puggins's page

puggins wrote:

We're talking about relative sales here, though. Adding more data points doesn't affect things drastically Unless you think that Barnes and Noble (or whichever one was added) sells a far different proportion of D&D books compared to other books. If we were talking about gross sales then you would be absolutely right.

Actually the reading I got from your previous posts seemed to make me think that you were talking about the gross sales. You seemed to indicate that gross sales each year (during the same months) for things not in the top 10 don't vary that much, which I believe was the point Vic Wertz was addressing.

To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure what I meant with the second paragraph of the "fiddle faddle" response. That year-to-year variance does matter is obvious, but what I wrote certainly doesn't imply that. The poster I was referencing tried to play it both ways- comparing relative positions of the MM and DMG when he thought they showed what he wanted and then dismissing them when it turns out that they didn't. That's even worse an argument than mine.

And my later point stands. We have two independent pieces of information: Rouse saying that 4e outsold its predecessors, and the rankings implying the same (while clearly omitting gross sales). Assuming that Rouse isn't lying, it appears that the variance between years wasn't great enough to skew the relative results.

"...which reminds me of another issue with this data source: the list of book retailers that it includes has changed over time. I recall that one of the major book chains was added only recently (I forget which one, but it was Barnes-and-Noble-ish in size). Unfortunately, this means that even if they reported the exact number of copies they were counting, you still wouldn't be able to do definitive comparisons--the newer list would have the advantage of including more stores."

We're talking about relative sales here, though. Adding more data points doesn't affect things drastically Unless you think that Barnes and Noble (or whichever one was added) sells a far different proportion of D&D books compared to other books. If we were talking about gross sales then you would be absolutely right. As it stands, adding more booksellers only makes the rating more accurate. A side by side comparison would be somewhat problematic if we didn't also have the datapoint that 4e sold better than any previous edition. That the data supports this previous statement lends credence to its validity.

Regardless, I agree with one of the previous posters- this shows that D&D is doing well, which can only be a good thing.

Fiddle faddle. You yourself were comparing sales figures between 3.5e and 4e.

In general, saying that the numbers may be different due to deltas between dates isn't valid- you may have a point if we compared, say, the week before Christmas to the week before tax day. But the release dates coincide each year and we're talking about #57, not #1. Every booklist will tell you that #10 and below are extremely consistent, with the top ten varying wildly based on the popularity of the books.

Rouse and company stated that 4e's sales dwarfed that of 3e and 3.5e. This data is consistent with that statement. And sales of PHBII indicate that initial sales are apparently quite sustainable.

You guys missed the core gift set sales numbers:

Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set

Weeks in Top 150: 2
Current position: -
Entered Top 150: 6/12/2008
Peak Position: 57
Last appeared: 6/19/2008

There's your disparity. The core set sold better than both the 3e MM and the 3e DMG. That the individual books made the top 150 as well pretty much tells you how much stronger 4e's sales have been.

There is a reach-focused paragon path in martial power that gives you the equivalent of threatening reach as a daily stance. So true masters of the polearm do in fact use reach to gain more attacks.

I'd like to point out that, despite being corrected and proven to be completely wrong, the original poster never bothered posting again on this thread, which sorta lets you know what kind of person he is, and probably what his intent was.

Throw enough S**T at someone, and eventually some of it is going to stick. He just has to keep shoveling the S**T until someone doesn't show him how utterly, totally wrong he is.

That's funny, considering many NPC and PC builds I have seen all over the place, from the Internet to real life people I know, all have multiclassed characters. Class or prestige class.

And multiclassing doesn't exist in 4E, I don't even know why anyone calls it that anymore. It's called "class dipping" now.

And thank the maker for that.

Multiclassing in 3.5e was an unmitigated disaster which challenged suspension of disbelief and any sense of balance that the game pretended to have.

(1) The fighting classes multiclassed freely, and the way multiclassing (and class design in general) was handled allowed characters to gain 80% of a class's benefits with only a couple levels from that class. Yes, my barbarian spent his entire youth raging in fights, surviving in the wild, blah blah blah. But your fighter could get all the coolest parts of my class by dipping into it with a single level. Gee, how.... silly.

(2) Of course, suspension of disbelief aside, it didn't really matter that melee classes could multiclass well, because they all still sucked horrendously when compared to spellcasting classes. That Ftr4/Bar4/Rng1 had all sorts of neat abilities and was significantly more powerful than a non-multiclassed fighter, but he was still chump change compared to the party druid, cleric or wizard. Multiclass and optimize all you want- you're still going to play second fiddle to the spell chuckers.

(3) The spellcasters, on the other hand, had a horrible, horrible time multiclassing. It wouldn't show up in many campaign because when you compare a wiz3/clr3/mt5 to a ftr4/bar7, the Theurge is still as good as the melee guy. Replace the Theurge with a pure wiz11 or clr11 and you'll see immediately how horrendously underpowered the Theurge really is.

So... multiclassing was either an exercise in sucking less or sucking more. Good riddance.

I'm guessing conservative. They've said more than the initial print run of 3.5E, not 3.0E - and 3.5E by all accounts was a slower seller than 3.0E (stands to reason, not as much urgency to get it right away).

The fallacy here is that 3.5e sold as well as 3e. The initial print run for 3.5e was larger than 3e. The initial 4e print run (as quoted by mearls) was 50% larger than the 3.5e print run, so I'd say that the 4e print run is pretty ambitious.

This really doesn't matter. Obviously, distributors and retail stores expect it to be a big seller, but until consumers actually buy all of the copies, it remains to be seen how well it sells.

