Give me choices!

[The Little Raven]

I wasn't aware.

Well, make yourself aware! You're missing out on some of the finest gamer humor ever made.

http://www.giantitp.com/index.html

 

[GeorgeFields]

Well, make yourself aware! You're missing out on some of the finest gamer humor ever made.

http://www.giantitp.com/index.html

Thanks for the link!

I decided to start at the beginning. Low and behold, the bluff the ogre was #4.

 

[FadedC]

I can definitely emphasize with the bard bit, I play a high level bard and the big choice I make in most combats is which to do first, an inspirational boosted bard song, or cast haste. I try to get around it as much as I can by keeping my bard song up all the time, but wow can this be a boring class to play in combat at times (out of combat is more fun). I can easily leave instructions for my actions for several rounds and then go get food or something. I don't feel that he is ineffective.....I mean +4 to hit and damage is a pretty big deal to power attacking fighters, as are some of the other bonuses and utility he provides.....he's just really boring.

Coming up with songs to sing is great if it works for you (it certainly doesn't for me), but that's not really a feature of the class as much as your imagination. You could just as easily be a singing fighter/rogue/wizard/etc.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Gnomes have their own book. It is pretty well known, as well as being nicely illustrated. And they have a stronger mythological basis then, say, hobbits/halflings.

Fairies have their own book too, but that doesn't necessarily make them a PC-appropriate race. The real issue isn't whether the creature exists in the literary world so much as whether there's a character precedent. Dwarves have Thorin, or Gimli, or Dvalin, etc.; elves have Legolas, Galadriel, etc.; halflings have Bilbo and Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Gnomes have Rumplestiltzkin. Not such a good precedent.

IOW, Poortvliet/Goldstone's book illustrates how gnomes can make fine encounters, but doesn't do a lot to make them fine PCs. Yoda does a better job of the latter...

 

[Counterspin]

Bards are interesting but aren't very good mechanically, but they're not much fun tactically unless you're seriously abusing diplomacy. Ditto monks. I would like all classes to be interesting to roleplay and balanced against each other mechanically.

 

[MerricB]

I've seen you say this many times, about certain classes not having fun in certain encounters but I've yet to understand it. I love playing the Bard, maybe because I like to role-play them so flamboyantly.

Indeed. Your enjoyment of the Bard class comes from aspects outside the mechanics. (So does mine - my three favourite classes to play are Wizard, Bard and Cleric, in that order).

The point is that people play D&D in ways from the extremely mechanics-heavy to the extremely mechanics-light, and you can indeed have different aspects of that within the same game.

A well-designed game will allow play in all styles to work well. Now, mechanics-light play is pretty much outside the purview of the rules, so we can ignore it. How well does D&D work as mechanics-heavy?

Pretty well, actually. However, it runs into its biggest problems with the bard, monk and cleric. The monk because it does almost everything worse than other classes, and the bard and cleric because the things that they're best at, don't actually have them making meaningful choices.

The best two actions of a mid-level bard are to cast haste and perform his bard-song. They are no-brainer actions. That's two rounds gone of every combat - and many 3e combats don't get beyond the 4th round! So, you might as well not have the bard player there for most of a combat.

The 3e cleric has a real problem where the amount of damage PCs takes from monsters is too high - without a cleric casting heal spells, they're going to go down. So, he gives up the useful actions he can perform to do a "nothing" action, which then gives the barbarian the bragging rights of saying "I killed the demon!"

Are there groups for whom these problems don't apply? Certainly! However, it is something that has been observed by Wizards over many groups playing the game. It's not something I'm just making up.

So, Wizards are going to fix it.

Now, I really regret the bard not appearing in the PHB, and I really hope it'll be in PHB2, for it has long be one of my favourite classes. But that's from a role-playing point of view, not from a games mechanics viewpoint.

Cheers!

