Skill Powers

Okay, let's see if I can remember how to do this blogging thing again. Having only played two D&D sessions in the last two months really has an effect on my D&D attention; I've not read an article for over a month, and feel so out of touch. I'm now making a concerted effort to keep active, even if our group doesn't, although now that snow has fallen, I think our usual summer distractions will soon be out of the way.

---

Last month's Dragon magazine had the third sneak peak into the Player's Handbook 3, regarding Skill Powers. In a nutshell, I think these are terrific. These provide powers whose prerequisites are based on your skill training, not on race or class. Long have I complained that every power in the game is chooseable by a single make of character, that there was no reuse of powers. If you wanted a fighter power, you had to be a fighter -- it wasn't going to appear in any other list.

But now, there CAN be some shared ability between otherwise very different characters. And since skills are an area where there can be some common ground between two different characters -- an acrobatic wizard or a diplomatic barbarian are both possible -- it perhaps makes a little more sense that it is in this area where commonality can occur. The stereotypically diplomatic classes (those with it available as a class skill) will seem appropriate if sharing the Cry For Mercy power, but if the party's fighter invests the time, he too should be able to exhibit some diplomatic prowess when needed.


But the ability to share powers across varied characters isn't the only attractive point about skill powers; the other is to make otherwise "worthless" skills useful. Now I'm sure I could start a debate with many people about whether this skill or that skill is "useless", and I assure you I could argue both sides. But these are some skills that, most will admit, are taken more for roleplay purposes -- "because she would have this skill" -- than for any utilitarian reason. D&D3.5 did the right thing by adding a lot of synergy bonuses to the worthless skills, and 4e did a better job by merging some and improving the others. And now that 4e has taken away the decision-making involved in ascribing ranks to skills, it was even easier to choose a few at character creation, and hope that those were the ones that needed Training in future skill challenges.

Now, with a new purpose to skills (if only to unlock access to these new skill powers), players might again put some thought into their skill choices beyond "I'm a paladin, I should probably take Diplomacy" or "the DM always drops us off of cliffs -- I'll take Acrobatics to be safe"; now the availability of skill powers might sway them to choices they'd otherwise avoid ("Religion? I'm no roleplaying paladin! Let the cleric worry about that."), or even better, might urge players to take the Skill Training feat, which I'm sure only sees use by roleplayers or heavily-themed builds.


Perhaps my favorite skill powers, I'll admit, are the at-will ones, which aren't many. Any time I look at "alternate" powers (racial or paragon/epic) to a class's regular set of powers, I always feel like I'm giving something up, losing something, instead of just swapping it. A bit irrational, I know, provided I'm happy with my choice. But this feeling doesn't occur if I'm gaining an at-will - and since skill powers are Utility powers, which generally aren't at-will, it feels like a gain if you can swap an at-will in. Two of my favorites are Agile Recovery (Acrobatics, Minor, "You stand up") and Fast Hands (Thievery, Free Action, "You draw or sheathe a weapon, pick up an item in your space or adjacent to it, or retrieve or stow an item"), both which can improve the effectiveness of your character in a very character-suitable way.

A not-so-brief summary (after 3 levels)

Having just hit 3rd level I figured it was time to sum up the things that I love and the things that I hate with 4e.

The Good:

Everything to do with Encounter design. I just love this. Everything from the mixing and matching of monsters, to their roles (as an aid for the DM only), to the use of terrain. It’s all just good shit. I mean it. WotC knocked this one out of the park.

The skills system. I was lukewarm on the untrained vs trained thing at first, but I’ve really grown to love it. It’s simple, elegant, and best of all dumping ranks in doesn’t outgrow the curve of the DCs, making what should be an incredibly difficult show of skill (ie, tumbling around a dozen ninja warriors without getting hit) into a can’t be failed exercise in boredom (ie. that DC 15 never goes up).

Racial abilities. They add a nice little kicker to choosing a specific race. Great idea.My only knock against them is that they just don’t go quite far enough. I’m putting this under a good thing, with the presumption that future books will push this great idea to the heights it deserves.

