The Peanut Gallery

[Dunamin]

Yes I was quite surprised at how little the loss is to an arcane PC when his familiar dies. Previously you lost at least 100 xp/level (if you saved, else 200/lvl) and couldn't call another for a year and a day. Now it's like "meh, see ya in 5"... not a fan of that...

I think they may have taken it a bit too far in the safe-zone direction, but I do prefer it to the exaggerated punishment alternative. At least from my experience, the threats of XP loss and removal of a character option from play on a time frame of years usually resulted in excessive paranoia and overprotectiveness.

 

[Kalidrev]

Considering the generally slow time-frames of most campaigns, I think the previous versions year and a day punishment equated to a total loss of a class ability, and in my experience, it just meant that the wizard/sorcerer who had a familiar, generally tried his best to just keep said familiar hidden on himself. I like the current incarnation better because it is more in line with the loss/use of an encounter power that was gained from a feat (like, for instance, the drow feat that lets them use both cloud of darkness AND darkfire, once per encounter).

 

[stonegod]

I played lots of wizards in 3.x. I never had a familiar due to the potential loss of XP. Far too much a cost for far too little gain. They're so easy to kill (AoE and poof).

 

[Mewness]

*Audience cheers the Ring of the Fey Lord group and waves giant foam warlock fingers*

 

[taran]

Hey, did we live through that?

We did, didn't we?

How about that?

 

[covaithe]

I think r1 was merciful, in that he played the monsters with monster tactics instead of doing his best to kill us. I'm not complaining; I think that's usually the right move as a DM. And in this case, that's probably all that kept one or two of us alive!

 

[renau1g]

Yeah, although I'm not sure if it was merciful... Ironheart went down at least twice, but I tried my best to remove my own devious tactics for more appropriate enemy ones. Anyways, I've learned that tons and tons of dazing effects aren't fun for any of us, so don't expect 2 monsters in one encounter who both have area daze ends effects that recharge regularly...well unless they're a solo maybe...

 

[stonegod]

Monsters should behave as monsters, not as DMs. A monster with a very high int will be devious; others, not so much.

 

[Dunamin]

I'm not sure how we survived a TPK encounter like that, but I'm glad we did.

Still, I'm used to DMs trying to slaughter his party pretty damn hard. Even with paragon-level daze-spamming cheating tactics.

 

[renau1g]

Bah, the highest baddie was only level 6, not even de-leveled. It was only a level 6 standard controller...not even elite either