DiasExMachina 4ED Update

[Dias Ex Machina]

Goodman Games and Dias Ex Machina are now presenting the Amethyst Errata. Although many of its points are from concerns we had late in the game’s development, the vast majority came as a result from buyer feedback. It may not be the last but we feel comfortable this covers the vast majority of issues. The errata contains corrections, modifications, and additional rules to improve game balance.

In addition, we will soon be posting a podcast to detail these changes, answer questions, and offer a few homebrew rules not included in the errata.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

In order help ease people into the new Amethyst errata, Conan and I sat down with the document along with the FAQ an explained it all in a helpful PODCAST. We are as civilized as always. Along with answering questions, we also supply a few extra rules not offered in the errata that go into our personal game. It runs about 65 minutes after I cut about 45 minutes of Conan’s bodily functions.

Heed warning, I do believe certain vulgarities slipped through. With us, putting a microphone on us is like throwing gasoline on a flame.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

I really like this one. I think this guy really got it.

World vs. Hero: Spotlight World: Amethyst Foundations

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

The first piece of “leaked?” art for the second book of Amethyst (title still pending) has been released. This is a sketch and not the final work. You can find it below as well but it’s been available on Amethyst’s facebook page for several days now. Check there for more posts and sketches.

The second book is at about 88,000 words so far. This is not including the new techan class being offered. Also expect to be able to go evil in this one, with rules on Ixindar and corrupt races.

As some you know, neither I nor Goodman Games are attending GenCon. This does not mean in any way we are dropping 4th Edition or gaming in general. I’m half-way across the country for one thing. HOWEVER, for those at GenCon, if you happen to see Amethyst related areas (games, booths, etc). Please take a photo and post it. Thanks all.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

Two points today, both involving interesting posts on the DEM forums.

The first regards the definition of disruption and how it affects classes. Martial classes are not magic but the items they wield are. So someone asked if a techan class could dive into fantasy multiclass feats. And the answer is yes, absolutely.

Humans can choose any of the available classes listed, so the four techan classes and the growing list of fantasy (from PHB1, 2 and 3) save for divine and psionic paths (and all arcane save for two). When you choose a class, you fall into the role of echan or techan human at that point...well...not technically. Yes, if you chose a techan class, you are a techan human. When you start using magic, you turn echan, but you could be a techan human fighter and until you start using magic, the choice to wield tech is still there. It’s when you start to use and carry magic when things get difficult.

You can ABSOLUTELY select fantasy multiclass feats if you are a techan class. Obviously, you would have to stick with martial class multiclass feats but that still allows you to tap into fighter, ranger, rogue, warlord, etc.

And by the way, this should also work for hybrids as well. Until you start using magic items, you are still open to use technology. This works the other way around to. Pick a fighter and grab a techan multiclass feat. Or better still pick that along with the Crossroad's Drifter lifepath. Grab an immune gun and presto, you're a magical fighter with double barreled shotgun...all perfectly legal and canon in Amethyst.

The second point involves our motivation for having limitation in the canon Amethyst setting. Specifically, the point involves our "mindset" and if we were still thinking like 3rd Ed player or 4th Ed players. The answer is that there was no "game mindset” when we created Amethyst. It's a very specific playground, as specific as playing in Middle Earth, Harry Potter, or A Song of Ice and Fire. That was the mindset, as a novel or non-game setting that was adapted into a game, rather than a game setting built from the ground up.

This was first brought up with The Tome Show. They mentioned Amethyst is about saying no while 4th Ed is about saying yes. Obviously, I have issues with that. Games, by definition, must limit player freedom. 4th Edition does say no, as do DMs. They say no all the time. Classes are limited in their roles. Powers have specific attributes tied to them (oddly enough NeuroSpasta counters this by offering incredible adaptability). My group made a joke recently that 4th Edition gives the illusion of freedom but in actually is nearly as limiting as the previous edition.

