Riley's page

Please cancel my AP subscription. Thanks.

It has a special place in gaming lore, but have there been many adventures that have really put the Shadowfell/Plane of Shadow to great use?

I'm signed up - your pitch sounds great, and given how good your take on the Feywild/Plane of Faerie was in Wrath of the River King, I have every reason to expect great things again here.

Now I remember why I converted to 4e. :)

Sounds like your players are pretty sharp on the rules/options. Either 1) make sure they make all have their stuff ready to go (and all the adjustments calculated), or
2) mess up their buffing preparations with an ambush.

Are they doing the buff-and-teleport thing?

I'm not a fan of the specific piece of art used in this demo model...

Gravesworm Ryzing

...but I can imagine any number of great pieces of D&D (or even MTG) art that would look great when painted on the canvas like that.

Choosing among the proposed MTG designs (well, the half of them that I've clicked through), here's a pair of shoes that I would actually love to wear:

Squirrels!

Sometimes people seem to go out of their way trying to find a reason to be annoyed.

I could use a new pair of Chuck Taylors. Wizards has produced some darned fine D&D art over the years. Depending on the design(s?) eventually produced, I could imagine wearing a pair of shoes that had a good illustration on them and didn't scream "I AM A CORPORATE BILLBOARD."

We need to adopt a child and buy a house this summer. Every bit will help.

Thanks. I'll be back soonish.

So, Wizards wants to provide exclusive content through DDI?

Good for them. I'm paying for the DDI; I might as well get something for my money.

As has been said before, don't buy it for rituals or character options. If you're going to buy it, do so for the cosmology and the fluff.

I am quite interested in a higher-res digital map option to go with Paizo products. I would pay money for such a thing.

I like the 4e monk a lot.

That is all.

So here are some other free fan resources to soup up H1:

Sebastian's 'Chop Shop': click here

Maps! Winterhaven improved:
click here for D&D Doodles

Breathing life into the Nentir Vale:
Sandboxing in the Nentir Vale (was: Emergent Features in KotS)
4E The Nentir Vale: A Sandbox

I bought the 4e books, too much blank space, too many worthless pages, too much incompleteness to force you buy more books just to have a finished product. The fact they held bards back to the second PHB just to give it a class they knew people wanted...that's pretty underhanded. Like I said, their reputation is well earned, a small meaningless move this late will not expunge their other deeds, never mind the whole PDF thing.

Ah not worth the time. 4e is 4e, some people like it. Fine, best of luck with it. But make mine Pathfinder.

Oh, never mind.

Scott, thanks again for posting this. This will be absolutely invaluable to me when I get to it.

I know those are available for free, it was more a throwaway comment about some of the issues people have had with the quality of editing for the AP... at least with the early part of it, I haven't kept up with discussion about the later parts.

I must be on the Paizo boards again.

FWIW, the series has been uneven to my eye - but then, the last couple of Paizo AP's have been hit-or-miss in my eye as well, so I could just be getting jaded. However, there've been some great 4e adventures in WOTC's adventure path. I'd recommend Ari Marmell's "The Temple Between" most highly.

At least they released KotS instead of the first few portions of their Scales of War AP... :P

#3 is pretty darned good, although #1 does nothing for me at all.

My opinion, paraphrased from Dragnmoon:
- They are useless for those running the current APs.
- They are flimsy and easy to tear.
And from Dryder:
"Maybe you can cancel the whole map folios and give us a better resolution in the pdfs, or put all maps into the back of a pdf file..."

The Map Packs (and the card decks) were my main reasons for quitting the Chronicles(?) subscription. Well, that and the fact that I'm playing 4e these days.

I'd much prefer to have label-free maps included in the original adventure PDF's instead.

Disturbing.

Riley wrote:

My local Target sells black foamcore for a mere $2.89 a sheet.

If its flat black foamcore with a black foam center then that's a great deal! That shinny black foamcore with the white foam center isn't ideal. You have to take a black marker to the edges to get rid of the white foam edge and the semi-gloss surface can cause glue adhesion issues (just warning you in case that's what they have there).

Also, for those looking to put a bit of Technicolor into their creations, Target also stocks a yellow foamcore sandwiched between two sheets on navy blue paper. :)

Yeah, foamcore is really variable depending on where you live. Its about $5.00 for a 20" X 30" sheet of black core foamcore here.

