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Rosalind
Apr 30, 2013

When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.

Jack the Lad posted:

Oh. Not really too much crazy OP stuff you can do at level 1, or any interesting enemies even. Unless you're going to go to multiple sessions and level up probably don't bother.

That said, I'd go High Elf Wizard with Burning Hands, Mage Armor, Shield, Find Familiar, Silent Image, Detect Magic.

Statswise go 15/14/14/12/8/8 Int/Dex/Con/Wis/Str/Cha so you end up 16/16 Int/Dex after racials.

Use a longbow instead of cantrips to plink when you need to - it's 1d8+3 vs 1d10 and works out significantly better until you're doing 2d10 with Fire Bolt.

Cast Find Familiar (as a ritual, getting an owl) and Mage Armor in the morning and then Burning Hands when you can catch 3+ guys.

Thanks! Part of me hates myself for playing a wizard in this edition, but this seems like it'll be fun. Building it right now. I'll post the finished character sheet when I'm finished.

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Jack the Lad
Jan 20, 2009

Feed the Pubs

Sage Genesis posted:

Hey, you can have both. Army of skellies 24/7 and one single Concentration spell to unleash 24 Sleeps, 24 Polymorphs, and 24 Confusions if necessary. But man oh man, look at the Fighter. By the time you get to pull this off he's attacking three times per round. Yeah, don't you feel jealous now, Mr Wizard?

Oh wow yeah I didn't even think of that. 24 Pixies have a 72% chance to generate 3 successful Polymorphs against an Adult Red Dragon, which is enough to blow through its legendary saves. You then begin casting your own save-or-lose spells at DC19 and follow up with the barrage of Confusions.

I honestly think Bard may be a better caster than Wizard purely for the ability to poach stuff like this and Contagion. It also gets big skill bonuses so you can outdo everyone else even when you're not casting, and 2 attacks which along with spells allows you to be pretty darned competitive in melee.

Rosalind posted:

Thanks! Part of me hates myself for playing a wizard in this edition, but this seems like it'll be fun. Building it right now. I'll post the finished character sheet when I'm finished.

Don't hate yourself - it's pretty clear that the designers intended people to be playing them!

Jack the Lad fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Aug 20, 2014

Sade
Aug 3, 2009

Can't touch this.
No really, you can't

Ruckby posted:

Look, the PHB has been out for multiple days now, so clearly everybody commenting has enough experience using at the table to know just how hosed Wizard's of the Crap's newest grod-tard wizard blowjob simulator is. The underlying math is just broken. Compare the equations for wizards and fighters, it couldn't be more obvious. God I miss 4e.

Even if you're not being 100% serious, aren't we hewing just a hair close to grogginess, ourselves, here? Wizards of the Crap?

Sage Genesis
Aug 14, 2014
OG Murderhobo

Jack the Lad posted:

Oh wow yeah I didn't even think of that. 24 Pixies have a 72% chance to generate 3 successful Polymorphs against an Adult Red Dragon, which is enough to blow through its legendary saves. You then begin casting your own save-or-lose spells at DC19 and follow up with the barrage of Confusions.

The Pixie Armada is supreme.

But yeah a Bard would be better at this. The Pixie Armada requires you to cast a Druid spell, whereas Animate Dead isn't.

Toph Bei Fong
Feb 29, 2008



Effectronica posted:


All we can do is speculate, but there are basically two camps. One says that Hasbro, and WOTC leadership, don't give a poo poo about D&D so long as they can still sell novels and potentially license videogames, and that Mike Mearls has taken advantage of this to make the D&D he wants. The other camp says that the people leading D&D, whether that's Mearls or someone above him in WOTC, are convinced that the current market is the biggest it will ever be, and so they're trying to claw away Pathfinder people by providing an "improved Pathfinder" and assuming that everyone who played 4e will come along out of brand loyalty.


Cynicism ahead!

There is a gigantic myth out there, in American culture especially, that there are Experts at the Helm and that the products we purchase are being produced by the Best and Brightest. We want to believe this because it is what the American Dream is built upon, that hard work and perseverance is what leads to success, and that thanks to this style of competition what is available to purchase is of the highest quality, is rigorously tested, and is free of defect. The People at the Top must be there for a reason.

This is, of course, complete nonsense. It has never been true. It will never be true.

