*lust*
I have signed up for GenCon, now I just need to figure out what I'm going to do...
More D&D 4th ed tonight.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Gen Con
I'm thinking about going to Gen Con again this year, and I'm looking for ideas. Specifically, what might be fun that I can still get into, and what I might try to get into if there are no shows?
Review of D&D 4th ed, part 3
I find my self needing to clarify my opinion again in response to Alan's comment, this time on alignment. Like I said in my first post, I agree that the old alignment system was strained in places, especially keeping NG and CG distinct and deciding exactly what CN meant. My concern is mostly that Lawful Good, Good, undecided, Evil, and Chaotic Evil will look like a continuum to someone who isn't familiar with the old system. They even encourage that point of view in the second paragraph of the CE description. A sentence or two is all it would have taken to say that LG and good can be equally good, differing only on the degree of value placed on lawfulness, and likewise for Evil and CE. I don't know if a newcomer would really view it as a continuum rather than as designed, but they might.
On to chapter 4. Probably the first thing I noticed is that while classes was a fairly modest 35 pages in 3rd ed, it's a whopping 120 in 4th ed. due to the huge number of class specific powers. Paragon paths are essentially a refinement of prestige classes, but since there are only 3-4 per class and you need to pick one, it could be restrictive on viable character concepts. Presumably there will be many more in the future splat books (only $29.25 each). Epic destinies is hurting even worse for options since, of the four available, Archmage is wizard specific and Deadly Trickster may as well be rogue specific.
Powers are by far the biggest new thing in this chapter. I think they are an extremely good thing for casters, since at will and per encounter spells can get a party away from stopping to rest because the Cleric or Wizard is out of spells. Where I think powers went wrong is in using them for all classes. In previous editions a player who was new and learning, or just wanted streamlined options, could play almost any non caster class and be happy. Now every class is as complicated as playing a caster. You're pretty much never going to use a basic attack, so every action means picking from whatever options are available and tracking power usage for every player. I may be thinking it's worse than it really is, and I do think it is a vast improvement for casters, but think it is a negative for non casters.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time pouring over each class since the returning classes are conceptually similar, plus my attention span for reading each power gave out mid Paladin. Overall, classes look more restrictive, in that it is hard to break out of the standard model for a class. I don't think Denia would be possible, and certainly not practical, in 4th ed. I'll miss that flexability.
Cleric is pretty much the same with a little more combat and a lot less healing. I suspect the new limit on adventuring between rests is going to be the Cleric's reduced ability to pour blood back into the Fighter.
Fighter is now pretty much restricted to being an armoured tank. As someone with fond memories of the flexibility of the 3rd ed fighter I see this as a big loss, probably more so in my mind than it is to most anyone else.
Paladin looks similar although the Paladin's Mount appears to be gone. (mmm... Unicorn mount)
Ranger follows the lead of 3.5th ed. with the separate Two Weapon Fighting and Bow paths. There isn't any explicit restriction to one path or the other, but I'm sure splitting feats and powers between the two paths will leave the character relatively weak at high levels.
Rogue is pretty much a rogue, although it looks like the stealth rogue, which is what I think of when I think rogue, is an afterthought. It doesn't really fit either build option. It looks like combat ability has been strongly promoted. Like I said yesterday, I'm not a fan of the striker role emphasizing combat abilities over non-combat abilities.
Warlock is an interesting concept, although pacts seem a little forced in a game where magic is always out there for the taking. Eh, not a big deal by any means. No real surprise that most Warlock spells have a target of one creature since it was placed in the striker role. They don't appear to get Rituals, which isn't a surprise since they are conceptually very different casters than the Cleric and Wizard. The Warlock's paragon path is explicitly dictated by choice of pact at level 1, with one paragon path for each pact. Hopefully they fix this in the splat books.
The Warlord concept feels really out of place to me, being better suited conceptually to leading armies than supporting a small group of heroes. I have to admit I didn't read enough of the powers to have a very good feel for how the class fits mechanically, but it does have some healing powers to fulfill that part of the Cleric's role.
