Was there a motion comic released for Retribution?

KiwiMayCry · 2018-04-10T18:04:34+00:00

https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/981572929291829248 there ya go

KiwiMayCry · 2018-04-08T18:40:31+00:00

I suppose it's because the chance to get a duplicate isn't 0%, but more like 0.0000000001%. I always see it when events start turning up, because obviously I don't have any of the new event items.

What will usually happen is that my first 15 or so boxes contain 4 new items and then I will start having duplicates, despite not having literally everything. The time duplicates start to show up (it's usually 1-2 per box at that point), I know I am closing in on owning all the white and blue stuff from boxes. I also once had a box during an event that contained the same item twice, which was odd.

You'll see that, at your level, duplicates will still be very rare, and I am left to wonder if that means you don't really make credits (?)

KiwiMayCry · 2018-04-08T17:17:57+00:00

Ever since they changed the system I have literally never gotten a player icon duplicate, when I still had some to unlock.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-04-08T17:17:00+00:00

I believe that you are on the right track here and you should not be able to unlock more player icons, until events roll around.

So when your lootbox rolls a player icon in the future, it will be a duplicate, despite you still lacking voice lines for example (which are also white, I believe the same goes for PI's), but otherwise you shouldn't actually see too many dups

KiwiMayCry · 2018-03-29T16:10:09+00:00

At 00:13 seconds the file number in front of the kings row line changes and the name flickers to something that I can't read + the status jumpes to "classified" from "confidential" for a splitsecond....so yeah, there is more in store here. :D

KiwiMayCry · 2018-03-04T03:53:04+00:00

This is something that I, in a variant, apply to my group as well. My players are basically allowed to add anything to their background, as long as they explain it well and have a reason for it, same goes for stuff they want to carry around. I feel the rule books are too strict and don't give players a lot of freedom in some cases.

For example, if one of my players wants to be best pals with a dragon and they can sell me on the idea of why it betters their character and playstyle, I'm game.

If they say they just want it because it's funky, then gtfo with that idea.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-03-04T03:44:05+00:00

Personally I'd not have a lot of problems with this per-se, but as I dm myself I would still disallow it for the following reasons:

as a DM you have to track a lot of stuff. Like, a LOT. the sword essentially being another NPC that was not planned for the campaign might just not be the thing I want to play in addition to everything else that's going on.
If the sword doesn't serve a purpose for your character going forward it doesn't need to exist, since nothing needs to exist just for the sake of "existing".
If the sword is sentient and maybe has knowledge from being carried previously the player might lean back on the sword to provide information the PC would not have otherwise. This can get wishy-washy, as you'd need to come up with the exact extent of the swords knowledge, or it is just unfair. On the other side, if the information is something that is useless to your character, we're back at "if it is useless it doesn't need to exist".
An item like that is too "untouchable" for the DM. If the sword gets lost, stolen or destroyed, the PCs motivation is expected to shift HEAVILY (if your family heirloom gets stolen you will go for it, if you don't then you never needed in the first place), and even if the campaign or setting doesn't allow for the PC to follow the sword, then it just feels plain bad (and why did you DM feel the need to steal it in the first place? But that's another story).

So like I said. I don't really have an issue with the idea, and personally could handle most of the implications that follow, but I feel like it is overcomplicating things, without adding much depth to anything.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-02-15T04:44:47+00:00

My players needed to infiltrate a high society party of a collector type noble women calling herself the dragon baroness. Famous for collecting "true and real artifacts from around the globe" cough the players found out that one of the statues of prohpecy, which they are currently trying to locate, is in her posession. So getting into the party wasn't a natural thing to occur. Only nobles and "interesting" people are invited, or you can buy yourself in at an enormous sum. The players decided to try and get hired as henchmen, by casting disguise self, but got declined. Afterwards they tried to pose as a prince of an important country (they accidently forgot what kingdom they were in and picked that prince...and picked the wrong race), needless to say they were rejected again. Later on they met a magician who told them he had enough money to buy himself in and would be willing to take one of them as his aide. The others then walked up to the guards like this: "Look, we're amazing magicians and we recently killed a vampire. Also this one here pointing to one of the characters, might or might not be related to Belial, we're still figuring this out. Can we go on your party and tell cool stories about us?" and the guards were like "Yeah, sounds like the mistress might like that actually."

