Show Notes
In this episode of the RPGBOT.Podcast, we discuss movement mechanics in TTRPGs. We discuss the differences in how different games handle movement, how movement fits into the action economy, and complex tactical things like opportunity attacks and how they fit into the design of games. We also offer a simple, usable solution for tactical movement in theater of the mind.
Materials Referenced in this Episode
- RPGBOT.Podcast Episodes
- Articles from RPGBOT.net
- DnD 5e
- Other Stuff
Cover Image by Danny Springy from Pixabay.
Transcript
Randall 00:23
Welcome to the RPGBOT dot Podcast. I’m Randall James, your roving rambler. And with me is Tyler Kamstra.
Tyler 00:28
Hi, everybody!
Randall 00:29
And Ash Ely.
Ash Ely 00:30
Hey, guys!
Randall 00:31
All right, Tyler, what’s happening?
Tyler 00:33
Well, today we’re going to talk about movement and tabletop RPGs. If you’ve ever played a tabletop RPG, especially one that involves combat, chances are your character has probably been moving around at some point. Now, we’ve talked about travel on a previous episode. But today we’re going to talk about the more like, fine foot by foot. I’m going to walk across this room and maybe high five, somebody that kind of movement
Randall James 00:56
With my sword.
Tyler 00:56
I mean, I’m not going to judge how you do your high fives.
Randall James 00:59
Fair enough. It wasn’t willing in fact that yeah, a high five shooter. Sure.
Ash Ely 01:03
Yeah. It’s just extreme high fives, you know?
Randall 01:07
And I think that’s exactly right. So we talked a lot about like, long distance movement in roleplay. Different systems have, like cool ways. We talked about One Ring has awesome ideas tied around travel, and I think that’s really great. But this is going to be more mechanics heavy, right? We’re going to talk about, like, literally in combat, and I suppose maybe some of the same rules are gonna apply to like chases won’t focus on that. But the mechanics of moving around in combat, where are they started? Where they’re at? And yeah, what are some of the systems, the modern systems doing today?
Tyler 01:37
Absolutely. And combat is absolutely the the most important time to think about combat…
Randall 01:45
No, combat is the most important time to think about combat. If you spent all your RP time thinking about combat, nothing’s ever gonna happen. You’re talking to a shopkeeper, all of a sudden, you’re like, alright, I rolled a hit. What do you mean, you were just trying to like buy tobacco for the road? What’s happening
01:58
That’s just called Murder Hoboing.
Randall 02:03
Every conversation is just pre combat, you try hard and believe in yourself.
Tyler 02:07
Well, now that we’ve established that my thoughts all begin and end with combat, what I meant to say was, combat is the most important time to think about movement. Because where you’re standing in a fight is so important. Like, if you’ve ever been in a fight in a video game, if you’ve ever been in a fight in a tabletop RPG, maybe you’ve been in a fight in real life, I don’t know your life, I don’t know. But where you’re standing, and where you’re going can be very important. Many tabletop RPGs use a grid for combat. And that’s something that to the best of my knowledge originated from Dungeons and Dragons. And a lot of RPGs have kept to that style of play. Because using a grid, sometimes it’s a square grid, sometimes it’s a hex grid, doesn’t matter. But using a grid is considered eminently fair. Which just means everybody knows exactly where they are. Everybody knows exactly how far away everything is from everything else. And there’s no like, on my turn, the bad guy was five feet and one inch away. And on the bad guys turn, the bad guy was four feet nine inches away, so they could hit me, none of that. Grid, grid is good. But there’s also theater of the mind, which you know, trades, some of that mechanical complexity, some of that additional tracking for speed, or in that case, movement does sometimes get complicated. And one of the more important things in games like Dungeons and Dragons, and Pathfinder, where you have very specific party roles, you’ve got your Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard. You’ll typically have kind of frontline and backline characters. So movement also becomes important in those games for separating bad guys, from your friends who are who are squishy and stand in the back. So just your Fighter is up front between the monster and the Wizard hiding in the back.
Randall 03:59
I think the other thing here that’s important is a lot of times if you have area of effect, right, I’ve got my cone or I’ve got a fireball, which is going to influence a sphere. Getting everybody in a position where you can be impactful with that cone or you can be impactful with that sphere without blowing up your own party also becomes like super important and strategic. And so it isn’t always just the Wizard hiding but it’s Wizard. It’s like, okay, I need line of sight. And I would like to be as far away as possible while also having that line of sight. And I think it’d be great if you didn’t stand in the middle of my fireball.
04:29
Do you also have to keep in mind especially when it comes to DND. There’s also a Z axis to sort of keep in mind there’s flight. There’s also swimming which is his own nature of… it’s own can of worms. And you know that whole situation plus different classes have different styles of movement, like monks are really good at dominating the battlefield through their massive movement speed, whereas with a Barbarian or Fighter kind of person you are going to be more about controlling other people’s movements, shoving them, grappling them, preventing them from moving away. And there’s a lot of ways that you can kind of use movement to your advantage, both defensively and offensively. And there’s a lot to think about, especially even if you just have the grid. It’s just a lot to think about not even to mention, theater of the mind stuff when you get into theater of the mind is a whole other can of worms.
Randall 05:25
Yeah, and for all the games that are played that have been strictly theater of the mind, I feel like you lose a lot of this, because it’s basically the DM thinking like, yeah, all right, I’ll allow it Sure, whatever. And that’s probably going to work. When in reality, like a lot of the scenarios you get to like I’ve had, I’ve had DMS basically say like, well, there’s five enemies, I’m gonna say you can get three of them. How does that make sense? Like, I’m grateful. But in this scenario, we’ve described where somebody for my party is each engaged with one of them, I can get three of them, but nobody from my party. Great. No, that’s Yeah, absolutely. Makes total sense, bro. Let’s do it. No.
Tyler 06:01
Well, that’s one of the reasons that the grid is considered eminently fair, because you can always just look at the grid and say, I have this pie plate fireball, I’m just gonna, like, wave my hand around and figure out where can I put this thing above the grid to only hit enemies, not hit my friends, or, I don’t know, maybe you get spicy. And just like, the tea fillings got fire resistance, I’ll fireball them, they’re fine.
Randall 06:26
It’s going to be great. The other thing that I’ll add to this, you know, I know everybody at home, right? They understand tax opportunity opportunity attacks, when you have the grid, and you can actually see the motion, it’s like, you know, you can only move 30 feet, in order to get from point A to point B in those 30 feet available to you, you are going to have to move in a place that’s going to invoke an opportunity to attack. And that’s going to change the way you think about your turn in any given system that you’re playing that has attacks of opportunity. So there’s a lot of great reasons why having the grid is is really going to be Yeah, important.
