Shadow of the Demon Lord

TBF, I was going Warrior until I learnt that someone had already made one and as we had a Warrior, Priest and a Magician already, I figured why not go Rogue.

Just hit rank 3, changed over to Ranger now. All those lovely boons.

Don't forget that crazy level 3 health bump

That's another thing I like about this game (though I haven't been able to play it yet, so I don't know for sure): Melee characters seem STRONG. The warrior Novice Path is a fucking powerhouse.

Yeah, seriously needed it. Even as an Orc there's been a couple of close calls. Down to 1 health left in one fight and then knocked down in another fight. I'm the basically the tank in the party.

They are strong, I'd definitely agree on that. Don't discount magic users though. The Clockwork Magician - when he isn't shutting himself down - can put out a fair bit of damage, he just needs a bit more practice on gauging which spell to use against what enemy.

I didn't like it, then again our DM was reading straight from a pre-created adventure.

What was it you didn't like? Are the pre-written's no fun. My GM was half running one and half something he'd written so I've not idea which bits were his and which bits were pre-written.

Ranger has the Highest single level health bump in the game so far from what I've seen.

Honestly, I find that a huge selling point. To me, the only thing you really need strong rules for in a game in combat, everything else is pretty easy to narrate or figure out some kind of roll. Pages of social and knowledge rolls aren't really required in my opinion, I prefer going "You're a Carpenter?... Alright, sure."

I definitely understand the complaint though, this is just me personally.

It is my favorite game right now. Pretty much everything I've ever wanted. My only complaint is that some of the master specializations(I forgot the terminology) seem a bit unbalanced. I mean, Inquisitor gets like a page of shit it can do and Transmuter gets like a +2 bonus to an attribute. Granted, I haven't actually played the that tier of the game yet, so maybe it is balanced. But that doesn't stop some of the specializations from being really lame.

PDF so I can have a look?

Not the reason I went with it... honest.

Out of all the ones you could have picked you went with Inquisitor as the unbalanced one. Have you seen Engineer? Become a mecha pilot whilst everyone else is just running around begging to be stomped on.

I honestly don't think the Inquisitor is unbalanced, sure it has more space devoted to it than say, Transmuter, but it's stuff isn't that great for the amount of bookspace. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it's not amazing. I think it's more that Transmuter is basically crap, unless I've missed something with how it works.

www4.zippyshare.com/v/PXalKqpm/file.html

I'm all for that HP boost!
The other survivalist/damage bonuses are just icing on the cake.

Yeah you don't get magic, but you can take hits and deal them out like the best of 'em with ranger. It's a really nice class.

For fun I tried making a Bloodborne esque hunter in the game going Warrior>Ranger>Executioner and it looked like it was gonna be real fun.

I didn't mean to say that the Inquisitor was necessarily overpowered. It was just the first one I could think of that took up a large amount of space in the book.

I was stuck between Scout and Ranger, but that massive health boost was too tempting to pass up.

I'm the only mundane in the whole group, the Warrior has just gone Spellbinder, I guess we'll see how important magic is for the mid-end game level.

Executioner is an interesting looking one, I've not thought out his progression path, been seeing how he handles the storyline and things and see if that influences thing.

Fair enough, I guess I just get caught on Engineer when people talk about game balance in it.

mille grazie

+2 to an attribute in this game is actually pretty big. Attributes are on a 1-20 scale and you only get the option to raise them by one three times in your career. So, if you started with an 11 in the Attribute, generally speaking you can only get that stat up to 14. Transmuter lets you get that up to 16 and if I'm remembering it right you can change that stat after you rest.

To give that some context, dragons have a Strength of 17.

>cont.

I just looked at it and it's even better than I thought. You get +1 to all your Attributes at level 10. Keep in mind that your attributes are basically everything, offensive and defensive. They're your BAB, AC, saves, etc. Transmuter is pretty great.

Im dming tales of the demon lord with 6 people.

Did an adventure of my own so they reach lvl 1 and get integrated in the city before the campaign starts.

The game is cool. What i miss as a DM is more martial combat stuff, cos now being a warrior spellbinder triumps over a normal warrior figther for example. They should have done mundane classes more flexible or with more talents.

