IconoclasticScream's page

You know, looking at the topics in the forums before they got locked down, I'm wondering if this announcement is just that 4th edition is officially on its way, but is indeed a ways (maybe a year or more) off. There did seem to be a lot of threads about "what would you like in 4th edition" as opposed to "what do you think about what we already have...

I think you're right. It's been clear from message boards that a new edition is an unpopular idea, and to make that change as a blindsiding move rather than a "Tell us what you'd like to see" way is pretty silly.

I've been waiting for this game a long time. I don't own a PSP, and wavered on buying one (I hate handhelds). But w/ the recent revision of the PSP (coming soon?) allowing one to actually use your HDTV widescreen to view the game...well...they just might have a new buyer...

Thanks for the early impressions!

I bought the PSP for the D&DT game. I had a metric buttload of old games I traded in for store credit, and in the end the system only cost about a hundred dollars. The impression I've gotten from reading message boards here and there is that I'm not alone in doing this.

If someone already posted this, sorry.

This is, it claims, a screen shot of the 4E message board.
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3702448&postcount=217

At its heart, it really is PHB 3.5 D&D. All of the races, classes (plus psions and psychic warriors), most skills, and some feats. Over 200 spells and psionic powers. In some cases the way a certain power, ability, yadda yadda works is tailored to the game (for instance, the party's cleric uses a morningstar and a shield. At first he had to put one away to have a free hand to cast spells. Once he took the Still Spell feat he could cast with both items in hand (the spells still take the same spell slot, not one level higher)).

Movement is turn based. You can move one character to do all of the exploration, or move the party together. Therein is the speed issue I have. There seems to be no way to call your party to one place. So if my fighter is off exploring a cave by himself, and he runs into a troll or two (and God help me, that happened when my characters were at third level), I can't just hit a button and have the party begin to converge on my location. I have to move each character through two move actions as their turn comes up in initiative. It's fun, but it gets a little tedious doing it. Things seem to go faster when there are five other people at the table, each making moves for their character.

So far my impression is that the game might be a little too involved for a seven year old. The game makers take the "Tactics" part of the name seriously. My party of third and fourth level characters ran into an encounter in a cave system where they were surrounded by five bugbears, six goblins, and a troll (there were two other trolls in the area who didn't come to the fight). If you don't have a very good sense of how to use the individual members of the party to their best advantage in a fight there's going to be TPKs all around.

It really is a cool game though, and definitely a good way to show someone how the rules come together. And really, it just looks and sounds so damn cool there was no way I could pass it up.

I think the all of cleric's future hit die rolls might have been determined at character creation so that people could not save right before a level and get max hit points for all characters. But that is just a random guess with very little information.

I'm not going to like my cleric for very long then. And as he's the main character in the group, I don't think I can retire him.

Maybe I'll just discuss the game with myself. :)

I think I've found a glitch. Maybe. I have a cleric in the party, human, CON 10. And 11 hit points. As he started with 8 HPs at first level, that means he's gotten one new hit point per level. I've tried saving before I level up, then leveling up again and again, and each time, one new hit point.

This is going to be really bad before too long.

Did anyone else get, or plan to pick up, D&D Tactics for PSP? I got my copy this afternoon, and after about three hours of playing I think it's fair to say the game is going to be unbearably cool. It really does seem to be as close to the 3.5 rules as a disk the size of a fifty cent piece can hold.

It's cracking me up how long combat is taking, though. Dear God, does the time actually move that slow with the pen and paper version and I've just never noticed? Maybe the barrage of jokes around the table and watching players pray to whatever god might be listening as they're about the throw dice have kept me distracted all these years.

How do you label the Item Cards? Just write on them? Does dry erase work? Use sleeves? Printed labels?

I'm trying to figure out the best way to use these that isn't time consuming or a pita, while retaining reusability of the cards. Any help would be appreciated.

I just use little post-it notes on the back. <shrug>

This is a veteran group, with almost 20 years of gaming experience. I think the players enjoy being back in Waterdeep and would love to play the Vampire Arc. These guys have not been back there since the good ole' 2nd edition. They have fond nostaglic memories of Waterdeep.

Back in the heady days of first edition, there was a collection of adventures set in the Realms called _Lords of Darkness_. Greenwood was credited as either the writer or editor. Each mini-adventure (meant to be done in one or two sessions) featured one of the iconic undead from the original Monster Manual. Very cool stuff all around, but the vampire adventure sticks out as being a real gem. Set in a major city with a sewer system (I want to say it's supposed to be Waterdeep, but it's been years since I ran it), it involves two twin brothers (I think they were twins, but definitely brothers. Unfortunately, my copy is in storage or else I'd go look it up.) who were long ago turned into vampires. One of them gets their hands on a Helm of Alternate Alignment, becomes LG, and is out to put an end to his brother. That's where the PCs come in.

If you can find a copy (I looked. Someone has it on auction on eBay*), want to involve vampires in Waterdeep, but don't feel like slowing down your AoW game, this might be the way to go. The roleplaying possibilities for the paladin of Kelemvor having to aid a Lawful Good vampire would be, for me, too delicious to pass up running the adventure.

