Dark Sun returns

[Data Vampire]

Defiling is, if I remember right, a subset of Arcane. Clerics don't have to worry about killing things when they cast.

I looked it up and this pans out. Divine magic works without killing plants.
It is only arcane magic that kills plants and you could get around that by taking a hit to power.

Also, 4e materials aren't allowed to change core rules definitions.

Why?

[Draco_Argentum]

Attention everyone stupid enough to respond to mandrake: didn't you learn anything from Elennsar? When someone makes 20+ posts per day in one thread talking to them just enables their spam.

He is also posting Oberoni, I'll stand for a lot of shit from people on this board, but not the Oberoni Fallacy.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now I understand some of the 4E hate, but the 3.5 apologetics, especially for the NPC system, is just sickening to me. The 3.5 NPC system is analogous to a bag of equal parts puke and diarrhea, and you guys should be ashamed of yourselves for being apologists for it.

As far as bad design, I would put it up there with 4E skill challenges. That's seriously the level of bad that it is.

I have been noticing that you've been steadily ramping up the exaggeration about 3.5E NPC/monster mechanics to bullshit levels.

I thought we told you to stop doing it. It's actually starting to make me angry when you do this.

[RandomCasualty2]

I have been noticing that you've been steadily ramping up the exaggeration about 3.5E NPC/monster mechanics to bullshit levels.

I thought we told you to stop doing it. It's actually starting to make me angry when you do this.

It's not bullshit levels.

Honestly, is someone telling me that they can spontaneously write up 4 level 10 NPCs of different classes without grinding the game to a halt for at least a half hour?

And a half hour is for a very skilled DM. A DM who is going to have to look more shit up can easily take longer than that.

Basically you take the time it takes to make a PC, and you multiply that by 4.

Given that most of my players say it took them longer than an hour to come up with their characters (dumpster diving and the like included), I don't think that's unreasonable. I realize many people on this board have an extensive amount of 3.5 memorized. But personally a lot of people don't. So while the numbers I'm citing may seem exaggerated, believe me that for the average group, they are certainly not.

It might be possible that some people could do complete writeups in under a half hour:
-A 10th level cleric archer whose secondary spells tend to be summons
-A 12th level centaur lancer
-An 11th level wizard focusing on abjuration and conjurations
-An 11th level sorcerer focusing on blasting magic

Honestly though for the majority of people, I find that highly doubtful. That literally is going to grind a session down for at least an hour, possibly two. If you only play for 4 hours, that's a quarter of your session time gone, just waiting for the DM to prepare.

And no, I don't buy into the bullshit "don't min/max" excuse, because that defeats the whole purpose of encounter design in the first place if the encounter isn't even challenging. I want to put together something that isn't mook squad.

Seriously Lago, do you think the majority of DMs can write up that NPC party in under an hour? I mean I just don't see the exaggeration anywhere.

[Leress]

I wouldn't put 3.x NPC creation on the level of bad that 4e skill challenges. The math works in the NPC creation it's just not fast. 4e Skill challenges have bad math at their base. 3.x NPC creation has the base problem with the unbalance of class to class and there is a lot that makes up a character.

[MartinHarper]

The line must mean that the character continues to make checks right away, potentially losing multiple surges until he succeeds.

Thanks for this. That seems to work much better.

[erik]

It's not bullshit levels.

Honestly, is someone telling me that they can spontaneously write up 4 level 10 NPCs of different classes without grinding the game to a halt for at least a half hour?

Basically you take the time it takes to make a PC, and you multiply that by 4.

I think people initially got incensed by the 10 hour number you have thrown down a few times. I know that's what gets my girdle in a grind anyway, when I see crazy numbers like that.

Yeah, making 4 characters like that could take less experienced DMs 30 minutes. I know for myself when I was playing, the major limiting factor for making those NPCs is how fast I can write with a pencil. I have made oodles and oddles of characters for pretty much any game I play, just because I like imagining different characters and taking different approaches to problems.

I might not be a typical DM for this example given that since I can just look at your list of 4 characters and figure out what staples I need immediately. The only reason I'd take longer than 10 minutes is that I would really need to look at a book is since I haven't touched a 3.x book for a couple years and I'd need to check the names of a few things, and make sure I have the ECL right on centaurs (I think it is 6), and to make sure my bonuses are lined up once I'm done.

The NPCs would not be getting the kind of attention to detail that player generated characters would be getting, so it definitely ought not take 4 times the duration to create those guys. I don't have to get everything just perfect, I simply have to make a standard character who can do one or two schticks to make them more memorable.

I'd probably make it a group of elves +1 centaur since I dunno any other race would fit with the centaur as well.

Elite array +2 for stats (+3 for centaur)
• Cleric with a few archery feats and a summoning spell list with a few buffs and cures. Domains based upon whatever god is appropriate for the story. Have a few summoned creatures at the ready.
• Copy the DMG NPCs for the sorceror and wizard whole cloth, and select a few particular spells differently. Pick a fun feat if any come to mind. A metamagic rod may make them more interesting, if you are okay with players getting theirs hands on that.
• Give the centaur levels in barbarian or fighter, depending upon if you have any extra feats in mind. Equipment as an NPC fighter or barbarian. If you can fit Shock Trooper into there, super.