I haven't seen the Warrior/Spellbinder in effect yet, that will likely be the next session. But as a character with 0 Power and absolutely no Occult/Magical experience or aptitude, I'd say that's crap.

As a 2nd level Rogue, I was doing minimum 2d6+1 damage an attack - with a fairly good chance of having two actions per round - and more often than not doing 3d6+1 damage.

Mundanes kick-arse.

I mean... I think Fighter is way better than Spellbinder for a Warrior. At level 3 a Warrior/Spellbinder knows 2 level 0 spells (the spellbinder one and one other) that he can cast twice a day each. Fighter gets more health and one of eight excellent static abilities.

Spellbinder is good, but I really like the "mundane" paths in this. But I've always been a fan of static bonuses so YMMV.

Also, GMs, don't let your melee characters skip over this page!

The thing that i fear is that spellbinders and battle magic can put +2d6 bonus dice with little effort and resources.
That means that a magical warrior can take more risks and get out of the norm easily while doing mundane attacks than a mundane figther.

The figther class is mechanicaly strong but is boring (and im speaking as a dm) i would homebrew it into 3 lvls of tiered talents instead of what we have now. If i had any idea of how to do that of course.

And this one for ranged

They can do that twice per day at level 7 if they take a master path that gives them +1 power. That's not that huge. It's not BAD, but it's hardly the be all end all.

The example I've been using has been my Orc Rogue/Ranger, so for him I get the following every Round against a single target;

Trickery: +1 Boon - +1d6 Damage if there's still a Boon left at the end.
Hunt Prey: +1 Boon.

That doesn't cost me one of my - few- spell slots and I can use it Round to Round. Whereas, level 3 Warrior/Spellbinder has 2 uses of 2 spells and that's it.

The dynamic may begin to shift as the levels go up, I'm still only at level 3 at the minute, but he is going to blast through his resources whilst I can keep using mine.

spell bound weapon last 4 hours

Ok. And that's cool. Meanwhile Fighter has way more health, a better healing rate, gets an excellent static ability tailored to their style (or just gets more defense) and can reroll sub average attack rolls.

Spellbinder is explosive, Fighter is consistent. It's pretty clear that we prefer different things.

But I'm going to survive the fight.

i dont want to make this "what class is better" so i will stop here if the conversation goes that way.

Now the rogue for example has the ability to learn magic, combine that with spellbinder again and boom.
Again and now at lvl 3 he can do +1d6 for 8 hours day. And Surely he is gonna lose that +1d6 with dice, but anyway you need to be in melee to do that so...

This is why i saying that mundane classes (expert and master only) need more stuff.

Yeah but as a figther i need that option without needing magic. Why i cannot be a high risk high reward fighter? instead of going always tank.

Cos as i see now that its the most viable option for figther going mundane.

I can appreciate what you're saying, but I honestly think the mundanes are fine. They get useful, static abilities that make them reliable.

But hey, I don't think that they're better or worse. Do you, senpai.

You totally can! Sorry if I came off like I was trying to tell you how to play. I have a long history of murderous GMs, so I prefer survivability.

I think the system is pretty balanced too, only had that little issue.

Jesus fuck.
Needing specific skills for everything is an absolutely awful games design choice since it only ever results in either a gimped character that knows the things they would reasonably know in the setting, and a minmaxed character who's super autistically focused on the 2 things he'll do the most.

It's the difference between a knight who knows court etiquette, heraldry and riding as well as fighting, and a retard in armour who put every possible point into HIT IT WITH MY SWORD!

Being able to do things your character should be able to do because of who they are, even if it doesn't specifically mention that thing on the character sheet is great.

Also
>"games"
please kill yourself.

I would like to avoid that kind of pointless and regressive debate of which class is better, I think Demonlord does a pretty decent job of evening things out.

However, that being said, if I took magic as a Rogue I miss out on Backstab - or Skirmish as the other Rogue in the group took and has turned out to be a far better ability than I gave it credit for.

Without magic, I can consistently do as much damage as I could do if I took the magic approach you suggest, but for the entire day. As I said , this dynamic may change when we get to Master or even just further into Expert. I'm still new to this system and am writing what I'm experiencing.

