Rule-of-Three: 07/10/2012

Walking Dad · Jul 10, 2012

1) what warlock? The 3.5 class? Why should I be forced to be a oath breaker relying on Charisma to have at-will powers?

Why do I have to take a theme to stop an enemy from running around me?

And why is throwing away clean movement mechanics of the last edition the way to get more customers?

I for one growing disappointed with the trying to forget/ignore the 4e and please only customers they had already lost.

Tactical modules that give no tactical abilities specific to characters are nearly worthless.

I'm A Banana · Jul 10, 2012

Walking Dad said:
what warlock? The 3.5 class? Why should I be forced to be a oath breaker relying on Charisma to have at-will powers?

Now that you mention it, I like housing the idea in themes, too.

But the big reason is because wizards have an expectation of their play experience being "limited, but powerful." While warlocks have an expectation of their play experience being "always, but not always powerful." And sorcerers are somewhere in between.

If you don't allow wizards to be "limited, but powerful," then you're taking away one of the fun parts of playing a wizard. A wizard that always has at-will magic spells violates that. A wizard that can opt into having at-will magic (such as via a theme) ain't so bad.

Walking Dad said:
Why do I have to take a theme to stop an enemy from running around me?

And why is throwing away clean movement mechanics of the last edition the way to get more customers?

I for one growing disappointed with the trying to forget/ignore the 4e and please only customers they had already lost.

Tactical modules that give no tactical abilities specific to characters are nearly worthless.

I don't follow.

My experience with 4e doesn't let me describe it as having especially "clean movement mechanics." I also don't see them rejecting 4e (re-read that second question, where they say they're building on what 4e taught them). I also don't see how tactical play requires fiddly movement in order to be worth something.

Methinks there's a lot of hyperbole, here.

Mengu · Jul 10, 2012

The more I read random ideas about length of an adventuring day, the more I want infinite resources. When you rest, you regain all your hit points, powers, everything. You're ready for the next encounter. Go! No daily powers. No healing surges. You run through as many encounters as you need to, to get your adventuring day done.

I know, there is supposed to be a resource management game within D&D. But I'm tired of it. I don't want to keep track of it. I just want to adventure, interact with new environments, new NPC's, new foes, I want to save damsels in distress, chase after thieves and brigands, investigate haunted houses, siege castles, lead nations, walk through hell, and kill gods. I don't want to count how many charges are left in my wand, how many arrows are in my quiver, how many surges (fine, hit dice if you must) I have left, how many dailies I have remaining.

What matters to me most, is being in the moment. I don't want to worry about how many times I cast fireball today, and see if I can squeeze out another one when a horde of gibberlings is coming at me. I don't want to worry about standing around, sucking on a healing wand before I run up the stairs of a burning building to save a mother and her child. I don't want to get to the doorstep of the big bad demon, and yell through the door, sorry buddy I'm out of healing, gotta go, I'll fight you tomorrow. I want to Just Do It.

There is also real life time constraints. We might have 3 weeks between sessions. If we're on the same adventuring day, it might mean I'm not going to cast any fireballs today because I cast one last session and I'm out. I've been out for 3 weeks, I WANT to blow something up!

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to play the resource management game, it's a large part of tactics we use, and I enjoy tactical play, but I'd be happier, if the resources were confined between short rests, rather than extended rests.

Remathilis · Jul 10, 2012

Holy $#!+ They answered my question!

I'm anonymously famous!

Harlock · Jul 10, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
That's cool. That's encouraging. That makes me a little less freaked out by the fact that everyone at WotC seems to really really <3 minis combat.

Really great points all around, but I wanted to speak to this in particular. I would guess, and it is only an uninformed one at that, that minis appealed to Hasbro a little more from a business standpoint than to WotC from a "good for the game" standpoint. Let's face it, with how we have heard WotC/D&D was split for accounting, a system by which players are encouraged to constantly update those plastic bits makes for a continuous revenue stream after core books have been bought. It had to sound good to Hasbro executives.

Please note this is not to say gaming with minis is bad. I happen to like minis; more for painting than playing, but I like them nonetheless.

Harlock · Jul 10, 2012

Remathilis said:
Holy $#!+ They answered my question!

I'm anonymously famous!

Awesome! Can I have your anonymous autograph?