The centaur is the most demanding for me to make because it is not a standard character type and most of his interesting stuff comes from atypical stats and selection of feats.

In combat things should go down pretty simply:

Cleric summons something, then proceeds to either fire arrows or summon more crap as flow of combat determines.

Centaur runs back and forth hitting people with the lance.

Wizard lays down crap: Leo's Tiny Hut, various walls, Stinking Cloud, Web, as appropriate. If you want to be a douche, cast a Globe of Invulnerability followed by Repulsion for extra difficultly if you wish, so the Sorcerer and Cleric can be by you and each is launching spells and crap at the players.

Sorcerer shoots players, classic evocations will do.

The centaur will probably go down like a bitch somewhat early, but not before hitting folks very hard. The trio of casters should be hard to approach or target, one way or another. The wizard will focus on keeping PCs out of reach, cleric assisting with summons. Sorcerer will deal damage, and cleric can pitch in there too. Focus fire on either any brutes who are able to save vs. the Repulsion or casters who figure out that they need to lob heavy spells at the NPCs.

Should be a memorable combat for a level 13 or so party.

[Just another user]

The line must mean that the character continues to make checks right away, potentially losing multiple surges until he succeeds.

Thanks for this. That seems to work much better.

I don't know, I don't want to sound too difficult but isn't it a little too deadly?

I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong because I'm not really familiar with 4e, after 3 days without water a 1st level character must roll a 20 DC endurance check, worst case scenario (no untrained, 8 con ) he would die instantly (total bonus -1, he simply can't succeed, he keep rolling and losing first healing surges, then hit-points), best case (trained, focus, 20 Con) total bonus 13, he succeed with a 7+, but after just 3 days he is already in the 'impossible to win' situation. at the higher levels you can problably survive 4 or 5 days more with the +15 for the half level and increased stats and magic item bonuses, but it is really not impressive for a epic level character.

Am I missing something?

Of course all this is moot, after 4 level every party will have a 'everlasting provision', and never have food or water problems ever again, (assuming they ever count food and water).

[Meikle641]

Um, what? I like Dark Sun, too, but 4e is a fucking awful system for it. Seriously. It's like, the opposite of 4e's supposed design goals.

Which "supposed" design goals are those?

Such as:

- D&D should be less lethal

- Heroic adventures and shit

- No lasting effects on the world around you


And let's look at Darksun:

It's a wasteland that will kill you just from heat exhaustion and natural hazards, without even getting to cannibals and shit.

Casting magic is a risky thing, since if you go the easy way, you Defile the land (and get lynched). Even if you act as a Preserver, you're still likely to die (and is harder to do, presumably).


...Whatever. Point is it's a lethal, harsh place that doesn't fit with the play style that 4e has been designed for. I'm sure someone more eloquent could explain it better.

[Titanium Dragon]

If you're saying that 4E doesn't have fixed DCs, well... 4E would like to disagree with you.

Depends on what you're referring to.

Most skill checks do not have fixed DCs but rather dynamic ones which vary by level; some are finer grained than others (Skill challenges work on 3x levels, knowledge checks on 10x levels). But they really do recommend that at high levels the slippery crap you put down has a higher DC to stay upright than at lower levels, and it corresponds, in theory, to the advancement in your skill check bonuses. In practice it doesn't work right because there is too much variation in the system and ability scores go up.

This is not really true in 3.x. Most skill checks were static DC, with very few dynamic ones. In 4e, most skill checks are dynamic DC, with very few static ones. Some are static, but a lot of them are secretly dynamic.

For example, acrobatics doesn't really scale, per se, but the size of cliffs scale as you increase in level, so the DC on that check scales.

Some checks do not scale, and it is generally a bad thing - like athletics checks becoming too easy as you get very high level. Though in some cases it is not unreasonable - jump checks don't really scale, per se, but the distance you need to jump tends to increase as you increase in level.

Now 4e does do something arbitrary. It sets the economy aginst the players. it does take away the ability to make money by rolling skill dice. All of those methods no longer work. Why? Because the game assumes that as adventurers you make your money by fighting and slaying monsters and the foul evils of the world.

Which is a good thing.

Did you really read all those stupid ecology paragraphs in the 2nd ed monster manual? Are flumph mating rituals that important?

The primary issue is not whether or not they are valuable (because they frankly WERE valuable) but whether or not they are -more- valuable than what else can be spent on the space.

The 3.x monster manuals sucked because they were full of garbage abilities which monsters seldom, if ever used, which cluttered up the stat blocks and made it difficult to tell what the monster did. The paragraph style was bad; having all the abilities in the monster stat block, written out, is massively, massively better. And moreover, the ecology and society sections in it were too poorly written mostly to be really interesting or usable, so took up space without contributing much.