The monsters. Another homerun for WotC. From the foundation of their design being for one encounter (ie. no more abilities/spells that won’t be used during a fight) to the stat block layout, it’s all much improved. A special favorite of mine is the use of signature powers for every monster. The kobold’s free shift and the goblin’s shift after a miss etc... Just awesome.

Races. Love the new races. The Dragonborn are a perfect addition, and the split of the elves into Eladrin and Elf is beautiful. The Tiefling... well, three out of four is pretty damn good. And the re-tooling of the other core races are all very nicely done.

The Bad:

The multiclassing (or lack thereof). Part of the fun in DnD is mixing and matching existing classes to whip up my own perfectly tailored “class”. Was it powergaming and unbalancing? Sure. Was it potentially nerfing yourself if you took the wrong class or feat? You betcha! But it was fun and challenging and I loved it. (The added perception that they nerfed multi-classing solely to justify the creation of future books, as in “don’t make up your own class, buy this book which has a bunch of new classes that almost fit your concept instead”, well, that kinda pisses me off.)

Spellcasting is just boring. It’s all just different powers now and that, in some vague way, robs me a little. Okay, my wizard can drop “Scorching Bursts” every round, but whoop-dee-doo. It’s dulls-ville.

Action points. It took me a while but I’ve decided that I hate the way they implemented these. When they first appeared in the 3.5 Eberron world, I thought they were quite cool. A nice little 1d6 boost to any roll to change defeat into success strikes me as “heroic”, which was the intent. In 4e getting to do an extra action in a round might be heroic, if you fighter uses it to make an extra attack and topples two ogres at the same time. More often than not the result of the Action Point is pretty mundane. A healing surge gets burnt, or a bad guy gets hit for an extra 5 damage. Yawn. Worse yet, I’ve used an Action Point for the extra move to get away from danger. Yeah. That’s “heroic”.

The magic items. I know they felt that players were far too dependant on magic items. But so what if they are? At least it gave us something to aspire and save up for. Something to quest for even. Now they’re just lame.

Retraining. WotC should take this concept and shove it up their ass. I hate it. 'Nuff said.


The “yeah buts”:

The assortment of powers. I like them overall, and the fact that every class gets them is both a good and bad thing. It makes every class unique in way, which is good, but it also (in an admittedly weird way that I have trouble defining) makes every class feel the same. I wish I could elaborate on this but it’s just my subjective feeling.

The feats will surely fill many a book (while emptying many a wallet) and every character gets a shitload of them, which is good. I suppose. But I’ve yet to see anything that I want to aim towards. They’re just so watered down now. A piddly bonus to a pair of skils, or the ability to wear armor and such are just... blah. Where are the Whirlwind Attack type feats that required levels of planning and then provided an exciting in game payoff?

The overall streamlining of the game. This came really close to being up with the good, but for one thing. There are times where I get the feeling that “time wasters” of the past (ie. confirming critical hits etc...) have simply shifted to new time wasters. This could be simply because our play group hasn’t gotten a complete grasp on the rules and powers but everyone’s action starts with opening the PHB to check on the details of our char’s powers. I’d rather be rolling dice thanks.

A rant on class

I seem to have touched on something based on the comments on my last post, so I’m gonna use it to pad my post count.

For starters, I’ll be the first to admit that my opinions are colored by the 3.5 past. I will not however apologize for that.

When I got a new car I did the same thing. The new one has more horsepower and a better air conditioner, but the old one had a better dashboard layout and cornered better. Comparing old to new and apples to oranges is just human nature. Still, point taken Adam,.

As for being patient and giving WoTC time to put out more material, well, I’ll concede that one too. I have no doubts that over the next few years we’ll be swamped with numerous offerings (or depending on how you look at it, schemes to pry our cash from our hands and pad their corporate bottom line). I’m also sure that the upcoming FRCS and certainly the PHB2 will be chock full of new powers (whether martial or arcane or divine). That’s all well and good. In the meantime while I wait for the main entrée I’ll make due with the bland soup of the day.

