Fabio_MP's page

Vic Wertz wrote:

And, judging by their blog, I think these two GSL products are Mongoose proper...

Huh. 4E Quintessentials?

The Quintessentials will indeed be back, though they will not be straight Mongoose productions - instead, they will be produced by one of the studios that form part of Flaming Cobra.

I can add to this, an Italian publisher that already worked with Mongoose (Nephandum and Empyrea) will publish some quintessential for 4e, they annoced this on some italian forum

here is the site of the publiher:
Asterion Press http://www.asterionpress.com/
but they send you to the Extrme fantasy site where you can find their products

In an Alternate Earth, Paizo doesn't do anything with 4 and since 3 core books are no longer being printed they realize they can't do that either.

So they come out with their own system instead.

What's that system like, I wonder aloud?

would not be simpler to make New Rules for the 4th edition?

e.g. if they think that they need long time attrition (you are not fully healed in the morning) they could create a wounds system

if they are missing this or that they can add it

the obietion since now has been in the line of "we cannot tell this or that kind of story" well put back the missing elements and go on

Now we get into a matter of semantics. I don't recall the official word, but if your statement is correct - do they mean each character will have a balance of abilities both in combat and out? Or do they mean each character will be balanced against each other in combat and out?

If it is the latter, then no character having out of combat abilities is very balanced.*

*I do not claim that is the way of things. Just pointing out the lack of any real information on the subject.

I am not sure, what I understood is that every character will be usefull in and out of combat, but it was said in a discussion in the logic of design

they were saying something like this "in previous edition you tried to balance combat abilities (or lack of combat abilities) by acting on Skill point or maybe special non combat powers, now we tried to balance combat abilities with combat abilities, and non combat with non combat"

as everyone I am waiting to see the complete ruleset (and probably since I am in Italy I'll wait a little more than all of you in the USA :)

Here's my problem with separating hit points from physical damage. If you aren't being hurt, how do you die or get near death? Do you get fatigued or disheartened to death? You see how ludicrous that sounds. It might be possible to die of exhasution, and you are less likely to recover from physical trauma if you are "depressed", but D&D characters don't die or have a brush with death due to fatigue and moral. They get crushed, cut, stabbed, burned, poisoned, or disintigrated. Likewise, your opponents don't die because you intimidated or exhausted them to death. They die because you have beaten, slashed, pummeled, torched, or electrocuted them. I think you get my point.

In all dnd edition hp are not exactly "physical" damage

for simpliciy sake let assume that in all edition you are dieing at 0 hp and dead at -X (the differences are minimal and you can easily extend the reasoning

there are fundamentally 3 kind of wounds

1) surface wound (any attack that don't bring you to 0 or less hp)
2) deadly wound (any attack taht bring between 0 and -X)
3) Mortal wound (any attack that bring you below -X)

now the 3 of them can be as low as 1 or as high as 100 (barring the death from massive damage)

example

a Fighter with 90 hp
1st strike is hit for 40hp of damage goes to 50 hp (this 40hp hit is surface wound)
2nd strike is hit for 40hp and goes to 10 hp (still surface)

path A
3rd strike another 40hp of damage goes to -30 and is dead (same amount of hp but instead of surface it is a mortal wound)
notice that he is dead in Original dnd, AD&D1st, AD&D2nd and D&D 3.x, NOT in D&D4th were he would just be dying (since the -X would be -45)

path B
3rd strike do 11 hp of damage, the fighter goes to -11 and is dying (lesser amount of damage but he get a deadly wound)

now the infamous you get back on your feet
if you roll 20 you realize that your "deadly" wound was not so bad (yes the arrow got trough but didn't hit any vital organ) and the rush of adrenaline get you back on your feet

by the way, the "daily" power are very similar to vancian magic, we have to see if they can be prepared or not

furthermore, since the creation of the 2nd level spell "cantrip" you can assume that you can convert a spell slot for a "at will" power

as for bookeeping, why should be greater?

at will: you have a short list of powers you can use everytime you want

encounter: even shorter list of power you must decide to use in one encounter, put an x near the one you use

day: not much different than now only much shorter list

Having said all that, I guess that most likely 4E will not suit our gaming style as well as the previous editions. Its emphasis on "cool" abilities and (seemingly) "narrowed down" focus/preference on combat is not what we're looking for.

didn't they say that each character will be both balanced in combat and out of combat?

so the diviner in combat probably would have spell that let him anticipate his enemies

with first phb you got rituals for divination so probably instead of using feat to get better magical combat powers you could use your feat to better your ritual and divination rituals...

