What I wrote:

This post makes me the most concerned out of any L&L post ths far, as it seems that Monte doesn’t actually understand the reasons people think D&D breaks at high levels. This worries me.

I love the idea, the concept of high level play. The problem is, execution is always mediocre. In 3e and prior, the issue wasn’t just that encounters could be bypassed with spells, it was that the non-casters had to just sit aside twiddling their thumbs as the casters did so. The issue wasn’t that you could disintegrate hordes, it was that climactic fights could be 2 hours long, or 2 minutes, depending solely on how the Wizard’s luck went with those spells.

4e, despite all the complaining handles the tier changes the smoothest. Fights get too long, and the DM has to do a lot of work to give big challenges sometimes, but everyone remains useful, and everyone gets a chance to contribute to the game.

As a fan of Mages (as you said at DDXP), I understand fully why you’re a fan of high level play in all editions.

But please, try to understand why some of us, as fans of Fighters, Rogues, Paladins, etc, have issues with it.

I like the idea. I want the game to change. I want my Paladin to soar across the sky, mounted on a dragon, pummeling demon lords and saving gods.

But in 3e and prior? I never got the chance. Either the Wizard removed all challenge, or he failed and we TPK’d since we couldn’t get past the magical wards.

For me, the game broke.

Please understand this. And please let me pummel my demon lords.

I suppose my main point is that D&D doesn’t break as a game at high level by default. Rather, it breaks if you want to have a diverse party. If my entire 3e party were primary spellcasters, I’d be fine. But it absolutely sucks playing my high-level fighter alongside those characters.

Monte talks about the type of game where you create your own planes and lay waste to planets, teleporting around and disintegrating hordes. But he needs to remember that not every class gets to do those things. We need to make sure those classes are still fun.

If we can do that, and keep combat from ballooning into a 3-hour affair, then I’d officially call high-level play “not broken”.

So Labyrinthian, who runs the blog, decided to put forth his points, and air all his dirty laundry about the system, to get my responses on it.

Many of the points, I had heard before. I tried to answer all of them as best I could.

But, as I am wont to do, my comment in reply to him ended up something like 8 pages long.

As such, I’m posting it here, and leaving Labyrinthian a link to it. It… it’ll just work better this way, I think.

Go read his post first (as I don’t feel comfortable copying his questions here without permission). Then read my responses below.

Callin gave some great answers, too, by the way.

Problems with the Books and Rules

1) Dumbed Down

Yes, the game is simpler and easier to play than 3e and prior editions. I’ve never understood why this is a bad thing, however. Why does something need to be difficult in order to be worthwhile?

Complexity is fun, sure, but it’s also a barrier to entry. Start with a simple system, and you can add complexity on top.

In addition, not everyone thinks complexity is fun. To appeal to the broadest audience, that additional complexity has to be optional. In 3e, most of the complexity was part of the core system. In 4e, they just made it optional, added complexity.

It’s a different design philosophy, and it won’t please everyone, but it makes it easier to expand their customer base.

2) Core Races

Tieflings and Dragonborn/Half-dragons were hugely popular in 3e, especially with the younger crowds.

Aasimar didn’t make it because they weren’t as popular, and as evidenced by your own post, nobody could remember how to spell (or pronounce) their name. They eventually made it back in, in a fashion, as the Deva.

Eladrin were included in order to have a split between the Galadrial-ish high elves and the Legolas-ish wood elves, as those two races have very little in common. This is basically what the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting did, as well. They just bumped it to core.

Gnomes got delayed… well, this is actually a kinda interesting story of deadlines and creativity:

See, gnomes have always been a bit weird, as a PC race. In some settings, they’re fey-ish tricksters. In others, they’re tinkers. In others, they’re short skinny dwarves. They never really had a set role in the world.

When designing the 4e PHB, they wanted to give the Gnome such a set place. But the deadline for the PHB was fast approaching, and they didn’t have time to finalise it all.

The deadline for the Monster Manual was a month or two further away, though, and they had already decided to include PC races in the monster manuals, so they hammered out the gnome’s place in the world (fey trickster), and included them in there with playable stats, with a full PC treatment in the PHB2.

Half-Orcs may have been a similar situation, but I’m less clear on that one. Suffice it to say that they did explain in no uncertain terms why certain races were left out of the PHB, and it wasn’t as simple as making people buy more books.

3) Classes

Similar for some of these, but also partially due to page count. With no classes charing the same spell list any more, adding a new class to a book doesn’t just take 2 pages for basic class features, and a reference to the spell list at the end of the book, anymore.

The Bard wasn’t a core class until 3e anyways, and sucked there, so it was delayed until they felt they could do it justice and make it worthwhile (PHB2).

The Druid was basically a nature Cleric with Wild Shape in 3e, and they again wanted to differentiate it more, but had a number of options to do so, with no clear direction to take. Again, they delayed it until the PHB2.

The Sorcerer was similar to the Druid, but needed to be differentiated from the Wizard. Again, they needed more design time to figure out just how t do so, and again, PHB2.

(All three of these classes ended up being very cool and unique in the PHB2, so I think they put that extra time to good use, and I’m happy they took it. The Bard and Sorcerer are my two favourite 4e classes.)

The Monk is a bit different. My guess is that, early in the 4e design process, the idea of the Monk being Psionic (mind over matter, and all that jazz – see most of the 3e Monk’s special abilities) came up and took hold with the design team, but they knew they didn’t want to introduce Psionics this early in the game. So it got slated for the PHB3, where Psionics came in.

(Aside from that, the Monk was always an outlier class anyways. Some people absolutely hated the idea of an asian-inspired class being part of their D&D game, just as some hate Psionics. It probably shouldn’t have been in the 3e PHB1 either.)

3 Again) World of Warcraft

…I’ve never quite understood this criticism.

Aside from the concept of roles, nothing in 4e came from WoW.

And even then, we’ve had those roles in D&D since 1e. But back then, we called them “Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Thief”, or the “Core 4″.

4e only brought in names for those roles, and made it so that they weren’t tied to those specific classes. In 4e, nobody had to argue over who will play the Cleric (because EVERY group needs a Cleric). If nobody wants to play a Cleric, we also have the Bard, Artificer, Warlord, and Shaman to fill that role in the party.

Sorry, but I’ve never found someone (and believe me, I’ve asked), who could explain to me how 4e is like WoW in any satisfactory manner.

4) Skill Merging

You have a very valid point with respect to Searching vs Listen/Spot. But most of the other mergers make sense. Stealth, for instance: while there may be times when a player only cares about one, for whatever reason, these are the exception, not the rule. If my thief is invisible, but really loud, he’ll never be able to break into the bank. If he’s silent, but out in the open, same problem. For 99% of uses, you need to use both. As such, 99% of the time, a player will want to be trained in both. And for those situations when you only need to use one? Just roll for one. Nothing about the skill says you have to be using all of its finctions at one time.

But the biggest reason for skill streamlining was Rogues. In 3e, if you were the party Rogue, you were expected to be trained in:

• Disable Device
• Open Lock
• Sleight of Hand
• Hide
• Move Silently
• Search

Without these, the party would generally be disappointed, as you weren’t following their expectations as the skill monkey.

And it would have also been nice if you could have:

• Disguise
• Bluff
• Forgery
• Climb
• Tumble
• Gather Information

With all of those skills, you could be an effective Thief.

3e Rogues got 8+int skills. They would need an 18 Int just to get all of these skills, and still wouldn’t have any points left over for their own skill choices.

