Anyone else out there with rule overload?

[blargney the second]

I've had two players who drop their character mid game and come in with a new character (my biggest pet peeve). Another one loves his character, but is always thinking and talking about new builds.

This group is the first place I've seen that behavior. I can kind of understand - there's new fun stuff coming out all the time. Personally, I'm more of a serial PC monogamist: I'm fully committed to my characters until something catastrophic happens.

I also have plans to allow a "multiple PCs, but only one at a time" rule that could help curtail this.

Ooohhhh, so that's why you're doing that house rule! It seems like a good tweak to account for some player propensities.

 

[Garthanos]

I don't visit the CO boards but I've been looking at guides when someone links to them here.

While guides may indeed be helpful, they can also have a detrimental effect: Many players treat them as gospel and stop thinking for themselves. Anything that isn't an option recommended by a guide is considered a non-choice.

Take the fighters sure strike...what color does it become if your DM has most humanoid guardsman as minion class knights and perhaps because there are many fewer pcs than normal in general makes extensive use of minions?

And you might see language skills becoming much more valuable in play when several players (like I have seen) paid the feat cost for linguistics.

What is optimal is nowhere near set in stone.

 

[Knowme]

Take the fighters sure strike...what color does it become if your DM has most humanoid guardsman as minion class knights and perhaps because there are many fewer pcs than normal in general makes extensive use of minions?

And you might see language skills becoming much more valuable in play when several players (like I have seen) paid the feat cost for linguistics.

What is optimal is nowhere near set in stone.

Cleave would still be far superior for minion destroying. Sure Strike is just sub-par - Fighters have so many good At-Wills that it is always overshadowed by something else.

But yes, your point is (in general) a good one - ratings vary, and in fact many guides will offer different ratings based on various criteria. I don't think they should be followed 100%, but that doesn't mean they are useless. The handbook threads also offer good discussion usually - if you read them (or post yourself) you will often see good discussion about different abilities, which can be useful.

 

[Goonalan]

Except for the DCs for everything, which were 5 too high originally, and then were made 5 too low. That's one piece of errata that I still can't forgive.

I still haven't read any of the errata, except perhaps if it appears when I look up stuff in the compendium. DCs too high- then fix them, if you're not bright then after the first Skill Challenege is failed, if you're bright then before the players even get to the Skill Challenge.

Sorry, I don't mean to be rude but, 'I still can't forgive', a little dramatic don't you think- nobody got killed, they fixed the problem (or you fixed it), the world kept on turning.

To the original poster, get an Insider account, no need to buy the books, take a look at the excerpts if it's stuff you want to read then buy the book, if not meh.

It used to take me 5 to 10 minutes to throw together a Level 1 PC I wanted to play.

However many supplements later and, still 5 to 10 minutes.

Oh and I'm a DM by trade, I tend to plan my sessions ahead of time and get together 1 sheet of A4 paper with the name of the good guys/bad guys (or the laptop) for each encounter ahead of time. I manage to track all conditions et al without breaking a sweat.

When I play with kids (ages approx. 13 and below) I hand out cards with 'Slowed', 'Immobilised' et al and then ask them to show me their cards before they start their turns.

I realise it gets more complex with higher level encounters (I've been there), often I just get the cards back out...

Don't get me wrong I make mistakes every now and then but the game goes on.

Options are all gravy- Wizards need to eat, I'll keep buying the books I like and reading the fragments of them that interest me, now if they could make scenarios to the standard of Paizo...

 

[Verision]

I still haven't read any of the errata, except perhaps if it appears when I look up stuff in the compendium. DCs too high- then fix them, if you're not bright then after the first Skill Challenege is failed, if you're bright then before the players even get to the Skill Challenge.

Sorry, I don't mean to be rude but, 'I still can't forgive', a little dramatic don't you think- nobody got killed, they fixed the problem (or you fixed it), the world kept on turning.

Let me explain my big gripe here. When I started playing 3.x, it was with a group of people who had already established a long list of house rules. I played as a PC with these people for a couple years and then started DMing (also using their house rules). I never actually played a single session of 3.x edition D&D that followed the actual rules.

When 4th edition came out, I convinced my group to switch to 4th and to play BY THE BOOK. We were going to play a campaign starting at 1st level and going as far as possible before we stopped (got bored; felt the game was broken; got to 30th level; whatever) and we weren't going to use a single house rule.

However, when we first started playing, the PCs had trouble winning skill challenges; the DCs were simply too high. It wasn't a matter of bad rolls, or stupid skill selection, the PCs simply couldn't make the DCs consistently enough to win challenges. This pissed my group off enough that they wanted to switch back to 3.x. This pissed me off because I was the only one who bought 4th edition books, which would be a waste of money if we switched back. I managed to convince my PCs to give 4th edition a little longer.

Then, the official errata came out, and what do you know, they errata'd the DCs. "Horray!!", I thought, "Now I don't have to avoid skill challenges or risk pissing off my PCs enough that they decide to switch back to 3.x".

My elation came too early, though, since the new DCs were just as broken as the old ones. Now, instead of ", I didn't roll an 18, I must have missed the DC" it became "Wait, what? I succeeded on a roll of 8? Really? What kind of (skill) challenge is that?".

My group is still playing 4th edition, but we gave up on playing "by the book". We now have a whole list of house rules and rule variations. We are right back to where we were with 3.x; playing a game that only works properly if you take the game into your own hands and only use the books as a guide.

That's why I can't forgive the idiocy that is the DC errata.