The world of big business has always worked on the whim of public opinion, and success in business has far more to do with being in the right place at the right time than anyone would ever like to admit, least of all those who are successful and would like to sell you their book about how to succeed in business. And once someone has attained a certain position of power within an organization, they can be nearly impossible to dislodge, regardless of whether their continued employment is helping or harming the company. Money is the only thing that matters, not product, not customer happiness, not quality, not even sales. If the black is high enough and the stock went up this quarter (regardless of whether or not it will have any affect on the following quarters), no one cares how you did it, what kind of person you are, or what kind of office culture you have. There is no oversight, no magical Corporate Police to keep people in line, and almost no consequences to any of your behavior if you keep it behind closed doors, off camera, and don't post about it on the internet in the wrong places.

One of the examples I love to use for this is Lisa Frank, best known for the stickers and notebooks we probably remember from high school, or remember older siblings carrying. An open secret is that Lisa Frank herself is an appalling monster of a person, an emotionally manipulative rear end who would regularly threaten her employees lives before turning over the day to day running of the business to her husband, who would in turn show up to the office coked up and would toss furniture while screaming at people. The weekly work newsletter featured columns reminding employees not to waste the boss's time, keep their interactions concise, and remember that they were being watched. Horror stories about the work culture can be found all over the internet. And yet it is only years and years later that the company has begun to lose money, basically because ironic nostalgia has begun to run out as a fad. You can read more about this here: http://jezebel.com/inside-the-rainbow-gulag-the-technicolor-rise-and-fall-1179495705

So trust me when I say that Hasbro does not care, at all, about Mike Mearls running through consultants left and right, firing a ton of the staff around Christmas, and eating string cheese in the middle of a long interview wherein he has to help the Fast Company interviewer play D&D with his niece (she wants to play an interesting character far off the standard Tolkien mold, and the interviewer is at a loss because he apparently needs written rules and explicit permission to make things up to keep his niece happy).*

You want the "problems" with 5e and D&D culture in a nutshell, it's all right there:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3034062/designing-the-new-dungeons-dragons posted:

Apparently she wants to be a Rakshasa, a mythological creature that can turn into a leopard (and not a sanctioned D&D character) and a hippogryph, too. Because apparently there’s some new series of YA books where turning into an ancient, highly specific Hindu spirit is possible. And it annoys me she won’t just play with the precanned Wizard character, but I appreciate her zeal and her early insistence to be her own person. And whatever she's reading about Rakshasas must be better than that vampire-crush fiction, at least.

[...]

She senses the chink in my armor, my panic growing, my grasp of logic failing, my lawfulness diminishing, her opportunity for becoming a game-breaking goddess who can question every foundational bit of D&D logic increasing to mythic proportions.

Was my niece's request reasonable? Of course, we were just playing a game! But was that game still D&D? That I didn't know.


The new generation isn't interested in "the classic stuff." (Note the tone of dismissiveness and derision about his niece's reading habits?) They don't want to earn their fun. They want to do their own thing and start enjoying themselves, because that's what leisure activities are for. I can think of a number of systems wherein her character could be generated in minutes. None of them, unfortunately, were Official D&D. All of those editions would require a lot of book digging. Or, you could just re-fluff, but as that is the devil's word, we dare not speak it out loud. If you want to stick with "proper D&D", 4th Edition learned that role playing stuff like "Can shapeshift into a leopard" actually isn't that big a deal, and doesn't really need much mechanical support, and thus had a class (Druid) and theme (Tuathan) that could do it at will. But that edition never happened.

quote:

My niece and I never got around to playing that game. (All wasn’t lost, dear reader, we went to the movies instead!) In retrospect, it’s partly my fault for being wound so tight, and partly the Starter Set's fault for not saying more overtly, “Go ahead, make it up! Because unless you download 110 pages of additional rules, and maybe half a dozen more books, you’ll probably need to.”

But with the rare opportunity of talking to the man who literally wrote the book on D&D, I asked Mearls what he would have done in my situation. Would he have let his niece bend the rules and be a Rakshaka?

He laughs. “I probably would have. My first daughter is due in November. I’m sure I’ll say, 'You can have a unicorn, a magic sword, whatever you want!'”