In 4e, you are expected, as a Thief, to be trained in:

• Thievery
• Stealth

Search, acrobatics, athletics and the social skills can be covered more easily by other party members, and you still get 5 more skills to choose, if you want to pick up one or two of them.

Did they simplify too much? Maybe. But 3e was a mess in the other direction.

5) Tactical Minis

Yeah, 4e does rely on minis somewhat more than 3e, but that was actually a calculated choice as well. WotC did surveys and focus groups, actually, and they found that the majority of people they talked to used minis with their games. As such, they embraced it somewhat, and the way they did it didn’t work for everyone.

There was also a shift towards tactical play, rather than strategic play (strategic play being things such as the Wizard planning out his spell usage for the day). This, again, won’t be for everyone, but it’s another thing that lowers the barrier for entry.

In strategic play, you need to worry about what may or may not come up later. As a new player, that’s hard. In tactical play, you mostly only need to concern yourself with what’s happening now. This is easier for most people to do.

6) Art

I personally like much of the art. The inconsistent stuff I’ve found has mostly been pieces reused from prior (3e) products. There are problems, but yeah, like you said, subjective.

But OMG, YES, the Pathfinder art is beautiful!

7) Book Layout

The book seems diaorganized at first because we’re used to the disorganization of prior editions. Both are organized, but they are so in different ways. For example, everything to do with a class is all together, rather than 3e’s placement of spells together at the end of the book. Honestly, most of the book’s organization hasn’t changed from 3e, just the amount in each section.

The index… yeah, the index is pretty shit. The TOC was pretty good, I just wish that had carried through.

8 ) Labels

See above about WoW. We’ve had these labels forever, we just didn’t have the same names for them. WoW stole the concept from us and defined it better, so D&D stole it back from them. Good game design is good game design.

As for this defining your character? Not a bloody chance! Was a 3e Rogue defined by the fact he could do +4d6 sneak attack damage? Did that make the game all about his DPS? Hell no!

The roles are guidelines to help you in choosing a class, and to assist you in designing new powers for said class. Nothing more. They say “Oh, you want to play a Ranger? Well, he’s a striker: a mobild, high-damage, low-defense character. That’s how you’ll end up in combat. Is that what you’d like?”

And if that’s not what you’d like? You take your character concept over to a class that does fit what you want out of your character.

There was nothing worse than deciding to play a swashbuckler as a 3e Fighter, and then realising at level 5 that you seriously gimped your character because you don’t view your character as wearing full plate and holding a shield. The roles just tell you what to expect from the start.

As for classes of the same role playing the same, I can tell you, from a group that has had 3 Striker characters in it at the same time (Barbarian, Avenger, Monk), none of them played the same. All three had a simila mechanical effect on the game, but they were all very distinct in their play, and never stepped on each others’ toes.

9) Resource Management vs At-Will

This goes back a bit to the Tactical/Strategic point I made earlier, and also to the point I made on the other thread.

• Strategic play is harder to get into as a newbie. Most new Wizards blew all their spells in their first combat, and were then stuck using a sling.
• Not everyone enjoys resource management. I know about half of my old D&D groups actively avoided playing casters in 3e, because they didn’t like the resource management. When half of your audience (likely more of your potential audience) avoids more than half of your classes, you have a problem.

For a low-level Wizard in prior editions, you would cast a couple spells, and then resort to firing a crossbow or sling for the rest of the combat.

At-Will powers are the 4e Crossbow. But unlike the crossbow, you still get to feel like a mage, using magic, when you use them.

In other words, you get to feel like the character you made. A mage.

10) The Mage’s Versatility

Yes, Mages used to be the epic swiss-army-knife of the adventuring party.

For why they’re not now, see above.

• Many (possibly even most) people don’t enjoy the amount of micromanagement required for such a character.
• When you get it right, it felt great, but when you mis-guessed (or your DM was being an ass), you were now the most useless character in the party.
• The amount of experience required to be able to get it right a majority of the time was a huge barrier to newer players playing those classes.

I had one player who decided to play her first Cleric. She took spells such as Speak With Dead, Calm Emotions, Bless Water, Comprehend Languages, and Endure Elements, because they sounded useful. Unfortunately, the module I was running didn’t have a lot of use for said spells, and she got pissed off at the game, because she wanted to take these in case there were times when they would be useful, but that precluded her from taking more universally-useful spells like Bless amd Protection from Evil. We eventually got around it using scrolls, but she never enjoyed the spell system in 3e.

For a lot of players, having to make those decisions up-front is terrifying. As such, they’ll prepare generally-useful combat spells, and buy scrolls for other situations.

In 4e, they’ll choose their powers, and buy rituals for other situations.

That said, the ritual system is less than perfect, by far. They could have done a much better job with that.

But yes, Mages are less versatile in 4e. Non-mages are now more versatile. My Fighter can now do more than just “hit it with my sword”.

11) Casters vs. Noncasters

I think I explained this well in my previous post, but I’ll reiterate.

If a player in 3e, who has only played Fighters, wants to try a Wizard, what is required? Learning no less than (and probably more than) 5 new rules subsystems.

• spellcasting mechanics in general
• vancian magic and spell prep
• save DCs and which spells call for them/require attack rolls
• spell penetration and caster level checks
• what all of their spells known do (for Divine, what all of the divine spells in the game [up to their level] do)
• and potentially spell failure and somatic/verbal/material/XP components

For vice versa?

• Um… heavy armour slows you down.

If a player in 4e, who has only played Fighters, now wants to try a Wizard, what is required?

• what their new powers do
• the Wizard’s Daily spell prep (far simplified from prior editions)

For vice versa?

• what their new powers do
• marking

It allows for more movement between classes, especially for new players.

But also, as Callin said, why should Mages be the only ones who get to be special? The only ones who get to have fun and versatility?

Honestly, majority of people I saw hating 4e at the beginning were huge mage fans, while the majority I saw loving it were huge Fighter fans. I think that should tell us something about how the classes were in 3e.

12) Healing Surges

Callin’s a bit off, here. Actually, the concept of damage hasn’t changed at all. Back in AD&D, Gygax had said that hit points are an abstract measurement.

But that’s not going to help in this situation.

You say that people don’t regenerate “just because”? You say that healing surges aren’t realistic? I would like you to follow me on a real-life example.

Do you go to the gym? Do pushups? How many pushups can you do? For sake of argument, lets say you can do 30 pushups at once.

Alright, now do 90!

Try to do 90, and you’re down for the count, aren’t you?

But wait, we know you can do 30 at once, right?

So how about doing 30, taking a 5 minute break, doing 30 more, 5 minute break, and then 30 more? Doe that seem possible? Damn straight it is.

Those 30 pushups you can do are your hit points. They’re how much of a beating your body can take at one time.

The 5 minute breaks are where you recover. They’re where healing surges are spent, gatorade is drank, and you get ready to do it again.

So if you say the concept of healing surges is unrealistic, I say bullshit. The concept of hit points without such a thing as healing surges is far more unrealistic!

13) Magic Items in the PHB

Magic Items are in the PHB because players like to look at them, and often (in many games) buy and sell them (or craft them, at which point they need their stats and market price). There is no reason a player should ever need to have a copy of the DMG in his hands. This also applies to summon spells and the monster manual.

A 3e player need the PHB, the DMG occasionally for items, and the MM occasionally for summons and animal companions. A 4e player needs the PHB and nothing else.

14) Combat Focus

False, false, false, and yet I keep hearing it.

