|
I like it.
I like the removal of characteristic penalties. The only mattered when a player tried to min/max anyway.
I like the removal of the sleep immunity - that only really worked during early levels and then only rarely did it ever come in to play.
The one trend that bugs me is the group bonus thing - that will be a pain to keep track of and most folks will just end up ignoring it.
Well I disagree with the group bonus being forgotten thing. I'm paraphrasing here but this is an example of play in my games right now.
"I fire my bow at the leader of the the orcs!"
Player Rolls: 18 with my bonuses that's AC 25.
DM: Okay that's going to miss.
Another Player: Did you add my +1 from Bless?
Player: No, crap! AC 26?
DM: HITS!
|
|
Well I disagree with the group bonus being forgotten thing. I'm paraphrasing here but this is an example of play in my games right now.
"I fire my bow at the leader of the the orcs!"
Player Rolls: 18 with my bonuses that's AC 25.
DM: Okay that's going to miss.
Another Player: Did you add my +1 from Bless?
Player: No, crap! AC 26?
DM: HITS!
Oh yeah. That is generally what happens in my group too. Trouble is that there seem to be a bunch of them now. It will be more like our high level game when there are like 5 spells up that give group bonuses, plus bard song, plus class abilities, etc.
Its gonna get a bit crazy. Hmmmm - maybe Paizo should work up a new Gamemastery product?
|
Likes:
Average Height/Weight for Elves is closer to how I generally envision them
No more 'trancing' I always thought that was kind of dumb
Dislikes:
The Elven accuracy (rerolls just slow stuff down!)
Sideburns on my elves (This is going to make me hate all male elf artwork)
In general though Paizo could do their own Elf thing in their own 3.75 PHB . I generally like what they already have for Elves (espescially the Forlorn) =p
Agree, Slaad.
And why pigeonhole an entire race with the wilderness background? And why are elves suddenly clerics, particularly since their favored class in 3 was wizard?
The body hair bit is dreadful, and this sentence is a clunker:
Wild and free, elves guard their forested lands using stealth and deadly arrows from the trees.
Introducing elves with the modifiers, particularly the ones used, is poor style.
And why are elves now tall?
I generally like it. But it also really, really cheeses me off that a subrace of elves gets a slot when there are already elves. People complain about the tieflings and that's all well and good, but there are two pointy-eared nubile races that share a set of ancestors and it bothers me. It's absolutely impossible to just say "Eladrins are a sub-branch of elves. To reflect the differences in culture they exchange x elf group power for y eladrin group power and their weapon proficiency slots are instead bonus languages/bonuses to knowledge skills/something else." A paragraph about the differences in the two cultures and you're done. They could have had room for gnomes or half-orcs, but they decided to be hypocrites on the "no redundant races" angle to be more similar to WoW. Lame.
Everything else about it: not a problem.
|
Favored class cleric? WTF? So these nimble forest dwellers love tromping around in full plate and converting people? Okay. Druid would make perfect sense, but I don't see cleric. Especially since elves have always been much more inclined to arcane casting than divine. I could even see sorceror as it's arcane, but wilder than wizard.
Also the racial feat totally blows. Spend a feat to get +2 to hit on one attack per encounter. Wonderful.
Long live 3.5.
I think you actually get the racial feat for free.
Favored class cleric? WTF? So these nimble forest dwellers love tromping around in full plate and converting people? Okay. Druid would make perfect sense, but I don't see cleric. Especially since elves have always been much more inclined to arcane casting than divine. I could even see sorceror as it's arcane, but wilder than wizard.
Also the racial feat totally blows. Spend a feat to get +2 to hit on one attack per encounter. Wonderful.
Long live 3.5.
