The New Design Philosophy?

[lukelightning]

Who uses ogre magi these days anyway? If I want a sorcerous ogre in 3e, I'll just take a regular ogre and give it sorcerer levels.

I do like the idea of ogre mages being a separate race, physically distinct, from regular ogres.

 

[Taraxia]

Could you, perhaps, give examples of spells with these casting times? Preferably spells found in the core books, as they are ones that would apply to everything.

*sigh* You would ask for the one variable by which d20srd.org doesn't let you filter.

While longer-than-an-action casting times are not terribly common anymore, a lot of divination spells or spells that induce permanent effects have long casting times. _Commune_ takes 10 minutes, as does _lesser planar ally_. _Scrying_ takes 1 hour. _Hallow_ takes 24 hours.

 

[Taraxia]

All I'm gonna do is ask how the heck the Ogre Mage fits into this criticism.

*What* flavor? What "classic" feel? What about him was so great and so special?

Mearls' criticism -- echoed by other designers in other columns -- is that if you look at the original Ogre Mage he's a hodgepodge of essentially random SLAs that were *originally* chosen by cherrypicking various random magical powers various oni have been said to have in Japanese folklore. Since none of them are really centered around a single folkloric concept or story element, an ogre with sorcerer levels is a lot more true to the original concept of an oni (a big ugly guy with unpredictable magic powers) than the One-Trick Ogre Mage.

As Mearls' pointed out, the mechanical use of the Ogre Mage (fly in, blast with cone of cold, turn gaseous and run away) doesn't even match the actual flavor text and illustration, where he's shown being a muscular badass with a greatsword and being a cunning leader of other ogres. Certainly this whole Ogre Mage as Master Manipulator thing isn't in there. Does it *say* you're supposed to find Ogre Mages masquerading as the new prince? Does it *say* he has a bunch of innocent human peasant slaves who will defend him? This isn't real flavor -- it's retconned flavor made to match the OM's ill-chosen abilities. It doesn't even work that well -- as opposed to a monster who actually has abilities that *reliably* work to mess with people's minds, like _dominate_ and _modify memory_ and whatnot, he just has the single _charm_ spell, which has the unpredictable effect of making people like you. (Unless you're going to unbalance the game horribly in favor of your bard PC, _charm_ does *not* function as any kind of mind control or coercion or make anyone do anything they wouldn't normally do.)

You have to write a whole, big, long, complicated story to justify why an Ogre Mage has a bunch of town guards defending him. It isn't a natural part of the Ogre Mage's defined abilities, and, moreover, it kind of contradicts the Ogre Mage's defined flavor as such. (Don't the typical encounter stats say he hangs out with other ogres? Isn't his environment in the wilderness? Doesn't the illustration show him all tattooed and whacking things with his sword?)

The master-manipulator Ogre Mage isn't a basic part of the OM's flavor, it's something DMs can come up with as a creative way to use the OM's powers, and today, thanks to 3.5's greater modularity, a DM can do that by adding class levels or homebrew SLAs to a monster if he so chooses. Nothing has been sacrificed of the OM's *actual* flavor -- he's just been altered to *fit* the flavor he actually has in the text.

 

[Mark CMG]

All I'm gonna do is ask how the heck the Ogre Mage fits into this criticism.

That is a discussion for the other thread, please.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=169179

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I miss the days when a powerful spell with good flavor may have been balanced by taking 3 rounds to cast, or causing the cleric to need bedrest for a few days. Now, everything has to be able to be handled in 6 seconds.

Bleh!

What, all of the 5 spells or so from earlier editions? Identify, Contact other plane and a few others had such restrictions. Compare it to the dozens of spells with feedback, backlash, ability loss, taint, etc in 3.5. You're wrong on this.

I think this whole thread is a huge overraction from the bitter grognards' club that EN World has devolved into. Most likely, those articles were quickly written, and any attempts to actually redesign poorly thought out monsters of previous editions would be a bit better. And yes, the rust monster and the "cone of cold on a stick" that the ogre mage was needed to be revised.

 

[Pants]

Could you, perhaps, give examples of spells with these casting times? Preferably spells found in the core books, as they are ones that would apply to everything.