#4 on the Amazon charts = It's selling just a weeeeeeeeee bit well.

One of my concerns for 4e, for the player perspective, is that it will be hard to make a unique and diverse character. That has always been an integral part of D&D for me. I never liked playing a 'typical' character. One of my favourite PCs was my half-orc rogue. Not the typical choice, and I skipped over a lot of normal rogue skills (much to the chagrin of other party members..."Wait...your rogue can't pick a lock??") and focused on creating a thug/assassin type character.

Develop 2 characters, same race and class. Take them up to level 10 and show how they can be totally different. Prove that if I create a Dwarven fighter and someone else in my group does too, that we aren't going to end up with basically the same character 10 levels later.

Any takers?

I think your challenge can be met and countered without even designing the characters themselves.

ODD/BECM/1E difference between 10th lvl fighters: race, weapon proficiencies

2E difference between 10th lvl fighters: race, weapon proficiencies, skills

3e difference between 10th lvl fighters: race, skills, 10 feats

4e difference between 10th lvl fighters: race, skills, base archetype, 6 feats, 2 of 4 at-will powers, 3(?) encounter powers, 3(?) daily powers, 2(?) utility powers.

The only edition that has any chance of competing with 4e is 3e, and it looks pretty grim there.

If you want the challenge itself, I'll be more than happy to take it up once I receive my copy of the books.

puggins wrote:

They specified the giant's abilities in combat. Frost and Fire giants had somewhat different abilities, but Hill giant and stone giants? Practically the same. Sure, the fluff was different, but stone giants, for all intents and purposes, functioned as slightly larger hill giants, which they considered to be a waste of space. In that regard, they are correct.

I disagree that even being similar they were a waste of space, but you make a good point and my reply was a bit too flippant. Sorry about that. I jumped the gun, and I appreciate that you spelled out the case very succinctly. Sorry about the reflexive post.

No need to be apologetic. You raise an issue that I've had with practically every edition, with the exception of 2e, of all things. One of the best things about 2e was that they made a point to discuss the ecology/society of every monster, which gave each one a personality it had never had before. The coolness of the beholder and the mind flayer come from 2e, not 1e.

Of course, you have to couple the cool ecology with one of 2e's worst aspects at its inception- the hideous monster art. **shudder** Hopefully 4e gets it right.

Hill and stone are too similar? If they had said hill and mountain, I'll grant you that one, but hill and stone? Hill giants are evil, cruel, primitive brutes, and stone giants are bald, thoughtful, artistic, and reclusive. I don't get where there would be any confusion . . .

They specified the giant's abilities in combat. Frost and Fire giants had somewhat different abilities, but Hill giant and stone giants? Practically the same. Sure, the fluff was different, but stone giants, for all intents and purposes, functioned as slightly larger hill giants, which they considered to be a waste of space. In that regard, they are correct.

David Marks wrote:

Isn't that about the same rate of advancement as 3E?

Yes and no.

Yes, that is the so-called planned timeline by WotC.

No, that is very rarely the pace people I talk with expect.

When Crowheart stated he had no problem with this, I imagined he was like the folks in my area that wouldn't have a problem with this. And that is because they expect 20th level (3.X speed) to take 5, 10, maybe even 15 years of time.

Perhaps I inferred too much into Crowhearts post, but I thought I should point that out for anyone thinking "forcing the character to retire after X years of play isn't a bad thing." They might want to readjust their thinking when dealing with those that don't use their "optional" timeline.

This whole topic is the "This Goes To 11!!!" argument from Spinal Tap given form.

(1) A god like moradin is stated out to be a 37th level solo creature, as per a design diary release a few weeks ago. Orcus, the most powerful demon lord, is a 33rd level solo creature. Therefore, the laws of the universe basically stop at 30th level. They needed to pick an arbitrary stop point, and 30th level sounded good to them. They could have picked 40th or 50th, but they didn't feel the need to expand the game that far.

(2) Giving players the "ability" to play the game at 40th level is a farcical aspect of 3rd edition- Sure you can play a 40th level character in a technical sense, but the game mechanics had been thrown out the window many, many floors down. By the time you got to 40th level you were so far beyond the greater powers of the multiverse that playing at such a level was a joke.

(3) Players that expect to play in the same campaign for 5+ years are very lucky and very few and far between. I don't know any players I've ever met who have lasted in the same campaign for more than 2 years, and they didn't meet very often at all. Wizards modeled D&D's progression in 3.5e so that an average group in an average campaign (which lasts roughly a year) can reach 20th level and play with all the goodies in the PHB. Clearly, disenchanter, you know people that break this mold- that's great for them, but they're in a tiny minority. Peruse the official boards for the past five years and pick out how many people complained that D&D doesn't support groups that play weekly for more than a years per campaign- you simply won't find many. Modeling the game to cater to the one year campaigns AND the five year campaigns is very, very difficult to do without stiffing one or the other. When one is stiffed, it has to be, by necessity, the smaller group- which sucks, but it's a fact of life. They can always halve or quarter the experience gain- voila! A four year trek to 30th level.

4e feels like WoW to me. It's my opinion, and not meant to belittle anyone that feels it's not like WoW. The OP has stated numerous times now its his opinion and he seem to actuality wants to get involved with the new edition.

I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion, or trying to tell anyone that their opinion is invalid. I'm merely asking for evidence supporting that opinion. Specifically, what triggered the "4e = WoW" reaction? If the list above is complete, then... well, okay, an unsupported opinion is still an opinion, but it's a lot less influential.

Soo.... give me some reasons yourself. I'll start with the obvious one.

