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M.c.P posted:Note on 4e wizard balance.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 01:34 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 13:50 |
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Randalor posted:Honestly, I'm a little confused as to why he couldn't have a game set in Sigil. Was Sigil even mentioned in 3e? As I remember it, Planescape started in 2e, was ignored for a decade, and then Sigil got name-dropped in one of the 4e core books and I was all  Although I remember someone statted-out the Lady of Pain at some point, and that's a very 3x thing to do.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:00 |
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Something that stands out to me as something i really dislike about both 3.5 and 4e is the idea of dailies. It never really occurred to me until i saw the 2011 Pax Live game, and Paul and Storm uttered a song with the lyrics "Dont blow the daily". And it struck me to the core. For me its this false sense of tension, where im taken out of playing a character, and thinking about what my character would do, and start weighing things in my head like "How many points of damage can i stack onto this thing." Suddenly the fun takes an abrupt stop, as i gamble on being able to do cool poo poo. Or even something effective enough that i dont die. Which brings me to my major question, that i havent really been educated on yet. What is Next's approach to combat failure? I know a lot of "what feels like DnD" is the tradition that if you are downed in combat its flat out death. A major problem i had with 4th both as a player and DM, was investing a lot in characters as a player, or encounters as a dm, and honestly thinking to myself... it would suck if the character died. And as a dm it made me pull punches. AS a player it made me risk adverse despite the character i played. Maybe this speaks to my love of Chris Perkins, but in the Pax live game 2010, they went to hell to bring a character back. Death wasnt the final answer. And that brings me right around to the final thing. Does death have to be the only resolution to combat? Is that still a thing, that combat needs to be life or death all the time? With 3.5 it used to be really hard to take someone out as a player without killing them, barring some clever use of spells. 4e's offered a few more options, such as declaring that you dont actually kill someone when you drop their hp. Something that would impress me in Next, would be seeing alternative resolution mechanics. Its probably way too much to ask for considering the other apparent issues with the system so far but that is something that would honestly have me take a good hard second look at DnD Next.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:10 |
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moths posted:Was Sigil even mentioned in 3e? Briefly, in the 3e Manual of the Planes, and some of the factions were given Prestige Class write-ups in issues 287 and 315 of Dragon.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:10 |
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moths posted:Was Sigil even mentioned in 3e? As I remember it, Planescape started in 2e, was ignored for a decade, and then Sigil got name-dropped in one of the 4e core books and I was all quote:It never really occurred to me until i saw the 2011 Pax Live game, and Paul and Storm uttered a song with the lyrics "Dont blow the daily". And it struck me to the core.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:15 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:Its mentioned in Manual of the Planes along with the stated out Lady of Pain. So his entire basis for "4th isn't REALLY D&D" also applies to 3rd and 3.5, if not moreso, after all, what happened to Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Mystaria, Greyhawk or Spelljammer in 3rd? Plus... They stated out the Lady of Pain? I thought her entire point was that she was an entity that was unstatable, that she was the "living" embodiment of "rocks fall, you die", and that she was never to be stated because to give her stats means that she could be killed.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:25 |
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IIRC her stats were "Lady of Pain, Alignment: Lawful Neutral." (edit: also, she's officially female) This caused at least one flamewar.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:28 |
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Randalor posted:So his entire basis for "4th isn't REALLY D&D" also applies to 3rd and 3.5, if not moreso, after all, what happened to Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Mystaria, Greyhawk or Spelljammer in 3rd? Plus... They stated out the Lady of Pain? I thought her entire point was that she was an entity that was unstatable, that she was the "living" embodiment of "rocks fall, you die", and that she was never to be stated because to give her stats means that she could be killed. quote:This caused at least one flamewar.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:37 |
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Randalor posted:So his entire basis for "4th isn't REALLY D&D" also applies to 3rd and 3.5, if not moreso, after all, what happened to Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Mystaria, Greyhawk or Spelljammer in 3rd? Plus... They stated out the Lady of Pain? I thought her entire point was that she was an entity that was unstatable, that she was the "living" embodiment of "rocks fall, you die", and that she was never to be stated because to give her stats means that she could be killed. Yeah, statting out Lady of Pain is basically the same as editing the Pulp Fiction wiki to decide that the briefcase was TOTALLY FULL OF NON-FIAT GOLD CURRENCY. I can actually address some of the rest: In 3x Dark Sun got a handful of Dragon / Dungeon articles, Ravenloft was sub-let to White Wolf's Arthaus studio, and the rest were relegated to notable fan-sites linked on the home page. They were given a semi-official status, and then ignored by everybody.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:41 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:Its mentioned in Manual of the Planes along with the stated out Lady of Pain. chrisoya posted:IIRC her stats were "Lady of Pain, Alignment: Lawful Neutral." (edit: also, she's officially female) The only thing the Manual of the Planes has to say about her, other than that the reason deities can't enter Sigil may be due to her desire, is this: "The ultimate ruler of Sigil is an enigmatic being known as the Lady of Pain, a floating female humanoid with bladelike hair. The power level and abilities of the Lady of Pain are unknown, but it is widely assumed that her power equals or exceeds that of the deities themselves."
