:Kill the Wizard First

Adventures in Playtesting is not dead. In fact, we had an entertaining (if short) session 3 last week, and a longer session 4 this week. A writeup is in preparation.

4e By the Numbers is also not dead, though I’m having some trouble coming up with an effective recap of the combat chapter that isn’t “Gee, this is a lot like 3e. Why couldn’t they change this and leave wizards alone instead of vice versa?” But I’m working on it.

The real problem is that I re-upped my World of Warcraft subscription.

Yes, I know. Shut up.

In unrelated news, I’ve still got a Malazan/Burning Wheel conversion in my backbrain that won’t go away. Maybe I’ll write up something for it.

Posted by James to Just Chatter | add a comment

So, after some delay, I’m back, and ready to take a look at the rest of the PHB.

I’ll first say this: 4e is slowly growing on me the more I read. I’ll be trying to talk one of my usual groupmates into running a one or two session game so I can evaluate it from a PC perspective, but the more I look at it, the less irritating I find it.

Most of it, anyway.

I think an important part of this is getting used to the idea that unlike 3e, where character capabilities changed massively over 20 levels, 4e characters really don’t. A 4e character has essentially the same capabilities at 5th and 25th level, with bigger numbers. And while the specifics of the numbers are problematic (an issue I will address in either the DMG or MM sections), the concept isn’t offensive to me, though I do find it less interesting.

In some ways, it’s curious to watch the reactions to 4e. A lot of people whose D&D experience pre-dates 3e or enjoy retro play deride it for its strict concern with balancing and emphasis on playability at the expense of flavor; meanwhile, many of my friends from the 3e “generation” consider it a step backwards, abandoning the high-crunch rules interactions and customizable characters for a stricter emphasis on single classing, niche protection, and more limited capabilities.

Anyway, on with the show.

Read the rest of ‘4e by the Numbers: Part II’ »

Posted by James to Analysis and Review | 11 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

So, I’ve been thinking about 4e so far, and how to push it into a different style of game. More review is forthcoming, by the way — PHB Part II should be up sometime this weekend, depending on my free time.

But in the meantime, below the cut you’ll find a few of my thoughts on how to tweak 4e around to turn those expensive high-production-value hardcovers into a game you won’t feel dirty about enjoying.

Read the rest of ‘D&D 4(+/- 2)th Edition’ »

Posted by James to Theory and Practice | 18 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

As a rejoinder to my mixed feelings about 4e, it seems the market has spoken: 4e has already received a second print run and is ranked #5 for preorders on Amazon.com.

If it gets more people into the hobby, that’s good for the hobby.

(Via Trollsmyth.)

Posted by James to The Industry | 2 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

I have seen 4e. And it is… well, it’s kinda not bad. Which is, admittedly, the very definition of damning with faint praise, but that’s where I’m going with this.

Before I move on to the details, I can save some readers a lot of time: 4e is “balanced” because they just removed a huge number of options. 4e characters just don’t do as much as 3e characters. They can’t. The rules aren’t there. Once you accept that, it’s a pretty fun game, but coming to it from 3e is a cold and bitter shock, especially if you play 3e at the high end of optimization like I do.

For reference, at the point where I’m writing this, I’ve read all three core books, and I’m going back through chapter by chapter. I’m going to try to keep the rantypants to a minimum.

I start in on the PHB below the cut.

Read the rest of ‘4e by the Numbers: Part I’ »

Posted by James to Analysis and Review | 3 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

So, over the weekend I visited some friends up in Detroit; a bunch of us got together to eat, drink, and be merry, and one of the things we decided to do was give Keep on the Shadowfell a shot. I ran it for five(ish) characters over two sessions, and while we never actually made it into the titular keep, I definitely have some thoughts.

The Good:

• This is the first time that the idea of hit points as tactical abstraction has ever really seemed built into the system. Partly it’s because hp totals were very swingy — something would hit for a pile of damage, then an equally large pile would be healed. Anyway, it worked.
• The minion monsters are nice. They added flavor to the encounters without actually being a real threat (in theory; see below for what actually happened…).
• There were plenty of reasonably interesting tactical situations even at level 1, which is nice.

The Bad:

• Anyone who tells you 4e fights are shorter than 3e fights is a lying lier who lies. Outside of the minions, the monsters have a lot of hp, and the “elite” monsters have a shitton. Seriously, the goblin boss has like 104 and you fight him at first level.
• I can’t lie to myself any more: it plays like a videogame, and that’s that. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong, and I think it will make fantastic con or beer und pretzel games. But the rules don’t seem to have much depth to them — most of the classes seemed pretty similar, with the major difference being whether you called your ranged attack “crossbow” or “magic missile”.

The Ugly:

• Well, here’s an issue that will be resolved when the actual book comes out: it’s a demo adventure. It’s slightly missing things like item prices to spend your loot monies on.
• Magic missile is an attack roll now. It can miss. Bugger that.
• It is freaking impossible to kill characters without basically throwing them up against stupidly over-levelled impossible opponents, which is basically saying “rocks fall, everyone dies”. Seriously, the players bitched about the fact that they couldn’t roll above a 10 while I was on a 15+ roll, but if those kinds of dice had come up in 3e, they’d all have died every single fight. Instead, they won. It’s like playing Toon, with more swords.