The AD&D Second Edition Monsterous Manual was actually quite cool, because there was a lot of ecology, society, ect. stuff so you could really use it. On the downside, there were only a couple monsters of each type at most, so actually using it was difficult and you HAD to make up monsters if you wanted more... and that was awkward and annoying, and there weren't really good guidelines for it.

4th edition basically has the bare minimum fluff necessary to run the monster (in some cases, a bit too little, as what some abilities actually do from a visual standpoint is at times unclear) BUT it has a ton more monsters, so you can actually make a dungeon full of goblins and still make every encounter interesting because you can use a wide variety of them. Moreover, if you need more monsters of a given type, there are guidelines on how to build them which actually work (well, aside from for minions) and generate interesting, usable monsters.

I am willing to admit that 4e characters might be better rounded if the power scheme was at will/encounter/daily/out of combat. However, it doesn't need that. Additionally, making the 3e choice of one of these out of combat powers and losing something that could be used in combat is ALWAYS a bad choice.

I would enjoy out of combat powers, actually. Indeed, one interesting thing you could potentially do is make out of combat powers apply across a power source - so you'd have arcane out of combat powers, martial out of combat powers, divine out of combat powers, ect. This would not only make power sources more interesting and help tie them together, but also save some effort on them, which I think is a good thing.

I'm going to make a confession: this is your first paragraph and I stopped reading after it because you're a dumbass. Necromunda has an entire section of common items that you can purchase standardly without sending anyone to work the black market. What the fuck do you think you're going to accomplish telling such incredibly transparent falsehoods.

There are lots of items you can purchase without going to the black market, but all of the best equipment is on the black market, not stuff which is commonly available. Best in terms of absolute quality, that is, not necessarily in cost:benefit ratio.

How so? Because the party might not go on the adventure that you wrote up? So what? I'm sure everyone here who has ever DMed a game has had to scrap a dungeon or an adventure (or at least postpone it until it could be retooled and used in a different situation) when the party discovered a way, or simply elected, to bypass it. Get over it.

As an alternative to the players simply being dicks, them diving off the rails might just mean that your adventure is stupid.

Well, there are really a few possibilities:

1) You didn't make it clear what the objectives were/your plot hook didn't engage them.
2) You screwed up the adventure and made it so they could skip most of it (though this isn't necessarily a bad thing; many of my adventures are prepared with at least a couple non-overlapping branches, though they meet back up, and if they skip a lot of it because they figure out it was Colonel Mustard with the wrench in the conservatory during act 2, rather than in act 5, that's okay as long as they figured it out in an interesting way).
3) The players are being dicks and deliberately avoiding your adventure, wasting your time (and everyone else's, too, most likely)
4) You are being a dick and railroading people too much.

Thing is, however, that the solution to #4 is not passive-agressive behavior but actually acting like an adult and telling the DM that the adventure is not enjoyable. If the DM is running a bad adventure, the correct solution is not to run off the rails and deliberately screw things up but rather to confront the issue directly. I know maturity is not really the strong point of many D&D players, but that's their problem. When you act like running off the rails to spite the DM is an excuse, then you're wrong. Its not something you should ever do. If the DM is railroading, or you don't enjoy what is going on, you should speak up about it rather than trying to ruin the game.

#1 and #2 are the DM making a mistake, and they happen. And #2 isn't necessarily undesirable, if the adventure is built to be non-linear and it took a sufficient amount of time to be interesting and nontrivial.

#3 is the players beng assholes. And yes, they are, because deliberately wasting the DM's preparation is fucking stupid. The DM prepares this stuff so everyone can have more fun. If you are intentionally running off in the opposite direction, you're being a dick. If you don't like what's going on, you should, as I said, speak up. And if you are just doing it to mess things up, you're really not being a helpful contributor.

Incidentally, one thing I do to avoid players having these excuses is asking both before the game starts and after every adventure what they want to do next. That way, when they go off, they don't have the excuse of me doing something which is boring for them. Either they think I'm executing poorly (which is fine) or I fucked up (which I'd like to know so I can stop fucking up in the future). I don't really have this problem very often, though.

You know, for all the prep time you're supposedly putting into these adventures, maybe you could spare a few minutes to write in an amulet of nondetection or some wonderous architecture or something.

Amulets of nondection and similar are actually crap most of the time. Typically speaking, if you give someone an option, they should actually be able to use it effectively. Giving someone the ability to scry, then make everyone worth scrying on be immune to it, is worse than not giving them the ability not to scry at all - not only is it a trap for inexperienced DMs, who allow them to scry when it is broken, but it is a trap to players as well when the DM makes scrying useless and thus denies them an option they thought they had. While the occaisional rare "this guy can't be scried on" is actually good, because it mixes things up, but when the rarity is actually being able to use the ability, there's an issue.

I'd rather spend time on wonderous architecture than figuring out how to prevent the players from using scry and die tactics, or burrowing through the walls with their adamantine axes. In exchange, the players get much cooler stuff to interact with, and people are more willing to DM because there's less busywork.

