Proposal - Dragon Magazine 369 - Minotaur

elecgraystone

First Post
When MM races were allowed into living 4e, they were available via the free-part of the DDI. We were talking about why they were allowed into the game in the first place.

You are quite right though, the minotaur isn't available anymore. You can still see the oversized trait by going to the free-part of the DDI and typing in bugbear though.
 

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Tomalak

First Post
So, the only thing that was a problem was that new minotaurs weren't as good as the old ones? What officially has to happen to get this approved?
 


Lord Sessadore

Explorer
Well, the real problem is that there's a number of existing minotaur characters using the MM writeup, which includes oversized. So, you have a sticky situation which basically comes down to two options: a) nerfing all the old minotaur characters, leaving them little choice in the matter, or b) grandfathering in the old minotaurs' oversized feature, but forcing new minotaurs to use the Dragon version. Both will probably leave a non-trivial number of people unhappy, so it's a tough call to make.

As well, there are a number of bugbear PC's with oversized, and whatever decision was made to deal with old minotaurs with oversized would no doubt set precedence for how bugbears are dealt with later. Similarly, this has the potential to leave some people unhappy, no matter what option is chosen.


In any case, to get this officially approved, at least three judges need to vote yes, and there needs to be two more yes votes than no votes. When both of those conditions are met for 48 continuous hours, the proposal passes.

Now, what needs to happen in order to convince enough judges to vote yes? That's a very good question, and I certainly don't have the answer.

Edit: Yeah, I know the feeling, covaithe. And I, at least, don't have any brilliant new ideas to solve all the problems. :(
 

TwoHeadsBarking

First Post
I have a wonderful idea. We ignore the minotaur issue until PHB3 is approved, and vote on the rest of the articles. Then it can be just like how shifters and gnomes got updated from the MM to PHB2, and hopefully minotaurs will be given something better than what they have now.

Ok, so it's not so much "wonderful" as "lazy", but, and correct me if I'm wrong, it's not like we actually have a problem with minotaurs being oversized. We don't have a disproportionately large number of minotaur characters, and I don't get the feeling that the oversized characters are overshadowing their party members. So I am effectively suggesting that we do nothing, because at this point I'm not convinced anything needs to be done.
 

JoeNotCharles

First Post
I haven't had time to read the articles in depth (so I won't be voting just yet) but people should at least vote on the article the OP wanted most urgently, and the rest of the non-minotaur stuff.
 

JoeNotCharles

First Post
I think the better way to do it would be to say that brutal D12 weapons STAY D12 weapons. The whole issue was the transition to a 2D6 brutal weapon right? That way only the problem weapons are effected and everyone else with 'normal' weapons can go about their merry way.

I think we have that in place with regards to Adventurer's Vault, at least. This is how I worded it, when I updated the charter in ancient times, but it might not be the best:

Yeah, I don't like that wording much. It's not clear exactly what happens if you try to take an oversized brutal weapon - does it become not brutal? Does it count as not oversized? Do they just not exist (why can't you make one that's larger than normal?)

I'd prefer to say, "oversized brutal weapons lose the brutal property" and then players wanting a giant brutal weapon can choose to have it not be brutal, or just use a weapon doing normal-sized damage and flavour it as being huge.

I'd propose a rewording, but then I couldn't vote on it...
 

elecgraystone

First Post
My idea JoeNotCharles is that oversized and brutal would work together in every situation except when the base weapon has a D12 damage. In that situation, the damage die stays a D12. I wasn't wording it for proposal placement, just tossing out the idea.

If I was proposing, I'd say it would be this be added to Oversized:
Exception: Oversized Brutal weapons that start with a damage die of D12 do not change to damage dice of 2d6 due to the increased effectiveness of Brutal. In exchange for not increasing the dice, the player deals an additional point of damage [much the same way as a versatile weapon deals an extra point of damage when used two handed].

This answers all your questions.
Does it become not brutal? Nope, always brutal.
Does it count as not oversized? it counts as oversized and deals an extra point of damage because of it.

It seems a bit heavy handed to to just say you can only have one or the other when it's ONLY the d12 base damage weapons that are an issue.
 


Mal Malenkirk

First Post
We don't have a disproportionately large number of minotaur characters...

Not to sound argumentative, but yes we do and that's precisley why you are wary about the number of people who will be unhappy.

Last I checked we had something like 4 minotaurs and 3 bugbears out of 90 approved character. About 8% of all the PCs uses oversized weapon! It's a lot worse if you consider the STR and Melee based classes. The 4 minotaurs obviously all picked such classes and so they are about 20% of the fighters, STR cleric and Two-Bladed Rangers...

Considering these two races are hardly staples of the fantasy genre, it is a lot.

If we had some way to tell, I'd bet ten to one we'd have half less minotaurs and bugbears without the oversized stuff. It's a nigh certainty.
 

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