Dragon Editorial: Fearless

[JohnSnow]

Well, if you had a stable of ghost writers, you would have his ability to bang out pages. Do you really think it's possible for these people to turn out thousand-page books annually, like quite a few of these modern writers do?

Sorry, but that sounds like sour grapes from someone who wanted to be a writer. Don't diminish other's achievements. Back when I was in college, I churned out a 20-page essay in a single day, and I'm far from being a professional writer. However, if I did that every day, I'd be able to produce a 6000 page manuscript in a single year. A thousand-page book is hardly beyond comprehension. And Jordan usually took 2 years...

So, do you have any proof for your claim? Or are you just making baseless accusations?

Back on topic -- it seems excellent that they're reducing save or die situations. Heck, at low levels, every fight is pretty much save or die. You ever see an orc's greataxe crit on a 1st level warrior? Dropped instantly. Basically, it came down to, 'whoever hits first, wins' in a lot of low-level combat. Probably the same at high levels with death effects.

I think most of us are agreed that the reduction in save-or-die effects will be good. Frankly, I'm eager for D&D to embrace the pacing of, say, a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie instead of, say, The Russia House.

 

[shilsen]

I personally think alot of the problem with 'hit points as a per encounter resource' could be fixed simply by making 'Craft Wand' apply only to arcane spells. You could still burn through treasure to heal up, but you likely wouldn't do it except before important fights that you didn't have time to rest up for.

The only problem with "hit points as a per encounter resource" is that WotC isn't explicitly making it a rule that PCs start all fights at 100% of hit points. But luckily I can achieve that with an easy house rule, as noted above. Of course, people who DM with kid gloves and run low-risk campaigns can't really do that, because they have to drastically reduce PC hit points before any given encounter for there to be anything of a challenge. But then they're probably also the people being kind enough to kill PCs left and right.

Ah well, if nothing else it shows that there are myriad ways of playing the game. As long as WotC doesn't require me to tone down my game, I'm happy. And from the looks of things, 4e is going to suit me a lot. I can understand that when D&D was invented it needed to mollycoddle players to get them to play, but I like the fact that they've decided to get hardcore.

 

[Lizard]

Sorry, but that sounds like sour grapes from someone who wanted to be a writer. Don't diminish other's achievements. Back when I was in college, I churned out a 20-page essay in a single day, and I'm far from being a professional writer. However, if I did that every day, I'd be able to produce a 6000 page manuscript in a single year. A thousand-page book is hardly beyond comprehension. And Jordan usually took 2 years...

I can regularly produce 5K words/day. At Mongoose, I did a 128 page book every month -- and game writing is a lot harder than fiction writing, at least for me. So a 1000 page book every two years is perfectly reasonable. Many authors produce far more without gohstwriters -- look at the output of some of the pulp authors, for instance.

 

[Primal]

But none of them have DRAGONBORN boobs.

They can hold the tiefling tails, though. DO NOT WANT TAIL.

HAW HAW!

Oh, you're into *that* stuff... slimy things with boobs and whatnot. Still, don't buy R&C just to see Dragonborn boobs -- it's much cheaper if you just take some photos of your mom undressing. And you get more pictures than there are in R&C, hey?

HAW HAW!

 

[SSquirrel]

I just seem to prefer a harsher, more deadly playstyle than many. I like SoDs, I like clever traps and clever ways to avoid/disarm them, hordes of vicious enemies, random encounters of random CR.

It's funny, I like Ken Hood's Revised Grim n Gritty, which is rather free w/damaging and damaging effects, but I hate traps and random encounters. Hordes of enemies rock tho and 4E does that much better than 3E does, so the designers say

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

It's funny, I like Ken Hood's Revised Grim n Gritty, which is rather free w/damaging and damaging effects, but I hate traps and random encounters.

*shrugs* everybody's got a different style. I thought Grim & Gritty lowered the power curve too much. I don't play D&D for "realism" I like the existing powercurve even at higher levels, I just mix things up in a more sandbox style. My settings and campaigns tend to have a RIFTSish OOT danger level than a Middle Earth of DaleyDale style.

Hordes of enemies rock tho and 4E does that much better than 3E does, so the designers say

Agreed hordes of enemies rock, I just don't like the way 4e is redesigning monsters and if I don't have trouble with it now why switch?

 

[hong]

What do you mean here by 'cheat'? You mean that they mysteriously found 'rings of regeneration' on thier character sheet, or that they 'forgot' to subtract damage from attacks? Either case says nothing about how 1e played when you were sticking to the rules.'

But they do say something about how much fun 1E was if played by the rules, padawan.

 

[Celebrim]

But they do say something about how much fun 1E was if played by the rules, padawan.

Wise man say, "Don't start edition wars, grasshopper."

 

[hong]

Wise man say, "Don't start edition wars, grasshopper."

No, you're supposed to use a generic food metaphor here. Something like "1E is like tomato sauce, but 3E is ice cream".

WHY DO I HAVE TO THINK OF EVERYTHING AROUND HERE??/

 

[Celebrim]

No, you're supposed to use a generic food metaphor here. Something like "1E is like tomato sauce, but 3E is ice cream".

I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.