*http://cgi.ebay.com/Lords-of-Darkness-AD-D-Forgotten-Realms-REF5-of-1988_W 0QQitemZ300124810369QQihZ020QQcategoryZ44112QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZVi ewItem

Anyone in NYC want to meet for trading Item Cards? I just don't feel like dealing with trading by mail. I'm happy to trade foils for the mundane versions of the cards I'm missing. Those missing cards are:

Hero's Hoard
04 Half Plate
08 Scalemail
09 Splint Mail
10 Studded Leather
12 Steel Sheild
13 Steel Shield
30 Longsword
23 Shortbow
37 Spear
39 Warhammer
40 Potion
51 Potion
67 Scroll
70 Scroll
86 Wand
100 Cloak
104 Gauntlets

Relics of War
03 Demonhide
06 Leather
08 Platemail
16 Club
17 Crossbow
18 Dagger
19 Dagger
24 Longsword
25 Longsword
30 Rapier
39 Potion
42 Potion
57 Ring
59 Ring
62 Scroll
68 Scroll
71 Scroll
78 Wand
81 Wand
85 Wand
86 Wand
92 Book
94 Bracers
96 Cloak
103 Pearl
105 Prayer Beads
106 Quiver

I've got piles of extras from both sets.

I get the sense that you don;t have children or are even married and lack the imagination to use unoffensive language to enjoy a story. [...] If the story also included incest and the exploitation of children would that be acceptable to you?

I have a Masters in English. I publish articles on American literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I don't lack the imagination to enjoy a story without offensive language.

That being said...

I teach high school students. They curse. They curse with extraordinary frequency. They were cursing before they started gaming. And now a few of them, through me, are learning how to play D&D. Do I care that they curse? Well, it's impolite, but otherwise, no, I don't.

Cursing may be rude and inappropriate at times, but curses are only words. I don't want my students to be afraid of words. I want them to have power over people who are. And I'd far rather have students at a gaming table, or with the dance club or, on our basketball court using language that would make a drunk pirate blush than to be out robbing stores or getting high. There are many more legitimate concerns than the dirty words kids use.

And I'm not entirely sure citing the possible enjoyment of stories that contain incest as criterion for the condemnation of someone who you disagree with or of the story itself is going to work effectively as an argument. If you do that you've just spoken out against the first book of the Old Testament, and that's going to be a pretty hard sell to a lot of people.

Magazines get cancelled all the time, folks. It's life. The end of an era, maybe, but not the end of the world.

As someone who's been reading and buying Dragon since #109 I'm glad the magazine (or whatever it will be in the future) is going electronic. My hard drive has much more space for PDFs than the space under the bed in my guest room does for back issues.

Every time D&D, or some facet of it, has evolved, it's bothered people I've known and they've stopped playing, buying new products, whatever. First to Second edition? Stopped playing. Second to third? Stopped playing. Those are just the two most obvious changes to the game, but the list is almost endless. Change isn't always a bad thing though, and with D&D, having gamed in the dark ages when it took a miracle and a guide wearing a fedora and armed with a bullwhip to find a rule in the first edition DMG, I know when change happens it's usually for the better.

I was a little upset when I read the news yesterday, but not because I felt betrayed in any way. Dragon was a low-grade institution. Sure, I'll miss the ritual of waiting impatiently for the new issue to arrive every month. But now I don't have to worry about issues coming in late, being lost in the mail, being ripped by the postal worker cramming it into the mailbox.

I don't think the angry D&D players need to unite. There doesn't need to be a boycott or an uprising, and no one needs to take the pitchforks and torches out of storage. Not yet, anyway. At least give give the new format a chance. The strangest thing in the world could be that it's actually something that people like. Maybe even more than its predecessor.

Check out Lesiem. http://www.lesiem.de/ A friend of mine hipped me to them back when we were playing In Nomine. The better part of their music fits at the gaming table. I was going to suggest listening to their song "Fundamentum," and by happy coincidence there's an eleven minute version of it as a free download on their site. I'm going to grab that now myself.

I intended this race to be an excuse for a gamer to imagine his/her character as the truly rediculously proportioned female that we of post-modern times find so sexy. I will admit that I don't have a great grasp of weight:height proportions at all, so any suggestions are welcome.

Thankfully, the aforementioned significant other is still awake to throw in her two cents again. She told me of a female friend of hers that's 5'10" and says her ideal weight is 180. Furthermore, anything under 160 and she looks really sick.

Taller than that I can't really help, except to say maybe gather some info on some of the women pro or college basketball players. You'll have the height, definitely athletic, and not so overly developed that they've lost that modern femininity you're looking for.

Amazons are a race composed entirely of coal skinned females. A typical amazon stands 6’ 6” tall and weighs 120 pounds; lithe and shapely, amazons possess legendary beauty.

My girlfriend is 5'2" and weighs 120 pounds. She has a fairly athletic build, not any noticeable amount of body fat. I mention this only as my point of reference.

Now, I know that different people have bodies shaped differently and there are variations on how they carry their weight. But 6'6" and 120 pounds? That's not going to be shapely and lithe. That's going to look like they've just been released from an extended period of captivity in a particularly nasty POW camp.