Gaming Den Reviews: Cityscape & Dungeonscape ... ?

[User3]

One of my primary loves of this website are the most awesome critiques/reviews of the newly published WotC books.

I, as well as I'm sure others, would be most entertained and informed if one of you fine Gaming Denners would post a cool critique/review of the recent WotC sourcebooks - Cityscape and Dungeonscape.

Anybody?

[josephbt]

Will be writing a review of both within 2 weeks. That 9Hells book won't be coming to the store for a long while so you're gonna have to wait.

[NineInchNall]

Dungeonscape has some rather nice, if situational, alternate class features.

[Username17]

Cityscape and Dungeonscape are both deeply flawed books and a lot of people don't want to talk about them, let alone own them. Where books like Stormwrack are minimally useful for ocean campaigns if you don't have a creative group and a DVD of Captain Blood, Cityscape and Dungeonscape are so marginal that I cannot reccommend them even for specifically City or Dungeon campaigns.

That said, we're still going through them point by point:

Dungeonscape

We're doing this first because it has "any rules at all". Indeed, you might even be tempted to play the Factotum, despite the name, on a dare. Or perhaps as some sort of weird optimization challenge. Dungeonscape is written by GiantinthePlayground and the Editor for Dragon Magazine. You can already imagine where this is going...

Chapter 1: Terrain and Character Options

Yes, really. The formatting on this book is really bad. The character class options and the dungeon building materials are in the same chapter. The Factotum is here too. The character options in this book are usually pretty underwhelming, but there are occassional gems gathered by sacrificing class features you weren't going to use. For example, this is a genuine discussion I had with K over the book:

Frank: Would you pay your Rogue Trap Sense fo-
Keith: Hell no! That's the thing Rogues need to live, the fundamental ability they get at level 1 that allows the party to even survive in a dungeon environment.
Frank: No, that's the 'Traps' abilty you get at level one. This is the 'Trap Sense' ability you get at level 3 that gives you a bonus to your-
Keith: Sold!
Frank: But I didn't tell you what you got.
Keith: Doesn't matter. Sold! Seriously though, what do you get?
Frank: You get to do half Sneak Damage to creatures immune to sneak damage.
Keith: Sold!

Yeah. The section on walls and floors is a partial overlap with the Stronghold Builder Guidebook. Yes, it's a partial overlap. The one in the SBG is actually better, but Dungeonscape has some extra stuff that the SBG doesn't have (in addition to missing some chunks). I don't know why. There is no "why".

Indeed, some of these character options are actually jokes. Not just "so bad that it's funny" - but written as humor! There is a bard option where your singing adds to the Move Silently checks of all your allies. Not only was this exact ability a long running joke on the Nifty forums, but Richard already transferred it into Order of the Stick. Now he snuck it past the editors of WotC. I am happy for him, because it's damn funny that he did that. But I'm actually offended that it saw print.

Now of course we have to talk about the Factotum. It is the bullshit class. I'm afraid that this is the point at which I am required by law to openly mock GiantinthePlayground for having given us this amazing piece of crap. I understand what he was going for, but holy shit is this class designed poorly.

The Factotum is supposed to be a genuine Jack of All Trades. And he does so by virtue of having the ability to channel "Inspiration" into getting bonuses to a long list of stuff so that he can compete in multiple arenas.

Inspiration: Let's talk about the Inspiration system. You get Inspiration points every time you have an "encounter" (whatever that means). But some of the abilities you run off of Inspiration are separately limited in uses per day. Inspiration lasts until spent, so as written you can have a bunch of meaningless encounters (social encounters in stores, for example) and build up a huge store of Inspiration points because you "gain inspiration points" you don't "refill your inspiration pool". I have honestly no idea whether that's intentional or not, because the class is very very weird.

Out of Order: At 1st level you get the ability to spend an Inspiration point to add your Int bonus to a damage roll afetr you have hit. At 4th level you get the ability to buy a die of sneak atatck before your attack roll. Yes, the 1st level ability is better and larger than the 4th level ability.