The Wizard's classic abilities got split between powers and rituals, but overall it is the same class. As I said above, at will and encounter powers should make this class a lot less about total spells per day management. The downside is that compared to the massive list of available spells in 3rd ed, there are very few powers and rituals available in 4th ed.
On to Chapter 5 and skills. Compared to 3rd ed, skills in 4th edition are significantly streamlined. Similar skills are grouped into a single skill. Training is either yes or no with a +5 bonus for training, and advancement is mainly by adding in 1/2 character level. As characters level, training is going to become much less significant to the 1/2 character level. Also, any training after 1st level or outside your short class list is going to come at the expense of a feat. The skills themselves are pretty self explanatory. My only complaint is for the physics of jumping. I don't really care about the distances being calculated, but the physics of jumping itself. For a high jump, it doesn't really matter if you have a run up or not, you will jump the same height. This doesn't surprise me all that much since it is a commonly held belief that a run up will give a higher jump. A bigger problem comes in the long jump. The long jump doesn't require that the highest point in the jump be at the center point. In the example they seem to be expecting maximum height at lift off followed by a glide over the pit. Yes, I'm probably being to picky about what are intended to be simple guidelines for a game that isn't about jumping. Other than that nit, the skills themselves look good. The number and grouping is probably right, although I will miss tumble.
Time to start reading again before I can review any more.
On to chapter 4. Probably the first thing I noticed is that while classes was a fairly modest 35 pages in 3rd ed, it's a whopping 120 in 4th ed. due to the huge number of class specific powers. Paragon paths are essentially a refinement of prestige classes, but since there are only 3-4 per class and you need to pick one, it could be restrictive on viable character concepts. Presumably there will be many more in the future splat books (only $29.25 each). Epic destinies is hurting even worse for options since, of the four available, Archmage is wizard specific and Deadly Trickster may as well be rogue specific.
Powers are by far the biggest new thing in this chapter. I think they are an extremely good thing for casters, since at will and per encounter spells can get a party away from stopping to rest because the Cleric or Wizard is out of spells. Where I think powers went wrong is in using them for all classes. In previous editions a player who was new and learning, or just wanted streamlined options, could play almost any non caster class and be happy. Now every class is as complicated as playing a caster. You're pretty much never going to use a basic attack, so every action means picking from whatever options are available and tracking power usage for every player. I may be thinking it's worse than it really is, and I do think it is a vast improvement for casters, but think it is a negative for non casters.
I'm not going to spend a lot of time pouring over each class since the returning classes are conceptually similar, plus my attention span for reading each power gave out mid Paladin. Overall, classes look more restrictive, in that it is hard to break out of the standard model for a class. I don't think Denia would be possible, and certainly not practical, in 4th ed. I'll miss that flexability.
Cleric is pretty much the same with a little more combat and a lot less healing. I suspect the new limit on adventuring between rests is going to be the Cleric's reduced ability to pour blood back into the Fighter.
Fighter is now pretty much restricted to being an armoured tank. As someone with fond memories of the flexibility of the 3rd ed fighter I see this as a big loss, probably more so in my mind than it is to most anyone else.
Paladin looks similar although the Paladin's Mount appears to be gone. (mmm... Unicorn mount)
Ranger follows the lead of 3.5th ed. with the separate Two Weapon Fighting and Bow paths. There isn't any explicit restriction to one path or the other, but I'm sure splitting feats and powers between the two paths will leave the character relatively weak at high levels.
Rogue is pretty much a rogue, although it looks like the stealth rogue, which is what I think of when I think rogue, is an afterthought. It doesn't really fit either build option. It looks like combat ability has been strongly promoted. Like I said yesterday, I'm not a fan of the striker role emphasizing combat abilities over non-combat abilities.
