John Glass's page

OK, I'm converting some of the feats on my own. Here's one:

Harrowed
Prerequisite: Cha 13, Level 1
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to your Will defense against attacks with the charm keyword. Furthermore, once each day you may draw a harrow card and gain a bonus based on the ability score it is associated with. Once per day as a free action, you gain a +1 bonus to a defense score, attack, skill check, or initiative roll associated with the ability. Increase this bonus to +2 at level 11 and +3 at level 21.

Has anyone done anything with the feats in the players guide or the Harrow deck? Are you just leaving those out, or did I miss another thread on this?

Thanks

John Glass wrote:

Having said that, I think the reason why some people have the feeling it is more restrictive is that the classes, at least for me, seem too similar. Everyone has the same number of powers, and no one is better than anyone else. It's like some sort of bizarre fantasy world political correctness.

I don't agree that "no one is better than anyone else". The role that each class fills has a unique gift that separates it from the others. A fighter can hold the line better than a rogue and a wizard can control the battlefield better than a warlock. Now that I have run the game for three different groups of characters it is becoming clear that 4e is really a team game. No one character can really carry the whole team like it did in 3e, so in that regard no one PC is "better" than another. I think that is a good thing.

Well, you must agree that in some way no one is better than anyone else, because you say so at the end of your post. Now, I didn't say I thought this was necessarily a huge problem-- I was just trying to point out why the 4e system might *seem* restrictive when it does actually offer many more choices.

The fighter in 3.5 gets to select a few feats while the wizards gets dozens of spells. This is not fair to the fighter, but the feeling of "sameness" in 4e some players might have stems from the fact that the fighter and the wizard get almost the same number of powers at first level, and use the same amount of powers at all levels.

No arguement that the powers are different and that they require teamwork on the part of the players. I was only trying to point out that the negative reaction that some people are having is based in large part on the differences in flavor and the way the game "feels." What my players tell me is that "4e is OK, but it isn't D&D."

I think it's important to take emotion/nostalgia out of this analysis as much as possible and just try to decide which system is more fun for your group. I agree with those who've said we will need more time and to see the splatbooks before we can really make any big judgements about 4e.

I think it is wrong to say 4e is more restrictive. There are fewer multiclassing options, but there are many more options in choosing powers right now, and there are sure to be even more options in the future. Picking 2 at will powers from 4 gives 6 unique builds, x choice of 1 from 4 encounter powers = 24 builds, x choice of 1 from 4 daily powers = 96 builds. Many, many more options than in 3.5.

Having said that, I think the reason why some people have the feeling it is more restrictive is that the classes, at least for me, seem too similar. Everyone has the same number of powers, and no one is better than anyone else. It's like some sort of bizarre fantasy world political correctness.

Clearly there are also many, many more options for the players and the monsters in combat. Fighting kobolds feels different from fighting goblins, which feels different from fighting orcs, much more so than in 3.5. That is hardly restrictive. But too many choices can make combat ponderous, which is how I feel at the moment, but I would like to try combat out more thoroughly before I really decide how I feel about it. It seems fun due to the increased flexibility, but I feel drained after every battle I DM.

But time will tell. If some powers are unbalanced (Sly Flourish comes to mind), then their won't really be as much of a choice. Even though Wizards has a ton of experience at balancing systems from Magic: The Gathering, we've seen from that game just how difficult it is to maintain balance in an exceptions-based game.

So I agree with those who have said we may have to wait for a year or two and see how the game plays with splat books. Exception-based systems offer extraordinary flexibility, but they have the potential to become seriously unbalanced, as anyone who has played Magic can attest. If just a few choices are overpowered, then that isn't really much of a choice at all, but if the system maintains balance, then the number of choices in character builds and in combat will be amazing.

CEBrown wrote:

I know I had far more money to spend on games and such between the ages of 14 and 21 than I do now, at just past 40...

That's very interesting.

I have far far more disposable income now (early 30's, home-owner and all) than I ever did at the ages you mention. Once I graduated from university and started my career, my disposable income has exploded.

