Listen, Jim. I watch Matt Colville, so 20 minutes is nothing! I actually loved a little length on this, as this sort of video I think needs that extra length to really get into the meat and potatoes of Character Creation (especially when you've had a decent amount of years to play). Keep up the great work, my friend. And try not to melt! :D
Jim, just wanted to let you know that I dont typically comment on youtube, but Im very happy with the videos you make and appreciate the time you put into them. I find the stories and advice very helpful
Jim, your stories of gaming back in the day are my favourite thing about your channel. :) My grandmother's house was the hub for our neighborhood gaming. My Uncle, 8 years my senior, and all of his friends would come over and I would DM for them all night long.
DragonQuest! We loved that game. It was our house rule set for years in college, particularly after so many of us had burned-out on D&D. Now having a lot of fun with the TFT reboot, which is very similar to DQ. Many thanks for hipping us to it.
In terms of the classic Player Types, I am mostly an Actor/Power Gamer hybrid: I want them to be effective enough in combat that they don't die unduly in a fight, but I also need them to be more than just a bundle of mechanics. Ideally, they can use some combination of their personality and abilities in all three pillars of play, either by helping other PCs out or hyping them up or by contributing directly. Though I tend to try to balance this in ways that help the DM as well; as a DM myself, I know the struggle (especially a newer DM trying to wrangle my herd of cats). My favorite class/background combos reflect this, either by imposing some sort of lens my character views the world through or placing some sort of expectation on them (like with the noble background or the cleric class)
Im really glad you make these kinds of videos, to me the value of the perspective of the experienced player and gm/dm is priceless. One day i hope to put everything ive learned into my own games.
I've started "liking" your videos before I even start watching them. Now I'm going to also comment before I hit the play button. Might not even be relevant to this video, but here it is. I play D&D with what are essentially "strangers". We play at our local game store, I run the game once a week for anyone who shows up and also in a private area in the back for enthusiasts. That's all the D&D I get. For that and other reasons, my characters are required to use standard array or point buy for stats, and get their starting equipment from their class and background. This keeps it fair for everyone. I'm otherwise pretty generous with allowing people to use whatever character creation options they can find in official source books. It's a different game, we don't really have time to indulge in some of the type of role playing that more personal home games with friends might involve, such as things involving in-game romances or individual character drama. This is to avoid any appearance at favoritism. The game open to the public is probably about 10% social interaction, 30% exploration, and 60% combat. The private games are probably a bit more balanced. I haven't gotten to play with friends at home in about 15 years. We all grew up and went our separate ways, and I just got back into the hobby with 5th edition. Maybe one day some of these people will actually become friends, but I kind of like keeping them all at arm's length. A lot of them don't even know my name, and honestly that suits me just fine. Now, to watch the video!
I'm so glad to find another person who believes armor should reduce damage inflicted rather than make your character harder to hit. I'm also pleased to hear that we share an interest in not only The Fantasy Trip but DragonQuest and RuneQuest as well. I am unhappy to hear of your health issues and the unbearable heat, so I do hope all goes well and that your health and the heat both improve as quickly as possible. TFT, DQ, and RQ are the kind of systems where the mechanics seem more logical and realistic to me than abstracting armor and dexterity as both making you harder to hit. I can still enjoy D&D, but I have a soft spot for the "armor as damage reduction" model. What I've gathered from lurking in the Steve Jackson Games forums is that Steve is making some revisions to The Fantasy Trip, such as armor will probably be equalized so that hits stopped equals the DX penalty unless you have exceptions such as Fine Plate. Thus Half Plate will stop 4 Hits for -4 DX and Plate will stop 5 Hits for -5 DX rather than the old DX penalties of -5 and -6 respectively. My own house rule would be to take advantage of these lower DX penalties by allowing the layering of Cloth and maybe Leather Armor underneath other armors so long as you factor in the DX penalty from all armors worn. This would allow some simulation of wearing a gambeson underneath mail, for instance. Perhaps this is somewhere in the original rules, but I'm forgetting if it is, or it may be that all suits of armor assume a layer of padding beneath the hard outer layer. In any case, I'm really looking forward to this blast from the past coming back to the future DeLorean style!