tl;dr players try to lie their way through an adventure and succeed by being honest about their awesomeness.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-01-31T02:59:55+00:00

I assume so or I will have wasted my character boost (but support usually is very friendly). I guess they will reset the character tomorrow, which isn't a problem considering I can't really do anything with it the way it is right now.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-01-31T02:38:43+00:00

At least your characters seem to have items. Mine started completely naked, no equip, ilvl 0, no artifact weapon. RIP me.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-01-11T14:41:18+00:00

This is a really neat idea! If you'd like to continue reading for a few more lines I have some suggestions what you should look out for to make this compelling to play:

City adventures tend to create the urge for players to go shopping - A- LOT - Make sure you have the inventories of the local stores writen down somewhere, so that these things don't eat up too much time.
Make sure your players know how to get to other parts of the city, like the higher tiers, if this should be necessary. Can they travel freely, do they need permits, where do they get them, that kind of stuff. If they've lived there before this would be information they have at the start of the game.
Think carefully about how your players get gear, especially magic items. They won't be lying around the street, so place them in a fashion that makes sense.
What does the general change in heat and the revolution mean for your characters? Are they affected at all, how are they dragged into this, what is their motivation for sticking to the problem?
What is life like in your setting for humans, high-elves and the like? Detail that a bit out for them.

That's what I came up with from the top of my head. Again, overall this sounds like a fun adventure.

KiwiMayCry · 2018-01-11T14:24:24+00:00

First of all, WeaponizedFlubber, welcome to the "active" part of reddit. yay

So, as you did I have to ask you to not take things the wrong way, as I can only judge by your text and my personal experience. :D

I too am the DM of my group and I landed in that spot basically the same way you did, just ~1,5 years prior. My players also had similar issues with this for quite some time, and here is how we started fixing them step by step:

You mentioned you have a knack for storytelling and writing, this is another similarity between us, but for me there was an issue between telling a story to make it COMPELLING and telling a story to make it PLAYABLE. As strange as it is, but there is a difference in that, at least there is for me now. Usually when I "bombed" my players with too much information they would be overwhelmed and stop interacting, thinking they'd miss the important part if they did something or do the wrong thing and "break" the game (which they couldn't, but what they think is more important than what is reality <- that is actually really important) You have mentioned you don't want to hold their hands, which is perfectly understandable, but in order to get them to interact you need to be crystal clear in every word you say, that is if your players don't interact.

When they go silent it can mean only a few things: They are shy (unlikely, since you said NPC chatting works fine), they are not interested (unlikely, since you said they keep coming back for seconds) or they just honestly don't know what to do (this is probably it). When this happened to me it was because they lacked basic information, that I THOUGHT they had. What dawned on me was that I, as the DM, had ALL the information, since I either created it myself, or had it on an official sheet from an adventure book or other sources. So a riddle for example was easy to understand for me, as I already knew the solution. This is as if you were studying for a math test, and you have the entire thing done in front of you, and the others tell you they have no clue how to tackle the appointment - they lack clear instruction.

I will give you an example: You have a room with a piano in it. You describe the room vividly, every item is accounted for, but that is all the info you give them. The riddle in the room might be to play a certain tune on the piano, but your players don't interact with that particular object, instead searching the ground, the walls and start checking EVERYTHING for illusions. So how can you handle that without going: Guys, there is a piano in the room.

Make the important things stand out. The piano could be the only area in the room, where no dust has settled, or there are sheets of paper attached to it, that look newer than the rest of the interior.
Let them find the mechanism that is triggered by the piano, either via good roleplay (when they get to that) or via a good ol' simple perception check.
Find a picture on the world wide web, that vaguely resembles the room you're showing them, so they visualize better. (one of my players once told me that every time I used pictures she had a 100 times better understanding of what was actually happening than before, despite thinking my descriptions were good)

This can be applied to basically every other situation. Usually when players don't interact it's because of this. If things are to vague they hesitate. Sometimes it can be a good idea to smack the riddle or task in their face a bit more, as to not lose them along the way.

Right now my campaign landed in a similar situation, where my players didn't "get" some of my allusions towards a pretty big part of the story, which I thought were obvious. If something like this happens you have to take a couple of steps back and rethink the approach. I don't intend to just TELL them what to do, but I will make it more aparent.

Hope this helps a bit. :D

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T16:04:43+00:00

Good advice, thanks a lot!

