The fighter and the paladin pretty well ganged up on the knight & stole his stuff


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Plane Sailing said:
I've never played WoW and don't know anything about it - but how many ideas has WoW 'taken' from D&D in the first place, I wonder? I wouldn't be surprised if WoW owed more conceptually to D&D than is ever likely to happen vice versa.

Cheers
The whole world of Azeroth in WoW was originally a D&D homebrew world run by, I believe, Chris Metzen...the head honcho on lore and such.

So, really, Warcraft owes everything to D&D. Nothing wrong with giving a little back.
 



Sunderstone said:
4E should have some original concepts for the traditional tabletop rpg, not borrow just about everything (like unlimited casting, "per encounter" is akin to having a mana bar) from a video game.

"Per encounter" casting is nothing like having a mana bar.
 

Ankh-Morpork Guard said:
So, really, Warcraft owes everything to D&D. Nothing wrong with giving a little back.
Yup. It even has tinker gnomes, owl bears (named wildkin) and the spells arcane missiles, blink, cone of cold, detect magic, mage armor, teleport. And healing priests with power world: X spells. So... WoW is so steeped in D&Disms, stealing the stuff (that's fitting a PnP-RPG) from it is alright.

Cheers, LT.
 

As I mentioned in another thread, we need to stop using "video-game like" as either a blanket insult or to denote an assumption of simplicity. There are a heck of a lot of very nice game system advances made by MMO's who needed to figure out a way to streamline conflict resolution systems so that they could be resolved by a dice rolling algorithm, but at the same time give the players tons of character-building options and also deal with any unexpected weirdness 4 million odd live players might cook up. And it's not like these change change the way you role-play, they simply change the underlying comflict resolution engine. Some of the CoH guys, in particular, came from tabletop RPG companies.

"simple" does not necessarily mean "simplistic" it can also mean "efficient" and "reliable." If a game mechanic works -- however you define "work" -- I don't care if it came from the designers, a widely-adopted house rule or an MMO.
 

Sunderstone said:
Good Ideas are good ideas, positive contributions are nice too. But the game is heading to far from what D&D is to me. Id like to keep the video-gameyness feel with the video games.

My point is, there is nothing about the rules that makes it video-gamey, except that there's a video game that uses similar rules. My question remains: if WoW didn't exist, and so no parallel to video games could be drawn with respect to the knight, but the class was identical, what would be your complaint? It seems to me that saying that something is "too videogamey" is something of a spurious cop-out. Unless there's something about the rules that is inherently tied to video games, there doesn't seem to be any substance to the comparison. What is video-gamey about a game mechanic that involves challenging an opponent, or taunting them into attacking? If I recall correctly, the first RPG characters to have this ability were Kender, way back in 1st edition Dragonlance. The major fantasy RPG video game release at the time was King's Quest, although Tower of Druaga had more dungeons...so you can hardly say that the ability was born of video games.
 

Sunderstone said:
snipped from an older post of mine... some obvious WoW ideas that made it to the PH2...

The Knight Class- Can we say Tank and Hold Aggro here?

We can. And it's a role that the Fighter equivilent has always tried to do. In every edition you have tried to protect the softer targets by interposing yourself - the Knight just allows a mechanical method for doing so. Ultimately, why do you think "Tank" is a role in MMOs?

Sunderstone said:
Knights Challenge Abilities (WoW Warrior equivalent)...
Fighting Challenge (Taunt)
Test of Mettle (Challenging Shout)
Call to Battle (Battle Shout Buff)
Daunting Challenge (Intimidating Shout-Fear effect)
Loyal Beyond Death (Last Stand, Prot spec warriors stand up and be recognized)

Fighting challenge and Test of Mettle, yes. Although they only work on certain opponents and allow a save.
Call to Battle is nothing like Battle Shout, it allows a re-roll of a fear save rather than giving a boost to damage. The closest match to Battle Shout would be the Inspire Courage use of bardic music.
Similarly on Daunting Challenge, it does not cause enemies to flee - if anything it is closer to Demoralising Shout. Again, affects only a subset of enemies and allows a save.
Loyal beyond Death is similar to Last Stand, but the source of the idea (hard bitten fighter struggling on beyond lesser men) is hardly unique to WoW. The implememtation is different too- you don't die when your Last Stand timer runs out.

Sunderstone said:
Thene there are feats like...
Sacred Purification (WoW Priest's Holy Nova)

Or as we knew it in 3rd ed core, Mass Cure Light Wounds.

Sunderstone said:
How about alternative class features...
Druids Spontaneous Rejuvenation (HoTs - Wow Druid's Rejuvenation -Heal over Time)
Fighters Counterattack (WoW Warrior's Overpower or Hunters Mongoose Bite)

Healing over time is hardly a WoW innovation, I may be misremebering but didn't Regenerate in 2nd ed work in this fashion? Again, Counterattack does not work like Overpower or Mongoose Bite (none of their limitations on activation) and even then counterattacking your opponent's attacks is about as generic as it gets.

Sunderstone said:

Heh.
I'll not argue that some of the knights features certainly feel like those found in WoW and may well be inspired by them, but claiming that they are a straight rip-off is a little ingenous. Personally, I like the Crusader's implementation of this archetype rather more than the Knight as I think the flavour works much better in that case.

Sunderstone said:
To the rest here, I dont mean to offend but my point is that 4E is heading too far away from the traditional D&D flavor for me. I enjoy both D&D (for about 26 years now) and WoW (since release). I just dont need one mixing in with the other. 4E should have some original concepts for the traditional tabletop rpg, not borrow just about everything (like unlimited casting, "per encounter" is akin to having a mana bar) from a video game.

The problem comes when it is so hard to define what the traditional D&D flavour is. Especially as WoW et al have been ripping it off so thoroughly for as long as we can remember. Even then, unlimited casting and "per encounter" based powers owe a lot to other traditional rpgs- take a look at the Charm mechanics and Scene-Long powers in Exalted for example. Or if you are worried about "mana bars" think about magic points from 1st ed WHFRP. <snip>

Sorry to bang on, it is just that I have been hearing this "it's too video-gamey" or "it's changing into an MMO" a lot, often without people being able to really define what they mean by that. Or even when they do the tropes that they complain about are either not present in computer games or are clearly originally D&D inspired.

-edited for factual content.
 

Gimby said:
Healing over time is hardly a WoW innovation, I may be misremebering but didn't Regenerate in 2nd ed work in this fashion?
The Regenerate X Wounds series of spells (which give Fast Healing X) first appeared in Masters of the Wild, then were rewritten as the Vigor series of spells for Complete Divine. The spontaneous rejuvenation trick is essentially just taking the druid's spontaneous summon and giving them a spontaneous spell more like the cleric's spontaneous cure, only using the druid-only line of healing spells.

Sorry to bang on, it is just that I have been hearing this "it's too video-gamey" or "it's changing into an MMO" a lot, often without people being able to really define what they mean by that. Or even when they do the tropes that they complain about are either not present in computer games or are clearly originally D&D inspired.
Bang on. :)
 

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