i mean... in a way armor stops things from hitting you, and since i mostly play heavy armor characters, i consider it just that, every point in my AC is 5% of the die's chance to hit. personally though i used to be upset over how high AC can be with Dex characters compared to armor that is expensive, heavy, and takes time to put on and off... but at the same time they're likely not 20 dex maxed out at the beginning... and also i cna get heavy armor mastery, access to shields and access to higher damaging weapons. so personally i consider it a trade off now. sure the rouge gets sneak attack dice but at most the rapier is 1d8, my greataxe is 1d12, my halberd is 1d10, and great weapon fighting is mm mmm mm~
This discussion all depends on what you mean with "to hit" though. In D&D it's abstracted to mean whether you take damage or not, not the act of physically striking the target which armor reduction system use. To me it's very much to do with being more practical in a leveling system where damage and hit points increase so dramatically and the points of damage the armor stops would have to scale up somehow to be relevant at all levels.
well with how dnd's health system works i'd point towards that as how effectively a character can endure damage... even without raging a barbarian will have the most hit points most likely, next are paladins and fighters then you have the average d8 dice that most classes get and then finally sorcerer and wizards have a d6 of hp per level... i would feel this system is a good balance and game play representation of taking hits. sure you can have an archer but is that archer a rouge d8? or a fighter d10? and again both barbarian and heavy armor users get to make use of the lovely feat known as HAM, i am honestly surprised the cleric in my group hasnt grabbed it... maybe he feels his massive health pool doesnt need the resistance??? but ehh... following jim murpheys advice ive been liberally throwing minions at the players whether they'd have 1 hit point or not. (kobolds are a great 1 hit minion, next is goblins once the players have some good damages, and im saving a 1 hit minion situation once the players start getting to like 40-50 minions in a room) but personally i had a paladin for a one shot, he had like 2 con? i roll for his health starting at level 3 and he gets 2 ones, because its a oneshot im more than happy keepign it... he has 16 health lvl 3... XD anyways, when the dm wanted to make that one shot into a campaign, i kept the character, kept his low health and simply grabbed HAM as his first feat, and it was making the greatest use of his health, suddenly he became a very capable front line fighter, able to take hits much more effectively and became the essential tank of a party of two, then 3 players. i would not shy away from that -3 health on nonmagical weapons... hell just seeing that as resistance is a worry to a party with only a few ways to combat that.
Thank you to everyone for contributing to the discussion! I do still enjoy D&D very much for how it makes characters feel heroic being able to shrug off so many potentially fatal wounds. I am not criticizing it all, and I don't think it is inferior. All I meant to say was that I prefer systems using a damage reduction model for armor. This normally means that character hit points are more limited than in D&D, sometimes with body parts being able to sustain even fewer points of damage than a character's total hit points. It's all personal preference, and I would happily join any of you for a game of The Fantasy Trip, DragonQuest, RuneQuest, or Dungeons & Dragons. Game on, everyone, and have fun no matter what system you use!
Steve Numerator in mine armor is a system nearly as hard as magic. It deflects, covers, resists and absorbs blows as well as encumbering, restricting and limiting movement. Most players don’t use armor, they just leave when it gets hot
Matt Coville has an interesting concept of what hit points mean. It's not just a reflection of how much damage you take. You might call them "heroic points" instead of hit points, the idea being that you expend energy performing some crazy stunt that allows you to avoid taking any serious damage that would put you out of the fight and when you run out of hit points you run out of fancy tricks.
@Jim Thank you for the tips. My cousin and I will be trying out Warding Bond this weekend. I am an assassin, and he is a cleric. The plan is to have me sneak in, assassinate, and be able to make it out alive! :D Hope you do more of these videos!
After watching, I will comment to say that I skipped 4th edition, got the PHB and DMG and thought it was interesting but never played it. The game I am running that is open to the public is set in the Mythic Odysseys of Theros, which is a parallel of the ancient Greek setting, converted from a Magic The Gathering setting. It's a lot of fun. The private game is in Forgotten Realms, a place that has changed a lot since I played it back in the day. We will always return there, but I look forward to exploring new realms as well.
I definitely try and optimize characters but usually built towards a thing that maybe is not the "meta" best. Like, if I want to be good at persuasion, I'll do that the best way possible, but I don't look up builds or anything. Although I did recently learn there is a hilarious build that lets you get like 120+ tiny servants that I secretly want to try.
