Kevin Mack's page

Recently i was doing Ravenloft as a campaign for my players. During the expansion part diseased one of my party members (A female wildhunt shifter Ranger) decided to track the infected warewolves (who had fled from combat) whilst the others headed back to town to find more information out that way. The ranger got as far as the crossroads (ahead of two of the diseased warewolves i should add) where for a random encounter she ran into a group of three regular none diseased warewolves.

After some appaling bad luck with her hide and move silently roles she ended up in combat with them and after a fairly long combat was able to kill the three warewolves. However during it she took enough damage so that when she killed the last warewolf and her shifting ended she dropped down to -1 hp but stabalised.

So now she is lying in the middle of the crossroads out cold with two of the diseased warewolves coming up behind her. Now what im wondering is if they should just kill her or maybe take her prisoner and if they should take her prisoner ways to go about restraining her and the like?

Perhaps doing the same thing they did with the death system using resurection and the like? (ie gain a temporary negative lvl)

Thats assuming of course that its a fully grown adult snow leapord. As someone else mentioned earlier you could treat it as a younger one by knocking off some of its Hd and abilities and graduly replace them till you get to lvl 4.

Could just make it a regilar cat for lvl's 1-3 after all everyone knows a housecat can maul a commoner or a wizard

Personaly i love the new iconic the artwork is great and the backstory is pretty good as well.

I cant help but find it ammusing that everyone uses for an example a lone wizard of X school facing lone monster of x type. I mean maybe ive been playing D&d diffrently for several years but generally its usually a team activity.

I also find it kind of funny people use fireball as an example of how damage spells dont do enough damage since its a spell designed for tacking out or damaging groups of enemies instead of a lone creature. Of course its unimpressive if your throwing it at a lone enemy thats not what its designed for.

Im having the same problem. All my modules and products have been shipped near as i can tell but i havent gotten any Pdf's for them.

So any chance of getting a sneak peak of the Gnome Druid anytime in the near future?

I mean, I understand the whole genre and the inpirational stuff and all that, but even in the most ridiculous circumstances what kind of dolt is going to sit in the middle of battle playing music to inspire and uplift everyone.

Well untill very recently (about 1950 i think) The british army with men playing bagpipes to inspire the troops in the middle of battle.

I would go with catfolk or something similar (since i dont think we could use the name catfolk). Partially because im admitadly a big fan of playing them and secoundly it would be really easy to do them by simply altering the way they come at the moment heres an example.

Catling

Dex +2
Cha +2
Int -2

Catlings are agile and have easy to get along with personalitys but they dont have the patiance for long study or planning.

+2 to sound based perception checks +2 bonus to stealth checks

Catlings have naturaly good ears and are adapt at moving undetected

this is just from 5 minutes looking through the old catfolk entry and altering a few slight things.

Now the 40ft land speed and +1 natural Ac are the sticking points for me since im not sure if they would be overpowerd and im still thinking on weapon proficencies and any other useful things so feedback would be appreciated.

Im with Disenchater and Cory on this one im calling it quits on the forums since it no longer feels like the Paizo i joined.

Well looking over what is known about monster design in 4th and monster design in 3.5. My take is that neither method is really better or worse than the other.

They both have there strong points and downsides so it really is a matter of style preference than anything else. As for myself my favorite part of being a dm is creating the monsters and NPC'S and ill happily spend several hours working on one so I'd say my style is more geared towards 3.5 monster making.

Stupid question but if no one has seen the OGL (or whatever the licence is called?) how can they know for sure that they will be allowed to make this monster book they are talking about? Also he openly admits he hasn't seen all the rules so it may turn out that crating new monsters is not as easy as they think it is. Not trying to rain on anyone's parade or anything just telling it the way i see it.

Ah 4E the game where you are smart enough to outsmart a bullet.

Anyone else getting the image of a fighter with a felt tip pen lashing out and doodling on people to 'mark' them?

I can actually see WOTC forums going the way Gw did a few years back a lot of what is happening at WOTC forum is exactly like what happened at GW before they decided to shut them.

He's some sort of warforged full of tasty Xp get him lads. In seriousness some good finds there

In regards to being spread to thin well the point of a paladin is that he is supposed to be more versitile. After all if you made him deal out damage like a Barbarian he would basically be a barbarian, and if you give him more feats like a fighter he basicaly becomes a fighter. Neither of which he is supposed to be.

Hmm personaly i dont see what the problem about Paladins at low lvl play is coming from. Ive recently ran a campaign where one of the charecters was a human Paladin and some of the best times he had were at low lvl (the other two party members were a human Knight and a Elf wizard.)

Now part of the problem in this case seems to be that. 1, you have a wide mix of builds some power some not 2, The paladin player seems to have had some bad luck. The first one would be simply not to allow players power build and the secound well if its bad dice rolling it dosent realy matter what class you are.

Another thing is a Paladin is really a jack of all trades charecter who seems a little less usefull if you have already have all the bases coverd.

You know it just occurred to me that compering the rogue preview to the pit fiend one it seems to me that certain monster abilities are either somewhat underpowered meaning there at a disadvantage against the Pc's. Or damage across the board had been toned down in general meaning a lot of fights simply turning into i hit you you hit me punch ups.

Have to say this is really Meh to me. As many have said it could be that they aren't showing all the options but if they are it seems somewhat Underwhelming to me. Not a fan of set number of hp or proficiency with only 5 weapons and the like.

Also it seems that characters will have a lot and i mean a lot more hp especially at higher lvls. in the current system on average and not including con a rogue should have about 60hp at 20th lvl whereas a 4th ed rogue at 30 will have 150 which is over double the current rogues (remembering that they said a 30th lvl character is roughly the equivalent of a 20th lvl one now) Combine with doing generally less damage and i see high lvl combats becoming really slow slugfests.

