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PeterWeller posted:It was a demiplane located in, I believe, the Ethereal Plane. Honestly, I think it works quite well combined with the Shadowfell. Both are spooky alternate planes very similar to the PMP where the PCs can find themselves trapped for a time. FRINGE posted:They should have left it as a demiplane. Demiplanes were the easy "hey I have this idea" way to create the Plane of Pizza and have it be "somewhere". (I feel sadly sure someone has made that one at some point. A "demiplane." Some dork committee spent hours detailing the cosmology of the elfsword universe, and they still had stuff they had to create corner cases in order to explain. Shameful. That somebody actually came up with the tagline "The Demiplane of Dread!" tells you a lot about that era of D&D. Splicer posted:Sounds to me like this could be solved by ditching "positive/negative energy" and just having "life/death". It's not like anyone refers to Air as "Gaseous energy" FRINGE posted:The old GR
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victrix posted:It's also why Next's goal of 'all inclusiveness' or 'the feel of D&D' or whatever is... kind of dumb. They should either be aiming to be THE brilliant rpg system to beat, or using their vast resources to figure out what the largest possible audience wants and then aiming directly at that audience, ignoring any internet voices to the contrary. The problem with going for both "the D&D for everyone!" and "the feel of D&D" is that, well, the feel of D&D is going to be different for everyone depending on their favored edition, their preferred playstyle and group. There are people who play D&D as nothing more than a glorified wargame with role-playing encounters as basically cut-scenes in between the action, there are those who play it as deadly as gently caress Fantasy Vietnam dungeon-crawlers, there are those who play it for sandboxing exploration of a living and breathing fantasy world generated with random charts, and there are those who barely even touch their dice during game sessions because they are playing a high-fantasy game of courtly intrigue and political machinations, all of which are perfectly valid playstyles, but a system that tries to support all of these different playstyles is probably going to be an unfocused mess. See 3e which, while seemingly solid on paper, ultimately broke down because it tried to do too many things at the same time and the various components of the system started interacting weirdly. But the thing is, no matter how bad D&D is for a particular type of playstyle, like courtly intrigue, people will still use it for that, because D&D is the most recognized RPG system on the market and the easiest to get players for. D&D has almost always been terrible at rules that go beyond hack and slash and dungeon-exploration, yet people are still going to use it for other purposes. In a way, this I think is one of the reasons why so many people rejected 4e: it dropped the pretense of being Everything: The RPG and focused explicitly on making a great hack and slash game, with a bare-bones system for out-of-combat resolution. It decided to focus on what D&D has always dedicated the most page-space to, only to be rejected by those who missed their horrible rules for courtly intrigue and drama, random wilderness encounters and save vs. death traps. And yeah, even though D&D is pretty much the worst game on the market for anything beyond putting your elfmans against the DM's orcmans in a dungeon, I still hear people pitching D&D campaigns in the vein of "Like Game of Thrones, but using D&D!" and all I want to say is "Um, D&D isn't particularly suited for that kind of a game, I could recommend The Burning Wheel if you want something like that," but I know the recommendations would fall on deaf ears, because D&D has for a long time put on the pretense of being the game to cover any kind of campaign, and people want to hold on to the idea of D&D being good for absolutely everything. victrix posted:Does Insider offer anything like that? A suite of apps for phones and a web front end that enabled face to face gameplay with useful tools built in built on a much higher budget and supported by a professional team seems like it could be wildly popular, given the number of players already using fan made tools to play online. Not exactly the same thing, but when 4e was still coming out WotC was working on a virtual game table for Insider. Sadly, the lead programmer went and did a murder-suicide. It was a really tragic and unforeseen event that no one at WotC could've prepared for, and since pretty much all the work said programmer had done up until that point went to waste in the process, the project was eventually cancelled.
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Jul 3, 2013 15:02
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What gets me is that with this new module setup that was promised, there was no real reason why they couldn't actually straight up make a D&D that could do all that stuff. It would take time, it would need supplements, but they totally could have gone for that. Instead we just sort of got D&D, again, except with worse math.
