ITT: "What were the writers thinking?" moments from roleplaying games

Reposting from /5eg/, more like "what was the company thinking" though

>Reposting from /5eg/, more like "what was the company thinking" though
I am fucking retarded. Don't multitask and post, kids.

How does WotC manage to be so fucking retarded? How can they mismanage so badly what could easily be the best edition of D&D?
>Barely any content released in, what, three years?
>What's been released is mostly decent or pretty good, with strokes of genius sometimes, but also a lot of "what the fuck were they thinking" stuff.
>Unearthed Arcana (save for a couple of brilliant releases) has been rather uninspired and/or unbalanced
>Yesterday's UA. No further commentary is necessary.
>Release D&D Beyond 3 years later than they should have
>C&D great (free) D&D tools
>shitty P2W MMO tie-in that literally nobody gives a flying fuck about, when they could have sold the rights to an actually competent game company like Obsidian and let them make new cRPGs
>C&D the guy who was making an UA Codex (this pisses me off to no end)
>Make the FR the default setting, which would not be so bad if they actually bothered to fix stuff. The SCAG and SKT's info conflict each other, for fuck's sake. Also Mystra died but she's fine lmaooo
>Barely any support for Eberron, and NONE AT ALL for any other.

God fucking dammit. I could go on and on and on.
It would not bother me so much if D&D 5e was actually bad. The problem is that they're so close to greatness, so fucking close to a new golden age of D&D... And they fuck up massively.

media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/20170213_Wizrd_Wrlck_UAv2_i48nf.pdf
Hi.

>NONE AT ALL for any other.
What about Curse of Strahd?

Mea culpa, that's my notes for the combat system.

Are you trying to say that this game isn't an absolute masterpiece?

>Atlantasia
What is this shit?

It's a good game.

So does this guy actually do anything with his newfound immortality, or does he just nerd out over current affairs? Does it elaborate on how he obtained the Medallion of Thoughtcrime?

>none of these last 12 potions work
AAAHIEEUGH

No, as most of the DMPCs in the book, he just kind of hangs around.

That's an adventure, it barely touches on Ravenloft itself.

Byoutiful.

>No matter what you do or how well you cover it up, people will find out you killed this reptile that does only one unusual thing.
>Owe a "quest" to a deity for undefined reason.

Sounds like a quick and easy way to summon a god. Is there any actual defined punishment beyond running errands? What book is this from anyway?

what game are these from?

>What book is this from anyway?
Don't let the name 'GM Bible' fool you, this is the core book for players (what few you may have) too.

I remember reading the pdf that was shared (by you, I guess?) There was not a single paragraph that didn't make me go 'wut' in it.

So in a sense it is a spectacular work and a triumph of will over good judgement, true.

This book is 545 pages long. It does not have a contents. It does not have an index. It has multiple blank pages for no readily apparent reason.

Oh, and in case anybody's desperate for one, here's the character sheet. It was originally a whole bunch of .docx files.

The Realms of Atlantasia.
One thing is reading it, a whole different thing entirely is trying to play it.

>by you, I guess
Might have been, but I'm not the only one posting about the game.

Neat, thanks. I've been using homemade sheets so far.

Holy shit is that little speech he gives supposed to be clever?

>I've been using homemade sheets so far.
For what purpose? Surely you're not playing it?

Speaking of character sheets, the length of a character sheet doesn't always correlate to a system's quality. World of Synnibarr's character sheet is only two pages long (one of which is just two columns of line for recording skills and abilities/spells), and it's entirely shit. However, SenZar, a pretty good system, has this monstrosity. Who thought having this in the core book was a good idea? (some of the pages are actually from supplements, but the core version's only about a page shorter)

Based on the encounter tables an average city-dweller encounters Par-traxx the supreme deity once every 30 years or so just on dumb luck alone, btw.

Yes, the author really is that fucking dense.

>For what purpose?
So far just for running it on Veeky Forums.
But I do want to get some guys and run a oneshot in it. I've seriously been thinking about GMing it at a local con.

No wonder we know his exact height and weight. He's the least enigmatic "enigma" I've ever seen.

Oh god, these are gold. Can I get a copy to laugh at?

