Evenglare
Member

Evenglare Spark peoples' imaginations?

You assume (incorrectly) that I don't have a problem with THOSE misappropriated terms, either. I cannot tell you how much it bugs me that "lycanthrope" is used as a catch-all term for all therianthropes. Therianthrope is a hot, hot word! Needs more use. Evenglare - Supernatural's angels are definitely not Good in D&D terms. :) As for beardless dwarves, having played with a lot of female players, my experience is very much that they love dwarves, loathe the idea of having to have a beard/shave, so I think it's the right default.

Going to dogpile in this one as well, but, Evenglare, where is this negativity you are seeing for 5e? Other than a few bits and bobs, the reaction has been very positive. It's been nice. Compared to 5 years ago when 4e came out, certainly a world better, when you'd get fifteen page threads sprouting every day about how the devs were destroying D&D and killing puppies. This time around feels a lot more like the release of 3e.

I'm sorry, please don't take this the wrong way, but this is so far away from how I feel that I don't understand. Personally I agree with you - I think it is strange on one level. But on another level the basic game is not just basic/simple, it is also game that has some small but specific calls outs to those folk who played the basic game back in the day.I completely understand Evenglare's point - electrum pieces serve no functional role in the game other than as a type of baroque treasure, and have no more place on the character sheet than a checkbox for bales of contraband silk, or valuable clay figurines imported from the southern lands! But I also think Raith5 is correct - the real reason for including them on the character sheet is that "call out" function to players with memories and expectations formed in the 1980s.

You are perilously close to committing the Oberoni Fallacy there, Evenglare. "The game ain't broke, coz you can play it by different rules" doesn't convince me. Some spells (items, feats, class/race abilities...) in the game AS WRITTEN are problematic. Not because it's hard to figure out and adjudicate how they work, or because it's hard to imagine them working the way they're intended, or because they're hard to include in a given campaign. But because they upset game balance on such a fundamental level that it may ruin your game at least for one session, before everybody sits down together and figures out a gentlemen's agreement or a fitting nerf or a generally agreed-upon ban. On the topic of spells: The fact of the matter is still that there are spells that are simply, inarguably powerful, with no mitigating factors in their wording, in RP considerations, in components etc. Just picking out some problem spells from the PHB, starting with the letter G, for example's sake: Gate, Glibness, Glitterdust, Grease. All four of them are extremely powerful for the...

Evenglare Right here on ENWorld, just like Morrus said. I've combed the web and have found the best exchange of 4e ideas, stat blocks, conversions, adventures and house rules to be right here. Sly Flourish (Mike Shea) is still putting out articles with a 4e focus. There's the archived Square Fireballs that has some good articles. Fourthcore was having some website issues, but is a wonderful repository of dungeon crawling themed material for 4e. The list goes on...

@Evenglare : Thank you! @howandwhy99 : I agree. I really liked that 'difference' of character types, too. It's a challenge to make it all work. @Fetfreak : The playstyle and theme are a great starting point. Creatively, thinking outside of the box is one of the best things you can do at the 'ideas' stage of game design. Thanks for pointing it out!

@Nytmare : Quite well said, thank you. I just hope I can one day upgrade from humor-esque to normal humor. @Evenglare : Sadly, yes. I thought it would immediately be taken as a joke, but it appears most people thought I was serious. I'd like to refer everyone to paragraph one: "In any debate of one totally unrelated medium against another..." I'd like to point out that I intended that statement as totally absurdest, satirical, and of no basis in reality. Somewhat like comparing Hot Wheels(TM) to kumquats. I really appreciate the feedback, though. I hadn't really expected so many people to vote Minecraft over RPGs on an RPG website. Very interesting. Perhaps I should start writing Minecraft columns? I also intended the article to create as much trolling as possible. Thanks for the explanation, @Morrus ! P.S. I was joking about the trolling part.

Finding spells and finding maneuvers/feats have direct precedent in myth/legend... not sure what M&M / HERO / GURPS has to do with anything. @Evenglare Should I recommend that you buy the reprints they have come out with if that is really what you are after?

I would like to take a moment to say that reading through this thread has given me a new appreciation for how D&D 4e is designed. I think that I gave up on it too soon -- the design of the published adventures and my stuck-in-older-editions mindset were working against me. I'm keen to give the game another chance. A big thank-you to Neonchameleon, pemerton, shidaku, S'mon, AbdulAlhazred, Balesir, Fox Lee, Hussar, D'karr, and of course Evenglare (for starting this thread in the first place) for sharing their insights into 4e, both in this thread and the "scene-framing" discussion. There are still three issues that I have with 4e (time to play out an encounter at the table, the number of fiddly bonuses/conditions to track, and the number of out-of-turn actions), but I think that I can reign those in with better adventure design and by encouraging my players to avoid choosing complex or fiddly powers unless they can use them effortlessly. The way in which character themes play out in the mechanics, the degree of control that a player has over his character's destiny, and the "carrot instead of the stick" approach to encouraging playing to type all go a long way to explain why I've found my recent visits to previous editions of D&D (and playtest of Next) fun yet somewhat unsatisfying. Now back to arguing about paladins. Some things never actually change. ;)