Which is not quite the answer of a man who wants to sell books. It's a guy selling a a cultural identity. If you have archives, go read Alien Rope Burn's FATAL & Friends review of Pathfinder, because they were doing the exact same thing back then, selling a myth, rather than a rules set. They aren't selling you a game anymore. They're selling whatever they can because the machine is running down and unlike other nerd hobbies that have movies, TV shows, or expensive expansion sets to make bank off of, RPGs are a diluted and overwashed breed that require significant investment (both time and financial) before you even begin play, have limited financial potential for the company as a whole, and don't wear out that way that CCG blocks, comic book story arcs, and TV show seasons do. So of course Mike wants to be your friend. He's the guy who said it's okay to Use Your Imagination! He's okay with you playing a gay character! He likes that one popular blogger you like! He reads the same forum you do! He's all things to all people! Just buy the new D&D books, too! Stop using the old ones.

This is not to say Mearls is some sort of mastermind or puppetmaster who figured out the One Simple Trick to Win Over Gamers, anymore than the Pathfinder guys did a few years back. He just looked at their playbook and used what worked. He saw a bunch of niches that were being filled by other people, and has been trying to cram his way into them using the biggest name in all of role playing to do so. And based on name recognition alone, he'll probably manage to make a lot of money doing so. It has nothing to do with quality of product. It has nothing to do with timing. It has everything to do with name recognition, and a few well placed nods in the right directions to a few taste-makers in the industry who need their egos stroked so they don't piss all over the project. The development team is small, so the budget isn't huge in Hasbro terms, so this is probably a project that will end up in the black, especially if they get a DDI style monthly subscription going.

But they won't make the kind of money or hit the sales figures that T$R was making in the 80s. To do that, you'd need to uncouple a lot of the core assumptions of the game from it's history and rebuild them with the new fantasy tropes and archetypes. I'd bet a fair amount that few people under the age of 18 read Jack Vance anymore. A friend of mine is running a hacked version of Pathfinder staring feminist Disney princesses for her daughter and her friends. I find myself linking to Dark Dungeons more and more on Facebook when discussions of 5e come up because why should people bother paying for something they could have for free?

Because that's D&Ds competition now. Not Rolemaster or Runequest or GURPS or some other fantasy RPG you've got to mail order or get from the game shop, but full books that you can download for free in seconds, and maybe toss the creator a few bucks for a real paper copy if you thought they did an awesome job. If Official WotC D&D stopped publication right now forever, RPGs as a whole wouldn't stop. There are enough fantasy knock offs, and enough previous edition books in the wild and scanned onto the internet to fuel the next couple hundred years.

All Mearls has left is to try and turn himself into all things for all people, everything for everyone, and hope that it sticks.

Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Aug 20, 2014

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Jack the Lad posted:

Oh wow yeah I didn't even think of that. 24 Pixies have a 72% chance to generate 3 successful Polymorphs against an Adult Red Dragon, which is enough to blow through its legendary saves. You then begin casting your own save-or-lose spells at DC19 and follow up with the barrage of Confusions.

But if I was writing the rules, this wouldn't have happened, therefore it's fine.

e: Seriously though, that's some Harry Dresden poo poo right there. Which is to say it's awesome.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Aug 20, 2014

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

Jack the Lad posted:

Oh wow yeah I didn't even think of that. 24 Pixies have a 72% chance to generate 3 successful Polymorphs against an Adult Red Dragon, which is enough to blow through its legendary saves. You then begin casting your own save-or-lose spells at DC19 and follow up with the barrage of Confusions.

What is the Odds when you apply the disease (from the same spell we use to stunlock) that applies disadvantage to wisdom saves

Generic Octopus
Mar 27, 2010
Is there a way for a Monk to apply disadvantage to things for his Quivering Palm?

Jack the Lad
Jan 20, 2009

Feed the Pubs

Stormgale posted:

What is the Odds when you apply the disease (from the same spell we use to stunlock) that applies disadvantage to wisdom saves

97.9% of 3 successful Polymorphs.

93.2% of 4 successful Polymorphs.

But you have to hit with an attack first to apply the disadvantage to Wisdom saves so it may not work out that good.

A Catastrophe
Jun 26, 2014

Stormgale posted:

Ok why Do I have to provide something better? Lord knows D&D can't emulate anything I described above or when it does (4e) it does so in a clunky way (Again not saying D&D 4e is bad I like it but you have to either start at an incredibly high tier to play a mythical hero).
Firstly, it's easy to talk about not-what you want, harder and more useful to talk about what you do want.

