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I actually don't have any trouble with the concept of astral diamonds at all... I can easily envision large chunks of quartz and rock spinning through the endless depths of the void, githyanki toiling away to break free powerful crystals for ioun stones, etc. I have trouble with the breakdown that 'astral dimonds' are actually from the astral plane and readily available as a common denomination.
The Astral Diamonds are all that is left of the World of Greyhawk...
Kewl!man I'll use this in my 4e campaign!
I actually don't have any trouble with the concept of astral diamonds at all... I can easily envision large chunks of quartz and rock spinning through the endless depths of the void, githyanki toiling away to break free powerful crystals for ioun stones, etc. I have trouble with the breakdown that 'astral dimonds' are actually from the astral plane and readily available as a common denomination.
Without taking the time to go reread the passage, it seemed to indicate astral diamonds were used as currency for very high purchases in some of the big planar metropoli (metropolises?) like Sigil, or the City of Brass, where the population probably does get a large number of visitors from the Astral (and travellers capable of going there). I don't think you'll really be seeing them out in Hommlet.
Cheers! :)
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I am a huge fan of varied currency. The standards listed in the PHB, coupled with denominations created for my homebrew world, represent the primary baseline that most nations with mints try adhere to. Generally this baseline is established by powerful merchant consortiums and banking guilds so nations working with that standard will see an marked improvment with the facilitation of trade and commerce. As a side note, in my current homebrew Common is a kind of universal language devised by powerful merchants in a now fallen empire to help improve trade deals and diplomatic interactions.
But for me, everyday currency must meet two criteria. First, the resource should be common enough that a sizable population can use it as money. Second, it should be rare enough to actually carry some sort of value. If a particular nation utilizes "paper currency" then that currency needs to be backed by a rare enough resource to make it viable. Older currency, like that kind of stuff found in ruins, can be worth more or less than the current baseline based a number of factors.
Outside of the silly name, astral diamonds don't feel like they fit that criteria. If they are rare enough to be worth 10,000 gp then their usefulness as currency is staggeringly small. If they are used for high value purchases in the extraplanar markets their designation as currency would indicate two things. One, they are common enough to used fairly regularly by the wealthy. Two, they are being "cut" or otherwise produced by a backing authority that insures that each astral diamond is, in fact, worth the same amount across the board. Both of these seem remarkably unlikely, given the value of the astral diamond, even in fantastic locales like the City of Brass and Sigil.
It's like saying the ten rubies an adventurer pulls out of a hoard are currency. Sure, they are valuable but they are not currency. They can be traded for goods but that makes them trade goods, not government sponsored currency. The merchant who recieves them might sell them to a jewel dealer or he might get a necklace fashioned or give them to his wife. They do not get rotated around the economy the same way.
I would have been much happier if they had given me a seperate economy of the planes, with feasible worth and materials, and simply told me such metals and alloys are worth more on the material plane because of their rarity. But a 10,000 gp diamond being a currency standard is just silly and destroys the versimilitude for me.
I am a huge fan of varied currency. The standards listed in the PHB, coupled with denominations created for my homebrew world, represent the primary baseline that most nations with mints try adhere to. Generally this baseline is established by powerful merchant consortiums and banking guilds so nations working with that standard will see an marked improvment with the facilitation of trade and commerce. As a side note, in my current homebrew Common is a kind of universal language devised by powerful merchants in a now fallen empire to help improve trade deals and diplomatic interactions.
But for me, everyday currency must meet two criteria. First, the resource should be common enough that a sizable population can use it as money. Second, it should be rare enough to actually carry some sort of value. If a particular nation utilizes "paper currency" then that currency needs to be backed by a rare enough resource to make it viable. Older currency, like that kind of stuff found in ruins, can be worth more or less than the current baseline based a number of factors.
Outside of the silly name, astral diamonds don't feel like they fit that criteria. If they are rare enough to be worth 10,000 gp then their usefulness as currency is staggeringly small. If they are used for high value purchases in the extraplanar markets their designation as currency would indicate two things. One, they are common enough to used fairly regularly by the wealthy. Two, they are being "cut" or otherwise produced by a backing authority that insures that each astral diamond is, in fact, worth the same amount across the board. Both of these seem remarkably unlikely, given the value of the astral diamond, even in fantastic locales like the City of Brass and Sigil.
