A Lot of Things to Rememberize?

[blargney the second]

Cards would be a good idea.

Cards are a good idea. You only ever need a few at a time, so they don't take up table space, and they're very handy for immediate reference. Also, you can just flip them when they are used for the encounter. When I'm playing my crusader, I love to throw down my Shield Block card on the table and say "Ha! +6 to AC!" when I use it to save my buddy's ass.

 

[Tharen the Damned]

I love Bo9S, but it's with a couple of caveats. It's great design, but it's too much for anyone save a player to keep track of. It gets a *lot* easier to handle if you print the manuevers out on cards.

My fear is that 4e will have too many manuevers (talents) at high levels; this is not so bad for PCs, but horrible for NPCs.

Cheers!

I guess design will go the way that PCs have access to some manuevers but will be able to get more out of them as they level up.
As purely speculative example: maybe a 4th level Halbardier Fighter can trip 1 enemy as an action but a 14th level one can trip 5 enemies.
Or a low level rogue can use Tumble to jump over 10 ft of enemies but a high level rogue can jump over 30ft of enemies.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Cars are a good idea. You only ever need a few at a time, so they don't take up table space, and they're very handy for immediate reference. Also, you can just flip them when they are used for the encounter.

Whoa, you're using cars!? It's like Transformers, and you flip them up!?

Sorry... it was too tempting...

Cheers, LT.

 

[blargney the second]

Whoa, you're using cars!? It's like Transformers, and you flip them up!?

Sorry... it was too tempting...

*lol*
Let the good times roll.
-blarg

ps - fixed it in the original.

 

[Jhaelen]

Another fear is that they're using this as a way to push the DI game table thing...

Game Table also conveniently tracks when people do things that cause other events to occur... (I'm making this up I don't know what its abilities will be)

Sure you CAN play the monster without using Game Table, but...

Shrug.

Won't happen. It's been stated that the Game Table does nothing of this sort. The example given was that the DM tells a player to roll a die. What the die roll is for and what the result means are entirely for the DM to decide.

 

[Scribble]

Hit point-based ability triggers aren't such a big deal.

Look at the crazed kuo-toa in Monster Manual V for an example:

Death Rage (Ex): A crazed kuo-toa that has 10 or fewer hit points gains a +2 bonus on melee attack rolls and melee damage rolls.​

So imagine something similar for a 1000-hit point ancient red dragon:

Enraged Incineration: A red dragon which is reduced to fewer than 500 hit points gives vent to its fear and rage in a torrent of flame. It may use its breath weapon as an immediate action.​

That sort of thing. It's just sitting there in the statblock, impossible to miss and easy to use. In fact, the next entry in Monster Manual V, the kuo-toa exalted whip, has a similar ability which triggers an immediate action for any evil aquatic creature brought to 0 or fewer hit points within 60 feet of the exalted whip.

One, maybe two, maybe even three aren't bad. It's when you start getting into all sorts of diferent trigger actions that gets too me. I already do it now with just special abilities and feats that don't have a trigger...

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I love Bo9S, but it's with a couple of caveats. It's great design, but it's too much for anyone save a player to keep track of. It gets a *lot* easier to handle if you print the manuevers out on cards.

My fear is that 4e will have too many manuevers (talents) at high levels; this is not so bad for PCs, but horrible for NPCs.

Cheers!

On the other hand, they're breaking down the mechanics overlap between characters and monsters. If they also do NPC or some sort of antagonist classes that have less of a laundry list of abilities and more of the kind that are convenient as a DM, it might be reasonable. Running 4-5 NPCs that are each only half or 1/3 as complicated as a PC would be very doable (and sort of novel )

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I love Bo9S, but it's with a couple of caveats. It's great design, but it's too much for anyone save a player to keep track of. It gets a *lot* easier to handle if you print the manuevers out on cards.

They even gave us those cards as a web enhancement.


I think it would be great if part of the extra content you can unlock with those activation codes would be printable cards for your new feats and spells and manoeuvres and whatever.

 

[Celebrim]

There were alot of things about that example of combat that bothered me, and the apparant decision to replace AoO with triggers was one of them. Frankly, I don't see how that reduces the complexity - particularly from the stand point of the DM. But in addition to not reducing the complexity, it creates metagame problems of a player not knowing the sort of thing that will provoke an AoO. In 3rd the details were somewhat complex, but the basic idea (doing something that drops your gaurd while you are in combat is bad), is pretty easy. Perhaps there is a unifying theme that will be revealed, but the general direction is away from what I need as a DM and doesn't seem to improve the experience as a player.

The other interesting thing about the combat is that it seems to have moved away from iterative attacks. There doesn't seem to be such a thing as a 'full attack action' any more. Maybe one didn't come up for the purposes of the example, but from the description it seems like they've done away with it. Now that is interesting, and I'm not sure what I think of it. I certainly can see why they did it - the lack of cinematic cool in a full attack action is one of the major complaints many players have with the system - but the details of getting rid of it (which I have considered before) are not trivial. In particular, I fear from the example that we will be seeing a proliferation of action/events taking place in each round. And that doesn't seem to me to be a simplification either. In fact, it sounds like an increased tactical and memory burden on the DM.

What is interesting to me, speaking as a programmer, is that the combat as described (if the underlying mechanics are what I think that they are) is much easier to program a real time game for than D&D's historical mechanics. In other words, its a good bet that one of the design goals of 4th edition was to make transition between paper and CPU as seemless in either direction as possible.

 

[Eagle Prince]

That is what I've been thinking too. So you get some extra time back by cutting out AoOs and grappling and full attacks... which actually added some extra detail to the system, but whatever... then all the time you save from that, and then some, seems to be taken back by a bunch of new rules to keep track of. So there are no full attacks, but you can still get more than one attack by having ability X or feat Z. There are no AoOs, but you can make an attack as an imediate action against anyone who does X or Y. Oh, and we want you to keep track of 5 times more bad guys. So in the end, do you even have a more streamlined game? Is it really any faster, better, or just different?