Warlock is an interesting concept, although pacts seem a little forced in a game where magic is always out there for the taking. Eh, not a big deal by any means. No real surprise that most Warlock spells have a target of one creature since it was placed in the striker role. They don't appear to get Rituals, which isn't a surprise since they are conceptually very different casters than the Cleric and Wizard. The Warlock's paragon path is explicitly dictated by choice of pact at level 1, with one paragon path for each pact. Hopefully they fix this in the splat books.
The Warlord concept feels really out of place to me, being better suited conceptually to leading armies than supporting a small group of heroes. I have to admit I didn't read enough of the powers to have a very good feel for how the class fits mechanically, but it does have some healing powers to fulfill that part of the Cleric's role.
The Wizard's classic abilities got split between powers and rituals, but overall it is the same class. As I said above, at will and encounter powers should make this class a lot less about total spells per day management. The downside is that compared to the massive list of available spells in 3rd ed, there are very few powers and rituals available in 4th ed.
On to Chapter 5 and skills. Compared to 3rd ed, skills in 4th edition are significantly streamlined. Similar skills are grouped into a single skill. Training is either yes or no with a +5 bonus for training, and advancement is mainly by adding in 1/2 character level. As characters level, training is going to become much less significant to the 1/2 character level. Also, any training after 1st level or outside your short class list is going to come at the expense of a feat. The skills themselves are pretty self explanatory. My only complaint is for the physics of jumping. I don't really care about the distances being calculated, but the physics of jumping itself. For a high jump, it doesn't really matter if you have a run up or not, you will jump the same height. This doesn't surprise me all that much since it is a commonly held belief that a run up will give a higher jump. A bigger problem comes in the long jump. The long jump doesn't require that the highest point in the jump be at the center point. In the example they seem to be expecting maximum height at lift off followed by a glide over the pit. Yes, I'm probably being to picky about what are intended to be simple guidelines for a game that isn't about jumping. Other than that nit, the skills themselves look good. The number and grouping is probably right, although I will miss tumble.
Time to start reading again before I can review any more.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
D&D 4th Ed, part 2
I'd like to go back to Character role from chapter 2 before dealing with races. My previous post was pretty much just a howl of outrage without really dealing with why. I'll give a pass on defender, I don't really think of that role in that way, and they ignore the cross role ability of the ranger, warlord and even cleric, but close enough. Controller also seems misnamed to me, but I can't think of a better name. Presumably "nuke it from orbit" was deemed insufficiently fantasy. The real problems with how role are presented starts with striker completely ignoring the non-combat importance of stealth. We are role playing after all, not roll playing. Calling the healer/support group the Leader really seems like they were trying to justify the Warlord's existence and thinking no one will want to play a character who's role is called support. They even acknowledge the potential confusion with the spokesperson non-combat role, but use the term anyway. Like I said, it just seems like much of this was taken way to seriously.
Enough on that, on to Chapter 3. I'll try to keep it shorter with less poo flinging, but no promises. I can only think dragonborn made it in one of two ways. One is to totally pander to people who liked playing half dragons, the other is as a feature of yet another new campaign setting at the expense of older settings. I haven't seen anything about Grayhawk or DragonLance for 4th ed, so presumably they are out of favor again. There's bunches of Forgotten Realms stuff in the pipeline already. Maybe they are yet another super powerful race in the Realms banished in ancient times and now coming back to restore their empire no matter what the current occupants of that land think. Str +2, Cha +2, so that means balance is out the window. That will make humans interesting. Dwarves are still dwarves. Another new race, Eladrin. They're mostly elves with a shiny new back story. I thought 3rd ed's handling of sub races in the Monster Manual was good enough, but whatever. Elves are elves, although they are fey now instead of humanoid. Half-elves are half-elves. Halflings are halflings, although not having a homeland of their own is a bit of a demotion. Humans are pretty much the same as 3rd ed. Only +2 in a single skill, but it's the character's choice. Bonus power, bonus skill, bonus feat, +1 to Fort, Reflex, and Will. Tiefling is an odd choice of new race since they go to so much trouble to stress that characters should be good. Aasimar didn't make the cut, and would make more sense. Both Dragonborn and Tiefling seem odd as new core races since both are supposed to be rare. Oh well, if it made sense it wouldn't be D&D.
oops, time for Simpsons. More ranting later.
