Does Veeky Forums play DSA/TDE? Don't really see discussion about it...

>So, maybe that's another reason why it will never be big anywhere but Germany.
They just need to ditch the 3d20 and then they'll be fine.

I have no idea what it is

Well, that's why you need a good group to kinda cover everything. Also, when creating a character there is a cap to how high you can pump "important" stuff, so unless you want to put a 10 into everything you don't really run out of points.
Or are you talking about combat abilties? Well, not every character is supposed to be a great combatant. Get just a few of them, unless you are the designated fighter in your group - in which case you will obviously be weaker in other situations.

The advantage of clerics (are they really translated as "blessed ones"?) is supposed to be a bit on the social side, but I agree that they are too expensive for what they are actually doing. There is an expansion that gives each cleric type some new abilities, but I never played with that one so I don't know if it's good.
Casters aren't that strong because they are expensive, their mana pools are small and they regenerate slowly.

And about multi turn spells - you do know you can modify them to take half the time with a difficulty of -1, right? You can even apply multiple modifiers for every 4 points you got in the spell.
What useful combat spells take more than 2 turns anyway?

This all sounds to me as if you played a really combat-focused adventure. Maybe that's your problem?

But that means completely revamping the way talents, attributes and quality levels work, which would completely rob the game of its flavour.

In the 80s, the guys who translated D&D into German decided to make their own game, and they tried their darndest to not make it a D&D clone - to the point where even the d20 works the other way around, a 1 is good and a 20 bad. On top of that they wreathed it in German bureaucracy and attention to (small) detail.
So basically German D&D.

blueberry inflation mages

Played it, and it's a very different beast from other ttrpgs. Very nit-picky about how social interactions work, which is cool in concept. It gives a little more wiggle room than D&D's strict 'save or suck' Difficulty Checks.

Combat can be quite a slog though, especially when there are multiple enemies and people are trying to utilize combat tricks to justify having spent the currency at character creation.

It's ok for it's niche, which I think is more the video game crowd than the traditional "D&D-esque" crowd.

>It's ok for it's niche, which I think is more the video game crowd than the traditional "D&D-esque" crowd.
How does that make sense with what you just said? Wouldn't the video game crowd be more into something more combat heavy?

I didn't say the system was combat-heavy.

Combat may be more involved compared to D&D, but I think the strength of the sytem is the NPC interaction.

It plays more like Fallout's interaction of "If you have 15+ points in Lockpicking, you can offer to open Bob's damaged safe for him" than D&D's "try to hit this number or higher on a rolled dice."

I used to work for the company that publishes the game and they actually hate the game and its fanbase and make fun of them at company meetings.

At the same time they treat the game as a cash cow and try to nickle and dime every last element to the players. They also have a con where you have to pay 600 bucks to sit at the same table as the game designers.

One of the lead designers is an obnoxious chad, the other is a complete autist who designs all these bureaucratic rules.

>It plays more like Fallout's interaction of "If you have 15+ points in Lockpicking, you can offer to open Bob's damaged safe for him" than D&D's "try to hit this number or higher on a rolled dice."
I'd say that is a rather gross misrepresentation. I'd say it is more like "if you did thing A you got information you can bring up in the conversation, and if you did B you found item C you can give to the NPC". And, A, B and C are things that required your different talents like lockpicking, historic knowledge, smithery or even dancing, and how you apply them is up to you. The key is exploration, both in a spatial sense and in the sense of exploring where your talents can be applied in what ways. And then on top of that you have a more detailed and complicated version of what is essentially persuasion checks.

>they hate the fanbase

Just like WotC

>they treat the game as a cash cow and try to nickle and dime the players

Just like WotC (see D&D Beyond)

>One of the lead designers is obnoxious, the other is an autist

Just like Mearls and Crawford.

Proof? Sounds like a massive load of bullshit to me.

Yep, they're really called Blessed Ones. I get that only one of the six playable churches gives you the healing you expect from a D&D cleric and the rest are for enhancing some other party role with magic, but every other kind of spellcaster can cast Balsam and heal almost as well as a specialized priest of Peraine, so the omission seems weird.

I was running a demo, so it was half dicking around in town and half fighting and it all had to be over in four hours. There wasn't much time to do setting exposition; just enough to establish how people kind of hate witches but not really and how trolls live under bridges and like sweets.

