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

[FreeTheSlaves]

I've got no problems with having 3 paths to stat generation. I'll give all three a look over, but I think I'll opt to have a customised array.

I do hope however that there is no repeat of a 3E baseline of 25 point buy and elite array being inferior to the average of 4d6dl rolled stats. The onus really should be put on the roller to weigh up the merits of the dice, they shouldn't have an easier decision.

 

[Dire Bare]

Shelly is actually an Associate Brand Manager and manages our Young Adult book Line. She was a Promo Coord. over seven years ago when I was her boss and has worked on pretty much every product at the company from M:TG to kids games. She is a very bright and talented marketer plus she writes her own plays, volunteers at a dog shelter, and can bake cookies that will make your heart stop.

Don't try to cut her down (you know who you are) because she doesn't fit into some preconception of who should be writing D&D articles. She's not writing The Cute Girls Guide to Curing Cancer in the JAMA. It's D&D, a game, and it is supposed to be fun. :\

Although it took her a few years at WOTC before she discovered D&D and doesn't have the depth of knowledge of a Chris Perkins, she is passionate about playing the game and shows up at our game every week to kick ass.

She single?

In all seriousness, I've been very impressed with all of Shelly's columns. Haven't read the book yet, but plan on picking it up eventually. She seems like a very seriously cool and fun person, and a good writer to boot.

And I kinda get a perverse thrill watching the segment of the grognard community get all in a tither about the "appropriateness" of her columns in Dragon magazine.

 

[Spatula]

I do hope however that there is no repeat of a 3E baseline of 25 point buy and elite array being inferior to the average of 4d6dl rolled stats. The onus really should be put on the roller to weigh up the merits of the dice, they shouldn't have an easier decision.

Yeah that is a glaring problem. Especially since the game was apparently balanced around 25 point buy, and 4d6 drop lowest averages out to, what? 28 points?

 

[delericho]

Yeah that is a glaring problem. Especially since the game was apparently balanced around 25 point buy, and 4d6 drop lowest averages out to, what? 28 points?

As far as I can tell, it's somewhere nearer 30ish points. However, because it's less controlled (your Fighter might end up with a 12 Charisma, which is 4 'wasted' points right there), it's actually less powerful than the equivalent point buy scheme.

Of course, that assumes using the system as written - no re-rolls except as indicated by the book, and no cheating. I have seldom seen it implemented as such.

 

[delericho]

I printed out the character generation rules for my perspective group a little over a year ago. I told them I was using 28 pt poiint buy and fixed a fixed hit points gain per level. I told them core only and they were fine with that. Had someone made a fuss they could have found another game. Using only core materials is not penalizing my players. Only those with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement have that mindset.

Sorry, I suspect you might have misinterpreted my post. I didn't mean to say anything about the relative merits of "Core only" vs "anything goes" games. However, if you are in an "anything goes" game, it's hard to explain to the new player that he should stick with the core only for now... as they'll likely think they're being penalised somehow, and that the other players are gaining unfair advantage from using all the rulebooks. (True, many if not most of the best options are in the core rules these days... but how is a new player to know that?)

(Of course, if you didn't misinterpret my post, then that's a wasted paragraph )

Also? I hate cheating players. You get caught cheating at my table, you walk. If you cheat at something like D&D then that says something particular about your character and youre not the type of person I want at my table. Draconican, yes. But I'm running a game to have fun and I really don't have fun with cheaters, so off you go.

Fair enough. Although since you use fixed hit points per level, we wouldn't have that issue.

 

[vagabundo]

Shelly is actually an Associate Brand Manager and manages our Young Adult book Line. She was a Promo Coord. over seven years ago when I was her boss and has worked on pretty much every product at the company from M:TG to kids games. She is a very bright and talented marketer plus she writes her own plays, volunteers at a dog shelter, and can bake cookies that will make your heart stop.

