Creslin321's page

Creslin321 wrote:

I mean, if WotC had presented 4E to me in a golden box while I sat on a cashmere pillow and was fanned and fed grapes by 10 beautiful women, I still wouldn't have liked it.

I'd have pretended to like it. :D

LOL, well played :).

One more thing I really want out of 5E...

Some really good suggestions for ruling on "ad-hoc" situations -
A lot of times we'll be playing and then a player gets some kind of crazy idea like: "I'm going to cast ray of frost at the chain that's holding up the chandeleir, and then Bill is going to shoot it with his bow to shatter it!" And you're thinking...uhhhh what do I roll for this? And if they manage to make the chandeleir fall, how much damage does it do?

I would just like some general rules of how you can deal with these ad-hoc situations and still be fair. Maybe just some general rules on how to determine "armor class" based on how difficult you feel a shot is, how to guess at the hit points of inanimate objects, stuff like that.

Zmar wrote:

Overreacting a lot? Not that I'd like to say that my formulation is accurate.

I don't think so. I think that overblown expectations and entitlement is a huge problem in the gamer community, and I think that the mental gymnastics associated with turning a casual wish into a firm promise is part of the root of that problem.

Maybe so...maybe huge expectations, feelings of personal slights, and problems with marketing are a problem in the gamer community. I can't really say. But at the same time, there are definitely people who just disliked 4E because of its content. And their dislike has nothing to do with notions like high expectations, marketing issues, presentation issues etc...

I mean, if WotC had presented 4E to me in a golden box while I sat on a cashmere pillow and was fanned and fed grapes by 10 beautiful women, I still wouldn't have liked it. There are just "hard" pieces of content and rules that I don't like about 4E. The classes all function the same, there aren't enough non-combat abilities, almost every utility spell got turned into a ritual, etc.

There are plenty of other folks that feel the same as well I'm sure. I know there are people that like 4E, but I think that the player base is split on this point...and for good reason.

Sometimes in "the old days" we did have to get out sheets of paper for quick and dirty maps--but they were the roughest of sketches for when something was too tough to visualize, or the description wasn't clear.

All in all, it was quick, and only used as a crutch when needed.

The incorporation and dependence upon the battlemat as a key element really debuted in 3.0, along with WotC's efforts to sell Chainmail and later the plastic minis.

I've played Warhammer, WH:40k, Battletech, Space Hulk, etc., and I do like mini games--but I don't like them imposed upon my D&D games.

The reason is two-fold. First, it slows the game to a crawl. Second, it takes attention away from the narrative of the story and tends to mire everyone's attention on the board and nothing else.

Some of my gamers are Old School, and the only way I got them into PF from 2e was to ditch minis and battle mats and go with...

Completely agree. The ability to play without a battlemat and not completely invalidate 50% of the player's abilities is a NECESSITY for me.

Sometimes I'll prepare maps but then the players just go off the rails and somehow wind up in combat. I really don't want to bother with a mat in these scenarios...it just takes too much time.

Also Val, what we would do sometimes for ad-hoc fights when some visualization is necessary, like if there's a narrow pass or something, was just draw an outline of the terrain on a piece of white paper. We wouldn't actually use it as a map, just use it as a reference of what the terrain looked like and where players wanted to go. It takes like 20 seconds and it helps you "guess" when things like AoO's should happen.

Terquem wrote:

4th edition, encounter, and daily powers ARE Vancian - ? How can people not see this? It is an even worse kind of Vancian because every day you cannot swap out the "per-time constraint" ability for one you think might work better.

And this is the challenge of any magic system. Limitation based...

Unlimited At-Wills, more-powerful Encounter Powers that refresh every encounter no matter how many times that is per day, and then Daily Powers and Rituals to round everything out.

I don't see anyone memorizing and/or forgetting spells, I don't see any spell slots, or selecting spells from a massive list, preparing spells, or having any truly game-changing uber-powered spells that are "game breaking", etc.

When you're out of spells in 3.5e, you're done. Pick up a rock and use your sling. When you're out of spells...wait, you're never out of spells in 4e...you might not have access to the most powerful ones (Dailies), but you've got your At-Wills and every encounter your Encounter Powers refresh.

If you think 4e is as Vancian as 1e-3e, then we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

And, as I said, I prefer 4e's magic mechanic to previous editions, but I also prefer Shadowrun's, Mage's and Ars Magica's to 1e-3e.

I think a big issue that I and a lot of other folks have with magic in 4E is that it is functionality equivalent to non-magic powers.