Weird Spellcasting: he Factotum has weird spellcasting. You prepare spells like a Druid off of the Wizard list, and then you cast them like a Warlock. So you can use Extend Spell, but you can't use Sudden Extend. Also, casting costs Inspiration points in addition to using up spell slots, so you have to figure out what an "encounter" is supposed to mean before you cast your spells out of combat anyway because despite knowing all Wizard spells you only get very low level spell slots for most of your life.

Bonuses to Weird Stuff: You get realy large bonuses to trips and bullrushes and stuff like that. You can't even play a Factotum without knowing exhaustively what all the minor combat manuvers do and how they work.

Broken Stuff: For 3 Inspiration points an 8th level Factotum can buy an extra Standard Action. At that level the Factotum gains 5 Inspiration points every time the combat music starts. So the Factotum really can pull so abusive teleportation loops I suggest rubbing it in by getting yourself some Incarnum so that you can d-door at will. Then hop in and ou with the extra actions... you get the idea. At really high level you can dumpster dive through classes to get any class feature available to any "Standard Class" of up to 15th level that is Extraordinary. That could be 8 dice of sneak atatck, or get an Animal Companion. I don't even know what all you can get because "standard class" isn't a game term. I think they mean "non-prestige, non-epic" - but honestly I don't really know because there's actually a game term for that: "Basic Classes".

K: I reiterate: What the fvck?

The Factotum gets turning attempts based on his Wisdom modifier, but he can expend them to do Lay on Hands that is based on his Intelligence Modifier. Apparently, Factotums are supposed to replace Rogues and Bards as the guys who get all the poontang because they can channel Inspiration into skill checks to get stupid awesome piles of Diplomacy and Bluff.

Floor Tiles: There are conversion ruls for all the stupid terrain tiles from the D&D miniatures game. They are just as insulting here as you might imagine.

Zombie doors! It's not just that having a bunch of corpses stitched together than shuffle out of the way when you speak the command word is retarded, there isn't even creation rules for all this crap. The entire section makes me sad.

Chapter 2: Equipment

Much of this chapter is taken up with such handy information as "you can put a holy symbol on your forehead, or your ass. Seriously, it's just a symbol and you can put it anywhere." There's also a long list of weird bullshit items you can use like listening cones and padded shoes to get tiny bonuses to all your skill checks.

The Get Smart! style gadgets are obviously an attempt at humor. The potion in the middle of your polearm haft, for example, is I assume supposed to be funny. It certainly isn't useful (or structurally sound).

The Magic Items section is mostly not about magic items at all. It is a discussion about how various cheap misc. magic items are totally awesome. If for some reason you didn't know that a Bag of Tricks was awesome, maybe this could help you. There is a reprint almost word for word of Josh's assessment of the Lyre of Building.

There are some new magic items, however. Most of them are not only crap but also insulting. Swarmstrike Arrows, for example, are little shovels that do full damage to locust swarms. There are a few jokes (the Security Blanket), and a few overpowered items (Boots of Sidestepping).

There are also some purchasing lists for basic equipment that are a waste of space.

Chapter 3: Character Options that weren't in Chapter One

There are feats in this chapter, but all the real character options were in Chapter one. There are some guilds and team options (like the PHB2). Like everything like this, most of them are crap and some of them are awesome. Search Team, for example, is awesome. Your whole party needs a rank of Search, and then the Rogue gets to stand in the back while the tank stands in the front and uses the Rogue's Search results modified by Aid Another from the entire party.

The PrCs are built on the current "spend four pages per PrC" model, and they all suck. Guilds are of course, always more power for nothing, but mostly they are lame power you don't care about.

Chapter Four: Hyperbole

This entire chapter is given over to ranting about Dungeons from a "design" standpoint. It doesn't really get into why dungeons or how players might go about building them or controlling them once they have been conquered. The chapter is 30 pages long and has a bunch of tables for generating... nothing you'd ever care about. This entire section is actually less useful than the Random Dungeon Generator at the end of the AD&D DMG.

Chapter Five: 7 monsters in 22 pages

If you were sad that the Rotgrub never got a 3.X conversion, you can be less sad now. But I am sad that this fact made anyone sad, so I don't know that this chapter generated any net happiness at all.

Chapter Six: Traps

It's like watching another man write his diary about having done his taxes. I don't even know if this chapter is useful because I can't even read it without having my head explode.