Vonlyn (sp?) Could play wingman, ie roll assists, letting you get in on the rp without soloing charisma encounters. I played a 4e pacifist cleric back then for the same pass-the-spotlight reasons you play support. It was fun, he was honed, and his heals were indeed overwhelming. Mirin, Tome carrier of The Traveller, you rocked.
I started role-playing way back with fantasy trip Melee and Wizard. We played it for years and in my opinion it’s still one of the best dungeon crawl games out there. Simple and elegant 3d6 system. You could make a character in literally 3 minutes on a scrap of paper.
Jim, for the life of me I’ve been trying to remember for months where I’ve seen that knight hanging on the wall before, and then it occurred to me it was years ago at the CSULB library! I’m assuming that it’s not the same one. Just had to mention this. Always enjoy the videos. Happy gaming!
Re: College of Swords Bard, I run a Dualist Bard in a fried’s campaign and he’s the party Healer/Buffer (I hate playing clerics). He doesn’t get to fight often but he’s nasty in combat.
If you're still interesting in trying a system where armor soaks damage, and characters are powerful out of the gate, give Fantasy AGE, by Green Ronin, a look.
At first it feels like too literal of interpretation with armor in D&D, for you to say armor makes you harder to hit and does not stop damage, but I’m curious what you mean more specifically. Because my idea of it is that you can say when your opponent misses the attack roll, that’s when your armor stopped the damage. And then flavor taking damage as ineffective armor and dodging. Are you saying like a knight in plate armor who gets hit with an arrow vs one who’s hit with a hammer with the same damage dice should be taking a different amount of damage?
One of the best low level combinations from my experience is a Circle of the Moon Druid/Totem of the Bear Barbarian who tends to combo a rage with a Brown Bear wildshape. You get a character that has a ton of HP, is taking reduced damage from everything while raging, gets multi-attack early as long as he's in his bear form, and is relatively simple to play.
Calinas the Necromancer. Druids could be so much more fun with their powers being connected to animals they run into instead of a starting build. Just as finding magical items is a crap shoot for what they can give you, absorbing animal traits from animals you contact in the wild can offer random abilities that enjoyable because they aren't perfectly under your control. Example: There aren't any bears to wildshape into but you run into a dear, or a owl, or something else. Now getting to turn into a bear is a great source of luck (if you need fighting power) instead of something every player can(and will) do at the start.
The length was not a problem at all! I love to hear your wisdom. I have benefited from it so much. I had a question for you though, why do you not enjoy clerics as characters? How do they not stack up with the other characters you demonstrated?
I would love to get back into 4th edition then. I have a soft spot in my heart for clerics. It may be because I am one in real life or as close as you can be.
My main game is Dungeon World, and for some reason, completely independently (or so they say) they all basically made anime characters (we’ve got a firebender from Avatar (Immolator class) a character that’s pretending to be a psychic from Mob Psycho 101 (Rogue class) and an anthropomorphic fox (Fighter class). When you die in Dungeon World, you roll Last Breath and if you get a partial success, Death makes you a deal. They’ve come to a city to track down a vampire at Deaths request, and I took this opportunity to introduce the local psychics (who I called the Ghostbusters, as I wasn’t feeling creative at that point) in order to challenge the fake psychic. We haven’t played again since they challenged him. The firebender said his character was a convicted criminal back home (hence why they have come to this land), so I’m going to introduce the ones chasing him in the next session. Meanwhile the guy that died and got a deal to go kill a vampire is running around trying to find and kill the vampire before he kills again.
Good vid! I'm wondering, can you explain the Bard Duelist build a bit? Is it a homebrew/3rd party duelist archetype college or a dip into duelist fighting style?
The troupe style play is something my group and I are just now trying out. It’s a little foreign to them coming from snowflakey 5e PCs, but really enjoying watching NPCs bubble up into characters that the players can pickup and develop as they wish.
“Snowflakey 5e PCs” ??? Why does that specifically have 5e attached to it? Snowflake PCs far predates the current edition. Pretty sure that started with 3e, but not sure.