As for the adventure proper: well, there’s a keep, and a death cult, and try to guess where the death cult is and what you have to do to them? Nice maps and packaging, and the encounters generally seemed pretty interesting. I will also say this, having all the monster stats and abilities right on the encounter page is extremely nice.

So, that is my 4e preview experience. More, no doubt, when the books come out. No Adventures in Playtesting this week, due to getting back from out of town and having crap catch up on yesterday.

Posted by James to Analysis and Review | 9 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

Second session, and since level 1 is dull, we advanced to level 2 at the beginning. Good thing too.

Quote of the night, while searching for a mysterious beeping: “It’s not the Armor Class. Uh. Air conditioner.” Some slight acronym confusion, there.

• Kad’dath Leoban, Human Jester 2. Second level Jesters get their Charisma bonus to saves, which is quite an improvement. Also, access to first level spells off the Jester list, which is pretty specialized, but has some real gems like glitterdust, cause fear, and touch of idiocy.
• Arthos, Human Fighter 2. Fighter 2 comes with a bonus feat. In this case, the revised Elusive Target, a strong choice that at this level provides a decent AC bonus and negates attackers’ bonuses from flanking.
• Liadan, Aasimar Conjurer 2. No real surprises here, gaining enlarge person and something I don’t remember - glitterdust maybe?
• Asham, Human Ranger 2. Level 2 is only so-so for Rangers. +1 AC while skirmishing, and when they do enough damage to an opponent, everyone else gets bonuses on to-hit and damage against him. Though that amount of damage one-shots most CR <1 enemies, so I may have to tweak it for playability at low levels.

Having made their deals with the kobolds of the Sunless Citadel last time, they set off toward the goblin caverns to find the dragon (and the loot). Meepo guided them past the traps securing the boundary, and they kicked in some doors.

Encounters:

• 6 Goblins (EL 2): If Arthos or Asham land a hit on a goblin, it’s pretty much dead, so with a surprise round, they’re going down pretty fast. One does land a hit on Liaden, which makes her wizard hp kind of sad. Also, a few pile some non-lethal damage on Asham. This will become important later.
• 6 Goblins, 4 Hobgoblins (EL 3): Due, perhaps, to some slight confusion about doors, directions, and who’s going where, they pop open the entrance to Goblinopolis, the land of a whole crapton of goblins. Not all of whom are armed, granted. Kad’dath talks fast, and convinces them that the party merely came down to place their auction bid early. The goblin chief agrees to take a few guards, accompany them to the edge of his territory, and throw the lot of them out. It goes without saying that both sides are plotting violence.
• 3 Hobgoblins, Goblin Cleric, Wyrmling White Dragon (EL 4): So two hobgoblin guards, the chief, and his cleric get the PCs to open a door on a very small white dragon. The first few rounds went pretty well — the enemies got a few hits in, and the dragon popped off a breath weapon, but Liadan color sprayed the shit out of both hobgoblins and the dragon, and Kad’dath landed a cause fear on the chief.

  Unfortunately, this is where things went… badly. Because the cleric took off for Goblinopolis to gather reinforcements. Although grease and caltrops held off the melee problem, being peppered with arrows wasn’t doing them any good, particularly when the combination of lethal and non-lethal damage knocked Asham out cold. Arthos did manage to stuff the stunned dragon into a bag and bludgeon it unconscious before the whole group threw themselves through a nearby door to relative safety.

• 2 Goblins (EL 1): With a surprise round, instant beatdown. Goblins never knew what hit them.

Making their way out very slowly, they rescued a gnome (who healed Asham up) and a few kobolds, and retrieved their reward from the kobold leader - a key to a locked door they’d discovered previously. They need rest very, very badly, but will be returning to cleanse the goblin menace. Next week.

This was pretty entertaining. No one died, but it was a very near thing - another hit on Arthos or Liadan near the end would have been bad. Still, everyone got to do their thing and everyone made it out in more or less one piece.

Posted by James to Tabletop Dispatches | 2 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

So, inspired by a couple of references, I’ve been looking at the World of Warcraft CCG.

Yes, I know. Moving on.

I know I’m not the only person who finds the idea of “raid decks” entertaining as hell. On the other hand, CCGs are, historically, a giant pit in the ground that one throws dollars into until one dies penniless and alone. And apparently the WoW game is on a three expansions/year release cycle, which is what drove me out of M:tG.

I also have no idea what the CCG scene looks like in Cleveland. I know a few people who play L5R pretty regularly, but that’s it.

So, does anyone have any interesting data to impart?

(Background: I played WoW for a while. Got bored. Quit. No real desire to go back.)

Posted by James to Just Chatter | add a comment

Treasure in 4e.

This is awful. Seriously, it’s just bad. I mean, I don’t care about encounter advancement, since I’ve moved to doing XP for accomplishments anyway and plan to keep on with that. But the treasure system is dreadful.