You're being a dick because the DM literally can't even run a game without a ton of preparation in 3E. You cannot create a 9th level wizard on the fly. You just can't. Encounter design takes so long that not doing whatever quest the DM planned is just telling him that he wasted 10+ hours of his life for no reason, and now he can't even run a game session because he doesn't have time midsession to create new NPCs.

Contrast this to 4E where you can write up a completely new NPC or monster from scratch in like maybe 2-3 minutes, and you see the obvious difference. It's pretty easy to go off the rails in 4E and do what you want. I honestly don't care if the PCs attack a merchant caravan that I never planned on them attacking, because I can easily get some stat blocks and run with it.

But in 3E, the rules are so clunky and slow that you literally outrun the rules as soon as you go off the rails. And that's just plain rule system failure. 2E rules let you create a fast NPC, as does 4E. 3E is the only edition where an NPC just isn't complete without a fuckton of magic items, feats and a bunch of other crap you have to choose because you make them like PCs.

Well, I'm going to invest time in preparing the adventure regardless. Thing is, in 4th edition, that time is spent on making stuff which is fun, whereas in 3.x, I spend too much time making stuff which oftentimes doesn't even matter, or is just busywork for building the monster/NPC. In 4th edition, I can build a combat encounter, using entirely custom creatures, including terrain, in a half hour. It takes massively longer in 3.x, which sucks, and is even worse if you haven't achieved a high enough degree of system mastery to not have to look most feats up in books and just give them standard sets of strong feats.

But that's now how D&D works. D&D is just a game with a bunch of uber power strategic spells and no way to beat many of them. Hell, I mean you can't even stop a fighter from tunneling with an adamantine sword into your dungeon, and that's pretty sad.

You can build the dungeon entirely out of permanet walls of force. That doesn't mean it isn't retarded, though.

In fact, I once ended up in a dungeon wherein EVERYTHING had a permanent wall of force, precisely because my character had an adamantine double sword, which I didn't even have for the purpose of digging through walls (but it was useful for such anyway).

RC, it doesn't take 10 hours to make a level 9 wizard. There is the NPC list in the DMG. Yes, they are weak, but you can tweak them, pick a couple signature spells and in less than 10 minutes have a working NPC.

Thing is, how strong is a level 9 wizard? Are they REALLY a CR 9 monster? How about a level 9 barbarian? There's really no way to be sure unless you playtest them, as you can end up off by 2 or more CR.

In 4th edition, if you go by the rules in the DMG, your standard monsters will be within a level of the appropriate power level, and usually will be right on.

Yeah, I run all games freeform. If players want to go teleport to the frozen wilderness and have adventures there, I can totally do that. I can generate potential enemies on the fly while I'm describing scenery, so I totally don't get the idea that it would be in any way difficult to handle players going off the rails in any system. I straight up insult the creativity of any DM who can't handle that shit, and have little respect for them.

I've found that freeform games tend to be shitty. I'm okay at pulling shit out of my ass, good enough that I've actually fooled some people a few times, but I can tell the difference in quality, especially when I'm DMing. To be fair, part of the reason why I'm good at pulling shit out of my ass is that I do a lot of random shit with my time, so I basically have partially constructed encounters, NPCs, ect. lying around which I can repurpose or re-imagine quickly, as well as a list of names both in my head and on my laptop. But even so, I can tell the difference (though if I use things which I made already, but use them differently, it tends to work better). Plus there's always the Schrodinger's adventure trick - no matter where they go, they still run into the adventure.

Moreover (and this is important) most people aren't very good at making up shit on the fly. And chances are you fall into that category, despite your claims otherwise. But even if you don't, most people don't, and you "not having much respect" for them is irrelevant, because guess what? If most people have trouble doing it, who do you think they're going to cater to? Here's a hint: its not the minority.

Additionally, in your given example: yes, it is good to cater to your player's tastes (so long as the game will be enjoyable for everyone at the table). But sitting down and then deciding what you're doing is worse than deciding what you're going to be doing, and then sitting down at the table.

Question RC, why don't you make a NPC pregen chart like the DMG but custom for your needs?

Because it takes an onerous amount of time to create an NPC in 3.x.

In 4th edition, you can actually do this in a reasonable amount of time - build a "NPC skeleton" and then add in the race at the last minute. But typically speaking, I'll just grab a monster of the same level and right role and recast it. I seldom actually use "real" NPCs.

K. That's an opinion. Here are the facts. Both versions of the skill challenge system, as they are written, suck balls. They must be fun for your group because your DM is house-ruling them or letting you guys win.

Thing is, losing skill challenges isn't actually really all that bad. A high failure rate is actually acceptable in skill challenges, because the result of failure isn't the adventure screeching to a halt. And they can be fun if you have players who actually play with them and understand them.

That said, there are better ways of doing skill challenges. I tested one tonight and it worked out better, and the players walked away from the table specifically citing it as a high point of the evening, and there was some actual strategy involved. I would like for it to be even more strategic than my current system, as the current system is fairly basic and there is still an optimal strategy - but it changes depending on the nature of the specific challenge.

