As Crwth mentioned earlier I equated being down to nothing but At-will powers and a handful of healing surges to "grabbing the crossbow". It was an off the cuff remark and I'll readily concede that it's not very accurate.
For starters, the At-wills are better than the old 3.5 crossbow-shot-and-a-prayer fallback. If not "better" at least they're arguably more interesting/engaging.
Our rogue trotted out two of his at-wills before finally falling. The paladin likewise. The warlord made good use of his Wolfpack Tactics and the ranger steadily used Twin Fanged Strike (or whatever it's called). Of course that was pretty much the only power the ranger ever used. Still, it's effective.
My fighter/wizard should have been even more versatile with the at-wills, and to be honest I felt like I had more options. I got off a couple of Thunderwaves to try to get some breathing room (one time it actually hit!) and otherwise relied on Reaping Strikes (damage on a miss! Love it!). So, all in all, no real feeling of "let down" when left with nothing else in the tank, so to speak.
Instead, the downside comes in the lack of options beyond powers.
At several points in the battle I wished that I could counter-spell those damn controllers. Or use a resist fire potion. Or a neutralize poison. Something to alleviate the feeling of being powerless under those enemy's whims. It was incredibly frustrating being completely helpless to resist being blinded or knocked down.
Simply spread out so that the controller's area of effect powers can't hit everyone at once? Good idea. In theory.
In reality, we were hemmed into a dead end room (admittedly a bad tactical blunder and probably the biggest reason for our TPK) with at least one enlarged Duegar taking up even more room. Frankly, once we allowed ourselves to become trapped in that room we were at the mercy of the controllers. As they thoroughly kicked our asses all player ingenuity was effectively nullified. We needed to get incredibly lucky just to push our way back out into the hallway. As impressed as I was by the enemy controllers, I was ultimately just frustrated by them, and that took away from an otherwise fine fight.
Sure the at-wills kept the fight interesting, but no more so than 3.5's relatively banal "pot shots with the crossbow". Boiled down, the at-wills are still strike me as basic attacks with some flavor text attached.
So, does this mean that 4E sucks compared to 3.5?
I love 3.5 for a variety of reasons, but I can't say that it's hands down better; regardless of how one defines "better". It's all so subjective.
I will say that 4E has alleviated many of my earlier knocks. The variety of classes has opened up numerous options, so multi-classing isn't missed as much. The upcoming Skill Powers looks like it's gonna be all kinds of awesome. The encounters are a lot of fun, and even dying is exciting.
On the downside, I'm still not liking the concept of Reflex, Fortitude, and Will as defensive scores versus saving throws. I know the math and all works out more or less the same. I just miss the empowerment of making a saving throw versus simply being blinded or knocked down.
I'm also hating the dearth of magic items. There's a decent variety of them, but their usefulness is minimal at best. I miss the days of having that one trinket/potion/scroll that can be pulled out to use in some inventive way, or simply to save one's ass. I also miss the facet of planning that magic items used to bring. Knowing that we were facing fiery and poisoning Duergar we would have stocked up on fire resists and anti-poison potions/scrolls/spells in 3.5. In 4E we had nothing but our powers and luck to rely upon. When the former dwindled and the latter ran out, the results were fairly predictable.
Showing posts with label magic items. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic items. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
This is treasure?
With a mighty slash of the warrior's heavy blade the great wyrm finally falls. There, before the surviving members of the party lay a veritable mountain of treasure. Gems and gold coins as far as the eye can see, but the choicest plums are the trove wonderous magic items scattered within.
Such as the fabled Gauntlets of Destruction. Sounds awesome. Level 18 and worth 85,000gp so they must be good. Oh wait. They only allow you to re-roll any 1s you get on damage dice. Ummm... okay. That's not too bad. You can still roll a 2 but at least it works all the time.
Not like the Boots of Infinite Stride. Those are only once a day. But, they do let you teleport up to a mile. Provided you have clear line of sight and effect. Okay. Still handy, and the +1 to movement is always in effect so that's good. Level 28 and 2,125,000gp worth of good? Well... maybe.
The magic items section in the PHB is full of entries like those. Stuff that sounds super awesome but ends up being a bit of a let down.
Here's another convenient example. The "Stowaway Stone". A "level 12" magic item with a market value of 13,000 gp. That's a little more than walking around money and something that shouldn't show up in one's backpack until he/she is nearing (or in) the Paragon Tier. So, one would expect that it does some pretty kick ass shit.
You'd be disappointed.
Unless you consider +1d6 damage to one arcane power once per encounter to be "kick ass". Factor in the effect of being knocked prone if you miss (and considering that most attacks miss more often than they hit, unless your DM habitually faces you off against naked kobolds tied to chairs) and this item loses what little luster it might have had. Even the Daily force a re-roll give a re-roll power is underwhelming.
Yet it's this kind of trinket that our characters risk their lives for. I wouldn't even get out of bed for some of that crap.
Not to say that every magic item in 4E is useless junk. Every player knows that even a modest +1 can be the difference between victory and a TPK.
I'm also aware that there were plenty of lame or useless magic items in 3.5. I give you Sustaining Spoon as Exhibit A.
However, the difference is that the spoon only cost 5,400gp. Not exactly a pitance but less than half the cost of a certain stone that'll knock you on your ass more than half the time.
My ultimate point is that there is nothing in the list of magic items in the 4E PHB that my character would actively quest for. If he should find some Fireburst Armor or a Thundwave Staff he'll be suitably pleased. There are also a number of other items like Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Amulets of Protection that are always nice to have, but by and large it's an uninspiring list.
