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Red_Mage posted:The underdark is legacy bullshit, but aside from the stupid names the Feywild and Shadowfell have the advantage of actually feeling like fairy tale things. You get dragged into the shadowfell when in places of great death and sorrow, its like hades or silent hill. The feywild is quite the opposite, you can waltz in and out of it in the twilight of midsummer, though only the mad go there. Yeah, out of all the planes in the 4e Manual of the Planes, I don't think any of them felt uninteresting, which is something that 4e has been pretty good about. The 4e Underdark book was great, since it basically turned it into plane-like region all of its own, where reality unravels the deeper you go and it's full of cool and creepy things. It's tempting to run an Ultima Underworld/Legend of Grimrock -type game where the PCs get thrown into a large underground dungeon and left to fight or die, heading down to escape and winding up in the Underdark, where they're not likely to see the sun until the end of the game. Edit: Obligatory link
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 16:29 |
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| # ? Jun 19, 2013 18:03 |
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New Podcast out with with the PA guys and Scott Kurtz http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article....d/4pod/20120806 Interesting listening to Gabes reaction to this new edition
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 06:26 |
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This podcast is a loving trainwreck.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 06:54 |
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It's like Mike Mearls turned up, to a DnD game and didn't do any prep and so is making poo poo up as he goes. i'm assuming there is a Part 2 coming down the pipeline
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 06:56 |
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I've been telling you fuckers that Mearls had no idea how 4e worked or had nothing to do with it's development. Maybe now that he's more or less stated in this podcast over and over that he has no idea how 4e works. Maybe now you'll believe me. Incidentally this podcast is not something WotC should be using as advertisement. It makes 5e look terrible. Krahulik never played other editions. He never saw the need. He lept into 4e and enjoyed it and rarely had major issues. He's also a very popular nerd icon. He doesn't give a single gently caress about D&D's "history." He doesn't care about Gygax. He never saw any of the vaunted problems old schoolers had in 4e. He is 5e's biggest enemy.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 07:03 |
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I dunno man, he'll probably just be ignored. It's not as if 5e has broad appeal anyway- it's all about the grognards, after all. The idea of actually reacing new people? Lol not a chance. And if anyone in the 5e echo chamber was likely to be concerned about this, they'll just use some Feel-Based-Thinking and decide the playtest cast was great and exciting and super successful.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 07:17 |
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Mearls dodged every question and for the first time ever Wizards posted a thing where people weren't drooling over 5e. A good day.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 07:17 |
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Catastropost posted:I dunno man, he'll probably just be ignored. It's not as if 5e has broad appeal anyway- it's all about the grognards, after all. The idea of actually reacing new people? Lol not a chance. Oh no, I agree that it'll be ignored by the crowd 5e is angling for. It's just going to be fun to watch WotC waffle around as they again try to convince 4e players the game will totally be all for them.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 07:26 |
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Mearls literally describes his job in the most Idea Guy terms possible. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article....nd/4ll/20120806 Playtest 2! Fighter Options Suprise redux Critical Hits Resting and Healing Skills Fighter Options gets changed because nigh-everyone of all designations wanted the people that are paid to make rules to expend the effort write out second page for the character. Full Heal From A Day gets a new rule because of how a distinct cohort of players wanted a different rule. Rogues are now officially the DTAS-ist class. "tactical" and "narrative" modules aren't being worked on; not sure what a game without either concept looks like.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 07:39 |
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Gerund posted:Mearls literally describes his job in the most Idea Guy terms possible. Google turned up nothing. DTAS?