(1) Only characters that have achieved paragon status may use magic rings.

That does indeed smack of level requirements.

Give me more, though. One instance does not an argument make.

I really don't care for the 3 chances at surviving death, hopefully that can be easily House Ruled away.

It's really not the three chances at surviving death so much as the new countdown to death, just like 3.5e. This one is merely more random, which appeals to me.

I can't disagree more about the WOW reference. They were certainly inspired by certain mechanical improvements in WOW, just like WOW was originally inspired by D&D. But I can't see more than a superficial difference, and certainly not in the list you mentioned.

Epic creatures, heroic monsters

This is as close as you get, but this is merely terminology. You can't tell me that an Ancient Red Dragon wasn't an epic creature for a 17th level party, or that a beholer wasn't a epic encounter for a 10th level party.

warlocks

(1) The D&D warlock functions completely different from the WoW warlock. They are alike in name only.

Feat tiers,

Feat Tiers were in 3e, never mind 3.5e. They've changed nothing from 3.5e.

random healing,

Random Healing was in OD&D, BECM, 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e. They've changed nothing.

buffs,

Buffs have been in existence since 1e. 3e really popularized the concept, with a list of dozens of buffs including divine strength, Fox's Cunning and Bear's Endurance. They've changed nothing.

minions,

WoW has no such concept. If you substituted "Zombie Movies" for WoW, then you might have a point.

immediate powers,

Immediate Powers were introduced in Complete Warrior, which was published a fully year before WoW went into open beta. They've changed nothing.

recharge (cool down

Recharge rolls have been in since 2e. Dragons, for example, needed to wait 1d4+1 rounds before using their breath again. Now they use a random roll that mimics the length of time: a 5+ recharge functions pretty similarly to 1d4+1, and doesn't require bookkeeping. They've taken nothing from WoW, and streamlined the mechanics.

I'm not saying that 4e doesn't borrow from WoW, but I AM saying that said borrowing is isolated and not pervasive, and nothing in your list was inspired at all by WoW. Do you have other examples?

One of the fundamental rules of writing popular games seems to be "abtract the things that don't matter, specify the things that do."

The abstraction of diagonal movement is a perfect example of this- yes, we know diagonals should cost more, but the error introduced into the system is acceptable compared to the annoyance you're eliminating. Clearly the designers are trying to move away from a Third Reich-style war game. In other words, they're trying to make it LESS like a boardgame, not more.

Okay, looks like someone reverse engineered it - here's a PHB Lite Link someone posted with it at 32 point buy with the mid stats being odd costs instead of evens. I think his 17 is likely incorrect (my guess is 14, but 13 seems ludicrous with 18 costing 18.)

...In other words, Mearls ported in his Iron Heroes point cost scheme, for all intents and purposes. Hmm, okay.... Some of his assumptions are a bit strange, but I'll buy it. Not sure why point buy is better this way, but I'm open to an explanation.

Giving it some thought and having read my AD&D 2nd edition books over the weekend my one area of concern with 4th edition (and I feel this way about 3rd a bit) is that the players are getting so many cool (couldn't resist, sorry) powers that it's getting more an more about the flash and less about the story.

Just throwing the thought out there but some of the most memorable games I've ran, and frequently brought up by my players are the 2nd edition ones...

Well, speaking as a player who prefers the wizard, I see this as a much-needed "share the wealth" strategy. Ever since D&D began wizards and other casters had the ability to do all sorts of whiz-bang neato tricks and effects, while the melee classes got to swing a weapon more effectively than the wizard, but nothing (or nearly nothing) else. Now melee classes have the ability to do things with a weapon that a wizards can't possibly hope to do, which is a good thing considering how many sword-swinging protagonists there are out there. I really dont' see any more "flash" than previous editions, I just see it spread around a bit more evenly.

puggins wrote:

Keith Richmond wrote:

I'm pretty sure they actually changed the point buy at least a _little_. The stats from the con add up funkily.

They actually all add up to 30 points once you take racial mods into account. We already know the mods of a couple races, so we knew that the elf and the tiefling came in at 30 points. The rest is just backwards engineering- we now know, for example, that humans either get a +2 to the stat of their choice (likely) or +2 to wisdom (unlikely).

Corrin has an odd number of points.

Skamos has an odd number of points.
Tira has an odd number of points.

Someone official confirmed they all added up correctly.

I stand corrected! I'm betting there's something beyond the point-buy system going on there- the others are simply 30 points with bonuses using the old system, and no one ever said anything bad about the old system.

I'm pretty sure they actually changed the point buy at least a _little_. The stats from the con add up funkily.

They actually all add up to 30 points once you take racial mods into account. We already know the mods of a couple races, so we knew that the elf and the tiefling came in at 30 points. The rest is just backwards engineering- we now know, for example, that humans either get a +2 to the stat of their choice (likely) or +2 to wisdom (unlikely).

pres man wrote:

Koriatsar wrote:

JUST AS RANDOM?!!

It sounds like the DM does everything and the player does nothing.
When a player rolls a save it's FUN. Like those times when you roll that nat 20 for success.

Can this edition possibly get any worse?

Well just to be clear, when you make an attack on the NPCs, you roll the attack. Basically what it means is you don't get to do any rolls when it is not your turn.

That sounds weak.

Why?

Almost anyone who has ever, as a child, been given brussel sprouts, has no need to run the survey. Some things are just self evident.

This, more than any reason, is why studies of the "obvious" are needed. Earth as a flat disk was very much self-evident. So was the rotation of the sun around the earth- the sun was the one moving, after all!

