PMed to avoid a thread derail.

You fucking asshole, Stormbringer. YOU ASKED THE QUESTION. If you don't like my answer, then don't ask the fucking question you twat. Quit being the poster child for reductio ad absurdum and go play an actual RPG with people.

EDIT: As far as problems, be they the Vacc Suit skill or escalating bonuses and escalating DCs, I am interested in solutions while you are only interested in demonstrating that they are problems. So again, fuck you. I'm into actual play, you can engage in your intellectual masturbation to your heart's content - but it won't bring you any closer to actual play.

Quote from: jeff37923;514066You fucking asshole, Stormbringer. YOU ASKED THE QUESTION. If you don't like my answer, then don't ask the fucking question you twat. Quit being the poster child for reductio ad absurdum and go play an actual RPG with people.

Yeah, and what I asked you to do is engage that self-assessed superlative imagination of yours to come up with some examples that weren't copy-pasted directly from the Traveller book out of an 18mo old post.  You are the one accusing everyone else of lacking in imagination.  Impress me.  I can read the book; you claimed to have some ultra imaginative examples of using the Vacc Suit skill that would blow away all arguments against it.  I don't even care about a Pilot that has Vacc Suit-6 and Pilot-0 right now.  That is not even on the horizon yet.  First, we need to figure out why a basic skill any spacefarer should have is so awesome that it needs ranks.

Or, you can start working on your defence of infinite bonuses/DCs.  I mean, I gave you the option.

QuoteEDIT: As far as problems, be they the Vacc Suit skill or escalating  bonuses and escalating DCs, I am interested in solutions while you are  only interested in demonstrating that they are problems. So again, fuck  you. I'm into actual play, you can engage in your intellectual  masturbation to your heart's content - but it won't bring you any closer  to actual play.

How can you formulate a solution if you are not aware of the problem or how it arises?  In fact, how can you even claim to be interested in solutions when you refuse to discuss the problem in the first place?

Quote from: StormBringer;514067Yeah, and what I asked you to do is engage that self-assessed superlative imagination of yours to come up with some examples that weren't copy-pasted directly from the Traveller book out of an 18mo old post.  You are the one accusing everyone else of lacking in imagination.  Impress me.  I can read the book; you claimed to have some ultra imaginative examples of using the Vacc Suit skill that would blow away all arguments against it.  I don't even care about a Pilot that has Vacc Suit-6 and Pilot-0 right now.  That is not even on the horizon yet.  First, we need to figure out why a basic skill any spacefarer should have is so awesome that it needs ranks.

Goddamn, you are an idiot.

That post came from my own mind, you will not be able to find it in any Traveller book - but you are welcome to try.  

Quote from: StormBringer;514067Or, you can start working on your defence of infinite bonuses/DCs.  I mean, I gave you the option.

No. I do not think it is a problem, so I will leave you to it. You are the one who is convinced it is a problem, after all.

Quote from: jeff37923;514068Goddamn, you are an idiot.

That post came from my own mind, you will not be able to find it in any Traveller book - but you are welcome to try.  

LBB, Book 1, Pg 22.  Vacc Suit skill:

QuoteA basic throw of 10+ to avoid a dangerous situation applies whenever a non-ordinary maneuver is attempted while wearing a vacc suit (including running, jumping, hiding, jumping untethered from one ship to another, or other such activity)

And your examples were:

Quote from: jeff37923;400835Then with an understanding that could come from 5 minutes of reading a Scientific American  article have the PCs make a skill roll when they run, jump, climb, or  reasonably engage in any physical activity that may bring them in  contact with the terrain.

Big imagination you have there.

QuoteNo. I do not think it is a problem, so I will leave you to it. You are the one who is convinced it is a problem, after all.