See

>I do want to get some guys and run a oneshot in it. I've seriously been thinking about GMing it at a local con.
This must be the same sort of bizarre urge that's resulted in me having a copy of both Synnibarr 2E and its supplement on my shelf. Don't judge me, they were as-received-from-distributor new, and for the same prices they had in 1994/5.

Beats being dimension shifted because of dragon sex.

>ACatIsFineToo.png

How long is an "s.s" and "cycle"?

Is Synnibarr the one where you get bonus XP for calling out the GM fudging the rules?

1 semi-segment (s.s.) = 1 round of engagement
10 semi-segments = 1 segment
20 segments = 1 cycle

AFAIK s.s is a round and cycle is a month.

1 turn of combat = 1 semi-segment (s.s.)
10 semi-segments = 1 segment
20 segments = 1 cycle
80 cycles = 1 season (except the Chaos Season, which is 40 cycles)
5 seasons ((4*80)+40 cycles) = 1 rebirth

The book never specifies how many seconds a s.s. is.

A cycle is a day.

If the players dispute a ruling, and the GM is found to be wrong, the player may receive double XP for the entire adventure, but if the player is wrong, then they can be penalised.
There's another one where if the GM starts diverging from RAW and the players find out, the entire adventure can be declared null and void, and the characters reset to where they were at the beginning. However, both of those rules come with big caveats saying that the GM can refuse to give you them if he doesn't want to/you've been calling bullshit on too much stuff.

Also, there are 80 cycles in four of the five seasons, and 40 in the 5th.

>The book never specifies how many seconds a s.s. is.
We can work backwards. A year is 360 days, a day is 200 s.s. If we assume a day is 20 hours, then a segment is an hour and a semi-segment is 6 minutes.

Which means that every single round of combat is six minutes long.

>Semi means half
>10 half cycles make 1 full cycle

The more I read, the stupider it makes me.

Hey, if you want we can start with the AD&D minute-long round. That makes every day 200 minutes long. Or 3 hours 20 minutes.

Gremlins roll 16 D12 every s.s for damage, so 6 minutes sounds about right.

You also need to take into account that every Season of Chaos you have a 30% chance to be thrown into another dimension due to cosmic dragon sex.

If a s.s. is 1 minute, then a year is 1200 hours, or 50 real world days.
Which means that every 50 real world days, you have a 30% chance of being killed by dragon fucking.

>Gremlins roll 16 D12 every s.s for damage
Jesus Christ, that's broken.

Okay, real talk, I actually really like the idea of a Druid learning shapes like a Wizard is learning spells, one by one, and "live as the animal" is great flavor, makes sense, and is a nice fluffy way to restrict and what shapes can be learned, as well as giving it a fluffy excuse to be down-time only.

But how the fuck does this even work? The spell doesn't say you actually transform. You get the benefit of being able to transform AFTER spending time as the animal. Would Druids be just like, hanging upside down in caves trying to be bats? Trying to flap their wings to fly, screech to echo-locate?

Make no mistake, the image is hilarious and explains why people think druids are crazy (and honestly even make some sense as being part of the process), but doing it 24/7? Not to mention an owl hunting the druid while he's trying to become a mouse or something.

Speaking of transforming, it doesn't say how often you can transform. Reading it as written, a low level druid is spending a season as a mouse (however long that is) to be able to turn into a mouse for 10ss (whatever THAT means).

...

>Reading it as written, a low level druid is spending a season as a mouse (however long that is) to be able to turn into a mouse for 10ss (whatever THAT means).
He spends either 80 days or 40 days (depending one whether he does it in the Season of Chaos or not) to be able to turn into that chosen animal for six minutes.

Also note the huge jump in duration at level 100 (80 times, or 40 times if you cast it in the Season of Chaos).

Actually, do you transform immediately on the conclusion of the season's worth of living as the animal, and then have to do a whole season of study again to transform for maybe only six minutes? This spell is bull.

>for six minutes.
60 minutes, sorry. It's not quite that shit. Though why they didn't just write "1 segment" and "2 segments" is a bit confusing.

Maybe to imply the minimum duration? You can transform 1ss 10 times?

Either way, it's pretty stupid.

What are the numbers on people having access to this spell? How often will you find a druid-type person in the woods when hunting for rabbits? How often do Druids steal chickens when going through fox training?

thanks white wolf

>internal meat grinders
>internal
>meat
>grinders
Jesus Christ.

That's basically the evil version of this thing from Dudes of Legend. There's also a female version.

