The Winner is You's page

Not alone!

I'm enthusastically awaiting 4E for a variety of reasons.

Everything I've heard so far regarding mechanics addresses something that's annoyed me with 3x or is about something whose changes matters naught to me either way.

Also, I'm less attached to tradition than others seem to be. Yes, tradition is a valid reason to maintain something--but I would argue that it's the least valid reason--in a rules system, in this industry, in this market. Rules, especially in this industry, need to evolve.

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As to the Paizo boards resulting in Paizo being equated with a kind of grognard central, I agree. One good thing is that only a fraction of any customer base ever visits any forum, and only a fraction of that is ever sufficiently familiar with the community there for activities on that forum to have any real impact.

But what worries me is that the people who're in the industry, the professionals in the industry I mean, do read the boards and are sensitive to reputation. If Paizo gets the reputation as "Grognard Central" then that will harm them because grognard is a derisive and marginalizing term and something, I would argue, not to wave about as a banner.

I want Paizo to enjoy mainstream happy success with growing group of new customers, not marginalized survival eked out by catering to an increasingly marginalized group. The entire industry is niche enough as it is. Therefore, I hope it embraces 4E--and its customers do too.

I couldn't justify using a hardcover book long term if it wasn't 4th--and that's what 4th edition is: the long term.

The monthly Pathfinders are easy enough to convert because they're adventures, but converting a campaign setting is truly the last thing I ever want to do under any circumstance--which is why I never do that.

I pay companies to do the work for me--that's the whole point of the product! The second I have to do converting or whatnot the value and the reason for purchasing diminish significantly.

consumers have to wait for Prius's because they don't meet most states emission standards and are being retooled

What in the world are you talking about? Can you cite a source for this? One that also doesn't have news about Bigfoot and UFOs, I mean?

They also claim that the fans have been clamoring for a 4th edition. I have seen no such demand

More accurately, fans have been asking for fixes of things that are broken. 4dventure addresses that in the most effective way.

After the release of 3.5 an acceleration of releases seemed to take place. this has the secondary effect of causing the idea well to run dry faster than may have otherwise happened. Once creative staff's ideas are pretty well done with, the only option is to go to a new edition.

I don't believe you know what you're talking about. Each and every writer who works on games, no matter the company or circumstance, has tons of creative ideas. They don't all see light because every company can only produce so many products.

I'm tired of editions, I want a constantly evolving game where rule problems and unbalanced content are actually fixed.

[...]
They then pile on supplement after supplement which adds to the flavour but then clutters the whole mess up.

Editions is the right way to go to avoid the continually supplemented rules problem you cite.

The problem would be exacerbated by having major official rules updates on a subscription basis. Looking just at new players, is it right to expect them to buy the physical books then go back and both pay a monthly fee and read X months or years worth of online updates just to learn how to play the game? No, it's better to have an edition and stick with it as much as possible over the course of the life of the product.

Everyone has a common rules set, everyone can play the game equally, and everyone only has to buy the one book to play and learn the game.

I'm wondering if the Saga Edition is a preview of the "streamlined" system of play that 4E is supposed to deliver.

Absolutely. In one of the developer blogs and elsewhere they've said that SW:SE and the Book of Nine Swords are both previews of what's to come.

As far as SW:SE is concerned, I believed they said that the skill system was an example.

Dark who? What sun?

Random and sometimes downright silly ideas:

Ships made of stone, a life-sized recreation of a famous sea battle—but they "float" on something unexpected, perhaps there's underground lava piped in through stone chutes so the ships appear to float on fire, or are mired in a natural tar pit—in any case some environment you wouldn't expect a sea battle to take place in. This, also, could lead to a story about two sea captains with such hatred for each other that they piloted their ships into an environment that led to their doom.

A life-sized intestine of a monster so massive that you can walk through it. Inside, it shows the epic journey of the only person known to have been swallowed whole by this kind of monster and lived. Each segment is a different chapter in his grand story of surviving off of the supplies left by previous victims. If there's a sherpa guild in Magnimar, this is their favorite.

