Design and Developments: Dirt, Rocks and 10' halls

[Rechan]

With the talk of pits, I'm pretty sure that he's just referring to like, 200ft drop offs. Pits so depe that if you fall off you will die, because there are various abilities that let PCs and NPCs push people around. Meaning insta-death unless you're careful.

 

[Simplicity]

I'd rather play a game where you can dig a pit and push someone in, than a game where you can dig a pit and wish upon a star that someday in the far future some game designer might design a game mechanic that lets you push someone in. Even if I occasionally get pushed into a pit.

If the players can dig a pit deep enough to kill and/or trap an entire camp of orcs without the orcs just climbing out, then lure the orcs to the pit, then push the orcs into the pit, they deserve the win.

Well, 3.5e DOES have game mechanics for pushing people into pits. It's called a Bull Rush. They just happen to be terrible, useless, and mostly unused mechanics.

The point isn't that they players could do this. The point is that if pits are somehow too powerful for DMs to use, then they are also too powerful for players to use. Ergo, they will use them. Repeatedly. Somehow the epic adventures of Bobrick the Pit-Pusher doesn't sound very good to me.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I think the dev team's ability to write concise and clear rules/instructions needs a bit of work:

If any creature enters a doomspore's square (or uses a standard action to kick or poke at it, if within reach), a doomspore releases a cloud of spores that provides concealment to all creatures within its own and adjacent squares. Furthermore, a bloodied creature caught in the cloud is subject to a Fortitude attack (+10, 1d10 poison) at the beginning of its turn or when it moves into the affected area. In addition, a target hit by a doomspore is weakened and takes ongoing poison 5 (save ends both conditions (Save?); creatures with immunity to or resist poison 5 are immune to the weakened condition also). Isn't that implicit?

This cloud and its effects persist for the remainder of the encounter (or for 5 minutes). Once the cloud settles, the doomspore can't produce another for 24 hours.

Err, what exactly do you have a problem with? It seems clear enough to me.

When a character under half of their hitpoints enters the square filled with poison gas spores, the DM rolls a d20, adds a +10 modifier, and compares it to the PC's fortitude defense. If it succeeds, 1d10 damage of the poison type (similar to current fire or acid damage, with its own resistance) is dealt to that PC. Also, the Poison 5 and weakness conditions are applied if that roll is successful, but posion resistance negates both. Both conditions are obviously described elsewhere in the book. This check is made at the begining of every turn that the PC remains in that square. The cloud, Poison 5 effect, and the weakness effect will all vanish after 5 miutes, or at the end of the battle, whichever comes first.

I don't see what is so confusing.

Anyways, the interesting element here is that the "bloodied" effect is quite literal. A character who is bloodied has open gaping wounds, and a character who is not bloodied does not. I rather like the simplicity of it, and the potential flavor effect. I wonder if it has an impact on healing, or an impact on abilities that require the user's blood...

 

[TwinBahamut]

And what's this about no pits? Don't you think there might be a problem with the DM just not including pits? How about this one...

DM: There's an orc camp ahead...

Players: DIG A PIT! That we we can just wait for them to come to us, and we can push them all in.

DM: What? Uh... Well, they might be able to do that to you to!!

Players: Probably not, they're just dumb orcs. But, I guess we'll just have to cover it then, huh?

Party Wizard: Phantasmal Image. No pit here.

DM: Crap. So much for that encounter.

We go from the 15-minute workday to up at the crack of dawn digging trenches. Way to go, 4th edition.

Since he was only referring to really deep pits, then I don't think it is going to be an issue. It is probably hard to just dig a 100ft deep pit on a whim when fighting orcs... I seriously doubt it is going to be a dominant strategy.

On the other hand, letting PCs just dig a set of 5ft-10ft deep pits probably won't be lethal to orcs, but would open up interesting tactical opportunities that would be hard to take advantage of in 3E.

If PCs can actually move enemies into a pit, then it lets the DM construct a deep pit of chasm as a specific part of an encounter, to perhaps enable the PCs to defeat an enemy that they might not be able to defeat otherwise, and I think that is interesting.