Variant Casting Time:
Legend Lore

Casting Time - 1 round
Call Lightning
Call Lightning Storm
Changestaff
Deep Slumber
Fabricate (+1 round per 10 cubic feet)
Insect Plague
Lesser Geas
Modify Memory
Sleep
Summon Monster 1-9
Summon Nature's Ally 1-9
Summon Swarm

Casting Time - 2 rounds
Permanency

Casting Time - 3 rounds
Find the Path
Restoration
Restoration, Lesser
Restoration, Greater

Casting Time - 6 rounds
Forbiddance

Casting Time - 3 full Rounds
Regenerate

Casting Time - 1 minute
Augury
Break Enchantment
Dream
Illusory Script (or longer)
Ironwood
Minor Creation
Prying Eyes
Prying Eyes, Greater
Raise Dead

Casting Time - 10 Minutes:
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance
Clone
Commune
Commune With Nature
Contact Other Plane
Divination
Geas/Quest
Hallucinatory Terrain
Liveoak
Major Creation
Mark of Justice
Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum
Nightmare
Planar Ally
Planar Ally, Greater
Planar Ally, Lesser
Planar Binding
Planar Binding, Greater
Planar Binding, Lesser
Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer
Reincarnate
Ressurection
Screen
Secret Chest
Secret Page
Sending
Sepia Snake Sigil
Spellstaff
Stone Tell
Symbol (All)
True Ressurection

Casting Time - 30 Minutes
Astral Projection
Guards and Wards

Casting Time - 1 hour
Atonement
Identify
Scrying

Casting Time - 12 hours
Simulcrum

Casting Time - 24 Hours
Awaken
Hallow
Unhallow

I see far more emphasis on crunch than flavor. Magic of Encarnum, PHb2, etc.

PHB2 had a large amount of flavor, almost a half-n-half book.

D&D has moved away from the crunch only approach that was popular during the revision and has become a lot more flavor heavy. MM4, in fact, gives a lot more space to ecologies and societies of the monsters. Fiendish Codex I had massive amounts of flavor, so did Lords of Madness.

I've got no problem with what-ifs, and given a choice between a closed development process and these kinds of articles, I'd take the more open approach any day. Being people that have a lot invested in D&D, we're just doing our job, too, by providing push-back on elements we find unwelcome.

That's the point, to get us to voice our opinions. Thus, the articles have done their jobs.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

PHB2 had a large amount of flavor, almost a half-n-half book.

More like 80/20%. Four new classes, 25 pages of new feats (including 3 new *types* of feats), dozens of spells. But going by page count is foolish.

The fact remains that drastically increasing the options available to players and then claiming that the problem with the game being too complex is because of a couple oddball monsters is rather misguided. Claiming that the fix for that generic mobs is class levels (or templates, or whatever else) and that that is less work for the DM than a couple paragraphs of tactics text in the MM is silly.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I think this whole thread is a huge overraction from the bitter grognards' club that EN World has devolved into.

Watch the tone.

A lot of us 'bitter grognards' are people that abandoned D&D at some point and came back into the fold when 3e came along, and you'll find that a lot of us are far more interested in stretching the possibilities in the rules than in playing the same-old, same-old. Hardly reactionary. About the only generalization that holds true here is the DM community is probably over-represented.

We're not objecting to crunch, or new ideas or rules. We're objecting to some spurious notion that the future of the game lies in reducing it to a bland, by-the-numbers collection of rules bereft of spirit.

 

[Pants]

More like 80/20%. Four new classes, 25 pages of new feats (including 3 new *types* of feats), dozens of spells. But going by page count is foolish.

I maintain the half-n-half.

All those pages on Affiliations, sample affiliations, backgrounds, character traits, providing ways to create more memorable PC's, yada yada, that's adding flavor to the game right there.

The fact remains that drastically increasing the options available to players and then claiming that the problem with the game being too complex is because of a couple oddball monsters is rather misguided. Claiming that the fix for that generic mobs is class levels (or templates, or whatever else) and that that is less work for the DM than a couple paragraphs of tactics text in the MM is silly.[/QUOTE]
Well, I never argued that. I just found the entire reactionary 'D&D being dumbed down because of a what-if article posted on the website that a developer might do if a revision were in the works' thing ludicrous.

 

[Piratecat]

[conspiracy]I HOPE design direction goes askew! 'Cause you know, if 3.5 is still as well designed in 2007 as 3e was in 2000, no one will ever buy 4e in 2008. But if it's as well designed as 2e was in 1999...[/conspiracy]