[4e] Those lying liars.

[Archmage]

It's not the equivalent of a [mind-affecting] tag at all, though, because psychic keyword attacks that deal psychic damage function just fine against undead and constructs. It's just an arbitrary damage color type. Note that "mindless" isn't a concept that even exists in 4e, because "charm" and "fear" keyword powers also work on everything--undead and constructs aren't immune. It's [Purple] damage. There's nothing special about it unless a specific monster resists/immunes it or is vulnerable.

The godforged colossus in MM1 has resist psychic and the fell taints in MM2 have vulnerable psychic 5. Beyond that, I can't think of much off-hand.

Now, you can't damage objects with psychic attacks.

The 4e psionics mechanics are kind of hilarious in a sense. I think the thought process is something like this:

1) Psionics have to "feel" different from magic, so they need their own unique mechanics (like in previous D&D versions).
2) But 4e's power mechanics are supposed to be unified so that "casting a spell" works exactly the same way as "swinging a sword."
3) We have a dissociative breakdown because our design goals have ceased to make any coherent sense.

So psionics needs to be different, but not "too" different. It's interesting that they're going out of their way to accomplish that when they did the exact opposite with arcane/divine/primal/martial sources--"see, they all work the same way!"

[mean_liar]

Sorry - wasn't clear. I know about power sources (Primal, Martial, etc). It just seems monumentally stupid to have a Psychic and a Psionic keyword. They honestly should be the same thing.

[NineInchNall]

1) Psionics have to "feel" different from magic, so they need their own unique mechanics (like in previous D&D versions).

2) But 4e's power mechanics are supposed to be unified so that "casting a spell" works exactly the same way as "swinging a sword."

I love that it's a tacit admission that there's no difference in "feel" between the warrior classes and the spellcaster classes. So all the people who thought Tome of Battle made warriors that were too similar to spellcasters can just STFU if they play 4e.

Seriously.

[sake]

Sorry - wasn't clear. I know about power sources (Primal, Martial, etc). It just seems monumentally stupid to have a Psychic and a Psionic keyword. They honestly should be the same thing.

Think of it as the difference between Divine and Radiant keywords. One's a class tag and one's a damage type.

The thing that annoys me is that the psionic classes can only really multclass/hybrid well with each other... except that they really can't because there's only three actual psionic classes and the Psion has a completely different stats from a Battlemind or Ardent so a Ardent/Battlemind is the only actual possible option there (although why on earth you'd want to be one instead of a much more effective Warrior/Warlord is beyond me)

Then there's the fluff problem. Right now a Kalashtar Orbizard feels more Psion-y than the actual Psion. It has at will TK and at will telepathy while the Psion get stuck with roughly the same powers, only they're encounters and they have to choose between the two.

And that's not even getting into the actual combat powers like that the telepathic Psion lacks much in the way of Orbizard-like hard control options, or that the Tk Psion's powers are mostly force based which is the shittiest, most limited damage type in 4E.

And finally there's the basic problem that under this system, Humans might as well never be psionic characters because they'll just end up with an unaugmentable, non-scaling, level 1 At Will power that pretty not doesn't exist after heroic tier.

[Doom]

It's odd, one of the counters to folks noting that humans don't make alot of sense in DnD4.0 was that they would get better as more books were released, since then there would be more at-wills and feats for them to choose from.

They just seem to get weaker and weaker...I can't even remember the last time someone chose to be a human in one of my campaigns (beyond being forced), and Shifter powers are so stupid good that they're pretty much the best choice for melee classes.

[Username17]

Yeah, it's actually completely the opposite of the original claim. As more races get written up and provided secret handshake feats, there are less and less builds that couldn't do better than Human. When the books first came out, the best Wizard was the Orbizard. And it still is. But of the basic races, none of them were a perfect fit. Eladrin and Tieflings got an Int Bonus, but everything else was meh. Elves and Dwarves got a Wisdom bonus and some sweet powers, but no Int bonus. Humans were really pretty competitive in that shitty field.