It is obviously related to skill challenges, but it is more sophisticated.

We have done much better, and in both 4th and 3rd addition it has gotten to the point where there are crap tons of characters who never ever have to roll +X vs DC Y for damage as their contribution to combat.

Why on earth anyone is so fucking stupid that they think rolling +X vs DC Y is appropriate for non combat actions is completely beyond me.

Because they're right. +X vs DC Y is actually fun. The key is to make it so you have multiple meaningful options, like they did in combat with 4th edition.

See I think the problem is they assume that you're roleplaying with these challenges. You keep talking about them like they exist in a vacuum, where all that's going on is the person's turn comes and they roll the die and pass/fail the next person goes. If that's not how you're thinking, tell me, but that's the impression I get from everyone.

If you do this, skill challenges are absolute and utter crap. This is not how they're meant to work, and this is why they don't work very well - the players are expected to bring a LOT to the table to make them even marginally enjoyable. This should not be necessary - in combat, even with minimal roleplaying, it is still fun.

Wandering out into the desert without food and surviving is just one of those things that holy people do. 3e and 4e both fail here, because that shouldn't even be an application of magic. A high level fighter should be able to cross a desert with a hip flask of blessed water and a dream.

To be honest, food is so cheap relative to what characters have that it is really not an issue, to the point where it isn't really even worth bothering with. I'm not sure why they haven't figured that out yet.

Come on, TD. We both know that's not true. To put it bluntly, D&D players have gotten pussified--they can't handle things like "paladins have to be LG or they fall and lose their class abilities." And let's be brutally honest: 4e is designed to play toward the tastes of the 13-year-old WoW crowd. No, I'm not saying that 4e is WoW, but it's targeting WoW's target audience. Seriously, look at tieflings and eladrin and tell me with a straight face that they aren't draenei and blood elves.

The reason why paladins had to be LG or lose their powers wasn't because that was what the audience wanted but because the designers didn't know what they were doing. This isn't a change in target audience - this is the original designers not actually knowing what their audience wanted. Hell, the dark, evil knight archetype is not exactly novel - death knights have been around since at least the 1980s, and the idea of playing a "holy" character who isn't LG isn't exactly new either.

To put it bluntly, D&D has always targeted the audience it targets today. And that audience isn't "13-year-old WoW crowd". The 13 year olds WoW crowd is a part of the target audience but, guess what? It was back in 2000 too. And in 1989.

For intermediate through advanced players, ages 10 and up

And I'll tell you with a straight face that they aren't draeni and blood elves. Why? Because WoW is based on D&D. Tieflings predate draeni and blood elves. Eladrin are an ancient archetype which predates Dungeons & Dragons.

I'm not even saying that it's a bad thing to include exotic races. It's not my cup of tea, but you can't deny WotC's obvious intent.

Yeah, to give the players access to the races they actually want to play. People like playing exotic races, and not just a few either - its widely popular. 4th edition finally actually gave people what they wanted.

First off, don't try and namedrop to add credibility to your statement. Not only do I not know who Dave Sirlin is, I don't particularly care. His existence impacts my ideas in no way whatsoever, and I don't give two whits about what he has to say about game balance. Monte Cook is probably a bigger name than Sirlin, and I think Monte Cook is an incredibly talentless designer who has really bad ideas.

Sirlin is a professional game designer and also an extremely skilled competitive fighting game player. He's one of the best in the world at Super Street Fighter Turbo - not the best, but he's very good, and that was his original claim to fame. If you've heard people talking about playing to win, and throwing around terminology like "scrub", there is a good chance they're referring to Sirlin's work. He published a book on the subject which is now available for free on his website.

And as for the idea that namedropping is irrelevant - no, it isn't. You're fucking wrong. If I say something, and leaders in a field agree with me, there's a much better chance that I'm right than if they disagree with me. This is not to say they're always right - they aren't. But if you disagree with them, there's a good chance you're wrong. Welcome to reality!

Empirical evidence, of course, beats authority every single time. But when you're talking about abstract things, people are less likely to agree on the empirical evidence.

Thirdly, the 3e D&D devs clearly thought that SODs were good game design. I could say, "I disagree with you (about SODs being bad game design) and the 3e devs agree with me, so I'm in good company," and what have I done? Done nothing to reinforce my point.

Thing is, if you said that 8 years ago, that would carry some weight.

But that was eight years ago, and since then, the 3e devs have admitted that the CR system was pulled out of their asses (which was pretty obvious), and that SoDs are crap. Back then, empirical evidence would be needed to overcome the common wisdom of the day.

I will agree that balance is important in a game to some degree. However, I will take your DMC examples and raise your Ninja Gaiden--the defining factor of the series is that it is ridiculously difficult and requires extensive system mastery to beat. And again, we have people who absolutely love the game because of this.

Yes, there are.