The Rube Goldberg stuff is kind of amusing, but I can't bring myself to give a damn.

Chapter Seven: More on Zombie Doors

The dungeon features from Chapter one get a more thorough explanation here than they do on chapter one. So there's like creation rules or something, right? Wrong!

No, the entire chapter just has break DCs and the like for the stuff listed in Chapter 1. It's just a naked attempt to squeeze out more wordcount.

Cityscape
This book is written by the two White Wolf authors who brought you Heroes of Horror. They don't need your rules, man! Indeed, there are almost no rules in this entire book.

What few rules there are are pretty forgettable. You can spend a feat to have no visible effects on your spells. You can get a metamagic that will make your spells go around corners for +1 level, and um... that's about it. The rules on Contacts are basically that contacts will help you so infrequently that you get new contracts every time you ask for a favor.

The vast majority of the book is pretty much exactly what you'd get if went up to a couple of random gamers and asked them to tell you what is in a city. Seriously, the vast majority of the book is taken up with things like "There's um... a park... and uh... a tavern... and... hmmm... a shopping district..." The degree of awkwardness is actually physically painful to me just to read.

There are rules for shooting fireballs at schoolyards full of orphans, which is weird. But sure, whatever. The spell list is unimpressive, but leomund's secure carridge is exactly what it sounds like and kind of fun.

There's very little that can be said about this book. It doesn't cover such essentials as "How can a city even exist with a persistent government when someone can go on a bugbear killing crusade and hit 10th level by the time he's popped off 127 of them?" or "How does food even get into cities when the outside world is full of manticores and the people who can conjure food from nothing have no pressing reason to feed the poor?"

You could read this entire book and still have not a single idea about how to explain how the economy of one functions or how one continues to exist in the D&D world. Even the section "Why the City?" is just a belly button exploration of why you might want to run an adventure in an area that people want to live.

-Username17

[Crissa]

Hmm... Around corners... Line of sight...

How about around a Anti-Magic Shell or Force Wall?

-Crissa

[josephbt]

I see Frank beat me to it, but i'm gonna post anyway.

Hello there. Last week, I got hold of a copy of Dungeonscape, last in the line of environmet books by WotC. This time, as the title say, the subject is the dungeon. Seven chapters, one painful, one filled with anguish, one crappy, one whatever, one boring, one readable and one with quality. We will begin with crappy.

Chapter One – Dungeon as the enemy AKA The Readable One

The chapter begins kinda bland, with an Intro that's 3 pages long. This isn't the readable part. Unfortunately, bits of crap got copy/pasted into this part from chapters 5-7. That is why you can skip it without any regret. No advice, no flavor, only paper.

But after that my morale bonus went up by one because my new favorite part of the game came up – alternate class features(ACFs later on). And then immediatly it went down by two. The dredded Complete Mage(Scoundrel) type of advice serves as an intro into each class feature. But nevermind, I say. If I could read through Complete Psionic, my mind will endure this also.

