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Ah okay, I was thrown by this "wizard is a subclass of wizard" nonsense.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:11
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Ignite Memories posted:[...] I definitely think you should check out Strike!
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Feb 22, 2016 20:12
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Leperflesh posted:Ah okay, I was thrown by this "wizard is a subclass of wizard" nonsense. Wizards got a ton of subclasses because Mearls really loving loves Wizards.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:14
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Kurieg posted:Wizards got a ton of subclasses because people who only know D&D really loving love wizards (because they're the ones who get to do the most stuff). I hear you.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:19
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Kurieg posted:Wizards got a ton of subclasses because Mearls really loving loves Wizards. I think it's more because wizards are piss easy to make subclasses for oh this sublass only uses fire, this one ice. this one spells that begin with the letter m
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Feb 22, 2016 20:19
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Elfgames posted:[...] this one spells that begin with the letter m It was a pretty big limitation until Melf came along naming things after himself.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:21
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I sort of wrote extensively about how you could get started on 4th Edition without using D&D Insider and with a minimum investment The short version is: grab the PHB 1, the Rules Compendium and the Monster Vault. That's a 35 USD investment for the official PDFs, but you can probably get the dead-tree versions cheaper. You'll want the PHB 2 for long-term play and the DMG if you want to get really in-depth with DM-ing for this game, but neither are absolutely essential just to start playing.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:22
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Bruceski posted:It was a pretty big limitation until Melf came along naming things after himself. There was also Mordenkainen, and of course every spell that begins with the word "magic."
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Feb 22, 2016 20:26
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How much of the blame do you all think BEAR LORE and the awful adventures should take for how 4e was received?
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Feb 22, 2016 20:27
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not much, i'd say it was the clear and consistant presentation that did 90% of the damage
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Feb 22, 2016 20:32
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Lightning Lord posted:How much of the blame do you all think BEAR LORE and the awful adventures should take for how 4e was received?
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Feb 22, 2016 20:39
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Evil Mastermind posted:Well, I remember how bad the original 4e adventures were (and the Encounters adventures weren't much better after a while), but what was BEAR LORE? 
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Feb 22, 2016 20:40
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I remember the reaction to Bear Lore being very strong, I think it caused people to regard the game as being entirely flavor free. The crappy adventures and ineptly run official actual play stuff created bad faith too, and solidified the idea that you can only play in one rigid way.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:40
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Lightning Lord posted:BEAR LORE I wasn't familiar with this "meme" when it came out, so I looked it up: 4e Monster Manual 1 page 29 posted:Bear Lore So the joke is that you have to make Nature checks to find out blindingly obvious information about what a bear does, right? So I decided to look up how 3.5e did it: 3.5e PHB page 78 posted:In many cases, you can use this [Knowledge] skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information. 3.5e MM1 page 269 posted:BEAR, BLACK So the great sin of 4th Edition was that it explicitly declared what sort of information you'd glean from a successful skill check. The fact that you have to make a skill check to find out what a Bear is in the first place is largely a tradition of "metagaming" grog in D&D where you're supposed to go "ohohoho you wouldn't have known what a Rot Grub is, save or die horribly!" despite the fact that your character may well be a well-traveled Ranger.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:41
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Fallorn posted:Also it's not just RPG's that could use technical writing the L5R (thank god it's dead) CCG had tons of natural language for card text and rules that made some cards not work as you reading them would lead you to think. They also had at one time the story team add a keyword to a few cards that made them unbalanced and was done after play testing was over. I don't think fantasy flight can screw it up a lot more than where it was when the game died. Whats hilarious is that M:tG has been around for long enough that they already have experienced the exact opposite issue and course-corrected to find an ideal shape to sell $0.75 worth of cardboard for $4. So M:tG was released around 1993, with card-text (and even rules) that veered towards natural language and "what would make sense-ness". This had its issues, and so the designers leaned into having a very specific, coded language to ensure every effect does exactly what it should. However in 2001 they released a card (known as Dead Ringers) that was completely accurate and made according to the system yet was completely misunderstood by every player that played it. Now they try to play both sides of the issue of natural language and technical writing, most notably by reducing complexity on the whole and being willing to re-arrange the language around the effect.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:41