Actually clerics in 4th edition apparently aren't so much with the heavy armor, according to Races and Classes . . . and plus, druid isn't ready yet, so for now, its cleric . . . in 2009 a sweeping change can happen to elven culture when they realize that they all should favored being druids, now that its available.
|
Actually clerics in 4th edition apparently aren't so much with the heavy armor, according to Races and Classes . . . and plus, druid isn't ready yet, so for now, its cleric . . . in 2009 a sweeping change can happen to elven culture when they realize that they all should favored being druids, now that its available.
Like some kind of elven hippie revival... ;)
I think it's interesting... and I think it's odd that they would have cleric as favoured class. I read this at first, and thought "what the hell did they do to elves?!" Then I remembered something about the eladrin... those are supposed to be more like the typical "high elves" right? So these would be the wood elves (or wild elves, or something)?
Odd that they would include both, as a previous poster said.
|
|
The thing that really struck me about this blurb wasn't the actual mechanics, but the giant ego of Bill. Once again they act like it is wise and benevolent WotC giving a "gift" to us small incompetent morons. The WotC R&D department really need to get over themselves. Hey WotC, your constant ego trips aren't doing anyone any good! Just shut up and try to make a game that D&D fans can enjoy without feeling like they are lowering themselves to playing a dumbed down for the masses MMORPG!
I suppose that they are focusing on attracting (new) vid kids because they are assuming that we grizzled vets who are grumbling now will surrender and buy later. It appears to me that the 2e-3e transition was a more significant mechanical change, but this one feels like a much bigger break with the past. What I've read of the new game doesn't feel much like D&D at all, at least the D&D I've known since the 80s. I'll give it a chance, but D&D isn't the only game in town.
Maybe 'Castles and Crusades' is quality, or maybe I'll finally pick up the 'Chtulhu' book and see what they've got.
Everything I've read about CoC is positive.
I found this article about the elves to be the first one that I could sit and enjoy without squirming in my seat. There is some meat in the fluff that makes it an interesting read. Though for the most part it's just more of the same, rapped in different paper and served to us the consumer. For all the elves in the story were always there in some form or another and now they have just changed some names around to their liking.
I think to have made it better they should have had a whole new setting in place, that way they could have used the gods they wanted without changing existing ones around and/or taking them from various other settings. The other thing I didn't like and it has already been mentioned is they are using classes (Druid) that will not even be in the first group of core books and to me that is a big no no.
Yet over all I enjoyed it, and found it to be the best article so far.
In the Forgotten Realms, elves have been as tall as humans since the old grey boxed set in 1st edition. I believe there have even been a few references in Dragonlance novels about elves being tall (the Qualinesti assumed that Tanis' son was short due to his human blood).
Eladrins are NOT elves.
This is what I despise about how WotC is handling 4E. Destroying all sacred cows and tradition out because the moronic customers they want to attract can't, I don't know, LEARN things?
Was it really hard for someone to learn that eladrins are a race of celestial beings from the Upper Planes (the Heavens) that represent and embody the principles, ideals, and power of Chaos and Good?
Oh yeah, 4E is about killing creatures as fast as you can so you can get to 30th level in under an hour. How could I forget that? Storytelling is gone from D&D.
|
|
That's exactly what I was thinking. I have not been impressed or even excited about ANY change/addition/mechanic of 4E thus far, but I will admit, after reading the Elf, thinking, hmm..that's not so bad at all.
"Not so bad." An interesting statement. I don't expect 4e to be atrocious. If anything, I see the elves resembling a cross between FRCS's wood and wild elves and the eladrin serving as FRCS's sun elves. In this respect, I see WotC trying to tie its game worlds a bit closer together.
That said, I continue to have trouble with some of the changes in fluff, but in reading the Lady Penitent series, it's helping. Also, it has occurred to me that WotC is trying to move FRCS into the Dark Ages. (It seems to me that the 2008 release, although a non-campaign setting, is being connected to FRCS. Perhaps a prologue to 5e?)
I'm in a wait and see state of mind.
|
|
Favored class cleric? WTF? So these nimble forest dwellers love tromping around in full plate and converting people? Okay. Druid would make perfect sense, but I don't see cleric. Especially since elves have always been much more inclined to arcane casting than divine. I could even see sorceror as it's arcane, but wilder than wizard.
