Kaoswzrd's page

The longer 4e goes on, the more I believe WOTC needs to release an "Age of Chosen" line or something, pre-spell plague. I mean, that'd be the solution for Dragonlance right? Release 3 books... War of the Lance, the children age (sorry don't know what it's called), and a Player/Accessory book. They should just release 2 pre-spell plague books for the Realms, a Core and PH book.

The 3.5 publishings they did for Dragonlance wre quite a bit, The Core Book which tried to span all the Ages of Krynn, then a seperate book for the Age of Mortals, War of the Lance, Time of the Twins, along with a Bestiary, a Races book, a Pantheon book, a High Sorcery book, and a Knighthood specific book, and I'm probably missing one of two. Some of these books were almost entirely fluff though and really don't need a 4e conversion unless they throw another Cataclysm into the mix to reshape the world. Most of the prestige classes, spells, items, and feats, were fairly unneccessary, if not down right useless. I think the only feat we ever used at my table from the books was the "Spellcasting Prodigy" but my understand is that it also appeared in a Forgotten Realms release. The races data and monster stats were the most important things I pulled from those books aside from the fluff.

Most of the 3.5 products weren't even published by WotC itself, they farmed it out to Weis & Hickman's own publishing company, with the exception of the Campaign Setting itself which came out under the WotC flag so to speak. I don't know if something like this arrangement might not be in the cards again.

That being said, Dragonlance was my first Campaign setting and while no one else at my current regular table really likes it, I would fork over some handfulls of cash for it, especially if WotC released it with support through their DDI subscriptions and Character Builder updates. I think one really cool facet could be the way that 4e moved away from prestige classes and to the Paragon and Epic paths. The meanas that being a Knight of Solamnia or Wizard of High Sorcery wouldn't have to be a prestige class selection issue so much as a role playing decision like it was in earlier editions. There could still be Paragon paths for the various Knighthoods and the Wizards, but these would represent those few members of those organizations that are true embodiements of their organizations. Not every Knight of Solamnia would be on the Knight's Paragon path, but someone like Sturm Brightblade would be. In the end whenever I got a chance to run Dragonlance I usually had to make the prestige classes work like this anyways, and most of my players never took them. My players are the type that if you tell the Wizard that he "has to take this prestige class or be marked a Renegade" he'll say "fine bring on the mage hunters!" and the rest of the party will likely back him up. However, if it's just a matter of offering the party a side quest for the Wizard to go take the Test of High Sorcery and join what is pretty much a guild then they'll be eager for the extra XP and treasure potential.

This all went off on a tangent I hadn't really expected. Anyways, all the additional races might be the biggest problem I see in bringing 4e to Dragonlance. The other campaign settings have done their best to integrate Devas, Goliaths, Shifters, and Dragonborn. Krynn might need an as of yet undiscovered third continent or another world shaking Cataclysm event/War to explain them if they decide to bring them all in. Although I've seen some fan-based resources out there that did a pretty good job of integrating these races into the world's story with existing world shaking events....

In theory, anyway. In practice, there are strikers (most strikers and some controllers), bad strikers (the rest of the strikers, the rest of the controllers, pretty much all of the defenders), stunlockers (some controllers), and healers.

4e's class balance isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I'll grant that it's not perfect, but my experience has been that it's closer then 3.5 was. For instance I would rather have a Cleric then a Warlord, Bard, or Shaman, if I can only have 1 of the 4, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if it was a Warlord or Shaman over a Cleric. Usually it just means you want someone in the party with a multiclass feat that gives them a daily heal. Some RPGA events have shown me this.

I think your missing the point of the pro mage advocacy group. Essentially the nastier the monsters are the more desperately you want a good mage in your corner.

If the encounter starts to boil down to the DM saying - "I nerf your attack and hit back for 150 points of damage", then only the mage likely has the tools to keep herself alive long enough to try a whole slew of different options looking for the weak point.

I think this is the crux of the Pro-4e power balance argument though. In both systems you want a balanced party, especially at earlier levels, but at higher and higher levels in 3.5 a Wizard is a required element. While a Wizard is often helpful in 4e, his role can be suplemented by one of the other controller classes fairly easily. I think the part that I like most about 4e is that the new structure of roles in the party (Striker, Defender, Controller, Leader) has shifted the emphasis away from balancing the party with specific classes and towards these general roles, making no one class actually required for play. You're party needs a controller but it could be a Druid or a Wizard. You need a striker, but it could be a Rogue, Avenger, or Barbarian. You need a defender but you could have a Paladin, Fighter, or Swordmage. While a particular player may have a preference towards one class over another, and each class brings something a little different to the table, in terms of power balance they're all relatively even.

D&D is not directly competitive. While the DM does often play an adversarial role, taking a "best guess" on a rules conflict is not going to ruin the play experience, and will probably resolve things much faster.

