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Here there be dragons (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/rpgmemes@ttrpg.network
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Oh come on. It's not that complicated.

If it's 3rd edition you just do basic skill checks on any ones of the 30-odd should skills for everything. Yes, including leveling up.

If it's 4th edition you run a spreadsheet program to track the five dozen skills you selected and curse yourself as you have to walk down a stone stair but you only have points in walking up wooden stairs.

If it's 5th edition you basically play it like 3rd ed but with a point buy system that allows you to accurately construct an artistically inclined vintner with a large bladder.

(Yes, having a large bladder capacity is an official perk from an official rulebook but few DMs are going to be insane enough to actually play with that rulebook.)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    This is exactly what I mean. The stairs thing seems to be a common joke.

    "Roll to ascend the stairs." was a common joke in our group.

    I remember all the spells being overly specific to the point of uselessness. "You can conjure a cat. It's just a regular cat and will probably flee from you. You can do this once a month and it costs a billion dollars."

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    DSA (aka The Dark Eye, as it's international release is called) does tend towards a low power level so magic is severely limited compared to e.g. D&D. You can throw fireballs but not as frequently. High-level magic can take days to recover from. I have my own criticisms of how the magic system works but it does work if you accept that a high-level TDE caster is at a lower power level than a mid-level D&D caster.

    The overall complexity was insane in the 4th edition; 5th ed did a lot to fix that. There are still a lot of skills but it actually feels manageable now.

    I actually like that the system can model mundane professions; it can be pretty cool to play a regular person who gets forced into adventure but is still competent at something, even if that something is not generally applicable to adventuring.

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