But with Gnomes and Deva on the scene? Humans aren't even close. Int and Wisdom bonuses. Substantial powers. Wizard focused racial feats that own you in the fucking face. They got it all. If you were going to be an Orbizard, why would you roll a Human?

Even the Eternal Seeker failed to live up to promises, since classes provide so much internal dumpster diving that you really don't care about being able to plunder other classes with the same stat array.

-Username17

[Doom]

I have to rant a little on that, as well.

You may not plunder other classes (due to lame multiclassing rules), but GEE WHIZ do other classes get their paragon paths plundered.

One little multiclass feat, and *pop*, you're now eligible to be a paragon of that class.

Um, does WoTC know what the word 'paragon' means? The bulk of my players are paragons of something other than the class they are. Rangers paragon Pit Fighter, wizards paragon that uber cleric paragon path (that gives you two dice for Wis attack rolls), etc.

I know it sounds like grousing, I hate low level 'multiclassing' of DnD4.0 because it's weak and usually unworkable beyond a tiny splash...and I hate high level 'multiclassing' because it's silly and metagamey and I'm back in 'words mean whatever we want them to mean' territory.

[sake]

But then they'd have to write class paragon paths that actually don't suck for that class they're written for, which they've shown time and again to be unable to do

The Avenger is probably the most blatant example of this. They have to multiclass out to find a useful Path, as they have all of one viable Avenger PP and even that one has batshit crazy WotC hates you mechanics like making you take 3d6 damage when an ally hits your oath target. There's a reason why the few good Avenger build involve either Pitfighter, Morninglord, or Student of Calwutzit.

[Crissa]

The funny thing I see is that they could still make money reprinting 3.x stuff, estimating by the unavailability of it on the secondary market.

-Crissa

[Username17]

The funny thing I see is that they could still make money reprinting 3.x stuff, estimating by the unavailability of it on the secondary market.

-Crissa

Basic first gen complete books are Available on Amazon. But only barely.

Seriously, when people are asking you to pay an out of print premium rather than giving an out-of-date discount, one can surmise that there is still some amount of demand for those books. The late period 3.5 books that had low print runs are essentially not available at all.

So basically yes. They could reprint the Complete books and put them on discount (because they've already paid for the writing and art and everything), and then sell them and make money. The real question is how many people would abandon 4e altogether if 3.x was still being "supported." They might seriously lose more money from people abandoning the pretense of 4e than they would gain from people buying 3.x books that there is clearly a market for.

-Username17

[Windjammer]

The funny thing I see is that they could still make money reprinting 3.x stuff, estimating by the unavailability of it on the secondary market.

(...)So basically yes. They could reprint the Complete books and put them on discount (because they've already paid for the writing and art and everything), and then sell them and make money. The real question is how many people would abandon 4e altogether if 3.x was still being "supported." They might seriously lose more money from people abandoning the pretense of 4e than they would gain from people buying 3.x books that there is clearly a market for.

I think the two main factors to consider here are: 1. WotC doesn't want to compete against itself, but 2. WotC may wish to compete against Paizo. In detail:

1. WotC made an active effort to not support 3.x once 4E was released. Not only did they communicate as strongly as possible the vibe via PR that "everyone at the office" quit playing 3.x. That's just ineffective market spin. No, look at this,

1.1. The 'older edition' section at the WotC website always included 1E and 2E stuff to download for free, and still does. If WotC believed there'd be a significant market for these things, they wouldn't give the stuff away for free. My point being, 3.x stuff never went into that website area because, by contrast to 1e/2e, WotC is aware that 3.x IS in direct commercial competition with 4E. Hence,

