New Penny Arcade Podcast

[Hawke]

My first 4E session included several complete newbies to roleplaying. Midway through kobold hall we realized our wizard had picked up one of my d12s and was using that as a d20... whoops!

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't think that it would have been that obvious. There are many different powers out there and Wheaton was playing a class that was yet to see print. Perkins may not have been intimately involved with the development of this class and may not have been aware of the mechanics of each power.

I grant that this might have been true for the Oath of Enmity, but I'm surprised that he didn't spot the missing proficiency bonus on the weapon based powers, since that is pretty independent. I'd certainly have had a quick review of a PC who was coming in as an entirely new class though.

I still think it is a shame about the cleric temp hp, about Binwins marking and sundry other things.

Amongst other things, I think it demonstrates that 4e is essentially more complex at low level than previous editions of D&D, since there is an added level of complexity for every class even at low level. Plus there is a lot more for a DM to track going on.

Cheers

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

While its true they're having fun, they would have had better results if they'd remembered some of those rules.

I'm not sure that "better results" has any correlation with "fun."

It's sort of fun in the moment, at least, to steamroll things. However, "Binwin was, like, totally immune to the DM's traps" doesn't generate as good a story as "Binwin got kabob-ed by a threshing machine, lit on fire by fire-breathing statues, and eaten by an Iron maiden, all in the same adventure!"

This is especially true since the whole spirit of Ac Inc seems to be "we succeed in spite of ourselves." Oh, and don't forget "Set the Dwarf on fire."

 

[ScottS]

Regarding the timing of the podcasts: my take is that the Perkins run of KOTS was one session, the Wyatt run was one session (maybe the same day as the former, dunno), and now this new set of recordings was one session (at least until the point where I stopped listening, which was #4 or 5).

Perkins forgot/chose not to mention fighter marking in the first KOTS session. Wyatt tells them about the ability in the next session, when Binwin doesn't do it in the first combat of the run. (He also tells them about charging and action points; the party response to the latter is essentially "WTF!11!?!?". There may have been more "reminders" later on, but I only checked KOTS #5.) Everyone seems to have forgotten about marking by the time the next Perkins game was recorded.

 

[Scribble]

As a friend and coworker of mine put it,

"The era of the podcast confuses me... In that it is now possible for people to be upset because Wil Wheaton does not add his attack bonuses correctly."

I must admit, that would have been a hard one to see coming ten years ago.

Number One- Please see that Mr Crusher adds his attack bonuses correctly next time...

(or was that more like 20 years ago? man I hate being over 30. )

 

[Mr. Wilson]

New Podcast is up, and things aren't looking to hot for the party.

Loved the story about Rudy the Undead Dog.

 

[darjr]

uh oh.

What is the publication date of this new issue of the podcast?...

 

[Mr. Wilson]

uh oh.

What is the publication date of this new issue of the podcast?...

I thought it was an April Fools joke as well, but it's 50 minutes and begins where the last one left off, so I'm gonna go with it being real.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Seriously, guys? Those things that you consider so immediately obvious--well, to many folks they're not. To a lot of folks, it's minutiae. I sure can't take any of that for granted with most of my group.

Oh, I understand that people forget these things all the time. Our group often forgets them too. That's why we have people who remind us...nearly every round.

Obviously, it doesn't matter if people forget these things. They are having a great time and that's all that matters. All I was saying when I started this side discussion was that the difference in effectiveness between a party who remembers and keeps track of all these bonuses and one that doesn't is fairly dramatic. They are up against fairly easy monsters.

I've just been reminded so many times by so many people, since I play in Living Forgotten Realms and play with different people all the time. I'm used to showing up at a table with someone I've never met before or who just made a cleric for the first time ever. Since they don't know how proficient I am in the rules, I've had to listen to the description of Righteous Brand a good 10 times. Each time read out in an excited voice like a kid in a candy store who has discovered something no one else ever has. Something like, "So I hit with Righteous Brand. And this attack give you my Strength modifier to hit on all your melee attacks for a whole round! So, every time you roll an attack roll, you should add...umm..FOUR to it. That's awesome. Hey, I just realized. If you spend an action point and attack and second time, you'd get the bonus on that as well."

An awful lot like the cleric did in this podcast. Only, he promptly forgot about it the rest of the times he used the power.

I guess I just play often enough that I wish I could remind people of rules. I know that people I've reminded about rules in real life almost always have more fun as they realize there is more to their characters than they thought.

It's a lot like watching someone play Monopoly and having them forget to pay rent over half the time when they land on other people's property. Sure, you can still have fun playing like that when nobody notices, but if you are the player who realizes that you were supposed to be payed thousands of dollars that you missed out on because someone else wasn't following the rules, it can cause hurt feelings.

 

[Hussar]

Seriously, guys? Those things that you consider so immediately obvious--well, to many folks they're not. To a lot of folks, it's minutiae. I sure can't take any of that for granted with most of my group.
/snip

Hang on. I'm not upset or anything like that. Perhaps it doesn't come over all that well, but jeez. Upset? That's way too strong.

I'm just thinking that something like, say, dwarven step is hardly minutia. It's in a great big honking box in the race description. We're not talking about something buried behind three pages of text.

Sure, fine, casual players and all that, and certainly the next time out they will probably have a better handle. But, I'd hardly call it minutia. Remembering which defense you happen to be attacking might be. But your basic racial abilities? Something you've had to have read at least once when you created the character? This is minutia?