I understand that WotC wanted to move away from what they saw as 3.5's reliance on magical gear. It pushes the focus on characters getting by on their own inate heroics (read: powers). It also cuts down on the time players have to spend pouring over their inventories to see if they have something that gives a bonus to a saving throw or what have you. Both are admirable goals but I think they went too far.
Items that were once "must haves", like the Ring of True Seeing, have now been nerfed to mere paperweights. A +2 to Perception checks and a Daily use of True Seeing that lasts until the end of your next turn doesn't strike me as worth 105,000gp or something a nearly epic 19th level character would swoon over. They wouldn't likely use it to tip the next barmaid or hawk it at Ye Olde Pawnshop, but it's not something worth risking life and limb for either.
Besides the perceived imbalance of suggested level and price of these items, too many give a bonus to saves against specific and rarely seen effects. Others give larger bonuses to skills like Athletics and Str Ability checks but not to plain old Str checks. I'd rather see more of the class or build specific items give significant boosts to powers. Add a prone effect whenever my thunderwave pushes an enemy. Let me follow a successful Daily power with an At-Will as a minor action. Things like that would give me something to aim for, save for, fight for.
As it is, there's very little to motivate the average adventurer. In taking away the reliance on magic gear they've also taken away one of the central motivators for adventuring in the first place. Sure, there's always for the righteous cause or for the service of one's god. There's even doing it for the pure glory or honor. But what about simple, unabashed greed?
Such as the fabled Gauntlets of Destruction. Sounds awesome. Level 18 and worth 85,000gp so they must be good. Oh wait. They only allow you to re-roll any 1s you get on damage dice. Ummm... okay. That's not too bad. You can still roll a 2 but at least it works all the time.
Not like the Boots of Infinite Stride. Those are only once a day. But, they do let you teleport up to a mile. Provided you have clear line of sight and effect. Okay. Still handy, and the +1 to movement is always in effect so that's good. Level 28 and 2,125,000gp worth of good? Well... maybe.
The magic items section in the PHB is full of entries like those. Stuff that sounds super awesome but ends up being a bit of a let down.
Here's another convenient example. The "Stowaway Stone". A "level 12" magic item with a market value of 13,000 gp. That's a little more than walking around money and something that shouldn't show up in one's backpack until he/she is nearing (or in) the Paragon Tier. So, one would expect that it does some pretty kick ass shit.
You'd be disappointed.
Unless you consider +1d6 damage to one arcane power once per encounter to be "kick ass". Factor in the effect of being knocked prone if you miss (and considering that most attacks miss more often than they hit, unless your DM habitually faces you off against naked kobolds tied to chairs) and this item loses what little luster it might have had. Even the Daily force a re-roll give a re-roll power is underwhelming.
Yet it's this kind of trinket that our characters risk their lives for. I wouldn't even get out of bed for some of that crap.
Not to say that every magic item in 4E is useless junk. Every player knows that even a modest +1 can be the difference between victory and a TPK.
I'm also aware that there were plenty of lame or useless magic items in 3.5. I give you Sustaining Spoon as Exhibit A.
However, the difference is that the spoon only cost 5,400gp. Not exactly a pitance but less than half the cost of a certain stone that'll knock you on your ass more than half the time.
My ultimate point is that there is nothing in the list of magic items in the 4E PHB that my character would actively quest for. If he should find some Fireburst Armor or a Thundwave Staff he'll be suitably pleased. There are also a number of other items like Gauntlets of Ogre Power and Amulets of Protection that are always nice to have, but by and large it's an uninspiring list.
I understand that WotC wanted to move away from what they saw as 3.5's reliance on magical gear. It pushes the focus on characters getting by on their own inate heroics (read: powers). It also cuts down on the time players have to spend pouring over their inventories to see if they have something that gives a bonus to a saving throw or what have you. Both are admirable goals but I think they went too far.
Items that were once "must haves", like the Ring of True Seeing, have now been nerfed to mere paperweights. A +2 to Perception checks and a Daily use of True Seeing that lasts until the end of your next turn doesn't strike me as worth 105,000gp or something a nearly epic 19th level character would swoon over. They wouldn't likely use it to tip the next barmaid or hawk it at Ye Olde Pawnshop, but it's not something worth risking life and limb for either.
Besides the perceived imbalance of suggested level and price of these items, too many give a bonus to saves against specific and rarely seen effects. Others give larger bonuses to skills like Athletics and Str Ability checks but not to plain old Str checks. I'd rather see more of the class or build specific items give significant boosts to powers. Add a prone effect whenever my thunderwave pushes an enemy. Let me follow a successful Daily power with an At-Will as a minor action. Things like that would give me something to aim for, save for, fight for.
As it is, there's very little to motivate the average adventurer. In taking away the reliance on magic gear they've also taken away one of the central motivators for adventuring in the first place. Sure, there's always for the righteous cause or for the service of one's god. There's even doing it for the pure glory or honor. But what about simple, unabashed greed?
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
DMG - Rewards
I wasn't originally going to make a post solely for this chapter, since it's so short, but in the end I decided it was something worth commenting on.
Rewards, as the chapter points out, are what drive the characters, and the players, through the adventure. Whether your character loves every shiny coin and eye gem, or the player is the power-gamer who just needs that one extra level to realize her dreams, rewards represent your "score" in this game. Even for the most die-hard roleplayer, saving simple villages and negotiating with kobold chieftains can get a bit boring after a while; they want to advance to saving cities, nations and worlds, and dealing with giants, dragons, demons and deities. These are things that the lowly first-level character can't be expected to do - the only reason a dragon bothers to parley instead of attack is if the party either poses a threat, or can offer something in return. These require advanced levels, treasure, or both.
