Penny Arcade Podcast with Mike Mearls

fba827 · Aug 8, 2012

i am probably reading way too much in to this but might this hint that the next playtest packet will be more character creation focused? Or in any case, as they get further into the conversion process on subsequent podcasts, i'm sure some basic character creation stuff can be gleaned.... at least for the classes in question...

keterys · Aug 8, 2012

WotC stated the next packet includes character creation, and will be available sometime around Gen Con-ish.

I suspect it means people will create their own characters to try out DDN at Gen Con.

GX.Sigma · Aug 8, 2012

mudbunny said:
The Acquisitions Incorporated podcasts are possibly the best advertising push that WotC has ever done. They were *all* paid for all of the podcasts that they did.

Well yeah, but the point is, (as he described in the Dark Sun podcast) Mike would never have touched D&D if WotC had not paid him a significant amount of money for that first podcast.

PinkRose · Aug 8, 2012

[MENTION=43019]keterys[/MENTION], your suspicion is in fact, fact.
GenCon - GenCon
Players will be able to make D&D Next characters and then run them in an adventure.
And if you're lucky (or unlucky), you'll have me as your DM.

Maxboy · Aug 8, 2012

GX.Sigma said:
Well yeah, but the point is, (as he described in the Dark Sun podcast) Mike would never have touched D&D if WotC had not paid him a significant amount of money for that first podcast.

Can i have a Citation for this, or is this you guessing

Jack99 · Aug 8, 2012

VinylTap said:
How do people, generally, handle HP restoration in traditional DnD games? Do you buy lots of potions? Buy your healing afterwards from an NPC? What is the most common mechanic from the supporters of the dogmatic 'zero to nil passive HP regen'/'healing surges are bad' crowd? Do people behind this ideology always run with a heal bot? How do you heal 75% health on 4+ PCs without things getting out of hand?

I mean, even if you go light healing (say one cure spell per party), you're still looking at multiple days to get everyone topped off after a tough dungeon day.

I've heard a lot of decent on the matter, but very little in the way of alternative game mechanics? I really like the idea of this hardcore/realistic, but can't figure out a solution beyond "ok we're taking a week off so the healer can reset his/her CLW 7 times."

B.T. said:
Generally, the idea is not to take damage in the first place. If you do, you have a cleric and potions and rest.

MooMan68 said:
If the party was seriously hurt, we typically rested for multiple days. Each day, each player would heal X points, and the cleric was assumed to have devoted all of his spell slots possible for healing and would have X dice to distribute. Later we ruled that heal spells cast out of combat always did maximum. If after the end of the day the party wanted to rest another day, we repeated.

If no cleric was in the party (not uncommon) either we used an NPC non-combat cleric hireling/follower, or the party was friendly with a local cleric who would provide plentiful healing potions at the price in the PBH.

Nobody had a problem with this at the time

Minigiant said:
A cleric in every town, a potion on every corpse, and a wand in every chest!

Totally cut off at the good part.

All of the above. We recently returned to 2e, and I snagged the HD mechanic from D&D Next. All I had to do is change healing/herbalism skill and voila. Works well, without reminding at all about the 4e healing surge wonkiness.

variant · Aug 8, 2012

Did I hear talk of encounter powers? That isn't going to go over well.

Revinor · Aug 8, 2012

VinylTap said:
How do people, generally, handle HP restoration in traditional DnD games? Do you buy lots of potions? Buy your healing afterwards from an NPC? What is the most common mechanic from the supporters of the dogmatic 'zero to nil passive HP regen'/'healing surges are bad' crowd? Do people behind this ideology always run with a heal bot? How do you heal 75% health on 4+ PCs without things getting out of hand?

1st lvl Cure Light Wounds wands (in 3e). 750gp for 50d8 healing - you cannot beat it cost-wise. My players at 18 lvl were carrying tens of them. They were calling it 'brushwood'...
This is one of the reasons I'm so happy with 4e approach to that - you don't need to workaround the system.

Mustrum_Ridcully · Aug 8, 2012

Revinor said:
1st lvl Cure Light Wounds wands (in 3e). 750gp for 50d8 healing - you cannot beat it cost-wise. My players at 18 lvl were carrying tens of them. They were calling it 'brushwood'...
This is one of the reasons I'm so happy with 4e approach to that - you don't need to workaround the system.

Wand of Vigor was even better, IIIRC. But that spell came so late to the game that I mostly remember the CLW Wands.

Balesir · Aug 8, 2012

GX.Sigma said:
Well yeah, but the point is, (as he described in the Dark Sun podcast) Mike would never have touched D&D if WotC had not paid him a significant amount of money for that first podcast.

Funny - I get the impression that this same situation would apply to a lot of folks over 4e...