Wait until the PC's come knocking at Wee Jas's door with the intent to commit breaking, entering, bodily mayhem and looting, and have somebody meet them and say, "The task we wish to assign to you is... just walk away."
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He seems to show up in a lot of modules. Usually dead. Go figure.
I am wildly excited, balanced against the marketing strategy of poisoning the well of 3.5 enjoyment. As the months go by, I expect WOTC to point out more and more little ways in which 3.5 is broken or wrong and that they're going to fix them this time, with all my hope for continuing to play D&D being anchored on those two words: "this time." Basically, I expect that, well before next June, I am going to be done with 3.5. I'm practically there already. I'll keep running just to keep my group together, but once the new rules come out, I'll read through them. If they've written a game I want to run, game on. If not, that should free up some time on Saturday evenings.
What I have seen as the WoWification of DND is mostly represented by a number of changes they're making because they've looked at some of the most successful games ever (WOW currently has, what, 15 million active accounts, each forking over $15 a month? Yikes) and tried to figure out what made those games popular. Some of the things that they have found were created for those games; some came from other games, some from D&D. Heck, some of them came from chess. This is all >fine<. So, players go on quests and have rewards that the GM has already figured out. How does this break the game? It doesn't. So, some classes now have abilities that allow them to distract stupid monsters into attacking them rather than the priest. Does this break the game? No. What I'm concerned about is whether or not including something written for a >computer game< requires a computer to keep track of. No matter how cool it is, something that can be accomplished in WoW with a couple mouse clicks might require more brainpower than my players seem to bring to the table some time (a fighter with Combat Expertise, Deft Opportunist, another AC/Hit Bonus/Something else feat, and a weapon which has different bonuses depending on who she's fighting has some... problems... with the math). Or, for that matter, more than I want to have to keep track of when I have seven books, a module, and 14 monsters to keep track of. Weapon durability? No way. Line of sight? maaaaybe. PC Rep affecting monster choices in a battle? eh. This goes both ways, by the way. You'll notice that Attacks of Opportunity didn't have much play in DDO. There are all kinds of things out there that make perfect sense in a computer game that I have no room for on my gaming table.
I heard the fire thing being that a fire elemental couldn't set anything on fire (or, really, kill anything) because they did non-lethal damage.
Oh, that's easy: a couple of the PCs get back from a late night of drinking and find that their room has been ransacked by goblin thieves.
One round. My party took the rough info from the mental link to figure out where in the building Fario was being held, created a Dark Way (magical ramp) up to the outside of the building, cast Passwall to open up the wall into torture chamber, killed Jil, grabbed Fario and left. They came back a couple hours later, after taking care of Fario, and found that the Last Laugh had cleaned the place out.
Especially if everybody sees it that way. The game remains the same? Good, then I don't need to buy it. Kthxbye. If they write a 4th edition that is backwards-compatible with 3.5, then I won't be buying anything but the core rulebooks. If it's not compatible, there's an excellent chance that I won't be interested in playing it, so, also not buying anything past the core books. It's like trying to sell cars by saying "Hey, remember last year's model? Boy, it sure sucked, didn't it? Bad mileage, poor handling, and that big transmission recall... But we're fixing it! Honest! This year's model is going to fix all those problems!"
Also bear in mind that the sum total advantage of the Smoking Eye template (aside from making a PC a little tougher) is that the person with the template can release Adimarchus. Remove that weakness (or, rather, expand on it) so that anybody can release him, and you don't need it. Consider strongly, however, replacing that chapter with something that provides a few levels of experience, though, otherwise the party will be under-levelled and under-wealthed for the remainder of the story.
Make the interior maps larger. The original adventures in Dungeon magazine were written for a 4-character party, and the encounters in the hardcover were scaled up for a 6-character group, but the rooms remained the same size, so things get a mite crowded in Jzadirune and a few other places (particularly places with 5' corridors--my players' party includes a dire ape and a large fire elemental, so...). Pick a couple NPCs for each player character and make up points of contact for each chapter. In ch2, somebody's cousin has been kidnapped and the shopkeeper is worried about him. In ch3, somebody's business is in danger of flooding. In ch4...