It's like saying the ten rubies an adventurer pulls out of a hoard are currency. Sure, they are valuable but they are not currency. They can be traded for goods but that makes them trade goods, not government sponsored currency. The merchant who recieves them...
Without having the fluff handy, I can certainly envisage a situation where, due to strange planar mechanics or some such, the 'astral diamonds' grow to a consistent size/shape/clarity/what have you.
I'd note that the value of an astral diamond is based on its weight, as is the other forms of currency. That is, 1/50th a pound of gold is worth one GP. 1/500th a pound of astral diamonds is worth one hundred GP (or something, I'm not looking at the chart currently).
Currency has always been kinda fuzzy in DnD, so I'm ok with it.
Cheers! :)
Feyleather armour is what you get if you have Tailoring to 375, and use
(10) Felweave Cloth
(4) Runic Spell Thread
(12) Cured Heavy Hide
(3) Astral Diamondsand requires an arcanite rod (available from an enchanter)
I thought everyone knew that. Right?
At last! Now we can finally put that "you mean 4E doesn't have craft/profession" rumor to rest! :P :)
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Feyleather armour is what you get if you have Tailoring to 375, and use
(10) Felweave Cloth
(4) Runic Spell Thread
(12) Cured Heavy Hide
(3) Astral Diamondsand requires an arcanite rod (available from an enchanter)
I thought everyone knew that. Right?
I am just hoping I can cut a Dazzling Astral Diamond and socket into my Windreaver Blade of the Boar. The +3 Sta would be super sweet.
At last! Now we can finally put that "you mean 4E doesn't have craft/profession" rumor to rest! :P :)
While simultaneously confirming 4th Edition is like WoW.
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The concept of a extra-planar currency does not offend me. However, the entire thing has the feel of being jammed together up against deadline. This has been a constant issue for me. There is a constant air of paniced rush and hasty decisions that makes me scratch my head and wonder.
Finally, anyone remember Planescape. We have developed iconic material to deal with this in the past. Of course, THAT can just be tossed over the shoulder of your average ambitious young designer.
Remember, most of these guys will have their best ideas harvested and secured as WOTC IP, and then be replaced by the next wave of bottom of grade employees in about 3-5 years. This looks more and more like a software model every time I look at it. Bring in the hot new talent. Have them build the craziest and most innovative stuff they can build with disregard for what came before, and then dump them for the next wave of newbies that you can hire at bottom dollar as soon as you enter the next production cycle.
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Without having the fluff handy, I can certainly envisage a situation where, due to strange planar mechanics or some such, the 'astral diamonds' grow to a consistent size/shape/clarity/what have you.
I agree, with the right fluff you can have anything. Gold coins can grow on the Lula Tree in the magical realm of Winkie Land and you can justify it in game. I can come up with any excuse and make it work. But consistency and believabilty are two different things for me. Believability requires consistency but consistency does not require believability.
As you pointed out, all currency is usually based on the weight of the coin, chit, or what have you. It is also dependent on the standard purity of the coin. D&D generally assumes coins of pure metal. Or rather, the game ignores it entirely and leaves to the GM to decide if all coins are pure. But the fact the astral diamond's value is based on weight actually works against its versimilitude. In the end, its a hand wave that seems out of place, IMO, with the traditional D&D currency hierarchy.
I will agree there is some fuziness to the currency system but not extensivly so. It is kept vague enough for DMs to tinker with if they want. Reading the Gord the Rogue novels you get the idea how Gygax did this in his game. But some thought went behind its original conception and you can read those thoughts in the 1e DMG. What Gygax did there and why he did it has come down to us all the way to 4e.
The economy, on the other hand, is a huge mass of fuzz that rarely comes into play. I like to toy with it in my games but I understand a lot of DMs do not.
Without having the fluff handy, I can certainly envisage a situation where, due to strange planar mechanics or some such, the 'astral diamonds' grow to a consistent size/shape/clarity/what have you.I agree, with the right fluff you can have anything. Gold coins can grow on the Lula Tree in the magical realm of Winkie Land and you can justify it in game. I can come up with any excuse and make it work. But consistency and believabilty are two different things for me. Believability requires consistency but consistency does not require believability.