Then why didn't you leave it to me to begin with, instead of sperging all over the discussion about how people shouldn't be talking about this?  In other words, you must have had a pretty good reason to not shut the fuck up in the first place and step right in the middle of it.  So what made you decide my discussion of a hypothetical issue (that didn't involve you in any way) was worthy of your nerdrage initially, and what made you decide that now you want to just back out?

Quote from: StormBringer;514070Big imagination you have there.

Nice editing there. I notice that you entirely skipped the sections where I was describing the different environments and how they can be handled. Or the fact that you are pulling out Classic Traveller when in my original post it was Mongoose Traveller I was discussing.

But you know, this is better.

It convinces me that you have got a hard on to be the angriest, most bitter non-gamer here and I'm fine with letting you have that crown. You can wear it in that empty kingdom of your own forum.

Quote from: StormBringer;514070Then why didn't you leave it to me to begin with, instead of sperging all over the discussion about how people shouldn't be talking about this?  In other words, you must have had a pretty good reason to not shut the fuck up in the first place and step right in the middle of it.  So what made you decide my discussion of a hypothetical issue (that didn't involve you in any way) was worthy of your nerdrage initially, and what made you decide that now you want to just back out?

Because you just aren't worth my time anymore.

I know that breaks your heart, but I'm sure that you will still be able to angrily masturbate over my absence.

I'm pretty sure that I would be better off just going out and playing more than staying on these forums.

Quote from: Richard Baker and Bill Slavicsek, Dungeon Mastering for Dummies v.3.5, page 251The widening attack gap

At 1st level, the difference between a fighter’s melee ability and a wizard’s melee ability is probably about 4 points or so — the fighter has a base attack bonus of +1 to the wizard’s +0, a Strength score about 4 to 6 points higher than the wizard, and might or might not have the Weapon Focus feat. A monster that the fighter hits 50 percent of the time, the wizard hits 30 percent of the time. A monster that the wizard hits 50 percent of the time, the fighter hits 70 percent of the time. This is a significant difference, but it isn’t broken. By the time characters hit 12th level, this gap is much more significant. The difference in base attack bonus is now 6 points, the difference in Strength scores has grown to 10 or 12 points, and the fighter definitely has Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus. The fighter probably has a much better magic weapon than the wizard, too. Now the fighter’s attack bonus is about 12 or 13 points higher than the wizard’s attack bonus, and probably as much as 6 or 7 points better than the cleric’s attack bonus. A monster that the fighter hits 50 percent of the time, the cleric only hits 20 percent of the time, and the wizard only hits on a roll of 20. A monster that the wizard hits 50 percent of the time, the fighter never misses. Rogues do almost as well as fighters because they usually rely on Dexterity-based attacks.

Now, it’s true that the wizard shouldn’t be attempting many melee attacks by the time he or she reaches 12th level (heck, by the time he or she reaches 2nd level, really). But what the widening attack gap means is that you have to decide whether a monster you include in the adventure is there to threaten (and be threatened by) the fighter, the cleric, or the wizard. If the circumstances of combat develop in such a way that the wrong character is in melee with the monster, you have a bad mismatch. The encounter suddenly becomes too easy or too deadly for the player characters.

The best answer to the widening attack gap is to avoid monolithic encounters where all the monsters are the same. It’s better to have two or three different types of monsters in an encounter, some better at dueling with the fighter, some equipped with other ways (such as spells or supernatural abilities) to attack the cleric or wizard.

What's misleading about the 'crunch whoring' diagnosis - and the Pun-Pun type of examples which invite it in the first place - is to believe that the 'widening gap' problems only come about if the DM allows players to cherry pick stuff from every book. The problem Baker and Slavicsek describe is a common one at that level of play. I've experienced it myself, in a campaign which I ran under the idea of 'every PC build can make use of the PHB and one splat book', with stuff like Tome of Battle excluded from the get go.

Thinking that 'I've never played D&D above level 10' entitles one to say 'Anyone pointing out a problem with play above level 10? Spherical Cows!' is a misuse of the term.