Yes, the 4e books and system focus the vast majority of their rules on combat. But the game (in play) does no such thing.

How can this be? Well, it’s simple.

You don’t need rules for roleplaying!

We didn’t need rules for even Bluff checks and diplomacy back in AD&D. In AD&D, there was even more of a combat focus in the rulebooks than there is in 4e.

My last game session was 4 hours long. 3 hours of that were roleplaying, with a few skill checks. Don’t anybody try to tell me 4e limits roleplaying.

…can you tell this one bothers me a bit?

(Can I also say that I’ve watched that video review a while back, and the amount of stuff that he assume and/or doesn’t seem to have any idea what he’s talking about… y’know what, never mind. Those reviews are aggrivating, not because he dislikes 4e, but because he can’t seem to be unbiased in his reviewing of a product. Maybe that bias is what people go to him for, I don’t really know.)

15) The Feel

And here we get to the most valid reason not to play 4e.

If it doesn’t feel right, then don’t play it. Plain and simple. 4e will not be the game for everyone, I have no delusions about that. And, having talked with some of the designers about this specific topic, neither do they.

Just keep gaming, keep having fun, and keep introducing new players into the hobby (while trying not to instill prejudices against any given system, in order to allow them their omn opinions on it all), and I’ll wish you all the best.

Problems Wizards of the Coast

1) The Joke

Actually, this was never said.

“Sadly the advice is still wrong. As was stated above, the “no 4E” did not come from any dev, but from an ORC at that time. So no, the devs had not said “There will be no fourth edition”. A forum moderator said he was not aware of any 4th Edition. But just as the cleaning lady does not really know what’s going on in WorldDomination Inc. so does an ORC not know what’s going on inside of WotC’s development circles. ”

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/21872069/Do_you_think_we_will_see_4.5_soon&post_num=34#378837481

This keeps getting passed around as something the developers said, but it was not. The question was asked to somebody that wouldn’t have known about it, and it was answered as best he knew (he hadn’t heard anything about it).

2) Splat Books

The PHB2, DMG2, amd MM2/3/4/5 all started in 3e (Monster books before that).

The books are being released as PHB2/3/4/5/whatever instead of Complete X in order to cement the idea of new material being core, yes. This is for two reasons, however.

• to encourage DMs to not disregard material their players like just because it’s “from a splatbook”
• to encourage a higher standard among development. When the books are all core, the quality standard has to be higher. There is no such thing as allowing a broken-powerful class into the game, just because it’s in a splatbook.

Grand total, though, they’re just splatbooks, and only the PHB1 is necessary to play the game. If you dislike splatbooks, then treat them as such.

3) Wizards vs. Technology

Yeah, the Tech stuff around launch was a clusterfuck. However, they are getting better. Then character builder was good, and the monster builder is spectacular.

As for the game table, I don’t know who you have saying it’s all but abandoned, but word from the horse’s mouth is that they were really embarassed at launch, and as such they’re continuing work on their tech projects more silently from now on. Running their mouths off about what they’d have available got them in trouble, and they don’t want to do that any more.

The word is, it is being worked on, it will come when it’s ready, and it won’t really be discussed until it’s ready to be announced and released.

4) Condescension

Not sure what you mean here. From what I read of Races and Classes, I didn’t see this (didn’t bother reading the Monsters one).

5) Character Conversion

Callin nailed this one. While 2e and 3e had some major mechanical differences, characters still relied on the same basic systems.

2e to 3e conversion was basically:

• What class are you?
• What race?
• What level?
• Alright, here’s how your spells changed.
• Now choose skills and feats.

3e to 4e has a much greater distance between the two conceptually. While the core mechanic stayed mostly the same (roll a d20, add numbers, compare to a DC), characters changed drastically. The power system, the skill system, even the feat system, and especially the multiclass system – all of this changed in major ways.

A direct conversion guide for 3e to 4e would be like a direct conversion guide from 3e to GURPS. Possible, but horrendously complex and not all that helpful in the long run. The best advice truly is to build a new character of the appropriate level, trying to capture the same spirit of the old one.

• 7) Don’t blink or You might miss the New Edition

Okay, firstly, I’d like to remind everyone that WotC themselves never actually said there would be no 4e.

Now, yes, you’re right, when 3e came, people were clamouring for a new edition.

But you know what else was happening at the same time? TSR was going bankrupt.

One big thing that WotC has said they wanted to do for 4e was get it out when the time was right to do so, rather than wait until they were in the same position TSR was in.

I can’t really blame them for not wanting to end up like TSR.

Additionally,just how short the release schedule actually is has been addressed elsewhere. It’s an interesting read.

Re: the part you liked

Bloodied was a great addition to the game. They had actually tried the AC/attack penalties “condition track” in Star Wars SAGA edition, before 4e was announced. It worked, but it was cumbersome to keep track of for every NPC, and people often overlooked it.

They kept the basic principle, however, in the Disease rules.

Phew.

So, Labyrinthian, I hope I’ve answered all of your questions satisfactorily. I hope you have a bit of newfound insight into just why some decisions were made, and why we like the game that you don’t.

I know, neat, right?

So, now that we’re finally finished moving and I’m settled into my new job on the other side of the country, I should probably get on that.  Let’s see… it releases…

TODAY????!!?!??

Well, so much for the “pre” part.

Anyways, the book I was sent was Agazar’s Book of Rituals, and as I said, it is out today.  This is an interesting book, as it was “crowdsourced”, in a way.  Way back in January, Goodman Games put out an open call for submissions, and this is the result.

I have to say, knowing this, the end result is quite impressive.  Most of the contributors are not professional game designers (and many may not even aspire to be such a thing).  The fact that such a product even exists is a feat unto itself.

But that’s not what you’re here for, is it?

What the hell is it?

This is a collection of some 300 new rituals for use in 4e D&D.  They are divided into ritual groups, just like the ones in the 4e core books, ranging from Binding rituals, to Divinations, to Warding.

Every category gets a chapter with about 12-15 pages of new rituals, with some variation.  There are only 8 pages of new Restoration rituals, while Exploration (a very broad category) gets a whopping 36!

The book begins with a short introduction from Agazar himself, on the subject of rituals in general.  This is repeated at the beginning of each chapter, for that chapter’s specific ritual category.  After this short introduction to a chapter, you will find a list of the rituals contained within it, organized by level, and then the rituals themselves.

The most beneficial part of the book’s organization, however, is the 20 pages of indices at the back.  These sort the rituals alphabetically, by level, by category (and by level within that category, making this one a mashup of the lists found at the beginning of each chapter), and finally by Key Skill (and again, subcategorized by level).  If your Cleric wants to find a good level 3 Religion-based ritual to pick up, this makes it easy.

So is it any good?

Yes!  Most of the rituals contained within are creative, useful, or otherwise just neat.  Unfortunately, the book suffers from some of the editing problems that occasionally plague Goodman books.  One ritual referencing a disease calls for a Save rather than an Endurance check, for instance.  The one that bothers me the most is the Heal ritual:

Heal

Time: 1 hour

Duration: 5 minutes

This ritual allows the target to spend a single healing surge but regain hit points as if it had spent four healing surges.  (The caster can spend a healing surge for the target, if he has none.)

It’s a very neat ritual, and costs a ton of money to make up for the awesomeness.  But there is one problem I have with it.

Why does it have a duration?

As it stands, it reads to me as though the extra hit points wear off after 5 minutes.  Alternately, it could mean that every healing surge spent in the next 5 minutes is equal to 4, making this a kickass ritual right before a boss fight.  I believe it was meant to show that you needed a short rest to do it, but with a casting time of an hour, is that really necessary?

