Irda Ranger
First Post
We've exchanged emails regarding Iron Heroes, does that count? And you've met my DM, so we've almost met ...hong said:
So what's gold gonna be for?
- Thread starter SpiderMonkey
- Start date
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
AllisterH said:
Welcome to the thread.
Sure, but not with a 10' pole searching for secret doors in every room. From my memory of the Conan stories, he tends to stumble across traps and secret doors either by inadvertently triggering them, or by having foes come through them.Reynard said:
I guess I just can't agree that dungeon crawling, with all that implies - ten foot poles, iron spikes, searching for traps and secret doors, in short all the trappings of 1st ed AD&D operational play - is essential to D&D. Adventures can happen in dungeons - that is, in underground labyrinths - without that sort of operational play taking place. And James Wyatt's recent dungeon craft suggests that underground adventuring will still be part of the game.Reynard said:
Doug McCrae
Legend
Part of the genius of the 3e design team was to realise that players are, on the whole, much more interested in the action adventure parts of the game.AllisterH said:
Birthright is, imo, a great setting. But it doesn't appeal to the vast majority of D&Ders.
Doug McCrae
Legend
In many respects, old school D&D is identical to Paranoia.pemerton said:
Including the clones.
Aexalon
Explorer
Down with the dungeon crawl!
*posts in support of fief-building*
Why must all protagonist actions invariably be offensive? What is so horrrible about doing something defensive and/or constructive for once?
And note that stronghold construction/management (somewhat akin to Crossroads Keep in NWN2) need not lead all the way to kingdom/empire building/management (akin to Birthright).
*posts in support of fief-building*
Why must all protagonist actions invariably be offensive? What is so horrrible about doing something defensive and/or constructive for once?
And note that stronghold construction/management (somewhat akin to Crossroads Keep in NWN2) need not lead all the way to kingdom/empire building/management (akin to Birthright).
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Aexalon said:
Well, not to be pedantic, but technically the protagonist has to act.
Playing defense is ok, for a while, but this carries a heavy price, and eventually the protagonist is forced to act.
About the de-emphasis of magic items... to me, this has one potentially negative effect, and one potentially positive effect. The negative outweighs the positive, though.
NEGATIVE EFFECT:
In previous editions, magic items always functioned as a sort of "parallel improvement track" to XP. By parcelling out the treasure and magic items, the DM could essentially steer the rate of advancement and also set the tone of the campaign to an extent. The difference between high-magic and low-magic, between Monty Haul and sparse and difficult. I think it's good to allow this option to be in the hands of the individual campaign. Furthermore, when you're playing a character, you always know approximately how long it'll take you to get to the next level... but you MIGHT find some really awesome magic item in your next encounter, so that's always something to look forward to.
Furthermore, highly powerful magic items allow players to make character builds which step out of the boundaries of "class" a little. (Apart from D&D, I've always preferred more skills-and-powers-based games as opposed to class-based games.) A fighter-type with Boots of Flying is suddenly stepping in the territory of the spellcasters, and I think that's perfectly okay. A mage with a powerful magic sword is suddenly just a little bit more able to compete on the level of the martial classes. (And to digress, I wonder... if every mage has some sort of automatic per-round mage strike-type attack, will that sadly mean the end of cross-class "utility mages" who use their magic primarily to boost their melee or rogue abilities?) And then there's the various skill-duplicating items like the Cloaks of Elvenkind and so on. I think that allowing more variety in character design is always good, and that means including various ways to make hybrid characters, using things such as magic items to fill in the gaps in one's strength. The core characters should be simple enough that you can expand them off in a million zillion directions and fighting styles, and one of the ways to support this is with a different selection of magic items. A fighter who wants to become roguelike by using Silent Shadowy Armor +1 *should* be able to do that.
So I hope they don't narrow the functions of magic items too much. The whole *point* of magic items is to give you an unexpected boost, an unexpected power, to broaden and expand your character. And unlike character class and race traits, it's up to the DM whether to include specific magic items in the campaign, so issues of "balance" are ultimately in the DM's hands and can be customized by each DM (particularly if the system doesn't allow magic item creation).
POSITIVE EFFECT:
The positive effect of reducing the strength and importance of magic items, IMHO, is that it'll make it more socially acceptable for the DM to run adventures where the PCs lose all their stuff. The old "attacked by the rust monster", "taken prisoner", "pickpocketed" kind of adventures. If items aren't as much of a core character trait -- if your Iron Heroes-style berserker can break out of his chains and grab a rock off the floor and wield almost as much damage as he did with his battleaxe, while he's breaking out of jail -- then it allows some new adventure hooks. (Well, fun for me as the DM, anyway... so maybe this is a bit tasteless to list as a positive effect.) :/ In a way it's interesting because it will create a more "low magic" effect (perhaps) and makes characters less dependent on fancy stuff. But in another way it's bothersome because it reduces one of the core motivations/methods of character improvement.