Ash Ely 06:59
Well, we’ve been dunking on theater of the mind for so long, that I feel necessary to say something in its defense. I think that theater of the mind can be useful. Like you said before, in terms of speed, just like getting things through, especially in older editions of D&D where combat can take on eternity, I can speak to that from experience. But also it just allows a little bit more freedom in terms of… for the DM you’re not limited by whatever map you can print out, or, you know, that kind of thing. And it’s sort of easier to visualize three dimensions in your mind than it is on the map. Unless you have like those tear things, but on on most people use virtual tabletops. And it’s not really easy to sort of do that on a virtual tabletop space. And it also is, it’s may sound bad, but it can be useful. It’s also good for fudging things for the DM, if the encounter’s not going as well as you thought, you can sort of see if you’re saying oh, this person moves here, and they’re like, Oh, am I close enough to attack of opportunity him, he’s just a bit out of your reach. Whereas if that was on a grid, they could see that I’m not advocating for DMs to lie to their players. I just want that stated for the record, but it can be useful in certain situations. I just want them to have the option to lie to their players and then make the choice not to every time. Right? Exactly. we don’t lie to our players here.
Tyler 08:27
He said lying.
Randall 08:31
I feel like we say this from time to time. You know, not every combat and not every session has to be the same. I think you might have certain combat sessions where you say we’re gonna do this theater of the mind certain combat sessions like if it’s the BBG and you’re in the lair. Absolutely go find that map let’s set up a grid let’s have fun with it. You know when, when they choose to fight the shopkeeper they were trying to buy the tobacco from. I’m not pulling out a grid for this people just let’s let’s make it happen murder hobo your way out. Don’t forget to pick up a pipe to let’s let’s move on.
Ash Ely 08:59
Yeah, and that’s the other thing that theater of the mind can be useful for is for unexpected combat encounters. Because it’s a lot to ask of the DM to have a bunch of maps set up for any possible encounter that people would come across. Or even just like random encounters that you roll on a table, which I don’t really recommend using because they’re always kind of boring. But if you’re going to use them, I think theater of the mind is the way to go. Because if you have a map, like I said, combat can take a while. And especially if you’re using a grid and you’re gonna make the whole Random Encounter thing worse for yourself if it’s taking a long time.
Tyler 09:36
So I’m gonna send you back with some homework. We did an episode on random encounters not too long ago. On Yeah, on how to make them fun, interesting. I was really happy with it. And I agree. We have done some dunking on theater of the mind, but I’m going to tease a little bit later in the episode. We’re going to tell you how to do theater of the mind in a way that is just as fair as using a grid. So yeah, stick around pretty quick. But first, I’m going to drag us into the Wayback Machine and we’re going to go back to third edition D&D.
Ash Ely 10:12
This portal I don’t want to go in.
Randall 10:15
The waters warm. Get out 30d6…
Tyler 10:22
30d6D. Are we building characters or throwing fireballs? Unclear.
Randall James 10:25
Yes.
Ash Ely 10:26
Both one
Randall James 10:27
Then the other, then the other.
Ash Ely 10:28
Porque no los dos.
Tyler 10:32
All right. So third edition D&D, hugely influential in tabletop game design. Also the addition that I learned on famously in 3.x and Pathfinder first edition, the term your action economy was you have a move action, a standard action and later introduced, you got a swift action, which is basically today’s bonus action if you’re playing 5e. But move your move action and your standard action were separate and distinct, sort of. You could also do what was called a full round action, which merged those two actions to do something bigger like casting a more interesting spell, making multiple attacks with a weapon, things like that. But movement was a discrete, like, I have a move action that I can use to run around or whatever. And the only alternative to that was you could take a five foot step if you didn’t move by some other mechanism on your turn. And having, having the ability to trade in your movement to combine it with your standard action do something more interesting was a very, very impactful decision on how 3.x and Pathfinder first edition how those games worked. Because taking a move action meant for martial characters, most of the time, you only get one attack on your turn, when you could be potentially making like eight. So moving was often very expensive, which meant in 3x and Pathfinder first edition for most characters, you never moved more than five feet per turn. Spellcasters could usually get away with a lot more movement, because most interesting spells fireball, etc. or standard action, but it was rough on marshals.
Randall 12:15
Okay, I want to be clear that five step foot as long as I don’t move by any other mechanism, could I still get the full round action by combining my movement? Okay, so I can combine my movement with the regular action and move five feet… cook it?
Ash Ely 12:30
Yeah.
Randall James 12:31
Alright, let me ask, let me ask a different question. Could I use my standard action to like move more perhaps in like a sprint or I don’t know, a dash?
Tyler 12:40
Yes.
Ash Ely 12:41
What? Well, yeah, that’s a full round, I believe it’s a full round action to dash though.
Tyler 12:46
You have two options you can take to move actions, which is just you move your speed. And then you move your speed again. Or you can take a full run, which is you can move up to four times your speed, but you can’t turn.
Ash Ely 12:59
That’s it. You have to go in a straight line. Yeah you have to go in a straight line. Yeah.
Randall 13:03
That’s fair. Nobody can turn at the same time as they’re doing that. I will say I really liked that idea of like, using, like your standard action as a move action to like, do something like dashing. I hope that stays around.
Ash Ely 13:17
Yeah, it’s, it’s one of the things that I’ve noticed about Pathfinder, like, having originally come from 5e. And now playing Pathfinder is that it’s sort of like Pathfinder has some things, it has a mechanic that will do better than 5e. But also worse, if that makes any sense. So like with the run action, you can move four times your speed as opposed to in 5e , you can only move twice your speed when you take a dash action. But it comes with the caveat that you have to go straight line, which is very funny. I do, I do kind of like that. I don’t really have a problem with that. I will say though, that you did miss two actions, immediate action, and a free action.
Tyler 14:01
Ah, yes, well, those weren’t directly related to movement. So I skipped over them. But you’re right, if needed actions are basically 5e or Pathfinder second edition’s reaction, but then you don’t get a swift action on your turn, and then free actions. They’re just that they’re free.
Ash Ely 14:17
Yeah. And immediate actions were different than attacks of opportunity. Like you could have multiple attacks of opportunity. Attacks of opportunity weren’t bound to your reaction or immediate action.
Tyler 14:28
Correct. And that too, was very impactful on how movement worked in those editions. Very commonly, frontline martial characters would take a feat called Combat Reflexes that let you take additional attacks of opportunity. If you’re playing PF1, you may have read our area control defender handbook, which basically goes into like how do I have as much reach as possible and as many attacks of opportunity as possible, so that when people try to walk up to me, I can beat them several times before they get to me, and then hopefully no one ever gets close enough to give you a high five.
Randall 15:01
The opportunity cost of being my friend is really high.
Ash Ely 15:06
I want to say that I think my friend Matt, who’s running my Pathfinder game may have read that, because he told me about a character that was essentially just I’m going to plant myself here. Nobody can go past me.
