4E: Powers based on skills

Posted on : 06-04-2008 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting, House Rules

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Here’s what I know about powers in 4E as they relate to skills:

1. Some powers require training in skills. The rogue’s Tumble power requires that you be trained in Acrobatics.
2. The rogue has been described as being able to do more with skills than other classes.
3. Mike Mearls is working on 4E mechanics. He worked on Iron Heroes, too, which allowed you to do a whole lot with skills (albeit in a way that required you to constantly reference the book lest you forget something).

Add a healthy dose of extrapolation and speculation, and my theory is born. I suspect that many classes, the rogue more so than the others no doubt, will have powers that allow you to attack, defend, and perform utility actions with your skills. It makes a lot of sense to me, and would make a characters choice of skills incredibly important. It would also give you an incentive to drop a feat on Skill Training, because that extra skill might open up a whole bunch of cool new powers for you. I would imagine that skill-based powers would be mostly the purview of the martial classes, but the other classes might benefit from these things, as well. At any rate, to continue the speculation, here are three skill-based powers that I’ve speculated right into existence. Enjoy.

Feint
Rogue Utility 1
With a quick thrust and a bit of misdirection, you cause your opponent to drop his guard momentarily.
At-Will * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Melee
weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Bluff vs. Reflex
Hit: The target grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn.

Taunt
Fighter Utility 1
With a mocking threat and a derisive laugh, you goad an enemy into an ill-advised advance.
Encounter * Martial
Minor Action
Close
burst 5
Target: One creature within the burst
Attack: Intimidate vs. Will
Hit: Pull the target up to 5 squares. The target is marked until the end of your next turn.

Assassin’s Rush
Rogue Attack 1
You flourish your blade and dive headlong toward your foe, nimbly bypassing his defenses to deliver a killing blow.
Daily * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Melee
weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Acrobatics vs. Reflex
Hit: Your opponent grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn, and you may shift up to 2 squares. Make a secondary attack against the same target.
Secondary Attack: Dexterity vs. Reflex
Hit: 3[W] + Dexterity modifier damage.
Miss: Your opponent grants you Combat Advantage until the end of your next turn, and you may shift 1 square. No secondary attack.

[Edit: Martial, not Martail]

Pathfinder RPG

Posted on : 20-03-2008 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting, Reviews

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So, Paizo Publishing has decided to put out a product that will, I suppose, compete with 4th Edition. In a bold and, I think, savvy move, they have released an alpha version of The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, so that people can read it, play it, and provide them with feedback that they will use to make it better, stronger, funner. I downloaded it last night and gave it a cursory read. I’ll preface this by saying that I was excited going in. I’m generally a fan of Paizo, and I’m generally a fan of free products. Thus, I was happy to give this thing a look and see just how they plan to fix 3.5.

My overall impression, after an admittedly brief look, was a resounding “meh”. I didn’t see anything particularly revolutionary or interesting in the rules. They’ve tried to maximize compatibility with existing products wherever they could, which means that they’re pretty limited in what they can change. They want to fix things like player durability at low levels and slow combat at high levels, but many of the problems the seek to fix are problems inherent to the core of the system, not just subsystems that can be re-written. How can you fix slow play at higher levels without eliminating iterative attacks or doing something about spell bloat for magic users? How can you make lower-level PCs more durable without changing the way experience points are calculated and levels are gained? And if you change that, you’ll have to change things like magic item creation and spells with XP components, because the value of the experience point has suddenly changed.

Pathfinder seems to me more like a band-aid solution than a true repair; too many of the system’s flaws are in the middle of tangled webs of rules subsystems to be fixed while still maximizing compatibility with the basic rules system. You either fix the system, or you make a compatible product, but you have to choose one of the two.