My bottom line point is that 4e classes all “feel” the same to me. No one has anything that really makes them stand out anymore. I’ve yet to see anyone in our party do something that made me do a double take. There has been no “oh wow, that was cool” moment.

The rogue has a ‘piercing strike’ that does some extra damage coupled with a move. The paladin has some kind of ‘smite’ thing. The cleric a ‘radiant strike’. My wizard the ‘scorching blast’. At first they were each on their own an intteresting effect to see in combat. Done every other round they lose their edge and become just another attack.

In 3.5 every class, every character, felt unique. They had their special flavors, their quirks, their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe it’s just me but I thought that was a beautiful thing.

Each class had it’s role in 3.5, only they were subtle and unspoken. They weren’t slapped down in stone and used like chains to lock us into a certain playstyle. It was understood that sorcerers and wizards stayed in the back while the fighters and paladins stood up front. Clerics and bards laid out the buffs and healing. Rangers and rogues crept around the edges and got in their damage when an opportunity opened up.

However, if you wanted to push a class into a different role, it was possible. A few feats or some multiclassing and my sorcerer could wear a chainshirt and step up to melee with the best of them. For sure it cost me a level of spellcasting and that arcane failute check bit me a few times, but that was part of the fun. I could get creative and experiment and revel in the failures.

True. The old multiclassing rules opened up some abuses. But when did “powergaming” become a bad word? If I want to take a level of fighter for the free weapon and armor proficiencies, or start as a rogue at 1st level solely for the skill ranks, well… where’s the harm? Who am I hurting? Some chump who’s playing the game in Yakima? No. I’m just having some fun. Last time I checked that’s the whole point of any game.

As another example the 3.5 ranger fought with two weapons or mastered the bow and could track. That was his thing, his role. For sure any other 3.5 class could do that with the proper feat selections. Same goes in 4e where a feat or two will do it. The difference was that in 3.5 feats were a precious commodity. Did your paladin really want to ‘waste’ a feat to track? Not bloody likely.

In 4e however nothing is off limits. Wanna learn to raise the dead? Spend some of the plethora of feats and learn the ritual. For all intents and purposes class no longer matters. In their mad quest to make every class equal to every other at every level (no more fighters outshining the wizard at low levels, only to have the tables turned in the high levels) they've given us vanilla throughout. Might as well just have "Adventurer type A" and "Adventurer type B" and get it over with.

Strategy seems to be a thing of the past as well. Sure, positioning your mini on the grid is more vital than ever, but past that there’s very little to think about. It’s a simple case of MMO style button mashing. Pick your at-will and your target and role a d20. No longer do you need to worry about meting out those special abilities or spells for a crucial moment. Fire away my friends! Plenty more where that came from!

Personally, I liked the angst over every decision. Especially when it came to spellcasting. I loved the whole “do I cast this or save it?”, or “do I try a spell that has a Will save because that giant seemed to slough off my Fort save based spell last round?” Those were the tactics and strategy that I really enjoyed. And when I ran out of spells, I loved to have my sorcerer grab her sickle and jump into melee. Puny hitpoints be damned! She wore that magic mithral chainshirt for a reason dammit!

That’s a thing of the past it seems. Now my dragonborn wizard is going to take the feats needed to wear chainmail only because there’s nothing else to spend them on. He’ll continue to grab his bastard sword and hack away at the bad guys despite having scorching blasts at his beck and call. He’ll keep on breaking out of his role because that’s the way I play. That’s called fun.

Ps. Despite my tone, I really am having fun with my new character. It is still DnD after all.

Pps. I am going to try out the multiclassing feats, just to try them. I’m also keeping an open mind. I can’t stress this enough. My opinions six months from now might be a total 180 from today.

PHB - Skills and Feats

I think I've mentioned this before, but I really like the way that some of the skills have been consolidated. Acrobatics and Athletics, Perception and Stealth, these have grouped together many skills that used to go hand-in-hand anyway.