Starting as a hero is one of the reasons I didn't like 4e, to a lesser extent 5e. I like starting as a nobody and becoming great... earning my class name was a wonderful thing. XD
tbh, in 5e, heavy AC is actually flat out better than dex armor, and always has the option to be upgraded with HAM, which will in fact stop damage, while you can have reasonable high AC with Dex characters ive found that the fact theyre based off of stats to really be a hindrance, also comparatively you can get HAM, and STR builds allow for the best, heaviest hitting, reach having, weapons in the game... i used to hate Dex vs Str AC in dnd but i love it now and have had far more characters not only built this way but i was always wondering "is the DM *TRYING* not to hit me???", now as the DM, i can proudly say "no, just that AC of yours is so high most the attacks fail."
true true, but if i have a good spare score i might just give that character a good dex score too. im currenlty having a halfling/halforc fighter with 14 dex still going heavy armor. its simply more AC
The odd thing, and maybe this is due to critical role, is fighters are quite uncommon in my circles. I've just started, but of the dozen people I play with or talk to, nobody is a fighter. Maybe the pendulum just swings when and where it wants
Dragon Quest is the name of a videogame that is much more popular than DragonQuest and it is giving me some trouble finding the tabletop game for sale.
Jim Murphy awesome! What did you think about their mechanics? I personally really like how ballistic skill and weapons skill are their own separate stats that determine hit chance. In D& D, the "higher strength = higher chance to hit with melee" convention never really felt right for me. Anyways, thanks for responding, Game Methuselah! And I really hope you and Matt get to play more d&d on camera and off because I get the feeling you both are quite a Dynamic Duo 😃
Andrew Matsiev I have a lot of fun playing with Matt. His whole group were fun gamers and Matt’s love for the hobby is infectious. As for systems, I like many, but the problem is getting people to play them when so many others in the wilderness
Glad to hear it! I have had some success with taking more of a backseat with a bard character by playing a "speaker for the dead" style character or some other sort of niche style public speaker. Really helps when I am trying to limit how much I speak in the party while still giving me a clear cut case and motivation for when I join conversations. Thanks for your thoughts on your experience with party dynamics.
Listen, Jim. I watch Matt Colville, so 20 minutes is nothing! I actually loved a little length on this, as this sort of video I think needs that extra length to really get into the meat and potatoes of Character Creation (especially when you've had a decent amount of years to play). Keep up the great work, my friend. And try not to melt! :D
TheNerdySimulation thanks for the support
Jim, just wanted to let you know that I dont typically comment on youtube, but Im very happy with the videos you make and appreciate the time you put into them. I find the stories and advice very helpful
Taylor Johnson thank you, hope to continue to be of service. The main value of age is knowledge & experience, hope I can share a little.
Jim, your stories of gaming back in the day are my favourite thing about your channel. :)
My grandmother's house was the hub for our neighborhood gaming. My Uncle, 8 years my senior, and all of his friends would come over and I would DM for them all night long.
At this point, I think all of your tales about table top RPGs(as both DM and player) would make an entertaining video series.
Eddie Tokunai I’ll give another a shot!
DragonQuest! We loved that game. It was our house rule set for years in college, particularly after so many of us had burned-out on D&D. Now having a lot of fun with the TFT reboot, which is very similar to DQ. Many thanks for hipping us to it.
always love Jim's vids, his passion is infectious and always gets me pumped to work on my own games!
In terms of the classic Player Types, I am mostly an Actor/Power Gamer hybrid:
I want them to be effective enough in combat that they don't die unduly in a fight, but I also need them to be more than just a bundle of mechanics. Ideally, they can use some combination of their personality and abilities in all three pillars of play, either by helping other PCs out or hyping them up or by contributing directly. Though I tend to try to balance this in ways that help the DM as well; as a DM myself, I know the struggle (especially a newer DM trying to wrangle my herd of cats).
My favorite class/background combos reflect this, either by imposing some sort of lens my character views the world through or placing some sort of expectation on them (like with the noble background or the cleric class)
Im really glad you make these kinds of videos, to me the value of the perspective of the experienced player and gm/dm is priceless. One day i hope to put everything ive learned into my own games.