In addition, take FPS games. How is the pistol balanced with the rest of the guns? Well, it's not. It's junk because it's meant to be junk. So the pistol isn't a real option, except when you're out of ammo, and you want something better. It's purposely designed to be a poor choice. In the 4e mindset, the pistol needs to be balanced with the rocket launcher, uzi, and M-16--and that's just not true.

This is the dumbest analogy possible. You know why?

Because D&D 4e has pistols, M-16s, and rocket launchers. They're called at-will, encounter, and daily powers. Indeed, the analogy is quite accurate - pistols are not as good as M-16s or rocket launchers, just as at-will powers are worse than encounter and daily powers. However, pistols are not useless, because you do run out of ammo with the big guns, and moreover, there are situations in which using a smaller, lighter gun is superior to using one of the bigger guns - you are more mobile while carrying a 3 lb pistol than while toting around a 50 lb bazooka, and you don't always want to use a bazooka or M-16 because the firepower is excessive or the gun is too noisy. This is true in 4th edition as well - sometimes, your at-will power is better than the encounter or daily power for these reasons. And also because, sometimes, it does something your other powers doesn't do.

Before you use an analogy, perhaps you should put some thought into it.

You've managed to prove my point marvelously--it's not combat balance that matters, it's screentime. Which is something I pointed out in my original post. Spotlight balance often has little to do with combat prowess or skills--rather, it's the people who love play-acting that steal the spotlight out of combat. It's the DM's job to make sure that everyone is getting about equal spotlight time--and, again, that has little to do with combat balance, except in a hack 'n' slash game.

You are absolutely wrong. Spotlight balance has everything to do with the ability to do things which occupy the spotlight. Combat prowess is one of them. Out of combat prowess is another. It doesn't matter how much play-acting you enjoy if I can cast charm person and make them do what I want them to do. I will still have the spotlight, because I mattered.

And it has a lot to do with combat balance in a game which is expected to be more than 50% combat. And D&D is such a game.

No, thank you. Skills are nonmagical. You can say that you're casting a spell, but if you're not using spellcasting mechanics, you're not using a spell. Especially if the wizard has low Charisma.

Skills aren't nonmagical. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. You can make an arcana check to detect magic, which is definitely a magical ability, at least by our standards. You can also make an athletics check to jump 50 feet.

The entire point of being a summoner is to summon things and have them do things for you. That's just how the concept works. Necromancers are the same way. And, again, if I have to choose between class fantasy tropes and balance, then balance is getting kicked to the curb.

Okay, let me get this straight:

The entire point of playing a summoner is to summon things and have them do things for you.

In 4th edition, you summon something. And then, you have it do things for you.

What about this violates the fantasy trope? That's right, nothing. There is nothing in the trope of the summoner which says "this generates action advantage". And indeed, usually summons do no such thing.

Take final fantasy X for example. In that, when you summon an Aeon, it replaces the party with the summon. In FFXII, you replace the other two characters with the summon. In pokemon, the player has their summon do all the fighting for them. This is a very common way for summons to function - oftentimes controlling the summon is what the summoner DOES, and the summoner themselves sucks at combat, which is why they summon crap to fight for them.

Charm person doesn't obsolete the Diplomacy skill at all. How could it? You have to wave your hands around and chant and look like a total goober and then if the target fails his save--then and only then does it replace the Diplomacy skill. What happens if the save fails? And what are people going to say when they see you trying to cast charm person on someone else? And what happens when the spell wears off?

You just said exactly why it obsoletes Diplomacy - its more likely to succeed with less effort.

[mandrake]

Your statement is bullshit and you know this.. 4E Eladrins very literally are similar to pre-4E eladrins in name only. Tieflings got complete visual redesign and even have different origins.

Eladrin in 3e had the solid single colored eyes and the otherwise elfvish features.

Yeah, and humans with rubber foreheads no one knows or cares about are soooo different. You're not even creative or imaginative as far as trolls go.

Is this a trek reference? Because I'm sure without budgetary concerns the people made Star Trek would likely have made less human looking aliens.

He is also posting Oberoni, I'll stand for a lot of shit from people on this board, but not the Oberoni Fallacy.

Again, I'm not saying the system is fine because it can be changed, I'm saying the system is fine.
I suggested that if an individual mechanic bothers you, that it doesn't mean the whole system is broken. That what was being discussed wasn't a mechanical problem, but rather a rules flavor problem.

[FatR]

Eladrin in 3e had the solid single colored eyes and the otherwise elfvish features.

"Solid single colored eyes" weren't even an "elvish feature" in 3E, you dishonest bastard. Also, they were fvcking celestials that were able transform into fvcking balls of light, fly and do other stuff that sad inhabitants of 4E can only dream about, and that awesomeness was their defining fvcking feature.

Is this a trek reference? Because I'm sure without budgetary concerns the people made Star Trek would likely have made less human looking aliens.

Ah, so it is looks that determine if something human or not for you. Well, I should have known not to expect anything else from a 4on, as 4E races have no fluff to speak of anyway. Well, fvck, 4E had no budgetary concerns and their new races are rubber forehead aliens anyway, so they still fail.