A chest with gold coins that pour out of it forever is how it's billed. Actually just a statue of a chest with coins pouring out of it, but the clinking sound of cascading coins comes from crystal wind chimes. Built to commemorate Magnimar reaching a significant trade deal early in its history.

A massive weather vane so heavy that it only reacts to the strongest winds—which are seasonal changes. If it turns early or late, it's the issue of the day, especially among area farmers. Might also be used a lot as a colloquial turn of phrase and reference inside Magnimar.

A land-bound lighthouse inside the city of especially curious design built by a wealthy wizard for her husband. What makes it different is that there's no lamp at the top. Instead, it's rumored to be a lighthouse that acts somehow astrally, casting an invisible beacon through the ether for her long-lost husband to find his way back to Magnimar who disappeared during a magical experiment or battle in the astral plane. The lady has since long died, but it's believed the lighthouse will be "on" forever. As to the fate of her husband, no one knows...

A series of towers that look unremarkable, but combined their shadows form shapes that change as the day progresses, perhaps chronicling a battle or other significant event.

Here's my rambling incomplete non-comprehensive review:

I don't go into detail on a lot of these points because I'm tired, and besides, you can get a lot from reading the preview articles on WotC's site.

Overall impression: I'm ready to adopt SWSE rules to all my d20 games. It's like D&D 3.75 but in a good way.

Things that Work

Base Attack Bonus increases with every level
This is a very good idea. At the very least this prevents the deflating let-down that is earning a level where “nothing happens,” that is BAB doesn’t go up or Saving Throws don’t go up, or whatnot. It also just makes sense.

Damage Bonus increases with character level
See above.

Defenses
No more Armor Class. You read that right! Instead, every attack goes against either Reflex, Fortitude, or Will. This is a big departure but it’s good and here’s at least one reason why: It makes more sense—especially to people who’re new to the game. I’ve had many a new person in my games and many a time they’ve asked, in so many words, why there are saving throws when there’s already an AC. It works better in reverse: Why is there an AC when there are already three types of defense-related stats? This unity brings everything together into something a bit more sensible.

Class bonuses to Defenses
That handy table clearly illustrates the first differences among the various character classes. It sounds min/maxy at the start, but really I think it will help new players understand that there are concrete differences between the classes and that the differences aren’t just window dressing. And, importantly, they can see that each class is balanced, making the choice more of what they’d like to play. In this way, a min/maxy table encourages roleplaying by freeing people up to not think so much about min/maxing an advantage over other classes.

Ability score increases
You get two at a time instead of one. ‘Nuff said.

Bonus feats
Everyone gets them every other level.

Talents
Oh, yes. Good all the way around. They’re really keen and you get them every other level. Sweet. Also, every class gets them at the same rate.

Feats
Maybe it’s the two-page spread table listing them, but it seems like you get a lot of ’em to choose from.

Iterative attacks
Gone—replaced by feats. The design reason was to speed things up and I agree, it absolutely will. But you can still do iterative attacks if you have the feats for it—and you easily can because there are so many got damnedable feats it should be easy enough to pick ’em up if that’s what you want to emphasize.

Force Points
a.k.a. Action Points and everyone gets ’em.

The Force and Force Talents
I like how it’s handled. It’s been too long for me to remember how the previous editions handled it, but I like the way this edition does it.

Destiny
This is awesome. Your character chooses a destiny as part of character background and when you make progress toward fulfilling your destiny you get Destiny Points, which are like Hero Cards, that is to say, you can trade them in to dramatically affect the game session (a critical hit didn’t hit you, stuff like that).
I like this because it encourages roleplaying and is an important, though overlooked, factor in the setting. Everyone in Star Wars does have a destiny if you think about it, and this is a wonderful mechanic for bringing that out and encouraging players to think about their characters more than they otherwise might have. It’s worth including in every RPG.