Now, I’ll admit that maybe I’m wrong about this. Maybe future iterations of Pathfinder will provide more solutions to 3.5′s issues, and maybe they’ll be a little bit bolder with their mechanics. My main issue, though, is that I don’t understand who their target audience is. Those who, like me, are kind of tired of the current version of D&D and want something fresh and new that doesn’t get weighed down by its own body of rules will immediately switch to 4th Edition. We’re probably not going to buy Pathfinder. Those who don’t want 4th Edition, who think that the current rule set is fine, may be willing to try Pathfinder, but will they be willing to pay full retail price for an incremental upgrade? In most cases, probably not. The problem is that, while Paizo seeks to solve 3.5′s ills, Pathfinder doesn’t really do anything that new or exciting. It’s the same old 3.5, just a little bit different. Is it better? Hard to tell.

But really, don’t take my word for it. Follow the link at the top of this post, download the alpha (it’s totally free), and read it yourself. If nothing else, the artwork in the book is stellar.

4E Again

Posted on : 17-03-2008 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting, Geeking Out, Session Reports

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Yesterday, I ran another proto-4E module; this time, instead of using one that I downloaded from the Internet, I created one myself. And yes, I have observations on that process:

1. Re-purposing monsters is easy. I mean, really easy. On the one hand, monsters are pretty distinct from each other, and each have unique “schticks” that differentiate them. On the other hand, it’s easy to alter those schticks a little bit, change their flavor, and leave most of the mechanics the same in order to create a monster that feels different to the PCs but takes very little work to create. Many of the creatures that my PCs fought were re-purposed in this way, largely because they were fighting a lot of ratmen, and ratmen do not appear in any of the leaked 4E monster documents. A goblin picador became a ratman lasher, complete with barbed whip. An orc raider became a ratman mutant, using claws instead of a battle-axe but attacking twice as quickly (though they never actually got to this encounter). The hobgoblin warcaster became a human mage, a cult leader of considerable oomph. I even got to use the shadar-kai chainfighter, transmogrifying it into a ratman chain-fighter and replacing one of its abilities with a chain grapple attack (which it never actually got a chance to use). I even dabbled in creating new creatures; I created a non-combatant NPC, whom the PCs were escorting. She had a weak attack with a dagger that did only 1 point of damage and she had only 10 hit points and very low defenses (she was based loosely on minion rules). She did, however, have a recharging ability that allowed her to heal allies and grant them saving throws.

2. Encounter design seems easier. Granted, I don’t know the experience point value of all of the creatures I used (and some may have been more or less powerful after modification, which may have affected their XP value), and I don’t know how much XP a level X encounter should be worth. So, I eyeballed it. I put together encounters that I thought my PCs could handle, and some of the tougher encounters I made easier by making my bad guys flee when a certain condition was met. Overall, it seemed pretty easy to create encounters by just eyeballing them, and I really think it’s going to wind up being more art than science.

Now, that’s creating an adventure. I created an adventure with six encounters total, and many of them were designed to be quite challenging. I had two players, each controlling two of the six PCs. Mike played as the cleric and the ranger, while Cary played as the paladin and the warlock. One defender, two strikers, and a leader; no controller. At first I thought this might be a problem, but my players were savvy and picked up on some of the finer points of 4E combat quickly (even Cary, who had never played 3E), and the lack of a controller didn’t seem to disrupt the balance of the game. Here are some observations on the four encounters that we got through yesterday; I’ll go encounter by encounter.

Encounter 1: Ambush!
The PCs had been hired by a local lord to escort a healer, Illyria Jeren, to the town of Amber, where a plague was killing off the townsfolk. On their way to Amber, the party was ambushed by bandits hiding in the trees on either side of the road. The PCs were not surprised, however; the ranger spotted two of them and alerted everyone else–in elven–to their presence (thank you Passive Perception). This allowed everyone to make a Perception check to scan the area, and the cleric wound up spotting three more bandits. All told, there were two bandits with maces, two archers, and a bandit leader with a hand crossbow and a rapier (based on the defiant rake). Two level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 5.