Colin Bremner great goal
I've started "liking" your videos before I even start watching them. Now I'm going to also comment before I hit the play button. Might not even be relevant to this video, but here it is. I play D&D with what are essentially "strangers". We play at our local game store, I run the game once a week for anyone who shows up and also in a private area in the back for enthusiasts. That's all the D&D I get. For that and other reasons, my characters are required to use standard array or point buy for stats, and get their starting equipment from their class and background. This keeps it fair for everyone. I'm otherwise pretty generous with allowing people to use whatever character creation options they can find in official source books. It's a different game, we don't really have time to indulge in some of the type of role playing that more personal home games with friends might involve, such as things involving in-game romances or individual character drama. This is to avoid any appearance at favoritism. The game open to the public is probably about 10% social interaction, 30% exploration, and 60% combat. The private games are probably a bit more balanced. I haven't gotten to play with friends at home in about 15 years. We all grew up and went our separate ways, and I just got back into the hobby with 5th edition. Maybe one day some of these people will actually become friends, but I kind of like keeping them all at arm's length. A lot of them don't even know my name, and honestly that suits me just fine. Now, to watch the video!
Welcome to 1976
I'm so glad to find another person who believes armor should reduce damage inflicted rather than make your character harder to hit. I'm also pleased to hear that we share an interest in not only The Fantasy Trip but DragonQuest and RuneQuest as well. I am unhappy to hear of your health issues and the unbearable heat, so I do hope all goes well and that your health and the heat both improve as quickly as possible.
TFT, DQ, and RQ are the kind of systems where the mechanics seem more logical and realistic to me than abstracting armor and dexterity as both making you harder to hit. I can still enjoy D&D, but I have a soft spot for the "armor as damage reduction" model.
What I've gathered from lurking in the Steve Jackson Games forums is that Steve is making some revisions to The Fantasy Trip, such as armor will probably be equalized so that hits stopped equals the DX penalty unless you have exceptions such as Fine Plate. Thus Half Plate will stop 4 Hits for -4 DX and Plate will stop 5 Hits for -5 DX rather than the old DX penalties of -5 and -6 respectively.
My own house rule would be to take advantage of these lower DX penalties by allowing the layering of Cloth and maybe Leather Armor underneath other armors so long as you factor in the DX penalty from all armors worn. This would allow some simulation of wearing a gambeson underneath mail, for instance. Perhaps this is somewhere in the original rules, but I'm forgetting if it is, or it may be that all suits of armor assume a layer of padding beneath the hard outer layer.
In any case, I'm really looking forward to this blast from the past coming back to the future DeLorean style!
i mean... in a way armor stops things from hitting you, and since i mostly play heavy armor characters, i consider it just that, every point in my AC is 5% of the die's chance to hit.
personally though i used to be upset over how high AC can be with Dex characters compared to armor that is expensive, heavy, and takes time to put on and off... but at the same time they're likely not 20 dex maxed out at the beginning... and also i cna get heavy armor mastery, access to shields and access to higher damaging weapons. so personally i consider it a trade off now. sure the rouge gets sneak attack dice but at most the rapier is 1d8, my greataxe is 1d12, my halberd is 1d10, and great weapon fighting is mm mmm mm~
This discussion all depends on what you mean with "to hit" though. In D&D it's abstracted to mean whether you take damage or not, not the act of physically striking the target which armor reduction system use. To me it's very much to do with being more practical in a leveling system where damage and hit points increase so dramatically and the points of damage the armor stops would have to scale up somehow to be relevant at all levels.
well with how dnd's health system works i'd point towards that as how effectively a character can endure damage... even without raging a barbarian will have the most hit points most likely, next are paladins and fighters
then you have the average d8 dice that most classes get
and then finally sorcerer and wizards have a d6 of hp per level...
i would feel this system is a good balance and game play representation of taking hits. sure you can have an archer but is that archer a rouge d8? or a fighter d10? and again both barbarian and heavy armor users get to make use of the lovely feat known as HAM, i am honestly surprised the cleric in my group hasnt grabbed it... maybe he feels his massive health pool doesnt need the resistance??? but ehh... following jim murpheys advice ive been liberally throwing minions at the players whether they'd have 1 hit point or not. (kobolds are a great 1 hit minion, next is goblins once the players have some good damages, and im saving a 1 hit minion situation once the players start getting to like 40-50 minions in a room)
but personally i had a paladin for a one shot, he had like 2 con? i roll for his health starting at level 3 and he gets 2 ones, because its a oneshot im more than happy keepign it... he has 16 health lvl 3... XD anyways, when the dm wanted to make that one shot into a campaign, i kept the character, kept his low health and simply grabbed HAM as his first feat, and it was making the greatest use of his health, suddenly he became a very capable front line fighter, able to take hits much more effectively and became the essential tank of a party of two, then 3 players. i would not shy away from that -3 health on nonmagical weapons... hell just seeing that as resistance is a worry to a party with only a few ways to combat that.