No more ranks - this threw me for a loop. You now pick which skills you're trained in, and that's it - you have training in it, and the only regular increases come from the 1/2-level bonus. Since many people picked the same skills every level-up anyway, this makes things easier, but gets rid of the fun some people had with dabbling here and there in many skills. The loss of synergy bonuses is a consequence of the loss of ranks, but I think the idea of synergy now comes into play during the skill encounters, which can often require various skills working together to get around the obstacle, whether a physical trap or a diplomatic meeting of minds.

I like that Detect Magic is now a skill check, instead of a spell that takes up space. The knowledge checks for various creature types and environments are a continuation of them in the 3.5 rules, which made the esoteric skills of that version useful, and help provide additional usefulness to the reduced skill set.

Unfortunately, two sessions into the first module hasn't had too many skill checks, and no skill encounters yet. It's quite a combat-heavy start, which is good for getting to know the combat system, but I'd like some variation!


The feats are a bit disappointing, coming from a 3rd edition background. They're very light, which makes sense if you consider how many skills you get as you advance. But when you're used to feats defining your character, these piddly things hardly seem worthwhile.

In 3rd edition, you could plan ahead for the feats you wanted/needed, always wishing you had room for one more. I found it difficult to pick something while planning a few levels of my cleric, because they all feel so powerless. The proficiency paths are a good use for the feats, if you need them (as a cleric does if they want armor), but so many of the feats are class- or race-specific, and even then feel like a waste of a choice, even when you're struggling to find anything at all.

The only feats that were interesting at all were the ones for Divinity, which basically give an extra use to your Channel Divinity ability. This reeks of the Dungeons & Dragons Online system where a cleric's turn undead uses could be used for other purposes (short-term regeneration, removal of negative conditions, etc.) Not that I don't like this alternate use of this occasionally-used ability, but it's yet another thing that feels stolen into 4e instead of innovated.

Many of the feats seem at first glance to require outrageous ability scores as a prerequisite, but considering the number of increases that are gained through the levels, it's not really so bad. Those who want to stray from the stereotypical can still have wizards with melee-boosting feats if they so choose.

The multiclass feats, which really sum up the multiclassing ability of 4th edition, take up all of two pages. I'm still not sure about this system, much preferring the openness of 3rd edition, but I suppose I should try walking a character through a multiclassing scenario to see what the end result is like - to see if the character really feels anything like a multiclassed character, or just a character that has no focus in either of the two classes.

Forget guesswork. It's finally game time!

After nearly six long months without any DnD, our group finally got together to kick off the 4e version of the game. Here then, are my first impressions.

First off, character creation is very much a step by step follow the recipe kind of process. The only thing that really slowed me down was finding where everything was on the character sheet. After that it was just following along and plugging in the numbers and picking powers. The latter was a little disappointing in terms of the sparse selection.

I understand that it's just the first book and that next years PHB2 will have many more powers to pick from, but for now I found that there was very little to get excited about among the powers. For my wizard it was pretty much a choice between a 1d6 + Int mod close burst versus a 1d8 + Wis mod range 5 blast. Certainly nothing to make him stand out amongst the other first level wizards in his graduating class.

"I majored in Scorching Blast while my buddy Dave majored in Magic Missile." Ho hum.

Feats are another disappointment. For me, feats were the defining element of 3rd edition. Feat selection alone could differentiate every fighter from every other fighter. In 4e that's gone, or at best very underdeveloped. Sure, my wizard gets a billion feats thanks to one coming every other level, but there's very little to pick from. Armor and weapon proficiencies will be nice. An extra trained skill or two might come in handy. I might even dabble in a Warlock pact. Otherwise nothing to really look forward to. Again, this will no doubt be expanded upon in further releases but for now it gets a Boo-urns.

On the other hand, skills seem much better now. At first getting a one time +5 for being "trained" seemed, well, stupid. But I now see the real beauty in the design. It keeps those set DCs from becoming obsoleted by ranks. No longer can I put 20 ranks into Tumble to move through the battlefield without ever drawing an Attack of Opportunity. So huzzah to the new skill system.

