A constructive alternative to Golden Wyvern Adept feats.

[Epic Meepo]

This quote from another thread sums up my thoughts on flavorful names in a concise, constructive manner:

In a section on magic traditions, which would serve as readymade examples for newbies, you'd have the Golden Wyvern Adept...

Under "Golden Wyvern Adept" you have: Typical Feats: Spell Shaping, blah, blah, blah.

There you go. All the same flavor and hooks you asked for, but without hardwiring it. It's like the prestige classes in the 3.5 DMG. Easy to use, easy to toss out.

Agreed. Instead of having flavorful names for feats, why not have flavorful names for packages of feats and other sample character concepts?

For example: Golden Wyvern Adepts can still appear in the core rules as wizards who pick feats from a particular list. But other characters can use feats common to Golden Wyvern Adepts without having to rename them, since the feats themselves don't utilize the Golden Wyvern name. Or, as another example, Bigby can be mentioned as a wizard famous for using a spellbook containing a certain list of spells. But characters don't have to refer to those spells as Bigby's spells, since Bigby isn't explicitly mentioned in the names of the spells.

It would seem to me that a scheme like this would be the best of both worlds. D&D would encourage flavor in sidebars devoted to 'packages' of feats or spells. And new players would have examples of ways to combine feats and spells into coherent character concepts. But the flavor would be extremely modular. Anyone could drop names like Golden Wyvern or Bigby from the game without having to rename any feats or spells.

 

[Doug McCrae]

That's the way Champions does it. A basic power would be called 'Energy Blast'. But Professor Flame's energy blast is called 'Inferno Doom (Energy Blast 12d6)'.

If 4e did that people would come online to complain it was too complicated. 'OMG, why do we need two names for everything! This is hopelessly confusing!'

And if you just used the basic name people would come online to complain it was flavorless.

 

[Baduin]

Why not to follow the old tradition of Bigby's, Mordenkainen's etc spells?

You could call the feat Golden Wyvern Spellshaping. That way you can get rid of Golden Wyvern for your campaign and still retain a meaningfull name - similarly like you can have a Tenser's Floating Disk or a plain Floating Disk.

 

[BryonD]

Why not to follow the old tradition of Bigby's, Mordenkainen's etc spells?

You could call the feat Golden Wyvern Spellshaping. That way you can get rid of Golden Wyvern for your campaign and still retain a meaningfull name - similarly like you can have a Tenser's Floating Disk or a plain Floating Disk.

That would also work.

 

[JohnSnow]

It seems to me that "Golden Wyvern" is the new codeword for "Metamagic."

That said, I have no problem with flavorful names for feats (although I did call Rich out on Dragon's Tail Cut :\ ).

I guess intrinsic flavor just bothers me less with magic since it's always been there. The "8 schools" of magic were arbitrary fluff that were pretty solidly hardwired into the rules. And they didn't make complete logical sense either. By comparison, 4e's Traditions, from what little we've seen, seem far less pervasive and intrusive.

 

[Cam Banks]

I suggested it in response to one of the stated goals of the designers, which is to make the game accommodating for new players, to slip in some undeveloped yet interesting sounding proper nouns (like Golden Wyvern Adepts) as "ready to go" world elements, and to provide some kind of additional level of flavor to the game. I think examples are far more accessible to new players, and they provide a basis for those of us who have been playing for a long time to come up with our own magical traditions, organizations, etc.

It would be more interesting, for me, to be able to come up with a trio of High Sorcerer packages for Dragonlance and throw in some suggested feats, skills, spells, or whatever than to rename the Golden Wyvern Adept feat as Red-Robed Wayreth Student and hope that people will remember.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Rystil Arden]

I suggested it in response to one of the stated goals of the designers, which is to make the game accommodating for new players, to slip in some undeveloped yet interesting sounding proper nouns (like Golden Wyvern Adepts) as "ready to go" world elements, and to provide some kind of additional level of flavor to the game. I think examples are far more accessible to new players, and they provide a basis for those of us who have been playing for a long time to come up with our own magical traditions, organizations, etc.

It would be more interesting, for me, to be able to come up with a trio of High Sorcerer packages for Dragonlance and throw in some suggested feats, skills, spells, or whatever than to rename the Golden Wyvern Adept feat as Red-Robed Wayreth Student and hope that people will remember.

Cheers,
Cam

This is a great idea--and since part of the 4e philosophy seems to be throwing in minor crunch tidbits to help encourage developing your character's fluff, they could even offer a minor benefit to anyone who 'completed the set' of suggested feats, nothing big, even (+2 on Diplomacy against other Golden Wyvern folks or maybe a little Golden Wyvern pin that has the abilities of a 1st-level magic item or something of that magnitude), and they could, after giving their examples, provide the building blocks for GMs to design their own traditions in the same vein.

 

[Sadrik]

After that dragon tail's cut I went to the golden wyvern for an ice cold emerald frost, it was nice.

 

[billd91]

Agreed. Instead of having flavorful names for feats, why not have flavorful names for packages of feats and other sample character concepts?

For example: Golden Wyvern Adepts can still appear in the core rules as wizards who pick feats from a particular list. But other characters can use feats common to Golden Wyvern Adepts without having to rename them, since the feats themselves don't utilize the Golden Wyvern name. Or, as another example, Bigby can be mentioned as a wizard famous for using a spellbook containing a certain list of spells. But characters don't have to refer to those spells as Bigby's spells, since Bigby isn't explicitly mentioned in the names of the spells.

I could certainly dig it. I could see it with any feat package, including related combat moves like a martial art style.

Dragon Style
1. Power Attack - Dragon Mighty Blow
2. Cleave - Dragon Tail Sweep
3. Bull Rush - Dragon Running Rush
4. Alertness - Dragon Hunting Sense
5. Skill focus (appraise) - Dragon Eye for Beauty

You get the picture...

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

That sort of approach ... or providing samples that show how the generic names can be tailored to a specific campaign flavor, is the way to go in my book.

Of course, they explained that in 3E, too ... the PHB had the section that talked about how Ember's player called Move Silently "Rice Paper Walk" while Lidda's player called it "Footpaddin'". A sidebar with a few explicit examples and a list of names might make both camps happy.