I mean, if you ripped the fluff text and the title out of the abilities in 4E, an arcane ranged striker would seem extremely similar to a martial ranged striker ability wise.

I like magic to feel like something mysterious, flexible, intriguing, and unique. I just never felt that in 4E. Magic felt the same as non-magic powers.

Creslin321 wrote:

Compare this with 3E/PFRPG abilities that do things like cause blindness...permanently. It's just so much more realistic.

I'm hoping we don't see this.

Because it sucks.

Also, what's realistic about magic that causes permanent blindness? How does realism even enter into that?

Well...I was actually thinking about a critical hit related feat :). So it should be fairly realistic there...if you get slashed across the eyes with a longsword...yeah, permanent blindness.

But see, I realize there's a difference between players here. Some people just want different things out of game. I want a game that simulates a fantasy world. Some others want more of a fun "game" to play in a fantasy setting. And I think this is the fundamental philosophical difference between the 3E lover and the 4E lover.

I remember a lot of folks would complain endlessly about things like the "bag of rats fighter." Where a fighter would carry around a bag with 20 rats in it, and then proceed to walk next to an enemy and kill all the rats with whirlwind attack, and thus get 20 great cleave attacks against the enemy.

I never saw this as a problem, because it's ridiculous. Any DM worth his salt, would just not let this happen. And this is how I felt about all the other rules. Instant death spells...just don't use them if you don't want to kill your players, or at least give them warning that they should protect themselves from instant death spells beforehand.

So I always saw the rules as just tools for the DM to use to create a fantasy world. So all of these horribly imbalanced or unfair abilities never bothered me. I would much rather have them to add flavor to the game, than not have them in the name of balance.

I disliked 4th edition but loved 3rd. So I'm probably one of those that WotC is trying to win back. I am more than willing to give 5th ed. a shot, but this is what I would like to see.

1. No more class-specific powers. Every class in 4th ed. had their own list of powers, with no real overlap between classes. But at the same time, many classes performed the same "role." This led to there being TONS of powers that did almost the exact same thing but had a different name. It also led to classes being "straightjacketed" into only picking powers from their list unless they wanted to use the odd multiclassing system.
I would like to see a return to feats/spells structured of 3rd edition, where "powers" are just a generic resource that all classes can draw from. It allows a lot more flexibility between classes and helps the powers keep their sense of identity. Everyone remembers Melf's Acid Arrow for example, but who remembers Timeless Trek in Mithrandian (or something like that)?

2. Diverse and flexible class system. I want classes to feel different from each other not just in the powers they have, but in the base mechanic they use. I also want there to be a lot of flexiblity in the class system, if I want to be an Elf rogue who dabbles in arcane and divine magic, then I want to be able to make that happen fairly easily.

3. No more long research sessions to find out how to use one spell. This is a problem with PFRPG and 3E, not 4E. Some spells include things like "templates" that you need to find in other books to use...this is just annoying. Summon Monster is infamous for this. Try finding the celestial template in the MM without knowing where it is beforehand.
If a spell uses a template or something, the template should be written in the spell description.

4. More flavor. I felt like 4E's abilities were largely lacking in flavor due to the sheer number of them and standardization for purposes of balance. Everything tends to do damage, move creatures, or inflict some status ailment for one round or until save. It just gets dull after a while.
Compare this with 3E/PFRPG abilities that do things like cause blindness...permanently. It's just so much more realistic.

You're not paying attention.

I'm not saying that consumers were/are pissed that the OGL was pulled. I'm saying that WotC's attempt to close D&D stopped the industry from moving forward and made an OGL-based competitor (read: Pathfinder) viable. This position is based on evidence and analysis -- so while it might be incorrect, if you're going to disagree with it, you might want to start by understanding it.

Also, conflating means merging two items, not confusing one for the other.

Edit: Sorry if that sounds douchey, but that's what you get when you start shouting.

Very true.

As I understand, Paizo basically had to make PFRPG simply because WotC wasn't really giving them many options when they pulled the OGL. If WotC had not pulled the OGL for 4E, then Paizo may have very well just kept going on their merry way of making supplements for 4E...and thus D&D's most significant competitor would have never existed.

I think the lesson to learn here is that it's not bad to have an OGL. It's not bad to have a closed license either. It *IS* bad to have an OGL and then pull it, leaving a lot of business that depended upon it out in the cold, but with a tool to remake your original game and market it.