Nice set!

Two things:

1) Belt-tightening led me to cancel my Pathfinder subscription last month. This month, Worldworks' Pathfinder terrain prompted me to resubscribe. The prospect of terrain this good, designed specifically to fit the adventure, was simply too good to pass up.

2) This has been surprisingly quick to put together. I built one room Thursday night, and another last night. The circular room took about an hour or so to build (I haven't built the props yet.), while the most fiddly room - the temple with all the alcoves - still took less than two hours from start to finish.

While the terrain is very detailed, it remains straightforward enough to reuse. Just looking at "The Sunless Citadel" maps, I can see two places where the circular room would fit in very well, as well as a location to use the alcove room.

I really look forward to the next set! I can only hope that the adventure is anywhere near as good as the terrain.

Oh, and: what about N'wah's paper miniatures?

Hot diggety!

Two of my favorite things, packed together!

Please cancel my subscriptions, both for Pathfinder Modules, and the Adventure Path. I'm afraid money is very tight.

We've grasped our fate with consummate care (actually, we didn't), bearded a brine dragon, defeated a vestige guarding the sands of time, and solved one ripe-as-hell puzzle box.

And yeah, we did have to look up what it meant to "beard" something.

By the way, what kind of a body count have you seen? Is the Tomb still deadly in 4e?

It was written up by the DM, someone other than me. I'm not sure what format he's keeping it in, but it's definitely not improvised on the fly. I'll see what I can do about getting him to share what he's got once the campaign is finished (which should be in a couple weeks).

So where have you gotten to on your adventure there? The tomb? Beyond the tomb?

So far, played in a homebrew game (to try out some new stuff with the system) and an updated Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

Was your Return To The Tomb of Horrors 4e conversion something you wrote up semi-formally, or something more improvised?

If you statted anything up for the Tomb, I'd really love to see it.

CORRECTION/UPDATE TO MY PREVIOUS POST:

The Character Codex is now form-fillable! I downloaded it today, and it is extremely convenient / nice.

Thanks to Goodman for updating this product. And thanks to Paizo for emailing me about the update!

Oh here we go with Scott again. You know, I never see you post unless it is a response to my remarks on the wonderful 4E game.

I'm quite enjoying the DDI. The Character Generator Beta is very good, and - more importantly - there's been some very good material in the online Dungeon and Dragon. Ari Marmell's recent dungeon was particularly good.

I haven't looked into quitting the DDI, but as far as I know, the only way to cancel a Paizo subscription is to send an email, or post on the customer service board.

It's always dangerous when the corporate bean counters are in charge of product design.

Like so many failed Microsoft ideas of the past, this turd will never fly.

Screw that...I want a Pathfinder gals pin-up calendar

F. Wesley Schneider's feelings are likely to be quite hurt.

BryonD wrote:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/enworld.org
Click on the "max" tab.
Enworld's traffic is down 50% since 4E was released compared to the year leading up to the release.

Dang. If this site is to be believed, Wizards.com traffic looks bad compared to last year. Too bad you can't plot more than a years' worth of traffic data.

-Skeld

Personally, I feel that the current Beta as it stands is TOO far afield from 3.5; not in a major way, but in some minor ways that take the game a shade too far from the previous incarnation.

Even with the decision to not publish under the GSL for now, Paizo remains my favorite adventure publisher for 4th Edition. I just have to do a little more work than usual to make use of them.

To be fair the only reason any one ever used used daggers in 1st and 2nd was because perverse DMs would hand out a Dagger +5 when all you otherwise had was +2 weapons.

Daggers were pretty useful if your PC was crawling through a 2' square tunnel and came face to face with a half dozen kobolds, or had just been swallowed by a giant frog.

So what would be some examples of the kinds of adventures you'd like to see in 4E? What kinds of adventures would be so different from the early crop? Feel free to point to a particular adventure as an example.

Also, there's much in the H3 Pyramid adventure that I really like: I love the head in a crystal ball, and I love the overall concept and the villain/backstory. But as I actually read the adventure, I get bogged down by page after page of stats about terrain and monsters. I think the biggest problem with the 4e adventure format is that it just doesn't read well. If it doesn't read somewhat like a story, I have trouble getting excited about running it.

Pediatrician.