As you pointed out, all currency is usually based on the weight of the coin, chit, or what have you. It is also dependent on the standard purity of the coin. D&D generally assumes coins of pure metal. Or rather, the game ignores it entirely and leaves to the GM to decide if all coins are pure. But the fact the astral diamond's value is based on weight actually works against its versimilitude. In the end, its a hand wave that seems out of place, IMO, with the traditional D&D currency hierarchy.
I will agree there is some fuziness to the currency system but not extensivly so. It is kept vague enough for DMs to tinker with if they want. Reading the Gord the Rogue novels you get the idea how Gygax did this in his game. But some thought went behind its original conception and you can read those thoughts in the 1e DMG. What Gygax did there and why he did it has come down to us all the way to 4e.
The economy, on the other hand, is a huge mass of fuzz that rarely comes into play. I like to toy with it in my games but I understand a lot of DMs do not.
Hmm. While I understand what you're saying, I just don't see the knock against astral diamonds being valued by weight. But then, I certainly fall along the "the economy of the world is a giant fuzzy mess, mostly worked upon my random tables and on the spot chance". So maybe thats the disconnect here.
Cheers! :)
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Disregarding my last post, I think the thing that irks me most about 4e is its departure from source materials and traditions in the search for new customers. They're turning D&D from a community into a commodity.
Anyway, I'm going to go now. I promised myself that I would let sleeping hounds lie, but... aw, f!+@ it.
Bye.
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Hmm. While I understand what you're saying, I just don't see the knock against astral diamonds being valued by weight. But then, I certainly fall along the "the economy of the world is a giant fuzzy mess, mostly worked upon my random tables and on the spot chance". So maybe thats the disconnect here.
Cheers! :)
True. And I think the way I feel about the astral diamonds has almost as much to do with tradition than anything else. Making it a core part of the game sits wrong with me. But I recognize that is entirely my opinion and difficult to define absolutely.
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You know, I am sure you have heard this before David but I wanted to thank you for being such a fantastic poster. You respect opinions and when you debate a point you do so with a great deal of gentlemanly behavior. Even though we might not see this change the same way, I respect the fact we can differ on this thought and you aren't trying to make me feel dumb.
I hope my comment about gold producing trees wasn't seen as being too snarky or an attempt to make your thought seem trite. If it was, I apologize. I have this tendency towards the absurd. It wasn't a shot at you or your idea per se, just my perception of how the D&D world works.
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Bring in the hot new talent. Have them build the craziest and most innovative stuff they can build with disregard for what came before, and then dump them for the next wave of newbies that you can hire at bottom dollar as soon as you enter the next production cycle.
While this sounds harsh, I am reminded of the 4E proponents (Yes, I still call them 'proponents' even if they use derogatory terms like 'whiners' and 'haters' for us. I'm old-fashioned.) who have asked why I am so distrustful of the people who brought me 3E, to which I reply, "I'm not, I still buy Monte's stuff, actually. WotC laid off many of the designers who brought us 3E, after all."
The game is now being reimagined by people who haven't played it as long as I have, and they *insist* that 3E is unplayable, boring and / or slow, despite having, in some cases, gotten their start in the industry working under the people who designed it, and then got laid off and replaced by this new generation.
There's a whole lot of people throwing the people who got them their jobs under the bus going on, and it's kinda creepy to read them dissing the work of people who used to be their friends.
And, irony of ironies, it isn't the old work of the old guard that is 'slowing down' or 'needlessly complexifying' the game. It's the newer stuff that's been produced by the new generation. Yeah 4E designers, *you did slow down and complixify 3E.* And now you want to be the ones to fix it? I am reminded of the mechanic who loosens some stuff up under the hood during your check-up, as 'job security,' so that you'll have to come back and have that stuff fixed.
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Sorry, didn't want to offend. I have nothing against your sexual orientation.Let's just say that it sounds like it belongs to one of those badly stereotyped gays from lousy movies.
Or moronic. That fits, too.
But it's reassuring that we all agree on that: Astral diamonds stink.
It's cool. Like I said, I know you meant no insult.
I even debated saying something at all. I didn't want you to think I was angry at you or anything. Because that is certainly not the case.
Thank you for saying what you did.
True. And I think the way I feel about the astral diamonds has almost as much to do with tradition than anything else. Making it a core part of the game sits wrong with me. But I recognize that is entirely my opinion and difficult to define absolutely.
