendo games, you got exp for eating and beating up team mates.  The eating is probably part party members are challenge rating their level and an old, now abandoned rule from second edition: treasure exp.  Find Treasure get Exp.  Thieves leveled like mad as according to these rules, making pickpocket checks on your party members and pickpocketing their treasure meant you 'found' the treasure thus got treasure exp.  Hand it back (or better yet pickpocket to plant the item on them) then swipe it again and again.  This is why there is the X days/weeks rule to train to level X.  Otherwise Thieves got level 40 in a session or two and the party was stuck at level 3-6.  Some items are worth hundreds or thousands of treasure exp.  Its why exp requirements get crazy high real fast.

Second edition did have 'epic' level modes.  It had monster manuals for that... I remember one creature that I think was from the para/demi elemental plane of vacuum, it was near Xorn in the MM.  Saving multiple saving throws verses death per round were involved or you imploded into it.  I had a friend who's campaign ended up getting far off the rails and involved managing to consecrate 4 or 5 levels of the nine hells.  The DM ended up resorting to the next level turtling up and putting an absurdly large (read mile wide), teleport trap on that next level.  In games like 'Pools of Darkness', the level cap was 40.  However, there was a knight class... which had a 3 tier system.... with you could stop being a lower level knight tier and rank up.  However you got blocked from using the previous classes abilities... I think until your level matches the highest in the previous class... meaning you could effectively hit level 120.  Giving you insane HP.

[classicdrogn]

Flockaducks. I had a nice beefy reply written, then the browser went pif and it vanished. The only part I care about enough to recreate is that I hate resource ranks and love book-keepy combat, but D&D character creation is like trying to draw with three "designer color" ballpoints (purple, pink, and teal,) a greenish-yellow highlighter, and a stick of charcoal, while BESM is like a nice fat pack of Crayolas (the 64-color box, frex) with many options and many ways to blend them into the shade you want even if they are a bit blunt, and the benchmark (for gaming, that's Mekton Zeta Plus for me) being a 128-color set of finely-sharpened colored pencils.

You can make ANYTHING in Mekton, from a pistol that fires Nuclear Bullets with a 2m blast radius (and is ridiculously cheap, being at the top of the MZ+ Abuse List) to Tupperware, a mountain (complete with wildlife and a spring-fed waterfall,) or a banana creme pie. I've heard similar things about GURPS only in even more detail, but never found the GURPS core rulebook for sale at the same time I had disposable funds. Either that, or perhaps my Resource rank is just too low for my Contacts to even bother offering it. Or something. Maybe I should put some UPs in Logistics or Blackmarket?

- CD, prays daily for access to his Character menu and its tabs
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bob Schroeck]

I've heard similar things about GURPS only in even more detail, but never found the GURPS core rulebook for sale at the same time I had disposable funds.

That might be a bit of an exaggeration. And some builds require more than the core rulebook. But... yeah. For Shapeshifters I basically designed "Ryo-Ohki as an SUV" for one of the sample characters.  And that's far from the hardest thing to do in the system.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[classicdrogn]

Oh, of course there's more to do in GURPS than you'll find in the corebook - entire bookshelves worth of settings and options and variants and so on, your (Bob's) own IST being a notable example - but without the core rules, there's not a whole lot of point in getting the rest...

As for Slayers and D&D, I'll note that a bit of research discovers that in the GoO D20 Slayers book, Lina is listed as Lv19 at the end of the first series ranging up to Lv23 at the end of Try - but they use completely new classes for everything but Rogue, and even that is heavily modified enough to get a complete listing. Apparently, the only thing you'll actually use from the basic Player's Hand Book is that one table that's not included in the SRD saying how much experience it takes to gain a level, and when you get new Feats and Stat bumps.

d20 still rubs me the wrong way, even so, though less so in the Slayers version. I do not like it, Sam I Am. (Not even after trying it.)