This whole book

>I actually really like the idea of a Druid learning shapes like a Wizard is learning spells, one by one, and "live as the animal" is great flavor
I agree, I just think it's hilarious that this guy wrote that entry, but for some reason decided that he really needed to specify that you need to do some fucking to learn that shape.
You'd think that the the multiple statements of "this isn't a spell you cast lightly" and "you really need to live like the animal" implied it, but this guy really wants to make sure that this will include some boning.
It doesn't even say you TURN INTO the animal, so it's just mandatory bestiality
And that's not even mentioning all the other insanity of it. What if you want to study a shark? Do you need to live underwater?
If you want to turn into a pigeon, do you need to hang eat bredcrumbs off the sidewalk and shit on statues?

Oh, and actually turning into an animal is a different spell.
The basic idea is good, but the execution is hilariously bad.

As for how it's done, I assume you can just cast Animal Study whenever you want, and if you already have that shape then you can just turn into it for a duration that scales with your level.

Welcome to the pain of a 4e fan. WotC turned lazy during 3.5 when they could sit back and have everyone and their mother making awful but inexplicably popular books for them, and forgot how to actually make anything themselves other than M:tG.

>
He's really insistent about that, isn't he?

You a) need Proficiency with the Kit, and b) need the Kit.
Medicine isn't useless, it's just not going to let you instantly heal people all the time. While there aren't any non-magical cures, the assumption would be that the ST will have a quest lined up.

They actually published this? I'm not sure how to feel about it. Post the Sacred Vagina

Dragons are this guy's special snowflakes, and he loves them way too much for some players to fuck around with them.
Most of the texts about dragons are just how dragons are the coolest and the best, and will always shit on your player character if you try something the GM doesn't approve.

>Post the Sacred Vagina
I'll do you one better. DoL is an April Fool's supplement, and it is glorious.

>April Fools supplement

That explains it. Do you remember Scroll of Swallowed Darkness for Exalted?

Just how many times has this guy been accosted to the point where he siccs his pet phoenix on people and turns into a chaos dragon and is still being bothered?

Wow, it's literally nothing. As in it doesn't help you at fucking all.
D&D 5E
>Heat Metal
>Lol the save lets you keep your sword so its balanced
>Lol armor what's that

The warlock stuff was ok
The lore wizard was offensive.

I just started 5e and man, they tossed out so many good ideas from 4e just to appease whiny shits that moved on to Pathfinder (which at this point is better than 3.5 ever was).

>Do you remember Scroll of Swallowed Darkness for Exalted?
Yep. Do you want me to post it?

Life is suffering

Nah, I got it. Didn't the devs say that if this sold well enough, they'd turn it into a full, official splat? We almost had a complete Swallowing Darkness Style. Maybe there's a homebrew for it, though.

What I love about that, especially the first sections, is that it reads like notes on an NPC in Dwarf Fortress, or some other game with procedurally generated NPCs.

So roughly once every 150 days?
That sounds about right.

I would not be surprised if it was random rolled (at some point anyway).

>scatter their atoms across every known dimension and plane of existence and...

THAT was the one. I saw this screencap in a Mary Sue thread about three years ago, forgot which game and character it was, and have since made two threads asking about it. Par-traxx from Atlantasia. God bless you OP, this has been bugging the shit out of me.

>Pathfinder (which at this point is better than 3.5 ever was)
Don't make me laugh. Paizo broke more than they fixed.

Essentially, yes.
Statistically speaking, "dragon mating dance" has to be the most common reason for death in Atlantasia.

Glad I could help.
I'm not OP though.

>he can't destroy anything or anyone
>he tears people into component atoms and scatters them across the multiverse, killing almost anyone and driving the sole survivor insane

I don't like PF, but I honestly disagree; at least as long as you include 3rd party stuff (to cover the vacuum left by no ToB), PF is at least on par with, and in many respects better than 3.5.

Hell, even core-to-core it's arguably better balanced than 3.5 (not that that's a high bar, but yeah).

Archetypes replacing prestige classes alone is an A+ change. Then there's the extra material that later got added, like Weapon/Armor Master's handbook that lets even the worst classes hover up to t3 if you use them.

Broken game elements are also way less frequent. The difference between an optimized and unoptimized character are still pretty huge, but you actually have to hunt down gamebreaking shit; no Pun-pun in PF.