The ranger managed to get the highest initiative roll, and promptly fired an arrow at the closest archer. The paladin wasn’t so lucky; a bandit charged him and got in a good hit with his mace, both dealing damage and causing the poor paladin to be dazed for one round. The other melee bandit charged the warlock, but ended up missing. The cleric moved to protect Illyria while the warlock cursed his foe and fired an eldritch blast, dealing significant damage. The two bandit archers took shots at the paladin and the ranger, while the bandit leader came out of the trees and advanced, firing his hand crossbow at the paladin. The battle continued in a similar manner; the closest archer was eventually bloodied, at which point he turned tail and ran. Next down was one of the bandits, also bloodied, and also fleeing. In the third round of combat, an unseen ally began firing arrows at the bandit leader from hiding; nobody managed to spot him during the combat. One of the bandits was killed, while the rest fled, but not before the leader took some significant damage: a critical hit from the ranger that almost took him from full hit points to bloodied in a single shot (1 more hit point would have done it), and a well-placed witchfire from the warlock.

Afterward, the unseen ally revealed himself and introduced himself as Erik, a local hunter. A few Diplomacy and Insight checks revealed information about the bandits, and their ties to the plague and the ratmen that had begun appearing in the area.

Observations: The paladin makes a really good defender. His marking ability is pretty potent in that it deals 8 points of damage when the enemy attacks someone else, so it provides a pretty good incentive for people to focus on the paladin. Combine that with the fact that the paladin had a really high AC and plenty of hit points, and it makes him a really good defender. The ranger and the warlock both did significant damage during the fight, and were probably most directly responsible for defeating most of the enemies. The cleric, unfortunately, wasn’t rolling very well and continually missed his targets. He did get in a Healing Word, which helped the injured ranger out.

From the bandits’ side, there was some unintentional teamwork built into the group. The mace-wielding bandits had the ability to daze opponents with their charge attacks, granting all of their allies Combat Advantage against the dazed character. Every single bandit present dealt extra damage, either 1d6 or 2d6, when they had Combat Advantage. A nasty combination that never actually wound up working, because only the paladin was dazed, and only once, and only for one round, and was never hit by anyone else during that time.

Encounter 2: Abduction
The PCs made their way to Amber and were let in despite the quarantine through a combination of Erik’s vouching for them and a letter produced by Illyria proclaiming what they were there to do. They stayed at a local inn, the Traveler’s Rest, for the night, allowing them to recover fully from the bandit attack. However, during the night, they suffered another surprise attack. This time, there were four melee bandits, one bandit mage, and two ratman lashers. So, four level 1s, two level 2s, and a level 3.

The ranger, being an eladrin, had only had to enter trance for four hours in order to rest fully, so he was awake and unsurprised. Everyone else had to take time to wake up. Had I know the specific values granted by armor and shields, I would have ruled that nobody was wearing their armor; lacking those things, and for the sake of simplicity, I allowed everyone to use their armor instead. The ranger was attacked by a lasher while everyone else was assaulted in their beds by bandits. The second lasher went after Illyria, binding her with his whip and pulling her toward the stairs down. The ranger bloodied the lasher he was facing, but as soon as he saw Illyria being taken away, he used his Fey Step ability to teleport out of the room he was trapped in by the lasher. Unfortunately, the lasher escaped with Illyria while a bandit pushed the unfortunate ranger back into a corner from which he could not escape without suffering an opportunity attack.

Meanwhile, the cleric rushed out into the hallway, ignoring the bandit that had engaged him, only to be knocked prone by a spell cast by the bandit mage. The paladin did a good job keeping one of the bandits focused on him, while the warlock used Eyebite and a curse to damage her bandit and vanish from his sight. That bandit, confused, went after the paladin (suffering an opportunity attack from the warlock in the process), unknowingly increasing the paladin’s AC in the process because of his Lost in the Crowd feat.

Once the lasher escaped with Illyria, the mage made a tactical retreat, his objective accomplished, and ordered the bandits and remaining lasher to stay behind and deal with the PCs. Through some clever positioning and good teamwork, the PCs were able to make quick work of the bad guys, and pursued the kidnappers. They found out from a witness that the kidnappers had fled to the west, and had been allowed to pass by the guard manning the gate. The PCs interrogated the guard (at arrow-point), and found out that he had been bribed, and that the villains were likely heading for an abandoned temple half an hour outside of town.

