4E information

[Cielingcat]

"If I only had a brain"=Scarecrow. Not sure what they are, but Changelings sort of resemble him.

"If I only had a heart"=Tinman, aka Warforged.

"If I only had the nerve"=Lion, aka Furries Shifters.

[tzor]

Warforged as they are if you recall a collection of wood (the scarecrow), metal (the tin woodsman) and warrior (the lion). Sorry I was going to a meeting and I had a momentary brain fart. Ironically I was actually using the Oz reference to talk about the developers.

[Maxus]

Oh yeah. I've seen the Warforged. By far my favorite depiction is the Warforged Pimp picture I found. (One wearing a broad plumed hat, a cape, a cane, and a couple human females hanging onto his arms. Ask and I'll e-mail.)

I don't see why they should be core, but Aasimar shouldn't be, though. (Seriously. Tieflings but not Aasimar? That's deserving of dancing the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.)

[CalibronXXX]

1194553505[/unixtime]]Warforged as they are if you recall a collection of wood (the scarecrow), metal (the tin woodsman) and warrior (the lion). Sorry I was going to a meeting and I had a momentary brain fart. Ironically I was actually using the Oz reference to talk about the developers.

You mean the developers are kinda like the wizard since instead of giving you what you ask for they give you random crap?

Players: We want Game Balance and interesting characters!
Wizards of the Oz: Here you go, the Polymorph subschool, Melee Weapon Mastery, and a shiny new elven subrace.

[Catharz]

Some changes can be good even if they're orthogonal to to those requested. 3.5 DR, for example, is better than 3e DR (although it's still arguably crappy).

[SphereOfFeetMan]

3.5 DR, for example, is better than 3e DR

How is that?

[CalibronXXX]

Because you can't just cast GMW at a heightened caster level and ignore all enemy DR. DR based on a handful of materials and alignment is better than just having it rely on straight weapon plusses.

[Crissa]

What DR in 3.5 uses only weapon plusses? I thought those went out with 3.0, and were only one type of DR (DR/magic) anyhow.

I doubt the race will be anything fantasy-ish, or anything anyone wants to play. It's funny that of all the known 'fantasy' races, so few become player races in fantasy games...

-Crissa

[CalibronXXX]

1194589891[/unixtime]]What DR in 3.5 uses only weapon plusses? I thought those went out with 3.0, and were only one type of DR (DR/magic) anyhow.

Try re-reading the three posts previous to yours.

[Crissa]

Very confusing series of one-liners. Excuse me, I was just failing my mid-term practical due to a bit-shift error in a segment of naughty code.

Also, magic/1 magic/2 DR came from when they couldn't just cast Magic Weapon, so I'm not sure why they didn't just take it out when they added the latter...

-Crissa

[tzor]

1194571103[/unixtime]]You mean the developers are kinda like the wizard since instead of giving you what you ask for they give you random crap?

You know I've had real discussions with people who would talk about the irony of the Wizard's gifts in the movie and how each gift of the wizard wasn't really what they asked for but a symbolic representation of what they already had. That was why the wizard was stumped with Dorothy.

A diploma is not something that gives intelligence, it is a result of intelligence. A medal is not something that gives courage it is the result of courage. And so forth.

Frankly I have the impression that the 4E designers are no less pompous than Gygax in one sense. They are designing a system not based on what you or I want to play or what they believe the gaming populace wants to play but on what THEY WANT TO PLAY. The fact that they probably play as crappy as they design probably escapes them. In one sense they are anti Gygaxan, if you don't play the way they play then you aren't playing crap.

[Voss]

Hmm. I have yet to see a game system that was designed by people that didn't like it. I get what you're saying, but that sort of bias is unavoidable, at least among the upper design team (It doesn't really matter if artist #7 thinks the game sucks ass).

All we can do is wait for the final product and mock it unmercifully (and not buy it) if it sucks ass. The alternative- letting the gaming population have a say, with their million different opinions on what makes a good game, will guarantee a piece of shit game.

[Catharz]

Regardless of whether you design a game based on what you think your buyers think they want, you should always design a game based on what you want. Hopefully your views are similar enough to those of your clientele that the game they want to play is a game you want to play and vice-versa. If they're not then you're designing games for the wrong people, and those people should be paying for a different designer.

If you design a game you'd like to play, at least one person will end up liking it. If you have any sense then you'll make sure it's a game your friends would like to play too. Otherwise you run the risk of making a game no one will ever want to play.