Tyler 15:19
Perfect. That’s exactly what those characters should do.
Ash Ely 15:22
He had an insane reach. And it was just Yeah.
Randall 15:25
So just to be clear, 3.x and PF1, it sounds like they had pretty similar basically the same movement rules. 100% the same? Yes. Okay, so this was something PF1 didn’t really branch off and try to do anything different.
Ash Ely 15:37
Correct.
Randall 15:38
Which is funny, because I think you know, in a moment, we’re going to talk about 5e and PF2. And I feel like they did go different directions. But I could see how they’re each inspired by what you’re describing.
Ash Ely 15:46
Well, as long as we’re on Pathfinder movement, I have a bit of a rant about movement and Pathfinder, specifically, when it comes to diagonal movement. I don’t know if you guys know about this. But in order to move diagonally in Pathfinder, you have to go. It’s like, two. Yeah, it’s it’s like in a half terrain. Yeah. It’s like twice your movement to go one square. And I get why they did that. And this is a major…
Randall James 16:14
Wait, wait, wait, is it here? Is it one and a half?
Tyler 16:17
It’s one and a half. Second Square costs two squares of movement.
Randall 16:21
Yeah. What’s the square root of two? God?
Tyler 16:25
Two, something.
Randall 16:27
I think it’s 1.41. People at home, we have calculators, we’re not going to go to them. But I’ll say put it in the show notes. Yeah. Square to two equals, we’re doing it. Hopefully everybody knows how to interpret a square root symbol. It’s gonna be wonderful. But everybody, everybody at home, I know. You know what it means? What I’m worried about Spotify and Apple, wonderful podcast solutions. I think everybody should be using them at home. They’re great. I don’t know if they know what the square root symbol is. Let’s see how it goes. Anyway.
Ash Ely 16:54
Transition?
Randall James 16:55
Yeah, well, 1.5 is awfully close to 1.4. So I actually understand why you would say if I’m gonna move on a DAG No, I’m gonna call it 1.5.
Ash Ely 17:03
Yeah, yeah, it’s an infuriating system. And this is the thing that Pathfinder likes to do, which is something that I’ve noticed that they… that Pathfinder was really obsessed with was realistic fidelity, which is basically like, we want to try to emulate how it would really go in a combat, which I get, but it’s kind of a losing battle, because this is all just basically anime. I mean, it adds nothing to the experience of people having to do 1.5 movement just to move in a diagonal. And I get that I think that the other complaint, the reason why they did it that way was because you can conceivably move further, using just diagonals. But nobody does that. Unless you know, they’re a jerk. And they’re trying to game the system. So I feel like sometimes you can sacrifice realistic fidelity for the sake of gameplay, because in my time that I’ve encountered diagonal movement, I hated it. And we eventually decided to get rid of it because it was a terrible, terrible way to do movement.
Tyler 18:13
Yeah, that’s reasonable a it doesn’t add a whole lot to the game, which is why five he doesn’t do it anymore. The one and a half rule, I believe, is included as a an optional variant in the fifth edition dungeon master’s guide, but I’ve never heard of anyone using it because like, yeah, sure, mathematically it feels weird. That diagonals take just as much movement. But it yeah, really doesn’t change the game.
Randall 18:38
I think we should be multiplying by 1.41. But that’s just…you know.
Ash Ely 18:43
So I think the the conclusion to take from this is diagonal movement is for math nerds, and nobody else.
Tyler 18:51
Well, as a math nerd…
Ash Ely 18:54
To call you out.
Tyler 18:56
It’s fine. It’s fine. I, I learned to suffer the one and a half rule at 10 years old. So it’s second nature. It’s fine. You get used to it, or you don’t know.
Randall 19:08
So he was strangely really good at decimals and nobody ever knew why.
Tyler 19:15
So I’m going to ask a hypothetical question. I’m gonna ask a hypothetical question that I frequently asked after talking about three point x and Pathfinder first edition. Why am I telling you this? As we do frequently on on episodes where we dig into mechanics, the context of three point x and Pathfinder first edition is very informative for other current tabletop RPGs. So, many RPGs now have kind of a split action system similar to three point x. So we’ve talked about the alien RPG recently when you’re in combat, you have a fast action and complex action, which is basically a move action and a standard action The Marvel Multiverse RPG, the play test is out. Currently, you have an action and you have a movement to action. Again, borrowed straight from three point x. Like there are a lot of games that do that. Fantasy Flight Star Wars as a two action system. It’s called your maneuver and your action and honestly of every game I’ve seen that tries to do this that is the best name scheme I’ve seen.
Randall 20:22
Yeah, it’s pretty solid.
Tyler 20:23
Yeah. So like that conceptual route in third edition has made its way into a lot of other tabletop RPGs. Now not everything uses like that to action system. Pathfinder second edition, famously has a three action system Mork Borg doesn’t care about movement at all.
Randall James 20:42
Yeah, with the secret for Mork Borg. You move and then you die.
Tyler 20:46
Accurate, or you stand still, and then you die.
Randall James 20:49
But in all seriousness, there’s actually no specification for movement in combat in the game. We’ve also talked about One ring second edition, recently, One ring has this idea of like stance, so you might be you know, kind of forward middle or, or distance ranged. I forget what it’s called, essentially, like three ranges of stance, though. And that impacts combat, but there’s no movement, the only thing you might do is go from being like in the middle to the front. And there’s there is a cost to that. But there’s no idea of like, I’m going to move on our grid, for instance, there’s no theater of the mind. Like, where were you? Where were where were they? It’s literally JRPG.
Tyler 21:23
Exactly. Yeah, wandering the stances. If you want to go from one of the melee stances to a range stance, you have to make a successful attack. That’s it. That is the entirety of movement in combat in One Ring. So let’s look at Fantasy Flight Star Wars because I think there’s some really interesting concepts here. And we’re going to touch on alien a little bit because there’s a lot of overlap and how this works. So we mentioned a minute ago how Fantasy Flight has the two action system where you have your maneuver and your action. Now, Fantasy Flight Star Wars wasn’t built to use a grid because if you watch Star Wars, like combats very fluid, people are running around, people are ducking behind things. There’s lightsabers, there’s flips, Obi Wan jumps off of a balcony like crazy stuff. So instead of using like a precise, rigid grid, which they’ve done in like the D20s Star Wars RPG, Fantasy Flight Star Wars uses a system of range bands. There are four bands engaged short, medium, long, extreme. Engaged is essentially melee combat. You get up really close to each other. Somebody gets down on one knee, pulls out a lightsaber. Everyone’s very confused.
Randall 22:41
Wait, wait, I don’t. I don’t think that’s right, buddy. I think it’s, I think it’s the high fiving with lightsabers.
