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mindflenzing — RPG Odd Character Concepts
Published: 2009-10-02 00:27:55 +0000 UTC; Views: 3712; Favourites: 23; Downloads: 68
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Description
R.P.G. (Ransack People's Gold) is the tale of four D&D/Star Wars/RPG players and their DM, who wishes he were a player. These intrepid players are, from left to right:Kenneth, the over-achieving, yet under appreciated DM.
Adam, the guy who has a theater background but needs a girlfriend.
Barry, the munchkin power-gamer with a bad case of arrested development.
Josh, the straight-laced guy who just wants to play the game.
Kassi, Josh's homicidally-minded younger cousin, whom he regrets inviting.
I figured that with all the time I have on my hands being unemployed that I should put up some new R.P.G. strips. Personally, I never trust my players when they give me a "sub optimal" character build. In 4th Ed D&D it means something went horribly wrong, in 3.5 or other OGL D20 games it means they will probably be completely broketastic once they hit prestige classes. These guys WILL make the character who is useless until 7th level when they become completely hax.
*Edit* I changed DM to GM, corrected "drom" in panel 1 to "from" and added in a Star Wars GM screen, minis, and books in place of D&D ones.
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Comments: 82
I think they disabled the :thumb_: tag in the last update or so.
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ya i think they did....but it think i was an acident on me
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It's too bad, I was just starting to love the thumbnail tag when they took it away.
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And I've seen players quote the RCR book to try to get Wookies out of DSPs when they rage out to kill irksome but non-villainous NPC in public.
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I gotta admit I cheesed my Jedi character a little, but most of it is stuff that you can find in the system itself. I dunno though, I've never been able to come up with a completely broken character.
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I've made hordes of broken characters, ask any of my Saga Ed players. Wookie grapplers suck for everybody else. I don't need to cheat one whit to make characters sufficiently specialized that the are thoroughly unbeatable by equal level characters in their encounters.
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Yeah with Adaavia I started with Multidexterity as a free feat for her species (this is D20 by the way, not Saga), and I was working on Multiweapon Fighting getting her up to using Lightsaber Form IV.
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I don't think I built any broken builds in RCR but I only played a couple of short campaigns in that. Multiple weapons is, of course, the best way to make broken characters in any OGL game and why they radically changed the way two weapon fighting works in 4th Ed.
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Yeah I saw that. Actually I noticed that the idea of having any additional attacks per character is only through feats now, ugh.
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There are no additional attacks through feats, only powers. And those powers generally specify that you must be wielding two weapons and be (generally) a striker class. On the upside it means that nobody is doing damage that far out of the mathematical range for their role so nobody feels like Aqua Man on a land based JLA mission.
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For Saga Edition there is. For 4th ed you're lucky to get two hits.
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Most classes can strike multiple foes with certain powers though usually only strikers can get extra attacks on one guy (unless you are a wizard with the daily power that lets you cast magic missile once per round as a minor action). Avengers get to roll two d20s for melee attacks and I have a rogue who can attack for 2d8+2d4+STR+DEX+CHA at will from first level (but he's the only build I've ever seen that gets beyond one standard deviation from the norms). My ranger gets a lot of multiple attack powers but they wanted to have the math hold across the various classes of any role and prevent the creation of the "duh" feats that 3.5 was famous for.
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Yeah there are some times where there's a bit of codex escalation in the 4th ed books, the worst part is they go from meh to good to the ZOMG kind of abilities/feats/whatever.
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Some stuff is really nice and fits my character concept way better than the earlier stuff but aside from fixing the Paladin in Divine power and the Rogue's Clever Strike, there aren't any "duh" powers or feats in Dragon or in the power books. Aside from my Warlord and Paladin, most of my powers and feats for my nearly half a dozen LFR characters are still PHB1 or 2. The new stuff I take is mostly to suit my playstyle rather than to be numerically better than the original options but usually the trade off is greater specific good for lesser general good. Your numerical best bet is to get a superior weapon, focused/weapon expertise, and weapon focus right off the bat and then get every circumstantial untyped bonus to hit (which my invoker does) but that is rather uncommon.
Even max damage builds have drawbacks, for example my chainfighter rogue will need to waste a 2nd level utility and a feat if I want to have him able to get to a ranged weapon without more or less spending a full round action and he loses a free hand (which can also cone in real handy). Essentially his build gives him just a little more rope to hang himself than normal (though I may still hold my action and wait for the fighter to go. Or if you immobilize/fighter mark the elven greatbow ranger he's just screwed.
Having DMed several campaigns of 4th Ed and build/played many many builds of all roles I can say that the fact that there is underlying math in 4th Ed that there never was in 3rd and that they make extensive use of both their own in house playtesters and the LFR community that not even the munchkins I play with have found significant ways (outside of the passivist healer) to make characters with the new books just duh better than ones of the old books. The best proof is that there are a lot of munchkins (even now that you can change all your powers/feats ever level in LFR) who still have primarily PHB1 builds.
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I dunno, I just don't see the complexity that some others do in 4th. At this point for the times where I will play I'll play clerics that are heal monkeys mainly but other than that meh.
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4th Ed's complexity comes from strategic play styles in combat. I play a number of characters who rely on teamwork to be effective. For example, my warlord has been known to have devastating turns but mostly when I have a barbarian in the party to throw at people with bonuses. My Invoker is mean but since she doesn't do good damage and is squishy she works best when my allies take advantage of my battlefield control powers to get to advantageous positions. There are plenty of builds that play well alone but most of mine need teamwork to shine.
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I haven't noticed the teamwork mattering too much except for traditional attack/support roles from previous editions. Near as I can tell the cleric and bard would boost people, the spellchuckers would...surprisingly enough...chuck spells, and the combat types would carve up whoever survived the spell onslaught.