Observations: Teamwork and clever positioning can grant the PCs a healthy advantage. A defender in tight quarters is a dangerous thing. Eyebite is an extremely useful power to have when you’re cornered. The ranger’s Split the Tree daily power is extremely effective when it hits. The ability to teleport is very, very useful, but not unbalancing at low levels. Cornering a ranger is pretty darned effective.

Encounter 3: The Old Temple
The PCs followed tracks in the fresh mud to the old temple, and kicked the door in. Inside the found a bandit, the bandit mage they had faced in the inn, and a ratman with a vicious-looking spiked chain. One level 1, one level 3, and a level 6.

The ranger moved to attack the mage while the paladin quickly marked the chainfighter. This turned out to be an extremely effective tactic, because the chainfighter used an ability shortly afterward that allowed him to shift six squares and attack three different targets. One of these was the paladin, but the other two attacks, against the warlock and the cleric, both missed and caused the chainfighter a total of 16 points of damage. Combine that with a well-placed curse by the warlock, as well as a very effective witchfire, and the chainfighter only lasted until the second round. Once the chainfighter was down, the bandit and the mage soon followed. This fight could have been very difficult, but some good teamwork and clever tactics made it probably the easiest fight so far.

Once the fight was over, the PCs interrogated the dying mage and learned that Illyria was being held below the temple, beyond the crypt. They also learned that the cult was known as the Children of Pestilence, and that Amber’s plague was their way of offering up the town as a ritual sacrifice to their god, Ualath the Diseased One. They also learned about the cult’s leader, the Vermin King. After the interrogation, they searched the area and found some useful magic items that they took with them, as well as some healing potions. They also used a magic circle on the floor to regenerate their wounds, rather than using up their precious healing surges.

Observations: The paladin’s Divine Challenge is extremely effective when used against an enemy that can make multiple attacks against different people.

Encounter 4: The Crypt
The PCs then descended some spiral stairs into a darkened crypt. They had a sunrod that they used for light, but the skeletons waiting within had an advantage with their darkvision. There were three skeletons and a boneshard skeleton. Three level 3s and a level 5.

The cleric used his Turn Undead power and missed, but even the miss allowed him to do half damage, and since that damage was radiant, the skeleton that he affected with it took additional damage. The skeletons weren’t all that dangerous to the PCs, just hard to hit with their high defenses. At one point the warlock provoked an opportunity attack from a skeleton, and its Speed of the Dead ability allowed it to do some extra damage.

During the second round of combat, though, the boneshard skeleton came out and did a massive amount of damage to the ranger, dropping him to -1. A little while later, a skeleton attacked the warlock and dropped her to 0. Both of these situations were quickly remedied by the cleric’s Healing Word, but the crypt was extremely confined and the skeletons definitely had some advantages on their side.

The PCs wound up winning the day, but the boneshard skeleton’s boneshard burst hit them twice in the process, once when it was bloodied and once when it finally died. Because it did necrotic damage, the PCs took full damage while the skeletons were unscathed.

Observations: The paladin and the cleric were the stars in this fight, mainly because they both had abilities that did radiant damage, which the undead creatures were vulnerable to. This seemed to be a difficult fight, not simply because the creatures themselves were challenging, but because the close quarters made it very difficult to move around, and skeletons get some nice bonuses when they make opportunity attacks.

General observations: Overall, I think it went really well. PCs are clearly capable of taking on foes several levels higher than their own level, which opens up a wide array of enemy possibilities to the DM. This also means that fights can be big, and you shouldn’t be afraid to outnumber the PCs. It also means that you can have several relatively weak enemies and a single “boss” enemy in a fight three or for levels above the PCs’ level. Terrain is both more important in 4E and easier to adjudicate than it used to be. Simple conditions like Combat Advantage, Cover, and Difficult Terrain make it easy to deal with most types of terrain, and those conditions make good yardsticks for coming up with other things, as well. It’s not difficult to run an encounter with multiple different types of creatures. From the PCs side, Healing Surges are a great addition to the game. They make healing simplified and reliable, and they allow the PCs to recover from a difficult fight in a few minutes so that they can easily go into another difficult fight relatively fresh. Overall, this, and the previous proto-4E session that I ran, have both served to make me even more excited about the actual release.