[Edit]
A non-gaming example: C is a lot like D&D. it was a language designed for the use of the designers. It is horrible. It is incredibly influential. It's far superior to any language designed by people who weren't designing for themselves.
[/Edit]

[Crissa]

So in your world, C is undefined and completely under the thrall of the already compiled black box link files that may or may not be compatible?

Hmm. That's a good point.

-Crissa

[Catharz]

1194645951[/unixtime]]So in your world, C is undefined and completely under the thrall of the already compiled black box link files that may or may not be compatible?

Hmm. That's a good point.

-Crissa

Er... The C99 SRD is freely available, isn't it?

[Crissa]

Yes, but all of the components you need to communicate with most hardware come in SDKs that have pre-compiled code that you merely link to their libraries and wham, you use their functions, and if their code is faulty, you're SOL.

Microsoft fought lawsuits for years alleging that they were using unreleased hooks in the OS to make their software run better. They managed to get out of it with some settlements, but their internal memos mostly showed they actually did do it - though it didn't actually seem intentional nor make their programs run better. But it did allow Office 98 to position itself and make the coup-de-grace against their competition at the time...

-Crissa

[Username17]

So I just played some Saga, partially in Czech. And while the experience was lots of fun, I have to say that the "crits always happen on a 20" rule is bullshit covered bullshit with bullshit filling.

Seriously, when dealing with mooks it means that the swarms of droids do nothing, nothing, nothing, CRITICAL HIT. It's like giving every mook in the universe a very low percentage SoD usable every round.

Once again I am reminded of why in SAME I had damage work the way it did. Giving Criticals an arbitrary, rather than relative chance simply underline the randomness in the system. If you are down to hitting on a 19 you critical hit half the fucking time. It's boring when they flat out miss and it's frustrating when they hit becase it takes away practically all your hit points each time.

You should either have criticals function like in 3rd edition D&D where you roll to confirm (and thus a 19-20 threat weapon always crits on 10% of its hits) or you should do it like SAME (and thus the degree you beat the to-hit roll needed influences your damage). Doing it like SAGA is craptastic. Twice as many attacks hitting half as often is twice as many criticals!

It's like playing fucking Runequest.

-Username17

[Voss]

But its *faster*.

But, yeah. I remember using the natural 1 and natural 20 crit and fumble rules during second (however optional they were). Added some bad crap to the game at times.

What does the game lose if you just pop crits out? Or make the extra damage a nice linear number- level or level/2?

[TavishArtair]

I personally prefer this version of "20s always crit:"

If it would've hit normally, it crits. Yes, this means you usually crit on a 20, but it stops mooks who are only hitting you on a 21 (and thus, must roll for 20s) from critting you. It is about as fast, and still results in more crits, but it reduces the number of situations where the only possible hit IS a crit.

[Bigode]

So, for an attack modifier = AC - 20, every hit's critical. Still crap, IMO.

[Crissa]

So it suffers from the same problem, minus the mooks who need a miracle. The mooks who already had 5% chance to hit you still crit all the time...

Fast, but how is that better?

-Crissa

[JonSetanta]

I'm just glad encounters will finally be rated as by 1 player vs. 1 monster.
My only regret is that it took them 30 years to do so.

[Voss]

Well, to be fair, it didn't take 30 years. More like 10. The old assumption was if you were DMing, you should be smart enough to eyeball it. Which didn't work out so well either, since many DMs were not particularly smart.

[tzor]

1194918990[/unixtime]]I'm just glad encounters will finally be rated as by 1 player vs. 1 monster.

I will wait until I see this in the details before I'm glad. It makes the assumption that all players are equal and I highly doubt that will ever happen. If not then what is the player that is being used for the scale.

I have an nth level player vs an nth level monster.

Even assuming that all classes are equal not all classes are equivalent. Some monsters are designed for specific classes and their difficulty changes drastically between classes.

Wizard vs Rust Monster. Advantage wizard!
Fighter vs Rust Monster. RUN AWAY! (Help me wizard!)

OK that's an extreeme example, I just am overly fond of the old 1E comics in the core books.

So whether this is the "idealized" character or the "idealized" party of four the fact is that if it has any bearing to the characters your players are using at your table then you indeed must have found some favor from God because Chance says that's not supposed to happen.

[Koumei]

1194965262[/unixtime]]
Wizard vs Anything. Advantage wizard!
Fighter vs Anything. RUN AWAY! (Help me wizard!)

Fix'd