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Mutants and Masterminds

2015-07-16T02:22:18Z

68.202.59.244: Everyone forgets the PL caps

[[Image:Power_girl.gif|thumb|200px|right|Superheroes. Most of them look kinda like this.]]
Mutants and Masterminds is a [[D20|d20]](ish) system published by Green Ronin (I guess they did a [[Weeaboo|weeaboo]] game too). Unlike a lot of other d20 games, this one only uses twenty-sided dice. Players make their own superheroes (or supervillains- there's no alignment in this game) and slug it out with each other or NPC characters.

The game revolves around ''power levels'' (M&M's version of character levels or challenge ratings). The standard PL for a player character is 10; this is about the equivalent of a normal comic-book superhero. PL 5 characters are more "street-level", PL 15 characters are more akin to Superman or other heavyweights.

Power levels don't necessarily correspond to actual superpowers - a PL 10 Batman-type character could have a lot of gadgets and other "realistic" skills that puts her on the same level as someone who can fly unaided and shoot rocket dongs from his hands.

There aren't any hit points in M&M; all attacks are either rated as lethal or not. When you get hit, you roll to see how much it affects you, and depending on what hit you, you either get stunned, knocked out or killed.

You can also get knocked away some 27000 ft. by a fucking Hulk rip-off drug addict and spend special Hero Points to get up video game style, which are then replaced when you do a very heroic thing (such as stabpunching clear across a hockey stadium some fucking Kraven rip-off who just shot you.)

Aside from skill ranks and feats, characters can spend points on various powers. M&M has a very large catalogue of powers ranging from basic damaging strikes to flight to mind control, allowing players to create almost any character. In addition, players may also add various feats, extras, flaws, and drawbacks to their character and/or their powers for further customization.

This system has been both praised for its flexibility and criticized as it can often lead to mechanically overpowered -- or simply [[Ball of arms man|bizarre]] -- characters. For example, with a cheap increase of +1 per rank and a limit on potential damage, the basic ranged attack power can never miss and has a range of, literally, as far as the eye can see. Never miss. Ever. As long as the character can see their target, the target is automatically hit. The system does however have many hard counters to abilities: being able to shoot anyone you can see matters very little when you fight in the dark or against a guy made out of a swarm of bees and is immune to your attacks. The GM is also free to have you fight equally overpowered supervilians.

[[Category: Roleplaying]]

Ranger

2014-10-16T02:40:58Z

68.202.59.244:

Rangers are usually nature-loving fellas, wielding either a bow or two swords. They are patterned after a certain copyrighted hero from a certain copyrighted fantasy [[The_Lord_of_the_Rings|book]]. They are warriors that are generally useful for tracking down enemies. They also are shitty divine magic users.

In the 1st and 2nd editions of Dungeons and Dragons, rangers were not able to sneak or fight properly in chainmail or better, or shields either. Armor was so key in melee under these versions that this led to the popular mocking party cry of "Ranger down!", heard during just about every battle. Rangers were thought to be the inspiration for the "At Death's Door" survival rule, since they would never survive a single session otherwise.

It is worth noting that one of the defining features of rangers is that they specialize in hunting down and killing members of specific races. From a pragmatic standpoint, this means they boil down to little more than racist serial killers who target by species (unless one of those species is their own, in which case they're probably some sort of bounty hunter). Being that race wars are one of the cornerstones of [[D&D]], this is unsurprising. They are rendered irrelevant by [[CoDzilla|druidzillas]], because rangers just can't compete with a guy who can turn into a giant bear that shoots giant bears out of his eyes while farting lightning and mauling things with its own overpowered pet grizzly bear. Rangers can get a half-assed pet grizzly bear, but because their animal companions are only as good as a druid that has half as many levels as he does, it's half-assed. [[Pathfinder]] gave them more fighting style options, made archery actually worth a damn, an animal companion that is only 3 levels behind the druids (which can be fixed with a feat), gave them better survivability and a couple of nifty spells, but the concept remained the same.

In 4e they get to mark their enemies, making them useful when you're fighting one tough thing and a bit crap against swarms. They can either slaughter one enemy, or irritate several, depending on what the situation calls for. Or they can completely miss with their most powerful once-per-milestone attack, and that's some fun.

5e made the "favored enemy" bit less serial-killer-ish, simply because they now gain more roleplaying and social benefits, like speaking their language to better understand them. Otherwise, though, they remain a powerful-if-not-optimal class, and get some combat styles like the [[fighter]].
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Rogue

2014-10-16T01:48:07Z

68.202.59.244:

'''Rogue''' is a character class found in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and [[Pathfinder]], although the general archetype (usually by different names) can be found in almost every [[RPG]] ever made. Rogues are sneaky, backstabbing, thieving assholes, but they're just so useful you can't help but keep them around.