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You know, I am sure you have heard this before David but I wanted to thank you for being such a fantastic poster. You respect opinions and when you debate a point you do so with a great deal of gentlemanly behavior. Even though we might not see this change the same way, I respect the fact we can differ on this thought and you aren't trying to make me feel dumb.
I hope my comment about gold producing trees wasn't seen as being too snarky or an attempt to make your thought seem trite. If it was, I apologize. I have this tendency towards the absurd. It wasn't a shot at you or your idea per se, just my perception of how the D&D world works.
No sweats Bardy! Change is a scary thing and everyone fears it. I don't begrudge those upset/alarmed by some of the previewed changes their thoughts/reactions. But I take my philosophy in life from Monty Python ... Always Look on the Bright Side of Life! So I generally always try to parse stuff as nice as I can.
Thanks for the compliments though! :)
Yeah, it probably has an enormous Godpiece.
Don't you mean GODSPIECE ... say it alound ... run for the hills ...
Anybody spend as much time playing Diablo II as me? Where if you beat normal mode, you can play through again on Nightmare, and then on Hell? And Leather armor becomes Serpentskin armor, then Wyrmhyde?
Sounds a bit like the leather/feyweave/unicorn-giggles stuff. Feyweave looks just like leather, but is better in every way and only available at Paragon level of play.
Something else occured to me:
In addition to sound really stupid, the whole astral diamons stuff sounds like something very setting-specific.
As such, they really should not be in the core rules.
If they're in the PHB, people kinda assume that every setting has them, and the places where they get them.
I would have welcomed some suggestions for larger denominations. This continues 4e's trend of telling you how to play the game, and if you want to go your own way, you're going to have an uphill strauggle from page one.
Anybody spend as much time playing Diablo II as me? Where if you beat normal mode, you can play through again on Nightmare, and then on Hell? And Leather armor becomes Serpentskin armor, then Wyrmhyde?
Sounds a bit like the leather/feyweave/unicorn-giggles stuff. Feyweave looks just like leather, but is better in every way and only available at Paragon level of play.
I read this and thought "that's funny."
Then I began to wonder. So I had a look. You're right! They "appear at level 16 and beyond"
So, basically, monsters "drop" them only once you get high-level enough.
D&D does turn into a lousy computer game knock off.
Finally, who comes up with these g@#~~@n names? Astral diamonds? Godplate? Do these guys work for Wizards of the Coast or Chong Glass?
I guess we now know what happened to the guy who messed up the stupid random name generators in Diablo and WoW (at least the German versions. I don't know whether the original is supposed to be as bad, but I heard that the translators did some extra stupid mistakes*). He god fired for incompetence and wizards took him in so they could learn the secret of their success.
* I mean, the random generator messing up big time and a monster has a name like "Of Darkness Of the Storm Winds" (not "critter of the darkness of the storm winds", mind you - one of them is supposed to be the subject). But naming the necromancer set "Necrophiliac's X" (where X is armour and so on) just does it. Kinda like kalling a currency astral diamonds.
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* I mean, the random generator messing up big time and a monster has a name like "Of Darkness Of the Storm Winds" (not "critter of the darkness of the storm winds", mind you - one of them is supposed to be the subject). But naming the necromancer set "Necrophiliac's X ...
[threadjack]Tell me this did not really happen. Please...[/threadjack]
Something else occured to me:
In addition to sound really stupid, the whole astral diamons stuff sounds like something very setting-specific.
As such, they really should not be in the core rules.
If they're in the PHB, people kinda assume that every setting has them, and the places where they get them.
I would have welcomed some suggestions for larger denominations. This continues 4e's trend of telling you how to play the game, and if you want to go your own way, you're going to have an uphill strauggle from page one.
Anybody spend as much time playing Diablo II as me? Where if you beat normal mode, you can play through again on Nightmare, and then on Hell? And Leather armor becomes Serpentskin armor, then Wyrmhyde?
Sounds a bit like the leather/feyweave/unicorn-giggles stuff. Feyweave looks just like leather, but is better in every way and only available at Paragon level of play.
I read this and thought "that's funny."
Then I began to wonder. So I had a look. You're right! They "appear at level 16 and beyond"
So, basically, monsters "drop" them only once you get high-level enough.
D&D does turn into a lousy computer game knock off...
Claiming that astral diamonds appearing in the PHB implies they'll have to found in every setting is simply false. Lots of setting change things drastically from how they are presented from the PHB. Look at Dark Sun for example.