Also, saying "sorry, I don't mean to be rude" while being really rude ("if you're bright", implying that I must not be if I had issues with the DCs) doesn't make you any less of an arse.

 

[Garthanos]

Cleave would still be far superior for minion destroying.

Would it? If minions are not clumped? cleave loses all its advantage and is left with inferior chance to hit. DM choices can make it situationally worse than sure strike. which is the point. Optimization is not an absolutism. I do like the guides by the way especially when they start pointing out some of the above.

 

[MrMyth]

My group is still playing 4th edition, but we gave up on playing "by the book". We now have a whole list of house rules and rule variations. We are right back to where we were with 3.x; playing a game that only works properly if you take the game into your own hands and only use the books as a guide.

That's why I can't forgive the idiocy that is the DC errata.

I think the vast bulk of the game works properly without needing any house rules; at the same time, every group plays differently, and part of the experience is tuning the game to one's own needs.

The DC errata definitely still bugs me though. Mainly because I feel the reason they haven't fixed it is that they recognize it is wrong, but aren't willing to take the flak for having to errata their errata. (The same reason I expect they haven't fixed the issue of Expertise, itself intended to be a fix for the game.)

I noticed in the Skill Challenge DDI articles that they consistently used Average and Hard DCs and never touched Easy DCs - even suggesting potential boosts to the Hard DCs for if you wanted a DC to actually be a challenge. I pointed out that these all indicated they, too, felt the existing DCs were too low. They kept offering the same line - that the current DCs were just fine, they just happened to want a higher level of difficulty for the challenges being written about in these articles. I think they finally admitted, in some of the last articles, that the existing DCs were too low - but made no mention of plans to fix it.

That said, they have done such a good job with errata in general that I can accept one or two blunders. So I wouldn't call the issue unforgiveable - especially given how easy it is to fix on one's own - but I can definitely understand the frustration over how they have handled it.

 

[Verision]

I think the vast bulk of the game works properly without needing any house rules; at the same time, every group plays differently, and part of the experience is tuning the game to one's own needs.

The DC errata definitely still bugs me though. Mainly because I feel the reason they haven't fixed it is that they recognize it is wrong, but aren't willing to take the flak for having to errata their errata. (The same reason I expect they haven't fixed the issue of Expertise, itself intended to be a fix for the game.)

I noticed in the Skill Challenge DDI articles that they consistently used Average and Hard DCs and never touched Easy DCs - even suggesting potential boosts to the Hard DCs for if you wanted a DC to actually be a challenge. I pointed out that these all indicated they, too, felt the existing DCs were too low. They kept offering the same line - that the current DCs were just fine, they just happened to want a higher level of difficulty for the challenges being written about in these articles. I think they finally admitted, in some of the last articles, that the existing DCs were too low - but made no mention of plans to fix it.

That said, they have done such a good job with errata in general that I can accept one or two blunders. So I wouldn't call the issue unforgiveable - especially given how easy it is to fix on one's own - but I can definitely understand the frustration over how they have handled it.

I agree with you, for the most part. The vast majority of the game does work fine. I mean, it's not like my group has house rules for half of the powers or anything ridiculous like that. Most of our house rules deal with DCs, loosening restrictions (my PCs like to "power game"), strengthening monsters (so they are a challenge for the "power gaming" PCs; yes it is weird to make players more powerful and then turn around and make the monsters more powerful too), etc.

Maybe my use of "unforgivable" is a bit of an over exaggeration; it's not like we went back to 3.x or anything. However, the reason I call it "unforgivable" is that I no longer trust the errata, or any of the new rules in the new books, at face value. I can't, not after WotC screwed the pooch so badly on the DCs. Plus, the crazy skill challenge DCs have left a bad taste in the mouths of my PCs; they no longer trust/like/accept skill challenges. Instead, we usually just role play through them, or work around them, or use a very loose "skill challenge" mechanic that they (my PCs) are more willing to accept (basically its opposed rolls, instead of skill checks vs static DCs), though we don't use that very often either.

 

[TerraDave]

You will have to explain how you are going to fullfill defender battle role from range? I think you are just suffering "class name envy".

Garthanos, I don't have to explain anything.

But since you wrote such a long post...

For a ranged defender, think of actual longbowmen or modern day soldiers. Think of a defender in a modern game. I don't mean snipers--the few, the proud--I mean the rest. In RL you have spiked stakes and cantrips (EDIT and caltrops), covering fire, disabling mounts, even "control effects" that herd the enemy and break up formations. I am sure there are possible in game dungeon friendly equivelents for these. But I haven't seen much of them for bow wielders.

For that zorro, hes a classic artfull dodger. Very mobile. But presumably trying to sneak attack. Does the movie or TV zorro sneak attack much? But again, were is the defending? Isolating the main enemy, holding off a bunch of mooks, big dramatic sword fights that aren't just stabby stabby.

 

[Verision]

Garthanos, I don't have to explain anything.

But since you wrote such a long post...

For a ranged defender, think of actual longbowmen or modern day soldiers. Think of a defender in a modern game. I don't mean snipers--the few, the proud--I mean the rest. In RL you have spiked stakes and cantrips, covering fire, disabling mounts, even "control effects" that herd the enemy and break up formations. I am sure there are possible in game dungeon friendly equivelents for these. But I haven't seen much of them for bow wielders.

I think a bow wielder defender could work in much the same way as the Swordmage. I.E. You mark targets, and whenever the targets attack your teammates, you shoot them with arrows.