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:41 |
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Akunin posted:The only thing the Manual of the Planes has to say about her, other than that the reason deities can't enter Sigil may be due to her desire, is this:
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 02:47 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:Wasn't Sigil and Planescape another one of those gently caress Monte Cook issues? I honestly remember a lot of people saying that he ruined Planescape and hell even people whined about 4th editions Sigil too for some reason. Those people are stupid. Cook's best poo poo is the stuff he did for Planescape, it is great.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 03:23 |
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Akunin posted:The only thing the Manual of the Planes has to say about her, other than that the reason deities can't enter Sigil may be due to her desire, is this: Planeswalkers Handbook, or whatever the 3.5 version was called. I looked it up! (because i haven't got around to ebaying it yet) It's just a line under Authority Figures in the sigil city-statblock. Those are literally all the published stats for her, along with "unknown race."
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 03:33 |
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It's still enough for her to be rules-legal killed, of course. This is 3.5.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 04:38 |
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Chris Perkins ends that article with the line "What will your next campaign cosmology look like? I’m betting it’ll look nothing like mine, and that’s no catastrophe." They keep on praising us gamers for our originality and yammering on about how every campaign is different and they want to give us a toolbox. So why does our toolbox contain an abacus, a VCR that has a tendency to eat tapes, and a cell phone the size of a brick? The only reason is because other actually creative people used those tools - and obviously the only way to be original and creative is to repeat their methods and cover the same themes? Well I must say that notion tracks perfectly with much of popular media, where it seems that nearly everything is a sequel, prequel, reboot or reimagining of some older property. But it's also something that really grinds my gears. So much so that I wrote a game with that at the top of my mind. I'm supposed to keep it civil in here, so I'll just type one angry sentence and then drop it rather than ranting on: These unoriginal assholes who have been playing the same game with the same classes and races and settings for over thirty loving years just LOVE telling each other how original they are because their elves have pointy ears, unearthly grace AND ALSO tattoos. edit: gently caress elves
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 04:54 |
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It's not as if they're not getting praise for their approach. People pretend half-assed design encourages them to improvise and it's just so fake.MadScientistWorking posted:Mearls didn't really backslide as much as you are deluding yourself into believing he did. Basically a lot of the stuff that he worked on were nothing more than clones of previous mechanics. Also, 'deluded'? You understand that you're never going to get to step to me, right? I'm just. . not even in the same solar system as you? Talkc posted:Does death have to be the only resolution to combat? Is that still a thing, that combat needs to be life or death all the time?
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 06:19 |
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Catastropost posted:I didn't say mearls was backsliding, the entire team was. It's very clear that there was an internal struggle over the game's future, and once that struggle was over, the victors just burnt everything. quote:Note on 4e wizard balance.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 12:47 |
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Yes, let us become even more shrill in our criticism of 5e! Let our despisement be cranked up so high that we now claim that 4e was terrible, rather than being one of the best (and best-supported) RPGs of all time!  Professor Cirno posted:You are incorrect. I remain "excited" about the class/background/theme thing, and think the best thing they could do (aside from having correct math and no 36d20 rats) in the next playtest is make sure it includes a two page fighter and a one page wizard among the options (along with the reverse too).
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 13:37 |
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Failing to like Essentials all that much isn't some kind of shrill freak out, man. Plenty of people had issues with the change in direction even at the time. I mean I agree it's the same one-- it's just the same one with classes and mechanics I don't find terribly interesting.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 13:57 |
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homullus posted:Yes, let us become even more shrill in our criticism of 5e! Let our despisement be cranked up so high that we now claim that 4e was terrible, rather than being one of the best (and best-supported) RPGs of all time! Nick at Nite posted:Failing to like Essentials all that much isn't some kind of shrill freak out, man. Plenty of people who had issues with the change in direction even at the time. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 13:57 |
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Oh, sure, claiming some kind of WIZARD SUPREMACY for 4E is nothing more than a narrative searching desperately for some vaguely-supporting facts. I just think it's silly to act like complaints about 4E are somehow in bad faith on the whole.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:02 |
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Nick at Nite posted:Oh, sure, claiming some kind of WIZARD SUPREMACY for 4E is nothing more than a narrative searching desperately for some vaguely-supporting facts. What? Man, Heinsoo has specifically written columns and forum posts about how he struggled against the entire rest of the design team to prevent Explicit Wizard Superiority! That's why the "Controller" role is so weird - it was originally designed as "Wizards can just Do More poo poo, sorry."