Armor
You pick which value is greater, your armor bonus or your natural (class) defenses. Since your defenses go up all the time, the more experienced you are the less you need to wear armor. This helps reinforce the idea that stormtroopers are low-level losers—and at the same time acknowledges and codifies a known truism of D&D/d20: Whoever wears the heaviest and most expensive armor doesn’t have the highest armor class.

Swift Actions
At last they’re easy to understand, use, and make sense.

Critical Hits
Occur on a natural 20 and that’s it—no re-rolling to confirm. Why is this good? Because it’s quite a let-down to roll a natural 20 and then have the prize taken away from you like the proverbial rug being pulled.

Second Wind
Once per day you can keep yourself from dropping dead. Purty sweet—especially in a game with no raise dead.

Damage Threshold
Mechanically makes more sense than Death from Massive Damage—but not the part where it affects the Condition Track (see below).

Suppress an Enemy
It’s the opposite of Aid Another. That is to say: Everyone, no matter what, has an opportunity to concretely benefit the entire party in combat.

Grappling
Satan just put on a sweater because grappling is easier. How? Here’s the short form: To do fancy grappling things, like pinning, you have to have a feat for it. Pow. No one’s going to take that feat so no one’s going to try to pin, so no one’s going too far into the grappling rules, so grappling just got a helluva lot easier through disuse.
Smartest thing in the book.

Diagonal Movement
They simply cost double. None of this 1.5 or every-other-square-costs-more business that makes me insane with rage far out of proportion to the offense against nature provoked by the 1.5 monstrocity.
Though personally, in my games, I’m going to continue to use my own math, which is that every square costs one because for goodness sake.

XP
It’s easier to assign from the GM’s side.

Things that Don’t work

The index
I fully understand the difficulty of indexing a 285-page book and having only a single page to do it. Yet, I can’t avoid the experience that nothing I’ve tried to find has been in the index.

Upkeep rules are not in the book
There’s a table for upkeep, and if you have the DMG you can find the rules for upkeep, but if you’re playing Star Wars SAGA Edition you have no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe there’s an explanation in another chapter—I’ll never know because it’s not listed in the index...

The Condition Track
As I write this, I don’t think there’s a force on Earth that could convince me that any sort of condition track for PCs is in any way a good idea. I’ve never seen one that worked and SWSE continues that tradition.
And by “works” I mean one that’s intuitive, doesn’t slow the game down, doesn’t require the player to look anything up during play, and is as easy to track as hit points.
SWSE’s track has six conditions, with penalties that are -1, -2, -5, and -10. Why not 1, 2, 4, and 8, that is to say, something easier to remember is unknown. Why the odd number? Why not just halve the number of conditions and say 4, 8? There’s probably some high-falutin’ math reason for it but whatever it is, it’s not worth more than having something easy to use.

Defenses
It’s a thing that rocks (see above)—but there’s still something rotten: If you have three defense-related stats, why not go the whole way and unify everything under one aegis, and have your hit points effectively be your defense too?
And more to the point: Why do you need a condition track when there are already three defense stats?

Squeezing
According to the rules, there are no narrow passages in the universe.
See, creatures can squeeze through openings half their size—but if and only if they can end their movement in a space where they’re not squeezing. Ergo, no one has ever crawled through anything longer than, say, 30 or 60 feet. Upside: You never have to look up squeezing rules ever again.

More than D&D, Star Wars needs a good Adventure Path treatment. Star Wars is too epic to consist of random encounters and miscellaneous adventures.

QFT.

I'd love it if WotC was planning on doing something like that, but since they're not even telling us the name of their initiative, I guess there's no reason to assume, well, anything. Lovely!

There's just as much chance that there will be as won't be something really spiffy keen like that.

The Super Bowl costs $900.

Seriously? I don't follow sports so I wouldn't know.

But ... $900? For a game you don't even play yourself?

This is how far civilization has progressed?

I like the grouping of defense, offense, tactics, and statistics.

But...
Stat blocks should be organized for practical use during combat before anything else and put descriptors at the end of the block.