Well, that's because people were complaining about the long runs back to their bodies from the res point. Now that they've added more graveyards, however, there may still be some rebalancing issues.
Didn't they wait until 3.0 had been released, and then have the big competition to see who would get to write the 3.0 campaign setting, with the winning setting being Eberron? It makes a certain sense that they would do this for 4.0 as well. My wild, off-the-cuff suggestion for how they could market 4.0 books, in keeping with their other marketing strategies, would be to sell starter sets, which would have a random assortment of the core books, plus a couple of splat books, modules, terrain tiles, and a rare campaign setting, and then publish booster packs which leave out the core rule books and give you a chance to pick up the ultra-rare Greyhawk campaign setting or Farmer with Pig miniature. I figure, $100 for the starter set, $50 for a booster pack, and they'd just be flying off the shelves.
Question is - is January good enough for 3rd party publishers or failing that will they suck it up anyway? Nope. Paizo's already stated (a month ago) that they've passed the deadline for new projects to be ready for print in June. That plus the time necessary to learn the new game system (a few days, at least...) means we can't possibly be seeing Paizo-quality products on the shelves until maybe... September? Other publishers might have shorter project timelines, or produce smaller projects which can get out sooner, but for Paizo? They'll continue publishing 3.5 for a while. It does make me wonder what the people at Goodman Games are going to be doing to pay the bills this spring...
This thread was inspired by the Mercedes commercial currently running, where the guy says "Why did we build a car with [everything you'd ever want in a car]? Because we wanted to build a Mercedes." The problem with that is that in order for us to buy it, they would have had to be supporting their legacy all along, rather than trotting the banners out now. So, they would have had to have produced more d20 stuff for Greyhawk, Birthright, Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Oriental Adventures... instead of maybe one Living whatever book, or a couple modules. And they seem not to have done that. Oh, and, they're really have to follow up by publishing all that stuff for 4th edition as well.
That's why I tossed in the bit about the encyclopedias... we're really just buying reference books, here, and so long as we're okay with flipping through the main edition, then five or six annuals, we're okay with what we've got.
Suppose you’re a car manufacturer, and your marketing department is assigned the basic task of convincing people to buy this year’s car. Marketing strategy #1 that you will see all car manufacturers use: "New car is great! Shiny, fast, roomy, affordable, good traction, lots of zoomy camera shots in the commercials! Yay!" This strategy, sadly enough, works really well. Marketing strategy #2 that you will see manufacturers use if their cars are too similar to other manufacturers’ cars: "New car is better than Other Guy’s New Car! Better mileage, better handling, people like our cars, new improved new car smell! Yay!" This also works fairly well. Marketing strategy #3 that you will hardly ever see manufacturers use: "New car rules over our car from 5 years ago. You know, the one that had the big factory recall, and terrible mileage, and the parts were really expensive, and things tended to fly off at freeway speeds. You remember. Sure, it looked great, and the kids loved it, and it’s paid for, but still, it kind of sucked. You need to buy a new one. And we’re the people who are going to make it! We’re fixing everything! Honest! Yay!" This really doesn’t work very well. Marketing strategy #4 that I’ve never seen, and the people at WOTC don’t necessarily realize they’re using: "New car rules over our car from last year. Better mileage, better handling, fancier styling, whatever. Last years model? Sucked. This years model? Won’t suck. Honest." See, the people playing D&D don’t think of it as a five-year-old game system. They feel like it’s still fairly new, and that the supplements that they’ve been buying have been constantly updating the game system, the way some people feel they still have a new car after five years of routine maintenance: that 3.5 with all the Completes and the Races of and the new Monster Manuals and Fiend Folii isn’t a five-year-old game system, it’s a game system from this year, like an encyclopedia with 10 years’ worth of Annuals. And so, with WOTC using marketing strategy #4, they’re like owners of a one-year-old car, thinking, “Well, sure, I could stand to get a little better mileage, and that door handle does kind of stick, and I did have to replace the brakes… but now it’s got new brakes, and I can get a tune-up to improve the mileage, and I still like the way it looks and handles, and it’s still got a few years left on it, so I’ll keep driving it, and, a few years from now, I’ll read up on what Consumer Reports has to say about New Car.”