I'm not disagreeing with your specific example, but there are plenty of "self-evident" things in science that are worth questioning, but our hubris prevents us from seeing the possibility of a different answer. I really doubt that there are too many truly worthless studies- I'm sure there are a few here and there, but by and large asking questions, even apparently simple questions, is a good thing.

I simply don't understand the issue that people have with these powers. They are movement powers, not "battlemat" powers.

Read Pin the Foe:

Until the end of the encounter, an ememy that is in melee with two of your allies can not move away without suffering opportunity attacks.

How about Iron Dragon Charge:

Until the end of the encounter, an ally that is next to you may charge an opponent you charge as an immediate action.

These are both valuable abilities, with or without a battlemat. White Raven Charge definitely benefits from having a battlemat, so don't take that ability if your DM doesn't use a battlemat. The same could have been said of many PHB 1e spells that talked about "foes within 10' of each other" and such.

The absence of a battlemat doesn't equate to the absence of movement during combat. Neither does the presence of a battlemat indicate a loss of roelplaying. If you don't use a battlemat then abstracting movement is a necessity- you'll have to live with abstracting some of these powers too. That's always been the case. In 3.5e the AoO rules practically screamed battlemat movement. Hell, back in the old days one of the first illustrations in the D&D handbook was that of a bunch of dice on top of a battlemat and some miniatures. They're not adding anything especially novel or bizarre here.

Now, when you, the 4e player (just assume that you started with 4e - it's not meant as a judgement or anything. Sake of argument and all that) want to talk to your favourite hobby, D&D, and you find a 3e player.

The two of you won't understand each other. Not just because the rules are different, but the world itself is different.

If a 2e and 3e player meet, they can at least talk about how they were in that dwarven city and were threatened by the cave-in. But if you the 4e guy and 3e guy speak, he first will have to tell you how dwarves used to live underground since forever.

You're equating world formats with the game itself. What if the dwarves in my homebrew lived in the forests instead? What if the Elves were desert dwellers? Would I not still be playing D&D? The differences between campaigns don't define the game, they define the story.

Besides, even in official D&D literature of the past, the chasms between editions were significant. What would a 1e guy and a 2e guy have to talk about when the Drow came up? One guy would be talking about Menzobarazan and the other guy would be asking about the Houses of Eirhel-Cinlu. Changes in game worlds happen, but D&D abides, as a wise man once said.

puggins wrote:

But the fact that their including a social encounter system tells you that they have your concerns in mind, don't you think? You're right- it might be terrible, but it shows that they know that many people want to simulate what happens OUTSIDE the dungeon. Thus we have a wait and see approach here- there's no point in saying that they are ripping out the noncombat roleplaying, because they're obviously not. What they put in remains to be seen.

Might be some token effort to appease the crowd. Fact is that a lot of stuff that doesn't help your character in the dungeon is gone, and we haven't seen any replacements for them yet.

Well, considering that we haven't seen 95% of the system yet, that's not particularly surprising or alarming. The fact that they've got an entire social interaction system coming at least tells you that they've got your concerns on the radar, whether or not you'll like their solutions.

Well, I've downloaded and printed everything I could find on 4E from the DnDXP and am going to run a playtest game tomorrow with my group. I'll post how it goes and try to be as honest as I can in my critique. Should be interesting. :)

AZRogue, I have a request, if you guys have time- try running it without the paladin or cleric and see if it works well. I'm interested in seeing how the healer-less party fairs...

I have two states for my PCs, alive or DEAD! I don't use this negative hit points crap. Resurrect someone, pop up and get back in the fight! Imagin what the game would look like if every monster had a healing alotment, and could be reduced to negative half their total hit points. This rule is so bad that the fix for it it to have one set of rules for PCs and one for monsters? This is insane. One of my personal rules as a DM is: If the PC can do it, the bad guys can do it.

This was the original rule in OD&D. It was spectacularly unpopular. So unpopular that the "optional" rule in the 1e DMG allowing characters to go down to -10hp became a de facto standard.

And -10 worked... for 1e D&D, there even the worst monsters in the game usually couldn't take you from half-alive to stone-cold dead in a round. In 3e, though, the high level game is spectacularly unbalanced that way. The odds that your character actually lands in the -10 buffer goes down and down as you climb in levels. At 15th+, you'd consider yourself damn lucky if an attack took you to -1hp instead of 1hp- at least an opponent is unlikely to hit you while you're down if somebody else is left standing. If you're at 1hp and a 15th level barbarian lets loose, kiss some xp goodbye.

Sorry if I messed up some quotes (i.e. attributed them to someone else).

puggins wrote:

The kobold with 27hp is considered a "standard" monster. The kobold that you and your friend are used to is the kobold minion, which couldn't be simpler- if you hit a kobold minion with a damaging attack, he dies.

What?

I don't like that. I don't like that a lot.

It's an option- you don't have to use it, but it's meant to let you simulate the neverending horde of monsters pouring onto the characters. I think it's a rather novel idea. But again, it's only a monster option.

puggins wrote:

That aside, the concept of adding 4 to a d8 roll is a fundamental building block for every RPG ever published.

Only for "bonus-based" systems (a term I may or may not have invented). "Pool-based" (another potential kae-original) don't.

Ugh.... I've tried to block out white wolf mechanics. They make about as much sense as Flat Earth Theory :-P I'll cede the point... any RPG that I've seen that is mathematically consistent has addition.

Touch was that much of an issue?