When the PCs are about to thump it, its class choice and alignment isn't information I need to know before anything else--what matters most are things like its HP, AC, and melee attacks--which take the creature's choice of classes into account.

My block would start thusly:

Dark Talon Hunter CR 3
Small, kolbold, humanoid (reptilian)
Init +7, Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Listen +6, Spot +6

Size is more important than creature type because size dictates what miniature is brought out--that's what I need to know first. Also, having size more prominent makes planning for the night's adventure easier, since it's easier to tell at-a-glance which miniatures I should get out before everyone shows up.

I like how spells are listed by higher level first. NPCs will absolutely bust out their high level spells because their time is short. ;)

By the by, why are AC and SQ capitalized, but hp is not?

determine the verisimilitude of the claim that such worms are not toxic to

I would think that the spell fails unless the party had already been to said lair

Then why does the spell exist? If they've already been there, then they know where it is, and thus don't need magical guidance to find it.

And as to reducing this spell to asking someone for directions, that's too restrictive, I think, because it's such a high-level spell to merely substitute for a guy on the street. It's supposed to be really cool magic that concretely helps the party out.

You have to remember: They wouldn't be casting the spell if they thought they had an alternative to finding out the information. Maybe no one in the party has Knowledge (arcana) or there's no nearby town or village with regular hunters or farmers who would know, or there's no sage they can consult, or any other means at their disposal.

When someone casts the spell, it's the players saying "We have no idea where or how to proceed from here and need help from an outside source." That source is the spell.

My suggestion is to use that to your advantage--not restrict its use. The spell should always work because it's a cry for help. Help your players, don't slap them down for trying to advance the adventure.

Truly the last thing I would want to have happen is to have one of my mid- to high-level spell slots wasted on an attempt to move the adventure along. Well, I would learn from the experience that I would never, ever, want to spend a slot on that spell again--thus reducing the effectiveness of my character and class to the party which, of course, would bring the sadness.

Don't take away or restrict the spell--use it to your DMing advantage.

Magic is a tricky thing. It's fluid and spell descriptors do their best to convey the intent of the spell along with some technical specifications. If the PCs cast the spell and say "the lair of the white dragon we just fought" or such, I would argue that the magic of the spell knows what the PCs are talking about. It's magic.

Besides, the request can't be too specific otherwise they'd already have enough information about it to infer its location and not need the spell in the first place.

What the PCs are asking for is help finding their next goal. They see that scroll as the best/easiest way to get it.

I would say that actually the easiest way is to use Knowledge (arcana) to know where a white dragon of that size, type, and behavior is most likely to lair and then to act on that knowledge. It's cheaper, too.

But anyway, you have an opportunity to specifically direct the PCs to the next stage in the adventure, or to a side quest that they'll find entertaining. The path to the lair may be impassible by the PCs (in a cave in a glacier that's too high, too sheer, too dangerous, whatever). Thus, the spell could point to a place that would concretely lead to the lair, like to a small adventure that would lead to ice climbing equipment sufficient to reach the lair, or whatever.

I would explain it as: Rather than failing, the spell leads you to the best possible place or situation to get to the lair.

The spell may not lead super-directly-straight-as-an-arrow to the lair, but, you know, magic is a tricky and fluid thing. It'll do its best to help.

That is to say: It'll do its best to move the adventure along.

there will come a day when paper production will mean killing too many trees and our planet will need those trees to keep oxygen production up and CO2 levels down.

I doubt it. You have to consider the total environmental impact of a PDA verses a paperback book. I'd wager that a PDA has more of a deleterious effect because, to grossly oversimplify, it requires mining, releases more chemicals into the environment, and so on.

Paperbacks, on the other hand, consume trees, discharge chemicals into the water in the production of paper, but that's largely it (again to oversimplify).

But beyond that, one paperback book is several orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to design, manufacture, and distribute than one PDA.

It's difficult to conceive of a circumstance where it would be cheaper and easier to deal with PDAs than printed (even home printed) books.