(Side note: why the hell did they have to change the term "Attack of Opportunity" to "Opportunity Attacks"? Did they think that we're all so stupid that we might mix up the rules of 3rd and 4th editions because they share a common term? Attack of Opportunity (or AoO) rolls off the tongue and has a cooler acronym. "Opportunity Attack" falls from the lips like a brick and just sucks.)

Weapons and armor selection are just as sparse. Only six types of armor? Not much in the weapon lists to choose from either. It was all very simplistic too (once I got past the terms like "versatile" and "high crit" and the new range deal). Not a knock that, but not really a plus either. The inclusion of the "adventurer's pack" in equipment was a nice touch, especially since I buy the same routine items for every character. The simplification of encumberance was a sweet deal too. So I'll call this area a draw, mostly because it continues to give me the feeling that WotC held back about 35% of their material solely to fill other books that are soon to be released.

The game itself felt like a beloved pair of old boots. We ran through two seperate combats with an "extended rest" in between and while they took as long as any 3rd edition encounter (possibly longer) that was just because we're still getting familiar with our powers etc... In the long run, I see combats being considerably faster after the learning curve is climbed. Mainly thanks to no more saving throws in response to attacks/spells. While I still felt a little powerless (and robbed of my hand in fate) when that caster fired that gob of acid at me, I can appreciate how much easier it must be on our DM Crwth to be freed from rolling saves for all the various monsters.

Tactically it played out quite nicely. The extra slides some of the baddies had made the battlefield much more fluid, which was fun. It made picking my spots for dropping those burst spells that much trickier. Small compensation for having only two to pick from but whatever. My 3rd edition sorceror didn't have much to pick from at 1st level either. Also the question of when to use that precious Daily power kept things interesting. I thought both of my fellow players used theirs too early in the day, but then I followed suit and wasted mine as well.

I'm still mixed on Action Points. I don't think they really add any value to game play, in that it would still be fun without them. The extra action is nice and since they recharge after two "milestones" (why not call them encounters?) I can spend them whenever I want to without worry or regret.

The module "Keep on the Shadowfell" has been good so far. While we only just barely dipped our toes the encounters were varied and interesting. Also there seem to be two or three seperate storylines that we can follow, and it'll be interesting to see if any of the threads converge or cross as we go along. I'm definitely looking forward to exploring Winterhaven more as it seems to be nicely fleshed out with some interesting NPCs.

All in all, while 4e was disappointing in some areas it also provided some surprising goodness. Enough goodness that my 3.5 books will stay tucked away and continue to gather dust. For now.

Skill Challenges

I thought I was going to hold off on commenting on the numerous Excerpts that WOTC are releasing lately, but the one on Skill Challenges changed my mind.

I really like this idea. They hinted in the past at how skills were going to be improved, but this is better than I had hoped. As a DM, I found that 3.0 was quite lacking when it came to skill balance -- that some went unchosen by every class. The 3.5 rules moved a few things around and changed some others, the most notable was the large set of synergy bonuses added to the Knowledge skills.

But turning skill checks into challenges is just terrific. I often tried to use the more esoteric skills throughout a campaign, so those players that had chosen some odd ones for their characters would be able to justify them. I think Don caught on to that pretty early, putting a rank here and a rank there. While a rogue could often be relied on needing his or her sneaking or thieving skills at some point in a campaign, the limited selection of a fighter, almost all Strength-based, went unused unless there was a lot of Jumping, Swimming and Climbing going on: "The goblin king demands that you climb to the top of that cliff and jump into the lake five times, making the biggest cannonball splash you can each time -- OR HE WILL BURN THE VILLAGE."

But now the Cannonball Clan Conundrum can be fully fleshed out as an encounter, whether the party decides to splash or slash to save the village. In the past, I would struggle with having to decide whether taking the skill-based solution should warrant the same amount of XP (and rightfully, it should, I feel) or whether the only true way to earn your experience was to slay everything in your path.