I was having an argument about 4E with a gamer who said that the cost of buying all of those new books, divided per hour of gaming time, makes D&D a very cheap hobby. Well, maybe. But I don't think it's the cost per se that has people (including me) upset-- it's feeling like we have a community that has a vested interest in this product, and WOTC is asking without much or any input from the consumers, as far as I can tell.

And anyone with an undergraduate degree in marketing should know this pretty well. Take the New York Times, for example. Do you think that they *like* having a front section with all the graphic layout style of a 19th Century mimeograph? No, but they know if they change their front page layout, readers will freak because then it won't look like the New York Times. Long-time readers were in shock when the NYT went to color photos (gasp) on the front page years after the technology for offset-printing color photos was readily available. The New York Times keeps its old-fashioned look because they don't want to anger their subscribers.

So, money is certainly a factor for some people, but I really think that the bigger reason is that the brand is changing a great deal without enough input from the fan base. I'm pretty sure that the folks at WOTC think they are doing something positive for the game, but either they are making a newbie marketing mistake or they have the arrogance to assume that they are immune to the kinds of issues around drastically changing their brand which affect almost every other company with a brand to protect. If we consumers had had more input into and warning about 4E, and if the changes were slightly less drastic, we would probably all be excited about 4E and make room in our budgets to purchase the books.

What metaphor?

And why do we have to go to another foreign country to get something as innocuous as Coca Cola made right? It was invented here, wasn't it?

Without spelling it out, what company that everyone on this board knows about is introducing a new product that makes the old one obsolete without giving the product's consumers much choice in the matter? I'm not naming any names, but they might be a subsidiary of Hasbro. If 4E sucks, will people say that it was a "New Coke" ploy to get people to demand the original?

Not that New Coke isn't a worthy subject of discussion, and I don't understand why we now have to get Coke from Mexico to get it in glass bottles either (at least, American Coke in glass bottles isn't available here in California). But it's just that the upcoming changes in "the world's most popular role playing game" invite a comparison to changes in the "world's most popular soft drink" if you feel like you liked the old "most popular" product just fine.

And there's a lesson that Coke and other companies should learn: you shouldn't change your flagship product in such a way that people don't recognize it as the original. Do you think that the New York Times, for example, *likes* having an extremely boring front page layout that looks like it came from the 19th century? No, it doesn't, but its readers would freak out if they changed the layout, because the readers expect that The New York Times will look the way they expect The New York Times to look. When the paper went from black and white to color photos about 10 years ago people were shocked and I'm sure many subscriptions were canceled.

Anyway, more than just a metaphor, I think it's a valid real-life lesson in how not to change your brand, too.

Just in case someone is counting votes on this thread, I wanted to say that E1 is the most freakin' brilliant module I've read. I ran it for a group of adults and they were blown away by it. The horror elements were really cool, but veteran players were also excited about the description, the atmosphere, the extreme challenge (they made me show them where the cover said "For level 5" and the pregen characters, who, btw, would be eaten and spit out if they ever set foot on that carnival's grounds) and the level of writing-- I was too. The only problem for me was that it was a one-shot and it will be hard to come up to that level, much less top it. E1 got me more excited about gaming than anything else in a long time. Yes, I wouldn't want every adventure I run to be horror-ish, but if they were all as good as that one I might not care.

Watcher wrote:

You know, sad but true.. I read the first post and thought the entire thing was a metaphor for 4th Edition. I see where it might not be, now.

Lol.... The buzz gets to you after awhile.

I'm a Pepsi guy anyway...

AWESOME!

Ditto, btw. ;)

Can we go back to the metaphor and extend it? What if people, on alternate bizzaro Earth, had started drinking Pepsi because they were mad at Coke for arbitrarily changing something that they liked? Even better, what if there was a user (drinker?) designed totally open source soda recipe on the net that everyone could make and it would be delicious, so that everyone could happily consume caffeinated beverages to their heart's delight without worrying about the fiat and whim of a cola company that made changes in secret without any input from their users. I'd drink that soda pop.

Or maybe that's just me being a carbonated gasbag.