1.2. WotC was trading their 3.x stuff in exactly that format - downloadable content - except by purchase, namely via the PDFs on DriveThru etc. of Rules Compendium, the Completes and what not. (I honestly don't recall how much of the 3.x books were on Drivethru and similar sites as I never used these sites - and would be grateful if someone could brief me in with the actual details.) And people kept buying those PDFs while PDF sales for 4e were ridiculously low. We all know what happened next: WotC removed those PDFs - all of them, regardless of edition. The ensuing outrage was fuelled by the 'old school' (pre-3E) crowd who bemoaned the lack of legal downloadable content for their 1E games. But seriously, we already know that 1E games and their crowd are not competition for WotC (see 1.1.), so I think it's safe to say that it was mostly the 3.5 PDFs that WotC wanted to remove. Same factor as in 1.1. - they wanted to remove active competition with 4E. The secondary book market on 3.5 books on Amazon et al which Frank linked to is indicative that the PDFs could and would have made WotC money. The ridiculously low sales numbers of 4e PDFs meant that the drawback (for WotC) of removing the 3.5 PDFs was small enough to make the tradeoff 'no 3.5 PDFs, no 4E PDFs either' worthwhile.

2. The only real point at this point in time for WotC to re-release 3.5 material in any form (reprints, which are costly because of the reduced print run size, or PDFs which don't cost them anything) is to torpedo Pathfinder. It doesn't need telling on this site, but even at other sites like Giant in the Playground, some vocal quarters on paizo.com, and lesser known sites in my own country (Germany) you'll find people who don't think PF is 'clearly superior' to 3.5. If WotC started to actively support 3.5. again that would be their best means to torpedo the PF market. Me, I'd like to see them do that because 3.5. remains my favourite edition to date, and if it's actively supported again that could mean that other companies pump out new product for it again.


So overall, it's a cost/benefit calculation, where 2. is the benefit and 1. is the cost: is undermining the sales of your most current product (1.) negligible enough to warrant undermining someone else's sales (2.)?

In other words, the earliest date we can expect WotC to re-release 3.x stuff is when Pathfinder is in their own perception fierce competition. Which could happen when (a) 4e sales hit the basement after the n'th attempt to re-launch the core books (aka "Essentials") and/or (b) the Pathfinder core rulebook sales will remain as high as they currently are even into 2011.

[Windjammer]

Remember the Chris Perkins video we discussed earlier in this thread?

Earlier today I watched the (currently) newest episode of the WotC podcast where the creators of Robot Chicken play D&D. Watch the clip as of here (the link gets you to the right timing) and watch the next 3 minutes.
Watch how Creative Director of D&D, Chris Perkins, here in DM role reacts to a new player trying to use his powers creatively. Watch his rationale in turning the player down.

Well, I just looked at the first errata for the 4E PHB again, and look what I found:

Target

Page 57: Replace the first paragraph with the following
text.

If a power directly affects one or more creatures or
objects, it has a “Target” or “Targets” entry. Some
powers include objects as targets. At the DM’s discretion,
a power that targets a creature can also target an
object, whether or not the power identifies an object
as a potential target.

So, do you play with errata? Because WotC' own Creative Director doesn't.

[Username17]

I don't think that's a very realistic assessment. Because frankly, I don't think that the 4e people rationally give two shits about Pathfinder. They are trying to tube 3.x, and all the 3rd party material, because 3.X is their biggest competition. Not Vampire, not Shadowrun, not GURPS or HERO, 3.x. Seriously, their old edition is the biggest draw in role playing.

And what their afraid of is that if 3.x gets support, that 3rd party materials could end up taking the mantle from them of anointed RPG default. Pathfinder could have done it, and I think they were (justifiably) pretty worried about Pathfinder taking over back in 2008. But... that's not going to happen. The bloom is off the rose, and Pathfinder failed to get the throngs of 3.x players to jump on their bandwagon to an even more spectacular degree than 4e did. Pathfinder is a footnote in gaming that counts in the annals in the same way and for the same reason that TORG does.

But if WotC starts making and selling 3e materials again, it would signal to distributors that they should take other 3.x supplements by 3rd parties seriously again. And that could mean that someone could potentially do what Pathfinder failed to: make an OGL Rules Compendium that people used in preference to the WotC one, and by extension become the go-to group in RPG publishing.

-Username17

[shadzar]

Remember the Chris Perkins video we discussed earlier in this thread?

Earlier today I watched the (currently) newest episode of the WotC podcast where the creators of Robot Chicken play D&D. Watch the clip as of here (the link gets you to the right timing) and watch the next 3 minutes.
Watch how Creative Director of D&D, Chris Perkins, here in DM role reacts to a new player trying to use his powers creatively. Watch his rationale in turning the player down.