• Bbn – No bad advice(gasp). ACF: Trapkiller – hit the trap to disable it and find it via Survival, lose trap sense. Not baaad, but certainly not good. You still have no reason to play a barbarian. 4/10
• Brd – No bad advice, no good either. ACF:Lore song – lose bardic knowhow, gain +4 on most rolls as an Immediate action 1/day+1/odd bard level. ACF:Mimicking Song(oxymoron, emphasis on moron) – lose counterspell, may grant untyped bonus on Move Silently. You can't counterspell, but you're a fvckin mime!!? I don't think so. Both 2/10
• Clr – They incourage you to take ranks in Heal. Does Heal do something? No? Then, no thanks. ACF: Divine restoration – lose granted domain power, spontaneously cast restoration line of spells. I guess if you took Plant domain, or Law, it could be better to sub it for something remotly usefull. 5/10
• Drd – No bad advice, but at the end of the chapter, there is a wonderful bit of designer insight. Quote ''Make sure to select Natural Spell feat so you can use your magic while in wild shape“. Ahem, no shite, Herlock Sholmes. ACF: Root walker – lose wild empathy, woodland stride and resist nature's lure; gain wild empathy with vermin, woodland stride with stone and resist nature's lure against aberrations. Since I've never seen any of these abilities in effect, I'm gonna have to conclude that i don't give a fvck about their variants. ?/10
• Ftr – Suggesting that Climb and Jumb be maxed in a game where flying is so commonly available is kinda moot. ACF: Dungeon crasher – no, you don't bring dungeons down, but you can bring stuff and critters down. Lose your 2nd and 6th level feats to gain +4 AC and saves vs traps, +10 to break stuff and +8d6 + triple your Strenght(i'm guessing bonus, tripling a strenght score might be obscene) if you Bull rush anyone into an obstacle. Considering what fighters usually gain(see Dragon Magic for undilluted pain), I'm going to have to give this ability 3/10, which is actually very good considering how i ordinarily give ftr ACFs a negative score.
• Mnk – Tripping is suggested. I've seen Goliath Bbn/Ftr/PsyWar/ExWpnMstr/Warmind, Ogre Psywar, Human Clr and wolves trip. Never a monk. I guess this is just an aprils fool day advice. ACF: Standing jump – duh, lose your speed to jump high. ACF: Wallwalker – lose your slow fall(did any one ever use this ability?) to gain a weirdass climb speed. Neither of these abilities is worth so much that you should play a monk.0/10
• Pal – Oh, man, three whole pages of Pally stuff. You can read more about it here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dn ... 09a&page=1 As far as I'm concerned it's crap, but so is the horsey. 5/10
• Rng – No advice. ACF: Trapfinding – lose Track, gain rogue stuff. So why aren't you playing as a rogue? 1/10
• Rog – Hehe, they suggest you cary 10' poles. This seriously takes me back through time. ACF: Quick fingers - lose a bit of Trap sense to Disable faster. Never have i seen a need for speedy Disable device, so i have no clue what this woud be usefull for? Maybe for Mission Impossible: The Return to the The Dungeon. ACF: Penetrating Strike – lose trap sense(yeeeeeah), gain half sneak attack dice on flanked opponents that are imune to sneak attack. Well, hoody hoo, that's what i call an ability. Later it will be shown that it matters not, but it is better than Trap sense. 10/10
• Sor – Aaaargh, the pain! The fotons leaving this page actually left little shitty smudges on my retinas, so i had to wash my eyes. First off, they suggest you take every damage dealing spell in the book, then they mock your low skill points and then as a coup-de-grace, they suggest Combat Casting as a feat option! Enough with the bloody Combat Casting! It's abominably bad. Stop suggesting it! ACF: Spellshield – lose familiar, gain a Mana Shield from Diablo. Absorbs 5x spell lvl(spent as an immediate action) points of damage. Pair it with Durable mage from Complete Mage, take a club and go beat up some fighters. I'm gonna give this one a 7/10 on account of my love for Diablo.
• Wiz – Again with the Combat Casting! Are the people at WotC Combat Casting worshipers? Is that feat a dark god of yours? Stop printing that crap. And NO, Magic Missile is NOT a combat spell. ACF: Wizzo of Sun and Moon – lose your critter, may memorise a Sun spell and a Moon spell in the same slot. Cast one and you can't cast the other. Guess when you cast which spell? Bollocks, complete and utter. How about memorising quality stuff regardless of daytime? 0/10

The next part of this chapter is the new class – Factotum. A quick rundown follows: bab full, ref good, 6 skills per level, all skills class skills, d8hp, all weapons, light armors and all shields, may cast in armors(not only light), trapfinding. And now a new mechanic(not) – inspiration points. You gain a pool of them at the beggining of the encounter(2 at lvl 1, 10 at lvl 20), and they may be spent on the following: Int bonus to rolls or AC, level on a skill roll, +d6 sneak attack, a modest ammount of healing, an extra standard action, ignore SR and DR, defensive roll, mimic Ex ability of a base class and cast a spell from wiz/sor list(max level – 7th).
Clustered together, these abilities might look like something, but actually you don't have anything to add to the party. If you can skill it, the rogue can skill it better. If you can spell it, the wizzo is better. If you can fight it, a druid is better. In fact, this class is so tasteless, that wet cardboard tastes better. Skip (Williams) it. Also, the sample factotum doesn't have prereqs for his feats. Sad, really sad.