My favorite part of this chapter happens to be the change for the experience points from a variable scale to a static one. No longer do you compare each monster's Challenge Rating the the party's level to determine the experience earned; that orc is worth 200XP whether you're first level or fifth. How much that 200XP helps in your advancement is what changes. Why is this significant? It makes adventure-building a lot easier. In 3rd edition, the DM would have to look up the CR of each creature in an encounter and figure out the XP once the encounter ended - if the adventurers cleared the crypt before ridding the pass of the troll infestation, they might have gained a level and thus the trolls aren't worth as much. This prevented pre-calculation of experience points for each encounter, unless you knew for sure that the party was going to be 6th level here.
Now, adventure writers can provide the total XP for the encounter with the encounter, regardless of the size or average level of the party. Not only does this make for easier computation for the DM running the adventure, but it also allows single encounters or encounter sets (Side Treks, as Wizards is calling them) to be looked at and considered for inclusion into a module or campaign; if the DM wants to ensure the party is in the paragon tier before they get to the Dark Spire of Death, and knows the party needs another 11,000XP total to reach that level, he can flip through his collection of random encounters and pick out a couple that total to that amount.
Milestones and action points are still new ideas to me, so I'm not sure how much of a "reward" an action point is. Sure, there might be a reason to reward a party that has kept going without rest, and admittedly, an action point isn't too large of a reward, but it seems like there's more attention to this idea that it warrants. It's just an action point, one extra action. I agree it can be handy, perhaps the turning point of a tough combat (especially if you've been going non-stop through encounters), and they provide that extra surge to make the character that more heroic. I just don't know that I see them as the big deal that the rules make them out to be.
Treasure is what drives a lot of characters, whether the accumulation of wealth or the power of magic items. The figuring of loot has been greatly simplified as well. This might have taken a bit of fun out of it, with the new parcel system, but on the other hand, it does allow the adventure creator to better tell if the adventure is doling out a reasonable amount of loot. This is a system that the Wizards people themselves have needed, for they were always notoriously stingy in their published modules.
I was surprised, when I read the section on the treasure parcels, though. In the early days of 4e's announcement, there was talk about magic items being toned down, yet the suggested loot for a party of five, per level, includes five magic items (not including potions). Perhaps this will seem lower at the higher levels, where you'd expect every enemy to be wielding at least +1 weapons, and that's where the new powers system looks like it'll be useful - obviating the need for everything over 5th level to have at least +1 items. Also, with potions being all but gone, especially the ubiquitous Cure Light Wounds of old, I suppose the number of magic items is affected there.
It will be interesting to see how the treasure and loot system works out at higher levels. In 3rd edition, selling items gave you half the market value on average. Now you only get a fifth, so characters are going to be motivated to make do with what they find, or disenchant them for rituals, which I'm looking forward to trying out in the future. I also find it interesting that a first-level party is expected to find an item four levels higher than them during their first level (in fact, every level should expect magic items of +1, +2, +3 and +4 of the party level). Yes, levels are stretched from 20 to 30 now, but still, this feels significant. This means that a second-level party could potentially end up with a +2 enchanted item, or if not, a +1 with some impressive enhancements.
Of course, we're currently playing through the first module, a Wizards of the Coast production, so I'm very curious whether the loot matches the parcels at all, or if the party is going to once again be poor.
Rewards, as the chapter points out, are what drive the characters, and the players, through the adventure. Whether your character loves every shiny coin and eye gem, or the player is the power-gamer who just needs that one extra level to realize her dreams, rewards represent your "score" in this game. Even for the most die-hard roleplayer, saving simple villages and negotiating with kobold chieftains can get a bit boring after a while; they want to advance to saving cities, nations and worlds, and dealing with giants, dragons, demons and deities. These are things that the lowly first-level character can't be expected to do - the only reason a dragon bothers to parley instead of attack is if the party either poses a threat, or can offer something in return. These require advanced levels, treasure, or both.
My favorite part of this chapter happens to be the change for the experience points from a variable scale to a static one. No longer do you compare each monster's Challenge Rating the the party's level to determine the experience earned; that orc is worth 200XP whether you're first level or fifth. How much that 200XP helps in your advancement is what changes. Why is this significant? It makes adventure-building a lot easier. In 3rd edition, the DM would have to look up the CR of each creature in an encounter and figure out the XP once the encounter ended - if the adventurers cleared the crypt before ridding the pass of the troll infestation, they might have gained a level and thus the trolls aren't worth as much. This prevented pre-calculation of experience points for each encounter, unless you knew for sure that the party was going to be 6th level here.
Now, adventure writers can provide the total XP for the encounter with the encounter, regardless of the size or average level of the party. Not only does this make for easier computation for the DM running the adventure, but it also allows single encounters or encounter sets (Side Treks, as Wizards is calling them) to be looked at and considered for inclusion into a module or campaign; if the DM wants to ensure the party is in the paragon tier before they get to the Dark Spire of Death, and knows the party needs another 11,000XP total to reach that level, he can flip through his collection of random encounters and pick out a couple that total to that amount.
Milestones and action points are still new ideas to me, so I'm not sure how much of a "reward" an action point is. Sure, there might be a reason to reward a party that has kept going without rest, and admittedly, an action point isn't too large of a reward, but it seems like there's more attention to this idea that it warrants. It's just an action point, one extra action. I agree it can be handy, perhaps the turning point of a tough combat (especially if you've been going non-stop through encounters), and they provide that extra surge to make the character that more heroic. I just don't know that I see them as the big deal that the rules make them out to be.
