Todd Starbuck's page

Oh look, it's the Necromancy Heisman Trophy.

Maybe, and that's final.

No really, morality is in the specifics... the circumstances. For instance it's one thing to kill someone who is trying to murder you, and quite another to subdue them and then kill them (that's murder).

If the bad guys attack the heroes en route to reclaim a lost relic, killing the bad guys would most likely be self defense.

You can also go with the idea that "things are different" in the setting as someone said above. Society might be fine with you for killing a bunch of kobolds. They may see kobolds the way that colonists saw the Indians or wolves... dangerous pests. Maybe the gods of good see wiping out villages as the greater good. But does that conform with the idea of goodness?

i believe it doesn't. Seeing kobolds as dangerous pests is neutral at best, im<ho. To me, being good involves mercy, compassion... traits that make us vulnerable, but make life worth living. Good PCs should go to great lengths to avoid murder. Laying waste to a goblin village is likely murder.

A solution might be to abandon alignment. Instead, let society judge them as ours does. Or let each deity judge. Each deity would have its own moral code. Pelor might frown on killing kobolds needlessly. A warrior god might see it as good exercise.

If you want a more interesting game... challenge this issue/thinking. Are the goblins evil or desperate? Meaning, are they looking for an easy living by stealing what others have earned or are they somehow unable to fend for themselves and are stealing food to feed their children? Start the story with something typical, cut and dry like "the goblins are raiding shipments". Then when the PCs investigate they might find that the orcs have displaced the goblins or are forcing them into it. Now things are tricky. The players might realize, "if my kids were starving I'd consider stealing" or "if my kids were held hostage, I'd do ANYTHING to save them". What started as clear and simple (and boring) has become complicated and conflicting (interesting).

It might also depend on how you think of free will in the setting. Are drow evil because their spirits are formed my Lolth? Are they genetically disposed to being evil? Are they beaten into submission by their matrons, mocked for showing mercy? Would being less than evil mean death or being at a severe disadvantage? Maybe the environment is so hostile that goodness is a luxury the society can't afford. Look around today and you'll see this thinking.

It matters because if the drow are redeemable, killing them becomes tricky. If they are inherently evil... let the bodies hit the floor.

Though, some players will prefer a more traditional "us vs. them" and "red beady eyes == kill them all". Sound like anyone you know from the real world?

If you really want to dig into it, run a game where the PCs are kobolds or goblins or orcs. Add some stats for hunger and pecking order. See what the PCs do when they are bullied by bigger orcs and they are starving. Make them drow and put them in a society that sees good as evil and vice versa.

Another way to making things interesting is to have all humans. That way the characters and players might see themselves in their enemies. Or just decide they don't care.

i was about to order this until i saw that the shipping charge was twice the price of the game.

Auto-regenerating fighters - Are you referring to healing surge? If so, you've missed the point. Healing surges represent a character taking a moment to get their breath, instead of moving or attacking. Stop comparing 4 to 3 so much. If you don't look at it as a new game, of course you'll be confused. HP represents more than just toughness.

well-hidden Vancian magic system - Isn't "at-will" the OPPOSITE of Vancian casting? AFAIK the only Vancian spells are the per day type.

Unfortunately applied to all classes now - i liked this. It means fighters do more than swing.

forget how to use them until you take a 5 minutes rest - No, you're just too tired to use them again until you take a rest. In earlier versions you had to rest a full night's sleep. Or some abilities could be used endlessly. It was arbitrary. Wizards where useless once they blew their load of spells. Now they are useful all day long. It makes sense that some actions are too strenuous to do over and over. Which can do more times? Bench press your weight or do push ups? You might need to take a breather before benching your weight again. But you could prolly do 10 or so push ups without a sweat.

5 star reviewers", are you getting paid to write down "designers' own words" - Argument to motive. That's very cynical of you. What if some of us genuinely LIKE the new edition? Are you so arrogant that you can't imagine people thinking in a way contrary to yours? Try the game again with a GM and players you like. That's what matters most anyway.