Well, I just looked at the first errata for the 4E PHB again, and look what I found:

Target

Page 57: Replace the first paragraph with the following
text.

If a power directly affects one or more creatures or
objects, it has a “Target” or “Targets” entry. Some
powers include objects as targets. At the DM’s discretion,
a power that targets a creature can also target an
object, whether or not the power identifies an object
as a potential target.

So, do you play with errata? Because WotC' own Creative Director doesn't.

Watch the commentary for that video and see how much worse it is than you think with just the errata on hand.

It seems the people making D&D don't even play it enough to know errata exists. Which goes to what I have said all along about 4th adn the idea of "core" material since they changed the name, that it will NOT be balanced because they do not know what material they have and just coming up with stuff. I mean if you would be playing it often enough, you would know about the errata #1, and #2 you would surely make sure new players understood it and had access to it in the first place.

Considering the online push 4th edition took, there is little to no excuse Chris did not have a laptop handy in order to look such things up online in the FAQ/errata section of the WotC D&D site, and likewise he should not have needed to see the card as it should be online in the RC, or ready at hand in Chris' Character Builder program, so he could just look at it real quick.

Wasn't that the reason again for trying to make the game fully digital? So that the players have access to most things just as quickly as designers do? Are we now saying that players have more access than the designers and know more about the game than they do? What hope will there be for any quality new material at that rate?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Um, does WoTC know what the word 'paragon' means? The bulk of my players are paragons of something other than the class they are. Rangers paragon Pit Fighter, wizards paragon that uber cleric paragon path (that gives you two dice for Wis attack rolls), etc.

I hate paragon paths on general principles.

They don't transform your character enough to make you advancement feel like anything. 3E PrCs had the same problem, too, but there were a couple of them that actually managed to do so (even shitty ones like the Shintao Monk and Gondsman) and you could always just cobble together a bunch of PrCs until you got what you wanted.

The 4E PPs are all locked into the exact same design. And worse, they don't even give you enough shit to care. Seriously, at level 15 you have two PP powers--one of which modifies action points and doesn't even deserve to be counted--an encounter power (out of 4) and a utility power (out of 4).

But what's really inexcusable is them taking shitty low-level concepts and making it a level 11-21/7-14 concept. Pit Fighter is not a concept worth exploring at level 18. Knight Protector is not a concept worth exploring at level 16. Frenzied Berserker is not a concept worth exploring at level 19, etc.

Epic Destinies are even worse, both in lack of character growth and actual abilities you care about.


Frank's idea about how you ditch your old abilities and identity once you reach a certain advancement point sounds like a really good idea. Once you become a Lich King or a Hell General or a Janissary it probably doesn't really matter that you were once a gladiator or a mage. It definitely doesn't matter that you were the littlest kobold in the kobold nursey.

[shadzar]

Um, does WoTC know what the word 'paragon' means? The bulk of my players are paragons of something other than the class they are. Rangers paragon Pit Fighter, wizards paragon that uber cleric paragon path (that gives you two dice for Wis attack rolls), etc.

I hate paragon paths on general principles.

I think what they do, same as epics is lock the characters into a defined pattern. where they should give more options, they are following the tech tree style of an RTS. Great for character building, if they actually offered something people who play would want, but they seem to offer nothing really, or for the few things they offer they bring other junk you just don't want with them.

They feel and look like at a certain point in the game you are handed a pre-gen to play form that level on that you can advance from there, but little to no choice in the character as far as the paragon or epic comes into play.

So like after every 10 levels you are handed a pregen that is similar to what your character was, but ramped up a bit and redesigned in order to keep with the game math so that you don't fall behind. it is to surgical and not organic enough design.

[RandomCasualty2]

Frank's idea about how you ditch your old abilities and identity once you reach a certain advancement point sounds like a really good idea. Once you become a Lich King or a Hell General or a Janissary it probably doesn't really matter that you were once a gladiator or a mage. It definitely doesn't matter that you were the littlest kobold in the kobold nursey.