The example Challenge shown is a perfect example of the hand-waviness of the more role-playing aspects of skill checks in the 3e rules. To make most Charisma-based skills worthwhile at all, you needed to roll them, but on the other hand, these situations were usually role-played speech between the players (their characters) and myself (the NPCs). I'm fortunate that my group are really good at role-playing these encounters -- they can theaten, cajole, persuade and bribe according to their needs and according to how they feel their character should behave. But every so often -- usually at the turning-point discussions and suasions -- I would have the player roll the appropriate skill, which would then either advance or backslide their role-played efforts. I think we worked it well, for the most part; sometimes the roll filled in that argument that the player couldn't quite make (to me, or to the NPC), and other times it would clear the NPC's head and make them realize they've been duped.

Having these Skill Challenges spelled out, though, doesn't lessen the role-playing aspect of the game. Just because a challenge "requires 8 successes before 4 failures" doesn't mean that I'll tell this to the players, they'll roll up to 12 times, and that's that. It means that these encounters can be designed a little more structurally, perhaps with conversation trees showing where rolls might need to be made, and how the NPC's reaction will be at those various points (instead of me winging it on the NPC's behalf). In fact, published modules (or pre-planning DMs) could go so far as create such an encounter as a choose-your-own-adventure conversation, where instead of choosing you roll.

The cutpurse just asked why she should help you recover the amulet. Roll Diplomacy. If you roll 13 or higher, turn to page 4. Otherwise, keep reading.

While I've been warm and cold about the various changes we've seen in 4e, this one is by far my favorite. Nothing but good.

Character sheet peek

Wow, it must be D&D day, with all of these posts.

A handful of character sheets. were issued, I believe for use at the D&D Experience event that went on last weekend.

I'm starting with the wizard, Skamos Redmoon.

The first thing I noticed is that the ability scores seem to be like they always were, not like what the Pit Fiend entry seemed to be showing.

Squares... squares... you know, if they had just kept things at feet, then they wouldn't need the word "squares" everywhere. Speed could be 30', range could be 25' normal/50' max, etc.

Dagger is +3 vs. AC. Where does the +3 come from? The last podcast talks about a "prof" bonus, perhaps proficiency - does the dagger have any such value? And who's not proficient with a dagger? Do wizards use Dex bonus to hit? Or is that maybe a function of light weapons? Even so, the +3 is a mystery.

Magic Missile looks formidable. Versus Reflex tells us two things - it doesn't always hit (boo), but it's going to be easier to hit large and/or bulky things (yay). The damage starts off better (yay), but doesn't compare to higher level MMs (unless it does increase in 4e as well). Boo, no multiple targets. Our old standby Magic Missile has all grown up.

The Passive Insight and Passive Perception are handy -- basically they're take-10s precalculated for you. The wizard sure seems to get a lot of ranks at first level... interesting. Some must be racial, but still...

Bloodhunt is a nice little racial feature, and I wonder if "attacks vs bloodied foes" include all types -- spells as well as by weapon. I don't see why not, but "attack" has a different meaning in 3e.

"Your powers are called spells, since they are from the arcane power source." Perhaps I just haven't been paying attention, but is that really saying that wizards get "arcane powers" and not "spells" on top of some other wizardy powers? Perhaps I'm not qualified to be writing a blog about 4e...

Looking further at Magic Missile on the other side, we see "Special: This power counts as a ranged basic attack. When a power allows you to make a ragned basic attack, you can use this power." Okay, besides the redundancy, I wonder if this is just not a common enough idea that they didn't come up with a "subtype" for it. It should emphasizes that MM is going to be a core spell for the wizard!

The Light spell -- sorry, power -- no, it's a spell -- says "[p]utting it out is a free action." Again, I'm surprised this isn't an entry on its own (like the (D) that 3e used to show that a spell was dismissable).

Light doesn't have a "type", like Illusion or Conjuration. Oversight, perhaps?

Mage Hand has

Sustain Minor: You can sustain the hand indefinitely

Does this mean it takes up my minor action each round, though? Not that I'd mind - it's a good balance of not getting it for free, but not being too expensive to maintain.