Tyler 22:50
So, so the range bands are intentionally kind of ambiguous. But the important part is you proceed through those range bands linearly. So engages melee combat short is probably like you’re in a small room. Medium is something like you’re in a large room. Long’s like somebody’s way over there. And extreme is like, I think I see that guy off in the distance way over there. Let me get binoculars.
Randall 23:17
C3PO, what do you see with your robot eyes.
Tyler 23:22
Something about R2D2. So in the two action system, you can spend your maneuver to move between range bands. So you could go from short to engage or engage to short or something like that. And there’s no opportunity attacks and Fantasy Flight Star Wars. So if you’re in Melee, and you don’t want to be you can just run. As elegant as the system sounds, there are some kind of minor frustrations. Namely, if there’s more than two people in combat, range fans get really confusing, because let’s say, let’s say I’m at medium range from two stormtroopers, and one of those stormtroopers runs off to the left somewhere. What range band is that, is that Stormtrooper. Now let’s say I have two friends who are boxing with those stormtroopers, what range band is everyone to everyone else and like it, it immediately starts getting very confusing once you start adding people. But the very recent Alien RPG came along and saved us with a very, very similar implementation of movement and introduced these things called zones. Now, zones are vague. They’re intentionally vague. And basically, if you just took like, take a map of a building, and take each room and kind of circle it and say, like, this is this zone. That’s it, and every zone you have to go through to reach somebody is one range. Bam, that’s it. Problem solved.
Randall 24:47
And then some idea of like being engaged as well?
Tyler 24:50
Yeah. So you can be in the same zone with somebody else and be in short range. But once you get into melee combat with them, you’re engaged. So like, let’s say I’m in a 10 by 10 room, me and Zenomorph boxer. We are in opposite corners and we are staring at each other from short range. One of us decides that we want to get into fights so I pull up my lightsaber Xenomorph puts on its boxing gloves, we move into engaged range. And…
Ash Ely 25:21
So, in this Scenario JEDI exist in the Aliens universe.
Randall 25:25
Yeah, absolutely.
Tyler 25:26
Does Disney own alien yet?
Ash Ely 25:28
No, but they will eventually I’m sure.
Randall 25:32
Are we sure?
Ash Ely 25:33
Yeah.
Tyler 25:34
Why not?
Ash Ely 25:36
Let me see I gotta look this up keep talking. Isn’t it like Fox 21st century is Alien okay.
Tyler 25:42
I don’t think bought Fox.
Randall 25:44
They might have good no because yeah they acquired the X Men.
Tyler 25:47
Yeah, yes…
Ash Ely 25:51
Oh my god they do own Aliens!
Randall 25:56
We need you know you chop off the boxing gloves with your lightsaber and then like caustic acids sprays everywhere and everybody’s having a bad time now.
Tyler 26:10
Well then you want to stop being an engaged range.
Randall 26:13
Jedi Master there’s a there’s a hole in your space boat.
Tyler 26:16
Yes.
Randall 26:20
So movement, am right?
Tyler 26:21
To movement. Yeah. Okay, so the reason that range bands are a thing in some RPGs, Star Wars, Alien. Because those are RPGs, where you are frequently both in ranged punch things and also shooting at things because alien has guns. Star Wars has blasters, Alien has aliens, Star Wars has aliens. So you need to know how far away you are from things so that you can shoot them or potentially whack them with your lightsaber.
Randall 26:56
But you don’t need to know exactly how far because exactly how far you’ve… exactly how far doesn’t actually matter.
Ash Ely 27:02
This actually sounds similar to Vampire actually, they have similar sort of range bands, but it’s not as like strict. It’s like it’s tied to weapons and certain skills. So like you have melee? Sure, I believe short range, mid range, long range. And like that’s that’s kind of it. Like you can I think it’s like you said I can’t remember exactly the moment but like you can move from one range band to the next on your turn. So it’s kind of similar to Star Wars. But I do like that system allows more freeform sort of flexibility. But I think you’re right that it would cause some confusion, especially if you’re using a grid.
Randall 27:42
Would you say that it improves the ability to execute theater of the mind.
Ash Ely 27:50
I see what you do there.
Randall 27:51
Oh, wait, wait, hang on, people hang on.
Ash Ely 27:56
There’s more?
Randall 27:57
Well, I need to ask a question. I’m pretty sure nobody at home listening knows how movement works in fifth edition.
Tyler 28:07
Not a single person… not a single person has ever opened that book.
Ash Ely 28:12
Nope. I don’t know why they’re listening to this podcast.
Randall 28:17
People, you know, people don’t use VTTs, they don’t lay down grids on their tables at home when their friends come over. I think we should talk about it for a second.
Tyler 28:27
So if you are familiar with fifth edition, or if you’re not movement… …turn is a pool. So you have a number of feet of movement based on your speed. And you can go that distance like that it gets a little spicy, if you have multiple movement speeds, but just go it’s in the player’s handbook spelled out very clearly. So I am a human, I have a 30 foot movement speed allegedly. And you can pretty much only use your movement for moving around on the grid. There are a couple other minor things like standing up from prone. mounting a creature, but generally it’s just I move around. Unlike three point x and Pathfinder first edition, you can’t trade your movement for more stuff to do on your turn. So you couldn’t be like, I would like to make more attacks, I’m going to stand still. Now there are some things that will like reduce your movement to zero like the Rogue has an optional class feature called steady aim that says you get advantage on your next attack. But you can’t move this term. Like there’s things like that, but you’re not. You’re not really spending your movement. You’re kind of sacrificing it which I guess is a difference.
Randall 28:35
You probably are… Spending sacrifice things. Absolutely. Yeah.
Tyler 29:46
It’s a distinction without a difference. Yeah. You can jump as part of your movement, which in some games like jumping is a specific separate action that you have to do. So. Fifth editions… Just the basic movement is actually very flexible and generous because it doesn’t have some opportunity cost that you’re giving up in the vast majority of situations. So like, if I am standing in a room full of angry goblins, and I want to go high five goblins with a sword, then then I can use my movement and walk between the goblins, successively bapping them, but like there’s nothing else I can do with the movement really. And that’s perfectly fine, because the designer wanted movement to be inexpensive in fifth edition, in 3.5 and PF1 movement was very expensive, which meant the characters who needed it most, martial characters generally just couldn’t move around on their turns.
Ash Ely 30:47
Yeah. And I think it makes combat a bit more dynamic in fifth edition, because you’re going to have people constantly moving around the board, some guy will flee throwing a fling a spell at you and keep running. Whereas in Pathfinder, it would mostly just evolve in the comments I played, it mostly just devolves into like a single, small part of the board, where everybody’s just hitting each other. That’s just kind of how I went because it was costly.
Randall 31:14
Typically, you’re talking about Pathfinder one.