Don't try to cut her down (you know who you are) because she doesn't fit into some preconception of who should be writing D&D articles. She's not writing The Cute Girls Guide to Curing Cancer in the JAMA. It's D&D, a game, and it is supposed to be fun. :\

Although it took her a few years at WOTC before she discovered D&D and doesn't have the depth of knowledge of a Chris Perkins, she is passionate about playing the game and shows up at our game every week to kick ass.

I have to say, she is like a breath of fresh air. I really like her articles. I'm sure she has a broader appeal.

I'd suggest putting her articles outside of DDI, so I can send around links. If people have to sign up, they wont.

Oh and silly arguments about the points buy, as usual. However I'm going to let my players choose. Some will point buy and some will roll, but if they roll they have to stick with it. Who Dares Wins!!!

 

[Imban]

As far as I can tell, it's somewhere nearer 30ish points. However, because it's less controlled (your Fighter might end up with a 12 Charisma, which is 4 'wasted' points right there), it's actually less powerful than the equivalent point buy scheme.

Of course, that assumes using the system as written - no re-rolls except as indicated by the book, and no cheating. I have seldom seen it implemented as such.

The biggest problems with it were, well, for many reasons characters with higher stats are self-selecting. While (as written) 14/11/11/10/10/8 doesn't let you reroll, a character with stats that are that bad isn't likely to last very long, both because his player may dislike and/or discard him and because he may just plain die. That, combined with how rolling even a single 18 in your random generation means you almost certainly blew 25 point buy and its 18/10/10/10/10/8 array out of the water, made 3e's default point buy highly lame to me.

And plus, since you got to arrange your stats, a Fighter ending up with 12 Charisma meant your lowest stat was 12. Unless you went 13/12/12/12/12/12 with your 25 point buy - something that'd give you a reroll if you rolled it - your stats are better for having rolled.

 

[delericho]

And plus, since you got to arrange your stats, a Fighter ending up with 12 Charisma meant your lowest stat was 12. Unless you went 13/12/12/12/12/12 with your 25 point buy - something that'd give you a reroll if you rolled it - your stats are better for having rolled.

For our last campaign, our group briefly flirted with random rolls (we'd been using 28-point buy previously). The result was that one player absolutely loved it - he rolled the equivalent of a 40-point buy, with a conveniently placed 'dump stat', leading to a very powerful character indeed. He then compounded this by taking the Warblade class.

Another player absolutely hated it. He rolled 14-12-10-10-10-10, and this was after he rerolled his first character for having no stat above 13 (or whatever that threshold is). He wound up playing a Halfling Rogue with a 16 and 5 10s. (Of course, the last time we rolled, some years ago in another DM's campaign, that same player rolled 18-17-17-14-10-10.)

And, actually, it is that that is my major objection to random rolls. It's not that sometimes you get absurdly high stats. It's not that sometimes you get absurdly low stats. It's that very often, one player will get a really good set of stats, while another will wind up with average or poor stats. If stats weren't so important to the game then that would be fine, but as it is my preference is for a suitable point-buy.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The first game of 3e that I ran - one fighter had rolled 18 Strength, the other fighter had rolled 16. The second fighter felt completely outclassed by the extra +2 to hit and +3 to damage his mate had, and soon the character was abandoned to die.

The last session which I had rolling for attributes, I tried a different method. Everyone rolled for six attributes, and then they could choose to use their own rolls or someone elses. If they used someone else's rolls, they couldn't put the scores in the same places. That turned out to be fun, and gave people some interesting options while remaining 'fair' for those that had rolled badly.

My preference nowadays is for point buy, although I agree that it does tend to lead to characters with 16+ in their good stat and 8 in Charisma...

 

[hazel monday]

I hate point buy personally. But I let my players have a choice when it comes to stat generation. They can either roll 5d6 for stats, or take a 25 pt. buy.
No one ever takes the point buy.
Thus my diabolical plan insures that players always roll for stats.
The way the gods intended it.