Treasure is what drives a lot of characters, whether the accumulation of wealth or the power of magic items. The figuring of loot has been greatly simplified as well. This might have taken a bit of fun out of it, with the new parcel system, but on the other hand, it does allow the adventure creator to better tell if the adventure is doling out a reasonable amount of loot. This is a system that the Wizards people themselves have needed, for they were always notoriously stingy in their published modules.
I was surprised, when I read the section on the treasure parcels, though. In the early days of 4e's announcement, there was talk about magic items being toned down, yet the suggested loot for a party of five, per level, includes five magic items (not including potions). Perhaps this will seem lower at the higher levels, where you'd expect every enemy to be wielding at least +1 weapons, and that's where the new powers system looks like it'll be useful - obviating the need for everything over 5th level to have at least +1 items. Also, with potions being all but gone, especially the ubiquitous Cure Light Wounds of old, I suppose the number of magic items is affected there.
It will be interesting to see how the treasure and loot system works out at higher levels. In 3rd edition, selling items gave you half the market value on average. Now you only get a fifth, so characters are going to be motivated to make do with what they find, or disenchant them for rituals, which I'm looking forward to trying out in the future. I also find it interesting that a first-level party is expected to find an item four levels higher than them during their first level (in fact, every level should expect magic items of +1, +2, +3 and +4 of the party level). Yes, levels are stretched from 20 to 30 now, but still, this feels significant. This means that a second-level party could potentially end up with a +2 enchanted item, or if not, a +1 with some impressive enhancements.
Of course, we're currently playing through the first module, a Wizards of the Coast production, so I'm very curious whether the loot matches the parcels at all, or if the party is going to once again be poor.
Friday, June 20, 2008
PHB - Equipment
This was a large chapter, and I'm slow, and busy, and ... well, anyway, here are my opinions.
1pp = 100gp? Why. The. Hell. Why on earth would you change such an iconic part of D&D? If, as Griff suggested, money is more prevalent (to adventurers, anyway), then add more units, such as the astral diamond. But why change the platinum piece? Changing magic in an ongoing world is one thing -- some cataclysmic event, yadda yadda; but what, hyperinflation hit Faerun, and the Waterdahvian rupee and Cormyr peso got revalued? Just bring back electrum pieces and shoot me.
That being said, the things I can spend with my gold pieces and over-valued platinum pieces is interesting. With armor specialization being broken up more than in other versions, the various types of armor are more appealing, or at least considered. I like that the higher-end materials needed for Paragon and Epic armors innately provide more protection.
Most of the weapon specialness has been taken away, moved into powers that focus on weapon groups. I think that's okay, because I always forgot which weapons could trip, which could disarm, which had reach, etc... The weapon sizes have been simplified a bit from the player's point-of-view, even if halflings are getting screwed for their size. We still haven't figured out the advantage to being Small in 4e.
I think we universally agreed that the Standard Adventurer's Kit is a good idea, easing the purchasing of a character's starting kit. The "gear" list is still too long for me -- I never know what I might need, and find I either fill up on useless stuff, or run out of money trying. Still, it's there for those who have the foresight to buy that rope.
It's nice that the price of magic items is directly tied to the level of the item, making that easy to figure out. But, this means that items are restricted to exactly their 30 levels, whereas the older 3e rules could have some static values added in when you add a little ability here or there. And this is what I'm finding lacking in the magic items of 4e.
I know that they wanted to reduce the reliance on magic items, and boy have they ever. The armor and weapon selection is arguably decent, but the other equippable items are meager. Nine rings? Four potions? What game are we playing here?
I definitely liked the consistency of "theme" across items. Armor always gives a plus-bonus to AC, of course, and weapons to attack rolls and damage rolls. But now, ever neck item gives a Fortitude/Reflex/Will bonus. And the idea of the kind of power that an item can give you seems to be a little more enforced than it was in 3rd edition, where it was more of a suggestion.
The Daily powers on many of the items, whether armor, weapon or other, are what took me a while to get my head around. You look at these Daily powers, and almost every one of them seems to be better suited as an encounter power. But what I had to realize was that the primary ability of the armor is the AC bonus, or to the weapon the attack bonus, and that these Daily powers were just something to spice it up and increase the price a little. If you subtract the base price of that +1 Curseforged Armor, you can see how much you're paying for that Daily power, and if it's worth it. And I think in most cases, it is. But when you first look at the Angelsteel Armor and see that it has a Daily power, albeit an until-end-of-encounter one, it's still 105,000gp (sorry, 1050pp) and hard to justify -- until you see that it's also at least +4 armor, which is 450pp of it.
Over all, I'm disappointed with the magic item section, with both its paucity and its lack of instructions on creating your own. There are no hints on figuring out the relative value of abilities you might want to create, nor instructions on how to stack abilities onto an item if you so chose. What if I want a ring of true seeing that gives a +3 item bonus to Perception? What's that worth?
1pp = 100gp? Why. The. Hell. Why on earth would you change such an iconic part of D&D? If, as Griff suggested, money is more prevalent (to adventurers, anyway), then add more units, such as the astral diamond. But why change the platinum piece? Changing magic in an ongoing world is one thing -- some cataclysmic event, yadda yadda; but what, hyperinflation hit Faerun, and the Waterdahvian rupee and Cormyr peso got revalued? Just bring back electrum pieces and shoot me.