Last bit of this chapter is(again) from another part of this book. It is all about walls and floors and doors of a dungeon. There also some bridges, chasms and chimneys. Why is it bundled with player stuff? The only interesting bits are the special terrains – magical floors that buff you. Blood floor grant Improved Critical, Deadwood grants +2 turn resistance and a morale(???) bonus to undead(cmon designers, at least pretend to know the rules), Elementum lets you stab people with elemental energy that hurts you also and finaly a material that all liches stand on – Magestone gives you a +1CLVL and a +1 to all spell DCs.

Chapter Two – Tools of the trade AKA Quality One

Well, to an average rogue this chapter looks like Christmass morning. First of is some mundane equipment, the designers knew we were depresed because of the last chapter so they wrote some hillarious gear down to make us laugh. My favorite is mithral grappling hook. You can throw it further for a mere 1000gp. Funny, isn't it? I guess adamantine manacles could be of use, and so could the wang bracers(draw one of 5 stored wangs as a swift action), the rest is crap.

The next subchapter is pure gold – weapon modifications. There is only one out of four that deserves mention, twice – The Almighty Wang Chamber. Every rogue should have two. Must be in a hilt or shield and must be bought along with the weaponor shield(kinda like masterwork). What does it do? It lets you treat any wang attached to it as a held and ready wang. So, Wang of Golemstrike in one dagger, Gravestrike in another and fear no unsneakable critter. Sub wangs for better ones, with regards to DM and adventure.

The rest of the chapter is composed of irelevant alchemical crap and bullshit magical items that noone will use. Special mention goes to Swarmbane weapon enhancement that lets you stab swarms really good.

Chapter three – Character Options AKA The Anguishy One

Nine feats – five general(two reprinted), two tactical, two weapon style. All bad.

Combat tinkering lets you pick locks and disable devices better during combat. When the fvck are you going to use this feat? Gnome tunnel acrobatics(tactical) lets you....what-fvcking-ever, one of the abilities is that you deal additional damage equal to the damage you get when you fall on a critter. Hammer and piton(style) literally does nothing – you deal d4+str dmg to a large critter with a standard action. Trap engineer and Trap sensitivity do trapcrap. Undermountain tactics works if you have stairs, doors or two walls handy. Weapon and torch(style) lets you look like Aragorn.

Prestige classes are so impossibly bad, that I had to wonder, what kind of a game are the designers running? There are luckily only two of them. The first one is Beast Heart Adept, a class that gets aberrations or magical beasts as animal companions. Over 10 levels, you gain three such beasts, ending with CR8-9, CR6-7 and CR4-5. Since by that time you play in a 15th level campaign, everybody has to ask them selves one single question. Why is the party wizzard and the DM covering your ass so much, since you suck at everything you do?
The other is The Trapsmith. You do stuff with traps. Whole five levels of doing stuff with traps. I guess if i were playing a ''Speed'' or ''SWAT'' scenario, i might consider playing this class. Or not.

Three guilds are also described in this chapter. Some entry prereqs are written down and three handy tables for determining your status within each guild. Only thing is, some of those numbers are impossible to reach. Again, designers, hello? Also, one of the guilds increases your affiliation score if your BAB is +10 or higher. I guess that nobody told the people at WotC that wizzos kill dragons, not fighters. Last time i heard, fighters didn't cast maxed Shivering Touch.

So overall, in the first three chapters the Good are: rogue losing trapsense to kill stuff more easily and wang weapons for rogues to kill stuf more easily. Spellshield Sor ACF gets an honorable mention. So does the swarmkilling weapon. Oh, and that ''special'' terrain.
The Bad is: most other ACFs, crappy gear and lousy feats, terrain and dungeon features nobody cares about.
The Ugly: both prestige classes, new base class, the ''morale bonus to the undead'' terrain. I can picture it right now – the uplifted zombie bulette, its brow shining with hope, its morale bolstered, it's eyes looking upward.

I would post more but i gotta go to work.

[User3]

Bravo, Frank and JosephBT !!

Lots of Gaming Den Hate for the Factotum, I see. I agree - especially when the Chameleon PrC is a much better and more versatile option.