Use your IMAGINATION! Why do you continually need a company to tell you how to play D&D? - Not everyone can or wants to invent a new RPG, or to write settings, crank out hundreds of spells or monsters. There are plenty of people using their imagination to make d20 material. That's the beauty of the OGL. Even annoying pricks can publish and even SELL their imagination. Go to a big game store and look around. My local shop has 100s of d20 books, only about 1/3rd of them are from WotC.

WotC is a business, if they stop making products they stop earning money. Then they fire people. Then game devs have to take soul crushing day jobs. Also, each version improves upon the last (despite the cries to the contrary here).

There is no roleplay in the game, from 2nd Advanced D&D it's now just D&D. - The amount of ROLE play comes from the people at the table. The rules are not fundamentally different from version one. The books still provide what D&D was meant to be: a tactical battle simulation. Read up on the history of D&D. If role playing occurs, it comes from the PLAYERS not the books.

It is over simplified and over priced - What you call over simplified, i call placed within the reach of more people. Maybe with this edition, gaming won't be such a sausage fest. Over priced? Maybe, but look at the change in quality over the editions. RPGs don't sell enough copies to be cheap. If WotC could sell twice as many books the price for each book would be lower. Instead of getting a black and white book with pictures drawn by the writer's girlfriend and edited by Clippy, you get full color pages with a durable binding and so on.

I feel like it is a new Lego set and all the pieces are glued together - The same could be said of any edition. WotC won't barge into your game and say "You can't be a teifling paladin!". Do the same thing you've done with all the other editions. Keep what you like, tweak what you don't.

i played in a demo of the new rules two weeks ago and loved it. i wouldn't say it was dumbed down so much as simplified. They pulled out much of the BS of the earlier versions. They also made the classes more useful. Fighters rarely just "attack", and wizards always have something they can do. Combat went much faster and there was greater cooperation and interaction between the players. In 3.5 games my groups rare coordinated anything, they all pretty much did whatever. In the demo we were talking across the table constantly. The simplification has an additional benefit: a shallow learning curve makes the game more accessible for people who would otherwise be turned off by all the rules. It will appeal more to girls and younger players, and even to players of the rules light games like WoD.

i'm buying my set from Wal Mart or Amazon. Paizo, seriously, get with the program. i'll take the $50 i saved by buying from Amazon to buy a fourth book.

zacharythefirst wrote:

That must be one handsome slipcase.

For that price I would want the DM screen and the Character record sheets, and a set of Dice.

Walmart has it for $58.64 (after shipping). i don't know which is worse, giving any money to Walmart or paying and extra $20.

Loved it.

And yes, it left me sad and scared. But in a good way.

"WE'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY!"

Try telling the back story in only 2-3 sentences. Much more than that and you are telling a real story, not describing a magic item. Remember that brevity is the soul of wit.

Brevity is... wit.

"We're about to make the hundreds of dollars of books you own worthless. Please give us another 25$ to have a book that compiles the rules you *already* own."

WotC,

Your books are rediculously expensive. i would buy more books if they were at a reasonable price. 25$ should be the upper end of your price range. Keep the new editions ten years apart. i would buy more books if i felt they would be useful for more than a few years. Fourth edition could be the Vista of D&D. You're screwing your customers in a money grab. Not cool.

Oh joy, WoD's least interesting "race" is back. i was hoping they'd skip it. But since i'm not playing NWoD with it's lame ass mechanics, i guess it's really no skin off my back.

In a new group my 2nd character will usually be female. Unless the game is WoD, then i usually play female first. Female characters are fun because it's one more thing that i'm not. i'm not rich, noble, a magic user, immortal etc.

One major reason to play female characters is most of the people in positions of power are male. You can therefore use either sexuality or "oh gosh, the big bad man is scaring me, can you help me?"