Designing Again

Posted on : 22-02-2008 | By : Brian | In : Design Diaries, Gamecrafting, Links, Wild Blue

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I don’t believe I’ve shared this yet, but I’ve sort of been on an unofficial hiatus from game design. As in, I’ve just been too lazy to do it. At any rate, I’ve been bitten by the bug again, so I’m going back to designing Wild Blue. I’ve had some ideas regarding mechanics recently, ideas that have really excited me, and I’m starting to put pen to paper again, in a mostly digital, metaphorical sense. These ideas incorporate some elements of Saga, but many of the ideas are wholly new (though I’ll admit to some influence from other RPGs, most notably Dogs in the Vineyard. At any rate, I’ve decided that, as I design Wild Blue, I’m going to document the process, if only to give myself an outlet for some of the things going through my head. This will be the first of my design diaries.

This first diary will focus on what is effectively my mission statement for the mechanics that will provide the foundation for Wild Blue. I have a number of goals in mind, and I’m going to outline them here.

1. The mechanics will be easy to learn and use. A lesson I learned with Saga was not to overcomplicate things. In one particular playtest, one of my testers was a novice gamer; he had never played a role-playing game before, and had limited experience with board games, too. Throughout the entire four-hour playtest, I had to repeatedly explain what he should do, how many dice he should roll, and why. I don’t in any way consider this to be a failing on the part of the tester; far from it, it was clearly a failing on the part of myself and the system I designed. Despite my broad-strokes approach in Saga, I had made the basic mechanics a little too complicated, and while experienced role-players and board gamers seemed able to grasp them with relative ease, a novice gamer had considerable difficulty. This is a problem I aim to avoid in Wild Blue.

2. The mechanics will allow for narrative control for the players. This is a big one. Saga had leanings in this direction, but didn’t go quite far enough. In Wild Blue, successfully resolving an action means that you get to narrate its resolution. This means that you get to decide how you succeed, and describe it. On the flip side, it also means that you can choose to fail, and if you do so, there will be some form of compensation, and not just the fact that you can choose how you fail; I mean mechanical compensation, an incentive of some sort.

3. The mechanics will allow for a wide array of character options. Saga, I think, succeeded fairly well in this regard. The skills were broad enough that you could create specialties that described your character fairly well, and traits allowed you to do this even more so. But I want to go a little bit further with this idea. There will be certain aspects of your character that are chosen from pre-defined lists, that do pre-defined things. However, the most important aspects of your character will be wholly player-created, and will be descriptive of your character. I also want drives to be a more central, more important aspect of your character.

4. The setting will inform the mechanics. Saga was deliberately generic. While I want Wild Blue’s system to have some aspect of wide applicability (I’d still like the system to be open-source), I want to have mechanics that reinforce, and are reinforced by, the setting. I don’t want to create a generic system and try to shoe-horn my setting into it, I want to create a system and a setting that are intertwined and designed with each other in mind. If the system can be used for other settings regardless, that’s just a bonus.

5. The mechanics will make it easy to be the GM. I tried to do this with Saga, and to some extent I think I succeeded, but I didn’t define things well enough for the GM. During my playtests, it was easy for me to adapt on the fly to what the players did, and to improvise challenges for them quickly and seamlessly. However, I always felt that I was fudging things to some extent. There weren’t any well-defined difficulty scales, so it was never clear how hard a given challenge should be. I want to change that in Wild Blue, and define things better so that there’s less guess-work involved in being the GM.

Parsing the Fiend

Posted on : 26-01-2008 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting, Geeking Out, Links

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It’s been quite a while since my last post, and for that I apologize. I have no particular excuse other than the usual: games and lack of motivation. At any rate, I read something just now that motivated me to make a post: the Monster Manual entry for the 4th Edition Pit Fiend.

