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Extremely charitable. Had he merely said that, it would be one thing. To say he's wrong and should check his facts is another.
As for a link... it was a news item and discussion in the 4e forums. I don't have it myself, but I had presumed this podcast, and the general "parse out the core" sales philosophy is espoused, were well known.
A non-D&D spellcaster who is a "general practitioner": the queen in Sleeping Beauty. She curses someone, controls minds, grows and animates thorns, throws fireballs, and turns herself into a dragon (it never helps).
A non-D&D spellcaster who is a "general practitioner": the queen in Sleeping Beauty. She curses someone, controls minds, grows and animates thorns, throws fireballs, and turns herself into a dragon (it never helps).
BADGUY
Personally, I'm not adverse to the uber-wizard but I simply prefer if the game tells me upfront, "wizards are uber"
In D&D, you have always been led to believe that one class is as good as any other.
Well, perhaps this is a minor point, but not always. In the 1e PHB, Gygax stated that magic-users might be weak at lower levels, but they were more powerful than any other class at higher levels. He said something similar about monks as far as combat goes. I don't have a 1e PHB handy, so I can't give you page numbers, but it's in there. Balance was a different kettle of fish back then. In some sense (not all senses), it wasn't a big concern, not like it is today.
Well, perhaps this is a minor point, but not always. In the 1e PHB, Gygax stated that magic-users might be weak at lower levels, but they were more powerful than any other class at higher levels.
Yes, that's true. "Always" was a poor choice of words on my part.
Page 25 of the 1E PHB: "Thus, while magic-users are not strong in combat with weapons, they are possibly the most fearsome of all character classes when high levels of ability are finally attained. Survival to that point can be a problem, however, as low-level magic-users are quite weak."
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I think that's exactly his beef with the system. If I play an archery, I take on the baggage of being a ranger and the wilderness flavor behind it.
Ignore the fluff. Just play the Combat Style for what it is (Archer). Pick different Skills to make your guy the kind of Archer you want him to be. There is nothing else that ties you to being Nature's Champion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stalker0
The one nice thing about the 3.5 fighter was that he was pretty flexible. From his core, you could create any kind of fighter guy you wanted, TWF, big sword, sword/shield, archer, polearm specialist, etc.
There are no "generic" classes in 4e. Everyone has a specific niche, which tends to force a certain kind of flavor on each class, and I can see how its problematic.
I know, but the choices are still there - they're just not at the Class stage. You can still choose to be an Archer, but you choose that by playing a Ranger. There really isn't any "Nature baggage" with that choice with appropriate Skill and Feat selection.
__________________ I don't "tell stories" when I play D&D. I adventure. Afterward, when the gold is counted and the bodies piled high, we may tell stories about how it all went down. Or not.
The reason you see things like this is because a character that inevitably wins simply because the author says he can is incredibly dull. Magic is untethered from any non-arbitrary causality, and arbitrary causality can take tension only so far.
So a literary wizard who fails to demonstrate competence with Magic Type X is actually capable of Type X, he just doesn't feel like using it. Or alternately, he's capable of Type X, but he's never in a situation where Type X would be more useful than what he can already do. I really can't buy this analysis. It requires either a wizard so pigheaded that he'll use a hammer to turn a screw rather than reach for a screwdriver, or else one who miraculously never faces conflict for which his established shtick is not perfectly suited.
4e doesn't let the wizard do a lot of things he used to be able to do. Even with refluffing, some abilities that were bread-and-butter in earlier editions are simply gone- mind control, instant long-range teleportation, cheap scrying, instakill spells, polymorphs, and long-duration buffs, for a few. Some of these may reappear with specialist classes, and some may be gone forever. If none of them come back, I really won't shed any tears. If I want to play a god among men with unstoppable sorcerous powers, I'll reach for Ars Magica, which does a vastly better job of handling a game where Wizards Are Better. The fact that these powers are gone from my D&D is not a bug to me, it's a feature.
I'm sure some people will earnestly insist that they could have been kept if only WotC had been smarter about implementing them. That's nice, but it's possible to insist that a circle could have four sides if only you're smart enough about squaring it. It's the sort of thing that I'll believe when I see it.
He either doesn't feel like it or though capable, didn't learn it for one reason or another maybe even choosing not too. Anyone is capable of anything, it comes down to personal drive and outside effects within our lives. Anyone can run for president if they have the desire and motivation and the outside effects of being born in the U.S.A., meet the age requirement, and find supporters to help fund and run their campaign.
My aspect of this debate points out that the potential is still there whether revealed or not. That potential doesn't exist in 4e, but possibly after the Arcane book. There was more customization in previous editions for mages or any other class with the limitations being set by the DM and the player the way it should be done, not by the rules themselves. The exception to the rule were the martial based classes who now get some of that aspect, but the problem as stated is that customization feels like you're using a cookie cutter. Fighter x is different than y only in how he fights and by the weapon he chooses. The same can be said for wizards in that damage is still pretty much the same between all forms. The only real difference as pointed out is fluff or how you describe your character's actions.
As for believability...using powers for several levels and suddenly your character completely forgets them...that's believable??? "You know I swore I had fireball in this spellbook, oh well, guess I'll cast something else. Let's see..." I remember a few games hearing a player suddenly say, "I never thought I'd have a reason to use this spell but now I can't wait to try this out."
Betote: Thanks for your list.