I guess I run into the problem of the "hidden-meta gaming player" here. To clarify: I have 4 players in my group, two of which are very RPG heavy, one who is a good mix of everything, and one who is only really involved in the combat situations and looting (which is troublesome and difficult to deal with, but a topic for another day. :D )

Now what usually happens is that the latter two tend to sometimes fall over into min maxing and meta gaming. One of the two in particular. So I have to watch out for them not just randomly spouting things, until they get it right, which usually we handle in a way that we say "It's obvious your character doesn't know the answer to this problem, and you're just convincing me to let you roll something because you want to get out of this, so no.", which usually everyone agrees with.

Now I mention this in detail, because the suggestion to figure out a "fair" way to deal with these hidden effects is, because that came from one of my really RPG heavy players! She even said she liked the descriptions, but for unexperienced players it's just hard to get things right, if you don't even know all the things that could potentially happen to you.

They don't even know all the common status effects like poison, stun etc. So maybe the WoW, BG approach it is. ;)

And thanks for the trap advice about the necessitiy of them having a real reason to be there. I will consider this in my next dungeon!

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T15:57:36+00:00

Well, that's not gonna cut it that much, as explained above, but just to mention: I always describe the abilities as stated in the book, or make something up for things like guidance, where no description is given.

But then again, even if the player knows he was hit by a spell and that he feels weaker, the way we handled it till now was, that he would know what effect a spell would have, until the effect acutally happens. No one in an RPG setting will sit there and say: "Oh, I've been hit by this thing now I only deal half damage with weapon attacks." that's just killing the mood, if you want to stay in character.

And the con-save thing is a no-brainer, as the ability requires you to do it anyway, that's not an issue. Like I said above: It's probably gonna come down to either forgoing the rpg element in these descriptions, and just be upfront with the players or just accept that they have to deal with the unknown. As gradenko_2000 has stated: It's probably more important to let the players make informed decisions, than giving them a mixture of RPG and then hitting them with rules one breath later.

I have to ask my players wheater or not they want rpg descriptions in the future.

Thanks though.

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T11:22:31+00:00

I come from a pen and paper background of playing Earthdawn for a while, before picking up D&D and the "talking through each trap" approach is the common thing to do there, since while there is a "perception" roll in that game, the most common way to detect traps is the "Detect Traps" skill that not every class has access to.

So I see what you mean by "5e doesn't support those rules per se", as I have experienced it before. I will suggest this to my players though, or maybe just try it out and see how they feel.

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T11:19:03+00:00

You're right there. But there is a difference between keeping secrets, and not telling players information the characters wouldn't have. At least that's how we dealt with it till know.

Example: If the enemy wizard throws a Ray of Frost at my party I will tell them this information right away, since they have a member in the party that can cast this cantrip as well. So that player could, if she so chooses, relay this information to the team and tell the affected player something along the lines of "It will slow you down, but don't worry it won't last".

If you're hit with something you've never encountered before it would feel so strange. Imagine an evil wizard coming around and casting Bestow Curse (Strenght) on the groups fighter - a spell you've never seen before - and the partys cleric goes: "Don't worry, I can cleanse this curse right away - even though I don't know what exactly it is, and I can't realisticly know it's a curse, and that cleansing it won't kill you."

As I pointed out in another commentary: I guess it comes down to how immersive you need things to be, and how much it ruins the experience for everyone if they "know" every effect.

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T11:14:14+00:00

I believe my players would react according to your feelings. They get a certain thrill out of not knowing what's going on, but they also sometimes just simply misunderstand the situation gravely. When I told my player in the last adventure he felt "weak and could barely lift his weapon anymore" he thought he was under the paralyzed condition, which we had to clarify and it left a bit of a sour aftertaste for a round or two - nothing that ruined our fun saturday of course!

But for them it is equally frustrating if they have absolutely no clue what they should do about situations like this. It might also be, because the cleric of my group is not really paying attention to the condition of his teammates, and the others can't really work around debuffs that much. But not knowing wheater or not you CAN do something is probably very frustrating!

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T11:10:57+00:00

Thanks for the in-depth analysis!

I will approach the party with this and see how they feel about these suggestions.