I find that "best guess" is generally the easiest and quickest way to resolve things, and if players are getting creative it's best to give them the benifit if they're able to make a reasonable justification for what they're doing. I find the biggest arguments at our table (in any eddition) come up when someone wants to argue that the rules don't accurately model how it would work in the real world. Generally, we try to run light on making house rules because too many really start to reshape the balance of the game, sometimes in unpredictable ways, and just leave certain decisions up for argument in special circumstances.

At the risk of sounding like an elitist jerk, a spellcaster trying to out-damage anyone is Doing It Wrong (tm).

Spellcasters' strength lies in their ability to completely lock down the entire enemy force with a single spell. Glitterdust is a great example of this. It deals no damage, but is incredibly ruinous to practically any group of monsters. It doesn't matter if the fighter can unleash a huge amount of damage in a given round. It's unnecessary. Lock down the enemy with a spell and slaughter them at your leisure. And besides, the fighter's ability to deal damage relies completely on whether or not he can actual hit the enemy. As has already been pointed out many times in this thread, a fighter can be completely foiled by invisibility, flying, warding, etc. And because his dependence upon the enhancement bonus game cripples him...

I have to totally agree with Scott here. In terms of DPS a fighter melee type can outstrip a spellcaster true (except a well built 3.5 Druid). However, Wizards and Clerics have the ability to completely control the board allowing them to do their damage as they please. My table often looked at it in terms of pitting a 20th level fighter type against a 20th level Wizard or Cleric. Magic items can play a role, and actual build, but generally the Spellcaster is going to come out on top every time. This is the unbalance to the class power structure that always became bothersome. We have yet to find such a major division in 4e, and the players at my table are exactly the ones to be looking for it.

(edited)
With respect, DDI may well only partially solve the problem. As a case in point all the current rules for the Magic: The Gathering are online at the moment on the Wizards of the Coast Site. The current comprehensive rules is a massive document, over a hundred pages long (*link to page where current set can be accessed*), and it's been a long time since I felt confident enough of my knowledge of the current rules to be certain what was supposed to happen in an odd situation without spending half an hour looking things up and pondering. Just because all the rules are on the DDI it doesn't mean that the game won't stop every...

Let's not forget that the Character builder (part of a DDI subscription) also generates all the relevant power cards for each character and their items automatically. The power cards are direct quotes of the entries from the books, with relatively up to date errata and the number crunching already done. Most of the expansion books (at least for the classes) just offer new power options, but there's no looking up required if you've printed the power cards, they remain pretty straight forward. Add to that the standing rule from the DMG, that generally in a questionable situation the player should get the benifit unless the DM rules otherwise. Most of the expansion books have done very little to change the basic mechanics or rules of the game, those are pretty well spelled out in the original Core 3 books (PhBK 1, DMG 1, and MM 1). We actually spend less time at my table looking things up playing 4e then we ever did with 3.5.

I was re-readind the novel "Spellfire" by Ed Greenwood. Terrible book really but I was travelling and bored. It struck me that Wizards/Magic-users were seen as the most powerful things on the planet (bar a few critters). This under 1e was very true at high levels (and some would say 3e also). Anyway has making say a fighter of high level equal to a Mage at high level a good thing? The novel Spellfire really falls apart if we take the balancing of classes view. I will make a statement I may get flak for but... In a roleplaying game is it required that all PC's are "equal"? Perhaps when I was younger I adhered to "the world must be fair" view, but back then I was stuck with 1e so even in my gaming world it wasn't. Just wondering if we have lost something, fear of evil wizards?

Thoughts?

S.

Absolutely balance is a good thing in our RPGs. While the real world isn't fair, this isn't the real world, in the end it's a game and if every player at the table is relatively balanced (barring them making a stupid awful build all on their own) then I think everyone has more fun and that's really the goal. Previous editions were rife with power imbalances at various levels. It was more of a sliding scale depending on the party level, but all the same rarely was the entire party totally balanced in power. I think this is one of the things 4e has done best for the game.

To compare it to the system modled in Spellfire just isn't a fair really. And let's be honest, Spellfire is probably one of the worst books ever written by TSR or any company. It's the shining example of why I hate Ed Greenwood's books. So why would you want a system modled after Spellfire? UGH!

I just looked at the upcoming releases. They appear to be going to do "race" books. Welcome back to the moronic days of 2e/3e splat book blot. Great chance for WotC to inject some sensibility into D&D after 3.x or so I thought 4e would be. I thought that the multi-PHB/DMG/MM's were quite a good idea to keep things in check - one per year, simple. Then of course the "powers" books were released, but grouped so things still weren't too overloading - but heading that way. But idea of races books just annoys 3 kinds of excretment out of me. UUURRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

Yeh, yeh I know - they need to make money, yada, yada... Doesn't make it any less annoying however.

In 1e you needed a bag to carry your books, in 2e you needed a compact car, in 3e you needed a station wagon, and now in 4e it looks like a semi would be a good investment.

S.

I had a similar feeling when I found out that the Players Handbook for 4e was going to have an almost immediate sequel. I was rather pissed off in fact. As it was my 3e book collection is extensive to begin with, and that's just my personal library not counting the investment made by the rest of the players at my table.