This is closely related to the fact that, so far, no one has shown us how Frank's diagnosis of Iron Heroes was guilty of 'spherical cows' as defined by Justin.

Speaking of that definition, observe the final sentence in the quote given above. It illustrates a way in which encounter design can mitigate a rules fault. But that's a far cry from saying 'the circumstances under which a design fault can arise are so rare that we can discount the fault' (one of Justin's definition of a spherical cow).

No, the claim in that final sentence is this: the circumstances in which the fault shows up become so frequent that scenario design (or monster choice, more simply put) has to mitigate it from now on. (And 'mitigate' is not the same as 'making it go away'.)

Quote from: Windjammer;514073And I'll emphasize that no one so far has pointed out, in actual fact, how Frank's diagnosis of Iron Heroes was spherical cows.

I've not played Iron Heroes but if it's anything like his criticisms of 4E I would expect it to be both:
- correct up to a point
- grossly exagerrated

I wouldn't pass up on playing Iron Heroes based on Frank's attack on it.  If I did play it, however, and found it to be flawed, I would look at Frank's criticisms in order to gain some insight into the problems.

Quote from: Windjammer;514073What's misleading about the 'crunch whoring' diagnosis is to believe that the 'widening gap' problems only come about if the DM allows players to cherry pick stuff from every book.

I believe you have dragged me into a different argument, sir. I said nothing about widening gaps, implied nothing about widening gaps, my comments had nothing to do with widening gaps.

(Or Frank. Don't know anything about him. Don't have an opinion.)

All I did was post a good suggestion. A reasonable suggestion. A correct suggestion. Based on sensible analysis:

"There are some really shitty rules out there, so don't crunch whore. It's likely to cause problems."

This advice is correct, on every level. It applies to D&D, Rifts, and most other games, it applies to third party d20, Vampire/any other game's splatbooks, equipment books, campaign settings, modules, house rules posted by some Internet guy, whatever.

So keep me out of your arguments, because I said nothing about them and, for the purposes of this thread, care nothing about them. I am not for you, I am not against you.

I had a point to make. It was correct. I made it.

EDIT:

And, for the record, crunch whoring causes a lot of problems. Cutting back on it mitigates them.

There are also problems unrelated to crunch whoring (which problems I didn't discuss). So cutting back on crunch whoring won't affect those problems, and I never said it would. Why attempt to contradict that which I never said?

Quote from: jeff37923;514071Nice editing there. I notice that you entirely skipped the sections where I was describing the different environments and how they can be handled. Or the fact that you are pulling out Classic Traveller when in my original post it was Mongoose Traveller I was discussing.

Most of us are not interested in your year old quarrels.  Mention it next time, I am not going to read every thread you were involved in for the past 18mos to get the context.  Describing the different environments is just a sort of explanation of 'running, jumping, hiding...' in context.  Don't get all huffy, you were the one that claimed everyone else was terminally lacking in imagination, then pulled examples directly out of the book and claimed they were your own ideas.

But this really doesn't bolster your argument:
Mongoose Traveller, Core Rules, pg 59.  Vacc Suit skill:

QuoteA character will rarely need to make Vacc Suit checks - merely possessing the skill is enough

So... yeah.  Pretty useless to have more than one rank in it, and the only place to find any reason to use it is the examples in CT.  Which you dutifully copy-pasted and claimed as your own.  Then you whinge that I used the wrong book to address your point.

And since you reposted your response in it's entirety, what could I possibly edit?  Are you suggesting that no reply quote should ever be trimmed down for brevity or to highlight the point being addressed?  Is my editing as egregious as...  Oh, I dunno...  replacing an entire post with 'wharblgarble butthurt' in the reply?

QuoteIt convinces me that you have got a hard on to be the angriest, most bitter non-gamer here and I'm fine with letting you have that crown. You can wear it in that empty kingdom of your own forum.

Yeah, that is why I find every thread you are on and make sure to comment directly to you even when the discussion is with someone else.

