Sword Skills
Maslow’s hammer would be an excellent name for a spell. Just saying.
On the off chance that any muggles have made it this far into the depths of the comic, you guys will want to familiarize yourselves with the term Min-Maxing (Warning – TV Tropes link). In short, if you’ve got enough bonuses in any given skill then that’s all you’ll ever need to solve your problems. Case in point.
And sure, you can pick a social skill like Diplomacy or a go all swashbuckly with Acrobatics, but if you truly wish to make your GM cry then the only choice for the would-be master of min-maxery is combat. Mr. Stabby there probably has a few drawbacks, but you can bet he also comes equipped with some crazy bonuses to damage. Still, I doubt he could compare to the sword that Laurel’s last fighter used. It was a sun blade first of all, but a greatsword instead of a bastard sword. And it had reach. And because it was a mythic campaign, our GM decided to make it a x4 critical instead of the x3. And the bit about “deals double damage” was taken literally, meaning that this crit-fishing fighter wound up putting out x8 crits vs undead. Let’s not even get into the disgusting things that mythic power attack brought to the party.
We never got around to killing the Whispering Tyrant, but I like to think he was getting nervous up in his evil fortress of shadow bad fell darkness.
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Well I believe I already told my story about overpowered weaponry back when we discussed the deck of many things.
So I’ll just say, I’ve always wanted to find a way to min-max Insight into an all-problem solver. If for no other reason than the hilarious excuses I would have to come up with. I also think Intimidation would be pretty fun. Imagine the hi-jinks of all-bark, no bite character!
Forgot to add, I would probably at least attempt Fighter’s approach to this problem. Whenever I’ve encountered a riddle or puzzle in the game I’ve been reminded how terrible I am at riddles and puzzles.
The most disturbing thing about writing this comic is realizing how, in a truly alarming number of scenarios, I wouldn’t behave all that differently from Fighter.
I’ve always liked the “riddles are optional” philosophy. If you can solve it, you get a neat bonus or discover a shortcut. If the plot requires your players to solve the riddle, however, you might be in for troubles.
Yes. Even when the riddle isn’t actually a riddle at all. Like how recently the players in my game spent a good amount of time trying to open a magically locked door I placed somewhere so they’d know it was there and could come back and deal with it later when they had an actual way of opening it. If it wouldn’t have resulted in derailing the current quest 100% I probably would have let them actually succeed with some of the more creative ideas.
Just goes to show how dangerous riddles can be to a game’s health. Even when they aren’t even there there’s the potential they’ll stop the game in it’s tracks.
if the thief’s player doesn’t have to pick an actual lock the wizard should get to use his massive int to just roll to solve a riddle
It’s a matter of gaming philosophy, and therefore subject to serious difference of opinion. My take is that, in the same way that “win combat” isn’t a roll that a fighter can make, “solve puzzle” isn’t a wizard skill. The difference is that some game challenges are directed at the player rather than the character. Some players have their suspension of disbelief broken in that kind of setup. Speaking for myself, I appreciate that shift in focus from fiction to problem solving, since it provides variety and helps to keep the game fresh for me. A good “middle of the road” option is to allow the smart characters to make some kind of check to get a hint.
I recently went for an Aid Another build in a Pathfinder game. I got it up to giving out +16 bonuses to AC multiple times per round, or something like +11 to skill checks. Weirdly enough, the GM wound up cancelling that particular campaign before we started.