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

A visit to the SJG website has netted me a copy of GURPS 4e Lite, to take a look at the system (as well as several other freebies - yay loot!) and I have to say that it looks pretty good. Making contested rolls by margin of success seems a little of - if two people are arm wrestling, one with Strength 6 and the other 10, and they roll (in order) 4 and 9, the guy barely half as strong still wins? I suppose it could happen if the strong guy hadn't been sitting properly braced and tipped on the edge of his chair or something, an that means Mr. 4 rolled much better given it's 3d6... (or, and I have to say I love this terminology, "d666") Compared to D&D and most computer RPGs Hit Points are Low with a capital L, but then the RPG contention that you can get hit a dozen or more times with a longsword and not be seriously inconvenienced is one of the more ridiculous in the first place, and not really borne out by most fiction, either - oh, sure, the heroes get nicks and sctratches that generate a dramatic blood stain all the time, but any solid hit will usually be cause for at least a quick breather scene to bandage up and recover, and/or not using the arm with the wounded shoulder/limping on the leg with the through-and-through to the thigh/etc. for a while. Exceptions (such as those who fall into the Determinator trope) are specifically showing off their baddassery in having a high Health and High Pain Threshold.

Judging by the skills listed in Lite, I'm a probably a 30pt character, maybe 50 at max unless you want to count instances of "I dreamed about this happening" deja vu as psychic premonitions. (Which I don't since a neurological basis for deja vu has been adequately documented and I well know how unreliable my memory is.) This is depressing, when a "typical low power, modern game" with detectives or whatever is 100 points.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bob Schroeck]

Drogn, 100-point characters in GURPS are already heroic, movie-protagonist-at-the-start-of-their-story level. "Ordinary" folks tend to be 25 to 50 points -- which puts you right square in the proper range.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[classicdrogn]

Drogn, 100-point characters in GURPS are already heroic, movie-protagonist-at-the-start-of-their-story level. "Ordinary" folks tend to be 25 to 50 points -- which puts you right square in the proper range.

So a second perusal has confirmed. I have decided that I like this system. If I ever manage to find some money to spare, I'll probably order electronic copies from e23 - Bob, would you reccomend anyhing in specific beyond Basic Set and Supers to go with International Super Teams? And, will those cover enough between them on the gizmo front to do superheroic robots, ala classic Transformers? I don't care about the weight of the paint or specific powerplant output, just the basic "big robot humanoids, heavy armor, death rays & alternate forms." Really, given how classic TFs all had a unique power and the mystically provided "souls" (whether you call them "laser cores" like g1 or "sparks" like everything since Beasties) they're much better done as odd superheroes than traditional robots.

Spider Man guest-starred in the first issue of their comics, too, so there's even in-continuity justification, though arguing continuities is apt to bring fans to blows when it comes to TFs. The US G1 cartoon alone features a minimum of three, considering that in various episodes, Megatron created the Constructicons, the Constructicons created Megatron, and the Constructicons never met Megatron until he attacked them on ancient Cybertron with his evilizer device. It's worse than Doctor Who!

-CD, would be including "Obsession: transforming robot toys" on that character sheet
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bob Schroeck]

Bob, would you reccomend anyhing in specific beyond Basic Set and Supers to go with International Super Teams?

Mm. I wrote IST to incorporate SuperTemps and Super Scum, but neither is mandatory (nor do I know if e23 even offers them). Magic helps if you want to do Dr. Strange-level wizards. Shapeshifters has the last 3rd edition attempt at shapechanging rules, which -- if I do say so myself -- finally got it pretty much right (at least close enough so that the mechanics were brought into 4E). Ultratech has good superscience toys, and High Tech is good for equipping the normals -- but again, neither is required.

And, will those cover enough between them on the gizmo front to do superheroic robots, ala classic Transformers?