Here’s some stuff I gleaned from the entry, in no particular order:

1. The Pit Fiend is worth 18,000 XP. No more referencing the CR chart; just a flat 18,000. Nice.
2. He has a teleport speed of 10. They’ve said that short-range teleports would be more common, and apparently (at least for more powerful characters and monsters), it’s just another method of locomotion, usable whenever you want to use it.
3. Action types for the Pit Fiend’s abilities are either standard, minor, and minor 1/round. I’m guessing that minor actions are similar to free or swift actions, probably a combination of the two, with minor 1/round being only somewhat more limited.
4. The Pit Fiend can summon some allies once per encounter, then effectively use them as short-range missiles. Very cool. Even cooler, there’s no roll required to summon, and no save required on the part of the devil/missile, which should speed things up.
5. There are Fortitude, Reflex, and Will defenses, as well as an entry for Saves, with only a +2 listed. I wonder what Saves do now.
6. The Pit Fiend has to use an Action Point to use his per-encounter power. I had originally wondered if taking the same per-encounter power more than once would allow you to use it multiple times per encounter. Now I’m wondering if you have X number of per-encounter powers, each usable by spending an Action Point. I wonder how quickly Action Points refresh.
7. One of the Pit Fiend’s powers, instead of being at-will or encounter, is listed as ‘recharge 4 5 6′. I wonder what that means. Presumably there’s some form of requirement for it to recharge.

That’s all for now. Peace.

Bulldogs: Psionics

Posted on : 03-01-2008 | By : Brian | In : Gamecrafting, Links

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I wrote this supplement for Brennan Taylor’s sci-fi space opera game, Bulldogs, a few years back, and now Bulldogs: Psionics has been published! Huzzah!

Rangerly Speculation

Posted on : 19-12-2007 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting

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I’ve been speculating about the role of the 4th Edition ranger lately. The following items have been posted on En World, and this is where my speculation springs from:

1. There will be fewer than 11 classes in the Player’s Handbook. “Mearls said 8 was about the ‘middle range’ of the number of classes that might be in the PH when I asked him about it yesterday, specifically mentioning that the Internet was taking 8 classes as confirmed.”

2. There are four party roles in 4th Edition: defender, striker, leader, and controller. The defenders are the fighter and the paladin; the leaders are the cleric and the warlord; the strikers are the rogue, ranger, and warlock; the controller is the wizard. That’s 8 classes.

3. Apparently “elves make for good rangers”. This implies that rangers are in the PHB, since elves are.

4. There are three power sources in the Player’s Handbook: arcane, divine, and martial.

5. “[A] controller can affect not only multiple opponents on the battlefield, but the battlefield itself. Fogs and walls? Controller. Reshaping the terrain? Controller. “Very little is known about the ranger, other than the fact that it is supposedly a striker and has some “scoutish” abilities. Here’s the thing, though. There are four roles, eight classes.

It would make a lot of sense, in order to maximize player choice, for each role to belong to two different classes. Why, then, are there three strikers and one controller? We know more about the rogue and the warlock than we do about the ranger. The rogue has sneak attacks and follow-up attacks, both of which allow the rogue to deal lots of damage to a single opponent, as strikers do. The warlock has curses, which make enemies more vulnerable to his eldritch blast and soul ruin abilities, allowing him to deal lots of damage. We do not know anything about the ranger’s striker abilities. It might have something to do with favored enemy, or some sort of skirmishing damage, if the ranger is indeed a striker.What if the ranger is a controller, though? There is only one confirmed controller (the wizard), and three strikers. Also, every role is filled by members of classes powered by
different sources. The defender has the fighter (martial) and the paladin (divine); the leader has the warlord (martial) and the cleric (divine); the striker has the rogue (martial) and the warlock (arcane); the controller might have the wizard (arcane) and the ranger (presumably martial). It seems redundant to have two martial strikers in the first book, let alone three strikers and one controller.

If you think about it, it isn’t hard to imagine the ranger as a controller. An ability like manyshot could easily be an area of effect attack, and it’s not hard to see other multi-target ranged attacks, or to see the ranger as a highly-mobile skirmisher who is able to strike multiple targets in quick succession. It’s also easy to see the ranger as able to utilize his surroundings more effectively than other classes, both on his own behalf and on behalf of his allies. Allowing allies to ignore the effects of difficult terrain while not doing so for enemies (or even worsening their effects), or allowing allies to gain greater advantage from cover or concealment, seems very controller-ish.