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Also I am sure there are people in 2016 AD who do not know anything about bears. I have certainly met adults who, when presented with a picture of a giant orange-striped cat, asked "is that a lion or a tiger?" Even if the readers know ALL BEAR LORE, PCs with a cloistered/isolated background are super common.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:44
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Personally I'd think that "thing with giant claws likes to attack with them" wouldn't warrant a check, but it's not like 3.5's way was any better.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:46
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Oh man I don't think I ever saw that before. I like that an unskilled normal person only has a 25% chance to know that bears live in the woods and will eat people, and a 0% to know they attack by crushing you with their giant claws. I'm pretty sure I could find a few thousand videos on YouTube of idiots trying to face down bears, so I guess immersion is maintained.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:47
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Yeah the reason Bear Lore became the joke it did wasn't because of its content specifically, but because someone found it and reposted it at a time where people were already giving 4e all sorts of dirty looks and slinging mud.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:48
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It should be noted that BEAR LORE was leaked in advance of the rest of 4e.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:48
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senrath posted:Personally I'd think that "thing with giant claws likes to attack with them" wouldn't warrant a check, but it's not like 3.5's way was any better. If you've played with both dogs and cats, you know it's not that obvious. A bigger dog with bigger claws will still prefer to manipulate objects and attack with its mouth, while a bigger cat will still prefer to use its paws.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:51
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I ran and played 4e and my old group never really enjoyed it, but it didn't seem like a bad game to us. More like one that we just didn't get how it was supposed to work. I also normally played 3.0 and 3.5 fighters and never felt restricted in my party usefulness so I know I'm an outlier already.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:51
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Lightning Lord posted:How much of the blame do you all think BEAR LORE and the awful adventures should take for how 4e was received? I don't think it was responsible for 4e's reception, but I think mentioning those adventures is a way to get my entire gaming group to wince through mutual pain, and it's probably responsible for my complete antipathy towards published adventures as a DM. (Most of us started playing Tabletop RPGs with 4e, and all of us had bad experiences with bad to mediocre DMs running bad WotC 4e adventures exactly as written.)
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Feb 22, 2016 20:54
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senrath posted:Personally I'd think that "thing with giant claws likes to attack with them" wouldn't warrant a check, but it's not like 3.5's way was any better. Exactly. The only real difference is that by spelling out what you find on a DC 20 check, the game implies that it's something you wouldn't know off hand, but considering that the 3.5 Knowledge check to find out A Useful Bit of Trivia about a bear is DC 18 as well, they're effectively the same. In both cases, if the DM felt like the group should know what a bear is, then they'd handwave the skill check. Like a lot of criticisms of 4e, its being willfully dense to assume that 4e is egregiously bad in this regard.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:55
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I think Bear Lore is a victim of a generally positive 4e change, that is, removing the "rarity" mechanics (oh god, the endless encounter tables) from earlier editions. Since all monsters are built from standardized templates, you can't just arbitrarily say "well, bears are super common, so the DC for basic Bear Lore should be lower." And actually, since the Monster Manual doesn't know or predict the commonality of specific monsters in your campaign, it's not unreasonable to think that you might have PCs living in a game world where bears are actually really rare, or confined to some far-off area, so that most normal people living in that world wouldn't have any particular reason to know jack or poo poo about bears. So to me the issue isn't "lol, DC15 just to know what everyone at the table already obviously knows about bears" but rather "the game didn't do a good enough job explaining why even "common" monsters have the same CD-level checks for Lore about them." When a game presents a mechanic that is probably counterintuitive for its players, it's a good idea for the game to explain why the mechanic is there, instead of just presenting it.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:59
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homullus posted:If you've played with both dogs and cats, you know it's not that obvious. A bigger dog with bigger claws will still prefer to manipulate objects and attack with its mouth, while a bigger cat will still prefer to use its paws. I haven't played with any dog that had what I'd call "claws", though I'll admit that I haven't been around many big dogs.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:59
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Out of curiosity, what is the difference between 3.X and 5E Fighters? They can't have seriously given them only feats again, can they?