Oh, yeah. If you don't want to use Vehicles and its piddly pound-and-point juggling, it's more than enough. And Shifters will have everything you need for transforming robots.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[classicdrogn]

Yeah, at $19.99 the 3e basic set PDF is just a leeeetle more affordable than the 4th edition. If that, Supers, IST, and Shifters will cover me (and get Bob a buck or two of residuals,) with option on Supertemps and Superscum if I can find/afford them later, maybe I'll actually get a chance to play sometime again. (Everyone around here has been playing Pathfinder, which I don't want to spend money on since I know d20 is a poor fit for my taste, and as previously noted have turned down attempts to start a Mekton game as "too wargamey," and BESM as "kiddie." Though where the heck they get that idea... maybe because it was used for the Sailor Moon RPG and Big Ears Small Mouse, but it was Hellsing TV and VOTOMS as well for crying out loud... GURPS though, has a pedigree.) Though I suppose there's probably play-by-post or -email groups that I could join now that I'm online once more.

- CD

ETA: IST and a 4e adaptation guide for Infinite Worlds are on e23, Shapeshifters is not

ETA2: Ooh, ooh, have you watched Tiger & Bunny? It covers the corporate sponsored supers concept like Supertemps, from what the summaries of each say - I've had it in a "watch RSN" browser tab (It's on Hulu) but haven't gotten around to it yet.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[ECSNorway]

GURPS Vehicles

Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[firvulag]

You know, I only ever tried the cut down version of the rules in GURPS Mecha a couple of times, never the full on Vehicles construction rules and I can still feel the tentacles writhing through my mind.  The scariest thing though, was that our regular GM back then would stat out every vehicle in the game he was current;y running, or was considering running.  He actually seemed to enjoy it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to find a corner to gibber in.
--
Sure, the U.S. has created amazing amounts of crap, but nothing
compares with the sheer horror of those two words.
  WILLIAM.  SHATNER.
-- Mark "Kamikaze" Hughes on Canada

[ECSNorway]

My issue with GURPS is that it makes a LOT of basic assumptions about how things work in the game world that are actually anything but one-size-fits-all. For example, take the magic system. A specific list of schools of magic and specific spells in each? If you're presenting for one specific world, sure. If you want to do something in a world with different laws of magic? Hell no. It'd be like trying to build Belgarion in d20. You just can't do it.

The vehicle rules are not only incredibly math-heavy (you need a spreadsheet and multiple cube roots), but make basic assumptions on things like engine weight and fuel efficiency, mass of components, types of components available. Again, if you're building for a specific world, that's fine, but for a game marketed as Generic Universal Role-Playing System? F**K no.

GURPS is neither Generic nor Universal, it is an amalgamation of a hundred specific worlds with a separate rulebook for each. GURPS Fantasy is not a generic fantasy supplement, it is a worldbook for RP'ing in the "GURPS Fantasy" 'verse and caters to that world's methodology only.

It's not for me. Suggesting a game using GURPS is in fact an active turnoff for me. If John Biles invited me to a GURPS Sailor Moon game, I'd have to think twice about it.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[classicdrogn]

My issue with GURPS is that it makes a LOT of basic assumptions about how things work in the game world that are actually anything but one-size-fits-all. For example, take the magic system. A specific list of schools of magic and specific spells in each? If you're presenting for one specific world, sure. If you want to do something in a world with different laws of magic? Hell no. It'd be like trying to build Belgarion in d20. You just can't do it.

The vehicle rules are not only incredibly math-heavy (you need a spreadsheet and multiple cube roots), but make basic assumptions on things like engine weight and fuel efficiency, mass of components, types of components available. Again, if you're building for a specific world, that's fine, but for a game marketed as Generic Universal Role-Playing System? F**K no.