 

[ShadowX]

I will just weigh in that I think gnomes make a fine race and I have two arguments for those that would see them wiped from the PHB. One, gnomes already have a great niche in the illusionist/trickster/tinkerer archetype. Unfortunately, many people seem to gag at the mention of any Dragonlance influence (even more so with kender). Second, I don't really see the insistence on each race having an archetype. Why must only humans have a personality range with the other races limited to stereotypes of human personality? It seems to me the game with its obviously human origins has always assumed that humans have no racial predilections like the other races and in fact this variability is taken as their trait. More likely, in a fantasy world the other races ascribe certain tendencies to humans just as D&D ascribes traits to the other races.

Halflings, judged by the standards here, have the largest identity crisis with being nothing more than short humans. At least adding kender elements gives them something.

I also agree that hitting stuff and healing makes absolutely no sense and other abilities already in D&D not making sense (like bardic music) does not make it any better. It would require some clever explication to convince me this is a good idea. I don't require much logic from fantasy, just a sense of verisimilitude and this ability currently breaks it.

 

[Wolfspider]

In case you weren't aware, that was an OotS reference, in which the bard uses bardic song to grant a bonus on a bluff roll. Somehow, a guy singing or beating a drum makes you more deceptive, but you can't grasp a paladin striking a person and his god awarding him a favor for doing so.

Thank you for clarifying the reference. I had a feeling some context was missing for me.

*raises eyebrow*

And I have no problem at all grasping the idea that a paladin hitting a person can heal someone else. I understand what the rule is doing. I just think it doesn't make much sense to me and is a kind of a disconnect with the way I view magic. I don't think from what I've read here that I am alone, so stop trying to argue that my feeling that this magic system does not feel right to me. It's an argument you can't win.

I liken it to reading all of the Lord of the Rings books, understanding that magic works in a certain way, that it involves crafts and subtle effects, and then suddenly having Gandalf start throwing fireballs all around and flying through the air on a broom. For years and years D&D has had a similar sense of how magic, especially healing magic, works, so I'm not surprised that this new approach seems weird to some people.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Gnomes have their own book. It is pretty well known, as well as being nicely illustrated. And they have a stronger mythological basis then, say, hobbits/halflings.

Clearly, LotR has given the halflings an edge (sadlly), as well as the elves and dwarves. But out of a slightly larger group of mythical creatures (centuars, dragons, giants...) they are right up there, and I think aproachable and flexible enough to be a PC race (in fact, some are saying they are too flexible). Makes more sense then them being "monsters".

Ironically, the first printings of both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings had gnomes in them. In later printings, they were renamed Noldor, a flavor of elf:

The Noldor are accounted the greatest of the Elves and all the peoples in Middle-earth in lore, warfare and crafts. In Valinor "great became their knowledge and their skill; yet even greater was their thirst for more knowledge, and in many things they soon surpassed their teachers. They were changeful in speech, for they had great love of words, and sought ever to find names more fit for all things they knew or imagined."[2] They were beloved of Aulë the Smith, and were the first to discover and carve gems. On the other hand, the Noldor were also the proudest of the Elves; and, by the words of the Sindar, "they needed room to quarrel in".[3] Their chief dwelling-place was the city of Tirion upon Túna. Among the wisest of the Noldor were Rúmil, creator of the first writing system and author of many books of lore. Fëanor, son of Finwë and Míriel, was the greatest of their craftsmen, "mightiest in skill of word and of hand",[2] and creator of the Silmarils.

Sounds a lot like D&D gnomes, honestly.

I agree that having them absent from LotR is a big part of the problem. If Lothlorien or Rivendell had some short not-hobbits hanging around in the book and the movie, we'd be absent a few threads on the 4E board, I suspect.

 

[Simon Marks]

Sounds a lot like D&D gnomes, honestly.

Have you read the Silmarillion?

Feanor and the Noldor leave the Valar, kick open the halls of Angabad and tear down Morgoth the reclaim the Silmarills. Accounted the Greatest of the elves - and Feanor was the greatest elf that ever lived.

Now, as the Silmarils became the Sun and the Moon and Morgoth was more (much more) powerful than Sauron this is a level of power beyond anything seen in Lord of the Rings.

D&D gnomes, on the other hand, talk to moles and badgers.