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 08:07 |
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Asphyxious posted:Google turned up nothing. DTAS? Death To Ability Scores, I think.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 08:09 |
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Death To Ability Scores! Replace the attribute part of your skill roll with a +3 modifier if you're a rogue; the best option.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 08:37 |
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Mike Mearls posted:The Hit Die mechanic is still there. Personally, I like that it takes the pressure off the cleric to heal and allows the group to benefit from a short rest. I think the mechanic is a bit more complex than I’d like, though. He's just putting stuff like this in to gently caress with us now, isn't he. That said, I'm curious as to how the fighter mechanic works out. It's still the bonus dice thing, right? As a set of round-to-round resources, I'm betting the average player figures out the optimum action (bonus attack/damage, probably) and spams it. Alternatively, the off-round options get completely ignored, due to the huge gamble involved in giving up your bonus dice for the chance of doing a defendery thing if the DM provokes it. But who knows, maybe they've come up with a way around this. Avoiding a straight-up "kill stuff faster" option would fix the first issue, and changing off-turn actions to use dice from your next turn rather than your last would fix the second. The grogs won't like it no matter what, so might as well ignore them and make it work properly.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 08:59 |
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Gerund posted:Death To Ability Scores! Except that a rogue will still be worse at finding traps than a cleric with a roguish background. Well, all right, that's not strictly true thanks to Skill Mastery, but the rogue's raw skill bonus will still be lower. This new feature fixes some of the problems with ability/skill interactions, but certainly not all.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 09:07 |
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Lochness_Hamster posted:New Podcast out with with the PA guys and Scott Kurtz Wait a second... Did Gabe just say he had nights in his 4e game where they didn't do combat at all? I thought that was unpossible.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 09:20 |
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Nolanar posted:Avoiding a straight-up "kill stuff faster" option would fix the first issue, and changing off-turn actions to use dice from your next turn rather than your last would fix the second. I very much doubt they're going to have the dice rolls for any other effect, and if they did, they'd do it in a way which would be hard to track. The dice are just a way to pretend that fighters don't get +1/-1 as their only option. Instead, it's +1d2-1d2. I mean, it would not surprise me if they literally got a .5 DPR bonus sometimes because they just replaced even values with dice.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 09:24 |
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Catastropost posted:Kill stuff faster is the only option that uses the dice. Unless you can hurl them at a second target, I guess? Otherwise, how is the push attack or the prone attack going to use the dice? I thought they said that you could trade in dice for other effects, like "lose a bonus die to knock your opponent prone" and the like. But yeah, bonus damage is definitely in, and will probably completely outstrip every other option unless there's a +hit effect. As for the actual dice themselves, I'm guessing we'll see a progression of bigger die sizes until they add a second die, so we'll end up with "+2d8+1d4" bonuses at mid level.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 10:01 |
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I'm going to repost this for anyone who didn't click the PA link. This body language is worth a thousand surveys.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 10:40 |
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Asphyxious posted:Google turned up nothing. DTAS?
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 10:42 |
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FactsAreUseless posted:Death to American Samoa, one of LF's more obscure slogans. "Donald Trump Alarm System" was one of the suggestions offered, I wondered if Rogues now could disarm traps by throwing gold at them.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 10:57 |
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moths posted:I'm going to repost this for anyone who didn't click the PA link. This body language is worth a thousand surveys. This pic is the best pic. It pretty much sums up Next for anyone other than its target audience. In fact, I think I'll put it in the OP. That said, could someone give those of us who don't want to listen/are too busy an executive summary of the contents? Is it really that bad for the Next team? I figured Gabe wouldn't be excited and Mearls wouldn't acquit himself well, but what about everyone else? EDIT: Added the pic. Also, a link to the podcast (erm, after this edit, oops)
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 11:38 |
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Nolanar posted:As for the actual dice themselves, I'm guessing we'll see a progression of bigger die sizes until they add a second die, so we'll end up with "+2d8+1d4" bonuses at mid level. Oh, if only there was a way to make this brand new original mechanic less complex!
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 11:38 |
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FM posted:That said, could someone give those of us who don't want to listen/are too busy an executive summary of the contents? Is it really that bad for the Next team? I figured Gabe wouldn't be excited and Mearls wouldn't acquit himself well, but what about everyone else? The best part so far has been a 5 minute soliloquy about how awesome clerical healing in 4e was and Mearls explaining how it doesn't really work like that anymore but it kinda still does, and then it fades out mid-sentence in that discussion for some reason.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 12:05 |
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FM posted:That said, could someone give those of us who don't want to listen/are too busy an executive summary of the contents? Is it really that bad for the Next team? I figured Gabe wouldn't be excited and Mearls wouldn't acquit himself well, but what about everyone else? Hard to say based on this. It's only part 1, and they've barely touched the actual mechanics of Next so far. Tycho and Kurtz both seem willing to give it a shot, but a large part of the conversation has been Mearls saying that 4E is too restrictive and Gabe saying that he's never had that problem. In the end Mearls just said that people who have no problem with 4E don't need to upgrade, but Next's focus on story meant that they could still buy setting books. There was also a fair bit of discussion between the PvP/PA guys about how clerics were healbots prior to 4E, and praise for 4E's "healing strike". It led into Mearls telling them about the new move/action turn, and the way that some things (*cough* minor actions *cough*) are kind of free, but it cut out before we really got a detailed reaction. It'll be interesting to see if that's in the next part. It wasn't a full-on attack on Mearls, but it's certainly not a shining endorsement of Next. The big question is how it'll go when they actually convert their 4E characters over. None of them are fighters, unfortunately; no questions about the second page here.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 12:05 |
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Doesn't the pvp guy play a dwavern fighter?
