No, he said that the low cost of rituals was a problem, hence he hates "quadratic wizards" in all editions.
D&D 5E New L&L for 22/1/13 D&D Next goals, part 3
- Thread starter Blackwarder
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Hussar
Legend
I agree that this is what I want. Golden age Sword and Sorcery is a blast. The problem is, that is pretty orthagonal to the idea of "let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!", everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play. " At least to me.
You never see this sort of tactical planning in sword and sorcery fiction. You see this sort of thing more in Police Procedurals and that genre, where part of the draw of that genre is what I've heard called "Science Porn". You've seen it if you've watched something like CSI. The police have a bunch of clues to test out. The music starts (boom chicka bow wow) and we get a montage of guys and girls in lab coats staring intensely at beakers and machines.
You get roughly the same sort of scene in the old A-Team and 80's action genre TV shows where the A-Team would be faced with some sort of challenge and you'd get a montage of the team preparing for whatever it was they were going to face.
And there's nothing wrong with that. It's fun and, let's be honest, it's certainly popular.
But, what it's not is Sword and Sorcery genre. You never see Conan coming up with lengthy methodical plans for dealing with stuff. You never see Elric pouring over maps, selecting just the right spell and the right equipment. You never see Croaker (Black Company) spending all sorts of time in the planning stages of anything. It's nearly always, bare bones plan, initiate and react. Very high paced, very exciting.
What you never see, which I've certainly seen more than a few times in "let's look up the weight limits of our stuff!", everyone is referencing books to find new spells to use, style of play" is the group spending three hours trying to figure out the exact wording of the questions to use in a Commune spell.
Iosue
Legend
But this is akin to complaining that the D&D invisibility rules (of virtually any edition) don't let you attack someone while invisible. Overland Flight is a ritual which assumes the caster is concentrating the entire time to maintain the flight.
Okay, some of the 4e rules aces are going to have to help me out here, because as near as I can see, the game seems practically designed to provide just this ability. You have flight, be that the Fly spell or a Dragonborn paragon path. You move. You use dragon breath as a minor action. You use your standard action to move again. You land at the end of your turn. What am I missing?
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Obryn
Hero
The specific issue is that the Scion of Arkhosia's flight sucks. Most flying creatures could, but they only get a U12 at-will which is basically a jump, and overland flight at 16.
It's a specific issue with WotC making a crappy PP. Remember at this time (PHB2) the designers were still flight-phobic after 3e's flight wackiness. The flight rules are dandy; that PP was apparently written to frustrate people who (understandably) thought it would be cool.
-O
Hussar
Legend
Yeah, I think Obryn has the point of it. After all the issues with flight in 3e, the 4e dev's basically made it so that your PC will not be a flying PC. If you wanted long distance flight, get a mount that can fly, or perhaps a magic item. But flying on your own? Not so much.
To be fair, it is really hard to balance against. And, I've always been of the opinion that WotC's RPGA games informed a LOT of 4e's design. In a home campaign, flight might not be a huge issue because the DM and the player can hash it out. In RPGA style games, flight becomes a whole lot harder to balance and balance is a crucial element of gaming this way.
In retrospect, I think a lot of the issues that 4e had on release can be laid on the doorstep of what I believe was design for RPGA play. Makes some sense when you think that they also wanted you to be able to play on a virtual tabletop on something like an Xbox or home console. Just like standardizing Magic rules, you have to standardize RPG rules considerably if you want this style of play. There's a reason that the Living Forgotten Realms rules for 3e were a brick and Pathfinder Society rules are not the same as Pathfinder home play.
To be fair, it is really hard to balance against. And, I've always been of the opinion that WotC's RPGA games informed a LOT of 4e's design. In a home campaign, flight might not be a huge issue because the DM and the player can hash it out. In RPGA style games, flight becomes a whole lot harder to balance and balance is a crucial element of gaming this way.
In retrospect, I think a lot of the issues that 4e had on release can be laid on the doorstep of what I believe was design for RPGA play. Makes some sense when you think that they also wanted you to be able to play on a virtual tabletop on something like an Xbox or home console. Just like standardizing Magic rules, you have to standardize RPG rules considerably if you want this style of play. There's a reason that the Living Forgotten Realms rules for 3e were a brick and Pathfinder Society rules are not the same as Pathfinder home play.
I think I'm starting to see this in my game. I'm curious how it will play out (luckily the invoker/wizard in my game is otherwise probably the mechanically least powerful character, and so is unlikely to end up dominating).
Just to add to [MENTION=11821]Obryn[/MENTION]'s post, there is a special movement speed in 4e called "overland flight" which, while being used, limits you to a single move action per turn. Functionally, it has the effect of "you can fly without limit, but can't do other stuff while you're flying".
And the dragonborn paragon path Scion of Arkhosia gives the PC an overland flight speed in this technical sense.
The scion also gets an at-will power which permits flight in the full sense, but it has a "must land at end of your movement" clause - so you can go somewhere high and then act, but can't act while in the air. A sorcerer at level 16 can get an at-will flight ability (the sorcerer in my game has it) but it has the same constraint that you only get to do a single short flight. (But doesn't require you to land - so if you wish you can go high and then crash.)
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
You make huge hostile assumptions...
Quadratic empowerment is only really bad in context its exclusivity is its primary bad ... when one classes main and total source of power previous edition spell caster get quadratic empowerment and the fighting type gets linear thats bad... and I only said the empowerment was like it was peaking in
Even though the monetary cost is trivialized a rituals time cost still does keep them somewhat under control... so that skills and similar things can be applied to emergencies.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Well if there is any dominating - rituals do generally mean its out of combat.. how many rituals does the character use?
Rituals often give other characters power... like the "affect normal fires" lets the entire party manipulate fire and breath water works similarly.
Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Yes I am not fond of out of control advnancement in every edition... note the rituals still have casting time to bind them somewhat so that skills can remain significant for emergencies... and emergencies are pretty important parts of an adventurers life ;p
Also I dont think I used the word... HATE...
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