Legends and Lore: Preserving the Past

[Neonchameleon]

I kind of wonder if the audience he's reaching out to might not be the ones whom have ALSO not opened a 4e book, but are also already making assumptions?

Because Legends and Lore is the right place to do that. Something written on the WoTC website in an article in a magazine about 4E D&D. This is reminiscent of the fail around the marketing for early 4E.

Right, but the logic of the design -- judging from what the developers had said -- was that a party with a Shade was supposed to get in less fights, due to its stealth capabilities.

So the "sucks at combat, great at stealth" design that made it like a 1e thief (forex) was a problem.

The problem is even if that was their design, the execution was poor. Shades simply aren't great at stealth. They get trained at stealth and can hide using partial cover or concealment. Like an average thief with Sneak's Trick. Or a Cunning Sneak rogue.

And out of combat, it's normally fairly easy to find something solid to get hidden behind. What's hard is the stretches of open ground you need to cross - the Shade's power isn't going to help here. It does what you don't need it to and doesn't what you do.

Let's take a leaf out of the Warlock Book.

Melt into Shadow
A shade which begins its turn hidden gains partial concealment until the end of next turn.

This allows the Shade to cross open ground - making him actually good at stealth. He can therefore do things no one else really can (other than a Warlock or deliberately specialised rogue or assassin).

And one from the gnome book.

Brother of Shadow
If a Shade begins an encounter with at least partial cover or concealment, he can make a stealth check.

Shades hide. It's what they are meant to do.

And instead of skill training give him a racial +3 to stealth (or at least offer it as an option).

Shades are therefore encouraged to take stealthy classes like the rogue rather than penalised for doing so.

Our Shade is now pretty much the best there is at what he/she does. Rather than very mediocre. Now we have that we can talk about penalties - and honestly at this point I wouldn't really mind the healing surge penalty. I object strongly to it on a supposedly sneaky character that (a) isn't that good at sneaking and (b) has a disincentive to take classes that help them sneak.

I don't know whether the design is fundamentally flawed. The execution of the shade was bad enough that whether the design was flawed is almost irrelevant. It's a deeply flawed race, penalising you for taking classes that should be a natural fit, penalising you in general, and without any real upside.

 

[Scribble]

Because Legends and Lore is the right place to do that. Something written on the WoTC website in an article in a magazine about 4E D&D. This is reminiscent of the fail around the marketing for early 4E.

I would say it's the perfect place.

People will read it because of who it's written by even if they ignore everything else on the site. I think that's the very reason for giving the column to Monte in the first place.

So start off talking about things that are awesome. The fact that Monte is saying it, for some, will make it even more of an awesome thing even if they never thought about it before.

Then slowly transition into talking about where and how it exists in 4e, or how you can make 4e your own with subtle shifts here and there.

Now, instead of just assuming the game can't do whatever it is you're assuming it can't do someone you respect is telling you how it can be done.


Just a thought.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

It seems so silly on the surface... but having someone they respect (or worship?) tell them that they were wrong all this time... just might work for some of those folks.

And I know where they're coming from. I hated 4e at first too. No way was I going to give WotC another dime!

But then I tried it, and it was fun. The rest is, as they say, history.

I wonder how many of them didn't give it that chance? (I almost didn't)
I wonder how many of the ones that did, and still decided they didn't like it, went into it deciding what the outcome would be, or deliberately sabotaging their own efforts to "prove" a point? (I went in with an open mind)

After all that, there is room to genuinely dislike 4e, but I'm willing to bet that many of the h4ters just do so out of spite. And, because, h4aters gonna h4ate.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Shades simply aren't great at stealth.

Out of combat, they are phenomenal.

[sblock=ShadeWonking]
Auto-training and a +2 in Stealth gives any shade who cares to remove their armor a +7 bonus before ability scores are factored in. While their bonus could certainly be higher, it doesn't really need to be. Their racial ability, combined with darkvision, means all they have to do is wait for night to fall, or wait for it to rain and they can Stealth forever, seeing enemies without being seen themselves, regardless of other abilities. Warlock and Rogue and Assassin powers can further enhance it.

Melt into Shadow
A shade which begins its turn hidden gains partial concealment until the end of next turn.

This allows the Shade to cross open ground - making him actually good at stealth.

A Shade can already cross open ground without loosing stealth quite easily. All that open ground has to be is lightly obscured (e.g.: most things other than broad daylight or bright artificial light). If they ALSO had this ability, they might be effectively perma-stealthed (depending on if it was at-will). If they had this ability instead, they wouldn't be able to use partial concealment to gain stealth.

Wording it with durations in combat terms is problematic since a shade, as designed, wouldn't be getting into combat as often. Turns are irrelevant when you're not tracking initiative.

Brother of Shadow
If a Shade begins an encounter with at least partial cover or concealment, he can make a stealth check.

Shades hide. It's what they are meant to do.

A Shade can already start an encounter hidden, assuming they don't come out of hiding in order to start the encounter. Surprise round?

And that's assuming the Shade wants to start an encounter. The design theory goes that a Shade doesn't WANT to start an encounter -- they want to AVOID encounters entirely, through the use of stealth.