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Jul 3, 2013 15:11
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Splicer posted:Sounds to me like this could be solved by ditching "positive/negative energy" and just having "life/death". It's not like anyone refers to Air as "Gaseous energy" But is Faerie the realm of Life? I wouldn't have told you anything like that if you asked me. Life isn't the same as dreams and nightmares and glamour and stories, and I don't see who's helped by the vague expectation that, in the feywild, things have lots of hit points or healing spells work better or whatever the hell. Fundamentally it undercuts the fae when they're not an end unto themselves, but rather an expression at one remove of, when you get right down to it, a damage type. It's pointlessly mechanistic and limiting.
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Jul 3, 2013 15:31
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Rulebook Heavily posted:What gets me is that with this new module setup that was promised, there was no real reason why they couldn't actually straight up make a D&D that could do all that stuff. It would take time, it would need supplements, but they totally could have gone for that. Pretty much. Supposedly, the playtest thus far has been about testing the core. Well, looking at the playtest documents, Next already has one hell of an unfocused core system. There's very little that modules can do to fix that, unless the idea is for modules to present post-facto math-fixes to the core system. But again, the fault lies in the fact that the "feel" of D&D and the "core D&D experience" have gotten so out of hand that the designers must be under a whole lot of pressure to cram in everything possible into the core so as not to leave anything out. Unfortunately one of the adverse effects is that none of the parts are considered with enough attention to detail, so instead of getting a good system for courtly intrigue you get "There's a Diplomacy skill and I guess a skill for recognizing heraldry and poo poo, roll some dice and the DM will make up a DC after you've rolled."
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Jul 3, 2013 15:32
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It seems like they are primarily using modules as a way to defect criticism more than anything. I feel like it only comes up from the devs when they are responding to something (eg. grid based combat, non Divine healing). There's no thought around a streamlined base you can plug stiff into, rather, what they want in their version of D&D is core, everything else is a module that will be released at some nebulous time in the future.
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Jul 3, 2013 17:07
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Ratpick posted:Not exactly the same thing, but when 4e was still coming out WotC was working on a virtual game table for Insider. Sadly, the lead programmer went and did a murder-suicide. Here's the story, It's really tragic. Namagem fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 17:18
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Nihnoz posted:I hate this because, why would you ever be anything else. Because you could be Wūlfgar, a half-werewolf werewolf shaman/druid with a wolf companion who summons wolves and has a ghost wolf that shoots tiny wolves out of its mouth.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:29
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Because you could be Wūlfgar, a half-werewolf werewolf shaman/druid with a wolf companion who summons wolves and has a ghost wolf that shoots tiny wolves out of its mouth. Help me out here and break that one down. Longtooth shifter shaman/druid, wolf spirit companion, wolf summon spells. Okay. But that leaves out a wolf companion, the tiny wolf shooting, and a whole extra werewolf line.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:32
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:Because you could be Wūlfgar, a half-werewolf werewolf shaman/druid with a wolf companion who summons wolves and has a ghost wolf that shoots tiny wolves out of its mouth. Gotta make sure he was raised by a surly dwarf who gave him a sweet magic hammer as a coming of age gift.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:35
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theironjef posted:and a whole extra werewolf line. Werewolf theme.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:36
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theironjef posted:Help me out here and break that one down. Longtooth shifter shaman/druid, wolf spirit companion, wolf summon spells. Okay. But that leaves out a wolf companion, the tiny wolf shooting, and a whole extra werewolf line. Possibly Fey Beast Tamer, though a sentinel druid with the werewolf theme can use beast form druid powers when in werewolf form, including swarm attacks?
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Jul 3, 2013 22:47
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theironjef posted:Help me out here and break that one down. Longtooth shifter shaman/druid, wolf spirit companion, wolf summon spells. Okay. But that leaves out a wolf companion, the tiny wolf shooting, and a whole extra werewolf line. Longtooth shifter sentential druid (choose Spring to receive a wolf)/animal companion ranger (a wolf of course) multiclass shaman (summoning a spirit wolf) with the werewolf theme and either Swarming Locusts as an at-will or a power swap for Haunting Spirits refluffed to be small wolves rather than small insects, and a daily swap to get Summon Nature's Ally. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 22:47
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Spoilers Below posted:a power swap for Haunting Spirits refluffed to be small wolves rather than small insects. I was thinking Twin Panthers refluffed as wolves.