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Feb 22, 2016 21:03
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senrath posted:I haven't played with any dog that had what I'd call "claws", though I'll admit that I haven't been around many big dogs.  My sister is working with a little bitty white miniature poodle who was not socialized by its first owner. It is a pretty good dog except for this extreme reaction to "people I don't know coming in or going out the front door" which puts it into this insane attack mode. Yesterday that dog scratched my mom pretty good with its claws, enough to break the skin through her Levis. So yeah, dogs totally have claws.
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Feb 22, 2016 21:03
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paradoxGentleman posted:Out of curiosity, what is the difference between 3.X and 5E Fighters? They can't have seriously given them only feats again, can they? They get marginally more stat increases than other classes, which, if your dm allows, you can trade in for feats. Honestly the fighter gets features, but they don't change the fact that all you can really do is make a basic attack. With one archetype you'll crit more often. With another you can occasionally deal more damage with a time limited resource that has been deemed equivalent to the cleric dealing forty damage to the entire enemy party or the warlock's entire spell list.
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Feb 22, 2016 21:08
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Leperflesh posted:My sister is working with a little bitty white miniature poodle who was not socialized by its first owner. It is a pretty good dog except for this extreme reaction to "people I don't know coming in or going out the front door" which puts it into this insane attack mode. Yesterday that dog scratched my mom pretty good with its claws, enough to break the skin through her Levis. So yeah, dogs totally have claws. Fair enough! I guess this just goes to show that nothing is really common knowledge.
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Feb 22, 2016 21:10
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senrath posted:I haven't played with any dog that had what I'd call "claws", though I'll admit that I haven't been around many big dogs.  In the winter they don't wear down in the mud/snow and dude is such a jerk we have to have him sedated to have them cut. I wanna paint them bright red but Im not allowed to.
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Feb 22, 2016 21:12
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Kurieg posted:Wizards got a ton of subclasses because Mearls really loving loves Wizards. 
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Feb 22, 2016 21:48
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senrath posted:Fair enough! I guess this just goes to show that nothing is really common knowledge. Dog claws aren't really meant for swiping or grabbing the way that cat or bear claws are because their shoulders aren't built to swing their forelimbs like that. Instead they're meant to dig in for purchase so they can bring their jaws to bear. If you pick up a hostile dog it'll claw at your arms because it's trying to get away and/or get at your throat. Asimo posted:It was loving hilarious to see a new, functionally identical wizard variant in every goddamn book after Essentials hit. Even better was you got two literally identical (except for a few fluff bits) types in the Witch and Sha'ir in two consecutive books. And then there's the Bladesinger....
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Feb 22, 2016 21:56
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Kurieg posted:Dog claws aren't really meant for swiping or grabbing the way that cat or bear claws are because their shoulders aren't built to swing their forelimbs like that. Instead they're meant to dig in for purchase so they can bring their jaws to bear. If you pick up a hostile dog it'll claw at your arms because it's trying to get away and/or get at your throat. The point being that "this animal preferentially attacks using this part of its anatomy" is reasonable, even when it appears semi-obvious, because there are exceptions. In a game that might allow players to creatively solve a problem, it's useful. In a hobby as toxic and partisan as this, however, BEAR LORE is Exhibit A for why 4e is a dumb game for literal children who will never be the True Gamers that Gygax intended.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:06
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I just want to reiterate that I really appreciate the help you folks offered re: 4th. It's given me a lot to think about w/r/t how I want my game to play and what my options are.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:22
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I don't know how you'd survive to adulthood in the D&D world without learning that goddamn everything wants to murder you.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:23
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Especially in the points of light setting, considering that the elements are actively malicious.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:39
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I have always made it a point of liberally salting my D&D settings with non-hostile creatures, both mundane and exotic.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:46
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Monsters not tryin' to eat you? What kinda hippie dippie bullshit is that? Next you're gonna say you don't have sentient races who are inherently evil and inferior to PC races.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:27
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Well, I didn't do it as some kind of bullshit "gotcha" like, oh, you guys ignored this particular "harmless" critter I just described, just like the last ten harmless things? Woops it attacks you from behind, LOL. But yeah, like, if the PCs are wandering through a magic forest where magic monsters might attack them, there should be loads of random critters and they don't all have to be mundane european/american wildlife like squirrels and deer. It's just flavortext but I think it makes the crazy D&D monsters seem less stupidly out of place.
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Feb 22, 2016 23:34
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