That being said, the things I can spend with my gold pieces and over-valued platinum pieces is interesting. With armor specialization being broken up more than in other versions, the various types of armor are more appealing, or at least considered. I like that the higher-end materials needed for Paragon and Epic armors innately provide more protection.
Most of the weapon specialness has been taken away, moved into powers that focus on weapon groups. I think that's okay, because I always forgot which weapons could trip, which could disarm, which had reach, etc... The weapon sizes have been simplified a bit from the player's point-of-view, even if halflings are getting screwed for their size. We still haven't figured out the advantage to being Small in 4e.
I think we universally agreed that the Standard Adventurer's Kit is a good idea, easing the purchasing of a character's starting kit. The "gear" list is still too long for me -- I never know what I might need, and find I either fill up on useless stuff, or run out of money trying. Still, it's there for those who have the foresight to buy that rope.
It's nice that the price of magic items is directly tied to the level of the item, making that easy to figure out. But, this means that items are restricted to exactly their 30 levels, whereas the older 3e rules could have some static values added in when you add a little ability here or there. And this is what I'm finding lacking in the magic items of 4e.
I know that they wanted to reduce the reliance on magic items, and boy have they ever. The armor and weapon selection is arguably decent, but the other equippable items are meager. Nine rings? Four potions? What game are we playing here?
I definitely liked the consistency of "theme" across items. Armor always gives a plus-bonus to AC, of course, and weapons to attack rolls and damage rolls. But now, ever neck item gives a Fortitude/Reflex/Will bonus. And the idea of the kind of power that an item can give you seems to be a little more enforced than it was in 3rd edition, where it was more of a suggestion.
The Daily powers on many of the items, whether armor, weapon or other, are what took me a while to get my head around. You look at these Daily powers, and almost every one of them seems to be better suited as an encounter power. But what I had to realize was that the primary ability of the armor is the AC bonus, or to the weapon the attack bonus, and that these Daily powers were just something to spice it up and increase the price a little. If you subtract the base price of that +1 Curseforged Armor, you can see how much you're paying for that Daily power, and if it's worth it. And I think in most cases, it is. But when you first look at the Angelsteel Armor and see that it has a Daily power, albeit an until-end-of-encounter one, it's still 105,000gp (sorry, 1050pp) and hard to justify -- until you see that it's also at least +4 armor, which is 450pp of it.
Over all, I'm disappointed with the magic item section, with both its paucity and its lack of instructions on creating your own. There are no hints on figuring out the relative value of abilities you might want to create, nor instructions on how to stack abilities onto an item if you so chose. What if I want a ring of true seeing that gives a +3 item bonus to Perception? What's that worth?
Monday, January 28, 2008
One ring to bind... oops, sorry, hobbit, you're not l33t enough
Ever since they mentioned that 4th edition is going to attempt to reduce the need for magic items, I've been a bit concerned. Granted, there were some issues with the current 3.5 system, with so many slots, remembering that you have such items at the right moment, and trying to decide, as a DM, whether to tailor the treasure (even once in a while) to the players, or just give them random junk which they're going to be laden with and will just have to sell to then try and find what they really do want.
In the latest Design & Development article, they talk about the magic item slots, and start off my saying they've reduced the number of them, yet still have the rule of one item per slot. Right off the bat, this, to me, means a weaker character, but I have to remember that the idea is that the race and class play more of a role now in a character's abilities. So does that mean that some of these racial and class abilities can truly take the place of a magic item? We shall have to see.
They've left your hands in as a slot, which is a bit of a relief. *:^) To armor they've added the cloth armor - the sense I get from this is that a wizard can have +5 cloth, to at least get an armor enhancement bonus to AC (or whatever the new 4e terms will now be). This is good for the general need of wizards for a little more defense, and I suppose this just means that all of the fancy robes they used to wear will now come in +1 to +5 versions?
"An item in the neck slot increases your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses". Only? There has been an unwritten (unless, perhaps, the Magic Item Compendium spelled it out and I didn't notice) set of rules about what kind of effects should go where (speed-boosts are on your feet or rings; mental abilities were helms/crowns/tiaras, maybe necklaces, and of course rings; strength or dexterity was usually in the bracers, or the gloves, or ... yep, the rings). But I don't think it was a strict rule. Having a crown of fleet-footedness didn't make sense, but if the DM allowed it, then fine (of course, the DM can do whatever he pleases, 4e rules notwithstanding).
Bracers and shields are in the "arms" category now. Can't have both. Interesting that the start of the "secondary slots" section states that "[t]hese items don’t have enhancement bonuses." No enhancement bonus on shields? Tell me more!
There we go - feet are movement and speed. Again, is this a strict hard-and-fast rule? Sure, it makes sense, but I'm curious whether that's an official stance now.
Ioun stones have lost their special place around the head, now taking up the head slot (as a new item type called an "orbital"). And only one allowed! What a shame. What happens to those 3.5 characters with a solar system around their head now?
Rings. I don't like this at all. "A starting character isn’t powerful enough to unleash the power of a ring. You can use one ring when you reach paragon tier (11th level) and two when you’re epic (21st level)." What is this power that they have that lets them unleash this? Base it on intelligence, or your will save, or ... something more tangible than "you've done a lot of adventuring, and now this ring will work for you." Item level requirements are a CRPG concept that have no place in pen-and-paper. If rings are too powerful for low-level characters, then they just shouldn't be available to them. Boo. Hiss.
Waist. Yeah, belts, whatever. I'm still miffed about the rings. Oh, what's that? Protection and healing is in the belt? Yeah, whatever. Give me my rings.
Oh ho; see how even the author laments at the end of the article?:
Rings: None right now, sadly
Sad indeed.
