4e is now dead to me.

[Catharz]

You could come up with generic groupings of like creatures, and call the the same (a la the "beast-headed giants" of Dark Sun).

I was also wondering whether color should be based on habitat. You've said that loci are Green. Does this mean that swamp loci are Green? If they are, you're effectively cut the silver cord in Magic, and now the color of a species is just a description of a set of abilities all members of that species have.
In that case, there's no reason for merfolk to be Blue. Maybe they should be Red.

[Koumei]

Well, that could sort of be a modifier. The default loci is Green. But if you apply the special "Swamp Loci" template, you become... what, Blue? I don't know how Magic works.

In before dragons with colour-coded alignments.

[Catharz]

Black -> marsh
Blue -> oceanic
Green -> woods
Red -> mountains
White -> plains

Apparently inhospitable regions have no 'mana'.

[JonSetanta]

1196986558[/unixtime]]
And lastly, if size affects melee, it needs to affect magic as well.

What, like a Fireball cast by a Giant or Dragon would be a massive AoE but same damage?
Or more damage as well?

Aside from the pseudoscience drivel spent 'explaining' how this would work (I don't care! haha) it makes sense in some way, given that for humongous humanoid beings to cast spells on a scale proportionate to themselves, one might expect it to be massive compared to our own.
On the downside, a Sprite Sorcerer with any kind of ranged or AoE magic suddenly becomes a less attractive proposition (and that's fine by me too, oddly, since the little buggers hardly get hit...)

[Cielingcat]

Also each color has a personality.

[Crissa]

Merfolk at by default blue... But that doesn't mean the have to be blue in Magic. While some areas tend toward a color, there's generally one race of each color in an area (as a minor race).

-Crissa

[Voss]

And another Mearls-ism for Frank-
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.ph ... 1[br]Mikey on why sunder sucks-

Here's why I think sunder is lame:

It doesn't respect the DM's control of the campaign. Sunder can destroy items that are important to the plot. It's an end point, rather than an extra complication. Contrast that with disarm: if you're disarmed, the weapon is still there, you just need to take a risk to get it back.

In particular, since so much of 3.5's firepower for PCs and NPCs is tied up in gear, giving you a way to destroy that gear works against the system.

If D&D's system didn't rely on items at all, sunder would be fine, but it does, so I don't think it helps the game.

Sunder also gives you another reason to stop adventuring. I think D&D works best when the PCs are playing a game where they worry about diminishing hit points and spells. Adding other resources to drain or destroy muddies the waters.

Other resources are too much! Waah, waah.
And you can destroy plot items! What is this, a bioware computer game, where you're stuck on the railroad to Unavoidable Plottown? Are we going to have unkillable NPCs next?

[CalibronXXX]

Sunder is a bad thing because it destroys things that a lot of your enemy's power is tied up in, but Sunder would be perfectly fine if it could destroy things in which none of your enemy's power was tied up in instead.

You'd have to be a total asshole or a moron to come to that conclusion.

[Catharz]

Mearls is right. Sundering does fuck up the game, assuming the DM puts treasure on NPCs such that corpse-looting PCs will have exactly the right amount of crud per level if they take everything. And that's how the game is apparently intended to be played.


Ideally, sundering should be possible because it's really cool. Sundering is a problem because, to be an effective combat option, it should do something most of the time. If you allow an attack which breaks the kensai's weapon with a good chance of success, that's unbalanced. In many games, you don't want most characters running around with golf bags. On the other hand, if sunder has a low chance of success then it's unbalanced in the other direction.

The obvious solution is to make most 'special' weapons very hard to sunder and sundering most 'mook' weapons fairly easy. Mook weapons include things like bear's claws and roper tentacles. The hard to sunder items should be extra shiny so as to avoid wasting actions. "You want to shatter a blade of pure flame? Good luck." [Edit] 3e almost works this way. [/edit]

[CalibronXXX]

1197097237[/unixtime]]Mearls is right. Sundering does fuck up the game, assuming the DM puts treasure on NPCs such that corpse-looting PCs will have exactly the right amount of crud per level if they take everything. And that's how the game is apparently intended to be played.

Even a DM with an IQ in the 70s should be able to figure out that if the PCs don't have enough treasure, you give them more treasure. I mean srsly, giving out treasure in the form of not-weapons is totally recommended and easy.

[Draco_Argentum]

Sunder screws people who like their character to have a signature weapon. Insert Catharz's bit about success chances.

[Koumei]

1196995377[/unixtime]]Also each color has a personality.

So alignments would be booted in favour of "Detect Blue" and "Smite Green"? That is awesome.

Regarding unkillable NPCs: Fucking Halastar the Insane Bastard.