[mandrake]

Such as:

- D&D should be less lethal

Less stupidly lethal. Less save or die. Less You made a first level character, now make two more so you don't have to spend time during the session when the first and second ones die from being too close to a housecat.

- Heroic adventures and shit

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but that's what D&D has always been about.

- No lasting effects on the world around you

This is outright wrong.

It's a wasteland that will kill you just from heat exhaustion and natural hazards, without even getting to cannibals and shit.

Which is entirely possible to model in 4E.

Casting magic is a risky thing, since if you go the easy way, you Defile the land (and get lynched). Even if you act as a Preserver, you're still likely to die (and is harder to do, presumably).

It remains to be seen how they will show that in Dark Sun 4E, but there's nothing intrinsic in 4E that makes it impossible.

...Whatever. Point is it's a lethal, harsh place that doesn't fit with the play style that 4e has been designed for. I'm sure someone more eloquent could explain it better.

I hope so, because 2 of your 3 "design goals" are either not new or not true.

"Solid single colored eyes" weren't even an "elvish feature" in 3E

Never said it was. I said that eladrin, in humanoid form, had the single solid colored eyes, but otherwise looked like elves. See the Book of Exalted Deeds. Yes, they did change them, but perfect flight and a laser form for a PC is kinda overpowered for a first level character.

Ah, so it is looks that determine if something human or not for you. Well, I should have known not to expect anything else from a 4on, as 4E races have no fluff to speak of anyway. Well, fvck, 4E had no budgetary concerns and their new races are rubber forehead aliens anyway, so they still fail.

I'm sorry, you were talking about looks, is looks not what you wanted to talk about? The point is that Tieflings are more inhuman than the typical D&D races, which generally fit into the "short scottish human" etc. areas.

[FatR]

Never said it was. I said that eladrin, in humanoid form, had the single solid colored eyes, but otherwise looked like elves. See the Book of Exalted Deeds. Yes, they did change them, but perfect flight and a laser form for a PC is kinda overpowered for a first level character.

They did not change them. They dumped everything that ever made eladrin eladrin (celestials, embody chaotic good alignment, made from souls of ascended mortals, live on Upper Planes, super-badass, have a certain themes to their abilities) into a trash can and stapled their name to high elves reskinned with WoW sprites. To thing about it, not too different from their threatment of DnD in general.

I'm sorry, you were talking about looks, is looks not what you wanted to talk about? The point is that Tieflings are more inhuman than the typical D&D races, which generally fit into the "short scottish human" etc. areas.

No. You were talking about looks. You still talk about looks, as if that even matters. Tieflings cannot be "more inhuman" than anything. Because they are 100% humans. With (ugly) rubber foreheads. Per PHB, said rubber foreheads define them entirely. 3.5 warlock class seriously had more fluff depth that their entire race.

[mandrake]

They did not change them. They dumped everything that ever made eladrin eladrin (celestials, embody chaotic good alignment, made from souls of ascended mortals, live on Upper Planes, super-badass, have a certain themes to their abilities) into a trash can and stapled their name to high elves reskinned with WoW sprites. To thing about it, not too different from their threatment of DnD in general.

So... they didn't change them, they changed them? Also, quit with the WoW stuff.

No. You were talking about looks.

No, I was talking about how standard D&D races tended toward "just like humans but shorter/taller/nicer/meaner"

You still talk about looks, as if that even matters. Tieflings cannot be "more inhuman" than anything. Because they are 100% humans. With (ugly) rubber foreheads. Per PHB, said rubber foreheads define them entirely. 3.5 warlock class seriously had more fluff depth that their entire race.

So, you're not actually interested in discussing this?

[schpeelah]

So... they didn't change them, they changed them? Also, quit with the WoW stuff.

They didn't change them, they slapped the name on something completely different. Also, they are recognised as WoW elves even by people who never played any Warcraft game including WoW.

[mandrake]

They didn't change them, they slapped the name on something completely different. Also, they are recognised as WoW elves even by people who never played any Warcraft game including WoW.

Really? That's funny. It's funny because if people haven't actually played WoW, they're just making shit up when they say that. Especially since the role that eladrin fill is far, far older than roleplaying itself.

[RandomCasualty2]

I wouldn't put 3.x NPC creation on the level of bad that 4e skill challenges. The math works in the NPC creation it's just not fast. 4e Skill challenges have bad math at their base. 3.x NPC creation has the base problem with the unbalance of class to class and there is a lot that makes up a character.

I would.

The system has the problem of being slow and inefficient, as well as unbalanced (due to the basic classes being unbalanced and requiring a ton of min/max to produce something remotely within CR). To make matters worse, NPC casters experience an actual advantage over the PCs, because they get to go nova at no cost, where a PC caster may well have to save spells.

So it's a failure and it also takes a good amount of prep time to actually fail.

Yeah, making 4 characters like that could take less experienced DMs 30 minutes. I know for myself when I was playing, the major limiting factor for making those NPCs is how fast I can write with a pencil.