That being said, WotC has been a lot more electronic friendly. My DDI subscription gets me access to nearly everything I need as both a player and a DM. Our table purches one of the new books after each release, but I no longer keep an extensive personal library of my own. While the SRD was available for 3.0 and 3.5, it was no where near as useful as the current DDI subscriber content and tools. I haven't seen anything this useful for electronic D&D tools since TSR came out with the Core Rules 2.0 CD-ROM for AD&D. All of it more then worth my subscriber fee when I factor in that I'm not buying expansion books once a month or so.

I also feel that the quality of the material in the new 4e products is much more uniform then the countless 3.0 and 3.5 releases. In previous edditions the other DM and I had to scrutinize every new feat, power, and class to make sure they weren't game breakingly powerful. By comparison I think we've only outlawed 1 or 2 powers in 4e and no feats at all. We had a running "house rules" list of outlawed feats, spells, and depending on the campaign even a class (the munchkins at our table broke Druids).

Just a note...I didn't read through the whole forum just responded to the OP.

Kenku and Wilden are my two least favorite races as far as appearance. I find I enjoy most all the races from the 2 players handbooks. At first glance I really didn't like the Devas, but I'm currently playing a Deva avenger and really getting into him. Having grown up reading Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and other "High Fantasy" I find that I miss having a literary background for the "new races" I'm looking forward to future handbooks that give more background on the "new races" as far as culture and role playing.

Celestial Healer wrote:

I'll tell you my tip. I can't print out power cards because I have a Mac and can't use the character builder. But I liked the idea, so I wrote up my own on index cards.

That way, not only do I have the powers written out in front of me, the experience of writing them out helps me learn the ins and outs of what they do.

It works for me, but I freely admit that if I could just print them out, I would ;)

You could always use Boot Camp / VMParallells to run a Windows environment in addition to Mac OS X.

Whether they're printed from Character Builder, typed up on the computer or hand written, as long as the transcription from the rule books to the cards is accurate, any form of power cards can help speed the game up a lot.

All of our characters are printed with Character Builder now, and everyone at the table uses the Power Cards and not any of those summary sheets out there. I'm just the only one (so far) that's slicing them up into individual cards. One of our players uses his iPhone and/or laptop and the website Iplay4e to run his characters and powers.

The other DM and I have a standing policy against attacking down PCs unless the villian has a reasonable role playing reason to do so. Damaging Auras have been one of the most dangerous creature abilities we've found for downed player that really introduce a high level of threat for characters on the ground, I can think of at least 2 PC deaths I owe to damaging auras. The other DM at the table recently introduced his own new monsters, one of which was a creature with heavy stunning and dazing effects attached to their attacks. These really helped to put the PCs on their guard. Although I found that certain characters were effect worst then others. The Ranger was slightly hampered, but having attacks that also let him shift gave him a lot more options then my Avenger who had trouble justifying using his Oath power at any point thus neutering his "Striker" role. Sustain Minor powers also became useless (to late the Wizard realized this after using his Flaming Sphere).

Forced movement has been a huge style change in our 4e campaign. In the past we generally disdained feat selections that offered Bull Rush and Grab abilities over anything that would deal out more damage. However, we've really had a lot of fun, and the flavor of our sessions have changed as more and more people have had some kind of forced movement abilities built into their powers. Almost every front liner in the group invests in "boots of spider climb" as soon as they're available.

I would say the feel/style of our game has definetly changed. It feels like the entire balance of the game mechanic is more fair for all the classes. I don't feel like any particular race or class is broken over any other. Spellcasters are no longer extremely fragile and vulnerable for the first several levels and then astronomically more powerful then warrior types at higher levels. Clerics are no longer only heal bots, using their actions every round to do nothing but heal the rest of the party, the invention of Minor Actions has been hugely benificial on several levels.

The only complaint I have as one of the DM's at my weekly group is that I have to work a lot harder to put the characters in jeaporady. Death is a lot more difficult, especially since my group excels at tactics.

As both a DM and a player I've found a couple of important things speed up each player's round in combat. My table usually has anywhere from 6 to 8 characters actively playing at our weekly game plus the monsters, this can take a lot of time without proper measures. First and foremost for 4e is that everyone have their powers written out word for word from the handbook. The Power Cards provided by Wizard's Character Builder help a lot with this. When we first started playing 4e though, everyone was constantly looking up their powers each turn, and that eat up a lot of time. Second, I find that it speeds up my own turn personally to have the power cards actually cut up into individual cards so that I can stack them in the order that they're going to be played. No one else at my table has done this, I've even started sleeving my power cards. It's been fun to have a hand of cards to play, and after I use them the used cards get set aside until they're refreshed. This keeps me from writing and erasing on them all the time. The third thing I've found, applies to any eddition of the game, make sure anyone with burst or blast powers (especially spellcasters) have enough dice to be able to roll out their attack rolls all at once.