So the point has come up that the new magic system that they are implementing in 4e is "Harry Potter-ish" because it relies too heavily on the wizards implements. (I believe they have said since then that implements improve magic effectiveness, and are not necessary, but let's ignore that for a minute.)

snip

Since we never saw Gandalf "prepare" his spells in the morning, and since he required (or at least appeared to require) his staff to cast spells, wouldn't the change in 4e to implements for wizards be more of a throw-back to Tolkein, as opposed to a nod to Rowling?
snip

..and... in the various Cindarella, Pinocchio and other Fairy tales Witch always have a wand (that must make D&D more of a child game)

..and.. in the '80 there was this Telefilm about mages and warriors with mages that needed a crystall......

...and... in so many books and myths and whatever the mage don't forget spells

...and... in vance books the greatest wizard could only retain 3-4 spells and would use lots of magical items and Sandestin Demons to make most of their magics......

so why don't make a system that use the good of the previous like specific effect spell, and try to put order between combat spell (usable quickly and NOW) and ritual spell for the more and seldom used activity... so the Wizard can be a wizard from first level w/out giving him scrolls or other items?

if I play a magic-user I want to cast spell, even small one but a lot of time, maybe I can do a fireball once per day but I want to be able to lit a candle all day long!

have fun

on vancian magic

I think it was not the fire and forget that made it work in dnd but the clear cutted power of single spell, then you had wand and scrolls to have spell that you really needed

to make the magic users more indipendent from wand and scolls is a good thing in my opinion

now the mage can cast his lesser spell as he need it, a few bigger spell now and then and for the truly big thing he got rituals

it feels better to me (and I tried variation of the fire and forget since the first edition of AD&D....)

Eladrin Wizard 70%
Elf Warlock with Fey Pact 30%

I like a lot of thing in the new edition and I could also go fighter or ranger

and I am very curious to try the new multiclassing rules....

things to consider

the roll (if it's indeed the mechanic of 4e or some other thing) is the new save, more than a save is a Luck Roll, maybe you can buy bonus with feat (Hard to kill +2 to death roll?)

the fact that a 200 hp character at -70 with a cure light goest to +x hp

actually negative hp don't exist, you are at 0 and dying,

what the negative are there for is for this:

Fighter A 10 hp on 100 max (die at -50 or less)
Fighter B 10 hp on 50 max (die at -25 or less)

they bot receive 40 hp of damage and both go to -30 hp

Fighter A is dying, Fighter B is dead

now Fighter A even if is out of combat have something to do roll his d20 and hope in a 20 to get back to 25 hp (while risking to get nearer to Fighter B in the Shadowfell with each roll) furthermore if someone keep striking at the fallen Fighter A he will make him dead with another 20 hp of damage

very fun!

so in brief the negative hp are there only to differentiate character for their positive hp, but at 0 and before negative half hp all character have the same hp: dying

I like it a lot

NPC: the fact that the rules don't apply to npc and moster I take it that "usually" they cannot get the 20 so in brief in say less than 10 round they are effectively dead, if the character hurry up to heal the npc he will get back in shape

when 3rd edition come out there was no marketing for a long time, a lot of thing where spilled on Eric Noah site were rumors were collected from a few playtesters

now we have playtesters, designers and developers that have blogs, go around here, on enworld on rpgnet and try to explain their reasons

the team working on 4th edition is much bigger than the one working on 3rd (if memory serves me well) furthermore they are less shy to make changes they feel are good to the game

but I am biased a lot of changes done are what I would have done so....

ps: I play since 1984
red box (a little), adnd 1st ed (a lot), adnd 2nd ed (a lot), dnd 3rd ed (a little)

Alright, time to put my 2 cents in...

I agree with what some others have said; it's the timing. Quick rundown:
time gap between 1E and 2E: 15 years ('74 - '89),
DogBone

well no, the first 1E book was 1977 and it got completed in 1979 (it war PHB, DMG and MM if I remeber correctly)

in 1974 was the brown box
in 1978 was another boxed set
in 1981 was the red box

you can find it precisly on wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_and_dragons

Of course, when the bard class comes out, you can use that. I know the above isn't a perfect solution, but since I'd say that the bard will probably be an arcane leader (I don't know that for sure, of course, but it's my suspicion) then you can play the warlord (also a leader) and shade it with multiclassing if you like.

I convinced myself that the Bard would be the Arcane Leader after reading Races and Classes, since it's arcane I am still hoping to find the bard into the PHB1 :)

the new bards seems tons of fun

regards, Fabio

So, out of curiosity, does anyone like this? In particular, if you were not interested in the Realms before, does this make you want to play in it?

yes, I played with not much attention since 1st edition FR but never really got hung on it, so much that I was not going to buy the Campaign Guide or the Players... but this changes have piqued my interest

I think that the new realms have the same flavour of the old one but are more interesting, I can still dig into all the previous history but don't need to for playing

and the fact that such an huge change could happen make them so much more magical (and also put Mystra back in it's place, you don't try to dominate the Magic) the magic running free again w/out the need for mages to be half-cleric is a very good thing

regards, Fabio