The actual intention is clear, but the duration should have been Instantaneous.  These sort of minor issues are to be found every few pages or so.

Is it a dealbreaker?  Not at all.  But it does mean you’ll have to read everything you want to use twice, to be sure the intent matches the execution.

As a whole, the book is quality work, well-laid-out, and containing some great black and white art.

Do you have any favourite parts?

Brownberry’s Annoying Companion.

Anyone in my group who remembers Clarence the Talking Box will know why.

Also, the Travel and Warding categories in particular are great.

Would you use it yourself?

Honestly, probably not, at least not at this point.  My players are largely new to the game, and don’t need to be swamped by the sheer amount of new material in this book.

Aside from that, some of the new rituals in the book just seem unnecessary to me.  For instance, there are many that are made for use by the villains in your adventures.  Personally, I see that as an area where codifying the bad guy’s rituals just overcomplicates matters.  These rituals may see a lot more play in Evil campaigns with Evil PCs, but I don’t tend to run those sorts of games, so their usefulness is limited for me.

The next time I actually play a ritual caster, though?  Oh, you better believe I’m taking Brownberry’s Annoying Companion!

Would you recommend it?

That depends.

• Do you believe there is a need for tons of new rituals in 4e?
• Are you confident enough in your players that you do not fear a deluge of new options causing choice paralysis, as it often did with 3e spellcasters?
• Are you not bothered by occasional editing errors, and having to fix minor mistakes before you can use some of the product?
• Does $15 sound like a fair price for for a 160-page softcover book containing 300 new rituals?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then I have no issues with recommending this book.

If you answered no to any of them, especially the player confidence one, then you’re going to want to at least flip through it first before buying it, and it may very well not be a good book for you.

Where can I find out more?

Goodman Games has a few previews up on the web, including the entire first chapter and all 20 pages of indices (plus some other sites’ pre-review opinions as well).  Take a look and decide for yourself.

Additionally, Goodman Games is actually big enough to be carried regularly by many local game stores, so if you want to flip through the whole thing, you can try there.

Once again, Agazar’s Book of Rituals releases today and retails for $14.99 USD.  Thanks again to Joseph Goodman and Goodman Games for the PDF review copy.

And we went to Gen Con! I should write more about that, but haven’t had any time, due to the next point.

We’re moving! To British Columbia! And need to find a gaming group in Kamloops! Any suggestions/offers?

Back to Gen Con, however. Just before we went, I was contacted by my good friend Phil, the Chatty DM. He said that he was scheduled for an interview with Bill Slavicsek and Andy Collins on Sunday, and asked if I wanted to come.

What the hell kind of gamer would I be if I passed that up, right?? (I am a particular fan of Andy’s work… my players still hate me for using that one.)

Unfortunately, Bill wasn’t able to make it, but we had a good chat with Andy, so all is well. Phil has part one up over at ChattyDM.net, where he rambles in overtired Québecois with Andy about DMing in general.  Read that first.

For my part, I got a number questions from the community members over at the forums of Andy Collins’ personal site. (Small forum, but a great group of people there.  Thanks, guys.) This was my first chance to actually be more than the general public, so I really wanted a chance to let the fans of the game ask their own questions.

So read part 1, and then continue here!

GRAHAM: I’m going to start off with some questions actually from some community members. Now, you actually ended up mostly answering the first one on the subject of complexity. But to follow up on that, is this something that you guys are looking at adding more of in the future? Psionics with power points, things like that?

ANDY: We want to continue to add options where they’re appropriate. One of the big challenges we had, even in designing Fourth Edition, was determining where to spend what we call around the office our “complexity capital.” We think a game has a certain amount of complexity that it can afford to use, and one of the real tests of design is deciding where to spend it. And there are some places where Fourth Edition got simpler than Third, because we didn’t think that was the right area for complexity. It wasn’t really pulling its weight. And there are other places where it got more complex. Certainly, playing a Fighter is a little more intricate now than it used to be. We thought that was a really good place to spend complexity, to give that person a more fun experience at the table. So there are times where, particularly in development, we will look at a new class, new monster, new power, what have you, and say “This is more complex than it needs to be.” If we can get across 90% of the effect for 25% of the work on the DM or the player’s part, we’ll make that call pretty much every time. The key there is making sure that it still feels robust enough that it’s not just a couple of numbers.

PHIL: Dispel Magic is a good example, I think.

(Agreement from all.)

ANDY: Yeah. There are a lot of spells in Third Edition that just had way too much going on in them. Again, particularly for character powers, designing something to do… to carry out its intended purpose, and little else, drastically helps the game be playable at the table, reduces arguments, reduces debate about what certain effects can or can’t do. So to design for a purpose, and have it carry out that purpose, is pretty important.

GRAHAM: Okay. So, there have been a number of comments that the PHB2 and PHB3 classes seem to be better from a design perspective than their PHB1 counterparts. In particular the comments seem centered around the controllers, the Invoker being a better designed controller than the Wizard, for instance.

PHIL: The actual power source of the Invoker is awesome.

GRAHAM: Oh, yeah. Would you say this is a fair assessment, due to you getting a better handle on the system?

ANDY: Absolutely! I think we learn about our own design all the time. Fourth Edition went through nearly three years or design and development, but the day it left the building, by the next morning it had been played by more people than played it throughout the entire three years. And that’s going to lead to observations that, maybe, we hadn’t made. Sometimes just designing a game, you can be so close to it that you might miss something. There were also places where we were a little conservative, in the Player’s Handbook. We weren’t quite sure how it would play out. Controllers are a good example. I think we were a little conservative on the Wizard, I think we have broadened him in Arcane Power, and then certainly the Invoker I think is a better-designed controller. That’s sort of a natural part of the game. We try to avoid that becoming just outright power creep, but on the other hand I think every book we do, we’re going to be designing a little bit better, whether that’s classes, monsters, magic items or what have you.

GRAHAM: I think that in general, the Invoker isn’t yet seen as power creep, so much as bringing the controller up to par, but is there any chance that, due to this, we would actually see updated versions of the PH1 classes, whether in a future book, or dragon article?

ANDY: It’s something that we talk about. My general preference is, rather than updating existing material to provide new options that might look a little bit better than the options you had, that it’s often easier to let bad choices atrophy than try to replace them all.

PHIL: Like you could have Arcane Power, let’s say, add new class features, a new part of the Wizard that might…

ANDY: …that might be a little bit better, some new spells that might be a bit better. That said, the idea of tweaking a very important class feature, maybe an at-will power, to be a little more effective, is something I feel is very much within the bounds of reasonable for the game. We don’t want to do it all over the place, but if we said “You know what, this iconic power for this class needs to be a little better in order to keep up, we would certainly consider that.

GRAHAM: And that actually leads into my next question, on errata, updates, FAQs, that sort of thing. Now, there was a huge flood of this at the beginning, of course, as you realized things after launch. And the member in particular who is saying this is applauding you for rebalancing powers like Rain of Blows. But is there a plan to step this sort of thing up, at this point, as it’s slowed down since then. Dragon, for instance, is getting pretty much no treatment in this department, and there are commonly confusing items that have yet to be addressed.

