Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Seanamal 01-28-06, 02:59 AM	This is NOT a rules change. What I am suggesting is that WoTC needs to make a well written rules fix to polymorph/wildshape/shapechange that spells out precisely what you CAN and CANNOT do. Then BEFORE they publish it to a book or make it official, they chuck it to the community. Let us playtest it, let us find the chinks in it's armor, let us figure out what the exploitations of it are. I think the basic problem is that the WoTC guys are less likely to find the flaws in their own work as they unconciously think who's gonna do that? Who's going to read it that way? I understand the underlying logic of the way many of the rules are written. For example Shapechage grants supernatural abilities because when you shapechange into a Red Dragon you want to be able to breathe fire. This logic was sound, unfortunetly they forgot that creatures other then red dragons have supernatural abilities. The min/maxing bonus stacking that abounds with transmutation magic is another area where the design team just really didn't think it through. They simply didn't have the proper mindset. When they wrote that rule they were thinking "Well, you should be able to do this." What they should have benn thinking is "Well you should be able to do this, but definetly not that!" I don't blame them or think it was sloppy work that caused this, it's just when you are involved in a project you somtimes have trouble thinking someone is gonna pervert your work. Your editing constraints, time constraints, and your endurance occasionally make you say it's good enough a little early. Then a pack of powergaming munchkins come along and bend what you thought is a perfectly fine rule into a gamebreaking pretzel. Ah, the rule of unintended consequences.
Gnome_Dragon_Disciple 01-28-06, 03:03 AM	See, what they need to do is get a group of char-opers and pay them for every rule they can break beyond any hope of ever being able to justify being in the game. Of course, this would mean that 4th edition will never see the light of day and the publishing pipeline would slow to a crawl of maybe a book a year, and that would be on a good year.
Seanamal 01-28-06, 03:13 AM	A dedicated think tank of rules twisters could crack most gamebreaking loophles in a day. I think your slowdown is overstated. I do like your per a closed loophole payment idea though. It does remind me of a dilbert strip where the boss announces they'll pay $10 per a scripting bug found and fixed and wally then announces he's gonna go write himself a new car.
Gnome_Dragon_Disciple 01-28-06, 03:28 AM	The trick would be making sure that the think tank has absolutely no role in the actual design of the rules. Any feedback from the char-opers would be restricted to reporting exactly how they did what they did. And the slowdown was a joke... The point of it being that ANY rule can be broken beyond the structural integrity of any campaign with enough effort.
Seanamal 01-28-06, 03:38 AM	The trick would be making sure that the think tank has absolutely no role in the actual design of the rules. Any feedback from the char-opers would be restricted to reporting exactly how they did what they did. I concur wholeheartedly. And the slowdown was a joke... The point of it being that ANY rule can be broken beyond the structural integrity of any campaign with enough effort. Which illustrates my point of how someone can write something one way, and everyone takes it or twists it to mean the opposite. I don't expect every loophole to be closed, that would damage the tailor it to your taste structure of DnD. But, I would like to see the real gross ones closed.