[CalibronXXX]

1197100660[/unixtime]]Sunder screws people who like their character to have a signature weapon. Insert Catharz's bit about success chances.

Yeah, and SoDs screw people who like characters that are capable of dieing. What's your point?

[Draco_Argentum]

SoDs don't have a lot of support precisely because they result in revolving door deaths by making combat to deadly. Sunder is similar but smaller in effect. Whats your point?

[JonSetanta]

Sunder could instead stack penalties like a "Broken Rating: -1 attack/damage" for each success, then when the weapon hits negative base damage outputs, it's broken.

[Crissa]

If something is important, why is it breakable?

As long as Save or Die is in the game, Sunder should definitely be an option.

-Crissa

[Koumei]

Apparently SoD attacks *aren't* in the game any more, however.

Of course, I'm willing to bet they didn't quite understand, and "Sleep", "Charm Person" and all are still in.

Oh wait, they're all Enchantments, so basically, the wizard is taking it up the arse three times a day in 4th Ed, and when they release the abomina... the psion, it will own the pants off everyone.

But I do agree that if it's important (a special ancestral weapon, an artefact, whatever), it should be built out of arbitrarium and Dragonforce (the hardest metal), and cannot be broken other than by a special ritual that requires one day, expensive components and has to be performed in a hard to reach place.

Thus giving enemies more incentive to merely steal the sword and use it or throw it in the pond (how else did Excalibur get there?), leading to a merry quest for all.

I always get touchy about enemies breaking my stuff, though. Ditto killing my XP-sink, er, I mean, my Improved Familiar, or cohorts. One DM was seriously obsessed with trying to kill my cohort off (along with railroading). As a result, we made a hobby out of defying every single thing he ever tried to have happen.

[Catharz]

1197100661[/unixtime]]

1196995377[/unixtime]]Also each color has a personality.

So alignments would be booted in favour of "Detect Blue" and "Smite Green"? That is awesome.

Regarding unkillable NPCs: Fucking Halastar the Insane Bastard.

But detect blue would be blue and smite green would be red.

[tzor]

1197113331[/unixtime]]If something is important, why is it breakable?

As long as Save or Die is in the game, Sunder should definitely be an option.

To the first point I agree. The whole idea that sunder is something that will rob the DM of his plot is just stupid.

On the other hand I have a counter argument.

As long as it is nearly imposssible for items in ones posession to be damaged ( See SRD ) then the idea of being able to make a specific attack against a weapon is really out of place.

Unless the descriptive text for the spell specifies otherwise, all items carried or worn by a creature are assumed to survive a magical attack. If a creature rolls a natural 1 on its saving throw against the effect, however, an exposed item is harmed (if the attack can harm objects).

[Cielingcat]

1197100661[/unixtime]]

1196995377[/unixtime]]Also each color has a personality.

So alignments would be booted in favour of "Detect Blue" and "Smite Green"? That is awesome.

Yes, quite literally.

Black
Blue
Green
Red
White

[Koumei]

That's pretty cool, actually.

[Username17]

Now defenses would have to be changed. The whole esthetic of having all defenses be DCs that attackers roll against is fine. But once you have Reflex to determine whether things hit you there's seriously no reason to have AC to determine whether things hit you. AC is a classy word though, and would replace Damage Reduction.

In any case, people should have a Defense calculated by each stat (and level modifiers and abilities) so you automatically know what you need to roll to push someone over (rather than busting out some unique Strength Check mechanic each time).

Off the top of my head, these defenses would be called something like:

Tenacity - Strength
Dodge - Dexterity
Fortitude - Constitution
Willpower - Charisma
Insight - Intelligence
Perception - Wisdom

And then you would have a separate ability to have Protection From Foo (Where Foo is "green" or "Blue"). This is a number which stands in for your defensive DC against attacks which are that color (regardless of what their normal defenses are).

And yes, you can use those for weaknesses, as a low Protection from Green is worse than not having one.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1197202302[/unixtime]]

Tenacity - Strength
Dodge - Dexterity
Fortitude - Constitution
Willpower - Charisma
Insight - Intelligence
Perception - Wisdom

Aside from the color stuff, I did something similar to this in my (still in progress) complete rewrite of d20 rules. Though I kept the AC stat for that D&D feel. Dodge is touch attacks and AC is for armored attacks, similar to how they're doing 4E.

The basic idea though is that my monsters weren't going to have actual ability scores, they're just going to have these stats (along with a few others). I'm trying to design it such that all the spells penalize one of these scores, and your actual base ability scores are never adjusted. Only PCs have ability scores anyway, and that's solely for determining a few other things like how many languages you know or your base hit dice modifier for con.

[JonSetanta]

You totally complexified the simple dynamic of MTG's "Power" versus "Toughness"... T_T