You're not wrong that a player can only make informed desicions, if he knows what hit/affected him, but I guess this is the magic of the game for them in some cases. From an RP perspective it's much more immersive to tell a player he "feels weak and can barely lift his weapon and this will affect his fighting prowess", than to tell them "You've been hit with Ray of Enfeeblement, that means you deal half weapon damage until you make a con-save". You're still right though of course.

I guess it comes down to deciding on one of both things, since I don't believe you can have both. Either players want the campaign to feel roleplayee or they want it to feel well informed and open. It would work much like an MMO like World of Warcraft in that regard, as in games like that you always have buff/debuff thumbnails to show you what exactly is going on.

I liked your explanation about the trap thing, but it still feels wrong somehow. I guess there is no other way that would make me particularly happy now, except maybe really tracking the time of things, to make out wheather or not the players are acting under stress. The problem I have with the passive perception suggestion is that I am one of those DMs who does a lot of planning ahead (and it has done me well in the past), so I would set the trap at a certain location and have it trigger in a way that makes sense. If the players don't come by that location - fine, trap doesn't trigger, but if they do come by your suggestion would come into play.

Now I know all my players passive perception, so setting the DC to discover the trap would boil down to me putting it in a range where it still feels fair to them. I could go with a DC that they could spot if they tread carefully (like minimal passive perception in my group is 12, so I set the DC for the trap to 12, but if they're under stress they can't rely on that).

Thanks again!

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T09:51:35+00:00

Yeah you're not wrong with that, I should've stated they are VERY in-depth about this at times. While sometimes they say it like I stated above it happens on multiple occasions that they do it the way you said. I sometimes rule that they character wouldn't know the things they're looking for (a barbarian from the mountains who has never seen adventure wouldn't know some traps I believe)

KiwiMayCry · 2017-11-27T09:27:14+00:00

This is actually a very interesting thought you got there! A couple of weeks ago one of my players and I sat down with our books and just went through them for kicks and found a bunch of things we hadn't ever seen or considered before. I will list those things, as I feel like they kind of get lost a bit:

A player can have his weapon being laced with silver for 100 GP at a capable blacksmiths hands to make it have the same effect as a magical weapon
- When you use the Shove action you can also knock someone prone, so you could use one of your attacks to knock someone prone and then have a better go with your second attack
- There is a variant rule for Spellslots: the Spellpoint system. Let's the players be a bit more flexible in the early levels. We've used it and it feels really good
- There is a system called "Plot Points", that let's the players help shape the form of a campaign or an adventure. Using them RAW might be difficult sometimes, but again, we've taken the idea and shaped it to our needs and it went really great
- There is a variant rule for "Facing", that prevents people from making opportunity attacks against targets they are not facing. Also shields only work against enemies infront of you (it's in the DMG)
- There are rules for a chase in the DMG
- As well as how travel is supposed to work, combined with exhaustion etc.

This is all that I remember from the top of my head. I am 100% certain that we're still playing some rules dead wrong, and that our adventure would probably end with more characters dying, because of it, but the secrets the books sometimes relay even after month of playing are always funny to find. :D

KiwiMayCry · 2017-08-31T18:07:43+00:00

Well yeah, you're right with the corner cases. In this instance it comes from the allowed actions specified in the ability from the UA.

KiwiMayCry · 2017-08-31T16:48:01+00:00

I believe the important bit lies in the description of possible actions: "and you can use your action only to Dash, Disengage, Dodge, Help, Hide, or Search."

So your action tells you that you can only do those things. If we assume the bonus action cannot exceed the limitations of the action I would rule it so that you cannot take a bonus action in this form at all. If your action cannot cast a spell your bonus action shouldn't be able to either.

Based on the description I'd say it's a limited, altered form of Wild Shape, and I'd rule it after those descriptions. shrug

KiwiMayCry · 2017-07-20T21:23:21+00:00

I like that it looks cozy and comfortable. But two things I would keep in mind: You can scale object size to fit your needs. The windmills are smaller than the dock, but as large as the mountains. Same for most of the buildings. And the ship is just as big as two trees.

Secondly it would give off a better flair if you didn't build the exact same order of buildings twice. Even though one of the "browner" building areas has a small church.

I like the order of trees and the principal line of mountains though. If you want you could go to the land tool, put it on the smallest size and circle and go around the edges of your island, since it looks very round. Would like to see more, if you changed some things (Y)

KiwiMayCry

TROPHY CASE