Realize first off that I'm basically working off what you wrote above and a generic Grognard Lore skill check, but this sounds like an example of inconsistent game design between supplements (likely written by entirely different people for different ends) rather than a failing of the system as a whole - which is, indeed, something that would be sent back for revision and normalization in a perfect world by the Gods of Continuity Edit. Given the choice I usually go for more crunch, myself, so the revelation that GURPS Magic is based on a "pick a list, then pick from the list" system is indeed a setback, but honestly it's hard to quantify a really flexible magic system under a point-buy model beyond "I buy Magic for 50 points, so I can cast a spell with any effect the GM agrees is no more powerful than other 50pt advantages." You can then provide a list of examples at various price points, but that's basically just back to the lists method. One possibility is dropping a separate magic sourcebook entirely, and instead using a "Must be cast as spell" limitation on superpowers, with some extra notes and/or rules on how many spells you can know or have ready to cast or whatever at once and how long to switch them out or invent a new one. This is how Champions 4th and BESM do it, and I'm honestly shocked that GURPS doesn't follow this model given the premise of being generic and universal.

Aside: I'd just like to express my intense dissappointment that Champions Online uses the list of lists method for building powers, and in the form of what amounts to a level/class system for free play at that, rather than the PnP version point buy. Why even call it Champions at that point? I read that page in the Game Guide and just closed the browser window in disgust.

I can't speak to GURPS Vehicles, as all I know of it is its reputation as mind-bendingly complex.

GURPS is neither Generic nor Universal, it is an amalgamation of a hundred specific worlds with a separate rulebook for each. GURPS Fantasy is not a generic fantasy supplement, it is a worldbook for RP'ing in the "GURPS Fantasy" 'verse and caters to that world's methodology only.

... isn't being an amalgamation of a hundred different worlds pretty much the definition of generic and universal? Well, maybe not quite the latter, since there will lways be something that's just not feasible in any ruleset, but it seems like a pretty good stab at trying.

It's not for me. Suggesting a game using GURPS is in fact an active turnoff for me. If John Biles invited me to a GURPS Sailor Moon game, I'd have to think twice about it.

Of course! Nothing is going to please everyone, and wouldn't things be dull if they did? Out of curiosity, what systems do you like for gaming?

Given how very derailed this thread has gotten from fanart (and I'm probably the worst offender in that respect) perhaps it should be moved to General Chatter? Unless doing so is a hassle, of course.

- CD

Edits mainly to fix quoteboxes
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Bob Schroeck]

Given how very derailed this thread has gotten from fanart (and I'm probably the worst offender in that respect) perhaps it should be moved to General Chatter?

I was thinking this very thing yesterday, and only getting distracted kept it from happening. Moving thread now.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

GURPS Vehicles

Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.

What, your calculator doesn't have a cube-root key?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Foxboy]

4e does have some changes that help a bit, even if technically you need to grab two books (Magic and Thaumatology) to get "generic" magic.

In fact, I know I've done the same mage fluff-wise at wildly different point levels based on different systems.

School-List "default" Magic (One Skill per Spell)
Improvisational "School Skill" (25-30 skills to cast everything)
Single-skill Magic (Varying roll penalties for different spells)
"Super Powers" (works kind of like HERO system, using Basic Set 4e and Powers. 4e Supers is more of a "these are the genre directives and how to use the Basic Set and Powers to make your hero!")

The "generic" books for 4e tend to be more generic than even 3e, focusing more on genre conventions than settings, even if they usually have a chapter with a sample setting.

The core assumption of 4e is that folks are doing an Infinite Worlds campaign. There's still plenty of space for one-world settings, but a lot of the flavor text makes the assumption. Fantasy Includes an Infinite Worlds-style write up for "Roma Arcana" or a High Fantasy Rome. However, there's more than enough in the 4e Fantasy book that one isn't beholden to that specific setting. 3e's Fantasy setting is now its own book, Banestorm.

SJGames has yet to release the 4e equivalent of the Math-gasm like Vehicles or Mecha, but from write-ups in 4e Space they're focusing more on the end results than the Engineering.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll