This product is 56 pages long and free. Cover, credits, intro and ToC take up 4 pages. I counted 17 pages of adds many of them for other Rite... [Read More]
Evocative City Sites Lorn's Entrepot (Abandoned Warehouse) by Rite Publishing. I was given this product for the purposes of this review. This product is 47 pages long. Cover, Credits, two pages of... [Read More]
Feats 101 by Rite Publishing. I was given this product for the purposes of this review. I have not yet played using these feats my review is based on reading the feats and checking a few against... [Read More]
The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos is a 4e D&D product describing some of the different planes in the 4e Cosmology. The book is a typical hard bound book that Wizards of the Coast... [Read More]
A level 1 PC doing 2d8 damage at-will without even spending a feat for a superior weapon is just a bit much... Especially from the POV of a spell caster stuck with 1d6 or 1d8.
Beside, the increase in size yields wacky, counter intuitive results. A battleaxe goes from 1d10 to 1d12; +1 damage on average. A good deal. But A waraxe improves on the battle axe by 1d12 to 2d6; +0.5 (and you lose variability). A damn poor deal for a superior weapon, few would take it. But a bastard sword goes 1d10 to 1d12 while keeping a +1 to hit over the waraxe and so, behold, you'll see more minotaurs with bastard swords than with Waraxe, a much more minotaurish weapon! And a maul goes 2d6 to 2d8 ; +2 to damage. That's a great deal! Again, you are as a result much more likely to see a minotaur barbarian with a maul then a Great axe as a result.
It's just a complete mess.
The Dragon issue 364 gets rid of that while fleshing out the minotaur as a full PC race with an array of cool feat.
Per Mal's request, I thought I'd help out and formalize it.
My proposal, for this and all similar situations where a rules change removes powers from a character, is to grandfather in existing characters:
- Any character approved with the old version of the ability before the new one was adopted will be allowed to keep the old version of the ability.
- If the ability is a power, feat, or anything else that's subject to retraining, they will switch to the new version at their next level up. If they don't like the new version, they can retrain for free. (ie. this retraining doesn't count towards the normal limit)
That second point doesn't apply to the minotaur ability, of course.
I don't actually have DDI, so I just forwarded the post, but do we have any minotaur characters yet? If so, I'd like to hear their thoughts on the change/proposal. I think if it's a potentially broken/overpowered ability (like this one seems to be) I don't think grandfathering should be allowed.
To use a 3.xe example, if a Radiant Servent of Pelor was approved, but it was discovered during play that it is/was quite overpowered, the PC should be required to re-jig their character, otherwise you're making the system unfair for newly created PC's.
If I made a new PC minotaur and was forced to abide by the new rules, but the other minotaurs running around had the oversized weapon ability I wouldn't be happy as it's giving one character a benefit over the other.
if you're to introduce something that changes an existing character may I suggest the following.
Any affected players are requested to change their characters voluntarily at the time the change is adopted, but it is not required. Be aware that it may affect a DM's character selection for participation in their adventures.
The changes must be affected in a character to be approved for level advancement.
Changes made to meet new requirements do not count toward the normal limitations of what may be changed at a level.
__________________ Oni
"Each man, one way.
Each horse, one stance.
Each church, one buddha.
Each master to his own technique."
I don't actually have DDI, so I just forwarded the post, but do we have any minotaur characters yet? If so, I'd like to hear their thoughts on the change/proposal. I think if it's a potentially broken/overpowered ability (like this one seems to be) I don't think grandfathering should be allowed.
To use a 3.xe example, if a Radiant Servent of Pelor was approved, but it was discovered during play that it is/was quite overpowered, the PC should be required to re-jig their character, otherwise you're making the system unfair for newly created PC's.
If I made a new PC minotaur and was forced to abide by the new rules, but the other minotaurs running around had the oversized weapon ability I wouldn't be happy as it's giving one character a benefit over the other.
You raise an interesting point. If someone does not have access to DDI will the no longer be able to make/maintain a minot character should the change be adopted even though it was an option at the start? This issue will come up again as more and more MM races get PC write-ups.
__________________ Oni
"Each man, one way.
Each horse, one stance.
Each church, one buddha.
Each master to his own technique."
There are currently three approved minotaur characters: a cleric, a ranger, and a fighter.
The cleric is Halford's, and he hasn't been around since Christmas, unfortunately. The ranger was in my last adventure, run by Light Rail Coyote, but we haven't heard from him since it ended (about a month ago, I think). And the fighter ... I'm not sure if he even went to the tavern.
So it seems we're unlikely to hear their thoughts on the matter. I think there was some discussion on the matter a while ago when the warforged article was proposed, but I don't think it came to any sort of a conclusion, other than that there are people on both sides of the fence.
For myself, I'm not sure which way I like better. Forcing old minotaur PCs to remove oversized would be best for balance reasons, but it also likely removes a feature of the race that drew the player to it in the first place. I'd really rather not take a PC that a person is fond of and spent time with and mess with it in a way that makes the character unappealing to the player running it. One suggestion from that old discussion was that the grandfathered characters can't take any new feats or racial features from the new material - essentially, they'd be stuck with what minotaurs had when they made their character.
Hypothetically, if we were to force players to remove oversized, how would we do that? Would we revoke approval until they fixed it, then re-approve them?
if you're to introduce something that changes an existing character may I suggest the following.