ANDY: I have, actually, a small stack of items, literally on my desk back in the office. If not for Gen Con, they would be going up in about a week or two, but obviously preparations for this con dominate a lot of time. We have a weekly meeting with the team of R&D folks, customer service, and organized play, that go over potential errata and update items. They provide their reports to me on a regular basis. I go through them, review them, vet them, talk with my editors, talk with my developers, before making a call on that. We’re working to standardize our update release schedule, but until we’ve got that stabilized I don’t want to make any promises. That said, I think we’ve been better in the last year than we had in the waning years of Third Edition about addressing items with speed and efficiency. We want to take our time; the last thing we want to do is update an update, so we’d rather spend a few more weeks going over it and processing, than rush something out. And the next book has to take precedence over updating the last one, unfortunately. I wish we had that unlimited time. But we’re very committed to keeping our game playable and fun for everyone, and it’s certainly one of my personal priorities to make sure that the update process is effective and efficient at accomplishing that.

GRAHAM: I think that what would help a lot is, not necessarily errata, but more frequent clarifications/FAQs.

ANDY: Well that’s what we use the Knowledge Base for, through customer service. We try to keep all the current questions in there refreshed, and the customer service folks meet with us, like I say, regularly to talk about these things, so they’re very much in the loop as far as making those calls.

GRAHAM: Okay, so, player feedback. Can you clarify just what sort of impact the players are having on the D&D game, and both the errata team and the team responsible for handling playtest material? Do you get ideas for changes from the forums, from emails, focus groups, etc?

ANDY: Absolutely. I think that’s another thing that Gen Con is really good for, is the sort of massive face to face interaction with folks, whether it’s chats in the booth of the hallway, or questions at a seminar. I mean, I always bring a notepad to Gen Con, because I know if I try to remember it all I never will.

PHIL: You didn’t note my rust monster idea.

(Laughter.)

ANDY: A seminar doesn’t go by without somebody saying “Have you thought about…” and one of us going “You know, we haven’t thought about that yet! *Jot jot jot…*” So yeah, we try to do our best to listen to our players, whether that feedback is coming through customer service questions, or forums, or emails to us or what have you. Inevitably, those things seep into the game, some of them through outright submissions to Dragon and Dungeon magazine. We rely on freelancers for that, and a lot of them are brand new authors who just happened to have a really good idea.

GRAHAM: On a related note, does the feedback of 100 players outweigh the opinion of one professional developer?

ANDY: Not necessarily, but it will cause us to rethink things. We think highly of our design, development, and editing skills, but we recognize that there is theory and there is reality. So there are times when I’ve thought “Yeah, this power, or this class feature, this looks really good. I think this is dead on, I think it’s the right power level.” Feedback comes back and, well, gosh, every fighter is taking that power. And that causes us to rethink “Okay, wait a minute, why is that? What did we miss? What did we underestimate, what did we overestimate?” And so, we try to always be balancing that theory and reality, and that’s something we’ve learned particularly from the other side of R&D, the card side, because the Magic folks are constantly going through that review, as they see which deck types are rising to prominence on the tournament scene, and it happens. Sometimes folks just come up with some combination or idea we did not see coming, and we have to go “Oh, alright… didn’t see that, but now we’re going to adapt.”

PHIL: And that is the perfect setup. And we can go off the record if you want, but I’ve been a huge Magic buff, I’ve been reading all the rules, and I’ve played in tournaments for a long time, and I can’t help but see a parallel in the way the game was developed. I think that someone from Wizards, from Magic the Gathering, worked on things for D&D4e, because the rules… the powers work like cards, your characters work like decks, and you see those combos appear now, and you want them to exist. And you can’t check all of them in time, you’ll see that some will break the game, so you’ll errata them. So how close, from a design perspective, are D&D and Magic? Was there cross-pollination?

ANDY: There certainly are folks who have worked on both sides. Mike Donais is on my development team, he’s also worked on card products. We had a few of the Magic folks helping us out in the development of 4e, giving feedback. And just working near each other, you can’t help but cross-pollinate ideas. I read the Magic R&D internal forum every day, because I want to learn how they’re approaching things. They have, from really day one, they’ve had a more scientific approach to design than D&D and other roleplaying games have tended to exhibit. But D&D is, at its heart, an exceptions-based game, just like Magic. Everything a character does is breaking the rules in some little way, and we’re really working to apply that same rigor that’s required of that to our character powers, to our monsters, to our magic items.

GRAHAM: And final question from the communities, late in 3.5, the article on Proud Nails came out. Minor issues that some of the Wizards staff have with 3.5 rules that were never fixed to their satisfaction. Do you feel like there are any proud nails in 4e?

ANDY: Yeah, I’m sure there are. The things that nag me with Fourth Edition now are really the places where I think we felt we had to be a little more conservative, maybe, than we had to. That if we could have taken all of the players of the game, and teleported them two or three years into the future, and shown them how comfortable they would be with changes, they would have said “Oh yeah, no problem.” But Fourth Edition was sort of a drop in cold water for a player who hasn’t been in on the design for the last three years of their life, like some of us had. So there are places where we said “Y’know what? We probably shouldn’t do that. Maybe we explore that later in the game’s life, maybe we save that for ten years down the road for some future edition of the game. But for right now, this is a place where we’re going to leave it be, or not go as far as we might.” I think that, for instance, opportunity attacks are still a challenging part of the game for many players. I think we made them much simpler, and I actually think the most trouble people have now is because they finally learned how they should interact with them in third edition, and now they’re trying to unlearn some of those things. But looking back on it, I go “Oh, man, if I could go back in time, I would find a week to have a really, really solid conversation about, should we completely eliminate these from the game, or should we even more restrict who can use them.” It wasn’t a high enough priority at the time, compared to other things, so we didn’t, but there are things like that where I go “Oh, man, if I could go back two or three years AND know that the players would all be able to be on board with it, I might have repeated those things.

GRAHAM: Okay, and just to finish up with a couple of questions of my own. As it has been since the ‘70s, as it always will be, nobody plays D&D the exact same way as anyone else. Everyone has their own little house rules, table rules, whatever you want. I assume you do not play 100% by the book. What sort of house rules do you use?

PHIL: It’s probably the equivalent of Future Future D&D!

ANDY: I’m going to segue a little bit and then come back. I think that house rules are a great element of the game, and I like to think that the framework we’ve provided, particularly for dungeon masters, allow them more liberty to do those house rules because they can see why the game works the way it does. I think one of the things that commonly trips people up with house rules is not fully understanding the ramifications, the ripple effect, of what they’ve added. And I really like the fact that we’re showing you “Look, these are the expected numbers that all monsters should have. So if you want to play around creating your own monsters, for instance, follow this formula and you’ll be pretty close.” Same with character building and such, opening that curtain, I think, helps DMs make those house rules.

One of the sections I’m playing around with the most is treasure dispersal. This is something the DMG sort of touches on and talks a little bit about, but I’m continuing to play around with, y’know, how do characters get magic items? Because on the one hand, I want the players to feel like their characters can accomplish the things they set out to do. There’s nothing more frustrating, in older editions of the game, than being a mace-wielding fighter and only finding magic battleaxes. It’s a drag, right? I don’t want to wield a battleaxe, I want to wield a mace, that’s my image of my guy. So I think the wish list idea in the Fourth Edition DMG is a pretty cool one, but I’ve continued to play with, okay, can I mix in a few random things with that? I recently asked one of my parties that I DM for to give me, in addition to the character wishlist, a party wishlist, because I don’t want anybody to have to use up a spot on their list for a Bag of Holding or what have you, but there might be some things that the group wants to own together, so I intermingle some of those.