Also, many high powered magical items generally aren't introduced in 3E before high levels. I doubt there are many characters below 10th carrying Vorapl Longswords. This is no different.
Cheers! :)
Yeah, but I heard if your characther jumps on the last pipe and jumps up in the air, he hits a hidden brick that drops 3d6 astral diamonds and a mushroom of enlargement! Sweet!Thank you! When I read the bit on the asstral diamond, the first thing I thought of was perfectly cut diamonds of different colors floating in the Astral Plane. That picture of course, screamed "video game" in my head. I wonder if PC's can get additional healing surges if they collect enough of them...
I'm also still wondering how you mine the Astral Plane, but that must just be the grognard in me.
What crap.
It has to be easier than being on the Etherial plane and mining Ether Ore... :D
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Also, many high powered magical items generally aren't introduced in 3E before high levels. I doubt there are many characters below 10th carrying Vorapl Longswords. This is no different.
There is a difference. It would not be against the rules for a 5th level 3e fighter to have and use both a vorpal longsword and a ring of invisibility. My impression of 4e thus far is that it would be contrary to the rules for such to happen in the new edition.
Also, many high powered magical items generally aren't introduced in 3E before high levels. I doubt there are many characters below 10th carrying Vorapl Longswords. This is no different.There is a difference. It would not be against the rules for a 5th level 3e fighter to have and use both a vorpal longsword and a ring of invisibility. My impression of 4e thus far is that it would be contrary to the rules for such to happen in the new edition.
You may be right re: the ring (which I agree is a silly rule). But hopefully that rule has been taken out.
I never received that impression regarding other items however; I always took the levels of the items more like "this item would be appropriate for a character of level X". But I guess in this case, we'll have to wait for the books to come out to truly know.
Cheers! :)
Awesome, not only does medium armor seem to be gone forever, but Sigil is mentioned!
Awesome, not only does medium armor seem to be gone forever, but Sigil is mentioned!
The more Sigil, the better! (IMO!)
Cheers! :)
"When you wear light armour, you add either your Intelligence or your Dexterity modifier to your Armour Class, whichever is higher."
Can anyone explain the rationale behind this rule?
Why is your being clever and able to understand complex mental diagrams making you any better at dodging/avoiding/absorbing incoming blows?
I can actually understand the Wisdom/Charisma pairing for Will defense, and the Strength/Constitution for Fortitude defense ... but Dexterity and Intelligence for AC?
Doesn't that sound like that "unnecessary parallelism" the 4E designers used as an excuse to get rid of the Great Wheel and other subsystems from previous editions?
(I actually wanted to ask this question on ENWorld, but considering that most threads over there are crapped with posters that seem to be unable to evolve beyond blind fanboyism ...)
Is it only me, or do the multiple references to astral/fey/elemental procedures (never mind the diamonds) sound like a cheap cop-out for the designers too lazy to come up with real (within the context of the game) explanation for the properties of armor? "Well, we need some better armor." "Well it is...you know...magic." "Hmmm..." "And it comes from the Astral Plane!" "Cool!" Every second magic effect has its origin on the astral plane now, or what?
And this "appearing only at higher levels" crap - up to 3e, it was within the DMs realm to decide what treasure to hand out at what levels. In 4e, it is set by the rules? That really sounds like being taken from Diablo or something. I expect now in the digital tabletop that killed monsters fall over and their treasure gets thrown up in the air, landing with an appropriate sound :-)
The astral diamonds... well, I would miss the gems from earlier editions of the game as the big valuables if I ever played 4e (chances got slimmer right now). It does not make much sense to me.
Stefan
Astral Diamonds are just a renamed Planar Pearl from PlaneScape. It's not really new and certainly isn't worth flipping out about. If you're going to insist on having an economy in magic items that scales up into Epic Levels you really need something like that. Consider that in 3rd edition a +2 Sword costs your weight in gold. Not its weight in gold. Your weight in gold. Seriously a +2 Sword costs over 165 pounds of gold. That's completely absurd.
So making Platinum worth ten times as much and hard coding the Planar Pearl is a pretty obvious solution to the problem. Not really a good solution, in that it still has the Diablo style magic market that doesn't make any sense. But it is an obvious solution. If you're going to have a stupid system of buying and selling magic items that you want everyone to use, at the very least you can make the high end currency portable enough for people to actually use it.