Thank you to everyone for contributing to the discussion! I do still enjoy D&D very much for how it makes characters feel heroic being able to shrug off so many potentially fatal wounds. I am not criticizing it all, and I don't think it is inferior.
All I meant to say was that I prefer systems using a damage reduction model for armor. This normally means that character hit points are more limited than in D&D, sometimes with body parts being able to sustain even fewer points of damage than a character's total hit points.
It's all personal preference, and I would happily join any of you for a game of The Fantasy Trip, DragonQuest, RuneQuest, or Dungeons & Dragons. Game on, everyone, and have fun no matter what system you use!
Steve Numerator in mine armor is a system nearly as hard as magic. It deflects, covers, resists and absorbs blows as well as encumbering, restricting and limiting movement.
Most players don’t use armor, they just leave when it gets hot
Sorry to hear that your back is troubling you, Jim! Feel better ASAP, we need you!
Thanks for the videos Jim! Always a good watch!
Loving your passion! Great to hear about your characters. You could tell stories about your cgaracters adventures.
Matt Coville has an interesting concept of what hit points mean. It's not just a reflection of how much damage you take. You might call them "heroic points" instead of hit points, the idea being that you expend energy performing some crazy stunt that allows you to avoid taking any serious damage that would put you out of the fight and when you run out of hit points you run out of fancy tricks.
Yes, I have seen and heard that before. It’s a good concept that keeps verisimilitude
@Jim
Thank you for the tips. My cousin and I will be trying out Warding Bond this weekend.
I am an assassin, and he is a cleric. The plan is to have me sneak in, assassinate, and be able to make it out alive! :D
Hope you do more of these videos!
Tried Warding Bond!
It was amazing! Thank You!
We didn't have any magic gear, and we still crushed it!
After watching, I will comment to say that I skipped 4th edition, got the PHB and DMG and thought it was interesting but never played it. The game I am running that is open to the public is set in the Mythic Odysseys of Theros, which is a parallel of the ancient Greek setting, converted from a Magic The Gathering setting. It's a lot of fun. The private game is in Forgotten Realms, a place that has changed a lot since I played it back in the day. We will always return there, but I look forward to exploring new realms as well.
That all sounds great. No need to look into 4th unless you end up in my campaign
this is wholly inspiring please keep it up Jim , thanks eh
I definitely try and optimize characters but usually built towards a thing that maybe is not the "meta" best. Like, if I want to be good at persuasion, I'll do that the best way possible, but I don't look up builds or anything. Although I did recently learn there is a hilarious build that lets you get like 120+ tiny servants that I secretly want to try.
Vonlyn (sp?) Could play wingman, ie roll assists, letting you get in on the rp without soloing charisma encounters.
I played a 4e pacifist cleric back then for the same pass-the-spotlight reasons you play support. It was fun, he was honed, and his heals were indeed overwhelming. Mirin, Tome carrier of The Traveller, you rocked.
I started role-playing way back with fantasy trip Melee and Wizard. We played it for years and in my opinion it’s still one of the best dungeon crawl games out there. Simple and elegant 3d6 system. You could make a character in literally 3 minutes on a scrap of paper.
Matt Muccigrosso I agree
Great story. Thank you for sharing.
Oh man, you described a great weekend!!
Jim, for the life of me I’ve been trying to remember for months where I’ve seen that knight hanging on the wall before, and then it occurred to me it was years ago at the CSULB library! I’m assuming that it’s not the same one. Just had to mention this. Always enjoy the videos. Happy gaming!
My wife was at the Brass Rubbing center in England, I think four decades ago and made the rubbing of Thomas Chaucer. Son of the writer.
