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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Najo" data-source="post: 3932438" data-attributes="member: 9959">Spells have the names of greyhawks uber wizards, characters that were tributes to Gary Gygax and the other creators of the game. I get that. If I use them, they seem like weird ancient wizards lost to time, if I don't them and I drop them from my game, they are hardly noticed being gone.Same thing goes with magic items, more weird names and references to obscure things from an unknown past or a long dead wizard. For the ones that are really bad, I can choose to use them or not or I can easily rename them. Like available spells, I as DM can control their inclusion in my game with very little effort.A pantheon, that is easy to plug or un plug. The rest of the game does not use the pantheon in its mechanics or hardly at all. There is very little, must be a cleric of pelor type of feats or other abilities. Most D&D pantheons are designed to plug in and out. Every campaign setting changes them around, along with the planes of existance and how planar magic works over all. Again, this is standard fair for the D&D DM who makes his own worlds or uses a published campaign setting from WOTC or a 3rd party publisher.Organizations, again, either I use them or don't. They do not tie to game mechanics. They are prebuilt ideas for me to change around and play with as I wish. I can use the maps, I can use the npcs, I can use concepts etc. Easy to rename and so on.Now, feats. Specifically feats that do basic core mechanic/ base class modifications (i.e. spell areas of affect) and ties it to a wizard tradition/ order/ etc by a fluff name. 1) because it is player chosen, I can not control its placement2) because it is a core mechanic (spell area effect) I can not replace it easily. I either have to rename it or get rid of it, and thus complicate things for my player or my campaign.3) because it has a fluff name, even though the character might call it something else, the players are going to constantly be using the term "golden wyvern adept" when refering to it. So your campaign is forced to bring in these fluffy feats. Because of the nature of the feat building fluff into the character, it is very likely a player embraces the concept of the feat (being an adept in a Order called the Golden Wyverns or learned from an ancient form of magical schooling called the Golden Wyvern technique or whatever). This colors and flavors the campaign setting in ways the DM can't control. It places setting elements just by a character making reference to it, which then leads characters to wonder at the nature of such a group or school. This in turn places the Golden Wyverns (and like named feats) into EVERY D&D campaign running in 4.0. As roleplaying reflects storytelling in all its forms, this is a short sighted and silly thing to do with core rules at best. 4) because, feat and talent reference is necessary for the rules to core rules to function. Everything else can be ignored, but classes and their abilities cannot. If the feat is kept like this (and even worse considered product identity) then 3rd party publishers are done for.   Renaming core rules on a character that the player choose and brings into play without the DM placing it in game is going to cause frustration. Not renaming those elements is going to frustrate the DMs who work hard on their worlds they have crafted and told stories in, It is going to frustrate many of the fans of official settings that suddenly have these shared ancient orders and identical magic in each setting. This just seems like a bad idea.Why do that to those DMs and those campaign settings. Why take away a key part of D&D, the appearance of a rules set that for the most part lets you tell fantasy stories with your friends in creative ways. There is actually very little fluff in the 3.0 and 3.5 books. The designers knew that, and only put in a small amount in places the DMs were not bothered by it.As for Golden Wyvern Adept not being an order, an adept is typically a member of a group who follows certain teachings when referring to the practice of magic. WOTC could be meaning it as an expert in Golden Wyvern techique, but I doubt it considering they have already referred to these as wizard orders with distinct training.</blockquote>

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