D&D 4E 4e Monster Manual excerpt

[pawsplay]

Bringing up abilities that we dont know players will ever receive isnt exactly a good basis for argument.

IF players ever get these abilities, which is by no means certain quite yet, I will be very suprised if they allow them to bring into play anything but medium (possibly large), solid creatures, not the type of creatures that would cause severe discrepency with the stats as written here.

If they don't appear, D&D has gone so far Mickey Mouse I can't imagine it ever having relevance to the the larger fanbase.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

double post...

 

[Kishin]

If they don't appear, D&D has gone so far Mickey Mouse I can't imagine it ever having relevance to the the larger fanbase.

I'm not sure I ever understand what you're saying here, but whatever it is, I highly doubt D&D's relevance will be jeopardized anytime soon. Its rather...monolithic.

I'm sure we'll see Wildshape again, though I'm willing to bet it'll be more in the form of the shapeshifting variation from the 3.5E PHB2 than its original incarnation. Dominate isn't going anywhere. Summons will be back too, but I expect the list of summonable beings to not quite be so expansive. Although, summons may very well be more playable in 4E thanks to the shortened statblocks. I've had way too many people not bother to keep record of/truly familiarize themselves with the creatures they plan on summoning, which can really slow a table down.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Summon Monster.

Summon this monster with these exact player balanced stats.

Wildshape.

This power turns you into this form with these effects

Dominate.

This is the one that I'm not sure how it'll happen.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

If they don't appear, D&D has gone so far Mickey Mouse I can't imagine it ever having relevance to the the larger fanbase.

M-I-C-K-E-Y R-O-U-S-E....

The MM will not be a player source book as long as the design tenets of 4e stay valid.

 

[Ondo]

No clue, although I'm holding out to see if the newly-team-swapped succubus kicked the erinyes to the curb. I like erinyeses. Erinyi? Erinyeese? Whatever. Winged infernal-angel-thingies-with-bows.

According to Rich Baker here the Erinyes is gone.

 

[pawsplay]

I'm not sure I ever understand what you're saying here, but whatever it is, I highly doubt D&D's relevance will be jeopardized anytime soon. Its rather...monolithic.

I expect that in fact wildshape, dominate, and summon monster will all be present in a recognizable form. If they were not, I don't think "jeopardize" would begin to describe the reaction from players. Hence, I believe they will.

 

[med stud]

I expect that in fact wildshape, dominate, and summon monster will all be present in a recognizable form. If they were not, I don't think "jeopardize" would begin to describe the reaction from players. Hence, I believe they will.

I don't know really. For every shape shifting afficionado there is one guy who is fed up with Polymorph. Not having shape shifting would be a loss of many fantasy/mythological tropes, but I think the old school polymorph- version of shape shifting can go away without much of a fuss.

As for summoning, I would like something that is closer to books and movies. I have never read a book where someone summons two badgers to fight for him, and those badgers last for 50 seconds. I would like a more ritual approach to summons. I think, though, that there will be some D&D- style summons available for PCs since the pit fiend has it.

Dominate is in. The vampire lord and the succubus have domination. What I don't want is the old dominate; I would like PCs and NPCs to use their skills to get people to do what they want. As it stands, intrigue becomes very hard at square 1; with Charm Person you can get someone to tell all of their secrets by the casting of a spell. I think, again, though that some kind of long time charm is in, since the succubus has it. I know that the write up for the succubus just details the throwing-yourself-in-harms-way- aspect of charm, but I would be very surprised if the Charm didn't do more than that.

All in all, I agree with you that dominate, summons and shape shifting are integral parts of a RPG. I'm not sure that the old school ways of doing them are necessary for D&D to keep it's players.

 

[AllisterH]

One of the things I find really annoying about the fluff changes to demons and devils is that the 4E designers seem to have gone out of their way to make it hard for people to continue to use the D&D hitorical approach to these monsters. For example, why couldn't they create a "pleasure devil" or "persuasion devil" and leave the word succubus alone, to be used by those who want to keep succubus demons in their world?

What exactly about moving succubus to devils makes them incapable of what they were before? I can see why WOTC wanted to have a clearer distinction between demons and devils but I'm not sure the succubus change will get noticed by most people in how they use a succubus.

re: Dominate, Wildshape and Summoning
Er, it should be noted that the 1e/2e versions of those spells tended to be MUCH, MUCH weaker than the 3E version thus anyone saying 4E is making the game Mickey Mouse has never played 1e/2e.

Domination was a 5th level spell and by the time 9th level hit, a PC would fail a save only on a 5 or a 6 (class relating saving throw + wis adjustment + racial bonus + magical items) and by the time 12th level hit, would probably only fail on a 1. Thus, even though Dominate has appeared, for over 30 years, only in 3E did it actually be a threat.

Similarly, Polymorph was, shall we say, not as abusive in 1e/2e. Hell it pretty much was useless compared to the tricks we now use it for. You could polymorph into an owl yet it didn't even give you the superior vision of an owl just the locomotion ability. You gained pretty much that until ShapeChange (and Shapechange didn't grant magical abilities OR abilities based on innate intelligence)
Wildshape was also MUCH more restricted than the current version for Druids. Largest animal you could become was a black bear and there was no "Natural Spell" feat.

As for Monster Summoning, in 1E/2E, the DM selected what monsters the player would get, and it was 2 levels behind the curve (Monster Summoning I was a third level spell that summoned 2d4 1ST-LEVEL) creatures. Again, you can see how MS wasn't as abusive.

 

[hong]

I expect that in fact wildshape, dominate, and summon monster will all be present in a recognizable form. If they were not, I don't think "jeopardize" would begin to describe the reaction from players. Hence, I believe they will.

So far, they seem to have taken a very robust approach, don't you think?