Second, there's heaps of things dnd does. Mainly, it does fights. Not dungeon crawling, not murderhobos or some other played out label. It's probably closer to what you're after than a great deal of games. But it's unclear what that is, without statements about what you're after, as opposed to what you're not after.

Case in point your view of when 4e is 'most' like a mythical heroes game. I'd say it's least like that at high levels, because it's weighed down with the most poo poo then. If anything were I running a mythic heroes dnd game, i'd reskin 1st level. Sure, epic destinies offer some small 'mythic' features, but not that much, and you could probably graft that onto heroic tier play anyway.

Already, our views on what the issues is seem to differ, usefully, but we get there by talking about what we're after, as opposed to what we're not after. I think you post more later on and then the forum went down but this is my point regardless.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Jack the Lad posted:

Oh wow yeah I didn't even think of that. 24 Pixies have a 72% chance to generate 3 successful Polymorphs against an Adult Red Dragon, which is enough to blow through its legendary saves. You then begin casting your own save-or-lose spells at DC19 and follow up with the barrage of Confusions.

I honestly think Bard may be a better caster than Wizard purely for the ability to poach stuff like this and Contagion. It also gets big skill bonuses so you can outdo everyone else even when you're not casting, and 2 attacks which along with spells allows you to be pretty darned competitive in melee.
Yep, pixies and skellies everywhere.

And Bard is hands down the most powerful class now, in an interesting inversion.

A Catastrophe
Jun 26, 2014

seebs posted:

Observation:
Everyone I have talked to who has actually played the game and tried martials has been happy with how they work out in play. And what I've heard so far is that DM prep is pretty tolerable. Maybe not quite as thoroughly streamlined as 4e, but a heck of a lot better than 3e.
How many of those people actually played martials in 4e, and are actually going to play them, a lot, in 5e?

And yes i'm sure you'll say 'a million of them' but we're all got our anecdotes. It doesn't change what's right there on the page.

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

A Catastrophe posted:

Firstly, it's easy to talk about not-what you want, harder and more useful to talk about what you do want.

Second, there's heaps of things dnd does. Mainly, it does fights. Not dungeon crawling, not murderhobos or some other played out label. It's probably closer to what you're after than a great deal of games. But it's unclear what that is, without statements about what you're after, as opposed to what you're not after.

Case in point your view of when 4e is 'most' like a mythical heroes game. I'd say it's least like that at high levels, because it's weighed down with the most poo poo then. If anything were I running a mythic heroes dnd game, i'd reskin 1st level. Sure, epic destinies offer some small 'mythic' features, but not that much, and you could probably graft that onto heroic tier play anyway.

Already, our views on what the issues is seem to differ, usefully, but we get there by talking about what we're after, as opposed to what we're not after. I think you post more later on and then the forum went down but this is my point regardless.

High level is the only point D&D breaks from close up tactical combat, its the only time anything approaching stealing concepts or running up starlight comes into play simply as things people can do because they are that good, playing a character who steals the will to fight from their enemies or can walk to any place in the land in a days pace.

From a combat perspective sure you can run low level reskinned and make Lu Bu, Guan Yu, have powerful combatants fighting but the skill system and every mechanic is based around mundane solutions, about doing simple things and interacting in that space rather than doing grand gestures.

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

Long ago, Jim Holloway depicted the true might of skeletons and predicted that their awesome power would foil many an adversary.

http://bit.ly/1thqiwB

opulent fountain
Aug 13, 2007

LuiCypher posted:

Long ago, Jim Holloway depicted the true might of skeletons and predicted that their awesome power would foil many an adversary.

http://bit.ly/1thqiwB

Why isn't the blacksmith with the sweet hammer wrecking that skeleton's face?

MadScientistWorking
Jun 23, 2010

"I was going through a time period where I was looking up weird stories involving necrophilia..."