In the latest Design & Development article, they talk about the magic item slots, and start off my saying they've reduced the number of them, yet still have the rule of one item per slot. Right off the bat, this, to me, means a weaker character, but I have to remember that the idea is that the race and class play more of a role now in a character's abilities. So does that mean that some of these racial and class abilities can truly take the place of a magic item? We shall have to see.
They've left your hands in as a slot, which is a bit of a relief. *:^) To armor they've added the cloth armor - the sense I get from this is that a wizard can have +5 cloth, to at least get an armor enhancement bonus to AC (or whatever the new 4e terms will now be). This is good for the general need of wizards for a little more defense, and I suppose this just means that all of the fancy robes they used to wear will now come in +1 to +5 versions?
"An item in the neck slot increases your Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses". Only? There has been an unwritten (unless, perhaps, the Magic Item Compendium spelled it out and I didn't notice) set of rules about what kind of effects should go where (speed-boosts are on your feet or rings; mental abilities were helms/crowns/tiaras, maybe necklaces, and of course rings; strength or dexterity was usually in the bracers, or the gloves, or ... yep, the rings). But I don't think it was a strict rule. Having a crown of fleet-footedness didn't make sense, but if the DM allowed it, then fine (of course, the DM can do whatever he pleases, 4e rules notwithstanding).
Bracers and shields are in the "arms" category now. Can't have both. Interesting that the start of the "secondary slots" section states that "[t]hese items don’t have enhancement bonuses." No enhancement bonus on shields? Tell me more!
There we go - feet are movement and speed. Again, is this a strict hard-and-fast rule? Sure, it makes sense, but I'm curious whether that's an official stance now.
Ioun stones have lost their special place around the head, now taking up the head slot (as a new item type called an "orbital"). And only one allowed! What a shame. What happens to those 3.5 characters with a solar system around their head now?
Rings. I don't like this at all. "A starting character isn’t powerful enough to unleash the power of a ring. You can use one ring when you reach paragon tier (11th level) and two when you’re epic (21st level)." What is this power that they have that lets them unleash this? Base it on intelligence, or your will save, or ... something more tangible than "you've done a lot of adventuring, and now this ring will work for you." Item level requirements are a CRPG concept that have no place in pen-and-paper. If rings are too powerful for low-level characters, then they just shouldn't be available to them. Boo. Hiss.
Waist. Yeah, belts, whatever. I'm still miffed about the rings. Oh, what's that? Protection and healing is in the belt? Yeah, whatever. Give me my rings.
Oh ho; see how even the author laments at the end of the article?:
Rings: None right now, sadly
Sad indeed.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
d%'d dude
Once again, Noonan has been reading my thoughts... his "monkeys without blinders" is how I've been doing treasure generation for some time now.
Okay, perhaps my method is not as in-depth as his -- we'll have to wait and see -- but for years now, when determining random treasure, I've always given bonuses and (as Didier Monin would put it) maluses to the subsequent rolls, depending on how the previous roll came out. Did they get very little coin? Add 10 to the gem roll. Did that end up getting them the maximum gem return? Perhaps -5 for the art and jewelery.
Perhaps, though, they're going to take it a little further (and a little more exacting -- my plusses and minuses are pretty much determined by mood), and actually have loot that makes sense together? So no Quaal's feather token in the same chest as a +3 longsword and set of +2 full plate; no fireball wand stored with the repeating crossbow. A drow with an SR11 ring and darkvision goggles??
Of course, I'm a little disappointed that such a system change didn't get put into the Magic Item Compendium. A new treasure generation system doesn't have to come with a new ruleset like 4th edition, and the new system will now have to get retrofitted into the dozens of tables that the Compendium provides.
How long after the release of the new treasure generation system until someone has made an online system that contains the full Compendium? Time me.
Okay, perhaps my method is not as in-depth as his -- we'll have to wait and see -- but for years now, when determining random treasure, I've always given bonuses and (as Didier Monin would put it) maluses to the subsequent rolls, depending on how the previous roll came out. Did they get very little coin? Add 10 to the gem roll. Did that end up getting them the maximum gem return? Perhaps -5 for the art and jewelery.
Perhaps, though, they're going to take it a little further (and a little more exacting -- my plusses and minuses are pretty much determined by mood), and actually have loot that makes sense together? So no Quaal's feather token in the same chest as a +3 longsword and set of +2 full plate; no fireball wand stored with the repeating crossbow. A drow with an SR11 ring and darkvision goggles??
Of course, I'm a little disappointed that such a system change didn't get put into the Magic Item Compendium. A new treasure generation system doesn't have to come with a new ruleset like 4th edition, and the new system will now have to get retrofitted into the dozens of tables that the Compendium provides.
How long after the release of the new treasure generation system until someone has made an online system that contains the full Compendium? Time me.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Another +5 Vorpal Blade of Vanquishing? Ho hum.
I've been noticing a bit of discussion on magic items in the DnD 4e forums, and it's got me to thinking. More than that, I've actually been re-evaluating my personal feelings on magic items and loot in general.
Now, I will admit, I am hopelessly addicted to multi-classing. I also have a tendency to continue re-hashing and refining the same character concept through several incarnations (thanks to untimely deaths) well past what would be considered sane by my fellow players. I just know that this time I'll get it right.
I am also a total loot whore.
When the bad guy has fallen one of the first things I want to do is search for valuables. Then it's the obligatory casting of detect magic (best cantrip ever!). I'm sure that Crwth can run the routine by rote with or without me in the room. And I hate myself for it.