Both Light and Mage Hand have now had "Special: You can create only one hand at a time". I'm going to guess there will be many cantrips of this form, so again, why not have a special term, "single", that says you can only have one going at once?

Ah, right, because they've done away with Duration, feeling that keeping track of such things is too difficult. Therefore there's nowhere to put (D) markers and such.

Scorching Burst is the second spell to have "implement". Is this tied to the Arcane Implement Mastery on the first page, which I conveniently ignored?

"Area burst 1 within 10 squares." Shouldn't that be "Area burst 1 square within 10 squares"? Okay, I'll stop ragging on the squares thing.

For the this post, anyway.

Does that mean just the square itself, or does "burst 1" mean "1 square beyond the targetted square", giving you an effective area-of-effect of 9 squares?

The Force Orb is interesting, in that it has a Secondary Target and Secondary Attack. I'm guessing the second Hit: line should say "Secondary Hit". The inconsistency of the naming rankles the computer nerd in me.

Infernal Wrath gives a "+1 power bonus." Does that mean just what's described in the next sentence - the +1 damage? Is it named to prevent stacking, if such a concept still exists in 4e? It's not much of an encounter power, but I guess it's free with your race.

Oh look, Acid Arrow! I was just asking about that the other day. Looks nasty. Ongoing damage, no limit, until they save. If spells such as Bane, Doom, Curse, etc. still exist, these are going to be much more powerful, if they allow you to attack someone's saving throws. I have a feeling it'll be against their defenses now, however.

Acid Arrow also gets a Secondary Attack. Very nice. If that wasn't a staple of a wizard before, it sure will be now. Daily is kind-of a bummer, though.

Sleep is interesting, since it has a slowing effect. The save against the actual sleep happens not immediately as the spell is cast, but on the targets' turns, to see if the slowness turns into a nap. That's interesting, because it means a target's companions might try and remove the effect before the fall down, drop weapon, provoke untold attacks, etc.


Wow, that was longer than I expected -- I think I'll look at the other character sheets tomorrow!

Christmas elves - just in time for Valentine's Day?

Wow, what a slow month. Okay, sure, real-life has gotten in the way, and the lack of informative posts by Wizards doesn't help, but I have to embarrassingly admit that I haven't finished reading the Races and Classes sneak-peak book yet, which might have something to talk about.

It also doesn't help that I rely on the Wizards RSS feed to tell me about new articles being posted - silly me, thinking that something like that might be correctly set up. But no, I've now missed two Ampersand articles because of this.

Oh, and did I mention that I haven't seen a developer blog for about a month, because they've gone and made a mess of Gleemax yet again? No? A shame I haven't mentioned that...

But this isn't just a post to gripe. I don't think. Let's go look at the that missed Ampersand article and see.


The older article was on the elf racial block from 4e, apparently a Christmas gift from Bill Slavicsek -- one that he forgot to put the name tag on. Or even wrap in wrapping paper. No ribbon. Shoved behind the tree.

Let's see: height, weight, ability scores (extra wisdom, no constitution penalty - very nice), size, speed... let me help you out here, since if you're a D&D fan, you're obviously mathematically challenged and can't do feet-to-square conversion on your own. 7 squares = 35 feet. Interesting that they've gone against the grain with units of ten.

Vision, languages, skill bonuses: +2 Nature, +2 Perception. Okay, we've seen that Perception is the new Spot/Search/Listen/whatever, but Nature? Is that the old Survival? No, wait, it was Wilderness Lore. No, wait, Knowledge (Nature)? Huh.

But here we go. Elven Accuracy (Elf Racial Power). Encounter/Free Action/Personal - so per-encounter, the timing/speed of it, and the range of effect. Nice and clear. "Reroll an attack roll. Use the second roll, even if it's lower." Not too bad, not too powerful.

Wild Step: You ignore difficult terrain when you shift (even if you have a power that allows you to shift multiple squares).

Perhaps I've lost track of things, but "shift"? Is that like a five-foot step, but now possibly multiple squares five-feets if you know what you're doing?