Enough on that, on to Chapter 3. I'll try to keep it shorter with less poo flinging, but no promises. I can only think dragonborn made it in one of two ways. One is to totally pander to people who liked playing half dragons, the other is as a feature of yet another new campaign setting at the expense of older settings. I haven't seen anything about Grayhawk or DragonLance for 4th ed, so presumably they are out of favor again. There's bunches of Forgotten Realms stuff in the pipeline already. Maybe they are yet another super powerful race in the Realms banished in ancient times and now coming back to restore their empire no matter what the current occupants of that land think. Str +2, Cha +2, so that means balance is out the window. That will make humans interesting. Dwarves are still dwarves. Another new race, Eladrin. They're mostly elves with a shiny new back story. I thought 3rd ed's handling of sub races in the Monster Manual was good enough, but whatever. Elves are elves, although they are fey now instead of humanoid. Half-elves are half-elves. Halflings are halflings, although not having a homeland of their own is a bit of a demotion. Humans are pretty much the same as 3rd ed. Only +2 in a single skill, but it's the character's choice. Bonus power, bonus skill, bonus feat, +1 to Fort, Reflex, and Will. Tiefling is an odd choice of new race since they go to so much trouble to stress that characters should be good. Aasimar didn't make the cut, and would make more sense. Both Dragonborn and Tiefling seem odd as new core races since both are supposed to be rare. Oh well, if it made sense it wouldn't be D&D.
oops, time for Simpsons. More ranting later.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Review of D&D 4th Ed, Part 1
My copy of 4th ed. showed up Thursday, and I've been working through it since then. (By the way, why did it take until Thursday for the USPS to get a package to me when it was sent on Monday morning from Jacksonville?) I'm through chapter 4 (abridged) of the Player's Handbook along with some skipping around for context and curiosity. So far I have to say that while some ideas are good ones, overall I'm underwhelmed. I'm willing to be convinced that some of it isn't as bad as I think, and undoubtably some will look better under the light of real game play, but it looks to me like one giant leap backwards to highly restricted "one true class path" rather than an evolution of the flexibility that I loved about 3rd ed.
I skipped nearly all of Chapter 1 since it's mostly "What is a Role Playing Game" and "How do you play", along with the super exciting dice sidebar. I have to believe that anyone picking up the book who doesn't already know this stuff is going to get a less coma inducing version from the people they are playing with. Anyone using this as their introduction to RPGs is going to put the book back on the shelf and run away.
Chapter 2 is better since it actually contains useful information. Synopsis of race and class, which I'll talk about in their respective chapters. WTF is this crap about character role? You need a meat shield, a medic to heal the meat shield, a thief to scout and deal with locks and traps, and a wizard to make shit blow up. Controller, defender, leader, and striker? Someone (probably many someones) took this way too seriously. On to ability scores. Saves (now types of defenses, whatever) got a little help by being able to choose the better of two ability scores as a base. Wait a second, you don't even roll dice for two of the three methods? Guess they're planning to push Living XXXX even more. Fortunately, method 3 (aka deprecated) is ye olde 4d6 drop 1.
Huh, they did away with alignment tic-tac-toe. Five alignments now: Lawful good, good, evil, chaotic evil, and doesn't matter. The old system might have been stretched thin in places, but this seems overly simplified. Some new gods, some old ones, but fewer of them. Wait, no, they just gave second rate coverage to the evil gods. Was 3rd ed. this preachy about "characters really, really should be good?" Seems a bit early to be covering what is flavor for everyone but Clerics and Paladins. More flavor. I can only assume this was done with the goal of targeting first time gamers, but it just seems really out of place here. Languages, good to know, but still out of place. Ah, game mechanics. Still "roll high on a d20" but lots of things now advanced by 1/2 character level. How to level, rant about powers later. Retraining being officially recognized is nice since some character concepts just don't work, but it seems prone to min/maxing. They made no attempt to justify from a character's POV either. The character just forgets something they knew last night and in it's place is something completely different.
