On The Horrible Naming

[Simon Marks]

Can you point out the equivalent example(s) from the 3E PH?

Deities and Domains as the worst offenders, Could you tell me what the Travel Domain did easily?

Diehard (Doesn't make it harder for you to die)
Nimble Fingers et al (ish)

 

[Imaro]

IMHO the naming conventions are taking a page from games like Exalted, Qin, etc. The biggest problem I have with them is that D&D (at least IME) has always been used to play in a multitude of varying campaigns with differing styles. Games such as Exalted and Qin use flowery descriptive names for abiities because it reinforces the games feel and fits the world's genre as presented in those books. The difference with D&D is that it's never had a definitive world to play in.

Just looking at 3e you have Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and that's not even getting into the whole 3rd party and homebrew worlds. Fluff is used to reinforce particular playstyles and/or genre tropes, the problem is that everyone has their own particular style in their D&D game. This makes them really unnecessary and in fact kind of annoying since it's just more work for a DM to first get to a generic baseline and then inject his own fluff.

I would have no problem (aside from my personal like or dislikke of particular names) if these were in specific campaign books, but in the end I'd rather have generic/descriptive names and create my own particular naming conventions dependant upon the style of world I play in.

 

[Aeolius]

Feats named after land animals do not excite me. They would have to be renamed from day one, as my undersea PCs have no idea what a panther or wyvern is.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Feats named after land animals do not excite me. They would have to be renamed from day one, as my undersea PCs have no idea what a panther or wyvern is.

Well that's just super, but sadly, I don't think the core rulebooks will be written exclusively for extreme outlier campaigns.

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

they are too anime...

And I'm an anime fan...

but not like this...

 

[Aeolius]

Well that's just super, but sadly, I don't think the core rulebooks will be written exclusively for extreme outlier campaigns.

Fair enough, but feats with names that are descriptive of what the feat does would be the best of both worlds.

 

[GVDammerung]

It is interesting to note that one sales point of 4E has been "easier for new DMs" and thus it will grow the hobby by growing the DM pool first.
I'm not clear on how flustering a new DM because he can't recall what his npc's feat *does* is going to fit into that plan.

This is the crux of the matter. There are lots of abilities and feats etc. that will be in play. Recalling what each one actually does without always having to flip through the books is a plus. If the name is somewhat descriptive of what the ability or feat etc. does, this helps eleviate the difficulty and makes things easier on DMs and Players. On the other hand, flavorful names that provide little clue as to what the ability or feat does are not helpful and do not make anyone's part in the game easier. Rather, flavorful but nondescriptive names complicate matters. Good names are descriptive names that suggest what the ability, feat etc. actually does.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Fair enough, but feats with names that are descriptive of what the feat does would be the best of both worlds.

Such as, say, making one more adept with the spellcasting techniques of the Golden Wyvern order of wizards, which will (if previous articles are to be believed) at least be described in overview in the wizard section of the PHB?

 

[GVDammerung]

"I combo my Howling Grognard Attack with Finely-Parsing Fan Stance!"

ROFL! Brilliant!

 

[Black_Swan]

I've read through the thread and please pardon my ignorance but I think this issue can be solved by looking at the objective of the new version. This will give us an insight into the reason the feats have been given names like this.

We may even need to drill down into the objective for the character portion of 4e.

For example..if the objective is to give D&D a more updated flavor in line with the latest card games, then the new feat names make sense.

You'd be able to build a character like a deck of cards. Each character is a deck and you slowly gather the feats and abilities (Better cards) to make the deck more effective.

So instead of the card "Cleave" which is generic and not very card game like, you get "Dragon tail slice".

I doubt that the names are being plucked out of thin air just to make them sound cool to the designers. There's a solid reason as to why the names are being chosen.

The objective of 4e will give us insight into that reason and shed some light on other design choices.

So..what is the objective of 4e?