Not so much of an issue as a point of inelegance. Your touch AC sorta modeled how fast you could react to attacks. And your reflex save modeled... how fast you could react to attacks. Folding them together makes sense.

puggins wrote:

Your friend will not have to pore over five different feat descriptions to figure out his weapon damage.

He does in 3e? Can't say that I had to pore over more than two feat descriptions, unless it was epic. And that's for a fighter with the specialisations, and it's not really poring.

Well, I can name more than five off the top of my head, but there are plenty of others. I don't necessarily find 3.5e too complicated, mind you. But if Stereofm has a friend that doesn't like to do much addition then adding bonuses from weapon specialization, improved weapon specialization, weapon mastery, weapon supremacy and Power Attack, not to mention adding situational bonuses like sneak attacks and magical bonuses is probably something he'd prefer to avoid.

Something I'd like to point out before I go on- I'm not intentionally trashing 3.Xe. 3e brought me back to the hobby six years after I abandoned 2e for being hopelessly and needlessly complicated and archaic. I really like 3e, but I think there's room for improvement. I'm hoping that 4e addresses the shortcomings of 3e- I'm certainly not positive it will, but I do like what I've seen so far.

Anyway, onwards...

The Great Wheel is gone. Devils and Demons aren't what they used to be (the whole succubus/erinyes thing). Dwarves aren't the old stonehall dwellers. Elves aren't the old magicophiles. Elementals are fire archons or something now. In the Realms, most heroes one has come to like are gone, many of the deities one has come to like are gone as well, the Weave is gone, I hear a lot of nations are gone or altered...

Ehh... I can care less about these changes, mostly because they're superficial and could be changed easily. I haven't run a campaign with the great wheel in fifteen years. Eriynes and Succubi never really made sense when held against classical mythology, and make a lot more sense now. No point in arguing these, because your taste is valid and I have no right to argue it with you.

I will say, though, that I sure as hell prefer what they're doing compared to the sanitized-for-public-consumption wankfest that was 2e. Orcus is in the monster manual? Hell YEAH! Back to 1e, baby, like it should be!

When I mean flavor though, I don't mean these things. I mean the feeling you get while playing the game is it an exhilarating romp pthrough a multi-level dungeon, hardly stopping to catch your breath (BECM), or a calculated exercise in resource management, hoping that your preparations are enough to succeed (3e). Each edition had its own feel. I don't see 4e being more radically different than the rest were to each other.

puggins wrote:

That's an odd and fallacious argument. No one disputes that OD&D and BECMI D&D were two of the first roleplaying games, and neither of them incorporated any sense of non-combat proficiencies.

They were the first. A lot of stuff was still in its baby shoes back then.

To use the car analogy: The first automobile didn't have seat belts, power steering, and many other things I would say are must-haves for cars today.

But the fact that their including a social encounter system tells you that they have your concerns in mind, don't you think? You're right- it might be terrible, but it shows that they know that many people want to simulate what happens OUTSIDE the dungeon. Thus we have a wait and see approach here- there's no point in saying that they are ripping out the noncombat roleplaying, because they're obviously not. What they put in remains to be seen.

One of my players, a good friend, is like this. He likes to play fighters, because there are few rules. he does not like additions. Neither substractions...

Power attack is sometimes difficult for him, as he forgets from one session to the next. But after a few years, and a little reminder before starting the session, he is doing fine.

Now... 1st (!) level kobolds with 27 hp.

Since a sword strike for 1d8 + 4 is already annoying for him when it strikes a 6 hp kobold, how am I going to sell him this ???? How many years will it take ?

And that's not including bloodied, terrain effects ... which might or might not be bad ideas, but won't simplify things.

so that's yet another reason for me to stay 3.5

The kobold with 27hp is considered a "standard" monster. The kobold that you and your friend are used to is the kobold minion, which couldn't be simpler- if you hit a kobold minion with a damaging attack, he dies.

That aside, the concept of adding 4 to a d8 roll is a fundamental building block for every RPG ever published. Basic D&D in 1981 used the exact same way to do damage. If your friend is used to it in 3.5e, he won't need to change any of his knowledge for 4e.

Even better, some of the most annoying and math-intensive concepts have been streamlined to avoid the time-consuming task of calculating everything out. Grappling is ten times easier, and yet no less satisfying. Touch armor class no longer exists. Your friend will not have to pore over five different feat descriptions to figure out his weapon damage. In every way, math in 4e has been forced into the background, which is a good thing. Your friend who hates math will probably welcome the simplification with open arms. The fact that it takes a few extra hits to kill the kobold overseer doesn't involve math at all- it's a matter of game balance. I'm sure your friend wasn't annoyed that the Red dragon he fought didn't die in one shot, right?

puggins wrote:

KaeYoss wrote:

I find it weird, too, but take a look at it. None (or almost none) of the old flavour is there any more, and what they did to the Realms? I know that many didn't like the Realms, and those changes seem to make them like it now. But other people did like it. And now they don't.

With no snark intended, can you define the flavor that you see missing? I've been playing D&D since the Erol Otus BE(CMI) days, and I can't tell whether or not a lot of the old flavor is gone, since the flavor of each edition is so radically different than the previous one (3.0 to 3.5 excepted).

I was reading through a copy of the old Rules Cyclopedia and amazed at how many of the things that were either very right or very wrong with 3E appeared there first - Prestige Classes (Paladin, Avenger, Druid), Skill Points (a simpler system than the NWP one from 2e, but similar, and closer to the d20 one)...

Then again, the Cyclopedia DID have THAC0... :D

But I'm not talking about rules... I'm talking about flavor. I'm a big fan of Classic D&D, but playing it is a drastically different experience than playing 3e, which is a drastically different experience than 2e, which is a fairly different experience than 1e.