Hmm...I think WotC is going to be hard-pressed to make 5E into a game that ALL (past and current) D&D players will enjoy. Reason being that 4E really drove a wedge up into the D&D market and split the playerbase.

The folks that are really concerned about game/class balance, ease of adventure preparation, battlemap combat, and accessibility probably favored 4E. While the folks more concerned about complexity, class diversity, ad-hoc combat, and flavor were probably turned off by 4E and went to PFRPG or back to 3/3.5.

So now WotC has the unenviable task of trying to make a game that appeals to BOTH of these camps without alienating either. I think it's going to be very difficult for them to appease the PFRPG crowd by making the game more complex and diverse without alienating the 4E crowd by making the game less balanced and accessible. And the same is true for the opposite.

Despite this though, I really hope they pull it off. It would be awesome if 5E turns out to be everything that everyone wants...but for now I remain skeptical.

I always thought it would be interesting to have a parallel material plane where negative energy was the primary force of life and positive energy was the animating force of the undead.

Since positive and negative energy are supposed to "balance" each other out, it never made sense to me that positive energy played such a major role in the lifecycle of the soul, but negative energy just seemed to be a "corrupting" influence. I thought that a parellel material plane where negative energy was the substance of life would help make the balance between the two seem more real.

Your undead could just be a normal undead from this plane that is fueled by positive energy.

Hey All,

Does anyone know if there is a PrC published somewhere that focuses on "Planar Magic?" Specifically, I'm thinking of a mage that exercises their power by opening temporary rifts to other planes and then unleashing energy through them.

For example, instead of casting "fireball" they would open a rift to the plane of fire and burn their foes with pure elemental fire from the rift. Or they could open a rift to the plane of earth above an enemy's head and drop a ton of rocks on them. Or if they wanted to heal they could open a rift to the positive energy plane...the possibilities are many and varied.

I just thought this was a cool concept and was wondering if there was anything already published on it.

Hey all,

Thanks again for all the advice. I wanted to give you guys an update on my solution for sharing music in case anyone else wants to do it.

I wound up using Ventrilo to do both the music and the voice. You can do this by running two Ventrilo clients on one machine where one plays the music based on the "Stereo Mixer" (or "What U Hear") channel, and the other is for your voice. I tested it out and it works great! As an added bonus, you don't to run two streaming apps for music and voice, so it should save on bandwidth as well.

Anyway, here is a link for more info if you want to do this for your games:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4965151_stream-music-ventrilo.html

Creslin321 wrote:

Quote:

It's not illegal to be good in Cheliax. If the authorities notice the cleric's aura, they might give the cleric the stink eye, but that alone isn't enough to arrest someone.

Granted, but my fear was that if the authorities are actively looking for rebels, and the party is hiding in the slums disguised as peasants, then it would seem odd if one of the peasants has a strong good aura :).

I could probably get around this by just having them operate "outside" of the city, but I think it's more exciting to force them to stay inside of it and hide.

Well... if they're looking for rebels, wouldn't "chaotic" be a greater indicator of rebellion than good? Same situation applies, I guess... just a different set of spells to look for them.

Yep good point! Either way, the ring and spell that some of the other posters recommended should work nicely. But it's still good to know that the authorities wouldn't freak if they just saw a good or chaotic cleric wandering around.

Thanks for the advice!

It's not illegal to be good in Cheliax. If the authorities notice the cleric's aura, they might give the cleric the stink eye, but that alone isn't enough to arrest someone.

Granted, but my fear was that if the authorities are actively looking for rebels, and the party is hiding in the slums disguised as peasants, then it would seem odd if one of the peasants has a strong good aura :).

I could probably get around this by just having them operate "outside" of the city, but I think it's more exciting to force them to stay inside of it and hide.

Undetectable Alignment. It's a second-level cleric spell, though. If there's a bard in the party, however, they get it as a first-level spell.

Thanks, also good advice :).

I am a fan of the idea of given NPC Class party members.

Give her an adept and a warrior to travel with her. You can even award teamwork feats to them if they play well together. The idea being if they are in a fight and they get hit with a fireball and they all make the save a couple times, maybe they get awarded the Look Out Team work feat. Or maybe they get ambushed from multiple sides, and if they play well together they get the back to back feat. See where I am going with it?

Also a good idea!

I think I'm just going to do a full blown Cleric instead of an NPC class. Since she's by herself, I think she'll need the help.

But I like the idea of the teamwork feats, very Batman and Robin :).

EDIT: Oh and as for the warrior, I've been toying with the idea of making this demon that she used "diplomacy" on to convince to join her (and I let her lol) take on the role of the fighter, but we'll see how that goes.