Amethyst has a lot of detail, but I wouldn't say it limits freedom anymore than playing in Middle Earth or Song of Ice and Fire. I think people were expecting Amethyst to be Eberron, meaning its everything D&D offers plus ours. Amethyst was written as a separate setting away from D&D and then it was adapted into 4th Edition.

There was a mindset, but it was not 3rd- or 4th-oriented. Amethyst was a setting created in 1992 and this is an adaption of that setting, in as much as the aforementioned fantasy novels mentioned above. Of course, a lot of people just want the techan rules for their own custom-created game. Some others adapt Amethyst to their own voice, which is also supported and encouraged.

This is only the official canon Amethyst setting. You are free to do what you wish in your own custom game. It's also ironic that WOTC, encouraging "yes", released the GSL, which limited the freedom of 3rd Party Games. “No” and “Yes” and interchangeable. It is correct that we say no to divinity. There is a very good reason why (as further reinforced by the GSL) they were removed. We could also say that we say yes to technology, yes to power armor, yes tanks and robots. We say yes to druids, barbarians, fighters, rogues, shamans, rangers, monks, and others. We have a massive world the size of North America and detail less than 1% of its landmass. 4th Ed has one elf race, we have three. Our humans are the same with additional options for techan paths. In the next book, we say yes to evil races, corrupt magic, and invaders from another planet (might said too much).

You may be surprised some of interesting ideas I have seen players come up with. One DM on the WOTC forum told me of a player that is using a Warforged template to create a robot PC. I think that's really clever. Another group simply pushed more into D&D and has an Amethyst party with tieflings. My group involves the following:

Techan Stalker
Human Monk
Tenenbri Wizard
Narros Ranger
Gimfen Rogue
Human Warlord

The wizard is off and on (more off) so we are about to add a techan grounder into the fray in a few weeks.

Here is another interesting oddity: Next week, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled campaign to run a one-off WOTC dungeon WITHIN the architecture of Amethyst. It is P3-Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress. There shouldn't be a lot of alterations to make it work. This group consists of a damaskan melee-ranger, a chaparran archer-ranger, a pagus shaman, a pagus barbarian, and a kodiak warden. Not sure why a scholarly and civilized damaskan is wandering around with a bunch of uncultured warmongers but hey, whatever.

Also remember, we removed divine only because the GSL prevented us from modifying them to work within our framework. If we could have, we would have removed the proof-of-god-requirement and fluffed them back in. You're more than welcome to do the same. We also made an exception for runepriest. Also note that all primal classes are in, including druid.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

NeuroSpasta has crossed its last "T" and dotted its last "I". It now stands ready. Anyone that has been tapped for playtesting, if you have not faxed in or emailed the NDA, now is the time. For those still interested, from the date of this post you have 48 hours before the files go out.

We recently added super heavy weapons, action set pieces, and general combat encounters.

Another addition is an optional rule I want to throw out there for people to read and gauge their interest. It may help people wanting a more traditional role-playing game without being tied down to tracking every 24-hour period.


OPTIONAL RULE –
EXTENDED RESTS, POWER RESETS, & MILESTONES
Simply put, there are NO extended rests in NeuroSpasta. The GM may allow them at the end of an adventure, with the GM determining when said adventure is officially over. The rules regarding extended rests are ignored (and in effect removed) until the adventure is concluded. If the game is considered one unbroken campaign, this rule is still in effect, meaning the resetting of powers and healing surges can only occur through the use of milestones.
Milestones: When you reach a milestone, not only do you gain an action point, you also recover ¼ of your total healing surge value (round down), and can reset one daily power (daily attack or daily utility). At 11th level, you can reset two daily powers instead of one and at 21st level, you can reset three daily powers. However, at these additional tiers, you still only regain ¼ healing surges and one action point. If in a fantasy game, the resetting of one magic item’s daily power does not count towards your resetting of others.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