Puggins wrote:

That's an odd and fallacious argument. No one disputes that OD&D and BECMI D&D were two of the first roleplaying games, and neither of them incorporated any sense of non-combat proficiencies.

Not true - either the Master or Companion box (I don't remember which - I never owned either but remember a discussion about it a few years back) added a Skill system to BECMI that appears in the Rules Cyclopedia. Basic and Expert rules had none of these, but the BECMI edition did have them ultimately.

Well, that simply dates me. I cut my teeth on the B/X Moldvay version of D&D, and that certainly didn't have any sort of skill system. So my point still stands- two of the most revered versions of D&D simply had NO skill system outside of the classic thief abilities, and yet I would seriously doubt that KaeYoss would consider B/X D&D as "Diablo on a Board."

I find it weird, too, but take a look at it. None (or almost none) of the old flavour is there any more, and what they did to the Realms? I know that many didn't like the Realms, and those changes seem to make them like it now. But other people did like it. And now they don't.

With no snark intended, can you define the flavor that you see missing? I've been playing D&D since the Erol Otus BE(CMI) days, and I can't tell whether or not a lot of the old flavor is gone, since the flavor of each edition is so radically different than the previous one (3.0 to 3.5 excepted).

AZRogue wrote:

What I think more likely is that they boiled the game down to the core (kick in the door, kill the monster, take his stuff) style AS THEY SEE IT.

Then they're not seeing a roleplaying game. It really is Diablo the Tabletop Game.

That's an odd and fallacious argument. No one disputes that OD&D and BECMI D&D were two of the first roleplaying games, and neither of them incorporated any sense of non-combat proficiencies. The first mention of noncombat skill was the optional "secondary skills" rule in the 1e DMG, and that "system" was extremely obscure and detail-free. If you used to be a sailor, then you were good at doing sailor-things, with no die rolls or elaboration on how to handle these "sailor things" given.

Gygax himself was somewhat dismissive about all the non-combat garbage that went on in later editions in Dragon magazine. I recall rabidly disagreeing with him at the time, but I've mellowed to his viewpoint over the years.

Unless they're completely oblivious to their customers, they must know that many like to do more in D&D than just have combat after combat. In fact, I've seen people defend D&D before, saying that you can do more with it than just kick in the door, kill the monster and take his stuff.

And now they make it very clear that they don't want that extra stuff?

Well, here's where the limited information we have comes in- there's apparently an entire social encounter system being installed, and who knows how they're going to handle "secondary skill" type stuff. Given your obvious interest in noncombat mechanics, surely the addition of a social interaction mechanic that is a lot more extensive that has been around before pleases you?

The point being that Mouseferatu's enthusiasm was expressed well in advance of his disclosures and was, in my opinion, disingenuous. Add to this that the 4e link you mention was posted after news broke of the partial NDA release and a picture starts to form about how WotC was (and possibly still may be) handling things.

I don't see any funny business here. More to the point, I don't see a reason for funny business. WotC is attempting to build long-term profit generation via subscription fees and repeated book sales. If they were aiming for a one-time sell-off followed by a quick exit from the market then a smokescreen or detailed image-management would at least make sense- the obvious examples here would be poorly-made video game or movie sequels that try to profit on their reputations in the short term at the cost of long term viability.

WotC is not trying that model. Collins' initial email and subsequent response made all the sense in the world- "we far away enough from printing the books to be able to correct mistakes, balance issues and poorly thought-out ideas. Please bring these up to us before instead of discussing them on the internet." No director of any product would've said anything differently. In essence, he said "if X sucks, give us a chance to fix it instead of assuming it'll be in the final product," which is imminently reasonable.

Vomit, in case you are not aware, is strictly forbidden by the forum rules. Since my post was not deleted by the caring moderators, I must conclude that no vomit is present.

I'm not a long-time poster here, so I'm obviously in the dark. What is it with all the vomit jokes here?

At any rate, a number of people here know 4e playtesters and the email they received from WotC about presenting only positives. This email was leaked and may have only appeared here because of the extreme censorship on the WotC and ENWorld boards. That is, it wasn't well publicized by WotC or ENWorld for obvious reasons.

It was kept so well-hushed that it only made it to the news page and into the 4e news archive.

This was also the time that Mouseferatu was outted as having a business relationship with WotC, something that was not disclosed in his public posts that had glowing reviews of 4e.

Indeed, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the investigator who outed the dastardly Mouseferatu: Mouseferatu himself, who disclosed that he was doing freelance work for 4e before he wrote that glowing 4e review.

You can find dastardly conspiracies everywhere if you don't bother researching your claims before vomiting them forth. A little documentation helps a lot.

Oh, and my "research" consisted of googling "mouseferatu reviews 4e" and "and collins on playtesters." You don't need to dig very far, usually.

I will try to keep this brief.

First and foremost, all this blather about "freedom of speech" is simply nonsense. The first amendment of the United States constitution specifically deals with the GOVERNMENT'S inability to stifle free speech. Paizo, being a private owner of these boards, is well within their rights to stifle what they consider to be offensive speech.

Government Banning KKK demonstration -> freedom of speech issue.

Paizo deleting KKK advertisement -> NOT a freedom of speech issue.

Now, people may question Paizo's decisions on what to ban and what to allow, and it may affect their bottom line.

Anyways.....

Personally, I find ad hominem attacks on designers, companies and other board members to be highly distasteful, but I've resigned myself to their existence on the internet, and I won't fault Paizo because a few of their readers happen to be neanderthals incapable of holding a reasonable conversation.