20 pages:

1: front cover
2: PHB weapon chart (for reference, not your character)
3: 1st page of character sheet

It’s similar to the WOTC char sheet, but less cluttered, and more useful.
The upper 1/3 is about the same as WOTC’s, but the Movement/Senses/Attack Workspace has been replaced with a Hit Points/Second Wind/Saving Throw section.

The lower 2/3rds is divided into 2 columns. The left column is a ‘Power Index’, listing powers by At Will, Encounter, Daily, and Utility. The right column has sections for (from top to bottom): Action Points, Movement, Senses, Attack and Damage Workspaces, and Basic Attacks.

4: 2nd page: Skills, Feats, Magic Item Index (including slots), Race Features, Class/Path/Destiny Features, Languages Known, Rituals.

5: Weapons & Equipment, as well as a classic 1e-style Wealth section

Then it gets on to the less essential ‘Character Folio’ pages:
6: Title, description, illustration, and ‘Comrades in Arms’ (which’d be good for that horse and your animal companion)
7: History
8: Allies, Enemies, Family/Clan History

Then back to a good page:
9: Advancement (a place to list hit points, score increases, powers, and feats added or swapped at each level)

And again to the fluff:
10: Stronghold/Hideout (mostly a piece of graph paper to map said location)
11: Dominion (Hex paper to map it!)
12: Campaign Notes/Legends & Lore
13-16: Adventure Journal (same on each page)
17: House Rules (mostly blank with lines)
18: top half is a nice, simple one-fold table card to put your init, passive skills, and defenses on. Bottom half is the OGL.
19: Armor table and castle-and-village illustration
20: Back cover

The good: I really like the layout
The small disappointment: it’s not form-fillable, and in fact, the 1st page is a single image. Any form-building is going to need to be done on one’s own. On the bright side, copy and paste is enabled, so that is possible.

I looked at a paper copy of this at the FLGS. I really liked the layout of the character sheet, and I haven't been impressed by any of the others I've seen so far. It's a fairly straightforward layout, and not overly cluttered with calculations like the WOTC form.

A question for the makers (or sellers) of this PDF:
Is this a form-fillable, or otherwise editable, PDF?

If yes, it'd definitely be worth the $5. Or more.

Nah, scratch that. I'm just gonna buy one right now, and I'll let you know.

That actually is extremely similar to how rituals play out.... It's pretty cool in practice, and I like that they have incorporated skill checks into the ritual process to add some variety.

So far, my 4e experience has been limited to DM'ing a small group through a loose version of the old Dragonlance modules, and we've been keeping it pretty fast and straightforward in order to keep my friend's 11-year-old daughter front and center in the game.

She (and the rest of us) are having a great time with the new rules, but I haven't been able to try out many of the bells and whistles of the system in this game.

Heh heh, nice try, but you're vaguing it up massively there and you know it. Come on, admit it, good or ill, removing the Vancian magic system is a BIG change, and inevitably big changes affect the feel of a game.

Boy that sounds a lot like encounter powers and rituals.

But of course, I have always found the Vancian system limiting , and I've devoted a great deal of time and rule-stretching to figure ways around its limitations.

Scott Betts wrote:

Rockheimr wrote:

Scott Betts wrote:

Rockheimr wrote:

Playing a Wizard in 4th Edition feels like playing a Wizard in 3.5. I still cast spells, use wands/staves/whatever, manipulate arcane energies and can even wear a pointy hat, all the while exploring dungeons and slaying monsters with my other make-believe buddies.
Heh heh, nice try, but you're vaguing it up massively there and you know it. Come on, admit it, good or ill, removing the Vancian magic system is a BIG change, and inevitably big changes affect the feel of a game.

Heck, magic user or wizard, whatever you want to call it, you could play what you just described using a diceless system...

My 1e wizard (M-U) became an effective every-round, 23-hour-a-day spellcater through clever use of items and a lot of persistent/contingent/broken spells. My 3.5e wizard became an effective every-round, 23-hour-a-day spellcasting machine through liberal use of wands of shocking grasp and scrolls and potions.

Now with 4e, I don't have to come up with complicated schemes to have something 'wizardly' to do every round. But the end result is the same: I'll have a couple tricks that I can use pretty much all the time, and a few other powers for really kicking butt. And some non-combat spells (rituals) to do the really cool stuff.

When I get around to making a wizard, I'll try out a few rituals, and no doubt make up a few of my own. With a bit of clever planning, I expect that my character will feel a lot like the ones I've played before Certainly as similar as any of my wizards have felt relative to each other.