Spoilers Below posted:

The new generation isn't interested in "the classic stuff." (Note the tone of dismissiveness and derision about his niece's reading habits?) They don't want to earn their fun. They want to do their own thing and start enjoying themselves, because that's what leisure activities are for. I can think of a number of systems wherein her character could be generated in minutes. None of them, unfortunately, were Official D&D. All of those editions would require a lot of book digging. Or, you could just re-fluff, but as that is the devil's word, we dare not speak it out loud. If you want to stick with "proper D&D", 4th Edition learned that role playing stuff like "Can shapeshift into a leopard" actually isn't that big a deal, and doesn't really need much mechanical support, and thus had a class (Druid) and theme (Tuathan) that could do it at will. But that edition never happened.
Its not even the new generation people. Anyone whose never really read "the classics" will express a greater birth of imagination than most D&D players.

SageNytell
Sep 28, 2008

<REDACT> THIS!

Spoilers Below posted:

Cynicism ahead!

:golfclap:
I really am digging the fact that this essay came from someone who goes by 'Spoilers Below', really adds to the surreal quality.
That was well-reasoned and well researched. I liked the Lisa Frank comparison, not least for the similar timeframe for the two companies. I think you've really hit the nail on the head - for a lot of gamers, including myself, the well's simply dried up when it comes to D&D. We've got other systems and other styles of play, and it's just not worth it to go back to something for the sake of nostalgia.

Thanks dude, this was a cool read.

opulent fountain
Aug 13, 2007

edit: I removed my dumb joke because I highly enjoyed reading that post

opulent fountain fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Aug 20, 2014

A Catastrophe
Jun 26, 2014
Despite the variety of games on offer, i'd say 5e's best bet financially is still just that a bunch of people will buy a new edition of dnd, and that will probably be what makes this a success. I agree that this is pretty much as far as machiavellian mike mearls goes- make a new edition, sell a new edition.

It's also fair to say that 5e will be easier to work on than 4e, much as 3e, and 3e 3pp was.

Stormgale posted:

High level is the only point D&D breaks from close up tactical combat, its the only time anything approaching stealing concepts or running up starlight comes into play simply as things people can do because they are that good, playing a character who steals the will to fight from their enemies or can walk to any place in the land in a days pace.
The former is purely a matter of framing, the latter is almost entirely in the epic destinies.

quote:

From a combat perspective sure you can run low level reskinned and make Lu Bu, Guan Yu, have powerful combatants fighting but the skill system and every mechanic is based around mundane solutions, about doing simple things and interacting in that space rather than doing grand gestures.
I'd consider those more paragon heroes then epic tier ones, but either way i think they could be modeled ok in 4e. As for skills, i admit I don't think of their practical ro default usage much at all, and recently i've taken to ignoring them completely, at least for a while.

A Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Aug 20, 2014

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

A Catastrophe posted:

The former is purely a matter of framing, the latter is almost entirely in the epic destinies.
I'd consider those more paragon heroes then epic tier ones, but either way i think they could be modeled ok in 4e. As for skills, i admit I don't think of their practical ro default usage much at all, and recently i've taken to ignoring them completely, at least for a while.

I'm just gonna frame this and say this is the exact same logic we are mocking in the people defending 5e, here's a spoiler: D&D 4e is still a good game but bad at by default simulating the sort of heroes of myth and legend.

As for some 5e related stuff, is this even legal yet without an OGL for 5e: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/necromancergames/necromancer-games-back-for-5th-edition?ref=category

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
It's not, though. High-level 4e guys are legitimately legendarily powerful. There's a lot of bookkeeping involved, but "slow" isn't the same thing as "ineffectual".

Just straight up giving people epic destinies at level 1 is a really cute idea. Heck, you could have a super compressed 10-level 4e, where it's like:

Level 1: Heroic
Level 2: Paragon Path level 11 features
Level 3: Paragon Path level 11 power
Level 4: Paragon Path level 12 power
Level 5: Paragon Path level 16 features
Level 6: Paragon Path level 20 power
Level 7: Epic Destiny level 21 features
Level 8: Epic Destiny level 24 features
Level 9: Epic Destiny level 26 power
Level 10: Epic Destiny level 30 power

Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Aug 20, 2014

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Stormgale posted:

I'm just gonna frame this and say this is the exact same logic we are mocking in the people defending 5e, here's a spoiler: D&D 4e is still a good game but bad at by default simulating the sort of heroes of myth and legend.