They should have just removed Magic Mart altogether and left the job of hauling gold back in wagons as an exercise for characters who wanted to make strongholds and rule kingdoms like in AD&D. But they didn't. They decided to try to keep the Diablo Economy thing, and that pretty much necessitates using extremely expensive currencies. I would have preferred them to have used bound souls, various magic gems, and IOUs from powerful outsiders all of variable value if they were going that direction. Because epic currency should feel epic if it exists at all. But they decided to go with something extremely uninteresting because they feel that haggling, evaluating gemstones, and bartering for favors is badwrongfun.
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The Leather/Feyweave/StarPants progression is just inexcusable though. That's really, really stupid. And it makes me very sad.
-Frank
Yeah I was never a fan of the magi mart myself. I riped it out done ,finished . wasn't hard.WASN'T a good ideal in 3e why the hell did they leave it in when they chopped the hell out of everything else??
I think I'll just let my players go on payin' for their stuff in crack cocaine, it's still a lot lighter than astral diamonds.
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Are you serious? You can add INT to your armour class? Where does this s*%& come from?
Have you not heard - its part of the new philosophy of always having bonuses...
Fortitude now accepts the better bonus of either Strength or Constitution as a modifier. Reflex accepts either Intelligence or Dexterity (light armor too). And Willpower accepts either wisdom or charisma.
If everyone has a juicy bonus then what's the point?
... that was rhetorical.
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Astral Diamonds are just a renamed Planar Pearl from PlaneScape. It's not really new and certainly isn't worth flipping out about. If you're going to insist on having an economy in magic items that scales up into Epic Levels you really need something like that. Consider that in 3rd edition a +2 Sword costs your weight in gold. Not its weight in gold. Your weight in gold. Seriously a +2 Sword costs over 165 pounds of gold. That's completely absurd.
This isn't a challenge, just more of a curiousity. Where did the planar pearl appear in the Planescape setting? I had never heard of it before this time and now I want to go look it it up and read more. I can't find reference to it on Planewalker.com
"When you wear light armour, you add either your Intelligence or your Dexterity modifier to your Armour Class, whichever is higher."Stephen Hawking is now the dodgiest man who ever existed!
See him move at blinding speed!
He is a living blur!Are you serious? You can add INT to your armour class? Where does this s%!! come from?
Don't rant. Don't rant. Don't rant. Don't rant. Don't rant.
<Deep breathing....>
It's called the Duelist. It's in the 3.5 DMG.
Where did the planar pearl appear in the Planescape setting? I had never heard of it before this time and now I want to go look it it up and read more. I can't find reference to it on Planewalker.com
I've never heard of it either and I'm a pretty big Planescape fan. If it does come from Planescape, it's pretty obscure.
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It's called the Duelist. It's in the 3.5 DMG."When you wear light armour, you add either your Intelligence or your Dexterity modifier to your Armour Class, whichever is higher."Stephen Hawking is now the dodgiest man who ever existed!
See him move at blinding speed!
He is a living blur!Are you serious? You can add INT to your armour class? Where does this s%!! come from?
Don't rant. Don't rant. Don't rant. Don't rant. Don't rant.
<Deep breathing....>
Its also a single class. Applying this to all characters across the board is not the same thing as making exceptions in special cases. And I guess therein lies a major difference in design philosophies between editions. 4e is the "No Child Left Behind" of D&D.
Never again can you have the physically awkward but absolutely brilliant wizard. Or you can, but you know he will be able to avoid attacks just as easily as the slightly dense but remarkably agile rogue.
Feyleather armour is what you get if you have Tailoring to 375, and use
(10) Felweave Cloth
(4) Runic Spell Thread
(12) Cured Heavy Hide
(3) Astral Diamondsand requires an arcanite rod (available from an enchanter)
I thought everyone knew that. Right?
Awesome post LOL
For those having problems with Intelligence helping with the increase to AC, I have to agree with it. Someone who is highly intelligent can analyze an opponent, his environment, and properly calculate when an attack will come, at what angle, and where to move to dodge it or most of it. If you're standing by a wooden beam inside a tavern brawl and an enemy swings wide at you. Your Intelligence would indicate that at the angle the enemy is swinging towards you, if you leaned your upper body towards and behind the beam, it will hit the beam and miss you mostly or entirely.