I don't like the squares instead of feet for distances. Squares make more sense than feet if your focus is writing for the virtual tabletop, rather than a battlemat. And, to be fair, it even makes more sense for the battlemat...
Also bear in mind that the writers of 4th edition have stated that they are coming up with a new version of Action Points. My personal experience with APs in several different game systems is that they are an odd commodity. If the PCs have enough of them to rely upon throughout their adventuring career, they can seriously take the edge of the risks involved in making die rolls. "Sure, I'll try to jump across the chasm. If I blow the roll, I can just burn some action points." On the other hand, once they've gotten used to them, the consequences of running out are seemingly dire--the PCs become afraid to move or do anything even remotely risky. "Are you crazy? Climb a rope? I'm outta action points, man. I could die!" We'll see what the new rules look like in June.
Taking off and nuking the Realms from orbit means not having to provide stats for Elminster or Khelben Blackstaff. It allows them to write the realms anew, which is going to annoy a great many readers & fans, but also provide fresh directions for everything to go in. People expressed disdain for the idea that they feel compelled to nuke FR every time the game system changes to justify the change in the world, but consider that they didn't do that for the other gaming worlds and just imposed the changes... and they pretty much stopped supporting those worlds. Aside from the Living Greyhawk Gazeteer, I don't remember seeing any d20 supplements for Greyhawk, but I have an entire shelf full of FR stuff for d20. All of which has had extensive rewrites to explain the differences in using it, compared to what I had already bought for 1st and 2nd edition.
I... know somebody who does this. She also has a hat with a gold question mark on it, too, for when the party returns for their reward.
I was just how people ran Skaven. It says that he will avoid combat as much as possible. If faced with overwhelming numbers, it seems to me that he would probably try to negotiate his way out . For those that ran Skaven, how did the encounter go?Here's one problem I have with that tactic: If he'll try to avoid combat, why did he take spell focus (evocation)? To quote Mephisto from the Highlander TV series, "Just because I prefer not to fight doesn't mean I don't know how." [stab][hack][quicken] Any NPC higher than about 5th level is just jam-packed full of combative goodness; to say that nobody above that level is interested in anything but combat is making a pretty bold statement about the campaign.
Outstanding job. Keep up the good work. re: getting hired by the Temple of Cuthbert. Remember that the temple has a motto, "Sometimes you have to crack some heads open to let the light in." The temple, and the people of it, wouldn't have any problem with it. However, everybody else in town would be well aware of the mindset, so your adjudication seemed reasonable. re: thuggery. The PCs in my campaign have been behaving very badly in much the same way: they broke the door down on a little old lady's house in the first encounter because they thought Jil was hiding in her house. They broke into the Temple of Wee Jas and killed everybody in the building, then did the same for House Rhiavadi and House Vhalantru. To which all the formerly-powerful and influential people in town said "... uh-oh..." When it was time for the nobles to get together to select a new mayor, they sent Jenya around to ask, "Hey, a bunch of anonymous, influential, wealthy, powerful people want to meet behind closed doors to make long-term decisions about the governance of Cauldron, mostly for their own benefit and profit; if they do, would you guys feel compelled to break the door down and kill everybody in the building?" To which two players, in unison, said "No! well...." End result: No meeting. We've moved on to the next chapter with no mayor in town. re: the law. Laws in Cauldron are goofy. In Chapter 2, we see that being a graffitist carries the death penalty. In chapter 3, we see that killing city guards carries the penalty of a short prison sentence, followed by banishment from the city. So, it's okay to break in and kill everybody in the building; just don't write anything on the walls.
From what I've seen, within a few months after 4.0 comes out you should be able to buy the books used at half price, which should bring the cost down considerably. 'course, WOTC doesn't get any money that way...
That would, indeed, impose a three- to six-month delay on other publishers being able to write stuff that uses the new rules, which gives WOTC a chance to write bug-ridden, out-of-date modules and accessories while the rules are still in development. A win-win situation! Only, not for us.