I am not one to rant. Over the past few months, Amethyst has had numerous positive reviews. In fact, I would say we've been blessed. Of course, it's not all been smelling roses. We've fielded our critics. Even the ones that love us have commented on certain decisions we made in service to the setting. One of the biggest changes we made concerned the lack of gods. Since Amethyst is set in the real world, we couldn't have proof of god/s. Therefore, we removed divine classes, as we could not alter them to fit fluff per GSL. I note The Tome Show, although praising the final product, mentioned this as a sticking point. The interviewer even asked me that exact point. Amethyst says no when the new mindset says yes. Beyond the fact that this is not true (as I feel like a broken record saying), I have explained that Amethyst is not a D&D setting but a fantasy setting using D&D base architecture.

Well, now we have a new D&D setting, Dark Sun, which is a return to an old setting I never played. Yup, full disclosure, I ran Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and even Spelljammer for a short time, but I simply missed out on Dark Sun, despite the appeal the setting actual has on me. I didn't know a lot of the specifics, including regarding the new 4th Edition update. That being said, imagine my surprise upon being told that divine classes are nowhere to be found in this new setting. Wow. No divine classes. Of course, WOTC also says that you can make an exception with a rule saying a cleric is a primal class instead of a divine class…which is great. Too bad GSL stipulations prevent us from saying the same thing. As it is, we are putting a lifepath in the next book that offers a loophole, but we only inserted this because of the backlash we received for removing divine in the first place. And here is a first party D&D setting doing the exact same thing. I am laughing…on the outside and the inside. So I guess it's okay if WOTC does it but heaven forbid a third party company does something against expectations.

…sigh…yes well; this is what happens when you try to be different. With NeuroSpasta, we are offering non-combat classes and free enhancement without the need of buying gear.

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

To say there has been no activity has been an understatement. On the contrary, I've been working so hard, I have had no time to do much else. After only a month of playtesting NeuroSpasta, I have already made over 300 changes to character classes alone. Among the many amendments include adjusting class power level to balance with other 4th Edition D&D classes, even ones seen in later publications. We have made the non-combat classes better by making their non-damaging powers even more effective.

Meanhwhile, in Amethyst, We have locked down our three new races for the book (Pagus, Kodiak, Tenenbri) and are polishing up the mixed martial arts-inspired vanguard class.

Oh and this…

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

There has been a real debate among the playtesters of late. It pretty much resolved itself but I wanted to share what it was and why. It also involved a friend of mine that runs a very successful D&D blog site. Since he hasn't mentioned the conversation, I won't mention who it was.

Anyway, the entire topic dealt with the design philosophy of WOTC and if 3rd party publishers have an obligation to follow it. I heard about this a couple times. About the "yes" mentality instead of "no". My opinion, and my entire group agrees, that yes and no are interchangeable depending on how you word your question. You can word a question in order to get a yes/no response and have it say exactly the same thing. A game is about yes and no. No DM in the world says yes to everything. A game has rules...rules are a series of no's and yes's. Plus there is such a thing as "Yes, but why" which is still a "no" (Elf gives you bow and Dex bonuses…so…Fighter?) 4E gives the illusion of freedom while still as constricting as most other games. Alignments (something I never agreed with) impose a moral view you may not agree with (and there are fewer in 4E). People cannot all be settled into four profiles.

When 4E PHB1 came out, the roles imposed by these new classes absolutely shoehorned you into a specific way of thinking. In fact, people say Amethyst says no, while we have Lifepaths that modify classes (custodian), and then we introduce techan classes that say, "hell with roles, we're doing what we want." We offered dual-role options and classes more malleable depending on how you created it.

Then we got criticism about that to. Some people WANTED those defined role--those series of absolute yes's and no's. We present techan classes, which many people thought couldn't be done. We said, yes...here...guns...go at it. But the setting--the thing that is NOT 4E D&D--says these two worlds are separate. One critic said "that's a no". Then I countered, "Run a canon Middle Earth game. Would you, as a DM, say yes to someone wanting to bring in a tiefling? Saying yes to everything leads to chaos...yes...I very much know the irony in that. People create settings all the time that limit options.