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Jul 3, 2013 22:49
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The best 4e build is "Bear bear bear with bear and bear".AlphaDog posted:I will support any system that allows the Elemental Plane Of <arbitrary thing>. An alternate universe... with nothing but shrimp !!
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Jul 3, 2013 23:00
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Mikan posted:The mechanics of the Vampire class were awful, but the way 4e handled the concept was great. You could decide exactly how important Vampire was to your character concept, either as a feat or a multiclass or a race or the full class. You could be a Dwarf Fighter who happened to be a vampire, a Vampire Wizard or an Elven Vampire and hypothetically be on par with the rest of the party. I liked that. The vampire was a sub-par striker, but I was actually impressed with the mechanics behind the healing surge system, aside from a few problems. Having a fixed number of healing surges but being able to generate surges by attacking, full heal whenever you had more than your full surge total, regenerate while bloodied and heal your bloodied HP total by poaching from an ally creates a unique and interesting dynamic. The problem was that the vampire also required surges to activate other abilities, but didn't get multiple uses of Blood Drinker until higher levels. Since you needed n/n surges +1 to full heal, then using blood drinker to get one surge before spending one surge on your abilities put you up the creek if you took damage, because then you'd need to spend surges to regain HP, putting you in the situation of either conserving surges to heal or being able to use your abilities. I really did like the fact that you could regain your bloodied value from a single allied surge (basically doubling the amount of healing you could normally get) because without any morality bar or anything big like that, a vampire player will always have the lingering thought of "my companions are really delicious" and "just a little bit won't hurt anyone." The vampire did need to be immune to surge loss from enemy attacks and other means because it screwed with the system, and it certainly needed to step up its game as a striker or embrace its inner controller. Replacing Hidden Might with a class feature that made Blood Drinker throw on a bunch of riders that would slow, immobilize, daze, weaken or stun foes as the vampire leveled and maybe gave its at-will attacks some extra control effects, and then replace Swarm of Shadows, Feral Assault, and Unfettered Hunger with some actual controller powers, and you have some a solid class. Replacing Hidden Might with a feature that boosted its HP, defenses and surge total plus handing out a defender aura and retaliation ability, and then letting it pick from from some more defense/single-target wrecking abilities and you can have a serviceable defender.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:22
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AlphaDog posted:I will support any system that allows the Elemental Plane Of <arbitrary thing>. The semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing. "Maybe we shall never mention it again". quote:What gets me is that with this new module setup that was promised, there was no real reason why they couldn't actually straight up make a D&D that could do all that stuff. It would take time, it would need supplements, but they totally could have gone for that. Has there been any concrete material on modules released? Or is it just that they'll 'do it soon' like a recalcitrant pre-schooler?
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Jul 3, 2013 23:33
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theironjef posted:Help me out here and break that one down. Longtooth shifter shaman/druid, wolf spirit companion, wolf summon spells. Okay. But that leaves out a wolf companion, the tiny wolf shooting, and a whole extra werewolf line. Hybrid Durid (Sentinel) gets you a wolf animal companion, hybrid Shaman gets you a spirit wolf companion on top of that, the Pack Outcast theme lets you turn into a wolf as a minor action, take Summon Natural Ally to summon a wolf, be a shifter (obvious), and Spirit Lance (Shaman Encounter 17) lets your spirit animal make a ranged attack. Then get a Direwolf as a mount, because gently caress, might as well hammer that one note as hard as you can, and be a werewolf-wolf riding a wolf flanked by wolves who summons wolves. And then the 3e Druid wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Jul 3, 2013 |
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Jul 3, 2013 23:40
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I think a couple of modules have been posited, mostly to stop people loving whining about not wanting martial healing (it hasn't, of course, worked), but nothing's materialised about how they're going to be integrated, or when they're going to be written.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:40
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LightWarden posted:The vampire was a sub-par striker, but I was actually impressed with the mechanics behind the healing surge system, aside from a few problems. Oh yeah, it was a very cool minigame for the Vampire class and I kind of wish every class (or more of them, at least) had something like that to play around with. It was unique.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:47
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Remember, they've promised us a "tactical combat module" complete with facing rules, so there's that to look forward to.