Further, it’s possible that animal companions might be abstracted into abilities that the ranger can use to move opponents around or immobilize them. A ranger’s wolf companion might have hit points and AC, with all other abilities represented by actions that the ranger takes to command it. Tripping opponents, harrying them in specific directions, using a bear to hug an opponent into immobility, using a hawk to momentarily blind an opponent or disarm him. This would not only give the ranger more battlefield-control abilities, but would significantly simplify animal companions (and give them a more concrete effect on the combat).

I may be wrong about all of this, but this is the way I’d like to see it play out. I’d love to see the ranger reimagined as a controller; I think it would help bring further definition to the class, making it a tactical skirmishing combat class with bow-and-arrow skill that others can’t even get near.

D&D Speculation

Posted on : 14-12-2007 | By : Brian | In : 4th Edition, Gamecrafting

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I’ve been reading up on what some people have had to say about the Races and Classes 4th Edition preview book (those that got their copies early, at least) over on EN World, and such readings have sparked a lot of speculation in my mind.

First, allow me to share those things that have been revealed over on EN World. Speculation for these items is in (parentheses).

1. All classes will follow the same attack bonus/AC/save progression, netting a +5 bonus every 10 levels. (Presumably this would be to streamline multiclassing somewhat. If things like saves, AC, and attack bonus are all tied to character level rather than class level, then that means that the only things tied to your class would be class skills, hit dice, and specific powers.)

2. There are feats, such as Fighter Training or Wizard Training, that allow you to pick up some class-themed abilities if you are not a member of said class. (To me, this seems like the replacement for multiclassing. Here’s how I’d do it, assuming item 1 is also true. Virtually everything is tied to character level rather than class level. attack bonus/AC/save progression is as above, and all classes get the same hit die (more on this later). This means that specific powers and class skills are really the only thing you get from your class, aside from some 1st-level benefits (more on this later, too). Every level, you can choose either a power from your class list or a feat. If you choose as your feat say, Fighter Training if you are a wizard, you get to choose a fighter power as if you were a 1st-level fighter. Every time thereafter that you choose Fighter Training, your effective ‘fighter level’ goes up and you get to choose a new fighter power. Multiclassing doesn’t really exist, per se; if you start as a wizard, you’re a wizard until you hit level 30, but you might pick up some abilities from other classes along the way. Now, I mentioned that I’d give all classes the same hit die, right? It’s a d4. Yes, you heard me right. But here’s the thing: feats and powers grant additional hit points. Most wizard and rogue powers would grant +2 hp, most cleric powers would grant +4, and most fighter powers would grant +6. Feats would run the gamut, with feats like Endurance granting a larger boon while others like Alertness don’t grant quite so many. Each class would also get certain first-level benefits, such as starting feats (armor and weapon proficiencies for the fighter, maybe some skill-boosting feats for the rogue, etc.). Assuming class skills work the way they do in Star Wars Saga Edition, skill points would be a non-issue; instead, you’d choose your trained skills at first level based on your class, and then your list of class skills would cease to matter. Taking the Skill Training feat would simply grant you a new trained skill from the full list, and maybe 2 hit points.)

3. Prestige classes have been replaced by paragon paths (levels 11-20) and epic destinies (levels 21-30). (My assumption is that these prestige class replacements are simply collections of new powers that you can choose from, provided you meet the prerequisites for entry into the path/destiny. Again, if you decide that your fighter is going to become a weapon master, he’s still really a fighter. Once he meets the prerequisites for that entry-level power, though, a whole new collection of weapon master powers opens up to him.)

4. Most short-term buffs will last for the whole encounter. (Awesome. I’m guessing that most ongoing effects are going to follow this model. It allows for a lot less bookkeeping, which is nice. I like the idea of something like barbarian rage or bless simply being cast and then become part of the encounter until it ends, rather than having to track several ongoing effects started at different times. Not only will this minimize deliberation over which spell to cast first, it’s also going to speed up play at higher levels, when more ongoing effects are available.)