Some great examples of everything wrong with D&D characters today.
John Lenin so true
Re: College of Swords Bard, I run a Dualist Bard in a fried’s campaign and he’s the party Healer/Buffer (I hate playing clerics). He doesn’t get to fight often but he’s nasty in combat.
Sven Helgrim I was amazed how good his was
I love the 4 Chaos license plate.
SirLucien long ago when only lawful, neutral or chaos!
I had an attack of nostalgia when I saw the logo on that Character Record Sheet @4:15.
If you're still interesting in trying a system where armor soaks damage, and characters are powerful out of the gate, give Fantasy AGE, by Green Ronin, a look.
I’ll look at it, but my gaming time is pretty full
At first it feels like too literal of interpretation with armor in D&D, for you to say armor makes you harder to hit and does not stop damage, but I’m curious what you mean more specifically. Because my idea of it is that you can say when your opponent misses the attack roll, that’s when your armor stopped the damage. And then flavor taking damage as ineffective armor and dodging.
Are you saying like a knight in plate armor who gets hit with an arrow vs one who’s hit with a hammer with the same damage dice should be taking a different amount of damage?
One of the best low level combinations from my experience is a Circle of the Moon Druid/Totem of the Bear Barbarian who tends to combo a rage with a Brown Bear wildshape. You get a character that has a ton of HP, is taking reduced damage from everything while raging, gets multi-attack early as long as he's in his bear form, and is relatively simple to play.
Calinas the Necromancer now that is some tasty cheese I’ll to try
Calinas the Necromancer.
Druids could be so much more fun with their powers being connected to animals they run into instead of a starting build. Just as finding magical items is a crap shoot for what they can give you, absorbing animal traits from animals you contact in the wild can offer random abilities that enjoyable because they aren't perfectly under your control.
Example: There aren't any bears to wildshape into but you run into a dear, or a owl, or something else. Now getting to turn into a bear is a great source of luck (if you need fighting power) instead of something every player can(and will) do at the start.
You speak almost identically to Stan Efferding. It’s awesome.
Big Burly Dm wow, I wish I looked that good and could pick up a car
Hope you feel better soon~
The length was not a problem at all! I love to hear your wisdom. I have benefited from it so much. I had a question for you though, why do you not enjoy clerics as characters? How do they not stack up with the other characters you demonstrated?
Benjamin Mullis like them fine. Pacifist Cleric 4th was awesome
I would love to get back into 4th edition then. I have a soft spot in my heart for clerics. It may be because I am one in real life or as close as you can be.
My main game is Dungeon World, and for some reason, completely independently (or so they say) they all basically made anime characters (we’ve got a firebender from Avatar (Immolator class) a character that’s pretending to be a psychic from Mob Psycho 101 (Rogue class) and an anthropomorphic fox (Fighter class). When you die in Dungeon World, you roll Last Breath and if you get a partial success, Death makes you a deal. They’ve come to a city to track down a vampire at Deaths request, and I took this opportunity to introduce the local psychics (who I called the Ghostbusters, as I wasn’t feeling creative at that point) in order to challenge the fake psychic. We haven’t played again since they challenged him. The firebender said his character was a convicted criminal back home (hence why they have come to this land), so I’m going to introduce the ones chasing him in the next session. Meanwhile the guy that died and got a deal to go kill a vampire is running around trying to find and kill the vampire before he kills again.
Ryan Pratt sounds wild
Miss you, Kim. Hope you're doing alright!!!
I’m a little beat up
@@jimmurphy1591 Hang in there, man. You're a tough ol' bird!
How does the Barbarian/Arcane Trickter work out with the standard array fir stats (15,14,13,12,10,8)?
Sven Helgrim I would think badly
People are starting to generate stables of characters again, if trends on D&D Beyond are anything to go by...
That worked in the 70’s
@@jimmurphy1591 I think a big part of it is that people just enjoy making characters, don't you?
@@MrSilvUr yes
Good vid! I'm wondering, can you explain the Bard Duelist build a bit? Is it a homebrew/3rd party duelist archetype college or a dip into duelist fighting style?
Sounds like a swords bard from the description.
Right out of Xanthars
I should've guessed it was a rose by any other name... Thanks!