And instead of skill training give him a racial +3 to stealth (or at least offer it as an option).

I don't know why they'd need yet another +1 to Stealth. It's not as if the game doesn't already have a problem with out-of-control skill DC's rising into the stratosphere because that seems to be the only place bonuses go anymore. A Shade who wants to pimp out Stealth clearly can just as well as anyone else, and then can use it in more circumstances to boot. By the time they're at level 1 with +7-11 (after backgrounds, feats, themes, not to mention Aid Another or a party with a half-elf) they're already well above the ability of most level 1 monsters to detect them.

A Shade's stealth modifier might not be bigger than anyone else (who pimps the thing), but it's much more versatile, since they can use it nearly constantly -- all it needs is night, foliage, fog, rain, or indoors with some fungi or a candle. Anywhere they're not in bright light is a situation where they can Stealth, and typically beat a monster's Perception (though not always, if they get a bad roll, or the monster has a good one), even if they're a paladin.
[/sblock]

But regardless of the specificities of Shade stealth, the intent was pretty clearly telegraphed. It's clearly hard for 4e to think outside the terms of turns and encounters, even though the intent was to think outside of those terms. This is one of the (several) reasons I feel that a 5e, at some future point, is fairly inevitable: the game needs to be able to be presented in a way that doesn't rely so much on combat encounters, in order to serve the needs of those players who never really relied so much on combat encounters, who maybe prefer a more 1e style of class balance across an adventure, where there are classes that are good at combat, classes that are good at exploration, classes that are good at investigation, and classes that are good at interaction, Funny how that meshes up with the Fighter/Thief/Wizard/Cleric split, eh? Almost like it was designed that way....

 

[ForeverSlayer]

Out of combat, they are phenomenal.

[sblock=ShadeWonking]
Auto-training and a +2 in Stealth gives any shade who cares to remove their armor a +7 bonus before ability scores are factored in. While their bonus could certainly be higher, it doesn't really need to be. Their racial ability, combined with darkvision, means all they have to do is wait for night to fall, or wait for it to rain and they can Stealth forever, seeing enemies without being seen themselves, regardless of other abilities. Warlock and Rogue and Assassin powers can further enhance it.



A Shade can already cross open ground without loosing stealth quite easily. All that open ground has to be is lightly obscured (e.g.: most things other than broad daylight or bright artificial light). If they ALSO had this ability, they might be effectively perma-stealthed (depending on if it was at-will). If they had this ability instead, they wouldn't be able to use partial concealment to gain stealth.

Wording it with durations in combat terms is problematic since a shade, as designed, wouldn't be getting into combat as often. Turns are irrelevant when you're not tracking initiative.



A Shade can already start an encounter hidden, assuming they don't come out of hiding in order to start the encounter. Surprise round?

And that's assuming the Shade wants to start an encounter. The design theory goes that a Shade doesn't WANT to start an encounter -- they want to AVOID encounters entirely, through the use of stealth.



I don't know why they'd need yet another +1 to Stealth. It's not as if the game doesn't already have a problem with out-of-control skill DC's rising into the stratosphere because that seems to be the only place bonuses go anymore. A Shade who wants to pimp out Stealth clearly can just as well as anyone else, and then can use it in more circumstances to boot. By the time they're at level 1 with +7-11 (after backgrounds, feats, themes, not to mention Aid Another or a party with a half-elf) they're already well above the ability of most level 1 monsters to detect them.

A Shade's stealth modifier might not be bigger than anyone else (who pimps the thing), but it's much more versatile, since they can use it nearly constantly -- all it needs is night, foliage, fog, rain, or indoors with some fungi or a candle. Anywhere they're not in bright light is a situation where they can Stealth, and typically beat a monster's Perception (though not always, if they get a bad roll, or the monster has a good one), even if they're a paladin.
[/sblock]

The Shade's stealth is great but any kind of obscurement from light or lack there of is nothing when something has darkvision.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The Shade's stealth is great but any kind of obscurement from light or lack there of is nothing when something has darkvision.

Makes it a little harder to gain concealment just from letting night fall, but that's kind of a corner case anyway. Yes, there are limits on a Shade's stealth, but they're still better at it than most halflings or gnomes, even if their bonus isn't any bigger.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Auto-training and a +2 in Stealth gives any shade who cares to remove their armor a +7 bonus before ability scores are factored in. While their bonus could certainly be higher, it doesn't really need to be. Their racial ability, combined with darkvision, means all they have to do is wait for night to fall, or wait for it to rain and they can Stealth forever, seeing enemies without being seen themselves, regardless of other abilities.

You mean that they can stealth like the average character with their dex aand a +2 bonus (wait for night to fall or wait for it to rain)? Being able to get hidden with partial concealment isn't an advantage over a thief (Sneak's Trick). And normally there's superior cover somewhere.

Gnomes with the same dex and stealth trained are better at hiding than shades - reactive stealth ftw. And outside combat, there need to be no solid walls or rises. Shades don't carry stealth with them. The mechanics don't match the intent of the rules.