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 12:08 |
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Whoops, you're right. In my defence, it sounded like a rogue from the way he described it, but I guess his trap-disarming is more the "run into it" style.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 12:12 |
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Catastropost posted:Doesn't the pvp guy play a dwavern fighter? Yes, and he sounded distinctly unimpressed with 5e when they asked him about it directly. "Was it cool?" "It was...oldschool." Also the best part of healingchat is when they - they excluding Mearls - talk about how pre-4e was too MMORPG-ish for their tastes.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 12:43 |
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Zandar posted:Hard to say based on this. It's only part 1, and they've barely touched the actual mechanics of Next so far. Tycho and Kurtz both seem willing to give it a shot, but a large part of the conversation has been Mearls saying that 4E is too restrictive and Gabe saying that he's never had that problem. In the end Mearls just said that people who have no problem with 4E don't need to upgrade, but Next's focus on story meant that they could still buy setting books. The fact that he came out and said this in a public podcast raises my eyebrows to a considerable level - considerable enough to warrant extreme suspicion anytime I review 5e materials. I get the management doublespeak (he has to refer to 5e as an "upgrade" after all), but I distinctly do not get how 4e is "more restrictive". I mean, I guess in 3.x you can stat out the Lady of Pain, but just because you can do something doesn't make it any good. It may make it good for people who don't want their VERISIMILITUDE ruined, though. I get why they're doing this public backtracking on 4e - the whole point of this discussion has been pointing out how they're trying to get the groggiest of grogs back on the bandwagon - but every time I see them do this, I hear that guy from Shogun 2: Total War shout "A SHAMEFUL DISPLAY!". It'd be nice if, as part of this whole publicity stunt and hype, they could admit that 4e did some pretty drat awesome stuff. I'll take Fightan Weeaboo Magic any day over having to do the calculations for Power Attack. Necrofamicom posted:Wait a second... Did Gabe just say he had nights in his 4e game where they didn't do combat at all? I thought that was unpossible. As far as toolsets go, I think it's entirely possible to do an entire 4e session without combat. At least they really gave it an honest try with skill challenges: though I'm not too sure how well they worked in the long run, or if anybody uses them. Compared to the somewhat cheesy Diplomacy rolls in 3.x where you could roll so absurdly high and that would be that, I'm inclined to like it more. Note: When I do my 4e campaign, I am going to do my damnedest to have a session without combat every once in a while.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:22 |
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LuiCypher posted:
Looking back on it, in my 4e game we had a few sessions without combat. Super impressed with my players when ambushed by Myconids in the Feywild, they surrendered straight away in order to reason with them. Cue me throwing out all the monster stats I'd written up and putting the combat grid away.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:28 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:they excluding Mearls - talk about how pre-4e was too MMORPG-ish for their tastes. I wonder what Mike was thinking, when that was spoken 
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:31 |
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Considering how Mearls & co. want to get as far away from the "videogamey" legacy of 4E, I find it weird that they chose to do a session podcast with three guys whose entire audience is just videogamers. They would have had much more success by rounding up a few of those OSR blogger superstars who can't stop praising the playtests and let them outgrog each other in front of a mic.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:34 |
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Rexides posted:Considering how Mearls & co. want to get as far away from the "videogamey" legacy of 4E, I find it weird that they chose to do a session podcast with three guys whose entire audience is just videogamers. They would have had much more success by rounding up a few of those OSR blogger superstars who can't stop praising the playtests and let them outgrog each other in front of a mic. The podcasts/pax games with this crew over the last few years have been fairly successful for them from everything I've read.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:42 |
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Rexides posted:They would have had much more success by rounding up a few of those OSR blogger superstars Can you honestly see them letting any of those grogs get a platform to speak, just imagine the horror of a Tarnowski podcast, it would be all about that "Ettin" and his destroying the game world
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:49 |
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Rexides posted:Considering how Mearls & co. want to get as far away from the "videogamey" legacy of 4E, I find it weird that they chose to do a session podcast with three guys whose entire audience is just videogamers. They would have had much more success by rounding up a few of those OSR blogger superstars who can't stop praising the playtests and let them outgrog each other in front of a mic. Except no one outside the hobby gives a poo poo about OSR people. Listening to the original PA 4e stuff is what got me interested in DnD and trad games in the first place and from what I've heard this is also true of alot of other people. It probably comes off as weird because this is trying to repeat that success in bringing in new players when everything about Next up to now seems far more catered to the people already in the hobby.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 13:53 |