But some posters on this board have truly gone beyond the pale.

There is the post that implies that 4e killed Gary Gygax. The poster oh-so-cleverly added the "some have wondered" tagline in front to give it some sort of false legitimacy, when no one on the rest of the internet that could be googled or Yahooed even mentioned the possibility.

There is the post that dismissed a third party designer's positive review of 4e monster design by trashing the professionalism of that third party design studio.

There is the constant trashing of the 4e designers, rather than the concepts themselves.

There is the comparison of WotC to Pravda, almost certainly from a board member who has no clue what living in a country dominated by a totalitarian government really meant.

Really, some of this stuff jumps past the deep end and slams into the concrete. Opposition websites and contrary points of view are absolutely vital- in some ways, some of you guys are the ones that are truly pushing the 4e designers to make a better game. But some board members only produce truly counterproductive, hate-filled invectives that make it easier for the opposition to completely ignore this board.

Some basic decency and common sense would be appreciated.

I admit, the mechanic doesn't make sense to me. What if the fighter doesn't threaten the marked opponent? What if the fighter is hiding? What if the marked opponent fails a Spot check to notice her?

This is definitely the case of not having access to the full rules. Clearly, the intent is that the fighter is a distracting presence, and makes the marked creature less likely to hit other targets because it has the fighter to deal with.

If there's three fighters in a little clump, why can only one of them mark an opposing Pit Fiend? What happens if I can't tell which of the opposing fighters has marked my character?

This is an interpretation issue- the sheet says "no more than one mark per creature," but I believe it means "this character may not mark a specific creature more than once," which means that all three fighters probably WILL be able to mark the poor widdle pit fiend.

If my fighter marks a character, can I "unmark" him? Will I be able to mark an ally (thus removing an enemy's mark)?

All of this will hopefully be delineated in the PHB. Obviously, it wasn't important in DDXP, so it didn't need to be explained.

How many times do I have to use this terminology before it stops sounding like a dog peeing on an opponent?

I wish they had use "challenged" instead of "marked."

But so far, we've only seen snippets of the rules. I'm sure that the full 4th-Edition manuals will explain all this.

I expect it to, yes.

the Roles

I've played tons of Online games (EQ, EQ2, WoW, DAoC, COH/CoV, etc) so I'm *very* familiar with the Tank / Tauntmonkey role, I've just never seen it used in D&D (or any tabletop game, actually).

I think, before the Knight class, the Kender from Dragonlance and the Taunt spell, neither of which I've seen used, are my only exposures to that sort of mechanic in tabletop RPGs.

And you won't see it used in 4e either, at least not until much higher level. The fighter's challenge mechanic is elegant and very flavorful- if a fighter decides to focus on an opponent ("mark" him), that opponent will pay a price for not dealing with the fighter. The fighter only distracts and punishes, he doesn't execute anything as hamfisted as a "taunt" mechanic.

Similarly, the paladin marks his opponent with the sign of his god, forcing the opponent to fight him or to be punished by divine forces for challenging that god's authority. Only at 27th level does the paladin get the ability to shut out his friends as targets, and that involves obvious deific intervention. What's the problem?

As for the fighter being a striker, well, he still is- he's capable of pumping out plenty of damage. All four of the abilities shown (cleave, tide of iron, passing attack and Brute Strike) focus on dealing damage and/or pushing the opponent around. Plenty of damage is dealt. In fact, of the six characters previewed, brute strike gives the fighter the single most damaging attack in the party.

My impressions so far:

LIKE
Healing Surge and Second Wind
1st Level HP being so big
At Will Powers

Well, I love 4e so far, but one of my misgivings has been the "at will" power- some minor trigger to refresh it would've been nice, just to give characters even more decisions to make. Then again, there is such a thing as decision overkill.

QUESTION
Standard, Move, Minor actions -> no full attacks? > No iterative attacks?
* I'd prefer Spycraft/Stargate style with 2 actions = 2 attacks, 2 moves, etc, and eliminate iterative to speed things up.

Every character gets a minor, move and standard action each round, and you can "trade down". Iteratives are gone. We don't yet know what replaces them, if anything.

DISLIKE
Movement in Squares

Meh... It's a shout-out to non-US customers. The players themselves can adapt the square to their most familiar measurement, whether that be feet, meters, hectare or whatever.

Durations (esp of spells)

The new list of wizard spells confirms that durations still vary quite a bit. I was afraid the save mechanic would dictate most offensive spell durations, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Individual attack rolls against each enemy caught in an area of attack spell

Now Players roll to-hit instead of DMs rolling saves. As a wizard-guy, I really like this change. As a DM, I really like this change too- shifting more of the burden onto the player is a good thing for keeping games running.

the Roles

I think these are being overplayed. Let's be honest- the fighter has always been a "defender" as they term it. The label only simplifies things.

Saving Throws being a flat 10+ = success

Yeah, this is weak. I would have preferred weak save (15+), standard save (10+) or strong save (5+) at least. Then again, this might be in the system already.

Wizards as Blasters, losing the versatility

Wizards aren't blasters- they're labeled as controllers, and they still have a ton of versatility if you read the two page spread of spells that got shown at DDXP. You have immobilization spells, Direct damage, area damage, invisibility, flight, resistance- all sorts of goodies in two pages.

Wizard implements...though if only small bonus maybe ok.

No clue about this. A proper implementation of a wizard's staff or wand, though, would be a refreshing improvement.