First off, to the people saying you will never get a game that needs to be rebooted every few years. Monopoly. Been new variations but the classic game has remained the same. Also chess. So that completely destroys that argument. Ummh, I do see a bit of a difference between D&D and Monopoly, don't you? And even with board games you can see development of the games: Ticket to Ride has been released as multiple sets and additions, which add new sub-systems. Dominion consists not only of different additions but also different basic sets. The rules for peasant scoring in Caracassonne have seen multiple revisions in 15 years. And Magic...? Other boardgames go through different editions as well, most notable with American offerings: Twilight Imperium, Britannia, and so on. So no, the argument survives. :D

First off, to the people saying you will never get a game that needs to be rebooted every few years. Monopoly. Been new variations but the classic game has remained the same.And it sucks. That's why people made new versions (Settlers of Catan, e.g.) that are better. Also chess. So that completely destroys that argument.Chess? That game that took nearly a millennium to evolve to its current form?

First off, to the people saying you will never get a game that needs to be rebooted every few years. Monopoly. Been new variations but the classic game has remained the same. Also chess. So that completely destroys that argument. No it doesn't. monopoly and chess are completely different animals, mainly in terms of simplicity. D&D is a much more complex game, both in terms of the rules themselves and the game play (story). I think another key difference is that the game play of monopoly and chess is very much the play of the rules themselves, while for D&D, the rules facillitate the game play. An analogy would be musical instruments (chess, monopoly) vs. music media like LPs, CDs, mp3s etc (D&D). A flute or violin are classics, they are what they are and there isn't a lot of advancment possible except through better craftsmanship and, I suppose, simulation. But music media is always evolving, always changing - becuase the media itself is secondary to the music. To put it another way, monopol...

I'd say multiclassing with sorcerer if you wanna be like freya with the dragon abilities from FFIX as well. Thats a great idea, but I usually stick with Kain from FFIV lol. Really excited to see what fun I can have with the Ranger class as well.

Curious on the thoughts of other people around here concerning balance, character optimization, munchkining whatever you want to call it. In 3.5 and pathfinder and all of that people say that clerics and druids can potentially make better fighters than fighters. Potentially. But you could always find specific cases where they don't, thus avoiding strict superiority and justifying, on some level, the choice of fighter. It's a stretch, and you have to optimize your fighter mightily to retain relevance out of the lowest levels, but it can be an interesting, even enjoyable challenge to do so. It's really that 3.x Clerics/Druids/etc making virtually as good melee combatants as fighter /while also casting spells that are very useful to the party/. The fighter can marginally defend his own little conceptual niche in spite of the higher-tier classes, but they're still far above him in overall effectiveness. So here's the question, if you want to be a fighter, do you pick fighter or a class tha...

There's also Numenera, and uh... not sure what else. I had trouble finding a really good fantasy/science fiction RPG, so I created/am creating one using the 13th Age rules. Fantasy/SciFi practically screams Shadowrun. It is also one of the view settings were magic and technology coexist without there being a conflict between them or that technology was mostly destroyed by an apocalypse. Some time ago there was a Shadowrun spotlight week (a concept which sadly has been abandoned apparently) and it got its own forum chock full of information for new players. Sadly it seems to have been deleted. At least I can't find it any more.

I would say that the Starter set is "normal adventuring", and it starts at level 1. If you want to play a less deadly 5e game, you should probably start at level 2+, but I wouldn't say starting at level 3 is the norm. I will check with my group to see what they prefer, I don't actually mind level 1 and 2, since it's only supposed to be 1-2 sesions before you are level 3. Just passing on what I've heard from wizards. They say level 3 is the old level 1. My interpretation is that 1st level is meant to represent 1st level in most editions of D&D. Since 4e characters start out more competent, you can start 5e characters at 3rd level to better approximate the power level of a starting 4e character.

I think our group got to level 3 within a couple of hours with the starter set, there were only 3 of us playing though so it may have been a bit quicker than normal. That does seem very fast. It took an 8 hour session for our group of 5 PC's to get to 3rd level playing the starter set. While we had some folks go to 0 hp, no one died. The DM actually threw in a few extra critters to make sure it was challenging enough - which it certainly was. He kept rolling criticals...over and over again... I was running the cleric, and liked the limited resources you have at 1st and 2nd level to heal the party. Certainly feels more like the challenges faced in earlier editions (1e/2e) at those levels.

I'd say the pathfinder starter does a pretty poor job introducing the players to what an actual game and character creation will be like. Especially since they cut down the rules like AOOs where as 5e is the actual game presented in a neat fashion. This is an interesting point. Whilst we'll never know, I suspect, I wonder if 5E will see more players retained by the rules staying approximately the same complexity, or whether the better initial product will mean that, even though the rules become more complex with the full product, PF retains more. Impossible to say, I guess. Having tried starters of various games with various groups in the past, I could see it going either way. The only thing that is always off-putting is when the rules of the full game directly remove something fun from the starter game (but that's really rare).

Just passing on what I've heard from wizards. They say level 3 is the old level 1. They are? Where? I do know that level 1 of 4e more or less resembles level 3 in 5e, but I haven't seen what you are saying here...