Actually, what I think a lot of people want (or were expecting) is that the same material in the 3.0/3.5 PHB/DMG/MM (which I believe is currently considered the core material) would also be in the 4E PHB/DMG/MM (i.e. classes, races, spells, and monsters) as opposed to spread across multiple books. Many people I think have come to expect certain things to be included in... What I've been seeing a lot of is "I want everything that I use in my campaign to be in the core rules." So, pretty much everything in the PHB, DMG and MM, plus some stuff from each of the Completes, the Races books, some of the monsters from MM2 and the Fiend Folio, some psionics rules would be nice... multiplied by as many people as you see posting here and at WOTC. To be fair, the posts here at Paizo are more reasonable than the ones at WOTC. If all the posts I were seeing were as uniform as what we've seen in this thread, I'd be thinking differently. However, the opinions expressed here seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
I have no larger point. The title just strikes me as apropos. Ignore at your leisure. Okay.
The difference is that the current PHB2, DMG2, and MM2-5 are completely optional. The PHB2, DMG2, and MM2 in 4.0 are going to have classes, races, and monsters that by all rights should be core and thus included in the first 3 books. That is the problem. You now have to wait several years and buy 6 to 9 books just to get all the the basic material. This is blatant milking of the D&D cash cow and treats D&D fans like sheep that will buy anything. In my eyes, this is totally unacceptable behavior, and is one more very good reason not to switch to 4.0. The alternatives being (a) publish 1/4 the information necessary to play all the core classes, races, prestige classes, feats, spells and magic items in the core rule books, and then another 1/4 a year later, etc. (b) make the core rule books four times as big, and thus, four times as expensive (c) leave out the artwork, which takes up about half the book (even more, for the MM). People who want pictures of orcs can buy a 3.0 MM on the internet for about $2. (d) say that the core races et al. are it, and there will never be new core rulebooks until 5.0 comes out. D&D players demonstrate a startling level of entitlement, like they have the right to demand that WOTC support every element of the 3.5 game system ever included forever, unchanged; it's a little surprising to me how much those players are willing to whine about how many books they'll need to buy when a new edition is published. They want the latest version of the rules, in three books, when the current rules take up an entire shelf? Too effing bad.
For those who object to the idea of zones because it's too video-gamy, bear also in mind that video games got it from early D&D--the level of the dungeon was equal to the challenge level, so the deeper you got, the tougher the monsters were.Yeah, but there's a difference between subtle level differencing from blatant zones. I'll never play an edition of any game that has zones. Blech! but... wait, I think we're using different meanings of "zone," or you're joking. Outside the mountain: Overland zone. Deer, wolves, the occasional ogre.
That's what I'm thinking of by zones: geographically discrete areas which have measurably different toughnesses of monsters populating them, which has been in the game since 1st edition.
There is a reason; you are not cleared to know the reason. Also, the number is 62.4. (Saern forgot a factor and the fourth digit is false accuracy, anyway.) Ah. I thought he was just using metric.
...essays and asides from the game's premier designers, developers, and editors. Yes, but, luckily, sin isn't going to be covered until the 4.2 rules come out in 2010, so they have some time to put the proper spin on it.
There may be sidebars in some of the free downloads elsewhere on this board (I took a quick look and couldn't find the download section); in any case, your DM should be able to purchase a PDF of an issue or two for about $4 apiece; a couple of those should give a pretty good idea what's involved in scaling the adventures to fit. They mostly involve adding or removing a few monsters here and there. However, bear in mind that the magazines were written for a 4-character party, and the HC is for a 6-character party. And, they didn't scale up the maps when they did that. So, if your party is larger than 6 PC's (particularly if a ranger or druid has large companions), I strongly suggest scaling the map & corridor size up a notch as well, otherwise a lot of the fights are going to feel like waiting in line for a ride at Disneyland.
umm... apparently, one of us has missed a memo. I thought the thing coming out soon just had design notes, discussions on how they were going to be changing the game system, not actual rules? Oh, and artwork. Lots of artwork.