Ash Ely 31:16
Pathfinder one. I’m not talking about where it will talk about Pathfinder 2 later, but Pathfinder one is what I’m referring to.
Tyler 31:22
Yeah.
Randall 31:22
Are we?
Ash Ely 31:23
Yeah, go ahead.
Randall 31:24
No. Okay. So I just wanted to make the comment, like you were talking about jumping a second ago. So one of the things that’s interesting to me is that 3x and Pathfinder one, right, you had this idea that you could run, but you had to go in the same direction. Because logic says that your momentum carries you in the same direction. Yeah, realistic fidelity. Yeah, in 5e, you can get a running start going north to then use the rest of your movement speed to jump straight west, or south for that matter. And that’s perfectly within the rules. I don’t really like that, like, Hey, I’m gonna get some momentum go in this direction, because why not? But I actually want to be over there. Ah!
Tyler 32:00
Yeah, absolutely.
Ash Ely 32:02
Or you could run full speed in a circle if you wanted to. Because 5e just embraces like, you know, anime rules this works.
Randall 32:13
It’s gonna be great.
Tyler 32:16
So we’ve talked about opportunity attacks a little bit previously and opportunity attacks in fifth edition or still a thing, just like they were in 3.x and PF1. And opportunity attacks are the thing that prevents movement from becoming a problem. So we talked about earlier like, I want to keep the monsters over there. My Fighter in between me and the monster and of course, I am the Wizard, but your your fighters, your football lineman, protecting the quarterback from the other team to use a sports metaphor to definitely the right audience for that.
Ash Ely 32:52
Perfectly acceptable audience.
Tyler 32:53
Yes. So…
Randall 32:58
The Wizard is the most important player in your mind. And I really feel like that’s on brand, so let’s keep going.
Ash Ely 33:03
100% percent.
Tyler 33:07
I just got psychic scream. And everything in this room that I don’t like is now permanently stun locked. The other players can go take a nap.
Ash Ely 33:16
Yep, wizards are broken.
Tyler 33:20
So opportunity attacks, people who look at fifth edition, trying to reconcile it with real world combat frequently look at opportunity taxes, like, this is absurd. That’s not how fights work. And I agree with you. Generally, in a fight. If somebody just randomly breaks off and runs straight away from you, you’re not going to get a free chance to punch them in the face. But this is a game. So we’ve traded some reality for some gameplay. So opportunity attacks, prevent enemies from just freely walking past each other, in order to get to the soft, squishy people at the back. Because if you could just walk straight to the soft, squishy people at the back, then the motivation is all of the players form like a turtle shell around the Wizard to protect them from all of the scary things outside.
Randall 34:10
I do think actually, there’s a little bit of realism on this, right. Like if I lay off the sweet clothesline, and you sprint straight into it, because you didn’t declare your intention to duck the clothesline. I’m totally gonna take you out.
Tyler 34:22
Well, that’s what disengage is for.
Ash Ely 34:23
I think. The argument that opportunity attacks don’t make sense. Realistically, I don’t know if I 100% agree with that. I think that if you may be not running away from someone. But if you’re running past someone, you’re usually focused on your destination, and not the person who’s here which does leave you classically open for an attack, which is why people are always like, you know, protect your flanks and stuff like that. If you consciously make the decision to sort of block that person, which is what disengage would be, then it costs you’re not moving as fast. So I feel like there is some realism even if it’s not like 100% realism. Like you said, we have to sacrifice some realism for the sake of balance and fun, which is the mistake that Pathfinder made.
Randall 35:12
I think the answer is we need to have an RPGBOT dot melee.
Ash Ely 35:16
Yeah. 100 percent.
Randall 35:18
100 nights and chainmail enter, like three leave.
Ash Ely 35:23
We’ve got to test this in real life. We got to don some armor, we got to draw up some five squares, five foot squares, and see if that’s realistic. And if I walked past one of you guys, if you could take a swing at me.
Randall 35:34
Yeah, I’m gonna I’m gonna be laying on my back staring at the sky going. I disengaged…
Tyler 35:43
The weirdest LARP.
Ash Ely 35:48
100% on board.
Randall 35:49
It’s like a Knight’s Tale except for none of us are that good looking? Yeah, exactly.
Tyler 35:54
It’s fine. I can give me the weird ginger looking squire. He was…
Randall 36:00
What is his name? Because I love him.
Ash Ely 36:04
Oh, it was it? Was it? Was it the poet guy? Or was the squire it’s been so long as I’ve seen that movie. We’re getting off topic.
Tyler 36:12
It’s fine. It’ll be in the show notes. Alright, so let’s jump to Pathfinder second edition. What’s it Alan Tudyk?
Randall 36:22
I thought yeah.
Ash Ely 36:22
Alan Tudyk was the squire? That’s right. Yeah.
Randall 36:26
Who got so angry at the poet? Okay. Anyway, it’s important because he’s a fantastic actor. And I wish he was in more movies. In fact…
Ash Ely 36:33
He’s been doing a lot lately.
Randall 36:36
More movies I don’t care the D&D movies in it I want Alan Tudyk in it somehow.
Ash Ely 36:41
Yes. Alan Tudyk fan hour, this is what this is.
Randall 36:49
Absolutely.
Tyler 36:51
Pathfinder 2. So we’ve talked about Pathfinder first edition where movement is very costly. So costly, that it’s a huge problem. And all combat turns into five foot square shuffling and shin kicking. And then we and then we’ve talked about fifth edition where movement is mostly very freeform. So you can run circles around and we’ve used this term in previous episodes, you can run circles inside your enemies safety doughnut, quote, unquote, without problem.
Randall 37:19
And the important part there you can even break up your your attacks. If you have multiple attacks. You could move five feet, attack, move five feet, attack, move five feet, attack. You might be invoking opportunity to attack every time you move. But you’re absolutely allowed to do that within the rules of 5e.
Tyler 37:35
Yes.
Ash Ely 37:35
Yeah. godsend.
Tyler 37:39
Yeah, famously another thing you couldn’t do in 3x. So Pathfinder, Second Edition, kind of finds a middle ground between fifth edition and 3x. So movement is still costly. On your turn, you have three actions that you can spend for various things like some things cost more than one action and not the point. But you can take a step which is you move one square, no no reactions are provoked. And that’s basically the same thing as three x’s five footstep or for that same action cos you can take a stride which is like five E’s, just your movement, like you move your speed, and then you’re done. Now PF2 doesn’t let you break up attacks during your movement generally, like there are some very specific features let you do that. But generally, a character can’t say I spent an action to move 30 feet. And in the middle of that I’m going to spend the rest of my actions to hit somebody and then move away like you can’t you can’t do that you have to finish what you’re doing. Do something else do something else that cost in the action economy make some movement, extremely valuable. Positioning yourself in Pathfinder 2 is very important. Flanking is a default rule in both 3x and Pathfinder second edition so getting into position to flank enemies or getting out of a position where you’re being flanked is huge. Where this can get a little complicated and messy is attack opportunities work very differently in Pathfinder second edition for one thing, not everyone gets them in fact, most things don’t. The things that do are big scary melee monsters that you would expect like yeah, this thing knows what it’s doing in a fight like your your troll your Fighter like the those characters creatures will frequently have a reaction that lets them attack you when you move or take an interact action.