The troupe style play is something my group and I are just now trying out. It’s a little foreign to them coming from snowflakey 5e PCs, but really enjoying watching NPCs bubble up into characters that the players can pickup and develop as they wish.
“Snowflakey 5e PCs” ??? Why does that specifically have 5e attached to it? Snowflake PCs far predates the current edition. Pretty sure that started with 3e, but not sure.
Starting as a hero is one of the reasons I didn't like 4e, to a lesser extent 5e.
I like starting as a nobody and becoming great... earning my class name was a wonderful thing. XD
Posta Jester I think you are in the majority
tbh, in 5e, heavy AC is actually flat out better than dex armor, and always has the option to be upgraded with HAM, which will in fact stop damage, while you can have reasonable high AC with Dex characters ive found that the fact theyre based off of stats to really be a hindrance, also comparatively you can get HAM, and STR builds allow for the best, heaviest hitting, reach having, weapons in the game... i used to hate Dex vs Str AC in dnd but i love it now and have had far more characters not only built this way but i was always wondering "is the DM *TRYING* not to hit me???", now as the DM, i can proudly say "no, just that AC of yours is so high most the attacks fail."
elgatochurro when they have a heavy armor, just have the enemy caster target them with a dex save, or an int save. Always fun.
true true, but if i have a good spare score i might just give that character a good dex score too. im currenlty having a halfling/halforc fighter with 14 dex still going heavy armor. its simply more AC
Oh no, I hope you feel better soon!
NightWatchersPet getting better, good support with Natural health wife and great chiropractor
"or if they could cheat, a paladin" sounds like a matt colville call out!
CaptainJuggy in original D&D needed a 17 charisma
Yes. 1st ed was made it way too tough to make paladins, monks and bards. 3.5 ironed these issues out well
The odd thing, and maybe this is due to critical role, is fighters are quite uncommon in my circles. I've just started, but of the dozen people I play with or talk to, nobody is a fighter. Maybe the pendulum just swings when and where it wants
John Franey I think a lot of people want to run a character that they think is “different”
As a gaming geezer when you talk about 5E it might as well be rap or TikTok celebs.
Rob Babcock I feel the same way.....Dog😜
Dragon Quest is the name of a videogame that is much more popular than DragonQuest and it is giving me some trouble finding the tabletop game for sale.
GameNub Quin interesting! How the world marches on. On eBay check toys, games, RPGs and you should have some luck. But remember they are old
Um... super secret Ebay tidbit of the day???
Add the keyword "BOOKS" to your search for more table-top roleplaying oriented results. ;o)
Jim, have you ever tried dark heresy or rogue trader? They are Warhammer 40k themed ttrpgs and I think you'll like it if you haven't tried them. :)
Andrew Matsiev have played both!
Jim Murphy awesome! What did you think about their mechanics? I personally really like how ballistic skill and weapons skill are their own separate stats that determine hit chance. In D& D, the "higher strength = higher chance to hit with melee" convention never really felt right for me. Anyways, thanks for responding, Game Methuselah! And I really hope you and Matt get to play more d&d on camera and off because I get the feeling you both are quite a Dynamic Duo 😃
Andrew Matsiev I have a lot of fun playing with Matt. His whole group were fun gamers and Matt’s love for the hobby is infectious. As for systems, I like many, but the problem is getting people to play them when so many others in the wilderness
ha I would love to hear about what monsters your nasty PCs had to go up against. XD
great video and hope you beat the heat!
Me too
Hope your back heals up okay!
Zac Lucas it’s doing great, thanks! My wife is a naturopath & have a great chiropractor 👩🏾⚕️ so I’m on the mend
Glad to hear it! I have had some success with taking more of a backseat with a bard character by playing a "speaker for the dead" style character or some other sort of niche style public speaker. Really helps when I am trying to limit how much I speak in the party while still giving me a clear cut case and motivation for when I join conversations. Thanks for your thoughts on your experience with party dynamics.
Zac Lucas ohhhh, Goth Bard with punk band, your giving me an idea
Woot
first level barbarian third level rogue arcane trickster? what is this hipster bullshit?
wtf was this video about...?
Jim you're an alright guy but this video was all over the place and not really useful...
Michael Buxton a response to a lot of questions. Sorry you didn’t like it or felt your time wasted.