Naw, they've expressly stated that there will be no 4.5. Bear in mind that this is from the same guys that spent the last two years swearing they weren't working on 4.0. For those who object to the idea of zones because it's too video-gamy, bear also in mind that video games got it from early D&D--the level of the dungeon was equal to the challenge level, so the deeper you got, the tougher the monsters were. That's why earlier versions of the game had the dwarven ability to detect sloping corridors... Gygax wanted to throw a surprisingly tough encounter at his players so, rather than just having tougher monsters behind the door, he had the party travel a couple levels deeper into the dungeon without realizing it.
I've always felt that LOTR did a tremendous disservice to DM's and game designers and other storytellers in that it gave people an unrealistic opinion of the power level and effectiveness of heroic people. Legolas was chosen to be in the Fellowship because he was young enough to put up with non-elves. Dudes, he was over 1,000 years old. The archery they showed him doing, where he killed two people with one arrow, or stabbed somebody with one, then drew and fired and killed an orc? The bit in The Two Towers where he was able to mount, blind, a horse that was at a full gallop? Killing the oliphaunt? All of these are totally in keeping with the kind of things somebody should be doing in heroic fantasy... if he had 1,000 years to practice his quickdraw. And, bear in mind, Legolas was a >child< by Elrond & Galadriel's reckoning. How many of these things should a 47-year-old elf be able to do? Not so many, I don't think. So, how do you roleplay a newbie elf, given the thundering might of ability walking around Rivendell?
1. The message from Nidrama is pretty succinct: Cauldron is lost. The only hope for Cauldron lies within the Smoking Eye, or some such. My party had already met Nidrama, recognized the eyes, and went with it. I was kind of hoping they wouldn't so that she could meet up with them later and ask "which part of 'only hope' didn't you get?" 2. Place the desert well outside of teleport range. Say, 2,000 miles. Have a nice walk. Please also bear in mind that Redgorge is about to be besieged, so, walk fast. 3. In my campaigns, I have worked long and hard to get the message across that evil != stupid. Kaurophon has been researching this whole Occipitus thing for a long time and has a great deal invested in making sure this works, so he was on his best don't-make-waves behavior. He never did one single thing against the party until the fight at the very end (to be fair, if he had, they would have squashed him like a bug). There were several times he could have wiped them out: they were underlevelled for one of the fights, so the Blasphemy automatically paralyzed all but one PC who was high enough level, and another who ran as soon as the monster showed up so he was out of the area. As has been pointed out in previous threads, my players understand that people who bend over backwards to help them are usually evil, so they're just constantly lying in wait to smack the bad guys, but in the meantime, if the bad guys want to help them out, that's great. My next campaign will be in the Moonsea setting, where they're working out of evil cities and for evil people the entire time.
Given that being confined to the plane for all eternity was meant as a punishment, I think perhaps a vengeful god might want to build a loophole in, allowing a 1st-level spell to summon forth a demon to die a really unpleasant and temporary death at the hands of a dire ape or two. I mean, that's gotta be really humiliating.
I've tried reading for understanding over there, and I just don't get how everybody is accepting as absolute, undeniable truth every word that comes from an official WOTC source, when, on those same boards, for the past two years, there would be about fifteen threads started every week in which somebody asked "So, when is 4.0 coming out?" and everybody would trot out the company line that, no, sorry, they're not working on 4.0. At every gaming convention, in every press release, in every blog entry, every single time any WOTC staffer had the option to say "Sure, we're working on it, but it's not gonna be out for a few years," instead, they lied through their teeth and said "no way, no how. 3.5 4evah! Go buy books!" and everybody bought it. And they still accept as absolute gospel every piece of information that slips out. Buh? The air's clearer over here.
Contrary to what was indicated above, I had very little trouble using 1st edition materials in my 3.0 campaign. Some of the fights may have been tougher or weaker than they should have been, but that all balances out in the long run: an orc is an orc is an orc. Traps do damage. Gold is gold. My biggest fear with 4.0 is that they will continue to point out things in 3.5 that are fatally flawed, so that I don't want to run it any more, but that 4.0 will also be fatally flawed, so that I don't want to run it, either. Title this Confessions of a Former Fantasy Hero and DragonQuest DM
Seriously! We all know that hordes of ALL grades go down just as easy to machine gun fire. Pssshhhah. Right. Just don't lead 'em as much.