Randall 39:35
And so being a person like that a couple times that I played PF2, who hadn’t looked at monsters it wasn’t familiar with who wouldn’t who wouldn’t have attacks of opportunity. I was aware that not all creatures would. But constantly the other players and I were basically like, Okay, I really want to get away from this creature. But I’m not going to because I’m afraid that it’s gonna have an attack of opportunity. And I don’t want to risk that. So I really, you know, If you have a group of players who, you know, basically haven’t read through all the monsters and don’t know what will and won’t have it memorized that, I think it’s a fun dynamic of like, I’m going to risk getting away from this thing with a potential that it’s going to hit me in the face on the way.
Ash Ely 40:14
That is interesting. So I don’t actually know that much about PF2. Because I haven’t had an opportunity to play yet, but I do. I do kind of like that. It adds a lot more valuable, a lot more value to martial classes. And it sort of addresses the whole, you know, realism issue where people are like, you know, they wouldn’t realistically hit that, but someone who is trained and fighting would know how to do that. But your basic Wizard who just has a stick and a prayer, he’s not going to be like, You guys run away from it. So yeah, that’s that’s not gonna work. But I do like that. And, you know, the problem with a lot of, you know, D&D games, is that while the martial fighters are valuable, at least in the beginning, by the time of the late game, they are severely outclassed by the casters, then this sort of gives them more value of for like the whole game, because they’re the ones that can tie down creatures and prevent them from moving, which, so like, if a guy is leaving, you can’t just have your Wizard stand next to him and be like, I got this guy’s you have to have the Fighter there, which, that’s cool. I like that.
Randall 41:24
I think it’d be a lot more fun game if we let the Wizard have an attack of opportunity. Because the Wizard is not going to hit. Go ahead. Hey, buddy. I’m gonna go over there. One swing, I give you one swing. You couldn’t do it. Alright, I’m out of here.
Ash Ely 41:41
You are forgetting… you’re forgetting a warmaster feat, which allows wizards to opportunity attack with a spell.
Tyler 41:48
War caster?
Ash Ely 41:50
Warcaster? Yeah, I know words.
Randall 41:54
He has one letter,
Ash Ely 41:55
War caster, excuse me. I’ve lost my D&D cred. But yeah, of all the feats I recommend people get if you’re a caster. That is like number one, because it does allow you to not just the, you know, opportunity attack, with spells, but you know, advantage on concentration checks is pretty good.
Randall 42:17
Yeah, it’s fair. You’ve taught the Wizard it’s not effective.
Tyler 42:23
All right, so. So we’ve talked a bit, we’ve talked ahead about a bunch of additions. Let’s go back to theater of the mind. A lot of people listening to this podcast are playing primarily Fifth Edition or PF2 these days. So let’s talk about doing theater of the mind in those two games. Calling back to earlier in the episode Fantasy Flight Star Wars and the Alien RPG both use this concept of range bands. So again, to refresh or to recap, engaged, short, medium, long, extreme, and it sounds like Vampire the Masquerade uses something similar, but I haven’t read that one it’s on, it’s on my pile of books, I promise.
Ash Ely 43:04
It’s a good one.
Tyler 43:06
You can use those range bands in fifth edition. Now the missing piece in Fantasy Flight Star Wars implementation of the range bands is that concept of zones that the Alien RPG introduces. So you can look at your dungeon map and say, here are my zones, players… like creatures can move freely between these zones using their entire movement to go between one zone or like maybe if they’re incredibly fast, they can move between two zones, you’ll kind of have to fudge the numbers. It’s it’s intentionally fuzzy, because you’re trading some of that crunchy simulationy math stuff for ease of play. Now, I personally am very, very comfortable on a grid. So like grid comes out, rulers come out. It’s like everyone’s counting squares. I’m right there, I’m ready to go. I’m like I’m in it. But zones, zones are unfamiliar to me. So this is like this will take me personally a little adaptation. But for people who don’t like to do all that math, counting squares, like using theater of the mind with these zones can be very helpful.
Randall 44:17
So only be clear. So what you’re suggesting is that in 5e or Pathfinder 2, we might adopt this idea of zones where I might be engaged with in melee with a particular character creature. I might be in the same zone with a character creature, or I might be two zones, three zones. And then we could basically just map kind of all of our ranged effects we can map everything to saying like, ah, you know, your your fireball goes so many feet. We’re gonna call that a up to two zones away.
Tyler 44:47
Yeah, exactly.
Ash Ely 44:48
Is that, that’s not a bad idea. And you could adapt it pretty easily with 5e. So engage could be anyone who’s within like, say five feet of you. Short could be anyone who’s like, between, like 10. And like, we’ll say 15 feet, like half your 30 foot movement. And then what’s past that? I forget sorry. Yeah, medium. Okay, so medium would be within your 30 foot range that you can probably easily get to. And then long would be within your dash and extreme is past that.
Tyler 45:22
Yeah, absolutely. Let’s say so you don’t even have to measure it using feet like that. Again, as soon as you bring the fee calculations into it, you’re going back towards the grid. Yeah, let’s use a an example. So if you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings, films, the fight in the mines of Moria, where they fight the cave troll like I used to, I use that as an example in a lot of Dungeon fantasy discussions, because it is so effective. Picture the room in your heads, there’s one great big door, you come in through the door, there’s the like the sarcophagus right in the middle. And then there’s kind of like a raised walkway along the back edge of the room. So that effectively gives you three zones, you have like the central floor of the room, the entrance right by the door, and then that raised floor at the back. So you could break that up into three zones. And any creature could use, it’s their movement to move between one of those zones. So you can only move into an adjacent zone. If you want to take a dash you can move one more zone further. And that’s that’s essentially the same thing how it works in Fantasy Flight, Star Wars and Alien RPG, you use your maneuver or your fast action in Alien to move one zone. That handles all your positioning. If someone wants to get into melee with another creature within their zone, I’d say… I’d say you can move from one zone into melee with a creature in another zone, or just into or out of melee, using your movement. But that’s where we start hitting the 5e specific edge cases, because we have a couple of things we have to worry about; opportunity attacks and reach. So opportunity attacks are specifically there to prevent creatures from freely just running out of melee to go do something else. It’s very simple, just if a creature moves out of engaged, opportunity attack, that it. Dead simple, barely even a change, you can still take the disengage action to negate that normally, so a creature could disengage, and then move off to a different zone if they wanted to. And I’m sure this will take some fine tuning. And if you try this, try this in your games, talk to your players, you know, work it out, write things down, come to an agreement, because we’re very much spitballing this and the the other edge case is reach. So there are pull arms. Star Wars famously doesn’t have a whole lot of spears. Neither does the alien RPG, but D&D does. So my suggestion is if a creature has more reach than the creature they are attacking. If they’re within short range, you can attack them. So let’s say I am over here with my glave, which has reach Goblin is over here at short range. So we’re in the same zone. And the goblin has a fork, I don’t know. So I take my glave and I have reached so I can attack the goblin. But the goblin needs to move into the engaged range band with me to attack me. You might also say that because I have more reach, if the goblin moves out of the zone, I would get an opportunity attack. But once that goblin moves into engaged with me, I would still take an opportunity attack if I try to move away. So that kind of simulates reach. And it’s like as the reach numbers go up, you know, things might have 15 versus 10 feet. And it’s essentially the same thing.