Also the racial feat totally blows. Spend a feat to get +2 to hit on one attack per encounter. Wonderful.
Long live 3.5.
I suspect that druids will be merged into clerics. Instead of worshipping gods, they will worship nature. It's possible that they'll get their own talent trees within the cleric class.
|
|
This is what I despise about how WotC is handling 4E. Destroying all sacred cows and tradition out because the moronic customers they want to attract can't, I don't know, LEARN things?
Learn?
Learn what?
I met a hard core Realms guy that knew FR history and geography better than he knew actual history and geography.
He knew all of this crap about an imaginary world that was utterly useless beyond the gaming table.
If that is the kind of thing you learn by playing D&D better not to play at all.
It is a game and as such I should not have to learn anything but how to play and just enough fluff to spin a good tale of adventure.
Eladrins are NOT elves.
This is what I despise about how WotC is handling 4E. Destroying all sacred cows and tradition out because the moronic customers they want to attract can't, I don't know, LEARN things?
Was it really hard for someone to learn that eladrins are a race of celestial beings from the Upper Planes (the Heavens) that represent and embody the principles, ideals, and power of Chaos and Good?
Oh yeah, 4E is about killing creatures as fast as you can so you can get to 30th level in under an hour. How could I forget that? Storytelling is gone from D&D.
This fluff fires off more story ideas for me. I love the idea of visiting the eladrin courts in the faery otherworld as a member of that gallant race, and fighting the drow with their formorian alles in the shadow forests beyond the eyes of mortals.
|
|
I met a hard core Realms guy that knew FR history and geography better than he knew actual history and geography.
He knew all of this crap about an imaginary world that was utterly useless beyond the gaming table.
If that is the kind of thing you learn by playing D&D better not to play at all.
Many people know many things that are in many ways completely useless in feeding either themselves or their families. Civil War buffs, baseball fans, chess historians, surfers, and those odd people that can speak Klingon have all spent many hours of their lives learning things of little practical value.
They do these things because they derive enjoyment from it. Obviously the act of learning something for the mere joy of knowing that thing is a pleasure that seems to escape you.
You have my sincere condolences.
In the meantime, I must ask myself - if Dungeons and Dragons is a mere game not worth arguing about, either pro or con, why are you spending so many hours of your life arguing with people whom you do not know and likely will never meet about a thing that really in the end is inconsequential?
Well, I like that they present a non-sucky elf (cause let's face it, the 3e core elf is gimpy).
I'm not in love with the "aura" fashion that the designers keep horkin'.
|
|
They do these things because they derive enjoyment from it. Obviously the act of learning something for the mere joy of knowing that thing is a pleasure that seems to escape you.
It is not about practicality vs fantasy. Its about moderation. Its about understanding that elves are not real and if someone imagines them to be different then the way you imagine them is not reason enough to generate the kind of violent hostility expressed by those that don't buy in to 4E.
I love the world of Glorantha created by Greg Stafford for RuneQuest. I know it very well and I enjoy reading about it.
Greg has a rule about Glorantha - your Glorantha will vary. Heck he even contradicts himself. In the world of Glorantha fandom its called being Gregged.
No one flies off the handle. No one screams when Mongoose depicts the world differently.
Its an imaginary world and things can change and we don't have to fold those changes into our indiviual understanding of Glorantha.
Its fiction and should be treated that way.
In the meantime, I must ask myself - if Dungeons and Dragons is a mere game not worth arguing about, either pro or con, why are you spending so many hours of your life arguing with people whom you do not know and likely will never meet about a thing that really in the end is inconsequential?
I love talking about games. I love talking about crunch. I love talking about fluff. I don't get tweaked when D&D does not meet my expectations. i am not going to rage against the machine because elves got taller. That is taking it way too seriously.