Any affected players are requested to change their characters voluntarily at the time the change is adopted, but it is not required. Be aware that it may affect a DM's character selection for participation in their adventures.
The changes must be affected in a character to be approved for level advancement.
Changes made to meet new requirements do not count toward the normal limitations of what may be changed at a level.
I like this, if we require that players must change to the new material. Of course, I think if the character is in an adventure the DM should be allowed to ask them to change before their next level up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oni
You raise an interesting point. If someone does not have access to DDI will the no longer be able to make/maintain a minot character should the change be adopted even though it was an option at the start? This issue will come up again as more and more MM races get PC write-ups.
Another interesting question: how do you get it approved when at least 2 of the judges don't have DDI access? (AFAIK covaithe doesn't, and I don't either.) But that is another factor we have to consider here ... though the Character Builder beta can give you the minotaur write up from Dragon. That's a really good way to 'cheat' for now, but I'm not sure how long that will stay viable. It also doesn't give you all the other juicy bits from the Dragon article (whatever they are).
I have DDI access, and the Judges can... coordinate for reviewing proposals. Although the only approved proposal so far (Drgon #364) was a free issue anyway.
I don't like new write-ups removing appealing parts of PC options (like the minotaur article did). It seems like a big downer when compared to articles that were purely expansions (warforged, gnolls).
I, however, will admit that I'm totally biased. My bugbear brutal rogue, Hrav, currently uses a large rapier, and I am loath to lose it. It's a big part of the appeal of bugbears, which don't have much else going for them besides being the only current Str/Dex race. Since WotC has stated they plan to remove Oversized as a PC option, I expect them to eventually do a bugbear article that removes Oversized from them, and if they give in return as poor a selection of new features as the minotaur recieved (I really, really think the new minotaur article didn't give much to the race), I'll be very disappointed. How L4W handles minotaurs will pretty much decide how bugbears will be handled.
__________________ Gary Hoggatt - www.garyh.net "Such heroic nonsense..."
I don't like new write-ups removing appealing parts of PC options (like the minotaur article did). It seems like a big downer when compared to articles that were purely expansions (warforged, gnolls).
Errata can essentially do the same thing (see changes to stealth, or more recently Veteran's armour or the like). While it is unfortunate it is part of balancing the game. The question is, is balance something that L4W is looking to uphold and to what extent? What is the stance on erratta, is that something that is going to be automatically adopted, or will each be reviewed and taken or rejected piecemeal.
The reason I bring this up, is that anytime you introduce something that changes how a mechanic works you're liable to affect someone, how should that be resolved?
__________________ Oni
"Each man, one way.
Each horse, one stance.
Each church, one buddha.
Each master to his own technique."
Errata can essentially do the same thing (see changes to stealth, or more recently Veteran's armour or the like). While it is unfortunate it is part of balancing the game. The question is, is balance something that L4W is looking to uphold and to what extent? What is the stance on erratta, is that something that is going to be automatically adopted, or will each be reviewed and taken or rejected piecemeal.
The reason I bring this up, is that anytime you introduce something that changes how a mechanic works you're liable to affect someone, how should that be resolved?
Well, as for errata, our policy is to automatically adopt it, unless there's a formal proposal to do otherwise.
__________________ Gary Hoggatt - www.garyh.net "Such heroic nonsense..."
I don't like new write-ups removing appealing parts of PC options (like the minotaur article did). It seems like a big downer when compared to articles that were purely expansions (warforged, gnolls).
I know it's not quite the same, but what if errata removes something that I thought was appealing? Would it be adopted? i.e. if I have Veteran's Armour from AV because of the daily power and it was errata'd out I wouldn't be happy because that's why I wanted that item.
Well, one thing with, say, an item getting errata'ed is that you can get a new item. Sure, it might take some fancy footwork in character, but it can happen. Same with a feat or a power - just retrain it to something you like better.
If a race loses an ability, any character of that race gets hosed. That character is fundamentally different than it started, and there's nothing to fix it, other than not taking the ability away in the first place. It's not like you can retrain your race.
Also, if errata changes or removes something that you feel is better 'the old way', you are free to propose that. If I'm not mistaken (and correct me if I'm wrong), you could even propose something in between the original and errata version, if you think the original was broken, but the errata overcompensated (essentially creating a house rule).
I am assuming then that any change that is proposed and voted in will be applied across the board. Errata being automatically adopted and able to be changed by proposal or rule changes brought to bear via proposal (this case being the latter). At some point people will see changes to how their characters functions they may not agree with. I think it would be in everyones best interest to set down and agree on the methodolgy of how rule changes will be applied in general before proceeding to making changes.
This is kind of deviating from the original proposal a bit and maybe warrents a seperate discussion.
Maybe there should be a chirurgeon in daunton that can swap races and classes so that you can retain your backstory. I.E. you're not longer happy with minotaur, but you don't want to lose your character so you can switch you stats to human but still look like a minotaur so you needn't break continuity with your character. I'd like to play a gnome with minotaur stats, rawr...gore! :P
__________________ Oni
"Each man, one way.
Each horse, one stance.
Each church, one buddha.
Each master to his own technique."
Gamers Online Now: 893
Linear Mode