Even back in the AD&D days of the 80s and early 90s, I was always on the hunt for bigger and better weapons, armor, rings, and cloaks. The more pluses or abilities the better. I loved it. Even as a DM, I had a strong Monty Haul leaning.
Then with 3rd edition we began playing our way through the official campaign series that was released along with the first books. Overall, a great series of modules but in my eyes it was burdened with one fatal flaw. The total and utter lack of magic items.
I don't know if they were written before magic items were added to the DMG but my 8th level ranger was running around in a masterwork chain shirt and wielding a +2 bastard sword. A masterwork chain shirt! For the love of jeebus! At 8th level! No wonder a couple of treants made short work of us.
Now the 4e developers are hinting/promising/threatening to return to those miserly roots. They want magic items to be less important, particularly at higher levels. They're going to dumb down the magic items in the game to the point where if we find a single magic item hidden amongst the loot, the entire party will still be pleased.
My first reaction was horror. Followed quickly by a sharp pain radiating from the left side of my chest. They should be adding more magic items to the game, not less. If first level characters now get to start with 30+ hit points then why not toss them a couple of +1 items? Maybe something with "vorpal" in it's name.
Then came the introspection. And some hard questions. I pride myself on being a sound tactician and a creative min/maxer when it comes to character generation. But am I too dependent on having magic items to get past tough encounters? Is banking on having that Ring of Freedom becoming a crutch to get around flaws in my own designs?
It sickens me.
So now I see this new 4e approach to magic items as a breath of fresh air. I look forward to the day where getting that first +1 weapon, or a +1 ring of resistance, or a bag of holding is a joyous rarity. Even for my 8th level ranger.
In fact I'm gonna turn over this new leaf right away. I'm gonna ask my DM to start cutting back on the loot right now. I won't whine or groan with disgust the next time a monster has nothing but a couple of coppers and some toe nail clippings. I won't jump all over the next thing that radiates a magical aura. I'm going cold turkey baby!
I feel better already.
Now, I will admit, I am hopelessly addicted to multi-classing. I also have a tendency to continue re-hashing and refining the same character concept through several incarnations (thanks to untimely deaths) well past what would be considered sane by my fellow players. I just know that this time I'll get it right.
I am also a total loot whore.
When the bad guy has fallen one of the first things I want to do is search for valuables. Then it's the obligatory casting of detect magic (best cantrip ever!). I'm sure that Crwth can run the routine by rote with or without me in the room. And I hate myself for it.
Even back in the AD&D days of the 80s and early 90s, I was always on the hunt for bigger and better weapons, armor, rings, and cloaks. The more pluses or abilities the better. I loved it. Even as a DM, I had a strong Monty Haul leaning.
Then with 3rd edition we began playing our way through the official campaign series that was released along with the first books. Overall, a great series of modules but in my eyes it was burdened with one fatal flaw. The total and utter lack of magic items.
I don't know if they were written before magic items were added to the DMG but my 8th level ranger was running around in a masterwork chain shirt and wielding a +2 bastard sword. A masterwork chain shirt! For the love of jeebus! At 8th level! No wonder a couple of treants made short work of us.
Now the 4e developers are hinting/promising/threatening to return to those miserly roots. They want magic items to be less important, particularly at higher levels. They're going to dumb down the magic items in the game to the point where if we find a single magic item hidden amongst the loot, the entire party will still be pleased.
My first reaction was horror. Followed quickly by a sharp pain radiating from the left side of my chest. They should be adding more magic items to the game, not less. If first level characters now get to start with 30+ hit points then why not toss them a couple of +1 items? Maybe something with "vorpal" in it's name.
Then came the introspection. And some hard questions. I pride myself on being a sound tactician and a creative min/maxer when it comes to character generation. But am I too dependent on having magic items to get past tough encounters? Is banking on having that Ring of Freedom becoming a crutch to get around flaws in my own designs?
It sickens me.
So now I see this new 4e approach to magic items as a breath of fresh air. I look forward to the day where getting that first +1 weapon, or a +1 ring of resistance, or a bag of holding is a joyous rarity. Even for my 8th level ranger.
In fact I'm gonna turn over this new leaf right away. I'm gonna ask my DM to start cutting back on the loot right now. I won't whine or groan with disgust the next time a monster has nothing but a couple of coppers and some toe nail clippings. I won't jump all over the next thing that radiates a magical aura. I'm going cold turkey baby!
I feel better already.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Blogwatching
I just finished going through all of the blogs that are accessible from here, which had a bunch of teasers to ruminate over.
James Wyatt talks about the "rule" about an encounter using up party resources, and thus a party can only face so many encounters before they need to rest -- but what if the big encounter happens first? As a DM, this is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and they claim to have done so. Huzzah, but how?
He also talks about his work on the demons in the 4.0 Monster Manual, and while he doesn't give anything away about them, it caught my eye because the monster books are my favorite ones, so I'll be watching what he says closely.
Chris Perkins also mentions the Monster Manual, and how one of my favorites won't be there, because he has been promoted to god status. This makes my mind race about how they're going to handle the gods in 4e -- there's nothing like a statblock for a god to make a DM feel powerful, and a player feel puny. How long am I going to have to wait for that!
Stephen Schubert reveals himself as the math geek at Wizards, mentioning negative binomial distribution; as someone who has been picking apart the structure of the game from a programmer's point-of-view, it's nice to hear them come right out and state that there is something mathematical behind their decisions. Until we see some progression charts or combat rules, we'll have to wait and see where this comes into play.