I could be wrong about all this but that's the impression I'm getting.

Hmm at the moment

1)No

2)not really sure i probably wouldent use the 4e stuff but then im the kind of guy that buys things for the pretty pictures.

3)I would keep my subscription.

was under the impression that all the summoning/ shape changing spells and abilities as well as animal companions and familiars were being dropped. So why would they be in the Players handbook?

Hmm ill stick to manflesh thanks. Now someone pass me another arm of barbarian

Funnily enough the changing of height of a halfling is one of the things that annoys me the most about 4th edition.

The argument for it in the races and classes book seems to be that it doesn't make much sense so they changed it to make it more realistic. You then flip through a few pages to see the red skinned, tailed, horned and glowing eyed tiefling.

Also as a side note they say that halflings were to small to make sence well hate to break it to them Giants dont make sence either. After all there bodies are far to tall for a human type of anatomy to support.

Okay im no mathimatician but since not every role will be 1-9 or a 20 would it not make sence to try and figure out how long a charecter will be down on average? then work out the odds of dying/getting up from there?

Somewhat off topic but how old is Drizzit in 3.5 because if I'm not mistaken one of the things they said they were doing was to severely cut back the age of elfs 300 years roughly wasn't it? so if they've done that i imagine a 100 year jump forward should be very significant aging even for him.

Only thing that would convince me at the moment is if the DMG came with a real live torch weilding goblin like the ones you saw in the first part of the Rise of the Runelords adventure path

I believe that what's happend to the 4E realms is a prime example of trying to get fluff to match the rules when it should be the other way round.

To me it looks like they designed the new cosmology to be generic as possible but diddent check to see how well it would work with the Forgotten realms so when its come round to getting the two to match up they have had to do a hatchet job on the setting.

Funny thing is i wasent that big a fan of the previous edition realms but it was far better than this souless abomination

hmm You could try using The Nightbringer model from games workshop although you would have to remodel the weapon and make him look more worm like.

Well just finished watching the video myself i have to say i don't really find it all that offensive but i do think there ploy to sell tieflings as a playable race has backfired because after watching that film i really REALLY want to play a Gnome and i don't even like Gnomes all that much.

I mean watching the video the gnome seems like he's having the time of his life whilst the Tiefling comes across as the whole I'm 16 and I'm angry at the world type thing and i know which one I'd rather play as

In regards to not being allowed to say negative things about the product that's actually nothing new. Games workshop have had that rule for years that staff members are not allowed to speak ill about a product no matter how terrible it is. So it wouldn't surprise me if another company has adopted this.

Hmm it seems like a fairly good monster build from what i can tell although a bit bland. What caught my attention was the description of what the fear aura does. I mean they argue that having modifiers adds to book keeping but then they put in an affect that applies an extra modifier?

Seems to me that there will be as much book keeping in this edition as in the last one especially if a lot more monsters have abilities like that

Oh and on a side note i don't know about anyone else but for some reason seeing everything described in squares and not feet made me cringe a little

I'm willing to admit i often use computer software when dming but its more to do with my almost unreadable handwriting than the game being to complex.

In regards to monsters and Npc's Ive always felt that they can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. Simple cannon monster creatures ill generally just take something out the monster manual whilst important monsters or Npcs ill spend a lot of time and effort on. Again nothing to do with the system being complex simply that i want to put more effort into that creature.

Am i the only one who finds it odd that someone who by there own admision is a novice DM is helping desighn the rules and playtest them?

No

Funny thing is i go to several D&D forums and the only two that the player base seems to be largely enthusiastic about 4E are Enworld and wizards own website. Pretty much all the rest Ive seen are at best in the Meh category

Cant say im botherd about Dwarf woman without beards. However i would be annoyed if they just look like a short human female they should at least have something that makes them look somewhat dwarvish and less human.(admitadly i have no idea what that would be.)

The group i play with consists of 5 Players and of them 4 are against the new edition (for various reasons) and im firmly in the meh camp

Maybe ive missed something but how is this simpler than the old system?
What i mean is from the way they seem to have described it i would think if you had a character with a magic weapon and a few of those feats they are talking about then would it not quickly become complicated? (well at least as complicated as the current system anyway)

Cant remember where i heard it but was told that in 4e the bonus that an average base stat for a pc will be +3 whilst in 3e it was +0 (ie a charecter with Str 10 in the current edition gets no bonus but in 4e it will be a +3 bonus.)

Im sure this has probably been mentioned before but would it really kill them to hire a profesional spokesperson or advertising specalist to promote 4th edition? I mean when selling a car to the public you dont have the car designer come up with the advert for it.

Cant say im to happy with what they have done. I could be wrong but it seems to me that if they are integrating certain feats into certain classes then its going to lead to a lot of static cookie cutter charecters (All rogues being nigh on identical, all fighters etc) and for a person like me who liked to be able to take a class and do it in a diffrent way it seems a little off putting.

Ps Cant say im to thrilled about the inclusion of action points either.

Yeah i remember that article but then again thats the same website that says your soul is dammned if you wear a paisly pattern tie

Going to go for option B myself. Nothing against the new rules simply that i cant be botherd or have the money to buy the 50+ books i own all over again.

Personaly i have nothing against them using gods from there other settings (Hey at the end of the day its there stuff so they can do what they want with it.) However two things come to mind that do make me concernd (All of this is speculation on my part).

1. Someone on another topic mentioned that he had the feeling that they hadent been working on 4ed anywhere as near as long as they had claimed. Its possible that its not so much a case that they couldent think up new gods rather than a case of they havent had enough time to debelop them so have had to go for a cut and paste job.

2. If they couldent be botherd thinking up new gods and have taken the easy way out does it mean that they will do it to other areas of the background and rules?