Whereas your Dexterity alone would simply react physically by dropping low to the floor without dropping on the ground to avoid the attack and beating the attack with pure speed and not any reason at all.
End result, Intelligence bonus to AC is perfectly ok for AC if you can describe how it happens in the first place.
Bring in the hot new talent. Have them build the craziest and most innovative stuff they can build with disregard for what came before, and then dump them for the next wave of newbies that you can hire at bottom dollar as soon as you enter the next production cycle.While this sounds harsh, I am reminded of the 4E proponents (Yes, I still call them 'proponents' even if they use derogatory terms like 'whiners' and 'haters' for us. I'm old-fashioned.) who have asked why I am so distrustful of the people who brought me 3E, to which I reply, "I'm not, I still buy Monte's stuff, actually. WotC laid off many of the designers who brought us 3E, after all."
The game is now being reimagined by people who haven't played it as long as I have, and they *insist* that 3E is unplayable, boring and / or slow, despite having, in some cases, gotten their start in the industry working under the people who designed it, and then got laid off and replaced by this new generation.
There's a whole lot of people throwing the people who got them their jobs under the bus going on, and it's kinda creepy to read them dissing the work of people who used to be their friends.
And, irony of ironies, it isn't the old work of the old guard that is 'slowing down' or 'needlessly complexifying' the game. It's the newer stuff that's been produced by the new generation. Yeah 4E designers, *you did slow down and complixify 3E.* And now you want to be the ones to fix it? I am reminded of the mechanic who loosens some stuff up under the hood during your check-up, as 'job security,' so that you'll have to come back and have that stuff fixed.
I agree entirely with this statement.
It's a sad state of affairs for WotC and D&D as a whole...only the end of 2008 will tell us what it all will mean.
Someone who is highly intelligent can analyze an opponent, his environment, and properly calculate when an attack will come, at what angle, and where to move to dodge it or most of it.
No, that doesn't work for me. Because if you go that route, a highly intelligent person can end up over thinking it and making matters worse.
Yes, a similar argument could be made about reflexes (Dexterity), but reflexes tend to be much more accurate. I know my reflexes vastly improve when my mind can't interfere - either through sleep deprivation or alcohol. (And I am not even classifying myself as highly intelligent.)
Astral Diamonds are just a renamed Planar Pearl from PlaneScape. It's not really new and certainly isn't worth flipping out about.
Even the professed Planescape experts haven't heard of them - I haven't, either.
And there's a difference between some obscure planescape stuff and core rules.
And if you think something called "astral diamonds" isn't anything to flip out about, you need to get your head examinated! ;-P
I'm sure people have been killed for names like that. Either that or I didn't hit them hard enough and they lived ;-)
If you're going to insist on having an economy in magic items that scales up into Epic Levels you really need something like that. Consider that in 3rd edition a +2 Sword costs your weight in gold. Not its weight in gold. Your weight in gold.
That's why halflings are always decked out in magic bling: They have to pay a lot less. And I understand the dwarves' greed now: They have to pay so much more for their stuff than other races!
Seriously a +2 Sword costs over 165 pounds of gold. That's completely absurd.
Maybe. But it's not an excuse for "astral diamonds". Nothing is.
Without thinking about it for more than 10 seconds, I could come up with 10 solutions that would have been better. And most of those 10 solutions really stink, I freely admit that.
They should have just removed Magic Mart altogether
Agreed. It's one of those few things that a great many people I know and/or met on message boards complained about with 3e and wanted gone - and one of those things I agree that D&D would do well without.
And with all the butchering of D&D they went through with, one of the things that is probably way up on the list of Things That Are Wrong With D&D stays.
Call me paranoid, but I can't help but accuse them of making this game more like Diablo or WoW to draw that crowd.
I would have preferred them to have used bound souls, various magic gems, and IOUs from powerful outsiders all of variable value if they were going that direction. Because epic currency should feel epic if it exists at all. But they decided to go with something extremely uninteresting because they feel that haggling, evaluating gemstones, and bartering for favors is badwrongfun.
Actually, I'd prefer something mundane. Diamonds, maybe - not magical astral diamonds mined by Keebler elves, mind you, but mundane ones. Or something like that.
Or leave it out and just put suggestions in. Something that every campaign and DM decides for himself.