I think, probably my biggest house rule, though, is just really trying to instill in the players the idea to not be constrained by what’s on their character sheet. I ran some skill challenges just a week or so ago, and when I started out I said “Look, this is a skill challenge, but don’t tell me what skill you want to use, tell me what your character is doing in the world, and then we’ll play on that. It was a struggle at first, it was a “they’re trying to get across town without being spotted by their enemies” challenge. It started like “I use stealth.” “You need to tell me… how, what are you doing?” “Well, okay, we’re going to slip in the back alleys and keep an eye out for passing patrols and make sure that we move from building to building.” “Great, okay, so let’s all make some stealth checks, and why don’t you roll me a perception check to assist that…” And by the end of that twenty minutes or so, the players were like “Okay, what do I know about the background of the city, I’ve lived here my whole life, so I want to figure out, are there some old abandoned buildings we can slip through, or maybe a good way to get up to the rooftops?” They had completely moved away from thinking of it as “what skill do I use?” to “what is my character doing?” and that freedom of the rules, using them as a guide but not a constraint… they’re signposts, not fences, and I think that approach, more than any individual house rule, has really helped my game.

PHIL: And from the echo I got from Gen Con and seminars, we need either bloggers or Wizards to be posting all over the place “You don’t have to play the rules as written.” And I can hear it “Why don’t you make the rules fit the way I want to play?” No no! YOU do that!

<Editor’s note: this little statement from Phil doesn’t have nearly the effect in text as it did at the time. When he said it, the conviction in his voice just had me cheering silently “Fuck yeah!” Oh, for want of a podcast, right?>

ANDY: And that’s, again, why we’ve gone with a more stripped-down version of the rules. We took out a lot of the attempts at simulation of reality. If a Dungeon Master wants to add more simulation to their game, they can do it, and we hope that the tools we provide can help them understand sort of how broadly to turn those knobs and dials, but we don’t want the DM constrained by “Oh, because it’s raining, and it’s raining because I rolled on the weather table and it told me it had to be raining, because it’s raining we have these penalties and modifiers, and now I can’t run the encounter the way I wanted to, because the rules tell me I have to run it differently.” That’s no fun.

GRAHAM: And I have to say, I actually had some trouble with skill challenges, just the format of them, at the beginning, until I tried one pretty much how you just described there, and that was the first one that I would consider a full-on success.

ANDY: That’s another area where the game is going to go through massive evolution. I fully believe that, five years from now, we’re going to look at the skill challenge system and the many different ways that folks have invented to interact with it, and we’re going to be just dumbfounded. When we were writing the skill challenge rules for the DMG, I kept saying “Look, we’ve got to keep in our minds, this is one way to do them. Let’s present one way that we think is functional, but in the future, let’s never stop from imagining other ways that you can structure that skill challenge, that might look totally different, but still allows you to do those sort of interesting things. That’s why I really like Mike Mearls’ Ruling Skill Challenges column on D&D Insider, because he started with the basics, and now he’s starting to explore some other interesting ways. DMG2 also gives a lot more advice on building and running skill challenges.

PHIL: I’ve got my own piece in the next Kobold Quarterly about skill challenges in combat.

ANDY: Nice.

GRAHAM: Awesome. And just the final two quick questions: One, I know everyone at Wizards is a gamer in general, not just D&D. What other sorts of games are you playing these days?

ANDY: Oh, what are the games that I’m playing right now? I’m playing a lot of Duels of the Planeswalkers. It’s really gotten me back into Magic. In fact, so much that my wife and I just recently cracked open a display box of the Magic 2010…

(Phil, excited by this, jumps up and runs around his chair in a circle. No, seriously. It was hilarious!)

ANDY: …and started opening those boosters. That smell just brought back, like, 1996 to me. So we’re building our own decks again, and playing a lot more Magic. In fact she was pestering me, “Make sure you come home with a life counter for me from Gen Con.” I couldn’t find one, so I’m bringing back this giant foam 20-sided die instead. So that one’s good.

We play a fair amount of computer games right now. We’re big with the Xbox. We’re really enjoying Xbox Live Arcade. I love the ease of getting games with that. Left 4 Dead is probably our favourite Xbox game right now. Shootin’ zombies, there’s just no excuse to not do that.

We played some MMOs, but we’re currently taking a break. We recently finished up a City of Heroes campaign, got to level 50, taking a break from that for a while, but I’m interested to see some of the new games that are coming out, like Champions Online, I want to give that a look.

Board games. Looove board games! Dominion, fabulous, fabulous game. As soon as we played that we were hooked. I love cooperative board games: Battlestar Galactica, Shadows over Camelot. I think the Lord of the Rings cooperative game was like this huge breakthrough into this area of “Hey, playing against a game is kinda fun.” Sort of like D&D without a Dungeon Master, and I think that’s a really interesting area. I look forward to OUR foray into board games, coming next year with the Castle Ravenloft cooperative board game.

I mean, if it’s a game, I’ll try it, and that’s true of pretty much everybody in the building. And that keeps us good game designers, too.

GRAHAM: And the final question: 4e d20 Modern?

ANDY: 4e d20 Modern. We are very interested in exploring some other areas where the Fourth Edition rules can go. We wanted to make sure we had a good solid foundation for Fourth and for D&D first, but we fully recognize that this ruleset can be applied to other genres very easily. Personally, I’d love to do a superhero game. I also think a 4e Gamma World kind of game would be really cool, but that said I think you can go less fantastic, too. I think that just the idea that you can heal yourself without magic spells or high tech equipment makes pulp action, spy games, all those sorts of things, much much more playable. So I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be exploring other genres in the future.

We would like to thank Andy for taking the time to talk to us. Phil and I are just huge fans of the game, and it’s great to see WotC taking a significant interest in talking to the fans.

So, we’ve been playing 4e regularly since September 2008, and like most groups have found some things that work for us, and others that don’t.

In 4e, however, there are a lot fewer things that we don’t use as written thus far.  Up until now, I’ve only found need to house rule three things.

1. Daily Magic Item Uses – As suggested by Wyatt:
   

   Unlimited Item Power:  You can use any item’s daily power once per day but have no restrictions on your own uses, so you can have 10 different items and use all of their powers. Once an item’s daily power is used once it is spent – you can’t give it to another character for a go, for example.

   And if anyone decides to abuse the system by hoarding multiple cheap items, you smack them with the rulebook and take the privilege away.  They don’t get nice things.

2. Skill Challenges – I haven’t quite figured out what to do with these, but had my first really good one at the MM2 Game Day.  They are not run by the book, however, and are affected by #3.
3. Skill Check DCs – The errata’d DCs are too low, and make Skill Challenges a cakewalk.  The original ones (with the +5 for being skill checks) were too high, and made Skill Challenges too hard.  I use the new Skill Challenge system (X/3), as the old one didn’t scale properly, and the original DCs (sans the +5 for being skill checks).  It seems to give the difficulty I want.

And of course the minor per-character house rules, such as reflavouring powers or making a Wizard into a Druid.

But recently, I’ve been thinking over another house rule, which I want to present to you here (and to the players on Sunday).

Let me start with a question.

Outside of the Grab and Bull Rush combat maneuvers, where would you use an Ability Check instead of a skill check?

I can’t think of a single case that isn’t better represented by either a skill check or an attack against the player.  On top of that, there is a lot of confusion about when to add the 1/2 level or not, with some people never remembering to add it for ability checks, and some adding it for even damage rolls.

So I am putting forth the following hypothesis:

All Ability checks can be better represented by a Skill check.

