On The Horrible Naming

[Wyrmshadows]

I'm surprised

I am actually surprised at the feat naming conventions the designers are using. I am surprised because guys who have been gaming for years and are payed professional designers think that these questionable names are a good idea.

I was never a fan of Tenser's this or Mordenkainen's that in core either unless it was in a Greyhawk sourcebook and always changed them by removing the character name from the spell when I DM'd on other settings.

I ran these names by my players (gamers of 20+ years) and they are unimpressed at best and think they are silly at worst. I feel the same way personally. There is no reason for Flying Panther Strike, Soaring Hawk Rend, Lotus Dragon Claw Sunder or Jade Ogre Skull Smash or what have you. This isn't a grognard issue, its merely an issue of desiring the books that are core to contain as little assumed style as possible so that D&D can, as it has always, support the ability for the ruleset to be ported to a variety of settings and genres without too much work.

I don't run games in Greyhawk and therefore don't have any use for Mordenkainen and don't run campaigns in the world of the Last Airbender, Final Fantasy, Elric's Melnibone, or He Man's Eternia and don't want to have to cut and carve the core game up constantly so as to run my homebrew or some other published setting where the names I have seen thus far, will not fit without being renamed.

I just have to scratch my head wondering "Do the designers really think these are good names or are the names a marketing angle?"


Wyrmshadows

 

[Hussar]

Mnemonic?

Dweomer?

Somantic?

But, I'm more than half kidding. BryonD makes a good point. If you picked the list of feats from 3e and showed it to a new gamer, they'd likely get most of them. The three name convention really does suck IMO. I'll wait this one out before judging though.

 

[Odhanan]

I am actually surprised at the feat naming conventions the designers are using. I am surprised because guys who have been gaming for years and are payed professional designers think that these questionable names are a good idea. (...)

What he said. There has to be a marketing reason behind, because if it is about taste...

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

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?

Good point. See, THEY are trying to pave the way now in 4th Edition so it wont be such a jarring transition to the completely collectable 5th release in 3-5 years

 

[BryonD]

A rose, called by any other name, smells just as sweet.

You may not know what Golden Wyvern is now, but I'm sure you'll know quickly enough to recognize it or even use it. The same principal goes for all names, like Evocation. I'm sure when you first heard that name you didn't know what it did.

You are wrong three times in this tiny post.

 

[DM_Blake]

Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus, Weapon Profiency, Weapon Specialisation are nice, generic names, I agree. But they don't really tell me what they do in game terms. I know they probably will improve my handling with a weapon, but how exactly? The only advantage is that they have "Weapon" in their name and thus you know that they are probably good for a fighter and you might want to take a closer look when skimming through the feats section.

No feat in the book explains its mechanics by the name. After many years of 3.x, we have become accustomed to associating certain names with certain abilities, but when I first looked into the PHB, i had no idea what Combat Expertise or Combat Reflexes did, and I had no idea how to resolve a Magic Missile attack.

But "Lightning Panter Strike" or "Gold Wyvern Adept" manage the same: "Wait, Strike? That sounds like something for attacking. Adept? Sounds like something magical)

Whether the names sound "cool" or not, i don't really know. I absolutely couldn't get the problem with "Emerald Frost", because it doesn't sound bad to me at all. (But I am not a native speaker). "Golden Wyvern" I don't like because I don't like the word "Wyvern" at all. But the word will be at least found in the Monster Manual, so what do I care.

Nobody is saying (or at least I'm not saying) that any feat should explain its mechanics in its name. That would be absurd.

Currently, in 3.5e, I have over 1200 feats on a single list I typed up. I left off hundreds of feats I thought were pretty worthless for the sake of 'slimming' down the list to 1200 or so. A few of those feats have goofy names like Robilar's Gambit, but the vast majority of them have descriptive names.

When I, or a player, scans my list looking for feats to take, we don't want to have to look up hundreds of them to figure out what they do so we can decide which to take.

Thankfully, 3.5e core books are 100% descriptive. At the very least, they are descriptive enough that a fighter knows he doesn't need to look up Spell Focus, and a mage knows he doesn't need to look up Two-Weapon Defense. Some of the splat books deviated a little, but still most of those feats use descriptive names too.

For the most part, once a person has looked up a feat like Power Attack once, they will be able to see Power Attack in some monster's stat block and will have a pretty good idea what it does, since the name is suggestive of the mechanic that they already read.

Robilar's Gambit is not very suggestive of the mechanic, but at least that mechanic does involve sacrificing something of value to gain an advantage. It's bad, but still marginally suggestive.

But Golden Wyvern Adept has no suggestion, at all, of the mechanic. In fact, it might even be a monk fighting style, or even a fighter fighting style (who's to say that in some campaign there couldn't be a school of fighters who train whip-daggers coated with poison and refer to attacking with these weapons as stinging like a wyvern - maybe these guys call them selves Golden Wyvern Adepts.)

So yeah, I don't like feats, or spells, or any other game mechanic, where the name has no reference to the mechanic.

Feats like this on my 1200 feat list are very irritating.

And one day, 4e might have 1200 feats. I sure hope they don't have such crappy meaningless names. If the core books have meaningless names, they will set the standard for the rest of the splat books, and more are sure to follow.

I hope WotC nips this is in the bud and sets a good example of meaningful feat names for all the books to follow.

 

[neceros]

You are wrong three times in this tiny post.

Care to explain how or why? Otherwise, this is a blank post itself.

 

[WhatGravitas]

But Golden Wyvern Adept has no suggestion, at all, of the mechanic. In fact, it might even be a monk fighting style, or even a fighter fighting style (who's to say that in some campaign there couldn't be a school of fighters who train whip-daggers coated with poison and refer to attacking with these weapons as stinging like a wyvern - maybe these guys call them selves Golden Wyvern Adepts.)

Hmm... that's a really good point. Most feats in D&D right now, give you at least a clue what they're doing, so you can preselect them. If you're not a spellcaster, why look at anything with the words "arcane", "spell" or similar stuff. Or, conversely, you'll never even try to look up dodge, shot on the run, or two-weapon-fighting, if you're going to play a guy in heavy armour and a huge greatsword...

Golden Wyvern Adept however, prevents this "prefiltering".

Cheers, LT.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Hmm... that's a really good point. Most feats in D&D right now, give you at least a clue what they're doing, so you can preselect them. If you're not a spellcaster, why look at anything with the words "arcane", "spell" or similar stuff. Or, conversely, you'll never even try to look up dodge, shot on the run, or two-weapon-fighting, if you're going to play a guy in heavy armour and a huge greatsword...

Golden Wyvern Adept however, prevents this "prefiltering".

Cheers, LT.

Except for back a chapter or two, in the class section, where the wizard write-up talks about the Golden Wyvern order (see the old Design & Development article about implements). This will, hopefully, help the poor folks remember that it applies to wizards.

 

[resistor]

Except for back a chapter or two, in the class section, where the wizard write-up talks about the Golden Wyvern order (see the old Design & Development article about implements). This will, hopefully, help the poor folks remember that it applies to wizards.

What if my world doesn't have a Golden Wyvern order?