Randall 48:49
And so in the description that you give, right, I’m on one raised walkway, there’s another raised walkway on the other side of the room. So if I’m doing a range attack, going into the central floor might mean that it’s essentially like a short range attack, or maybe it’s medium range, because it’s separate zone, going to the walkway on the other side is one additional zone further away. And so at that point, I might have to use something that has a long range attack. And at this point, I think you’d probably have to sit down, kind of look at what skills are available, what folks have and make a call about. You know, I’m going to map everything from like 60 feet to 90 feet and just call that long range. And if you had 60 feet, 90 feet in the original spell, I’m gonna say you can go two zones and we’re fantastic. And for a lot of these things, if you want to go one or two additional zones, you can do it but you’re gonna roll a disadvantage. So it won’t always be perfectly fair. But I think it’s probably a lot better of a solution than saying like I don’t know like you can get, you can get three guys if you want to go ahead.
Ash Ely 49:50
Yeah, I think, I think that the issue with this system does come into effect with spells. I do think that you’re just kind of have to kind of eyeball it. But you mentioned like 60 feet is long range, you know, 30 feet is short range. But there are some spells that are 120 foot. So if that’s like… if 60 feet is long range, 120 feet is extreme. That makes extreme extremely powerful. Sorry for the pun. I’ve, which I don’t know if you want or not. But I do think this system has potential though, especially when it comes to theater of the mind, because it is difficult to keep track of everything. So if you just have it in your mind, like, okay, this person is in this zone, these people on this zone, and you can sort of keep track of it better.
Tyler 50:39
So there, there’s one last thing now that you bring up spells that you have to worry about using the system because area effects are a thing. All of my friends are in a, in the next zone over. And there’s a bunch of creatures in that zone, nobody’s engaged, whatever. And I have this nice fireball that I want to drop into that zone and cause some problems. How do we handle that? Well, fortunately, the Dungeon Master’s Guide has an answer to this one. There’s, there’s a table on adjudicating area effects. It’s very simple. Just what is the shape? What is the size? Here’s how many creatures you hit, done.
Ash Ely 51:13
Oh.
Tyler 51:13
Like don’t, don’t argue with it. Don’t fight with it. Pretend that it makes sense that you can get more than two creatures with a line no matter how long it is, like. Just yeah, just use the table. It works great, it will solve your problem. The extra math doesn’t add anything to the theater of the mind combat, you might need to work some stuff out. Like if you say that you want to hit a creature that is engaged with one of your allies, you might just have to say yeah, if you drop a fireball on creatures that are engaged with each other, everyone that’s engaged is going to be one of those creatures that gets hit and you’re just gonna have to deal with that. But work it out with your players just come up with an answer and just stick to it because as long as the ruling is consistent, it’s always fair. Now with that solved, let’s real quick talk about how this would work in Pathfinder second edition. It doesn’t!
Ash Ely 52:09
Quest complete, on to the next.
Tyler 52:11
Yes, Pathfinder second editions movement is baked very hard into how combat works. And it is a very, very important part of how combat is balanced. So maybe somebody way smarter than me has figured out how to do theater of the mind combat in PF2. But at the very least this system that we’ve pitched tonight would not work yeah, but if you’re playing Pathfinder second edition, one of the best things about it is the, the specific crunchy tactical, satisfying combat like combat in Pathfinder second edition feels so good. It feels so good. But if you take away the grid, it gets way weird.
Ash Ely 52:55
Yeah, that’s kind of always been the appeal of Pathfinder. It appeals to the strategist and tactician in us.
Tyler 53:02
Definitely.
Randall 53:03
Alright, I think we did it. I think that was solid. Alright, so we do have a question of the week this week. Our question of the week this week comes to us from Skaweez via Discord. Question, Mad classes are almost always weaker than Sad ones. And the main exception, the Paladin is so OP that even a mediocre Paladin is better than the best Monk. Oof. So I want to pause for a second we’re not done with the question. We’ve talked about Mad/Sad, and I think before but let’s call it out. So I think it helps the question makes sense. So Mad is the idea of multiple ability score dependence or multiple ability dependence, Sad is single ability dependence, 5e most of the classes are famously sad. They’re not mad, they’re sad. And we’ll get into that in a second. Okay, so, Skaweez via Discord question. Mad classes are almost always weaker than sad ones and the main exception the Paladin, so be that even a mediocre Paladin is better than the best Monk. So hypothetically, would it be better for every class to be Sad? Or for every class to be Mad? I personally wish 5e were designed for the latter. Where having generally average stats was optimal and capping a stat came at a great cost. And so the implied question is basically what do we think? And so Tyler I want to come to you first.
Tyler 54:13
Ah, all right, sure. Okay, um, personally I think more classes should be mad like you should get some benefit from having high stats in other ability scores so like, wizards… all you need is intelligence like sure dexterity gives you AC, Constitution gives you hit points and you get saves from everything but your Wizard all you need is intelligence. If you need more AC, cast major armor, if you need more hit points cast false life like you got it. All you need is the intelligence to back up the spells. If there was a more significant benefit to other ability scores, we would see more diversity and builds and more interesting characters, like, if you want to play an enchanter, who’s also really charming and just uses their spells to back up being charming. Like, there’s very little benefit to doing so. Like, sure you get, you can put 14 and charisma and take percent and proficiency and persuasion, which you have to get from your background, because it’s not even a skill option for the Wizard. So you have to get it from your background or from your race, like fifth edition, very much locks people into those abilities score breakdowns.