A ring of nondetection works IIRC, but you can't afford it at 1st level.

Ah good advice, thank you!

Thankfully, I am the GM so the player in question can just "happen" upon such a ring if it suits the purposes of the campaign :).

So I'm planning on running some adventures in Cheliax where the heroes will likely participate in rebellious activities in opposition to the government. They will probably be required to hide in the slums of cities from time to time and practice guerilla tactics.

The problem I'm having is that one of them is a CG Cleric that gives off a strong aura. So I'm not a genius, but if I were the Chelaxian authorities, I would arrest the "peasant" giving off a strong aura of good.

Is there any way for a cleric or paladin to "hide" their aura? It makes it tough to run any adventures with a lot of subterfuge.

give her a second character that heals

Good advice, I was thinking about doing this as well. I think I will just have a GMPC cleric accompany her. She's too new to control two characters so I think that should work out.

Do you think that a party of 2 could handle CR around their level?

Hey All,

I'm currently running a solo campaign with my wife, and I'm having some difficulty determining what CR level encounters to throw aganst her since she is often on her own. Does anyone have any experience/advice regarding solo campaigns?

Just for some more info, she's playing a Wizard (evoker) currently level 2, and with pretty beefy stats/extra abilities. Sometimes she'll have allies, but many times she will be completely solo.

We use Fantasy Grounds 2, and it's pretty awesome, especially for Pathfinder. Most of your calculations are automated, and there are premade monsters that you can just drag into encounters. Depending on how you're used to playing, games may take a little more prep work, but it's worth it. The UI is kind of unintuitive at first, but once you get used to it, it's really good.

Cool :). I think I'm going to go for FG2 as well after weighing my options. I'm psyched to DL it tonight and give it a whirl.

In FG you just need any image open. And you can right click to bring up layer and add a grid or hex of whatever scale you want.

I see, thanks! So I can just make a map in something like Pyromancer and then import it should be easy.

Creslin321 wrote:

DMFTodd wrote:

1 - Haven't tried it

2 - You're looking for a VTT, virtual table top: Maptools, OpenRPG, Infrno, FantasyGrounds.

3 - We use Skype for our group of 7. Skype is nice that you can hear when two people talk at the same time. Taking turns talking doesn't seem to be an issue with it as it was with Ventrilo (that was a couple years ago at this point).

Thanks for the response DMFTodd! Good to hear that Skype works well with 7 people.

Have you ever heard of D20 Pro? It's another VTT (thanks for the term :) ) that I found while googling. It looked pretty good an inexpensive, do you have any experience with it?

I have been using D20Pro for about a year and a half now. I have a group of 6 that uses it for our weekly game.I prefer it over Maptools and Fantasy Grounds II. We also use Ventrilo which i vastly prefer over Skype, you will have to pay for a server but it takes a lot less CPU resources compared to Skype.Look HEREand HERE for some more info on VTT's.

Thanks bigkilla!

Good to hear that D20 Pro is decent. I'm really oscillating between FG2 and D20Pro at this point...not sure which one to get and I don't want to waste my $ on one and then decide I like the other better.

Anyway, if price was not an object, would you do FG2 instead of D20Pro?

Also, I DL'd the free trial of FG2, but couldn't really find anyway to easily create a battle grid. This is very important for me because I like to do sandbox style adventures where I may need to make a quick battle grid on the fly.

Does anyone know if FG2 has a decent battle grid creation system that will let you quickly spin up a battle grid during an adventure?

1 - Haven't tried it

2 - You're looking for a VTT, virtual table top: Maptools, OpenRPG, Infrno, FantasyGrounds.

3 - We use Skype for our group of 7. Skype is nice that you can hear when two people talk at the same time. Taking turns talking doesn't seem to be an issue with it as it was with Ventrilo (that was a couple years ago at this point).

Thanks for the response DMFTodd! Good to hear that Skype works well with 7 people.

Have you ever heard of D20 Pro? It's another VTT (thanks for the term :) ) that I found while googling. It looked pretty good an inexpensive, do you have any experience with it?

Hey All,

I'm thinking of starting an online campaign with my cousin who lives very far away and some other folks. I really want to try to replicate the "face to face" RPG experience that we used to have as much as possible, but I'm not sure how I should go about this technology wise.

So does anyone have some advice on what kind of technologies can aid an online campaign the most? A few things I was thinking of were...