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Jul 3, 2013 23:50
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Kai Tave posted:Remember, they've promised us a "tactical combat module" complete with facing rules, so there's that to look forward to.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:05
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Kai Tave posted:Remember, they've promised us a "tactical combat module" complete with facing rules, so there's that to look forward to. This needs to be played with TOTM by the way. I need to see how you implement something as fiddly as facing and try to run that.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:09
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Mikan posted:Oh yeah, it was a very cool minigame for the Vampire class and I kind of wish every class (or more of them, at least) had something like that to play around with. It was unique. It still amuses me that when people asked for 4E style tactical combat, the first thing that came to Mearls' mind was facing. I mean, dude has worked on 4E before, what the hell man?
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Jul 4, 2013 00:30
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goldjas posted:It still amuses me that when people asked for 4E style tactical combat, the first thing that came to Mearls' mind was facing. I mean, dude has worked on 4E before, what the hell man? Not only that, but he was the lead on it for how long? I think more likely, he said that as a way to get people more in tune with 2e and prior to feel nostalgic about the tactical combat in that (which did include facing). I just hope they don't say "Here's tactical combat! Facing, Penalties for shooting into melee (including the chance of hitting your ally), and wait till you get to the Grappling rules! They're 5 pages long!"
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Jul 4, 2013 00:38
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Remember that Mearls also posted to Twitter that Next is full of 4E influence and he doesn't understand why people are saying they think that 4E is being given short shrift. At this point I genuinely can't tell whether he just doesn't get/understand 4E and the people who enjoy it or if he's just hoping that if he repeats it often enough that it'll be accepted as the truth.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:41
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Namagem posted:Not only that, but he was the lead on it for how long? What's bad about 5 pages of grapple rules? Since everyone other mechanic, gets, like, a sentence, that should be enough to have a full tactical grappling combat game, maybe even with subversive homoerotic undertones.
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Jul 4, 2013 00:44
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goldjas posted:facing. The only explanation of the need for facing that I have read was "If you don't know a creatures facing how can you tell whether a rogue/thief can sneak past it/use stealth abilities against it?" Mind you this was a random person on a blog, not a member of the Next design team.
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Jul 4, 2013 01:34
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kingcom posted:This needs to be played with TOTM by the way. I need to see how you implement something as fiddly as facing and try to run that.  : Sir Steiner Axeman moves to hexgrid 4853, rotates his torso to face Goblin #3, swings his weapon- : I'm sorry but Goblin #3 is in hexgrid 4823 out of your range, you miss. Mark up two body-heat points for that attack.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:09
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moths posted:
I would play this game if twisting your torso was a thing. It would count as a minor action.  EDIT: Also have a twisting torso phase.