Mustrum_Ridcully · Jul 10, 2012

harlock said:
awesome! Can i have your anonymous autograph?

I already have one, see:

xxx

Dausuul · Jul 10, 2012

Mengu said:
What matters to me most, is being in the moment. I don't want to worry about how many times I cast fireball today, and see if I can squeeze out another one when a horde of gibberlings is coming at me. I don't want to worry about standing around, sucking on a healing wand before I run up the stairs of a burning building to save a mother and her child. I don't want to get to the doorstep of the big bad demon, and yell through the door, sorry buddy I'm out of healing, gotta go, I'll fight you tomorrow. I want to Just Do It.

Here's a question. How do you feel about once in a while having to deal with your character being wounded and suffering from some form of penalty (e.g., you're quicker to go down in combat)?

What I'm getting at here is that one could turn the whole resource management aspect of hit points on its head. Instead of having to nurse your hit point supply through multiple encounters, you get them all back after each fight; but once in a while you take a significant injury and now that's a problem you have to deal with, one that won't go away any time soon. Resting for 5 minutes won't fix it. Resting for a night won't fix it. Resting for a week might fix it, but that's outside the scope of most adventures.

Mengu · Jul 10, 2012

Dausuul said:
Here's a question. How do you feel about once in a while having to deal with your character being wounded and suffering from some form of penalty (e.g., you're quicker to go down in combat)?

What I'm getting at here is that one could turn the whole resource management aspect of hit points on its head. Instead of having to nurse your hit point supply through multiple encounters, you get them all back after each fight; but once in a while you take a significant injury and now that's a problem you have to deal with, one that won't go away any time soon. Resting for 5 minutes won't fix it. Resting for a night won't fix it. Resting for a week might fix it, but that's outside the scope of most adventures.

I would love it, as long as the character remained functional (no comas please). Your leg might get caught in a bear trap, and you suffer a -1 penalty to speed for the remainder of an adventure, and have disadvantage on ability checks that would require you to use that leg. Or you might suffer rapid onset acute paranoia after facing some illithids, and can't accept assistance from your allies on ability checks because you don't trust them. I'd go so far as to say story based injuries would be fun to deal with.

Hit points are just a combat resource. Injury could be a system of its own. But now, we're gonna hear, "this does not feel like D&D".

Walking Dad · Jul 10, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
...

But the big reason is because wizards have an expectation of their play experience being "limited, but powerful." While warlocks have an expectation of their play experience being "always, but not always powerful." And sorcerers are somewhere in between.

If you don't allow wizards to be "limited, but powerful," then you're taking away one of the fun parts of playing a wizard. A wizard that always has at-will magic spells violates that. A wizard that can opt into having at-will magic (such as via a theme) ain't so bad.

The exceptions you mention are 3.x for the sorcerer and 3.5 for the warlock only.
No bigger history for this distinction than the AED system of 4e.
And I like to play wizards in multiple levels and play them to be an intelligent sage with magical powers. That is the fun part of playing a wizard for me. Not vancian casting. And it looks like that I can get not this archetype (intelligent sage caster) without vancian casting in Next.
Hated it in pre-3.x D&D that wizards never got more spells for high int. Anyone remembers this time? The crossbow wizard is totally 3.x, we had darts and slings only before.

This is nothing against you, Kamikaze Midget, but many seem to think of 3.x, when they speak of "classic" D&D and of how D&D always was.

I don't follow.

My experience with 4e doesn't let me describe it as having especially "clean movement mechanics." I also don't see them rejecting 4e (re-read that second question, where they say they're building on what 4e taught them). I also don't see how tactical play requires fiddly movement in order to be worth something.

Methinks there's a lot of hyperbole, here.

4e has in my experience clean movement mechanics.

I just reread the second question and answer. And yes, they reject it. They say that 4e design was based on encounters and they reject it for basing it on the "adventuring day".
The only other mention is that they will give tools in a quality of the 4e encounter building rules for designing adventures. I still don't see the connection between balanced combats in an specific encounter and designing a good adventure. Many early adventures succeeded at the first and were bad at the second.

In chess, pawns move exactly 1 sq (fiddly, isn't it

).
I want tactical play with tactical movement, not only general strategies like "we are going to surround them". Just different tastes. Doesn't make my wants less important than yours and I hoped for a place for both in Next.