Oh, wait, I wasn't the one doing that.

QuoteBecause you just aren't worth my time anymore.

I know that breaks your heart, but I'm sure that you will still be able to angrily masturbate over my absence.

It's difficult to miss you when you latch on to every conversation I am involved in and don't actually leave.

QuoteI'm pretty sure that I would be better off just going out and playing more than staying on these forums.

Yes, you would do that, but you desperately want to convince people how little of your time I am worth by seeking me out and posting reply after reply.

Of course, backing out of the conversation is easier than engaging it and having to defend the points you make.

Quote from: Windjammer;514073What's misleading about the 'crunch whoring' diagnosis - and the Pun-Pun type of examples which invite it in the first place - is to believe that the 'widening gap' problems only come about if the DM allows players to cherry pick stuff from every book. The problem Baker and Slavicsek describe is a common one at that level of play. I've experienced it myself, in a campaign which I ran under the idea of 'every PC build can make use of the PHB and one splat book', with stuff like Tome of Battle excluded from the get go.

Thinking that 'I've never played D&D above level 10' entitles one to say 'Anyone pointing out a problem with play above level 10? Spherical Cows!' is a misuse of the term.

This is closely related to the fact that, so far, no one has shown us how Frank's diagnosis of Iron Heroes was guilty of 'spherical cows' as defined by Justin.

Speaking of that definition, observe the final sentence in the quote given above. It illustrates a way in which encounter design can mitigate a rules fault. But that's a far cry from saying 'the circumstances under which a design fault can arise are so rare that we can discount the fault' (one of Justin's definition of a spherical cow).

No, the claim in that final sentence is this: the circumstances in which the fault shows up become so frequent that scenario design (or monster choice, more simply put) has to mitigate it from now on. (And 'mitigate' is not the same as 'making it go away'.)

And this is exactly the problem Spike described with the sneaky monsters and his own party.  Almost nothing could sneak up on the one character, but nearly everything could sneak up on the rest of the party.  And that was a moderate 20pt gap.

Heay, guys, back off Traveller! Them's fighting words.

As to the Vacc-Suit question: Vacc-Suit is also used to pilot Battle Dresses, e. g. some forms of Exo-Skeletons.
And in any game where someone rolled up a high VaccSuit skill he was:

1) VaccSuit Drill Instructor
2) ExoSkeletonIronMan Champion
3) VaccSuit Designer
4) VaccSuit Tester
5) Weird fetishist
6) Underpants collector

I mean really, what kind of adventuring does someone who flips burgers at -6 expect to do? Right, none, but he still has the skill!

Deductive reasoning:

1. Anyone who does not understand Traveller does not understand RPGs properly.
2. Mike Mearls is on record that he does not understand Traveller.
3. Therefore, Mike Mearls does not understand RPGs properly.

Inductive Reasoning

1. 95% of people complaining about Traveller rules have not understood Traveller.
2. Posters in this thread have complained about Traveller rules.
3. Therefore, there is a 95% chance these posters have not understood Traveller

Quote from: Settembrini;514096Deductive reasoning:

1. Anyone who does not understand Traveller does not understand RPGs properly.
2. Mike Mearls is on record that he does not understand Traveller.
3. Therefore, Mike Mearls does not understand RPGs properly.

Inductive Reasoning

1. 95% of people complaining about Traveller rules have not understood Traveller.
2. Posters in this thread have complained about Traveller rules.
3. Therefore, there is a 95% chance these posters have not understood Traveller

Doesn't prevent the fact tbat if you enrole in a pilot career you should be able to autoselect at least 1 rank in um ...pilot.... doesn't exactly break the game does it.

Quote from: jibbajibba;514097Doesn't prevent the fact tbat if you enrole in a pilot career you should be able to autoselect at least 1 rank in um ...pilot.... doesn't exactly break the game does it.

Traveller: Real pilots need no piloting skills.