As mentioned, I don't think anyone's saying "This is how you must play" I just - and this is speaking as someone who generally will always lean towards some kind of magic character - think that the mundane Paths in this game, still feel extremely powerful, and actually competent as adventurers/murderers/psychopaths etc.

> I was told that it does D&D better than D&D

If you mean that it feels even more like a video game then D&D, then yes, absolutely.
Just look at it.

This game is pretty brutal i did a game in crossing in wich the mastermind of a criminal band that the character had to the defeat had a caiman tied with a rope (i recicled the encounter from the "curse of crimson throne").
So the player character tried to go into melee instead of simply atacking him at distance.
The reptile ado her for 9 dmg, the poor player went lucky and hit the boss leaving him unconscius. Then the rest of the players killed the reptile at distance.

Explain? How does having combat options make it more or less like a video game?

Also
>than

>Pretty brutal

Absolutely my favorite thing about it. Shit can just kill you. You have to consider the pros and cons of even participating in any given combat.

im thinking of doing some type of permanent injury table like in warhammer.

I mean when you reach 0 hp you retain consciousness but with every attack that hits you. You roll on a table of injuries with the negative hit points as bonus.

When we played warhammer fantasy our alchemist losts his teeths and he maked new ones made of gold. Another player was one-handed and another went nuts by a head injury and the latter "surgery".

I've heard that this is supposed to get some kind of post-apocalypse reskin? Anyone know anything about that?

They say that during funding. But i think they will do it after suplements.

Did you read what the combat options actually were?

Having options is great, but when those options sound like something that should have a hotkey listed...

>Choose between different types of effect with your attack! Why you're not playing WoW? Fuck if we know!

As opposed to just hitting him, doing damage and then moving on?

What are you suggesting as an alternative? Ditching it all together?

The options are literally the same ones you have in the past few DnD editions. Trip, disarm, charge, etc. It's gamey on places, sure... Because RPGs are games and should be designed with fun systems and options.

I've not played it myself, but it seems much better than DnD5e on a read through. It's the 'gritty' to 13th Age's high gonzo fantasy. Between the two of them, there's no reason to play 5e.

Not that guy, but what is the benefit or appeal of having a mechanical gate before you can do certain common sense things? All those attack options just seem like things you should be able to say you do, and the GM adjusts the check difficulty accordingly. Why list out your options? Can't you just think of them?

There's nothing to stop you thinking of additional ones, isn't that part of the appeal of Boons/Banes, is that you can come up with something on the fly and the GM sets the Boon/Bane threshold for that.

The idea of listing them out is to give everyone an idea of what you can do and the framework for how easy/difficult a comparable action would be.

Ah, I see. Still reading the system, this seems less DnD than I thought.

Mechanically codifying actions is just useful for providing hooks in the mechanics. It also means the GM and player have a baseline on what options are open to them.

You might as well ask "why have rules for combat, can't I just rely on the GM and common sense?"

A game is a series of interesting decisions. Presenting those options transparently makes for better games.

>If you mean that it feels even more like a video game then D&D

You may have a point but I refuse to take criticism from someone who doesn't know the difference between "then" and "than", seriously.

I'm still not even sure why "this game is like a game" is even any kind of meaningful argument. Games are games. Sports, wargames, board games, video games, theatresports, RPGs - they're all games.

And many games benefit from explicit rules and options.

I hold RPGs to the same playtesting and system quality that I would an indie video game of comparable size.

I thought it was OSR WHFRP?

Yes and...?

Would anyone happen to have a pdf of Terrible Beauty for this game? i'm running it soon, and I want to include some dark fey elements in my campaign

I think it's great. Discovered it around a month ago, played my first session last Sunday with some randoms online.
One of my biggest gripes is how low-level magic-users run out of spells in a matter of a few rounds, but this mechanic keeps some variety at higher levels, so I guess it's not TOO bad.

i have tales and companion.
I dont know how to upload it without the watermark.

that's ok, I've already got tales and the companion, mostly just looking for Terrible Beauty. thanks anyway though