There's also Numenera, and uh... not sure what else. I had trouble finding a really good fantasy/science fiction RPG, so I created/am creating one using the 13th Age rules. Do you have it shared somewhere? I'd be interested in taking a look. Thanks

Backgrounds are one page as shown from several previews. TOC has backgrounds from 125 to 142, that 17 backgrounds by my count. 16 if pg125 is just explanation. How did you get 8? The only preview I saw was the Hermit, and that did not get all the Background on one page. Edit: Actually having looked at it again, I think we can be pretty sure that a Background will be approximately 1.5 pages, so around 11 in total in the PHB. edit2: My prediction is 'Acolyte, Charlatan, Criminal(Spy), Entertainer, Folk Hero, Hermit, Noble, Outlander, Sage, Soldier, Urchin'

Well normal adventuring is supposed to start at level 3, 1 and 2 are supposed to be apprentice levels where you are doing small time stuff. I agree it's deadly but it's definitely by design. By level 3 you should have enough HP to start doing some real adventuring. I think our group got to level 3 within a couple of hours with the starter set, there were only 3 of us playing though so it may have been a bit quicker than normal. I would say that the Starter set is "normal adventuring", and it starts at level 1. If you want to play a less deadly 5e game, you should probably start at level 2+, but I wouldn't say starting at level 3 is the norm. I will check with my group to see what they prefer, I don't actually mind level 1 and 2, since it's only supposed to be 1-2 sesions before you are level 3.

Do you play the class you want and have it fit your original vision for your character (Fighter) or do you concede your original vision to something mechanically superior (Cleric or Druid)? If I want to play a fighter... I play a fighter. Mechanical superiority is unnecessary.

Also burning these books is disrespectful of the people who worked literally hundreds of hours making them. This isn't even just not liking the books, it's making sure others don't even get to experience it. It takes it a step further than just dismissing the author's work, it's actively destroying part of their life. As someone who has written three books, I completely agree with this. When you put you hard work, your creativity, your soul on paper, and someone maliciously destroys it, yeah. I'm more than willing to admit that I'm thin-skinned enough to feel a little upset by it. It's bad enough when there's some criticism, though I appreciate it if it's constructive. But to have someone take something that you've cared about for months or years, that you've put hundreds of hours into, that you've willingly shared with others to increase their enjoyment, and then have them destroy your work as a show? To take something you've been dedicated to creating, and to obliterate it because it's that t...

Not in the slightest. Agree with me or not, that's your right. But I stand by my feelings on the matter. (And it's not just the burning, but the making a spectacle of it.) I AM curious, if it's such a non-issue to you, why do you feel the need to argue over it? You may feel that it's silly for me to react this way, but you're expending just as much energy on something you feel doesn't matter. I'm not being snide here; I'm honestly curious. What do you get out of it? this thread, and others like it, are already spreading like wildfire in the internet. And the reactions of some, equating this on the same level as historical book burnings, gives gamers a much worse reputation than what Bryce is doing. Nothing like a giant lack of perspective to quell stereotypes of gamers being overreactionary Also burning these books is disrespectful of the people who worked literally hundreds of hours making them. This isn't even just not liking the books, it's making sure others don't even get to exper...

I'm with mouse, any burning of books is despicable. I DO enjoy 4e, I love all D&D, but burning books is one of the worst things in my opinion, in this respect I could not care less about edition wars. It's just wrong. I'm sure he did it because "edgy shock factor!". Yes, book burning of any kind is just wrong. Some books aren't worth the paper they are print on, but even in those cases, the paper can still be recycled. Burning a book for anything other than survival is just pointlessly polluting the environment and well, it is a book, if you don't want it, sell it, give it away, donate it to a library. And if it is a 4e book, well give it to me, these guys have become ridiculously hard to find in my country.

Agree. I really hope that the Eldritch Knight bucks the trend of previous editions attempts and enables the creation of a decent fighter-mage. Also I wonder if there is any way the hunter ranger will have a quarry ability. I am sure there will be some form of favoured enemy but I really liked the quarry ability in 4e as way of modelling focusing upon a single enemy. Going by the Alpha PHB, which seems to be extremely close to this, no and no, sadly. The Eldritch Knight is not a "decent Fighter-mage". He IS a decent Fighter. Not as good as the other two, but decent. His spellcasting, however, is limited to only cantrips and abjuration and evocation spells (which are thematically appropriate but prevent him getting most really serious battle-altering spells, and goes off INT, and most importantly he only gets 8 + 4 spells EVER (the 4 being fixed), casting 4th level spells at the highest (only at level 19 and 20, though I'd be unsurprised to see that go down to 17 in the final). It'...

Just occured to me. What I REALLY want is a blight druid subclass. Love the concept. They're never as potent as just the regular forest-oriented subclasses. The druid's bark is always worse than his blight.

I will update the first post. You don't have monk up here. The subclasses seem to be way of the open hand, way of the shadow, and way of the 4 elements. Also ranger has hunter and beastmaster. Did you see them in the (in)famous alpha document, or has anyone from WotC mentioned these at some point?