...

>There wasn't much time to do setting exposition
That's a shame, a lot of the fun in DSA comes from the world building. Many adventures are written specifically to give you a feeling for a certain culture before throwing you into cold water.

Based on the published adventures I read, a lot of the adventures involve throwing the players at a deep-seated and unresolvable cultural conflict, they accomplish nothing but make one or both sides mad at them, but fuck it, at least they get paid.

ima break dis down fo u
> dnd
> make a check
> locate one ( 1 ) stat
> take that modifier
> add ontop of 1d20

now take the german abomination
> lokate skill
> note skillpoints
> locate 3 ( three ! ) different attributes corresponding to skill
> roll 3 d 20 in order and compare against those attributes
> try to roll below the attributes
> if you roll too high - spend skillpoints to effectively reduce the die result
> calculate how many points you have left after that

and this is the basic _BASIC_ skillcheck mechanic,

once you add in modifiers,
> any one or more of your attributes may be raised or lowered
> you may be added or deducted skillpoints
> you may need to calculate not only how many points you keep over, but also possibly what the maximum malus you could have taken before flubbing the roll could have been

DND makes you look up one value and roll one die, essentially
DSA makes you look up a minimum of 4 different values, roll 3 dice, and then juggle with those 4 different values and whichever boni or mali you have

its

literally
insane

Yeah, that is a problem in international marketing for the game. That DSA has been so popular in Germany in spite of it shows the significance of brand loyalty, no matter how many D&D fans deny that.

The system sounds convoluted on paper, but it's not bad at all.
You usually have those values in your head after an hour or two of play, and can see at a glance if you passed the check or not. Having a gradation of success that is more detailed than 1 and 0 adds to the game.

Part of the US RPG scene is people inflating the tiniest problem to epic proportions to denounce rival games. You even have people here that argue that d20 is superior to 3d6 because d20 is faster to resolve because you don't have to add up any dice. I refuse to believe that anyone in all earnest considers this to be a relevant advantage. This has got to be promotional remarks, trying to talk readers into such folly. You just have to deliver such nonsense with the greatest panache.

Huh. That's kinda sad.

To be fair, D&D has such a large fanbase that you're bound to have some really dedicated fanboys who want to promote their favorite game. There's no reason to believe that WOTC themselves is doing that kind of promotion.

Well, on the contrary you have people in Germany who promote the opinion that D&D is a simplified casual RPG that's nothing but a cheap power fantasy fulfillment, and that "true hardcores" only play DSA. So I guess it evens out, bullshit like this is just part of fanboy dynamics.

Does someone here play Midgard? Its the oldest german rpg System and the one I play most. Its a really beautiful system and the rule core is easy to open for other settings (the author did this too by writing an official book for a Perry Rhodan rpg based on midgard rules).
Would like to hear Veeky Forumss opinion on this game if someone knows it

In german the are called "Geweihte" but Blessed Ones actually fits pretty good. The difference between them and normal clerics is, that they have a blessing from the god and are priests, while the others are just priests without powers.

I don't play Hun games

Are there actually priests who aren't blessed ones in the lore of DSA?

At least thats the Way I understood it, for example there are even "Pseudo" Wonders for Priests that don't are blessed (yet) in the Rules, similar to the Magic Tricks for Magic Users. But, although I play the game since 3 years now, I am not absolutely sure, I never played a cleric and neither did that much of my players, so not read that much into their Rules. Altough I want to try, because the Twelwe Gods Church is actually pretty neat.

Blessed ones are similar to wizards, but instead of magic tricks, spells and rituals, their skills are called blessings, lithurgies and ceremonies. And they cast with carmal points rather than astral points.
The fun things about blessed ones is that their rules force them to roleplay properly, because the GM can give them boni or mali if they do stuff that their god likes or dislikes. For example, if a blessed one of Rondra attacks an unarmed, "Rondra" can block his carmal points for a day as a punishment.

Friend of mine once played a blessed one of Rondra in an adventure that mostly took place in a city with an important Rondra temple, and he got all kinds of cool shit along the way.

Well, DSA has a fairly big fanbase in Germany, so it's par for the course, yes.

I used to play a bit. A friend of mine still does. But it gets mentioned here even more rarely than DSA does.