As for some 5e related stuff, is this even legal yet without an OGL for 5e: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/necromancergames/necromancer-games-back-for-5th-edition?ref=category
There's always been a grey area around making supplements for other peoples' games. It's probably legal so long as you don't reprint content from the 5e books verbatim or use any 5e trade dress or trademarks. So they'll likely just say "compatible with the 5th edition of the legendary best-selling fantasy roleplaying game" on the cover. Plus the similarity of 5E to 3E means you can pretty easily retro-clone 5E material from the D20 OGL/SRD.

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

Ferrinus posted:

It's not, though. High-level 4e guys are legitimately legendarily powerful. There's a lot of bookkeeping involved, but "slow" isn't the same thing as "ineffectual".

Just straight up giving people epic destinies at level 1 is a really cute idea.

Yeah but if I want to play legendary heroes I don't want that at level 21 2/3rds through the game, just as I wouldn't want that power limited to wizards in 5e.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Stormgale posted:

Yeah but if I want to play legendary heroes I don't want that at level 21 2/3rds through the game, just as I wouldn't want that power limited to wizards in 5e.

...which is why, if you don't want to bother with house rules or anything, you start the game at level 21. Like I already said.

Fresh level 21 characters are probably easier to deal with than built-from-scratch level 21 characters because they'll have fewer items.

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

Ferrinus posted:

...which is why, if you don't want to bother with house rules or anything, you start the game at level 21. Like I already said.

Fresh level 21 characters are probably easier to deal with than built-from-scratch level 21 characters because they'll have fewer items.

Why should I buy a system where I'm ignoring 2/3rds of it's content? ((less because of the way powers work but still))

Seriously I've had to build level 21 characters, it's a slog, it's boring and I mostly had to make characters for other people because they didn't want to deal with it

Nihilarian
Oct 2, 2013


Ferrinus posted:

It's not, though. High-level 4e guys are legitimately legendarily powerful. There's a lot of bookkeeping involved, but "slow" isn't the same thing as "ineffectual".

Just straight up giving people epic destinies at level 1 is a really cute idea. Heck, you could have a super compressed 10-level 4e, where it's like:

Level 1: Heroic
Level 2: Paragon Path level 11 features
Level 3: Paragon Path level 11 power
Level 4: Paragon Path level 12 power
Level 5: Paragon Path level 16 features
Level 6: Paragon Path level 20 power
Level 7: Epic Destiny level 21 features
Level 8: Epic Destiny level 24 features
Level 9: Epic Destiny level 26 power
Level 10: Epic Destiny level 30 power
That could probably be pretty fun, though you'd have to rework encounters a bit.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Well, my recommendation for 4e in general is to literally delete feats and items. That makes chargen pretty easy.

It's not really ignoring 2/3rds of 4e's content to play a level 21->30 game, any more than you're ignoring 5/6ths of 4e's content if you run a short 1-5 game over a couple months. Like, actually playing from level 1 to 30 is cool but represents an enormous investment and is absolutely, manifestly not about being a mythic hero - it's about becoming a mythic hero, from scratch. The draw of 4e isn't the ability to level up, though, it's the tactical combat, which you'll be doing at every level. If you wanted a game about courtly intrigue and I recommended you 4e, then I'd be weirdly bidding you to ignore the vast majority of the material.

Other than 4e, fantasy combat games that let you be Beowulf are kind of thin on the ground. You could wait for the new edition of Exalted, as I mentioned, or, I dunno, crack open 3.5's Tome of Battle...?

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

Ferrinus posted:

Other than 4e, fantasy combat games that let you be Beowulf are kind of thin on the ground. You could wait for the new edition of Exalted, as I mentioned, or, I dunno, crack open 3.5's Tome of Battle...?

I'm not even explicitly looking for combat, just something that evokes the power and freedom to part the seas, steal the wind, that sort of grand gesture that yes exalted piques (even if the system itself is mired and 3e has problems looming), I'm just saying that D&D is pretty bad at this sort of stuff in general from beginning to the latest edition unless you want to focus on Guan Yu or Lu Bu, purely in the martial combat sense.