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:14 |
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Augure posted:What? Man, Heinsoo has specifically written columns and forum posts about how he struggled against the entire rest of the design team to prevent Explicit Wizard Superiority! That's why the "Controller" role is so weird - it was originally designed as "Wizards can just Do More poo poo, sorry."
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:15 |
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The D&D Miniatures team (back when it was a skirmish game of its own) once did a poll with a bunch of named D&D characters, to figure out which ones were famous and popular enough that they could be turned into profitable miniatures. The Lady of Pain was on the list. We came this close to a standard-size plastic Lady of Pain doing battle with Elminster [Epic] and his brave companions Dire Bat and City Guard #1-3 on Assembly Tile 5.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:20 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:You'd have to be an idiot... MadScientistWorking posted:Mearls didn't really backslide as much as you are deluding yourself... You'd have to be an idiot to think baiting people was a good idea in a thread that is already prone to bullshit derails. You'd have to be deluding yourself into believing it is a good idea given your rap sheet. When you get back from your vacation don't do this again.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:21 |
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I think they really needed to define the Controller role more when they were creating it. Everyone else has a fairly standard "something" that makes them their role, what do they get? Defender: Can mark enemies and generally is a tough cookie through high HP. Striker: Adds a flat or variable amount to damage rolls. Leader: Gets a healing power as a minor action. Controller: Uhh, well, their powers cause conditions like everyone elses, they get lower hitpoints than all other roles for some reason, and they get at-will area attacks which are unique except for all the other classes of different roles that also get them. They should've really gone, "OK, controllers cause conditions on EVERY ATTACK, even at-wills, and we're going to make that unique to them. Controllers will also be the only role with at-will area attacks. Finally, whenever a controller gets a power that causes a condition, that condition will be more severe than when others get it." As it is, controllers seem underpowered outside of a few corner cases you have to look up on the Internet.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:25 |
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Gort posted:As it is, controllers seem underpowered outside of a few corner cases you have to look up on the Internet.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:26 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:I don't think the team really backslid at all. Wizards of the Coast always had a ton of inconsistent and weirdly unbalanced support throughout 4E's lifetime. Replace "4E" with "every Wizards D&D Product". Also, a new Q&A was posted yesterday: http://community.wizards.com/dndnex...8/02/dd_next_qa The second question seems to strongly suggests that, with an XP system in place, there is going to be math behind determining a given enemy's power level and how that relates to experience points. They also seem to hint that you can have it both ways - you can stat out and build an enemy like PCs, but you can also ballpark it and build it quickly like a monster. I guess they're trying to say that they're going to allow you to build monsters like 3e and 4e? I thought the first question was kind of pointless - the rules are always going to get a bit wonky when you have just one player or when you have more than 10, and there are few mechanical ways to solve problems with those that do not involve heavy amounts of DMing. Though they do seem to promise that there will be fabled maths involved in terms of encounter level relative to party strength. Finally, the definition of "adventuring day". Personally, I liked the incentive that 4e added with "milestones" to persevere through an adventuring day, encouraging the party to take more risks to get more reward. I think it also makes for interesting tactics and roleplaying - when I used to do martial arts, before I could spar against my teachers they would always make me do way too many exercises. The logic behind it was simple - you perform at your best when you're a little exhausted. It seems counter intuitive, but the reality is that you only make the attacks that you know you'll land, you only block the hits that you need to, and in general your style becomes brutally efficient because now you have an idea of what your limits are and how you can maximize what you have left. EDIT: I made a style edit. I used "fabled" in two consecutive sentences, which totally disrupted the flow of the sentence in my mind.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 14:40 |
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I was thinking about this more the other day, and I realize it's not an amazing, new thought: it makes sense that wizards are the go-to class for creative power use, because today, most of us accomplish far more with things that aren't powered by our own muscles and energy than we do by our own efforts. We are all wizards now . . . I know what it's like to scry things in other countries, move heavy objects via simple controls, and fly through the air, and other people have had the experience of killing things from far away by moving a finger, and even bringing the dead back to life. I don't know what it's like to choke-slam anyone, let alone a creature larger than me and through a wall. People insist on wizards being the masters of reality because they already know what that's like, and wanting to play a fighter is like wanting to live without electricity or something (you can do it, but you won't be as effective in the big picture). Where I'm going with this is that Wizard Supremacy may run deeper than 35 years of D&D (look at Harry Potter), so they may have to bake it in to 5e to appeal to the widest possible audience. There are games where you can have disparate power levels and equal participation in a game (the Buffy game, for example), but those games require a lack of RPG history baggage. I hope they consider consistent branding of their modules, at least, when they come out. Let's say standard 5e is "D&D Red" because you can bet it's gonna come out in a red box. Tactical rules, dungeon tiles, and grid-based backgrounds, classes, and themes are released as "D&D Black", while collaborative world-building like Microscope, FATE-like points and Drama-like cards, and social rules (like Polaris!) come out under "D&D White". D&D Black and D&D White products would require the core Red Box to play. It gives them clearer branding: "your son loves D&D, ma'am? Well, the Red is the core, so he has that, but if you've seen him playing with a map and miniatures, you can bet he's using Black too -- you can get him something he doesn't have from that". Setting books and published adventures could be some other color, and if the Red is a huge hit and they want to release more stuff like Red, they can run through other BECMI colors and release them as boxes, NOT books.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 15:25 |