This leads me to Dark Sun. Amethyst disallowed divine classes. Now Dark Sun has done the same. What Dark Sun has done is nothing bad. I love they did it...because it shows that this mentality moving through critics is a paradigm that WOTC doesn't completely endorse. They know that certain settings will limit options. They are retroactively paving the way for us. Not every setting has to have every race and every class. Not every game has to be Forgotten Realms and Eberron. Dragonlance limits options, so does Middle Earth or Dark Sun.

In 3.5 Amethyst, we allowed divine classes because we could redefine them as tapping an undefined power from the gate some people "claimed" as divine. We created (as some have said) the single best paladin prestige class in all of 3.5. It had powers based on an internally defined virtue. In some places, people use such power without being religious. In 4E, with limits on the GSL, we could not do that, so I took them out.

Why couldn't we just ignore it? Well, that means we allow the proof of god/s. This is very dangerous in many ways. If we allow a priest to have divine powers and cleric to have divine powers, this forces a proof of god into the setting in some readers. You have dozens of people with divine powers, each that verify their god as fact…and thus rendering them all false, as they can't all be true. We could say, "Your faith gives you power, not your god." Well, that's heretical as well. We're not smoothing the waters by saying "sure, go at it."

Amethyst is not a Dungeons and Dragons setting. It's Amethyst using 4th ED architecture. DMs and players don't need me to give them reasons to change it. We list the canon setting as it is and let the group alter it how they see fit. The canon setting has limited magic use. So I disagreed with those few critics saying Amethyst follows a 3rd Edition mentality of saying "no." That would be like saying Harry Potter follows a 3rd Edition mentality by saying no, or Song of Ice and Fire, or any other setting established as a fantasy over just a D&D Campaign. In the end, I think that was the issue. Some people expected a setting that was just "Guns on top of Forgotten Realms". Well, you can do that. Grab the guns and classes and away you go. That's not Amethyst. I didn't want to use virtue as I did in 3.5 because I felt that was a cheat. You can spend years reading books to cast a spell or you could just "believe" really hard.

Now, a point came up that we have demons, therefore hell, but not heaven or angels. The demons of Ixindar are only called that because that is the word people use. They look nothing like demons. They don't call each other demons. It is the conflict of chaos and order. They have spellcasters. We have spellcasters. They have monsters. We have monsters (we actually have a lot more monsters). They don't have evil clerics, so neither do we. It is incorrect to assume Ixindar is hell. People like saying it is, but there is no fire or brimstone, no forked-tail devils. Religion made these connections and they are not all true. Just the same, Attricana is sure as beans not Heaven. Nearly all monsters on this Earth are from its influence. Trolls, ogres, dragons, all sorts of abominations, all from Attricana.

I wanted to enforce the idea that WE, the human race, are still the same from modern day. The issues over religion and faith are unchanged. I wanted it to be a mirror of our real world, which means divine power is delegated to holy books and bad Kirk Cameron films.

What does this have to do with our playtesting? Nothing…well, not exactly nothing. I'll explain it all next time…

 

[Dias Ex Machina]

I am sure fans are wondering about the lack of updates (Bob). The reason for my recent absence can be tracked to LivingDice.com. Starting this week, I'm handling guest blog duties while the website's operator is held up with a broken appendage.

I'm not sure for how long this gig will run. My first feature was posted on Wednesday, dealing with the lack of 3rd party products that try to push or bend the system. Next time, I deal with a slightly less inflammatory topic—as to why does Dungeons & Dragons require the inclusion of deities.

Additionally, I have also joined the staff of Emerald Press as part of the Combat Advantage team. Through its distribution and pages, I hope to share details on future products through DEM, mostly the upcoming release of Ultramodern4.

Links to share:

LivingDice.com
Home - Emerald Press PDF Publishing