Yes, "Priest" includes all Blessed Ones, but you are only a Blessed One if you receive karmic energy from the entity you serve. All Priests of the Twelve are Blessed Ones, but there are entities that don't automatically bestow karmic energy. Witches and Druids have their own kind of magic and receive their own kind of secret knowledge from their gods, they are priests of Saturias and Sumu respectively, but don't receive karmic energy from their Gods, but from nature instead. Thus they are priests that aren't Blessed Ones.

> Does Veeky Forums like doing its taxes?
> does Veeky Forums think that the D&D mechanical ruleset needs to be more than tripled in complexity?
Considering the amount of GURPSfag here ... I would say YES.

Just big is an insult. It's easily europes most successfull roleplaying game just with the german community, even outselling DnD over here.

DnD has no ties to european culture and is simplified heavily for being an american product. This makes it definitely better for combat scenes but also feels lacking, fantastical and over the top for the european market. It's like comparing an action movie to a sluggish fantasy epos. Both talk to entirely different targets.

I like the complexity of the system and the strongly defined setting. That's what makes DSA, DSA. Being able to look back at 30 years of detailed history for a single town and it's social and economical value for the region, that has its own 30 years of history, feels good. It's immersive and fun.

Unlike wizards (and witches and elves,) Blessed Ones have an extremely limited selection of magic. Rondra will only give you things that make you a better tank and Phex will only give you things that make you a better thief. If you're a priest of Boron, you'd better hope that you run into some undead or you're going to be warming the bench. Praios' spells are so useless that you'd pretty much only want to worship him for the social benefit of being in the most powerful church. In contrast, other kinds of spellcasters can mix and match from a wide variety of effects, and wizards can even steal spells from other schools.

Which is why I agree they are underpowered/too expensive, but I haven't played with the Götterwirken expansion yet, so maybe that gives them a well needed buff?

Blessed Ones are fun for roleplaying though. Even though they are a bit difficult to build I think, for someone completely new to role playing a Blessed one would be a good character to get in the right mindset, especially since DSA lacks allignment charts.

>Just big is an insult. It's easily europes most successfull roleplaying game just with the german community, even outselling DnD over here.
It's still small by comparison on a global scale.

Yes, so is DnD when you take the other continents in contrast.

In DSA, you have far more control over what your character can do and who he is compared to DnD, where the element of luck (a single check on a flat distribution where the random factor - the d20 - spans wider than typical bonuses) is so great that you're at the mercy of the dice most of the time to see where the scene goes (and, hence, the "NAT 20!" raving). The influence of luck is easily mitigated with the check system and point buy of DSA.

>No ban of iron
>Rapture Buff
>Social advantages
They're damn strong

I don't think that's entirely accurate, it's still very successful in Europe.

Ban of iron is a minor annoyance at most.
I once built myself a witcher on a flying board who would use said board as a weapon by ramming into other people. For the damage, I tied three daggers at the front of the board with a leather belt construction. These three daggers together were still below the ban of iron threshold which triggers at 2 kilogramm. Ban of iron just means you can't wield a two hander into battle.

Or affect iron, or cast when in shackles, or wear plate/chainmail. Additional other magic classes need contact to the ground like witches. And almost everyone gets mali for not doing gestures/chants while devotees can just do their shit.

DnD is certainly bigger overall but not as much as you may think. And certainly not on a global scale. It's mostly the anglosphere.

Meant for first one

>where the element of luck (a single check on a flat distribution where the random factor - the d20 - spans wider than typical bonuses) is so great that you're at the mercy of the dice most of the time to see where the scene goes (and, hence, the "NAT 20!" raving)
user, the nature of optimizing in D&D means mitigating the swinginess of the d20.

>cast when in shackles
I thought ban of iron only gives you a malus. Does it prevent spellcasting entirely?
Anyway, plate and chainmail you wouldn't really wear anyway because those require you to put points into "load habituation" (? DSA uses weird wording sometimes), which in turn requires you to put points into physical attributes a wizard doesn't really use that much.

Afaik yes, could be wrong in 5e. Haven't played for a while.

In 5e it is rather forgiving. It gives you a malus of 1 on spell casting for every 2 stone of iron near you, and after an hour a malus of 1 on your astral regeneration, again for every 2 stone.

Not that user but I had no idea that the ban of iron was that weak in 5e.