Also, free online material.

Overall, I see no reason to play 3.5 over PF. If you are really missing something, you can just port it over.

>need Proficiency with the Kit
Nothing about it says you need proficiency.

It does say it's a 30% chance that someone in the group will be caught. With 4-5 people in the group, the odds are better than 1/3 that you survive scalysextimes.

Wait, so its a 30% chance one person in the group gets pulled. That makes 0 sense, because that means that in a group of 1000000 theres roughly a one in 3000000 chance of you getting pulled, but if youre alone its a one in three.

That's actually right, according to the precise wording. I remembered it as "30% chance that someone is taken".

Does this mean that there's 30% chance that someone in every group will be caught, and if so, does it mean that the best way to survive dragon fucking season is to gather as many people as possible in one big group?

>That makes 0 sense
Nothing in this book makes sense.

>does it mean that the best way to survive dragon fucking season is to gather as many people as possible in one big group?

That's actually a good story hook; The Chaos Dragons are coming, and the countryside is emptying as everyone floods to the nearest city to wait out The Scalying. Columns of people halfway between refugees and holidayers (if it happens a couple times a year, people are used to and and would be prepared to bring goods to the massive markets) flooding down roads, the brave or the desperate taking the opportunity to loot the abandoned towns before rushing to the city at the last possible moment...

I take it back, this game is amazing.

It's a pity because as crazy as it was, it fit well with the setting.

And making a martial art out of the act of sex is just brilliant. Even if you forget about some of the side effects.

Entire societies designed around avoiding getting pulled into dragon sex.

>I take it back, this game is amazing.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. If taken at face value, everyone has ridiculous shit happen to them all the time, be it a druid trying steal their carrots while tunneling like a mole, a demigod just walking down the street, or dragonfucking whiskering away people... and that's the "normal". It's like a less coherent Sigil.

>making a martial art out of the act of sex
>not turning a martial art into sexytimes
I am now going to develop a fantasy culture that has a method of courting involving two martial artists beating the shit out of each other until they finally just rut.

So like... Klingons?

It takes a Standard action to attack. By the rules as written here, you're spending a Standard action to increase your reach. Nowhere does it say you may attack on this action, all it does is increase your reach. It's effectively useless.

See, I love this. Taking the book literally, by the letter even, and working with that.

For example, each year, a Priest of Rho-dain must found a new temple, complete with a High Priest.
If you're unable to do this, you die.

And logically, this High Priest must himself start a temple each year. Meaning the faith must grow exponentially, or else the priests start dying off.
It's insane when you realise that it's just there because the author is a complete moron who isn't able to understand the consequences of his rules, but taken at face value it's a cool setting element.

At least he realises that a priest of Rho-dain can "call upon a great force of Priest, Priestesses and champions from around the world".

That's actually great.

The book doesn't even tell you explicitly what the temples believe in, you just kind of have to infer it from their chores and their spell list. I have no idea what most of them are gods of, they just kind of exist.

Look at these guys, the Priesthood of Bahl-inn-orr. These guys are essentially mercenary warrior priests that need to constantly seek out wars and battles to participate in.

Again, this would be kind of a terrible class as a player character unless you campaign features a lot of mass combat, but as a setting elements it's delightfully weird.

These guys:
Are probably the worst/best of them all. They need to start at least 2 wars per season (which means 10 wars per year), as well as one new street gang every year. It's so weird.
But it means that the entire world of Atlantasia need to been constantly engulfed in war, as the existence of just 100 Priests of Magg-eth means that there's 1000 new wars started every year. They even have to start two wars during dragon fucking season.

Well, we still have Blue Slut style. Which is about as close as we can get.

>Priesthood of Rho-dain consists of old men and suicidal NEETs

>They need to start at least 2 wars per season (which means 10 wars per year), as well as one new street gang every year.

This reminds me of War in Soul Music.

When the apocalypse was coming and Death was gathering up the riders, he found that War was amusing himself by watching a battle... between ant colonies.

Maybe you can loophole it out by stretching the definitions of wars.

You seem to be under the impression that writers didn't make this on purpose to shit on martials. This smells like Paizo, Paizo already confirmed they have no intention of making martials as good as casters or even remotely playable

>starting flamewars on the internet counts
>spend all day shitposting to complete your holy duties