Strength -> Athletics

Dexterity -> Acrobatics/Stealth/Thievery

Constitution -> Endurance

Int/Wis -> the various Knowledge skills

Charisma -> the social skills

I even propose that Grab and Bull Rush are just athletics moves, taken from wrestling and football (and many other sports) respectively.

Can any of you, dear readers, come up with a situation that is better represented by an ability check than anything else?  Please, I’d like to hear it.

Well, I can’t, so I put forth this house rule:

Grab and Bull Rush are now Athletics checks.  Ability Checks don’t exist until I am shown that they have some merit.

Doesn’t that make Grab and Bull Rush too powerful, you ask?  I say no!  The PHB2 already brings forward the Improved feats for both of them (which gives a +4/+6/+8 bonus), indicating that they needed a boost.

Corrollaries:

The Improved Grab and Improved Bull Rush feats no longer exist.  Skill Training (Athletics) is sufficient.  Skill Focus (Athletics) can bring it up to the full +8 bonus that the Improved Feats do.

And other abilities that affect the maneuvers still apply, such as the Goliath getting a +2 bonus and being able to roll twice.

As an added benefit, before, it was far easier to escape a grab than establish one.  This fixes that.

These maneuvers are now not only viable alternatives, but they are potentially superior alternatives in some cases.  And they don’t require a feat to become viable, if your class gets Athletics as a class skill.

With 4e’s emphasis on maneuverability and tactics, I can’t see that as a bad thing.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Uses for Ability checks that I missed?

Preamble: a group of us bloggers, through Ed Healy, got sent a bunch of promotional copies of the PHB2 (release date: March 17).

Now we’re writing about them, as bloggers tend to do.

We decided to split up the book among the group of us, with each of us taking one class and running with it, at least for our initial articles.  (Afterwards, we are free to write anything we want.)

Since one of our players (Roberta) is currently playing a Druid, I jumped on that one.  After our game on Sunday, we sat down and hammered out a level 5 druid for our game.

(To head off any questions: the picture at the right has nothing to do with the 4e druid.  They don’t get animal companions.  But it was an awesome picture from an image search on wild shape.  So there.)

I’ll walk you through what we did, and answer some frequent questions along the way.

What were we doing before?

Roberta has been playing an elven druid since September.  Up until this point, we were using the Wizard class, reflavoured to be more nature-y.  Magic Missile became Thornburst, Thunder Wave became Earthshock (and was now a minor earthquake), etc.

This caught the “weather witch” feel pretty well, but was still missing some things.  She wanted to be able to do some shapeshifting, and other druidy-flavoured stuff that wasn’t yet possible.

Building a Druid

The Druid is a controller with a twist.  One of the main abilities of the Druid is Wild Shape (the ability to turn into a beast form, primarily an animal of your own size).  When in beast form, you gain access to some new powers, but you lose access to any non-beast-form powers.  This presents an interesting tactical choice for the Druid, but also makes the class more survivable in melee than the Wizard.

To start off, we had to choose a Primal Aspect, and went with Primal Predator, giving a +1 to speed when not in heavy armour.  As Roberta’s character is an elf, she now has a speed of 8.  Nice.  This also meant that Dexterity would be her secondary stat (Wisdom being the first).

Next up were the at-will powers.  Druids get three of these (at least one of each of beast form and non-beast-form powers), and have a number to choose from.  Roberta decided on:

Thorn Whip: Ranged, pulls the target 2 squares.

Storm Spike: Ranged, extra damage if the target doesn’t move.  Seems a little defender-ish to me.

Grasping Claws: Melee, beast form, slows the target.  Also somewhat defender-ish.

What’s your favourite at-will Druid attack power?

For my money, I like Chill Wind.  It’s basically a ranged Thunder Wave, that slides 1 instead of pushing 3.  I love me my tactical positioning.

For the remainder of her powers, she decided on:

Twisting Vines: Level 1 encounter.  Similar to Icy Terrain, but instead of filling the area with difficult terrain, the squares around each target become difficult terrain.  This means it is potentially more effective, as it can make more squares difficult, but it only does so on a successful hit.  It also doesn’t knock the target prone, however.  We’ll have to see it in practice.

Wind Prison: Level 1 daily.  Surrounds the target in wind, and they grant combat advantage until they move.  When they move, every enemy within 5 is knocked prone.  Cool, flavourful.  I’m unsure as to how effective it will be, but I know the Rogue will be excited by the prospect of lots of combat advantage (if not from the target, from all the prone enemies).

Skittering Sneak: Level 2 utility (daily).  Roberta loves her utility powers, especially if they have out-of-combat uses.  This power allows the druid to take on the form of a tiny creature, from a mouse to a cat to anything of comparable size, and gain a +5 to stealth while doing so.  Fun!

Tundra Wind: Level 3 encounter.  Think of this one as an enhanced Thunder Wave.  Close Blast 3, 2d6+wis damage, and knock them prone.  With the Primal Guardian feature (not what we chose), it would also push them Con squares.

Wall of Thorns: Level 5 daily.  This one is pretty obvious.  Big wall, blocks line of sight, hurts to pass through.  Entering a wall square costs 3 extra squares of movement (so stack it on difficult terrain to make it 5 squares).  This one is a great controller power.

What neat power makes you want to play the druid as your next character?

Easy.  Baleful Polymorph.

Level 15 daily.  Ranged 10.  Wis vs Will.

Turns the target into a tiny beast and stuns them (save ends both).  Damage once they save.

On a miss, does damage and dazes the target (save ends).

So it’s a cool power in general, but I’m most exctited because of our group’s specific history with the 3e version of the spell.

Player: “Baleful Polymorph!”

DM: “Okay.  What does he turn into?”

Player: “Hmm… a deer?”

Other Player: “I… think those have more than one hit die… and aren’t really harmless…”

Player: “… a legless deer?”

…and the legacy will continue in 4e.

Altogether, the Druid looks to fulfill Roberta’s needs better than our original Wizard did.  General impressions included:

• Seems more optimized than before (Wis/Dex build, rather than Int/Wis, for an elf).
• The flavour is pretty much exactly where I want it.  As I read the power flavour, it was very close to what I would have done myself, meaning they must be on the right track.
• Wild Shape seems… odd.  Why is there the limit of once per round?  [Ed: Answer - because when you change back to humanoid, you get to shift a square.  With the "Wild Shape is a free action" feat, that means unlimited movement in a round.]

Now, for some

Other Questions.

Do you get at-will flight?

No.  You do get a bunch of flight powers, though, including one Paragon Path which focuses on flight and flight forms.

What’s the difference between the Primal Aspects?

Predator tends to be melee, beast form powers. These tend to have better damage.

Guardian tends to be ranged or burst/blast implement powers. Many are not beast form, and they have added non-damage effects.

Is the Druid as good of a controller as the Wizard?

I’d have to say it’s better.  The Wizard, thanks to history, had a lot of striker in him.  The Druid can lean that way, if you take a lot of beast form powers (especially Predator powers), or towards leader a bit, but is a very strong controller.

Also, I haven’t counted, but the Druid seems to have more sustainable powers and zones, which are great for controlling the battlefield.

Are all the beast form powers melee attacks?  Can a beast form Druid be an effective controller?

No!  Some are close burst/blast (Roar of Terror, for one example), or even ranged attacks (Gaze of the Beast, level 29 daily, dominates (save ends), dazes on a miss).

The beast form attacks are still rather controller-y.  This can give you a viable melee controller, if that’s what you’re looking for.  In fact, you could go all the way to level 30 with only one non-melee/close non-beast-form power, and that one is your mandatory non-beast-form at-will.  You would end up leaning into striker a decent amount, but you should be able to hold your own.