Last edited by dm4hire; 2nd November 2008 at 05:37 AM..
Reason: Grammar
Mmmm... Lord of the Rings, Stormbringer, Song of Fire and Ice, Harry Potter... to name a few :P
Lord of the Rings? I don't remember Gandalf doing much more than throwing lighted pinecones at goblins and self-rezzing. Grima Wormtongue is clearly bewitching Theoden's head, but neither he nor his boss threw any overt magic around. LotR is notorious for how _little_ D&D style magic ever happens.
Song of Ice and Fire, I'll have to plead ignorance on that one. I can't say I've ever been enticed to read it.
The Elric series... I can't remember Elric throwing around any fireballs, either. He has his pacts with the elemental kings and the lords of chaos, but his magic involves summoning them, and then they do their own particular hoodoo. He has one flavor of magic, and that's about it.
And as for Harry Potter, that's an Ars Magica game crossed with Tom Brown's Schooldays. With almost every consequential character in the book a wizard, I've got no qualms about magic being the go-to solution for everything. If every D&D character were a wizard, I wouldn't mind them being able to do everything with magic, either.
In the second case, there's the recognition that lack of ongoing support means the decline of the game. I know people are still playing older editions, but go ahead and try to find players for those on a routine basis if your current gaming group breaks up or you move to a new town. That's not so easy. Depending on where you live, finding people for the current edition may not be that easy either. Whichever version of the game that is current is the one that gets the advertising, the shelf-space, the newly printed (or at least distributed) copies of the rulebooks. The older version is the one that sees copies destroyed via any number of mishaps without the means to replace them.
So what you're saying is that having books on the shelves that people want to buy is good for the players and good for the hobby?
Sounds like spreading the material that people want to buy out among several books is a really good idea that people should be suppporting then.
A charitable way to read Grimstaff's comment is "I don't recall that, please provide a link".
"We were told in a podcast" is the same as "we were told". You still haven't provided support for the claim. I don't recall it either.
They're referring to a flippant, joking comment made in the podcast, not any kind of officially stated business policy.
Its hard to be "charitable" when the folks are levellling the same tired, inaccurate dispersions over and over again, but I'll try.
__________________ "There are few problems a well-placed fireball cannot solve. Now, tell us more about this... orphanage?" - Balfour Grimstaff
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They actually said that they are (were) withholding some of the "classic" critters for future MM's so that we would see future MM's as "core" products..same for PHBs.
Thats pretty much a money grub in my book- i.e. they want us to not look at them as optionals, they will be considered to be necc.
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I think people sometimes get too fixated about what's "official" to see what they could do with the whole- "David "Zeb" Cook
They actually said that they are (were) withholding some of the "classic" critters for future MM's so that we would see future MM's as "core" products..same for PHBs.
Thats pretty much a money grub in my book- i.e. they want us to not look at them as optionals, they will be considered to be necc.
And that's the issue I have. (Well, one of them.)
In my opinion, the game went from:
1. Make a good game
2. Maximize profit
to:
1. Maximize profit
2. Make a good game
Granted, this is an over-simplification, but it's my perception.
So what you're saying is that having books on the shelves that people want to buy is good for the players and good for the hobby?
Sounds like spreading the material that people want to buy out among several books is a really good idea that people should be suppporting then.
How about having the core books available sale? Why would you assume it had to be important information spread about several books like with WotC's 4e subscription model?
__________________ Bill D
"There's a fine line between a superpower and a chronic medical condition."
- Doctor Impossible
They're referring to a flippant, joking comment made in the podcast, not any kind of officially stated business policy.
There is nothing joking or flippant in the statement in the podcast.
For those who might not have clicked on the podcast, the statement being analyzed here is (or starts with) the second question. It's about two minutes in.
The question is what criteria were used to determine what monsters made the cut.
The answer given was that certain creatures were saved until later monster manuals so later monsters manuals could be considered "core". He also announced they planned the same thing with respect to player's handbook.
And if designer statements about what criteria they used for the design don't count for you, I don't know what does.
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I do recall that podcast, at the time I still had an interest in 4e
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At 1:52 in the podcast, Dave Noonan asks (this is paraphrased) "What was the criteria for which monsters made the cut into the Manual?" to James Wyatt (head of the writing team for the MM) and Mike Mearls (lead developer for the MM). Below is James Wyatt's and Mike Mearls's response, transcribed by me:
Quote:
Originally Posted by D&D Podcast #16
James Wyatt: "So, one of the things that I thought a lot about, uh, when I was first putting together the outline for this book, which has grown considerably since then, but, um, it's [a] ... r-really important mindset that I want to try to train people into right away, which is that this is not the Core Monster Manual."
Mike Mearls: "Mhm."
James Wyatt: "We're gonna do some number of Monster Manuals over the life of the edition, and those are the cool-, the Core monsters for the game, just like we're going to do some number of Player's Handbooks that are going to be the Core Player's Handbook rules for the game. So...there are some monsters that I very intentional-, intentionally left out of this book, so that when they appear in Monster Manual 2, that will help communicate 'hey look, this is a Core Monster Manual! You don't have frost giants if you don't have Monster Manual...N!'"
As you can see, this comment is neither flip, nor joking. It is a very serious statement regarding design policy for the Core Rulebooks, and indicates that things WotC knew were popular were being held back for later books intentionally.
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