 

[Khaalis]

Design & Development - Terrain

NM - Duplicate Post. Finally found the other thread...


The new Design & Development article "The Importance of Terrain" is up. Lots of juicy tidbits.

Located Here

 

[Yair]

A) Stephen Radney-MacFarland writes well. He's very amusing.

B) It seems the doomspore only affects bloodied characters, which I presume means roughly wounded characters; that seems mightily strange.

C) What does "a target hit by a doomspore is weakened and takes ongoing poison 5" mean?! Is there a "to Strength" or something missing or implied there?!

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Err, what exactly do you have a problem with? It seems clear enough to me.

When a character under half of their hitpoints enters the square filled with poison gas spores, the DM rolls a d20, adds a +10 modifier, and compares it to the PC's fortitude defense. If it succeeds, 1d10 damage of the poison type (similar to current fire or acid damage, with its own resistance) is dealt to that PC. Also, the Poison 5 and weakness conditions are applied if that roll is successful, but posion resistance negates both. Both conditions are obviously described elsewhere in the book. This check is made at the begining of every turn that the PC remains in that square. The cloud, Poison 5 effect, and the weakness effect will all vanish after 5 miutes, or at the end of the battle, whichever comes first.

I don't see what is so confusing.

Anyways, the interesting element here is that the "bloodied" effect is quite literal. A character who is bloodied has open gaping wounds, and a character who is not bloodied does not. I rather like the simplicity of it, and the potential flavor effect. I wonder if it has an impact on healing, or an impact on abilities that require the user's blood...

My problem was the unnecessary repetition and long-winded-ness of the description. I edited the bits that I could understand rules-wise. What I'm hoping is that we don't see so many caveats and contingencies in the actual rules!

 

[Geron Raveneye]

All very nice. Except poison damage to hit points. Meh, I really wonder why they keep the traditional attributes around if everything attacks hit points again. One of the things I liked about 3E was the attribute damage of poisons. Color me neutral on that development. Encounter zones are nice though. This Doomspore pretty much reminds me of the good old Yellow Mold, which was a patch of yellow fungus that, on being touched, emitted a yellow cloud that did 1d6 points of damage and made you chocke to death in 6 rounds if you didn't make your save vs. death ray. Just that, back then, it was found in the Monster part of the rulesbook and now will probably found in the Encounter Zones part. The more things change, etc.

 

[Mouseferatu]

One of the things I liked about 3E was the attribute damage of poisons. Color me neutral on that development.

Poison dealing damage to attributes was one of those things that, from the moment I heard about it, I loved--in theory.

In practice, however, I almost never found it worth the effort. It's the perfect example of what I've started to call 3E's "cascading math." X impacts the numbers dealing with Y, which impacts the numbers dealing with Z. Poison attacks your Strength, so you need to take a moment to figure out how many points your Strength modifier drops. Then you have to remember to subtract that from your attack rolls, damage rolls, and skills. Poison attacks your Con, that's HP damage--figure out how much the modifier changed, multiply that by your level, subtract that from your total--oh, and don't forget that Fortitude save, which is going to impact your second save against the poison...

And God help you if you have a character in the party suffering two different types of penalties, such as Str damage and a negative level. Slowest and most boring fight I ever ran was a party vs. a hoard of shadows and wraiths combined, because every round became a math test. And it was such a cool image, too. :\

Meh. Each individual step is dirt simple, yes, but I've seen too many game sessions grind to a halt too many times for me to pretend that the results are in line with that apparent simplicity.

Honestly, if 4E gets rid of damages and buffs to ability scores, I'll be thrilled. And if that means that a few more attack types go straight to HP, that's a small price to pay, as long as there are still other interesting attack forms in the game that aren't attached to ability scores.

 

[wedgeski]

My problem was the unnecessary repetition and long-winded-ness of the description. I edited the bits that I could understand rules-wise. What I'm hoping is that we don't see so many caveats and contingencies in the actual rules!

I felt the same way on reading that, however what you've probably got is a designer who has the chance to give us some real info at last, and has had to pack a lot more information than normal into the text. Otherwise it would just have been the usual string of 'Poison 5' nonsense that doesn't actually tell us anything about the rules.