WotC Blogs II

[GreatLemur]

Perhaps chaotic = risk-taking and lawful = careful?

I hope not. I've always hated the conception of the law/chaos axis as describing methodolgy rather than merely values and outlook. But, hell, I don't use alignments anyway, so why should I complain?

 

[Mercule]

In the Wizards Presents: Worlds and Monsters book, we'll present in more detail 4th Edition's alternative to the Elemental Planes of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.

Hmm... I may actually pick up this preview. The core cosmology has long bothered me and I'm curious what they're doing with it.

As far as being evocative, that's essential (or, at least, quite valuable) to an RPG book, even the core rules. 1E V:tM was incredibly evocative and filled me with ideas, while 2E V:tM was mechanically more sound, but very dry (very bad, considering the goals of the Storyteller series). I often found myself returning to my 1E book for inspiration.

That's also the reason so many people still love the 1E DMG. Gygax spread Proper Nouns all around that book. I think it's worth pointing out, though, that he rarely (if ever) stopped and said, "Okay, here's the history of Kas and Vecna," or anything similar. It was all very casual, not forced. I hope they do this with 4E, and I'm getting the impression that they are.

 

[Glyfair]

That's also the reason so many people still love the 1E DMG. Gygax spread Proper Nouns all around that book. I think it's worth pointing out, though, that he rarely (if ever) stopped and said, "Okay, here's the history of Kas and Vecna," or anything similar. It was all very casual, not forced. I hope they do this with 4E, and I'm getting the impression that they are.

Yeah, that's why I never got all the Greyhawk grognard complaints about Greyhawk not really being the default setting in 3E. Default setting has nothing to do with giving out campaign info, it has to do with where it draws its flavor.

 

[Rechan]

The hell is grognard?

 

[Glyfair]

The hell is grognard?

Grognard

 

[Glyfair]

In Stephen Schubert's latest blog entry he mentions that bar-lgura are large creatures and mentions improvising spider stats in his latest game.

An interesting note, though, that the players didn't even pick up on was that I didn't start the session with stat blocks for the spiders. I knew I wanted the small spiders to use webs to trap the PCs and pull them closer, and I wanted the large spider to be a more significant melee threat. With a couple of notes on those abilities, and using a generic set of level-appropriate attack bonuses and defenses, I was able to generate those monsters nearly entirely on the fly.

Of course, it helps that I'm currently very familiar with the structures we are using for building monsters - but to me it highlights what is important about a monster in the context of an encounter. Generally, you need to know numbers for hp, defense, attack, and damage, and then you need the one or two special abilities that make the creature unique in combat. It seems obvious, really, and wasn't a novel realization, but was just something that I was thinking about last night.

(And yes, I know that many monsters need some interesting things to do outside of combat - but that wasn't information I needed during those encounters.)

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

IN Stephen Schubert's latest blog entry he mentions that bar-lgura are large creatures and mentions improvising spider stats in his latest game.

I am not prone to superlative, but if I will be able to reliably and effectively improvise monster stats on the fly (presumably using a simple system provided in the DMG or MM), this will be the best edition ever.

 

[Rechan]

I get the impression that they're basically going to have a list of attack/damage/hp/AC that's appropriate for a monster of x level. Sort of like the table of NPCs by class in the DMG. So you can mix and match.

Which is a little nice.

Belatedy, thanks Glyfair.

 

[Wormwood]

With a couple of notes on those abilities, and using a generic set of level-appropriate attack bonuses and defenses, I was able to generate those monsters nearly entirely on the fly..

I truly hope that 4e can deliver on this promise.

While I appreciated "PCs and Monsters are built on the same principles" as a 3e design principle, in actual play I found that it really hindered my enjoyment of the game.

 

[WayneLigon]

I was very interested at seeing this. Heck, you could have an entry that says:

Spider, large lvl5; AC 14, 1 Bite+3, 2 Claws +1, Poison/A, Webs

where there is a simple table that lists generic attacks for a lvl 5 creature:

LVL BAB Primary Damage Secondary Damage
5 +4 1d8 1d4