Missing races and classes

My absolute number one gripe. I don't miss gnomes or half-orcs, but I miss barbarian a bit, and druids a lot.

All in all, I think it reads like a ok system, if a bit too skirmish like. I'd probably play in a game to try it out, but definitely want to continue the main campaign(s) in 3.5. There is too much untapped potential in the 3.5 library to leave it behind, IMHO.

So, yeah, there is some positives that I might lift for my 3.x games.

If POL is the way to go, and Greyhawk-lite was bad, tell'em to stop stealing from Greyhawk for 4e. Its sickening the lack of support greyhawk got, and now to watch them pick the bones for the POL setting of 4e.

What are they stealing from Greyhawk? I know theyr'e including Pelor in the list of gods, but that's the only thing I've heard that is Greyhawk specific to come down the pipe.

Greyhawk as an implied setting was the absolute worst result for Greyhawk- everyone was introduced to Greyhawk-Lite, which hardly appealed to anyone enough to figure out the greater, deeper world of Greyhawk.

Worse, tons and tons of things got shoehorned into the faux-setting because, well.... it was the implied setting. The watering down was horrible.

An implicit Points of Light campaign is absolutely the way to go. I would argue that the early editions used that very model (Keep on the Borderlands, anyone?) to a high degree of success.

One more thing- someone mentioned that 4e doesn't address the concept of "Bloat". I don't exactly know what "Bloat" means to that poster, but 4e's main purpose is to get rid of niche rules and overly complicated subsystems, which is my definition of the word bloat.

how exactly does the WotC management plan to overcome the fragmentation of it's fan base? Please don't give me any of that "Love of 4E will conquer all" claptrap. So far IMO the majority of what has been released and leaked out reeks. I mean no insult to any of you pro 4E'ers, so take it in stride.

With all due respect...

You're making the assumption that fragmentation will occur. Previous history disagrees with you. 4e will likely either retain 90%+ of the D&D audience or will lose all of it. In other words, it'll follow the path of either 3.5e or Champions: Fusion. Both 3e and Champions were popular systems (one far more than the other, yes), both would probably have enjoyed continued success without a new edition and both saw pretty significant resistance to that edition.

3.5e, despite suffering a significant online backlash, proved to be wildly popular. The previous edition (3e) essentially ceased to exist. YOu can argue that the changes in 3.5e were fairly minor, but that argument works in two directions- yes, those playing 3.5e were just playing a rebalanced 3e, but the population as a whole saw a need to update all their core rulebooks for such a minor revamp. For such a minor revision, 3.5e did a spectacular job of utterly obliterating the use of the 3e rulebooks- you simply never see them around anymore, despite many protests, predictions and promises to the contrary by online 3e hardliners.

Champions didn't have such a huge backlash in advance of publication, but boy did it have one afterwards- the champions audience simply rejected the new rules. Not only did Fusion not gain any traction with existing customers, it did a heck of a job of marginalizing the Champions population in general- barely a whimper was heard for years afterwards. I think the HERO system in general is still suffering some of the backlash of Fusion. And it's easy to see why- the rules just stunk. They flew in the face of Champions philosophy and tradition. How any publisher could manage to so misread its target audience still astounds me today.

So what do these two wildly diverging results predict about 4e? Well, I think they predict that 4e will live or die on its quality. If it's better than 3.5e- even only marginally better- then 3.5e will die as surely as 3e did. Sure, right now you hear all sorts of complaints about investment, timing, what-have-you. But come release, these complaints will drift away if 4e is a better system than 3.5e

If 4e is not as good as 3.5e, however.... if it's full of exploitable holes, or it contains uncomfortable abstractions that make players cringe, or proves clunky or inelegant, then there'll be hell to pay. Fans will abandon it by the boatload, and 3.5e will have been dealt a serious- not mortal- blow. WotC's market share and raw sales will plunge like an anchor.

So, sorry, I don't see a serious fragmentation coming. Either practically everyone will switch, or no one will. I don't see an in-between.

And the reverse is also true; that elements created and intended to be GH-specific get transported to other settings. What the Hell is Lolth doing in FR? You can change the spelling, change her to a goddess, change whatever you want, but it is still misappropriation of intellectual property (I will stop short of using the 'T' word, since for all I know, TSR gained ownership the character from EGG, but it is still misuse, like a cameo from Spiderman in a Batman movie, it's appearance is jarring and leaves an unpleasant taste).

It niggles when I hear players in a homebrew campaign declare their cleric's allegiance to Pelor/Heironeous/Ehlonna et al., since these are the 'core' deities in the 'core' books.

This is an odd argument, seeing as how the original adventures at best only loosely tied the G/D/Q cycle to Greyhawk, if at all- I know that EGG gave suggestions where to place the Tomb of Horrors IF the DM were using Greyhawk. The G/D/Q series doesn't even do that. Only when it was converted into supermodule format (after EGG left the company, I'm fairly certain) did it get "officially" associated with Greyhawk. Lamenting Intellectual Theft is really, really odd. Gygax was never so narrow-minded as to suggest that all the official names should be changed if the modules were not used in GH. He was very protective of his own campaign, and went out of his way to say that most modules were adaptations of their original form, but he never proclaimed Lolth, Eclavdra or the rest to be Greyhawk-only.

So you're disappointed that players aren't exposed to Greyhawk, yet you hate the clear homage that the designers of 3.0 paid to the Greyhawk setting? They basically made the transition into a Greyhawk game nearly seamless.

Hi folks,

Brand new member here. I'm interested in reading the older threads in the SCAP forum, but I can't figure out how to get to them. How do I read the older threads?