5. Most non-combat spells have become rituals. (I’d imagine rituals take longer to cast and/or involve some sort of cost to enact above and beyond what combat-oriented spells require. It’s easy to envision something like comprehend languages being a ritual that takes 10 minutes to cast and requires that each language to be comprehended be spoken by at least one willing participant. Thus, it becomes a sort of ‘opening ceremony’ for diplomatic meetings and business transactions when language is an issue, and doesn’t use up potential combat resources. I always thought it was kind of hinky that a spell like comprehend languages, which is really useful but only in specific situations, took up a spell slot that could be devoted to a spell with more immediate utility.)

Ok, I think that’s enough for now. I’ll mention again that this post is mostly speculation, and that I have no inside information about 4th Edition.

PC Death

Posted on : 27-10-2007 | By : Brian | In : GMing Methodology, Links

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Over at Treasure Tables, there’s a post about describing the death of a PC. The gist of the post is that when a PC bites the dust, it usually comes as a surprise to the GM and the group as a whole, and thus the GM probably has some trouble doing any kind of justice to the character’s death when put on the spot. Now, I’ve never actually killed a PC (though I’ve killed major NPC allies before, both intentionally and not), so I can’t really speak from experience on this issue. I do know what I’d probably do in that situation though. I’d let the player handle it.

My reasoning is thus. As the GM, I have a strong connection to and investment in the world, the supporting cast, the allies of the PCs, and the villains, since they’re all under my control and, in many cases, I’ve created them all by hand. When something major and dramatic happens to an important NPC or group or feature of the setting, chances are I can do it some kind of justice in describing its demise because of that connection and investment. The thing is, while I might like the PCs, and while I may be secretly rooting for them to win, I don’t have that same connection with them because I didn’t create them and they aren’t under my control. I’m not invested in the PCs. The players are. Especially if a player has been playing a character for a while, he/she is invested in that character and likely thinks about that character a great deal more than I do. A player often knows how his/her character will behave in a given situation, what that character wants out of life, what his/her hopes and fears are. The player may even have given some thought as to how he/she wants the character to die eventually (or even how the character wants do die).

Given that the player has a much stronger connection to the character, why not capitalize on that when it counts? A PC’s death is arguably one of the most important things that will ever happen to that character. It only seems right that the player should be able to decide how that happens. Obviously the circumstances surrounding the PC’s death will color the description somewhat, but I’d much rather let the player have that moment than take it away and make a mess out of it. It might even make the death of a well-loved PC easier to take.

Viking culture in RPGs

Posted on : 25-10-2007 | By : Brian | In : Gamecrafting, Links, Wild Blue

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My buddy Dean just posted this really interesting explanation of how Viking culture can be applied to the ‘points of light’ model that I discussed earlier. Some of this I’m not sure I can reconcile with what I have in place right now (such as it is), but other things intrigue me.

The idea of “Sea Kings” (or, in Wild Blue’s case, “Sky Kings”) is a good one. I like the idea that, while the Demesne is the major power, there may be a number of nomadic pirate lords, or even warlords in control of entire city-states, outside the purview of either the Demesne or the Folk. This could even feed into the concept of one people selling high-quality weapons to another, only to have them used against them somewhere else. Perhaps some of the border towns manufacture high-end swords or guns, sell them to a neighboring city-state in order to appease their warlord, and said warlord sends out pirate ships to raid the Demesne’s merchant vessels. Along these same lines, Dean inquired about the relationship between the Demesne and the Folk, and whether or not it would be conducive to trade in border areas. The answer is, probably not. The issue isn’t necessarily one of animosity (though there’s no shortage of that), but of the fundamental differences between the two peoples. The people of the Demesne are human. The Folk are very much not. Many of them are ageless, a number of them have vast amounts of power at their disposal, and they are almost universally inscrutable and unknowable by human beings. They are the Other, in every aspect of the term. Some trade might be possible on an individual basis, but such trade would likely make no sense to humans, with the Folk offering bits of worthless junk (toadstools, bits of string) for valuable tools, or vice versa.