Outsider IOUs would work (bound souls is a bit to LE for my tastes), or another Idea I read about once. Hoardshares. Don't remember the name exactly, but they were basically paper money, backed by dragons' hoards or something. Fort Know, Great Wyrm Gold Dragon, so to speak. They had magic failsaves and all that.
I guess Adamantine or Mithral would be out of the question, because they're usually used to make arms and armour with it. You don't put it into coins if it's so much more useful in swords.
"When you wear light armour, you add either your Intelligence or your Dexterity modifier to your Armour Class, whichever is higher."
Can anyone explain the rationale behind this rule?
Can't.
Not any more than the fact that you cannot add anything with heavy armour. I mean, you may not be able to jump around nimbly, so dex might be out, but what about int? If being smart makes you harder to hit, how will the full plate prevent that? Dulls the mind, all that metal?
I can actually understand the Wisdom/Charisma pairing for Will defense, and the Strength/Constitution for Fortitude defense ... but Dexterity and Intelligence for AC?
I don't see the strength for fort. My muscles help me pump the poison out of the system? I hit the flu over the head with a club?
Wis/Cha for will I could see. Having enough ego to enchant myself to fight off other enchantments, whatever.
About abilities and AC: NWoD has Defense, something distantly related to AC - it's either Wits or Dex, whichever is lower. I can see it: You have to be able to think fast and move fast.
In NWoD, Wits is mental finesse (like dexterity for the body and manipulation for social situations) while Intelligence is mental power (like strength for the body and charisma for social situations) (there's also resistence attributes: stamina for body, resolve for mind and composure for social).
D&D doesn't has as many ability scores as NWoD has attributes, so some are more or less lumped together. But is Wits part of intelligence? I'd rather say that it's wisdom, since wits is use for all the perception stuff, like wisdom in D&D.
Doesn't that sound like that "unnecessary parallelism" the 4E designers used as an excuse to get rid of the Great Wheel and other subsystems from previous editions?
It sure does. Doesn't make too much sense, and I don't see how we need it, either.
(I actually wanted to ask this question on ENWorld, but considering that most threads over there are crapped with posters that seem to be unable to evolve beyond blind fanboyism ...)
Would probably be interpreted as an insult to wizards employees and those who like 4e - you're saying that they're dumb not to ask these questions, you see - and you'd get banned. That will teach you to question the wizard overlords.
Alright I have been waiting for Legend of Zelda D&D forever now... grabs astral diamonds and goes to buy a white sword.
I must defend Zelda here: The game has rupees, not astral diamonds. And in Zelda, you never buy swords. You earn them. At least I can't remember ever buying a sword in the games I played (which were Adventure of Link, A Link to The Past, and Twilight Princess)
And, to make one thing personally clear: They're never dropped by random enemies! :P
Claiming that astral diamonds appearing in the PHB implies they'll have to found in every setting is simply false. Lots of setting change things drastically from how they are presented from the PHB. Look at Dark Sun for example.
What sun?
Look at the Realms. What kind of coins does it use? Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum. Eberron? I'm not quite sure, but from what I've heard, it's CSGP.
In fact, whenever something like currency is changed, they usually make a big deal out of it. Dragonlance and their Steel Pieces (which never made sense.
And you can be sure that the new Realms and Eberron will suddenly be flooded with Astral Diamonds.
Also, many high powered magical items generally aren't introduced in 3E before high levels. I doubt there are many characters below 10th carrying Vorapl Longswords. This is no different.
Yes, it is. As you say: generally. It may be implied. But it doesn't explicitly say "you can't get this before level 16". It screams, shouts, shrieks DIABLO. "Requirements: Level 21, Strength 40".
D&D isn't supposed to be Diablo. When such "soft limitation" kinda exist in the game, it's okay. But when the rules dictate or even imply that you cannot use this until level X, I feel like I'm hunting for magic items, doing Mephi Runs or Raids, instead of roleplaying a character in a fantasy world.
* I mean, the random generator messing up big time and a monster has a name like "Of Darkness Of the Storm Winds" (not "critter of the darkness of the storm winds", mind you - one of them is supposed to be the subject). But naming the necromancer set "Necrophiliac's X ...[threadjack]Tell me this did not really happen. Please...[/threadjack]
Will it comfort you that I haven't seen it personally? Just heard about it by those who play. So there might be doubt about it. Those guys could have pulled my legs.