Group awareness is interesting, and I'm sure it will be continually forgotten. It's bad enough trying to remember that you're under the effect of a bard song in the current rules -- who's going to remember that they have an elf in their party, that it matters, and that they might be close enough to get a bonus?

Elven Precision [Elf]. Prerequisites are "elf" and "elven accuracy racial power" and "heroic tier". Don't the "elf" and "elven accuracy racial power" go together? Or are they still blurring the lines between the name of a race and the subtype, so a drow might still be "elf" for satisfying prerequisites, but might now have "elven accuracy"?

All in all, mildly informative, and it looks like they've kept the elf recognizable. Huzzah?

People skills and people's kills

Noonan teased about "skill challenges", "extended challenges" and "complex challenges." He also said that I can probably suss where they're going, but maybe I'm just thick.

What I'm hoping for is an expansion of what skills are used for, and how often. As a DM, I consciously try to add opportunities for characters with seldomly-used skills to shine: Move Silently, Hide and Tumble all see regular use; Concentration, Spellcraft and Knowledge: ____ all see some time as well; and the rogue's Disable Device and Open Lock are appreciated when the time is right. But there are some skills that just never get used, and I feel it a shame if a player caves to the reality of typical gameplay by avoiding the skill that their character should have taken, to fit their personality. Giving opportunities for these "lesser" skills to be used, especially when they allow the party to avoid a long trip, an awkward encounter, or certain death, is what makes me feel good as a DM, even if the characters never utilize it. Something about assuaging my guilt, for what's coming next.

If 4th edition provides more examples of alternate use or more opportunities to use them in combat -- because, let's face it, that's the meat-and-potatoes of D&D -- then they'll be greatly welcomed. I, for one, loved the synergy bonuses in 3rd edition, especially the Knowledge synergies in 3.5, so I hope they keep these around, and perhaps add more. I want to see my players get upset because there are so many useful skills to choose from.

However, no longer how much my players might wish it, the Diplomacy, Bluff and Sense Motive skills will never cross the meta-boundary and work on the DM.

Barking up the wrong tree

Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with "Talent Trees" and such. I've never played the Star Wars RPG, and never will. However I'm hearing again and again how DnD 4e will have this concept as a core part of character creation. One poster in the WotC forums (search for SavageCheater's remarks here ) offers what I feel is a damn fine guess.

It is a little lacking in exactly what skills or feats might make up each tree, but that can be forgiven considering there's no certainty that feats and/or skills will even be included in 4e. I've seen devs refer to feats and skill checks so it's almost a sure thing but I wouldn't cement anything into place just yet.

I suppose my initial qualms with talent trees is that they seem to remove some of the variety and versatility of 3.5.

I know what you are thinking right now. That Griff is a total R-tard! I'm gonna flame his posts so harshly that his house, his car, his entire world will actually catch on fire.

Whoa there boys and girls! Allow me to explain.

In 3.5 my fighter can be radically different from another fighter in the same party simply by taking different feats. Throw in choices in weapon specialization, dodge, mobility, combat expertise, power attack, cleave etc... and you have a ton of variety.

The 3.5 skills system allows two rogues to be completely different as well. One could specialize in the traditional rogue skills of disarm and open lock. Another could be the sneaky scout with lots of hide and move silently. A third could load up the social skills like bluff, diplomacy, and gather information.

The 3.5 magic system offers not only metamagic feats but school specialization, focus, and a ton of prestige classes. My shadowcasting sorcerer is completely different from my abjuration focused sorcerer.

It's been over seven years and I still haven't come close to trying all the character concepts rattling around in my head. Every new book with it's pages of new feats, classes, and magic types has provided even more selection and idea.

Talent trees on the other hand strike me as very cookie cutter. Want a stealthy ranger with a focus on archery? Take the ranger, apply this talent tree which says take this feat here, put these ranks into these skills, and voila!

Road map. Recipe. Pick your analogy. Either way you follow the directions and you have an instant character. Instant and bland, like a microwave burrito.