Ash Ely 55:30
I don’t know, I think, I think I disagree a little bit. I think that it is, especially in 5e, every class does rely on at least one or even two other ability scores. And that’s because dexterity is a very favorited skill, like it is, it is useful for everything, if you take your dexterity, you’re gonna have a rough time, even with major armor. Major armor is dependent on your dexterity as well. And constitution is another thing that you also have to focus on, especially if you’re a caster. Because if you’re a caster, and you have low hitpoints you can’t really cast anything if you’re dead. And also it constitution is tied to your concentration, concentration affects. Now I do think that where Mad really becomes a problem is when it… when we’re talking about multiclassing. Like when your multiclassing was stuff that’s not in God’s name is supposed to be multiclass. I do think 5e struggles with that. Because you know, I should just be able to make like, Monk Barbarian. But that is an awful way to build a character. Because suddenly I have to now focus on strength, if I’m going well, no, I would probably ignore strength, but dexterity, although unique kind of needs strength for because I think it’s tied to your rage. I don’t play a lot of barbarians… constitution for your AC. But now you also have to do wisdom for your Monk AC. It’s a whole mess. So it’s, it’s probably kind of the problem when you’re dealing with bounded accuracy. And I think Pathfinder, this is one of the things that Pathfinder was better at was you could make a really mad class. And the way the and you could still make it super overpowered through the use of all the frickin feats and items and other bull that you can sort of put on your character and make a really overpowered build, even if they are pretty stat heavy.
Tyler 57:32
Of course, even with all that most things lose to a single class Wizard.
Ash Ely 57:36
Yep, that is true. I mean, was there just OP although I will say in 5e clerics give them a run for their money Cleric finally, solo everything in the game.
Tyler 57:46
So if you’re looking for a system that does this a little better. Pathfinder second edition is right there. Pathfinder second edition is really, really good about letting you choose how to do your ability scores. And because of the way increasing ability scores work, you are not punished for diversifying quite the way you are in fifth edition. So like, wizards are still sad, all you need is intelligence. So you can just dump all of your resources, new intelligence, but you get, you get to increase four scores by plus two, at first, fifth, 10th, 15th and 20th level, you can’t put all four of those into intelligence, it’s only one score. So you have to improve other things, which makes it very easy to play classes that have like diverse capabilities. A lot of people build high charisma barbarians, and build around the intimidate skill. Rangers can be built with high intelligence or high wisdom to play them as a support class like PF2 does a really really good job of offering diverse options there based on how you want to do your ability scores. So yeah, it’s if you look at fifth edition and say sad shouldn’t be a thing. PF2 it’s right there, real good.
Randall 59:01
My fear for if you try to make more classes have an opportunity to be mad in 5e, my fear would be that you would basically just wind up with like subclass arc types, where it’s, you know, oh, well, I’ve got my Barbarian who somehow also has a dexterity dependency. So do I go down the dexterity path? Or do I go down the strength path. And then once I max out strength, I’ll start boosting up dexterity and maybe it’s taking, like some of the skill tree that’s coming on that side. In other words, for every class, you would basically wind up with this branching pattern of like, okay, well, I focused on deck. So I take these things, or focus on strengths. So I take these things. And then you’ll have some people who tried to build that balance character and get a little bit out of both. My suspicion in the way the ruleset is built, is that you would wind up with a character who’s actually just bad at everything. You know, you’d have a Barbarian in your class, and they’d be like, oh, you know, I focused on strength and I’m beating the hell out of everything. And this person who’s like, well, it took a little bit of everything. So like, I almost dodged that It still hit me in that I almost hit that guy really hard. But it wasn’t that hard.
Ash Ely 1:00:03
Yeah, I think that is the problem about you know, I think people overreact when they say that sad is overpowered. I think in some cases, it makes sense. Someone who’s dedicated their lives to being a Wizard, and that’s the only thing they do, they’re going to be a master Wizard, rather than someone who just kind of dabbled in it. Because if you, if you make a character that’s just good at everything. That’s a boring character. I’ve constantly encouraged people and I do this with my own characters to dump a stat have a dump stat, even if like you roll it like we usually roll for stats in my games. But even if I roll really well on all of my stats, I will take one stat and I’ll be like, That’s a five now, I want to see what I can do with that. It’s usually charisma. I like to make characters that put their foot in their mouth because that’s what I do.
Randall 1:00:58
Especially my Warlock just…
Ash Ely 1:01:00
I do that as a Warlock, that would be a horrible character.
Randall 1:01:09
How do I RP, somebody who’s really good at spells with the patron but also really terrible with everybody else? Yeah. And I think that’s wonderful. As long as you can commit to actually doing that RP like the you know, even like the strength of the Wizard like I’ve got a I’ve got a four strength somehow. So like somebody hands a thick book, like, okay, the Wizard copies, one too many spells into the spell book and all of a sudden, the extra ink it’s like, I can’t do this anymore.
Ash Ely 1:01:34
I will say it is fun. Most people like they’ll, they’ll take like wisdom or charisma, or take one of the physical ones. It can be fun. I tanked constitution one time that was rough. Because I was playing someone who had a chronic like illness. And she kind of had to rely on her pet to do most of her fighting for her basically, we homebrewed that she was an Artificer and she made like a mech, like a little mech, and she basically had to hide behind him and most of her ability came from the spells that she cast in her Mech, but if she ever got into combat she was which can be a fun character. It can be fun and it makes it a little bit more threatening.
Randall 1:02:13
Now when I played PF2 my… all of my damage was dealt through my cat.
Tyler 1:02:19
It was just a house cat like…
Randall 1:02:24
Also the party tank, and I’m not even kidding. I love that. I put that cat in so much danger.
Ash Ely 1:02:30
Sorry. Sorry, precious.
Randall 1:02:34
Yeah, big trouble a little epsilon. Wonderful one shot, play it with your friends. Great introduction to Pathfinder 2. I’m Randall James, you can find me at amateurjack.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @JackAmateur.
Tyler 1:02:44
I’m Tyler Kamstra. You’ll find me at RPGBOT.net Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at RPGBOT D O T n et and patreon.com/rpgbot.
Ash Ely 1:02:55
I’m Ash Ely, I am still setting up some of my social media accounts. So those details will come out soon.
Randall James 1:03:02
All hill the Leisure Illuminati. Nailed it. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on Apple podcast and rate us on Spotify or your favorite podcast app. It’s a quick free way to support the podcast and helps us to reach new listeners. You can find links in the show notes. You’ll find affiliate links for source books and other materials linked in the show notes as well as on RPGBOT.net. Following these links helps us to make this show happen every week. If your question should be the question of the week next week, please email podcast@RPGBOT.net or message us on Twitter at R P G B O T D O T N E T. Please also consider supporting us on Patreon where you will find early access to RPGBORA dot content, polls for future content and access to the RPG bot dot Discord. You can find us at patreon.com/rpgbot. When you guys disagreed on the question of the week. I really wanted to hop in with like the O’ Brother, Where Art Though. Okay, I’m with you fellas.
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