Yeah, I'm all for using that idea too. Trading up abilities also tends to mean that character sheets are less complicated, which is a good thing. Though I'm not quite sure if you can pull it off.

The main problem I can see is that sometimes you can lose valuable stuff in the trade, especially if your new class isn't necessarily like what you started as.

If you go from air mage to doom knight, you probably want to keep the air mage's ability to fly and create wind walls. Even something more simple like going ranger to master swordsman, you may want to keep your stealth and camouflage skills.

You'd almost have to do it like a pyramid set up where you can get a lot of lesser abilities by taking one bigger ability. For instance a heroic ability may give you proficiency with martial weapons, another one may give you proficiency with heavy armor. Where as a paragon ability might give you proficiency with all weapons and armor. So basically you get to trade up for the bigger ability later.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, one thing I wondered is why they would even release a Rules Compendium book for 4E.

Yeah, in 3E there was (sadly) a need for a rule compendium book. There were just subsystems that flat-out did not work, like stealth and polymorph. So I could see there being a demand for this sort of thing.

But 4E doesn't want to fix any of its subsystems, unless you count the Skill Challenge system. Which I don't. All 4E has to offer are across-the board NERFS.

So... with the knowledge that only fanbois would even purchase a Rules Compendium book in the first place, why do they think that fanbois would line up and down the block to purchase a book that will nerf all of their old books while adding no new functionality?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Because the Rules Compenduim won't be the fully up to date game rules. It will be a set of new rules with overpowered options that will only be nerfed when they need to sell a new set of books.

[Username17]

The Rules Compendium has "a few significant revisions to core rules" according to Greg Bilsland's Twitter Account.

The real question is not why anyone would grab the Rules Compendium for the rules revisions, it's why anyone would grab the Rules Compendium when the rules will get a significant "update" in D&D Essentials the next month.

The Rules Compendium is going to be obsolete by the time you've finished reading it.

-Username17

[A Man In Black]

The Rules Compendium has "a few significant revisions to core rules" according to Greg Bilsland's Twitter Account.

The real question is not why anyone would grab the Rules Compendium for the rules revisions, it's why anyone would grab the Rules Compendium when the rules will get a significant "update" in D&D Essentials the next month.

The Rules Compendium is going to be obsolete by the time you've finished reading it.

Is there anything that implies that the "few significant revisions to core rules" are different from the "significant update" in D&DE?

[Username17]

The Rules Compendium has "a few significant revisions to core rules" according to Greg Bilsland's Twitter Account.

The real question is not why anyone would grab the Rules Compendium for the rules revisions, it's why anyone would grab the Rules Compendium when the rules will get a significant "update" in D&D Essentials the next month.

The Rules Compendium is going to be obsolete by the time you've finished reading it.

Is there anything that implies that the "few significant revisions to core rules" are different from the "significant update" in D&DE?

Absolutely. The significant rules revisions in th Rules Compendium have supposedly been decided upon, while the rules updates in Essentials are being worked on right now and are supposed to be ready in a few months.

Greg Bilsland said that the rules revisions in the Rules Compendium were there (as in: currently exist, though of course they haven't been printed yet so he can't name them except as part of a deliberate marketing strategy). He also said that he would be very busy for the next couple of months making the rules updates for Essentials.

Since the Essentials rules updates haven't been written or decided upon ye, it's a fairly safe bet that they will not share identity with the revisions in Rules Compendium.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

The Rules Compendium has "a few significant revisions to core rules" according to Greg Bilsland's Twitter Account.

But-but-but they said there wouldn't be a 4.5! WotC would never lie to us!

[RandomCasualty2]

The Rules Compendium has "a few significant revisions to core rules" according to Greg Bilsland's Twitter Account.

But-but-but they said there wouldn't be a 4.5! WotC would never lie to us!

Dude no...

The rules compendium is 4.333 and Essentials is like 4.666... totally different thing.

[Lance Twillman]

My girlfriend wishes to know whether it would work against a Gazebo though - do they count as scenery/terrain/"stuff" or creatures?

Gazebos are most definitely creatures. And damn scary ones at that!