On to the One True Character Advancement Table. The first thing I notice is that ability scores advance a lot more frequently. +5 total in 20 levels (or +7 in 30) of 3rd ed, +14 (+24) in the same span now. Everyone gets powers, and a fair number of them, but we still have no idea what they do. They kind of look like spell like abilities since it's broken down as at-will/encounter/daily/ utility(?). On to a quick tour of a character sheet. The most obvious change is a drastic reduction in the number of skills, also indexed off of 1/2 character level, and trained appears to be a binary +5. Not sure what bloodied and surges have to do with hit points yet, and no clue about action points either. Whoever decided how big to make the equipment box never played in a "take everything that isn't nailed down, and if we can pry it loose it isn't nailed down" type party, which is pretty much every party in every game I've played. Ah, we've escaped chapter 2.
It's late, so I'll write more tomorrow.
I skipped nearly all of Chapter 1 since it's mostly "What is a Role Playing Game" and "How do you play", along with the super exciting dice sidebar. I have to believe that anyone picking up the book who doesn't already know this stuff is going to get a less coma inducing version from the people they are playing with. Anyone using this as their introduction to RPGs is going to put the book back on the shelf and run away.
Chapter 2 is better since it actually contains useful information. Synopsis of race and class, which I'll talk about in their respective chapters. WTF is this crap about character role? You need a meat shield, a medic to heal the meat shield, a thief to scout and deal with locks and traps, and a wizard to make shit blow up. Controller, defender, leader, and striker? Someone (probably many someones) took this way too seriously. On to ability scores. Saves (now types of defenses, whatever) got a little help by being able to choose the better of two ability scores as a base. Wait a second, you don't even roll dice for two of the three methods? Guess they're planning to push Living XXXX even more. Fortunately, method 3 (aka deprecated) is ye olde 4d6 drop 1.
Huh, they did away with alignment tic-tac-toe. Five alignments now: Lawful good, good, evil, chaotic evil, and doesn't matter. The old system might have been stretched thin in places, but this seems overly simplified. Some new gods, some old ones, but fewer of them. Wait, no, they just gave second rate coverage to the evil gods. Was 3rd ed. this preachy about "characters really, really should be good?" Seems a bit early to be covering what is flavor for everyone but Clerics and Paladins. More flavor. I can only assume this was done with the goal of targeting first time gamers, but it just seems really out of place here. Languages, good to know, but still out of place. Ah, game mechanics. Still "roll high on a d20" but lots of things now advanced by 1/2 character level. How to level, rant about powers later. Retraining being officially recognized is nice since some character concepts just don't work, but it seems prone to min/maxing. They made no attempt to justify from a character's POV either. The character just forgets something they knew last night and in it's place is something completely different.
On to the One True Character Advancement Table. The first thing I notice is that ability scores advance a lot more frequently. +5 total in 20 levels (or +7 in 30) of 3rd ed, +14 (+24) in the same span now. Everyone gets powers, and a fair number of them, but we still have no idea what they do. They kind of look like spell like abilities since it's broken down as at-will/encounter/daily/ utility(?). On to a quick tour of a character sheet. The most obvious change is a drastic reduction in the number of skills, also indexed off of 1/2 character level, and trained appears to be a binary +5. Not sure what bloodied and surges have to do with hit points yet, and no clue about action points either. Whoever decided how big to make the equipment box never played in a "take everything that isn't nailed down, and if we can pry it loose it isn't nailed down" type party, which is pretty much every party in every game I've played. Ah, we've escaped chapter 2.
It's late, so I'll write more tomorrow.
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