Search results

Not all the jargon is game-y. Strength, Intelligence, Ranger, Wizard, Splint Armor, Glaive, Chain Lightning, Raise Dead, Pick Pockets, Initiative and Flanking are all jargon. It's just that they are jargon for things that exist in the gameworld, so they don't break immersion. Skill Check...

In and of itself, an archtype is a type of character in the gameworld. By itself, it doesn't have any "role in resolution or capability." That's the class. At the risk of defining on the fly, I'd say that the class is the game mechanic construct that enables an archtype in the game. Of...

At the risk of stating the obvious, classes are for allowing players to play an archtype with a balanced and fun set of appropriate abilities. There are interesting arguments to be had about how broad/flexible classes should be and whether the archtypes overlap (e.g. paladins and...

I think the real problem with roles is that, for many classes, the class archtype is bigger than any one role. As such, assigning individual roles to classes makes them narrower than many players would like. Fighter is a great example of this: many people wanted striker fighters and, while the...

I partially agree with you, in that I think there should be good choices for light, heavy and maybe medium armor. And, similarly, there should be several good weapons for PCs to choose. But I disagree with the assertion that 2nd rate weapons and armors are bad for the game. They serve two...

As someone who has been mostly playing 4e since it came out, I think there are two problems with 4e jargon. First, there is just too much of it. Defenses like Fortitude, Reflect and Will (the "Non-AC Defenses" or "NADs") are critical (and mostly self-explanatory) concepts. But once you add...

I like ability damage for the ability to have a form of damage that can reflect unique forms of attacks and can be harder to heal. I hate it for the recalculation aspect. I think ability damage should be limited to ability checks and whatever checks are immediately based on ability checks in...

There are two different issues here. One is how the DM can measure challenge so as to correctly predict how difficult an encounter will be. The other is to determine what rewards to give the PCs for completing the encounter. For the first, the game needs to start with the assumption of a...

These guys have played a lot of D&D. There is no possible way they think that you can -- in one hour -- cover the range of experience provided by a multi-year campaign. That they can appreciate a one hour experience (the "lunch break" session), doesn't mean that they have somehow lost track of...

I care more about the rules system than the typos, but I'll echo the sentiment that I would rather see a late system than a system that really needs another round of playtesting. In the same way, I wouldn't mind if the initial round of supplements came out a little slower if that made them...

The more I think about it, the more I think there are two different parts of guidelines. Encounter guidelines need to tell the GM whether a given encounter will be trivial, definitely-winnable-but-resource-exhausting, challenging, near-impossible or impossible. That's mostly about figuring...

I recommend taking a look at Alea Iacta and, more immediately relevantly, Alea Iacta: Parthia. I'm not sure if our Nile adventure is posted in the the Parthia section, but the GM is a classics professor and the material is excellent. -KS

What's easy to make and what can't be made seems like a factor that will vary significantly game by game. I fear that WotC will have a very hard time figuring out how to support all of these various styles. It wouldn't surprise me if we get a level chart of items and some very general advice...

I agree that you need something to work off of, but I think creating a single baseline can cause the "player expectations" problem that Monte aludes to. A better approach is to create a set of baselines (e.g. high, medium and low/no magic items) and let DMs know what those choices look like and...

I used to think that. After having spent the last several years assembling treasure parcels by hand, I would love a nice, well thought out, random treasure table. And that's not a flip remark. There are times when I'm going to intervene in treasure allocation and decide that this cool item...

I'd like to see an initiative system that gives credit to fast characters, but doesn't begin every combat with going around the table getting initiative scores in order. That's OK for a combat that's going to take 30-60 minutes, but I don't want to begin a 5 minute combat with 2 minutes of...

I agree with the sentiment, expressed by several above, that the CoDzilla problem doesn't really have anything to do with Vancian mechanics. For clerics, the problem was how buff spells worked and, in later 3.5, how WotC had poor discipline in figuring out what kind of offensive magic was...

YMMV, obviously. I'm not sure I've ever played in a home game where a PC used a CLW wand. Do PCs usually buy them, or does someone convince the cleric/bard to take Craft Wand? Then again, my PCs were never about maximizing their use of the rules. I remember a great negotiation in 3.0, where...

Direct backwards compatibility is a little insane for all the reasons mentioned above. The real question is how convertable adventures from other editions will be. If you pick up Forge of Fury and try to run it in 4e, you need to do a lot of work to make the fights make sense. Personally, I...

I don't deny that there is a significant difference between the CLW wand and the healing surge. But that depends on game style. I haven't played or run many 4e games with more than 3-4 encounters in a day. In that context, running out of healing surges is the type of thing that only happens...