D&D 4E New "Confessions of a Full Time Wizard" - 4e tidbits!

[Voss]

Right, but the WotC boys SHOULD be dire half-dragon expert gamers. If it took them 20 min to come up with characters that they themselves developed and supposedly has been the WotC house game for 2 years now, then it should be ALOT faster for them.

It shouldn't, actually. They've seen so many different versions of classes, abilities, feats and everything else go through the system that I'd be very surprised if they had a good working knowledge of what the current draft of the PH actually says when they sit down with it. And then there are the folks playtesting who aren't actually on the design team, but are being pulled from other departments.

That said, putting hard numbers on this sort of thing is always risky. Did they have a concept in mind when they sat down? Did they know what the rules currently are? Were they eating while they tried to make their character? Did the player and DM go off on a tangent while discussing it? Did someone find out that another player had already picked the same class half-way through? There's a lot of crap that can go into character creation too, and someone on the internet is always going to say, 'But I can do it in 3 minutes and 22 seconds, wtf is wrong with these people'


On rolling vs point buy. Point buy makes sense as the focal point. You can balance a game on point buy. 5 players can easily make 5 characters of roughly equal power, and the dm will know exactly what to expect. Rolling makes that a lot harder. Strongboy the Mighty with 2 14s, 2 16s and 2 18s is going to disrupt the whole group, particularly when compared to Averageboy the Truly Lame, with scores that actually range on the average, from 10-12. Their bonuses are so different, they really can't compete with each other. In many ways, they aren't even playing the same game.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Point buy based on an array, rather than the basement?

See, I just might be turned around on this rolling stats thing as long as it's not prohibitive to break 15 again.

 

[SteveC]

Fails Will save and gives into to the corruption of message board...

Opens draft of PHB, goes to chapter 1, page six, and looks at last paragraph regarding Determining Your Ability Scores and low and behold you can still roll dice to determine ability scores. It says so on page 7 in the third paragraph. But if you like to use the Standard Ability Array you can do that too, it says so on page 7. Not happy? Wait there is more if you want to use a Customized Array you can do that as well it says so. Where you ask? If you guessed it is on page 7 you get a

Okay, that made me laugh quite a bit. I think that, once again, we have complaints about the default set of rules, even when other options are presented right along side it. My humble suggestion for players is to have less concern for what other players and campaigns are going to do with their games, and more with what you want to do. This isn't even a house rule situation: both rules are presented in the same place!

My games typically use point-buy, because that's what my players want. When I started up my SAGA game last week, my players said "let's be different this time and roll for stats..." and that's what we did. Which one does SAGA recommend? Does that really matter?

Bewildered a bit,

--Steve

 

[Fifth Element]

Honestly, these are the sort of no-brainer changes that should have been made decades ago. Random stats means that one player gets a bad-ass character when another has to play a midling or weak one. It means a few poorly rolled stats can unbalance the entire game. It just doesn't make sense, except in that 11 year old "I rule! You drool!" sort of way.

QFT. While I'm not fond on the point-buy system in the 3.5 DMG, I haven't used random rolls in, I don't know, maybe 15 years.

Randomness in play is fun; randomness in character creation is frustrating. We don't roll randomly for skill points, or feats, or class, or race, or spells, or attack bonus, or saving throw bonuses. Why would we roll for abilities and hit points?

 

[Voss]

My humble suggestion for players is to have less concern for what other players and campaigns are going to do with their games, and more with what you want to do. This isn't even a house rule situation: both rules are presented in the same place!

--Steve

Its more a matter of what potential DMs are likely to inflict on people, more than anything else. You're right, it doesn't matter what other people are doing, but if you're used to one or the other and the DM says 'We're doing it this way', you might have a problem. Maybe because you've got the perfect build in mind for 28 point buy, maybe you're hoping for certain stats that only random generation can give you. But either way, a DM doing it a different way can scuttle your grand plans before you even begin.

 

[SilverAgent]

Sign me up as someone who doesn't like randomness in character generation. Heck, I wrote point-buy character generation rules for -Warhammer FRP-.

Don't suppose the person quoting the book can tell me whether staged point buy is still being used? (Probably not.) That was one of my pet peeves -- if +2 Ability Score is always +1 Bonus, a 16 shouldn't cost more than a 14, and so on.

 

[vazanar]

Fails Will save and gives into to the corruption of message board...

Opens draft of PHB, goes to chapter 1, page six, and looks at last paragraph regarding Determining Your Ability Scores and low and behold you can still roll dice to determine ability scores. It says so on page 7 in the third paragraph. But if you like to use the Standard Ability Array you can do that too, it says so on page 7. Not happy? Wait there is more. If you want to use a Customized Array you can do that as well, it says so. Where you ask? If you guessed it is on page 7 you get a

Doesnt the message board hit your will AC now?

It's a choice for each group as now. With the DI it does seem the easiest way to keep balance. Ive tried both, my current players prefer rolling over point buy. Odd enough the newer players prefer rolling and the older could care less.

 

[Rechan]

Its more a matter of what potential DMs are likely to inflict on people, more than anything else. You're right, it doesn't matter what other people are doing, but if you're used to one or the other and the DM says 'We're doing it this way', you might have a problem. Maybe because you've got the perfect build in mind for 28 point buy, maybe you're hoping for certain stats that only random generation can give you. But either way, a DM doing it a different way can scuttle your grand plans before you even begin.

And a DM doing it a different way is no reflection on the rules.

I might say "Hey, no standard races sans humans - here are my homebrew races." I might say "We're playing in Eberron" or "We're playing in Ancient Arabia". I might say "No wizards - just psionics."

A DM is the lord of his table, and the rules facilitating that shouldn't upset people on the grounds that the DM might do something they don't like.

 

[Spinachcat]

I much prefer rolling characters - the results create more more roleplay surprises. I always loved the crew rolling 3D6 down the line and then wondering, who the heck am I going to be? That was always terrific fun and produced our most memorable characters. But this is before the days of the Game Balance Nazis.

Point buy characters are always dull and one-dimensional. Wow, another wizard with a 18 INT and 8 STR? Really, how surprising. Amazing, another table full of CHA 8 heroes. However, point buy is the best option if you are playing online or RPGA or other situation where group chargen with the DM would not be possible so I see why they would promote it considering how much point buy systems are used in video games.

 

[Exen Trik]

It'd be tough to balance that way, since each spell would have to have three versions. I suspect they've just got one (scaling) version of each type of spell. A per-encounter spell will offer something an at-will one will not (probably area of effect in the case of burning hands), and the dailies will be even more impressive (sleep was overpowered for most of D&D's history).

I'm curious to what degree every spellcaster will operate this way.

It may be even simpler, since each spell has a level associated with it the per encounter slots may let you select spells of one higher level, and for per day spells of two higher levels. Or, spells chosen in those slots have general benefits available, instead of alternate versions of each spell.