Riley wrote:

A more interesting question is: with increased availability of preorder options and online marketing and shopping, are the sales of new D&D editions (and other RPG products) merely getting compressed into an ever-smaller window?

I remember that it took me almost a month to get my hands on a 2nd edition PHB - and I was hunting for one rather hard. This time, I got 4 of 'em (mine, wife's, and 2 gifts) in the first day after release.

It could be simply like the blockbusterization of movie sales: sell lots in the first weekend, and drop off precipitously a couple days after that.

Mmmm, I doubt it. Movies are ad-driven for the most part and focus on heavy marketing. Role-playing games usually emphasize word-of-mouth marketing instead, which tends to take longer to spread. Sales will certainly decrease over time, which is true with most things, but I don't think you'll see a movie-style drop in purchasing. We're two months out of release and the books just went into their third printing. So if this is opening weekend, it's one hell of an opening weekend.

I'm not claiming to have an answer on this - and I hope this theory is wrong - but it is possible that the D&D market is still slowly contracting, despite the encouraging initial burst of 4e sales.

Personally, I really hope that WOTC comes up with a killer introductory game, and finds a way to recruit a fresh new wave of players. Because I think the new edition is very interesting and easy to play, but it isn't self-explanatory straight out of the PHB.

I think they did a great job in the new DMG with good advice for new and old DM's on how to run a great game. But I don't think the PHB accomplishes the same thing for players.

This link is just the first of many results from Google. The core 4E set sold out by preorder alone.

I remember that it took me almost a month to get my hands on a 2nd edition PHB - and I was hunting for one rather hard. This time, I got 4 of 'em (mine, wife's, and 2 gifts) in the first day after release.

It could be simply like the blockbusterization of movie sales: sell lots in the first weekend, and drop off precipitously a couple days after that.

Past experience with edition changes (1e->2e, 2e-3e, 3e->3.5e) shows that after an initial period of vocal outrage, most people end up playing the new edition - while a smaller number do not.

I'd like to cancel my Chronicles subscription (but not my Adventure Path or Modules subscriptions).

Thanks.

If anyone takes a comparison between all spells from D&D basic to D&D 3.5 and the spells (or power or abilities) in 4th Ed, you'll notice that these spells are missing:

Cleric 1st level:
bless water
detect [alignment]
detect undead
deathwatch
hide from undead
protection from [alignment]

Cleric 2nd level:
augury
calm emotions
consecrate
delay poison
eagle's splendor
make whole
owl's wisdom
status
undetectable alignment
zone of truth

Cleric 3rd level:
create food and water
daylight
glyph of warding
locate object
magic circle against [alignment]
obscure object
speak with dead
stone shape
water breathing
water walk

There's some much more to name here and no, rituals don't cover enough of it at all.

These spells are mostly not combat oriented and its these spells that are removed from 4th...

I'd ritualize the following:
(purify?) water
protection from [alignment] (as a more classic, literary-style circle of protection)
augury
delay poison
create food and water
glyph of warding
magic circle against [alignment] (see above)
speak with dead (at much higher level)
stone shape
water breathing (at much higher level)
water walk
daylight (with perhaps a combat/blinding version as a power)

I'd keep the following out of the game:
detect [alignment]
eagle's splendor
owl's wisdom
zone of truth
locate object

These could be hit or miss, because in 25 years I've hardly ever used them:
detect undead
deathwatch
hide from undead
calm emotions
consecrate
status
undetectable alignment
obscure object

For those who adopted 4e early, has the game started to lose any of its luster?

OK, fine. You win.

BTW, I have a closed portcullis through which four orcish archers are firing at my party. Can you check your 4e DMG and tell me how it modifies the level of the encounter?

Yeah, I'll buy it. The swordmage, drow, and genasi look good, and the fluff previews look chock full of ideas.

Can't get worked up about the fluff changes: I like to see new versions of old things. I've still got old versions of FR on the shelf if I want to use them, and I've played in many contradictory versions of Greyhawk - without any impairment of my enjoyment of those games.

I am, always have been and always will be, a diehard Detroit Lions fan. (NOW do I have your pity?)

Better to just know you're team is lousy, and keep hoping for the best. That's how it was as a Packers fan from 1970 to 1993 or so.