What the hell is up with the title of this post?

Well aside from the obvious (“I’m a bird!  I’m a cat!  I’m a donkey!  Whee!”)…

The class is good, and is interesting, but it suffers from legacy.  Just like the 3e Druid, it doesn’t seem to know just what it wants to be.  It’s primarily a controller, but the beast form powers encourage melee.  It can lean into striker, leader, and even defender, depending on the powers chosen.

The beast form powers make this seem like it should be two separate classes.  The class is great, if you focus on one aspect or the other, but if you take powers from both you could find yourself missing out on the ability to use certain powers just because you ran out of minor actions.  And, unless you’re in beast form, your opportunity attacks suck.

This doesn’t ruin the class, but it does present some challenges.

Will I write more about the PHB2 before it’s out?  I hope so!  We’ll see what time brings.  But for now, these people have your back:

Want to learn more about Player’s Handbook 2? Read on…

• Atomic Array: Episode 018: Player’s Handbook 2
• Game Cryer: Player’s Handbook 2 Review
• Gnome Stew: A Veteran GM’s Take on GMing and the PHB2
• Critical Hits: The Avenger
• Campaign Mastery: The Barbarian
• Uncle Bear: The Bard
• Critical Ankle Bites: The Druid
• Kobold Quarterly: Review: Player’s Handbook 2
• The Core Mechanic: The Invoker
• Flames Rising: The Shaman
• Stupid Ranger: The Sorcerer
• Musings of the Chatty DM: The Warden

Drop by Wizards of the Coast today!

The PHB2, which isn’t being released for 13 more days, is sitting right here on my desk.

…or chair.  Whatever.  My desk is a mess and can’t hold it.

The point being, I have a PHB2.  And you, kind readers, do not.

How did this come to be?  Why, through the good Ed Healy, of the Atomic Array podcast, of course.  A group of us from the RPG Bloggers network are splitting up some parts of the book and will be posting all about it over the next little while.

By the way, CAB is a member of the RPG Bloggers network.

Actually, I’m a founding member.  And the resident tech/server guy.  And we’ve been a member since August 2008.

What?  I just never got around to talking about it until now.  Great place, lots of great bloggers.  Lots of great rpg content flows through that site every day.

</shill>

The articles are slated to start going up around March 13th.

Personally, we’ll be tackling the Druid, at first.  Specifically from the point of view of our current “Druid” character (and her player, who has a thing for playing elven druids).

But after that, we’ll be doing other stuff, too.  I have a couple of article ideas lined up, including some collaborative stuff with Critical Hits, but I’ll also take requests.

Is there something you would like me to talk about/discuss/preview?

Let me know in the comments here.  And remember.

I have a PHB2.

And you don’t.

ps. this is going to be long.

Anyways, things have changed since I last put up a DM Log; mainly that after we finished Rescue at Rivenroar, Graham took back the helm. He is now DMing, and I am back to playing.

The decision was made for 2 reasons: first, I was running into some mental blocks in trying to run a pre-written adventure. I write, so the main draw of DMing for me is, and always has been, the world-building and plotting aspects. I found that working with someone else’s story was sapping my creativity, both in-game and in my other endeavours. Long story short, my writing was suffering (ie. not happening at all), so I decided to drop the DMing to concentrate on the rest.

I do hope to DM again in the future. I found 4e was so much easier to work with mechanics-wise. Once we’ve had more experience with this edition, I want to run my own stories. For now, it falls to Graham to lead us.

Which brings me to the second reason: simply put, Graham has decided that he prefers DMing to playing (much though he likes creating wacky characters ). So he’s been more than happy to take over now that school has settled down this semester (relatively speaking )

As I mentioned above, we finished off Rivenroar (in mid-November I believe), and moved into the next adventure: “Siege at Bordrin’s Watch”. We’ve already finished that as well without ever blogging about it (a combination of me being too lazy to make my “no-longer-DMing” post and Graham being far busier in January than he expected to be). So I will take some time here to point out a few highlights from that adventure, then we can start fresh with Graham posting more detailed DM Logs starting from the third part – “The Shadow Rift of Umbraforge”.

First off of course, we said farewell to our faithful Warforged Swordmage Porth-OS to make way for my character. At the same time, the player that was unable to join us for the first adventure due to school finished that, and returned to play again.

He joined in as a Tiefling Infernal Pact Warlock named Wagmonger (shortened to Wag)

I decided to play a Shifter Ranger with the archer fighting style. Her name is Daciana, but Graham has taken to calling her “Bitey”

The adventure was fairly standard, with 2 separate dungeons to work our way through. Each had quite a memorable boss fight to contend with. In the first, the group got knocked around quite a bit, and three of us were unconscious. One was the warlord, so there went some healing, and the cleric was across the room and none too healthy himself (something like 1 hit point and no healing surges left ). But luck was on our side that day: either all three of the dying characters, or two of the three managed to roll a natural 20 death save! Which got us back to enough power to finish out the fight. (Having 3 Tieflings in a room full of spreading fire doesn’t hurt either )

The second boss fight was interesting for… different reasons. The objective was to flood the hundred-foot room to block the path of the orc-army advancing through the mountains. Of course, we had to deal with the advance guard. The encounter happened in a large room, with a catwalk running up around the walls and leading to the central pillar & a mechanism to flood the lower levels (our goal). We fought our way up, with some choosing to race up and ignore the lower enemies while others fought a rear-guard action.

By the time we were all at the top, we had a tough boss to face with low party resources. The idea at this point was to set off the machine and make our escape. Those of us with the appropriate skills worked on the machine, while the others distracted the boss, mostly trying to push him off the 70 foot ledge.

The machine was activated fairly quickly. The pushing, on the other hand…. didn’t work too well. Y’see, our various powers kept hitting the boss… but Graham’s damned DM dice don’t ever seem to want to roll a failed save… so the guy would just fall prone at the edge… over and over and over. That is, at least, until we were almost able to make a break for it anyways. This was when he was finally actually pushed off of the ledge into the very hot, rapidly rising water. And there was much rejoicing.

Well, that catches us up somewhat on the game. I’m going to make another post tomorrow to talk about a few other things.

If I may, I’d like to make use of the collective knowledge of the interwebs here and ask you all a couple questions, based on my christmas presents.

1)

One of my gifts I recieved was a Crackberry Bold.  I am looking for a good dice roller program for this tiny addictive handheld.  Anybody know of a good one?

2)

I also recieved some gifts to fund my hobby.  Specifically I got

• One free D&D book of my choice (thanks Christine).
• $100 in gift certificates for my FLGS (part of the old layout of which is pictured above, click to go to their website).

So I have some purchasing to do, and I need to decide just what to get.  Most of it will probably be 4e books, though I’m open to other suggestions.

The 4e PHB2 is definitely in that bundle.  Aside from that, though, I’m just not sure.

Manual of the Planes looks nice, but so do Draconomicon and Open Grave.  The Eberron Campaign Setting and Player’s Buide both are on my list of books to get, but they aren’t around until June, and I should be graduated and earning money by then.

Suggestions?  Should I just blow it all on minis?  Has there been any further news of a 4e d20 Modern?

Aside from all that, it’s Christine’s (current DM, other writer, my fiancee) birthday today!  Everybody wish her a happy one!

Could this be a sign of what the next WotC campaign setting will be, after Eberron?

We’ll see, I suppose.