I thought the Dungeon Crasher (Alt-Fighter Class Ability) would have gotten more fanfare. Especially since bullrush-structured fighters tend to have more interesting and versatile mojo than damage-monkey fighters.

Speaking of Chameleon's, the Trapsmith spells known is crazy-good for the Chammy. Look at how low-level those excellent spells are!

I'm thinking the Dungeonbred Monster template might have some narrow uses in light of its interesting offset +0 ECL adjustment.

[shau]

The barb and ranger ACFs look good to me. If I understand it correctly, the ranger gives up a track (which can be gotten back with a feat) for the rogue's key class ability trap finding. That is pretty good if you wanted a ranger who is a more competent skill monkey. The barb's ACF also lets you find traps, plus you can still totally be a barb and go into frenzied berserker or something. Cool if skills do crap all for you (I have been in many campaigns like this) but you still need someone to make sure the party does not get blown up by a stupid trap.

Anyone want to try carrying your own floor around for the bonuses?

[NineInchNall]

1173738211[/unixtime]]I thought the Dungeon Crasher (Alt-Fighter Class Ability) would have gotten more fanfare. Especially since bullrush-structured fighters tend to have more interesting and versatile mojo than damage-monkey fighters.

That's pretty well covered by a guy on the WotC boards: http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=791388

[NineInchNall]

1173739084[/unixtime]]Anyone want to try carrying your own floor around for the bonuses?

A Shadowcraft Mage totally would.

[User3]

The Rogue ACF ("Penetrating Strike") is a nice feature for Rogue builds that get Trap Sense from more than one source (such as many Roguish PrCs).

For such builds, you get the best of both worlds without really giving up anything beyond a redundant class feature acquisition.

[josephbt]

I would have written a review of other chapters, but Frank got it right. I don't see what else should be added.

What pains me the most is a WHOLE chapter devoted to traps. Seriously, wtf? Where does that obsession with traps come from? Indiana Jones? And of all things, the chapter is full of "the room with crap in it" traps.
Let's imagine a scenario - the party is in front of a room, the room has some nonsensical machinery in the middle, the doors to the room are sturdy and big. You might as well put up a sign - "No traps here, keep on walking".
One of the traps in the book is supposedly an EL20 trap. It consists of a room(sic!), a pedestal, and a crystal skull upon it. C'mon, the players somehow got to lvl 20, they have brains, IT'S A TRAP and the KNOW it.
One more thing pisses me off regarding traps. They aren't worth a single story. I can tell a story of a party that fought a golem and a dragon and myriads of creatures. Tales can be written about parties that convinced the king to attack the kingdom of Yakkedy. Has anyone got a trap story?

"And that one time, in the dungeon, i was walking and a poisoned bolt hit me!"
"Oh, man, tell me about it!"
"Well, i was in a dungeon, and i was walking, and a poisoned bolt hit me!"

[Nihlin]

1173780793[/unixtime]]One of the traps in the book is supposedly an EL20 trap. It consists of a room(sic!), a pedestal, and a crystal skull upon it.

Does it make it so that you can't be seen by or interact with anything in your home plane, effectively making you some kind of impotent ghost? Because I totally saw that episode of Stargate.

[User3]

1173780793[/unixtime]]I would have written a review of other chapters, but Frank got it right. I don't see what else should be added.

What pains me the most is a WHOLE chapter devoted to traps. Seriously, wtf? Where does that obsession with traps come from? Indiana Jones? And of all things, the chapter is full of "the room with crap in it" traps.
Let's imagine a scenario - the party is in front of a room, the room has some nonsensical machinery in the middle, the doors to the room are sturdy and big. You might as well put up a sign - "No traps here, keep on walking".
One of the traps in the book is supposedly an EL20 trap. It consists of a room(sic!), a pedestal, and a crystal skull upon it. C'mon, the players somehow got to lvl 20, they have brains, IT'S A TRAP and the KNOW it.
One more thing pisses me off regarding traps. They aren't worth a single story. I can tell a story of a party that fought a golem and a dragon and myriads of creatures. Tales can be written about parties that convinced the king to attack the kingdom of Yakkedy. Has anyone got a trap story?

"And that one time, in the dungeon, i was walking and a poisoned bolt hit me!"
"Oh, man, tell me about it!"
"Well, i was in a dungeon, and i was walking, and a poisoned bolt hit me!"