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Jul 4, 2013 05:00
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I'm not usually one for "Argument from authority," but I was rereading the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and drat if there isn't the best little bit that's oddly prescient regarding many of the design issues the Next developers seem to be bumping into: gently caress Game-as-Limitless-Physics-Engine-That-Can-Model-Any-Situation.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:34
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LightWarden posted:The vampire was a sub-par striker, but I was actually impressed with the mechanics behind the healing surge system, aside from a few problems. Having a fixed number of healing surges but being able to generate surges by attacking, full heal whenever you had more than your full surge total, regenerate while bloodied and heal your bloodied HP total by poaching from an ally creates a unique and interesting dynamic. The problem was that the vampire also required surges to activate other abilities, but didn't get multiple uses of Blood Drinker until higher levels. Since you needed n/n surges +1 to full heal, then using blood drinker to get one surge before spending one surge on your abilities put you up the creek if you took damage, because then you'd need to spend surges to regain HP, putting you in the situation of either conserving surges to heal or being able to use your abilities. I really did like the fact that you could regain your bloodied value from a single allied surge (basically doubling the amount of healing you could normally get) because without any morality bar or anything big like that, a vampire player will always have the lingering thought of "my companions are really delicious" and "just a little bit won't hurt anyone." At first the vampire seemed disappointing to me and CharOp didn't seem to like it either. I was mostly disappointed with the Essentials level of options. But my girlfriend loves vampires so she really wanted to give it a go. She makes the vamp work pretty well and a paragon vampire is actually pretty good. Sure it's not the best striker, but the shadow/shroud assassin isn't either. She can make them both work really well. When she burns surges for all the extra damage, rolls all these extra dice and that always makes me say "I'm sorry, how much damage?" Heroes of Shadow was mostly disappointing on the classes side for me. The races I generally liked and the best part is the flavor/fluff.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:56
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kingcom posted:I would play this game if twisting your torso was a thing. It would count as a minor action. So long as it's a MechWarrior style torso twist, so you can face one direction as you walk off in a separate one.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:57
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Spoilers Below posted:I'm not usually one for "Argument from authority," but I was rereading the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and drat if there isn't the best little bit that's oddly prescient regarding many of the design issues the Next developers seem to be bumping into: The game as physics engine thing is a really, really bizarre 3e-ism that, due to the history of 2e, has become ingrained as "the way it always was."
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Jul 4, 2013 06:58
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ProfessorCirno posted:The game as physics engine thing is a really, really bizarre 3e-ism that, due to the history of 2e, has become ingrained as "the way it always was."
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Jul 4, 2013 07:07
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Spoilers Below posted:I'm not usually one for "Argument from authority," but I was rereading the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide, and drat if there isn't the best little bit that's oddly prescient regarding many of the design issues the Next developers seem to be bumping into: What Gary cleary intended was something something, gamist bullshit, something something, storygames. ProfessorCirno posted:The game as physics engine thing is a really, really bizarre 3e-ism that, due to the history of 2e, has become ingrained as "the way it always was." Well, let's see about "physics engine as a 3e-ism" (and also, as a bonus, about RPGs-as-stories and RPGs-as-games)...  Oh. And while we're at it, what about Theater Of The Miiiiiiiiind?  Welp. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 07:07
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Ehhhhh. While the 3e book never outright says it (and yeah, I'm pretty sure EVERY D&D book lists it as a storytelling game, and like 90% of ALL ttgs do the same at that), there's been snippets from other developers and such that that using the rules to enforce the rules of the setting was an intended part of 3e.
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Jul 4, 2013 07:24
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http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/DnDPodcast_20130705.mp3 Holy poo poo, not only did he run the module basically cold with half an hour of reading in advance, he also hosed about with it in the process. Jesus gently caress do these people have any clue about marketing at ALL?
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Jul 5, 2013 10:32
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isndl posted:So long as it's a MechWarrior style torso twist, so you can face one direction as you walk off in a separate one. Cúchulainn posted:His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front.
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Jul 5, 2013 11:07
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ProfessorCirno posted:Ehhhhh. I don't actually disagree with you, but it's hard not to go by what's actually written in the books, otherwise you end up with "You don't actually need to do <thing from book>, it's only <edition I don't like> that you actually need to do that in" or Pundit-esque "this game I don't like falls into this category I don't like, regardless of what the designers and players say". thespaceinvader posted:http://media.wizards.com/podcasts/DnDPodcast_20130705.mp3 He's been playing D&D since 1981. I mean, the dude's got like, 7 whole years on me, not to mention he's the lead designer for D&D Next. Of course he can run a D&D module with no prep and put his own stuff in and it will be perfect. That's like, his job, man. It's even a system he designed himself so that's like, at least 4d20 times easier. Plus five. With Advantage. You wouldn't want some marketing suit making the session feel all artificial and fake now, would you?
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Jul 5, 2013 11:10
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