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If that's the case than your DM is much too nice. The newer LFR modules tend to throw three fights of XP into two combats and I use a lot of environmental hazards, advantageous terrain, and nasty combinations of powers to challenge my players. If the spellcasters just cast and the melee types just melee than characters die. And playing without certain roles or maximized roles is tricky in a difficult fight. When the controller has to shut down all the enemy skirmishers because otherwise they do so much damage that the party's lack of a healer would lead to a TPK, you gotta play smart. Around here people regularly play modules meant for 3-4 level characters with first level ones. I've played in games where the monsters had hit bonuses as high as the party's defenses. If a party does not feel the need to work together than the encounters need to be 2-4 levels higher. When I started running 4th Ed all my solo hot dog munchkin players started learning teamwork really quickly for the first time in their gaming lives.
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Actually so far any group I've been in have been in the first couple of modules that ever came out for 4th, really they were doing screwjobs with some of the stuff that's weren't TPKs but were bloody hard to deal with. I think it helps that we didn't have all the roles for it or the people who had certain powers to help just couldn't roll well enough to actually do anything.
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Keep on the Shadowfell? I played partway through it and it was poorly written and had a rather Gygaxian 5x5 room in it right at the beginning.
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I thought the pally that could use an encounter power at will was fairly broken.
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As is the guy with three recharge close burst 5 powers in a 5x5 room with over twice as many hit points as the entire party of first level characters. I played a module where the idiot who wrote it put a burst 2 in 10 3d6+5 damage encounter power as an at will and then boxed the entire party into the kill zone. My bard's ability to pump out temporary hit points every round was the only reason it wasn't a total party wipe. It's too bad I didn't have my encounter slide power or I could have dragged that SOB kicking and screaming into the waiting jaws of our barbarian.
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Your group didn't take a 5 minute rest to recharge powers?
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He didn't get it until after the module was finished and he leveled.
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What can you do. At least its better than the teleport or die encounters.
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Never had one of those.
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It's like the old Temple of Elemental Evil only they kill you slowly and agonizingly.
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There is a reason that wookies are never diplomats nor Jedi's.
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No, Wookie Jedi with a lightsaber staff and power attack. They do obscene damage and when they rage on top of that they are by cannon not morally or karmically held accountable for anything they do. It is just one of the many reasons I hate Wookies.
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That sounds like some bullcrap. Even Lucas in all his recent stupidity surely didn't come up with that. That has to be the work of fanfics and their obscure daydreams. In the movies you never see a Wookie Jedi, and obviously a Jedi can't give into rage. At any rate, they never said that a wookie goes into a blind rage, all they said was "A droid don't rip your arms of when he get's angry."
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I'm not sure where exactly it comes from.
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Probably the people who wrote the rules for the SW RPG that you're playing.
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Its possible it was the people who wrote the OGL D20 version for WotC when the first prequel movie came out but I think it was established in the EU that Wookies aren't responsible for their actions when in a Wookie Rage (remember that in Star Wars there is an entire damn wikipedia page on Lucas' notes about the history and tradition of the stupid little charm Anakin gave Padme in Phantom Menace). Nobody allows for simple throw away lines in Star Wars.
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AH, well that could be then, because I never did any of the extra reading on Lucas notes. What else is considered Cannon besides the movies?
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There are 3 of 4 levels of cannon with Star Wars so that really just depends. Since only things explicitly stated in the 6 movies are cannon in the first level and at the other end all the novels (most of the) games, the animated series, movies, and the dark horse comics (not the Marvel or DC ones) are cannon.
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And then there is an intermediate level where the writings and notes of Lucas are cannon?
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While the franchise's creator is alive and wants to encourage other people to keep it fresh you have to be willing to have levels of cannon to keep both grognards and creative types happy.
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Well then first of all he shouldn't have screwed it up, and second, he should get to work on some sequels. But on the other hand, I'm not certain there could be sequels since they killed all the bad guys in 6. Of course SW has a much higher possibility for sequels than does BSG.
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I'd bet he had no clue how much fans of the franchise would be pissed with stuff he did in the prequels. It sounded to me like he was itching for the special effects to allow him to do anything and when he got it he went hog wild. At least he did better than Michael Bay in Transformers 2.
There are sequels and prequels galore in the expanded universe.
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He probably still has no clue. Well I heard that the reason he did the old movies first was because the special effects didn't exist to do the things he had planned for the first ones. Still, he relied far too heavily on them, to the point of making the first movies little more than special effects reels. I didn't much care for the first Transformers movie so I never bothered to go see the second one.
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Lucas is very creative but he sucks at directing and dialog. If he had less creative control over his movies there would have been more Empire and less Phantom.
I enjoyed Transformers 1 but I'm told 2 is like a drug trip and the high point of the film is Megan Foxes tits. And I've seen movies where no amount of nudity would save the plot.
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Which would have been awesome.
Sounds like some crap. The first one was semi-decent, at best. I thought the humor was a bit childish and the plot was stretched rather thin. It was one of those movies that I ended up ready for it to be over well before it actually was. One of the things that I thought was really stupid was how most of the human mains were supposed to be either in high school or just out, and they're casting actors my age to play those roles. I mean, I realize that there are some things that cannot be done with underage actors, and that having underage actors causes all sorts of limitations. But if you want to do more adult stuff then DON'T HAVE UNDERAGE CHARACTERS in the first place.
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Yeah.
Michael Bay is out of his league when he tries to do more than crash cars and blow things up.
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Apparently so. I just think that given the full potential of the Transformers they rather failed to live up to the possibilities.
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