New Playtest up...

[GlassJaw]

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I have, i like it. I like D&D better though. Does Conan have that Wealth mechanic? Sounds vaguely familiar...

Conan doesn't have a Wealth system per se but it encourages the wanton spending of coin on the proverbial "ale and whores".

 

[GlassJaw]

Without quoting a specific post above, I'll start by saying this:

There's no question D&D is about killing stuff and taking their loot.

Now that's out of the way, I'll go one step further and say that D&D is not (or shouldn't be) about spending game time for accounting. It's not fun.

I cringe when I look at a module and see all the mooks with masterwork gear and +1 items. I know if I run the module as-is, there's going to be a session in the near future that will be spent entirely on flipping through badly kept lists of gear the players found over the past few sessions, figuring out the values of everything, converting it to gold, figuring out each person's share, and then ultimately buying what they really want.

What is the core purpose of loot for the players? To get cool stuff and become more powerful. To me, all the work in the middle is wasted game time and it's not fun.

I would welcome a system that makes it easier for players to upgrade their magical gear even if the fluff is a bit wonky. For example, what if each character could bind to a single item. As they find other magical gear, they can choose to drain its magical power and transfer it to their bound item. A bit cheesy? Maybe. More fun, saves time, and removes the middle man? Absolutely. If it makes the game more fun, I can suspend my disbelief.

 

[Glyfair]

One thing really bothers me about these playtests... they are using a bunch of races and classes that aren't going to be in the game when it is released (and by their own words, haven't really been developed yet).

Why can't our official playtest reports be with elements that will actually be included in the Core books?

You got mentioned on David Noonan's blog.

His reply:

I saw a reasonable criticism of the playtest reports here. It's a fair cop: Why don't we give you straight 4e playtests without including elements that may or may not make the cut for the PH/MM/DMG? You get two responses from me on that score. First, most of our internal playtest tables are doing exactly that--straight 4e goodness, often starting brand new at 1st level. Only a few tables went the "faithful reinterpretation" route that my table did. Second, one of the things we test is the away-from-table design process. How hard was it for Logan to crank out a reasonable chaos gnome, for example? Was his assessment of its balance accurate? Did he have enough design space to work with? See, those are pretty nifty questions. We live for stuff like that.

One other thing: D&D Insider is going to give you playtest reports from a lot of the other tables. My guys are just prolific, I suppose.

 

[Insight]

One thing really bothers me about these playtests... they are using a bunch of races and classes that aren't going to be in the game when it is released (and by their own words, haven't really been developed yet).

Why can't our official playtest reports be with elements that will actually be included in the Core books?

Did it occur to you (or really, anyone else asking the same sort of questions) that the designers may not have settled on "what is going to be in the PHB"? A lot of people seem to think everything in 4E is already set in stone. If that's the case, why bother playtesting?

 

[Jhaelen]

Anyone else find it odd that despite it being said that we'd be better off starting over rather than trying to convert our current games to 4E they're playtesting by converting their current game to 4E?

I'd find it odd, if they didn't have playtests where they tried to convert their current games to 4e. How else should they find out what works and what doesn't when converting? How should I trust their recommendations if they didn't even test it?

I certainly hope they'll test the game at every character level not the just the first few. I think, it's probably easier to test the new rules at higher levels if they convert existing campaigns.

 

[Insight]

Conan doesn't have a Wealth system per se but it encourages the wanton spending of coin on the proverbial "ale and whores".

As do I.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I cringe when I look at a module and see all the mooks with masterwork gear and +1 items. I know if I run the module as-is, there's going to be a session in the near future that will be spent entirely on flipping through badly kept lists of gear the players found over the past few sessions, figuring out the values of everything, converting it to gold, figuring out each person's share, and then ultimately buying what they really want.

I'm curious to know how they'll fix this. Their solution (as stated in the snippet) is to cut out the middleman and award gold pieces directly.

So.

There are two ways to read that playtest snippet:

1) Gold pieces still have "game" value.

And as long as there remains some tangible "avatar empowerment" benefit that can be bought with gold, players WILL loot the bodies. They will loot the altars and the candlesticks, the statues, the tapestries, the ornate coffers, everything and anything that has a gp value and is not nailed down.

That is the nature of PCs.

If this is the case, then the snippet simply indicates that it is going to be a lot harder for PCs to transport wealth. If they can't loot a +1 dagger (2000 gp, ready to travel!) it will have to be something else.

"Don't bother looting the snake priest, guys, he won't have any magic items because he didn't need them. Here, help me get this statue onto the mule."

Treasure CAN'T be nothing but coin.

So instead of getting together once every few sessions to catalog all the +1 items you have and sell them off, you'll be cataloging a whole lot of other stuff that has some gp value. That annoying "dividing the spoils and spending your coin" session is still going to have to take place.

2) The only other way to read that snippet is "Gold is not important anymore." That would be a HUGE departure from the core of the game.

 

[ST]

"Don't bother looting the snake priest, guys, he won't have any magic items because he didn't need them. Here, help me get this statue onto the mule."

Treasure CAN'T be nothing but coin.

So instead of getting together once every few sessions to catalog all the +1 items you have and sell them off, you'll be cataloging a whole lot of other stuff that has some gp value. That annoying "dividing the spoils and spending your coin" session is still going to have to take place.

That goes back to 1e, and I have to say I never minded the abstraction of "300 gp of assorted tapestries, candlesticks, and coins". If you don't want to play Antiques Roadshow you can just divvy up the coin value evenly and be done with it.

I do think we can get away from the idea that any encounter of a high enough CR is going to be loaded with magical loot afterwards. Yes, adventurers are going to want to pick the corpses clean, but lots of games have mooks with little financial value, and put the cash (or, well, whatever motivator for adventure you want) deep in the dungeon behind lots of them.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Even in the 2E days, when the rules didn't really support using gold to buy magic or any other kind of direct Avatar empowerment, gold still had value; in my games PC's bought ludicrously fancy suits of armor in order to look good at court, they bought castles, they bought casinos and temples and all kinds of things that made their characters cooler - though not in a way that would necessarily help them in their next dungeon delve.

I like the approach they're taking on magic items, I think. Like Nebulous, I love magic items, but I don't want them dominating the game the way they do in 3E; and by that I don't mean power-wise but rather in their necessity and the need to buy/sell them that causes them to take up so much "game space." I think I tended to give out more powerful items to the same level PC's in 2E games, but for some reason they never seemed to be as big a deal.

I'd love to see the big six deep-sixed.

BTW, I don't read too much into that snippet. I think they just happened to just find coin there, and magic will be less required by NPCs, nothing more than that.

 

[Felon]

I think you are correct. People are reading to much into that report.

I agree. Even if there are builds for warforged and warlocks, that doesn't mean they've made the cut.

And really, once you give a spellcaster some at-will offensive capabilities, you've gone a long, long way towards killing the warlock and taking his stuff.