Second hand trap story:

Party discovers a trap. Most of party tries to do clever stuff. Barbarian gets impatient after a little bit of time and walks on pressure plate. Some arrows fly at him, some of which hit, for a total of 1 damage after DR. Barbarian jumps up and down on pressure plate until arrows stop coming. 60 arrows and a total of 5 damage (post DR) later, the trap stops working. Barbarian looks at the party like they're stupid.

So yes, its a trap story - its a story about how traps aren't really that interesting though.

[dbb]

Technically, the Head of Vecna is a trap story. Well, sort of.

[CalibronXXX]

Second hand trap story:

Party discovers a trap. Most of party tries to do clever stuff. Barbarian gets impatient after a little bit of time and walks on pressure plate. Some arrows fly at him, some of which hit, for a total of 1 damage after DR. Barbarian jumps up and down on pressure plate until arrows stop coming. 60 arrows and a total of 5 damage (post DR) later, the trap stops working. Barbarian looks at the party like they're stupid.

So yes, its a trap story - its a story about how traps aren't really that interesting though.

The story would have been more interesting if the Barbarian had a few levels in Frenzied Berserker.

[Judging__Eagle]

1173804998[/unixtime]]

Second hand trap story:

Party discovers a trap. Most of party tries to do clever stuff. Barbarian gets impatient after a little bit of time and walks on pressure plate. Some arrows fly at him, some of which hit, for a total of 1 damage after DR. Barbarian jumps up and down on pressure plate until arrows stop coming. 60 arrows and a total of 5 damage (post DR) later, the trap stops working. Barbarian looks at the party like they're stupid.

So yes, its a trap story - its a story about how traps aren't really that interesting though.

The story would have been more interesting if the Barbarian had a few levels in Frenzied Berserker.

One problem.

The party has to survive for the story to spread.

Of course players could still be able to re-tell the tale.

[RandomCasualty]

1173780793[/unixtime]]
One more thing pisses me off regarding traps. They aren't worth a single story. I can tell a story of a party that fought a golem and a dragon and myriads of creatures. Tales can be written about parties that convinced the king to attack the kingdom of Yakkedy. Has anyone got a trap story?

If you've played the original Tomb of Horrors, you'll have plenty of trap stories. Most of which will be summed up with "And then I(we) rolled up new characters."

But 3rd edition made traps largely pointless. Mostly because they do straight up damage, and damage isn't even something you care about. If it doesn't kill you, then CLW will fix it.

In general you want more memorable traps. Like the portal that delivers you in one place and your equipment elsewhere is always fun.

[User3]

Don't forget that Mordenkainen's Disjuction is a CR 10 trap now, though.

[josephbt]

Ever since i read "Cityscape"(It's city outside?), something about the book has been gnawing at me. I couldn't put it right. I knew there was more than 160 pages of crap.

And then, yesterday, will having a beer and describing the book to a friend, i found what was that which bothered me. Actually, my buddy figured it out. Here goes.

There are three metamagic feats in the book. One says that half of your damage dealt is city damage, the other that your spells don't have you as a point of origin and the final one that your spell don't have a visible game effect.
Put them all together, use them all on a single spell, who are you? You're the bloody paradox mage from Mage the Assencion.

Har, har, you're playing a WoD game in DnD, hahahaha. You're not laughing? Me neither.


@Guest with Mord Disj trap
So?

[dbb]

1173937258[/unixtime]]Ever since i read "Cityscape"(It's city outside?), something about the book has been gnawing at me.

"It's Crowded Outside"?

This leaves Dungeonscape somewhat stuck for a name. In the interest of surrealism, however, I suggest "It's Inside Outside".

--d.

[User3]

1173942734[/unixtime]

This leaves Dungeonscape somewhat stuck for a name. In the interest of surrealism, however, I suggest "It's Inside Outside".

--d.

Best name ever!

[Catharz]

"The Town and the City" & "Dungeons & Dungeons"?

[josephbt]

I'm gonna have to go with dbb.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1173937258[/unixtime]] One says that half of your damage dealt is city damage,

Question, what the fvck is city damage? It sounds really stupid.