Actually, my last FR campaign ended by having the world plunged into a Dark Ages, with all the major cities burning and civilization collapsing. Hmm... Ironically enough, that campaign was the 3.0 adventure path, ending with Bastion of Broken Souls. So, the AP that was supposed to usher in 3.0 can be used to bridge to 4.0.
Actually, aside from the players making a lot of really bad rolls, that is exactly how that encounter is supposed to go. The hags are supposed to be an extremely challenging encounter. Perhaps this will inspire the PCs to pay a little more attention when celestials show up and start handing them information.
Also, I've often redesigned the maps slightly to accommodate a bigger party, and let everyone interact with the enemy, so it tends towards big open spaces with the odd obstacle. I'm currently running the SCAP with eight players, one of which is playing a beastmaster with a dire ape & a tiger, and the maps have been a huge limitation. Too many 10x10 rooms with a 5' wide hallway leading up to them. Granted, that's how people build buildings, but nobody wants to be behind the dire ape, because they can't see the fight; nobody wants to be in front of her, because there's people up ahead who need their arms pulled off... scaling up the bad guys in number would necessitate a change in map scale, which I'll do in my next campaign if needed.
You're right. I didn't even factor in the cost of ink or toner cartridges. We all know those things aren't cheap, and you will go through them surprisingly fast if you print all of the mags. Even taking them to Kinkos to be printed and bundled won't be cheap. The situation was bad enough without even going into this aspect of it. A friend of mine suggested last night that I could upgrade to 4.0 for free, because the books would be available in the 4.0 SRD, and I pointed out the cost of printing being kind of self-defeating... although I am definitely going to look into how much it would cost to just download them to my laptop. If that's cheaper, I'm going that direction rather than paying $75 for the books.
Unfortunately, the one thing that they absolutely cannot afford to do is educate everybody as to how to use their existing 3.5 materials with the 4th edition rules; they need everybody to upgrade to the 4.0 rulebooks, and, two years from now, they need everybody to buy the 4.0 campaign settings, rather than going to Half Price books and buying the 3.5 setting for, well, half the price.
A: I run past B.
How this is resolved: A moves up to B.
Taking the sword hit from an AoO doesn't prevent the trip attempt.
Yikes. How many dozen sales do you figure that one cartoon is going to cost them?
And, specifically, how is it marketed towards a younger audience? Every single thing I have heard about a major design change between 3.5 and 4.0 screams "World of Warcraft" to me.
Realistically, they need to come up with a product to sell. They can't just keep patching 3.5 and writing new supplements for it, because they've published most of what people have said they wanted to see. Speaking as a fairly loyal 3.5 player, I can't imagine what three or four books per year they could possibly write that I would buy. Can you? So, their options are kind of limited. Write new books that won't sell, abandon the franchise, or write new books that will sell. I don't believe they are intentionally jettisoning their loyal fanbase. They need to write new books, and the only ones they know people will buy are core rule books. So, they're writing new core rule books. And, hey, guess what? Now that they have new core rulebooks, they can write a new FRCS and a new Eberron and and and... Oh, and, yes, even better than hoping people will pay $30 every few months for a new book is the possibility of charging people $15 every month for an online service. Particularly if they don't actually have to write a whole new books' worth of content every month; for your $15, you get a few new web pages, a few new web tools. It's not like they're beaming an entire new Monster Manual into your website every other month.
I LOVE that Idea. I am so stealing it for a game. Now... how to make Miniatures out of Limburger... hmmm. Actually, we had edible treasure in a game once--the DM tossed a sack of chocolate coins out onto the table and said that's what the party got as a reward (in a game where a gold piece was a >lot< of money). Somebody ate one, and the DM said, "Wow, that was an expensive party you guys had last night. It cost you a gold piece." We were more careful from then on...
To simplify the process of new players getting up to speed with the rules, they have introduced Drow Elven Ranger Barbarian who is dual-wielding scimitars as its own class.
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