(And of course, lest anyone say I'm forgetting it... of course there is always role-playing and in-character goals and other reasons to keep playing, apart from getting buffer and buffer. But for now, let's just talk about the "making your character more bad-ass" element. I hear that MMORPG designers have difficulty getting players excited about In-Game Titles ("Your character is now the Duke of Blah!") and fortress-building (like in poor old Ultima Online) and other things which don't translate to simple, raw increases in badass-ishness. So if D&D4E emphasizes either of these things -- although I haven't seen much evidence that they will apart from speculations on this thread -- perhaps they will actually be bucking the MMORPG play style.)
Of course, in the end it's probably moot because I'm sure that Wizards will release more and more magic items in future supplements until there's as much stuff out there as there was in 3rd edition. Well, maybe.
NEGATIVE EFFECT:
In previous editions, magic items always functioned as a sort of "parallel improvement track" to XP. By parcelling out the treasure and magic items, the DM could essentially steer the rate of advancement and also set the tone of the campaign to an extent. The difference between high-magic and low-magic, between Monty Haul and sparse and difficult. I think it's good to allow this option to be in the hands of the individual campaign. Furthermore, when you're playing a character, you always know approximately how long it'll take you to get to the next level... but you MIGHT find some really awesome magic item in your next encounter, so that's always something to look forward to.
Furthermore, highly powerful magic items allow players to make character builds which step out of the boundaries of "class" a little. (Apart from D&D, I've always preferred more skills-and-powers-based games as opposed to class-based games.) A fighter-type with Boots of Flying is suddenly stepping in the territory of the spellcasters, and I think that's perfectly okay. A mage with a powerful magic sword is suddenly just a little bit more able to compete on the level of the martial classes. (And to digress, I wonder... if every mage has some sort of automatic per-round mage strike-type attack, will that sadly mean the end of cross-class "utility mages" who use their magic primarily to boost their melee or rogue abilities?) And then there's the various skill-duplicating items like the Cloaks of Elvenkind and so on. I think that allowing more variety in character design is always good, and that means including various ways to make hybrid characters, using things such as magic items to fill in the gaps in one's strength. The core characters should be simple enough that you can expand them off in a million zillion directions and fighting styles, and one of the ways to support this is with a different selection of magic items. A fighter who wants to become roguelike by using Silent Shadowy Armor +1 *should* be able to do that.
So I hope they don't narrow the functions of magic items too much. The whole *point* of magic items is to give you an unexpected boost, an unexpected power, to broaden and expand your character. And unlike character class and race traits, it's up to the DM whether to include specific magic items in the campaign, so issues of "balance" are ultimately in the DM's hands and can be customized by each DM (particularly if the system doesn't allow magic item creation).
POSITIVE EFFECT:
The positive effect of reducing the strength and importance of magic items, IMHO, is that it'll make it more socially acceptable for the DM to run adventures where the PCs lose all their stuff. The old "attacked by the rust monster", "taken prisoner", "pickpocketed" kind of adventures. If items aren't as much of a core character trait -- if your Iron Heroes-style berserker can break out of his chains and grab a rock off the floor and wield almost as much damage as he did with his battleaxe, while he's breaking out of jail -- then it allows some new adventure hooks. (Well, fun for me as the DM, anyway... so maybe this is a bit tasteless to list as a positive effect.) :/ In a way it's interesting because it will create a more "low magic" effect (perhaps) and makes characters less dependent on fancy stuff. But in another way it's bothersome because it reduces one of the core motivations/methods of character improvement.
(And of course, lest anyone say I'm forgetting it... of course there is always role-playing and in-character goals and other reasons to keep playing, apart from getting buffer and buffer. But for now, let's just talk about the "making your character more bad-ass" element. I hear that MMORPG designers have difficulty getting players excited about In-Game Titles ("Your character is now the Duke of Blah!") and fortress-building (like in poor old Ultima Online) and other things which don't translate to simple, raw increases in badass-ishness. So if D&D4E emphasizes either of these things -- although I haven't seen much evidence that they will apart from speculations on this thread -- perhaps they will actually be bucking the MMORPG play style.)
Of course, in the end it's probably moot because I'm sure that Wizards will release more and more magic items in future supplements until there's as much stuff out there as there was in 3rd edition. Well, maybe.
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