Rogues have a variety of skills that make them useful in various situations and, if they get a backstab, cause incredibly high damage, but they suffer from low hit points and shit armour. This may sound good, and they are pretty decent, but they're dead weight in a party with wizards, clerics, druids, erudites, or any other tier 1 class. Similarly, they also become utterly fucking useless in combat when something with heavy fortification, an elemental, a construct, an ooze, a plant, or an undead show up. Pretty much, if it's immune to criticals, the rogue can only pout as he/she/it/hermaphrodite becomes a useless skillmonkey, unless he/she/it/hermaphrodite starts diving into splatbooks looking for ways to bypass crit and sneak attack immunity. Most embarrassingly they can't sneak attack anything with concealment, which includes anything not standing in at least torch light.

Given the power of their sneak attacks, many builds revolve around turning invisible after performing an attack. This may sound pretty sweet, but said builds also often revolve around one specific kind of weapon (ice, radiant, etc.) and so a clever DM can simply not provide any of said weapon. Serves you right for min-maxing, I guess.

Their skillmonkeying is more useful in [[Pathfinder]], where they now have a lot of exclusive skill uses that other classes used to be able to do well enough with the right buffs, and they get ''rogue talents'' that give them a little more unique flavor. Have a Japan-flavored alternate class in the [[ninja]], which changes out some of those skillmonkey powers for [[monk|ki pool]] and general ''insane badassery''. Each can crosstrain in the other's special abilities.

==Rogues in 4th Edition==

See [[Bloody Path]].

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{{dnd-stub}}[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons Classes]]

Ninja

2014-10-16T01:46:07Z

68.202.59.244: /* Pathfinder */

'''Ninjas''' are awesome disguised individuals who are the anti-[[samurai]]. Like [[rogue]]s, but with more ''style''.

In ancient Japan, they served as spies and assassins. Some worked for particular noble families, like sneaky [[samurai]], while others were basically covert-organizations-for-hire. They used disguise, deceit, and general trickiness to steal secrets and treasures, and they developed unexpected new modes of combat such as juujitsu (unarmed fighting) and "peasant" weapons like the sai (originally a rice planting tool) and the kusari-gama (which ''looks'' like a rice-harvesting sickle, but has a long weighted chain with hardened links on the other end that can break bones and disarm).

Over time, they became feared. The primitive and superstitious people began to believe that ninjas were more than just dangerous spies and masters of disguise. They attributed magical powers to them, like the ability to shapeshift, conjure fire, turn invisible, control animals, and even [[monstergirl|mate with the spirits]] to give birth to monstrous half-human creatures. Because having the world simultaneously so terrified of you that it would pay a premium for your services and so hilariously wrong about the nature of your methods that actually countering you was hard was ''incredible'' for business, the secretive clans weren't exactly in a hurry to go debunking these folktales.

Ninja usually dressed like whoever they were disguised as at the time, since ''everyone'' stares at the guy in black pajamas. The iconic image of the head-scarf and robe clad "ninja" is actually an outgrowth of a clever bit of Japanese stagecraft.

In traditional Japanese theater there is no "backdrop" set, just a black felt curtain and stagehands manage the other sets and props while covered head-to-toe in black clothing. You may think this is distracting, but after a while, the audience is just trained to ignore them, the way ''you'' ignore that a stage is just a set and the actors only carrying props when you watch a play.

One incredibly clever playwright took note of the fact that the audience was trained to ignore these hands, and came up with a brilliant idea. When the script called for a ninja to assassinate a character, one of the stagehands would suddenly mock-stab them, leading to many double-takes and shat bricks on the audience's part. As with all good ideas, it was quickly appropriated by billions of talentless hacks who used it all the time, until the idea of the black-stage-gear-clad ninja was embedded deep into the public consciousness, simply because people ''always'' take their cues on what's real or unreal from fiction.

The move from decentralized feudal period to a centralized military dicatorship, however, dealt a heavy blow to the ninja's business, since, after all, a peaceful isolationist nation had much less need for their abilities, and the end of the shogunate and the modernization of Japan in the nineteenth century broke them for good, since their methods had grown dated with the passing years. Still, they remain in the public imagination, and in the hearts and minds of all fans of Japanese culture and history, [[weeaboo]] and non-weeaboo alike.

As a result, like the samurai, any traditional game with an ancient-Japan-proxy (read: ''all of them'') has got ninja in it somewhere. Let's take a look.

== Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition ==

[[Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition]] made the ninja a shitty [[rogue]]. Intended as a rogue/[[monk]] mix, but unlike Pathfinder they get much fewer skills than the rogue, no armor, and can't do rogue backstabbery unless invisible. They also can't use their [[weeaboo]] powers for shit because all of them draw from a super tiny ''ki pool'' and last only one round. The only one they get early enough to be worthwhile is invisibility which they need to (and can't) spam like crazy because, as said before, they get a shittier version of Sneak Attack that only works when invisible. So basically, they're rogues that [[FAIL|can't skillmonkey OR backstab as well as rogues and get pretty much nothing in return.]]

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== Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition ==

In [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]], rather than make an entirely separate ninja class, they decided to simply roll it into the [[monk]] class as one of the "Ways" that a monk can choose to follow upon reaching level 3. The ninja option is the Way of Shadow, which allows the monk to use ki to cast certain spells (darkness, darkvision, pass without trace, silence, minor illusion), teleport from shadow to shadow, become invisible in darkness, and get a bonus attack against an enemy that was hit by someone else in that same round.