Yeah for many things this is the big limiting factor, like doing skill points, spell lists and wizard's spellbooks. Even copying pregens took awhile because of this (since you really didn't want to be flipping from page to page while using multiple pregens, and the tables got confusing as a quick reference.

Most of the time I get delayed, since at least one NPC archetype gets me dumpster diving (usually a warrior fishing for feats). Casters tend to have the writing speed limit associated with them, and choosing equipment often slows me down quite a bit.

And really, all that work doesn't produce something more balanced, so it just bothers me.

4th edition basically has the bare minimum fluff necessary to run the monster (in some cases, a bit too little, as what some abilities actually do from a visual standpoint is at times unclear) BUT it has a ton more monsters, so you can actually make a dungeon full of goblins and still make every encounter interesting because you can use a wide variety of them. Moreover, if you need more monsters of a given type, there are guidelines on how to build them which actually work (well, aside from for minions) and generate interesting, usable monsters.

Yeah, the 4E monster gen system is actually one of the better ones I've seen in an RPG. It's fast, effective and reasonably well-balanced. It means that you have to do a little comparison of abilities between monsters of the same level, but that's generally not hard to do.

Really, the monster gen system is one of the strongest selling points of 4E.

[Username17]

TD, you are TL;DR. If you write huge walls of text people will in fact glaze over and stop reading. While earlier you were complaining that people weren't reading your posts because they continued to disagree with you, when you write endless screeds of crap like that people simply won't read your posts.

The thing is though that even in skimming, every time I stop to read even a small section, I find shit reasoning and demonstrable falsehoods. I mean, look at this specious claim:

And I'll tell you with a straight face that they aren't draeni and blood elves. Why? Because WoW is based on D&D. Tieflings predate draeni and blood elves. Eladrin are an ancient archetype which predates Dungeons & Dragons.

This is just demonstrably false. Yes, the names are recycled D&D names. But the races share pretty much nothing with the previous D&D lore. They don't look like a planescape Tiefling or Eladrin, they don't have the Planescape backstory of a Tiefling or Eladrin, there's really no connection except the name.

Allow me to tell you a story: The Arduin Grimoire contained bug people who happened to look exactly like the Ice Devil from the AD&D monster manual. And they had new backstory written for them (they were totally psionic bug people not ice devils). But they were still obvious rip-offs. And then, D&D took that backstory wholesale and put it into a new D&D book with a new name and a new picture. And they called it a Thri-Kreen, and the thing they were ripping off was itself a rip off of their own material in its way. But it was still a rip off of Arduin.

Or hey, let's talk about how Warcraft Orcs are greenskinned because Games Workshop Orcs are greenskinned, and then a bunch of Orc stuff from Warcraft got back ported into Warhammer.

This form of cross pollination: where one company makes a clear rip of the intellectual property of another with sufficient cosmetic changes to avoid lawsuits and then the other company steals those cosmetic changes for their own material is totally common. So don't give me bullshit about how the Eladrin can't be stolen from WoW Blood Elves because Warcraft tole from D&D. Of course they are. WoW stole all kinds of crap from D&D. And the 4e Eladrin are straight up WoW Blood Elves that happen to have the name of a completely unrelated celestial being from D&D's planescape setting.

So yeah, TL;DR: I'm not going to read all the way through posts when they are that long and rambling. But statistical sampling indicates that your posts are 100% composed of crazy bullshit and outright lies.

-Username17

[FatR]

So... they didn't change them, they changed them? Also, quit with the WoW stuff.

They didn't change them, they replaced them with an entirely different race. Like if someone would have erased your account then registered a new "mandrake" and started making posting that aren't full of stupidity and obvious dishonesty. On that note, to the ignore list you go.

[mandrake]

Obviously, you're not paying attention any more because you simply can't hack it in a discussion, but eladrin were the fey celestials. Lived in Arborea, had faerie court, etc etc. It's not an unreasonable name, and their changed role, is changed in origin, not in function.

[schpeelah]

The only thing they have in common is being fey. Let's look more closely:
4e Eladrin: Teleporting elves w/ strange eyes, PC race.

3e Eladrin:
- Coure: celestial pixes who turn into globes of light (and presumably go "Hey! Listen!' all the time)
- Bralani, who turn into whirlwinds, wind elemental powers
- Firre with hair on fire, turn into pillars of fire, cast as clerics, fire powers
- Ghaele turn into large (5ft diameter) globes of light, shoot rays, cast as clerics
- Shiradi winged humanoids explicitly stated not to be elflike , turn into a cloud of triangular shards of light
- Tulani, another globe of light, music powers and cleric spellcasting

Yeeeeeah nothing but role and origin.

[mandrake]

Way to oversimplify.

[schpeelah]

Way to oversimplify.

[RandomCasualty2]

Can blood elves teleport?

I mean I'm not too familiar with WoW.

From what I saw in Warcraft 3, blood elves seemed to be more outcast demon corrupted elves, while the Eladrin are more like high elves.

Unless there's something I'm missing, I don't see the whole blood elf = Eladrin thing.