The programmer in me really perked up at Mike Mearls' blog post, where he discussed "intended use" of game elements. Specifically,
If we also want to make it a playable character race, we'll design a separate racial write up for it. We won't try to shoehorn a monster stat block into becoming a PC stat block.
Considering the amount of work I've done for xmld20 in this area, tearing apart the monster entries into races and monster classes, this comes as mixed news: will I still be able to figure out this breakdown if they don't supply it? Will every monster be provided in a class-based way? Or am I stuck with what they give me? Their discussion of race levels fuels my hopes a bit, since they're thinking more ... mechanical, I guess you'd call it.
Didier Monin discussed D&D Insider, which I'm excited about, for the most part. The part I'm not interested in, as I've mentioned before, is the set of applications they're providing, and that's what he focused on. Sure, character generators might be nice, but as a third-party developer, I have these hope that they're not that good so I have something to work on. And even if Griff thinks there might be times where we'd want to use the Game Table, I think we'll just play DDO instead.
Two things by Rodney Thompson caught my eye: he discussed the idea of magic items as "immediate reward" (versus XP as a "delayed reward"), which is a good way of thinking of it. But then he states that you
...don't have to actually get a new magic item for the potential for reward to be there, and in many cases you'll feel as though you've been rewarded when someone else gets an item. In 4E, I think there is going to be a very interesting dynamic between magic items and players. I believe it was mentioned that some traditional things about magic items were going the way of the dodo...
I like the first part, but... what things are going the way of the dodo? As Griff mentioned in an earlier post, there's no more XP cost to crafting, but that doesn't seem to cover what Thompson is talking about here. Next to the monsters themselves, the magic items are my favorite bits to the game.
Thompson finished by dropping a bomb: 25th-level spells. This took a second reading for it to sink in. Is this just a high-end spell, using everything the wizard has, with metamagic and such? We're not talking about a 49th-level wizard I assume...
Finally, Logan Bonner got my jaw dropping when he stated
...[w]ell, that assumes that there will be monks, that they have ki strike, and that DR exists. Now, at least one of those is true...
Everybody loves a monk, don't they? You can't get rid of them, can you?? Not when we've been waiting patiently for them to appear in DDO all this time...
I hope that the Gleemax setup gets finished sooner rather than later, so following these blogs is a little easier. An RSS feed, perhaps, folks?
James Wyatt talks about the "rule" about an encounter using up party resources, and thus a party can only face so many encounters before they need to rest -- but what if the big encounter happens first? As a DM, this is definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and they claim to have done so. Huzzah, but how?
He also talks about his work on the demons in the 4.0 Monster Manual, and while he doesn't give anything away about them, it caught my eye because the monster books are my favorite ones, so I'll be watching what he says closely.
Chris Perkins also mentions the Monster Manual, and how one of my favorites won't be there, because he has been promoted to god status. This makes my mind race about how they're going to handle the gods in 4e -- there's nothing like a statblock for a god to make a DM feel powerful, and a player feel puny. How long am I going to have to wait for that!
Stephen Schubert reveals himself as the math geek at Wizards, mentioning negative binomial distribution; as someone who has been picking apart the structure of the game from a programmer's point-of-view, it's nice to hear them come right out and state that there is something mathematical behind their decisions. Until we see some progression charts or combat rules, we'll have to wait and see where this comes into play.
The programmer in me really perked up at Mike Mearls' blog post, where he discussed "intended use" of game elements. Specifically,
If we also want to make it a playable character race, we'll design a separate racial write up for it. We won't try to shoehorn a monster stat block into becoming a PC stat block.
Considering the amount of work I've done for xmld20 in this area, tearing apart the monster entries into races and monster classes, this comes as mixed news: will I still be able to figure out this breakdown if they don't supply it? Will every monster be provided in a class-based way? Or am I stuck with what they give me? Their discussion of race levels fuels my hopes a bit, since they're thinking more ... mechanical, I guess you'd call it.
Didier Monin discussed D&D Insider, which I'm excited about, for the most part. The part I'm not interested in, as I've mentioned before, is the set of applications they're providing, and that's what he focused on. Sure, character generators might be nice, but as a third-party developer, I have these hope that they're not that good so I have something to work on. And even if Griff thinks there might be times where we'd want to use the Game Table, I think we'll just play DDO instead.
Two things by Rodney Thompson caught my eye: he discussed the idea of magic items as "immediate reward" (versus XP as a "delayed reward"), which is a good way of thinking of it. But then he states that you
...don't have to actually get a new magic item for the potential for reward to be there, and in many cases you'll feel as though you've been rewarded when someone else gets an item. In 4E, I think there is going to be a very interesting dynamic between magic items and players. I believe it was mentioned that some traditional things about magic items were going the way of the dodo...
I like the first part, but... what things are going the way of the dodo? As Griff mentioned in an earlier post, there's no more XP cost to crafting, but that doesn't seem to cover what Thompson is talking about here. Next to the monsters themselves, the magic items are my favorite bits to the game.
Thompson finished by dropping a bomb: 25th-level spells. This took a second reading for it to sink in. Is this just a high-end spell, using everything the wizard has, with metamagic and such? We're not talking about a 49th-level wizard I assume...
Finally, Logan Bonner got my jaw dropping when he stated
...[w]ell, that assumes that there will be monks, that they have ki strike, and that DR exists. Now, at least one of those is true...
Everybody loves a monk, don't they? You can't get rid of them, can you?? Not when we've been waiting patiently for them to appear in DDO all this time...
I hope that the Gleemax setup gets finished sooner rather than later, so following these blogs is a little easier. An RSS feed, perhaps, folks?
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