== Pathfinder ==

[[Pathfinder]] also made the ninja as a rogue/monk, and their vast variety of skills means that they outdo both classes by miles (except as skill-monkeys or number of attacks per round). They trade in the rogue's unique skillmonkey powers, like disarming magical traps, for "ninja tricks," which, like the monk's special powers, use up a ''ki pool''. Also, they are perfectly capable of outdamaging the fuck out of rogues, given the nasty things they can do with projectiles and poison, on top of their sharing the rogue's backstabbery. They also get passive bonuses to their stealth tests the longer they've been in stealth, leading to hilarious shenanigans.

They also make a scrumptious dip class for monks and vice-versa, since their ''mixed martial arts'' passive abilities let their class levels stack for abilities, and the monk's ''flurry of blows'' explicitly works for all those ninja projectiles. Combine with the "ninja trick" that lets them double the number of projectiles they throw for a ki point, then combine ''that'' with poison... you get the idea. Hope the DM didn't let you get ahold of drow venom.

In other words, Pathfinder ninjas are [[awesome]]. They are still screwed over by the many sneak attack nerfs introduced in Pathfinder, but at least they look cool.

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== Legend of the Five Rings ==

[[Legend of the Five Rings]] is mostly about samurai shenanigans, but ninjas both exist and are potential sources of PCs . Only two of the Clans in Rokugan have ninja on the payroll (well, technically, only the Spider have ''ninja'', the Scorpion are very insistent that they have ''shinobi'' -- the two are written the same, but differ in how you pronounce the characters). Ninja are theoretically regarded as somewhat mythical: actively talking about ninja like they exist in a court setting will lose you honor and result in lots of scorn and ridicule from the stuffed-shirt courtiers. In practice, most samurai do know they're real, so don't hesitate to tell people you trust in more-private and less-open settings when there's an assassin on the move.

Scorpion shinobi are, hilariously, probably the most level-headed and moral people in their crazy clan of manipulative assholes and anti-heroes. They actually start out running the Gauntlet, a series of tests that involve dressing like a "traditional" black-pajamas ninja and essentially running interference, attracting lots of attention while the ''actual'' ninja that's probably been posing as a manservant or courtesan for months does the necessary sabotage/wetwork/spycraft/etc. Those who survive get to learn to be REAL operatives.

The ninja of the corrupted Spider Clan are... less theoretically-benign. They're ordinary people who have traded away bits and pieces of themselves to the Shadow Dragon, a manifestation of the Lying Darkness whose malign power seeks to consume the world. They're probably better at outright assassination than Scorpion shinobi, since their powers are practically supernatural instead of just realistically good, but they often have very little personality or initiative of their own. It makes them good at not being noticed, or at pretending to be other people, but when the mask slips, they won't have the skills to talk their way out. Scorpion ninja can be good at lots of things, but most Spider ninja know only how to kill and steal.

[[Category:History]] [[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]

Binder

2014-10-16T01:00:31Z

68.202.59.244:

Binders are another class from Tome of Magic along with the truenamer and the shadowcaster, but despite standing next to some of the worst designed classes in the system, are competently designed, mechanically balanced and fun to play. They contact beings from beyond the known universe (known as vestiges) to inhabit their body for a while and experience the real world again in exhange for special powers. There's a binding check involved that determines whether the vestige can influence your actions. If they win, you have to act in a certain way in certain situations or get a stacking -1 penalty on pretty much everything that only goes away when the vestige leaves. If you win, they just sit nicely along for the ride.
Religions are generally against binders because their gods don't really like it when a mortal chump can just doodle a seal on the ground and contact a vestige while the gods can't do anything about vestiges.
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Warforged

2014-05-11T07:05:02Z

68.202.59.244:

[[Image:Warforged lance.jpg|thumb|right]]'''Warforged''' are basically an excuse to play a robot in a fantasy campaign without having to deal with level adjustment. They are similar to golems but differ in the fact that they are actually sentient creatures, created by magically coagulating metal and wood in a vat, and count as a special type of creature known as a "living construct", meaning they still have a constitution score and various other properties not possessed by other constructs, at the expense of sharing a lot of vulnerabilities with living creatures that plain old constructs don't.

This player race came about with the advent of the [[Eberron]] campaign setting for D&D and since then gained considerable popularity amongst the gaming community (which [[Dragonborn]] will never live to see). Surprisingly enough, Warforged are generally quite popular on /tg/. Warforged were originally used as mass produced soldiers in the big "not World War 1" of the Eberron setting.

==See Also==
*[[Beeforged]]
*[[Rood]]

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Warforged artificer.jpg|Artificer.
Image:Warforged lance.jpg|Will stab a bitch.
Image:Warforged pimp.jpg|Pimpin ain't easy.
Image:Warforged reforged.jpg|Reforged.
Image:Female Warforged.jpg|Robots have no -4 STR.
Image:Lesbian warforged.jpg|Watch out for splinters.
Image:Doorforgedmouthfuck.jpg|Forged for war, and mouth fucking.
Image:Shanky.png|How it's done.
Image:Warforged_Bard.png|They can be bards, too.
</gallery>

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[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons Races]]