On a systems level, it’s maybe tolerable. If you play it by RAW, it would seem to keep people about where they should be, which isn’t awful, I guess, if you’re determined to have a game where money buys power. As long as they don’t find the inevitable loopholes, anyway.

In terms of setting and roleplaying, though, it doesn’t make any sense. I haven’t really been one of the people blowing the “4e is World of Warcraft” trumpet, because I think it’s a trite complaint that glosses over the enormous history of video games and tabletop games borrowing (and shamelessly stealing) from each other. But when they import the “Disenchant” mechanic wholesale, they’re making it real hard for me to take them seriously.

“The characters don’t find magic items that are beneath their notice—they won’t walk out of the drow enclave with a wheelbarrow full of +1 rapiers.” So apparently when you level up, so does the whole world, and suddenly everything that’s not on the Approved Treasure Distribution List goes away. I guess that’s one way to keep people from melting down lower-level items and making better ones. An extremely dumb way that makes no sense, but hey, whatever, it’s balanced, right? Also gone - giving NPCs magic items they might actually use: “The 5th-level NPC has a 6th-level item—not because he needs it, but because it’s one of the treasure parcels.” Yes, I can imagine that happening. “Well, I’m off to oppress some more dirt-farming peasants. Just need to pack my random level-appropriate trinket so that any adventurers who drop by to stop me are properly rewarded.”

The default world is supposed to be “points of light” - isolated safe environments in a hostile wilderness. With that in mind, it makes even less sense to fill the world with traveling merchants who buy magic items at rip-off prices and sell them at a 500% markup (and yet, are never killed and looted by PCs). Who also mysteriously stop selling lower-level gear.

This is just… really stupid.

Posted by James to Analysis and Review | 10 comments | show comments » | « hide comments

So, we kicked off the first session of James’s House Rules Extravaganza tonight, opening up with The Sunless Citadel, a reasonably good first level module. For reference, I may post a link to the Tome of Houserules at some point, but in any case I’ll highlight differences as I go along.

The Party:

• Kadath Leoban, Human Jester 1. The Jester in this game is a skill-centric character, similar in some ways to the rogue, who is also a secondary spellcaster. Very much a ‘decent at everything, awesome at nothing’ archetype, which is a class type that has historically not been really useful at all. I’m keeping a close eye on this.
• Arthos, Human Fighter 1. The revised Fighter is a tactical control specialist. I know how these guys do, at least through level 6; I played one in the Spelljammer game. They are awesome at their job.
• Liadan, Aasimar Conjurer 1. The plan is to go arcane summoner through the Malconvoker prestige class, which is a decent way to roll. Liadan will make a good test for some of the revised school feats and metamagic rules.
• Asham, Human Ranger 1. The revised Ranger is quite a bit different — no spellcasting, no animal companion. Instead, a solid set of finesse-based combat, terrain manipulation, and party boost abilities.

Of course, at level one, there’s only so much that they can do.

The Sunless Citadel is a location adventure. Once fiating everyone as having met on the road and heading into town (increase/decrease amount of obvious railroading to taste, but this is a playtest game), there’s some talking, meeting people, etc. The module itself is pretty light on the townsfolk and what they’re like, so most of them end up as one of James’s Short List of NPC Personalities. Long story short, once a year some goblins show up and auction a magical disease-curing fruit. Last month some adventurers (two natives, two out-of-towners) went to investigate this whole scam and never came back.

Big underground temple, ancient dragon cult, etc. And everyone knows what underground dragon temple means: kobolds. Obviously, they’re at war with the goblins. So off to check this place out.

Encounters:

• 3 Dire Rats (EL 1): Typically, for level 1 combats, this was pretty swingy. Arthos lost 2/3 of his hp in two rounds of flanking rats, and Kadath lost half of his in one hit (and contracted the Creeping Syphilis or something). It might be worth looking at level 1 hp and doing it more like 4th Ed. I expect that to be the only time I say that the rest of this game.
• Pit Trap (EL 1/2): Woo, pit trap. I’m still working on better ways to handle traps. Honestly, this particular trap is purely a “did you bring a pole” test with nasty consequences - a 10′ fall with another dire rat at the bottom is pretty bad news for level 1 characters.
• Meepo (EL 1/6): Poor Meepo. The goblins took his tiny dragon, and now he’s all sad. One (impossible to fail) Diplomacy check later, and it’s okay, little kobold, the party is here to kill all the goblins. And possibly any kobolds that look at them funny. Kadath distracted the weeping creature long enough for Arthos to sweep all his earthly treasure into a Santa sack. My players are not nice people.
• Yusdrayl (EL 3): This is a real simple room: do not piss off the kobold queen, or she and her many guards get to fling themselves on your puny level 1 hit points. They are many, you are few, and it’s pretty much impossible to kill them all before someone gets stabbed, so make nice. Objective: succeeded! A bargain was struck, and the party agreed to at least try to get the dragon back. Since “kill all goblins” was already in the cards.

That’s where they rested, and where we closed. Pretty much par for the course at level 1, a level we will be moving through very quickly, because it’s boring.

Posted by James to Tabletop Dispatches | 6 comments | show comments » | « hide comments