In honor of GM's Day, Bad Axe Games is pleased to offer a free preview of our upcoming Trailblazer rules supplement.
What is Trailblazer?
Trailblazer is a “system optimizer” for your d20-compatible 3rd edition game. Our design approach has been straightforward and focused: identify the major problems of 3rd edition, then rebuild or refit the system using the latest in game design philosophy.
Trailblazer is both forward-looking and backwards compatible; innovative, but respectful of gaming traditions.
GM’s Day Preview
For our special GM’s Day Preview, we’ve chosen a set of rule subsets specifically with the GM in mind. Each of these subsets was also chosen because you can use them right away, independent of any other rules changes.
• The 10 Minute Adventuring Day
• Encounter Budgeting
• Treasure Parcels
• Customizing Monsters
This preview is designed to showcase our design philosophy and presentation style, which is focused on empowering the GM to take his 3e game and tune it up, rather than turn it in.
I like what I see so far. When do you envision the final product being ready?
One other thing--and maybe I'm just dense (I can sense people nodding)--but even after reading the sidebar, I still don't know what the term "CoDzilla" really means - even though I've seen the term a few times.
I like what I see so far. When do you envision the final product being ready?
Pre-GenCon and pre-Pathfinder. It depends on how much (good) feedback we get from playtesting.
My plan is to offer a "Trailblazer Only" PDF version, which includes only the changes (and relevant design essays). The Trailblazer PDF will be priced in accordance with the value I have invested in the work.
I will also offer a "Trailblazer Complete" print-on-demand version that includes all relevant portions of the SRD in one place-- but priced just enough to include the additional cost of hard-copy printing. In other words, if you want the printed version for the sake of completeness at the table, you won't pay for reprinted and unchanged portions of the SRD. I'll just eat whatever it costs me in man hours to lay that out in a single work. (Assuming I'm otherwise still gainfully employed by then...)
Ultimately, my recommendation for anyone who is already planning on buying the printed version of Pathfinder would be to do that-- just buy the printed version of Pathfinder, and use that as your printed reference at the table.
Let me be clear: I wholeheartedly support Pathfinder as the rightful heir and "hard copy" repository of 3e knowledge moving forward.
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One other thing--and maybe I'm just dense (I can sense people nodding)--but even after reading the sidebar, I still don't know what the term "CoDzilla" really means - even though I've seen the term a few times.
Ahh, that's ok Dave-- that sidebar's somewhat of a throwaway for the preview. In the final product you'll likely find some artwork there instead. If you "get it" you get it, and if you don't-- count yourself lucky.
CoDzilla is a cleric or druid that excels at combat (and everything else) with a level of self-sufficiency that puts all other classes to shame. The rest of the party just serves to hold the cleric's jacket so it doesn't get wrinkled in the coming dust up.
Personally, I think the Druid is by far the worst offender, but DoCzilla simply doesn't have the same panache.
There's some wiggle room in the class features and spellcasting figures, but you can easily see how far ahead the Cleric and Druid are compared to the other classes.
Suffice to say, the Trailblazer class overhaul doesn't show a lot of love to the Cleric or Druid.
Conventional wisdom is that 3e shows a certain amount of "love" to these two classes simply because they had to serve the function of party healer, which, quite frankly, is a bit of a drag. We address this instead through the 10-minute rest, and while the cleric and druid are still important for emergency healing during combat, they are by no means the primary source of recuperative healing after combat.
Removing this burden from the divine healing classes increases the imperative to "juice" the other classes.
I think somewhere along the line, the 3e designers lost sight of all the moving parts of 3e. Once the party is able to buy (or Craft) a wand of cure wounds, there's not nearly the same kind of pressure on the cleric or druid to use their spell slots for healing-- which leaves those spell slots open for the kinds of spells that give rise to CoDzilla (divine favor, divine might, righteous might, and countless other buffs).
In all the 3E games I've run or played in (2 longstanding campaigns, a couple of one-shots), I've never had a druid PC in the party, so I've never seen the class in action (though reading threads here on EN World has made me interested to see it in game).
I have seen the cleric in action, and we did in fact use wands/potions many times to avoid having the cleric simply allocate all spells to healing.
Wulf,
It looks interesting. How about next tackling the seperation of non-biological abilities from race?
__________________ "The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " -Monte Cook
" If the DM has to make a lot of judgment calls, the game is more difficult to learn. However, it's my belief that it's also more satisfying." -Monte Cook
"Don't let rules replace good DMing skills"- Monte Cook
Basically, what 4e did in making thing likes bonuses vs. giants into feats and racial proficiencies into feats. I think it would make it easier to create environmental /cultural variants of races or handle situations where a PC of one race grew up among another race's culture. Making such things feats would also just add more variety among PCs of the standard races should a player feel that their character did not receive the training vs. giants or kobolds and learned something else.
__________________ "The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " -Monte Cook
" If the DM has to make a lot of judgment calls, the game is more difficult to learn. However, it's my belief that it's also more satisfying." -Monte Cook
"Don't let rules replace good DMing skills"- Monte Cook
Last edited by Greg K; 7th March 2009 at 04:12 PM..
Basically, what 4e did in making thing likes bonuses vs. giants into feats and racial proficiencies into feats. I think it would make it easier to create environmental /cultural variants of races or handle situations where a PC of one race grew up among another race's culture. Making such things feats would also just add more variety among PCs of the standard races should a player feel that their character did not receive the training vs. giants or kobolds and learned something else.
Yep, that falls below our design criteria of "common complaints."
We don't want Trailblazer lose focus from "3.5 fixes" and drift into "Heartbreaker."
That said, sounds like an easy fix and you already have your head around it: Build up a package of traits for each class. Assign each trait a value equal to 1 Feat or some fraction thereof. Let each starting PC then choose a list of traits with the same total value from your master list.
Wulf,
Fair enough although entirely new base classes and altering the racial abilities are the one area of 3e that I have never felt comfortable (except for humans). I have no problems with class variants per customizing, fixing multiclassing dipping and save bonus stacking, adapting from pre 3e and other systems, or a bunch of other things to tailor my game. For some reason, the block comes with just the two mentioned areas
By the way, I pimped the Trailblazer preview over at the WOTC boards in a thread on "How to fix 3.5, without massive house rules". Obviously, it's house ruling, but it fit the conversation of the thread. Your timing could not have been more perfect
__________________ "The designers of the newest edition built so much reliance on rules right into the game, to make it easier to play. As one of those designers, I occasionally think to myself, 'What have we wrought?' " -Monte Cook
" If the DM has to make a lot of judgment calls, the game is more difficult to learn. However, it's my belief that it's also more satisfying." -Monte Cook
"Don't let rules replace good DMing skills"- Monte Cook
Last I heard it was still on target fro pre-GenCon, pre-Pathfinder. Which I hope means before early July. I really want to have Trailblazer to take with me to Afghanistan.
So hurry up Wulf!
__________________ "Mr. Prince, would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?"
"The American revolution?"
"A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tablets of the law and put them where everyone could see them—and thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom."
—Conversation between Prince Lysander and Colonel Falkenberg, The Prince
Last edited by The Black Kestrel; 25th May 2009 at 05:51 PM..
Trailblazer is now available.
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