What was the weight threshold previously if it prevented magic entirely?

it used to be three times the encumbrance of all non-magical metals that you carry close enough to you to be in your aura, meaning armor and weapons carried, stuff in your pockets, etc. If I remeber right, it also counted every started stone (kilogram) of metal touching you that way. Putting someone in shackles meant that they couldn't cast shit if you made them heavy. Also, it included all non-magical metals but excluded gold and to a lesser degree silver, so you could still carry coinage or get armor, it would just be insanely expensive and of worse make. For the equivalent of several million dollars, you could get stuff like arm and leg braces made out of magical steel, but getting an entire armor of that stuff is so insanely expensive realistically nobody could do it.

Also, instead of decreasing your AsP (Mana) recovery, it completely nullified it for a number of days equal to the encumbrance if you carry it for more than an hour.

To be able to carry any meaningful amounts of metal, you would have to take feats that make you more resistant to the ban and allow you to decrease the effects of signature equipment if you get used to carrying that particular piece a lot. That way you could carry decrease the effective encumbrance and decrease the multiplier to 1 instead of 3, but that is still only as good as the 5e default.

Or, you know, invest the GDP of a small country worth of ducats into armor made of metal from a heavenly sphere.

Sounds tough.
Nowadays there is an ability called "iron immunity" or something like that. It just doubles the threshold of iron ban from 2 to 4.

I actually think that is kinda cheap. It heavily reduces an advantage blessed ones have over magicians. But I can see why having a hard counter to your class would have been kind of annoying.

Well, it's not like it's easy to put a mage in shackles. But it means that you HAVE a way at all of combating them. It means that everyone has an edge over them in being able to carry armor. All I can think now is "Wow do you need a lot of material to effectively catch a wizard" because with such a low modifier you need fully six time as much iron to get the same effect. Imagine beating a wizard and not being able to safely take him captive because you don't have enough fucking iron to pile on him so that he won't just have an actual chance of magicking himself out of his constraints somehow. A high level wizard is now about as nightmarishly hard to keep captive as a fucking Jedi instead of "just wrap him in a chain"

It ultimately comes down to caster superiority. Unlike D&D, Fighters don't become irrelevant, yes, but it also used to be that you absolutely NEED a front line or else the enemy is just going to trash you because you have no armor and a big enough chain lasso will make you offensive capabilities effecively null. It was a disadvantage instead of a nuisance

Well, that just means you have to deal with wizards in a different way. Usually when you find very powerful wizards or witches in an adventure they will have some kind of pact with an otherworldly being that gives them their power.

Eddy is that you?

Im german, playing DnD but i want to switch to either Pathfinder or DSA/TDE, because DnD5e only has 3 books in german, while these have like 30 or more in german. Which one is better?

Pathfinder is closer to D&D

I want to make the decision based on tone. D&D and Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75) is more flashy, high epic, WoW-style fantasy. DSA is more grounded and closer to europe's actual myths.

*I would make the decision...

I think the case for DSA has been made in this thread:
>down to earth setting, magic and miracles are something special and relatively rare
>complicated, but detailed ruleset for social interaction, investigation, crafting, puzzle solving, etc.
>combat system is more simplistic
>3d20 system allows for more gradual levels of success
>character creation based on buying with a pool of points for everything
>ruleset and lore is interwoven to a degree, a lot of emphasis on lore that goes back 30 years

Don't really know anything about Pathfinder other than that it exists though.

bump

All TDE threads eventually die in the middle. Only a handful of users here actually play TDE and they always post the same stories in every thread to keep it alive for a short moment.

I remember:
>G7 Anonen that would always complain about the terrible way his campaigns end.
>Witcher user that added daggers to his flying broom.
>user that always tells the story of his group where everyone played as assassins and had different methods of murder.

Literally in every TDE/DSA thread you can find one of these persons posting for a moment before it dies.

>>Witcher user that added daggers to his flying broom.
Hey that's me and I only posted that story twice on Veeky Forums, this thread included.

I remember reading it nearly a year ago and then sometimes in short lived TDE/DSA threads again.

The pdf of the character sheat is from last april. So I guess your time frame makes sense? Maybe I mentioned it again some point, but I don't usually post that much on Veeky Forums. Eh, make it three times then, whatever.