WotC_Shoe on leaderless parties

[SSquirrel]

Potion vials all come w/an easy to access flip top lid. No more child safety lock on things. Just make sure your toddlers doesn't get her hands on the potion of speed and the potion of fire breathing

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think that a minor action would be fine, if it was strongly enforced that you'd also have to take the time to have a free hand AND get at the potion itself. Certainly NOT a minor action while charging the orc, swinging a mace and blocking with your shield.

Otherwise, I think a standard action is good, if the potion does a sizable heal. "A sizable heal" potion should be pretty expensive, though.

Fitz

Also, I don't see why 15 WEEKS is too little time to adjust completely minor - slash - somewhat arbitrary - slash - totally a matter of opinion - rules adjustments. There's PLENTY of time before the books go to the printers.

 

[Voss]

Also, I don't see why 15 WEEKS is too little time to adjust completely minor - slash - somewhat arbitrary - slash - totally a matter of opinion - rules adjustments. There's PLENTY of time before the books go to the printers.

But that time isn't 15 weeks. Depending on who in the publishing industry you want to listen to, its somewhere between 5-10 weeks. Or 25-50 business days.

And we don't know if those are the only issues.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'll be interested to see what the trade off is for the leaderless group regarding faster fights vs. deadlier combat threshold.


I think that for my money there should be a different strategic situation for the two parites.

I don't really want the encounters to be substantially harder based on party make up, but I would like to see parties have to weigh their decisions differently. With harassment tactics making more sense for leaderless high damage parties where a defender heavy party with good leader support really needs to stick in the fight till it ends.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Drinking a potion as a minor action? Doesn't seem right to me--much for the same reason as others have described. If WotC wants to make potions a more efficient use of a combat action, they should simply have them heal more effectively. That way, you spend the action to heal and even if your opponent hits, he doesn't take it all away from you.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

From the sounds of things, it's not too much different from a party of effectively built 3rd edition characters without a cleric: you make up for the lack of healing in other ways--more battlefield control and blasting power, more straightforward attacking damage output, etc. One way or the other, you finish combats more quickly. However, if things start to go badly, you don't have the same keep on your feet potential.

It's certainly not an ideal situation in 3rd edition, but it can be made to work. (I played a couple 8th and 10th level mods where the only cleric was my multiclass mutt with her 2 levels of cleric).

I'll be interested to see what the trade off is for the leaderless group regarding faster fights vs. deadlier combat threshold.


I think that for my money there should be a different strategic situation for the two parites.

I don't really want the encounters to be substantially harder based on party make up, but I would like to see parties have to weigh their decisions differently. With harassment tactics making more sense for leaderless high damage parties where a defender heavy party with good leader support really needs to stick in the fight till it ends.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

But that time isn't 15 weeks. Depending on who in the publishing industry you want to listen to, its somewhere between 5-10 weeks. Or 25-50 business days.

And we don't know if those are the only issues.

The question is - what should they be doing int he last 5-10 weeks, if not tweaking some rules? Should they just sit around because in 5-10 weeks, their books go to the printer?

Until the book is in print, things are still allowed to change.
In software, they might now be in the testing phase, which means there won't be any new functionality added (in D&D terms, no new classes, no new subsystems), but you will be tweaking the existing one. ("Is this button visible enough?" "The caching system is too slow, find something to improve it." "When saving a document on closing the application, the document can't always be opened on startup - fix that". The D&D equivalents might be: "The playtesters said that potions were rarely used in mid-fight" "The Bugbear Strangler singlehandedly killed a group of 5 characters three levels lower - that sounds too dangerous!")

 

[fnwc]

BTW, I like the idea of drinking potions as less than a standard action. I could go for move or minor - anything is better than a standard action IMO.

From a purely mechanical standpoint, I agree, as it's rarely economical to waste a standard action mid-combat to drink a potion, unless it is particularly beneficial effect (e.g., a potion of heal).

Hopefully in 4th the impact of each individual action is lessened, so that it's possible to have some tactical variance, without feeling you're wasting your turn.

 

[delericho]

I'm fine with drinking a potion being a minor action, provided that doesn't also include the time to retrieve it from your pack.

I do think that the various healing potions should be more effective, though.

 

[Deep Blue 9000]

I think minor action potions are a bad idea unless players get powerful abilities that cost minor actions. If they don't, then there is no reason to not chug a potion every round. That's almost the definition of broken.

Increasing the healing power of potions is a much better idea.