1. Webcams - Has anyone ever tried a game were everyone videoconferenced? Does it help?

2. Battle grids - Is there any kind of PC application that lets you share a battlegrid over the internet for combat?

3. Conference call (Skype) - Does anyone have advice on how to utilize conferencing tech for gaming? Any good ways to stop everyone from talking at the same time?

EDIT:

One more thing I would really like to do is play music on my computer that all my players can hear. Any idea how to do this???

You tried to get help out of WotC customer service? Ha! They ain't Paizo, friend. They don't give a s*%% about you. Just look at the WotC forums, and it's pretty clear how they feel about customers.

As for the pdfs, they'll never release them. They can never be 100% sure there won't be piracy, and that's what it'll take. Plus, it's WotC, a company that does not care about the promises and business deals it makes. They screw over people all the time. Remember Paizo? Remember White Wolf? Remember Drive Thru RPG? You can't trust them. At all. So even if they were willing to sell the pdfs again, who besides WotC would vend them? People have pretty much figured out how untrustworthy they are.

About WoTC and PDFs...

I don't think their decision to not release PDFs has ANY impact on piracy whatsoever. There are already fan-created PDFs for just about D&D 4e book out there. IMO, the best remedy for piracy is to create an excellent physical product that just can't be replicated in electronic form.

A lot of folks who have no qualms about pirating would still buy a book if it was a very high quality product and had things like folding poster maps and such. Things you can't easily replicate with a PDF.

Creslin321 wrote:

So does anyone know of a 4E book that fleshes magic out more? Makes it seem more like it does in fantasy literature?

I can't recommend any books, but I can tell you how I think of magic:

Magic is an art. This is a common theme not only in fantasy lit generally, but specifically D&D fluff and fiction. Now this doesn't really jive with pre 4e rule sets, because everyone casts spells to the same effect; a Protection from Evil spell is exactly the same whether a wizard, a sorcerer, a druid or a cleric casts it. When you consider that all these classes have starkly differing magic sources, it just feels weird. IMO, YMMV, etc.

4e magic feels much more artistic because every caster uses it differently. Wizards have Scorching Burst, sorcerers have Burning Spray, druids have Flame Seed, and so on. Just like every artist will draw the same apple a bit differently, every caster class slings his spells a bit differently.

You give a decent argument, and basically prove the point that everything is really subjective. As you say, YMMV. IMO, magic just felt more like it should in previous editions, but I can see your points as well.

That said, there were some spells in previous editions that were more flexible and artsy like polymorph and illusion spells. You could pretty much do whatever you wanted with them. So I did think that element of art was there...albeit not everywhere.

Also IMO, the only game I've played that actually represented magic as closely as possible to how fantasy lit represents it is the Mage White Wolf game. But the problem was that it was almost completely dependent on improving every single spell effect, it put a huge demand on the DM. So I do actually prefer a little "gaminess" in my magic system. I think it all comes down to personal preference in the end...

Essentials and ritual magic might be the answer your looking for. Rituals are things you can do in addition to the normal powers. I don't know how many rituals there are though. Essentials I have never read but I have heard people say it takes the classes a bit more back in the direction of 3e was in some regards so it might be the answer as well. I am sure someone who knows a lot more about 4e will be of more help.

Hmm okay, thanks for the tips. I will look into them.

So I'm currently playing a 4E campaign and, I'm sure like many other folks, there are some things I like about 4E, and some things I don't. But for me, there is one thing about 4E that bugs me more than anything and really stops me from enjoying it. Specifically, it's just that magic doesn't feel as "natural" as it did in previous editions. I'm hoping that one of the kind posters here will read my concern and maybe point me in the direction of a 4E supplement that helps remedy my complaint.

Anyway, what I mean by this is that in almost all fantasy literature, "magic" is typically represented as some kind of mysterious "force" that spellcasters can draw from. I think this makes magic feel like it is really something "alive" and an integral part of the world.

I also felt that 3.x and earlier D&D also felt like this regarding magic. Spells were basically a generic resource that many different classes could draw upon. So the classes felt more like they were just different "methods" of reaching out to the "force" as opposed to self contained entities that just had powers like a game.

And this is where my problem with 4E is. Powers are now all contained within the class. So a wizard power is a wizard power specifically, and other arcane classes could never use it (barring multiclassing or hybrid). It makes magic feel kind of artificial because each class has its own lineup of powers...it's not like they are drawing upon any common source of power like you would expect.

So does anyone know of a 4E book that fleshes magic out more? Makes it seem more like it does in fantasy literature?