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In all their talk of an "XP budget" for adventures, as far as I can remember, they have never addressed the huge inherent difference in challenge between one big encounter using all that XP, and spreading it out among a dozen encounters. It seems like such an elementary issue, but it's somehow in their blind spot. Same with their previously stated belief 5 2-round combats is the same as one 10 round combat. No, it isn't. Multi-round effects (which are exclusively for casters, for verisimilitude) are far more effective in the big combat. And those encounter-ending spells tend to end big encounters just as easily as small ones.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 15:31 |
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Suggestion for the OP: add Dungeon World to the list of D&Desque modern games to check out.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 17:57 |
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I'd prefer to keep the list to games with a thread. I haven't heard much about Dungeon World, so I wouldn't feel safe recommending it.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 18:09 |
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FM posted:I'd prefer to keep the list to games with a thread. I haven't heard much about Dungeon World, so I wouldn't feel safe recommending it. In the interests of fair play, I should edit a link to this 5E thread in those threads in case anyone is looking for an alternative.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 18:12 |
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From the latest qna:quote:Will there be rules or guidelines for smaller or larger groups? 1 DM and 1 Player? Groups of 10 or more? Think about it. That's right. quote:This also handles having players at different levels, so that groups that like having players at different levels can do so without worrying about the adventure balance.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 21:47 |
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I'm...what? How...what? I'm sorry, what?quote:This also handles having players at different levels, so that groups that like having players at different levels can do so without worrying about the adventure balance. I realize that in some systems this happens, but people like it? Who the hell likes it? I can't even think of a theoretical person who considers it a good thing. The best I can figure out is something to do with 3.5's weird XP rules, but even then, it's never a desirable thing to happen. What the hell? quote:Will there be rules or guidelines for smaller or larger groups? 1 DM and 1 Player? Groups of 10 or more? Any possible? Including 99 level 10 Wizards and one Fighter? I realize they probably mean something less stupid, but they sure as hell aren't saying it. WotC desperately needs an editor. Anyway, I need to go for now. I think there's smoke and blood coming out of my ears.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 21:55 |
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I think there's a contingent of players that believe all characters should start of at level 1. So if a new player joins their level 10 characters, they get to start at level 1 and "earn" their levels by avoiding being one-shotted for a couple of sessions as they follow the higher ups around and beg for scraps. I definitely ran into this type of game early in my gaming career back in the nineties.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 22:16 |
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gninjagnome posted:I think there's a contingent of players that believe all characters should start of at level 1. So if a new player joins their level 10 characters, they get to start at level 1 and "earn" their levels by avoiding being one-shotted for a couple of sessions as they follow the higher ups around and beg for scraps. First game of D&D I ever played, level ~14 party that'd been campaigning for over a year, DM forced me to play a level 1 character. Round one of combat, the entire team holds action to wait for one guy, except for my level 1, 4 hit point wizard, who casts magic missile and is immediately stomped on for 60ish damage. That's fun, right? Right?
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 22:27 |
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Kaninrail posted:That's fun, right? The goal wasn't fun. The goal was exclusion. You have to understand a lot of the OSR people, the people D&D is pandering to at the moment, don't want new players joining the game. They don't want anyone who hasn't already memorized their preferred set 0of rules to even step to their table.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 22:33 |
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Nick at Nite posted:Failing to like Essentials all that much isn't some kind of shrill freak out, man. Plenty of people had issues with the change in direction even at the time. I remember at the time Essentials came out, Gabe from Penny Arcade commented something along the lines of "I never played previous editions, so to me it was just fixing a bunch of things that weren't broken."
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| # ? Aug 4, 2012 00:32 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 13:50 |
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Necrofamicom posted:I remember at the time Essentials came out, Gabe from Penny Arcade commented something along the lines of "I never played previous editions, so to me it was just fixing a bunch of things that weren't broken." If I'm remembering correctly, Gabe then caught a bunch of poo poo from Penny Arcade forum posters who wanted to know who the hell he thought he was to say 4e wasn't broken without having played the previous editions.
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| # ? Aug 4, 2012 00:37 |
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