The resolution system, the way the players interact with the world just feels really bad for evoking that sort of play in D&D, which is all I was really trying to say.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
The HeroQuest RPG works for a lot of legendary mythological feats and abilites, and Jenna Moran's games (Nobilis, Weapons of the Gods, etc.) play at that power level. But yeah, D&D has always been a wargamey enterprise of precisely-defined effects and abilities that really doesn't scale up to cover Gilgamesh punching a river so hard it changes course and stuff like that.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
Oh, yeah, no, in that case I don't think any edition of D&D is going to help you out. 4e's good if you want epic combat, but does very little to otherwise let you stride the world and shake nations and so on. If you're not content with that living almost entirely in freeform roleplaying, you want another intellectual property entirely.

ocrumsprug
Sep 23, 2010

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
Not really sure that any version of DnD has really been that game though. Now, falling off your horse at level 1 and dying? THAT'S DnD (not 5E).

Stormgale
Feb 27, 2010

ocrumsprug posted:

Not really sure that any version of DnD has really been that game though. Now, falling off your horse at level 1 and dying? THAT'S DnD (not 5E).

This was literally what I said before people kept saying "But 4e epic destinies", it was in response to someone wanting to power up the fighter to mythic levels to match the 5e wizard instead of bringing everything down, I said it was kind of not what D&D did ever.

ocrumsprug
Sep 23, 2010

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

I think the lack of OGL is probably fine in this case, as they are claiming they are Unspecificed Game 5E compatible. And as was shown earlier in the thread, there is no formula so the SRD would be of little value in any case.

Case in Point:

OtspIII
Sep 22, 2002

I think that big freeform stuff like that is actually pretty incompatible with D&D (as opposed to just not being supported by it). D&D has always been super logistical or tactical, even in the editions with a lot of DM fiat. Both of those qualities are pretty at odds with over the top improv feats of logic-breaking.

Rosalind
Apr 30, 2013

When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.

My character for Encounters is hopefully done. Since I'm playing a wizard, I decided to make her a super snobby wizard in personality too! I like to make my own character sheets because then I can put stuff where I'd think to look for it. Also I can make power cards which make me happy. It's a bit rough around the edges, but to me it's much, much easier to read than a standard character sheet.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/237318133/Hera-Sunsworn

Am I missing anything here?

Jack the Lad
Jan 20, 2009

Feed the Pubs

Rosalind posted:

My character for Encounters is hopefully done. Since I'm playing a wizard, I decided to make her a super snobby wizard in personality too! I like to make my own character sheets because then I can put stuff where I'd think to look for it. Also I can make power cards which make me happy. It's a bit rough around the edges, but to me it's much, much easier to read than a standard character sheet.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/237318133/Hera-Sunsworn

Am I missing anything here?

I like it! 5e would be a lot better if spells were presented that neatly and concisely (and by level instead of alphabetically).

I'd recommend grabbing a staff or another crystal if you can rejig your equipment. Having a spare arcane focus is good against disarm/sunder shenanigans.

Let us know how you get on.

Rosalind
Apr 30, 2013

When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change.

Jack the Lad posted:

I like it! 5e would be a lot better if spells were presented that neatly and concisely (and by level instead of alphabetically).

I'd recommend grabbing a staff or another crystal if you can rejig your equipment. Having a spare arcane focus is good against disarm/sunder shenanigans.

Let us know how you get on.

Well thank you for the build! I'm hoping the DM will let me say that I have the crystal as a necklace. Money actually is pretty tight since the longbow + spellbook combination eats up like half of it to start with. I think I'll be ok for the first session. If I continue with Encounters, then I'll pick up another one.

Falcon2001
Oct 10, 2004

Eat your hamburgers, Apollo.
Pillbug
Can we all agree that if they're going to do 5e they should at least let someone competent make a 4e tactical combat video game?

homullus
Mar 27, 2009


So I guess the cover depicts one of the "boss battles", taking on the big bad in his lair. The party wizard, shapechanged into a dragon, has cornered the story's villain, and is about to strike. Very exciting!

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Jimbozig
Sep 30, 2003

I like sharing and ice cream and animals.
What the gently caress. I go away for three days without internet and I miss Mike Mearls eating string cheese? I understand being a grognard and wanting to play the games you played when you were 12. I sometimes think it'd be fun to go back and play goldeneye on my n64 while my buddies called each other awful names. But why would you want to eat the same terrible food you ate when you were 12? String cheese is an affront to cheese and an affront to decency. Real cheese, even a simple and inexpensive sharp cheddar, is one of the most delicious types of food you can buy. Why eat tasteless plasticky crap that costs more?

Mearls isn't just a grognard. He is a manchild.

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