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Swagger Dagger posted:The podcasts/pax games with this crew over the last few years have been fairly successful for them from everything I've read. They are exceedingly watchable/listenable and incredibly well-run. In my opinion, they've been some of the best publicity for 4e imaginable - they make the game look like a lot of fun and I think I could convince new people to play D&D if they watched it. Though on that note, we've been really hitting upon a crucial point that I'm worried Next won't take into consideration. As mentioned earlier, sometimes grogs who hate 4e scare people away from the hobby. What I want to know is how 5e is going to draw new people in? Name recognition alone has been a blessing for D&D when it comes to attracting interest, but one thing that both 3e and 4e did well at release was bringing in the new blood because they did something different from the older editions, and they did the basic stuff well compared to previous editions. Since 5e seems a bit regressive...  Since we've been referring to the comics involved here and there, I just wanted to link the one with Tycho's thoughts about Next and the associated comic in case people haven't seen it before: http://penny-arcade.com/2012/01/11 EDIT: Added - Rexides posted:Considering how Mearls & co. want to get as far away from the "videogamey" legacy of 4E, I find it weird that they chose to do a session podcast with three guys whose entire audience is just videogamers. They would have had much more success by rounding up a few of those OSR blogger superstars who can't stop praising the playtests and let them outgrog each other in front of a mic. This would actually be a terrifying thing to listen to. And whether or not it would be a success would depend solely on your definition of success. Did it pander to their perceived "core" market? Yes! Did it scare any casual listeners who might have had a passing interest in the hobby? Yes! Ergo, a success for them. But really, though I've been a noted 5e apologist in the past (and will probably continue to be as long as they release playtest materials that hint at simpler, less groggy mechanics) I think they did the right thing by presenting it to Penny Arcade. Mearls deserved every ounce of skepticism from a crew of people who helped introduce thousands of new people into the hobby with 4e.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 14:01 |
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There is one respect in which 4e was kind of videogamey -- 4e PCs are not just exceptional, they are nigh-Olympian. Look at how many classes can teleport just a third of the way through their careers (assuming 1-30). There is a middle ground between your level 5 peasant stabbing at a goblin with his rusty pitchfork and hoping it at least dies of sepsis later and starting level 5 already flying and invisible . . . and I think a game could be very popular in that middle ground.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 14:29 |
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homullus posted:There is one respect in which 4e was kind of videogamey -- 4e PCs are not just exceptional, they are nigh-Olympian. Look at how many classes can teleport just a third of the way through their careers (assuming 1-30). There is a middle ground between your level 5 peasant stabbing at a goblin with his rusty pitchfork and hoping it at least dies of sepsis later and starting level 5 already flying and invisible . . . and I think a game could be very popular in that middle ground. Wait, first it was teleport at level 10, then it was start level 5 flying and invisible? Holy crap before I know it my character is gonna start at level 1 and be divine already.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 14:32 |
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Augure posted:Wait, first it was teleport at level 10, then it was start level 5 flying and invisible? Holy crap before I know it my character is gonna start at level 1 and be divine already. Well, if you play a Cleric-
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 14:40 |
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LuiCypher posted:This would actually be a terrifying thing to listen to. And whether or not it would be a success would depend solely on your definition of success. Did it pander to their perceived "core" market? Yes! Did it scare any casual listeners who might have had a passing interest in the hobby? Yes! Ergo, a success for them. Considering how they have been taking their 4E audience for granted up to now, I have always seen 5E as being a gamble to win back their old customers. The 4E podcast sessions have been a huge marketing tool in bringing in new people in the game, but this is very obviously not their goal with this edition, so I don't really see the point. But who knows, maybe when they actually start playing they will love it and give it the Penny Arcade Seal of Endorsement. (If I remember correctly, Holkins played a cleric, right?)
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 14:42 |
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| # ? Jun 19, 2013 18:03 |
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Augure posted:Wait, first it was teleport at level 10, then it was start level 5 flying and invisible? Holy crap before I know it my character is gonna start at level 1 and be divine already. People joke a lot about not wanting to play a dirt farmer at all, let alone as a prerequisite to becoming powerful in the game world, but 4e's high fantasy is superhero high fantasy. There is room in the world for games that are at neither end of the spectrum, and are also good games at the same time. WFRP3 lets you start as a peasant, but in that game the peasant is not necessarily worse off than the beginning wizard or cleric. Flying and teleporting freely really do change your non-combat encounters, and therefore the stories you tell about your campaign. It makes me sad that 5e looks like it's going to leave those only in the hands of the wizard, the party member you least want charging ahead of the rest of the group.
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| # ? Aug 6, 2012 14:44 |
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