As 4th Edition will be hitting the shelves in about 4 months, the time has come to collect
thoughts, informations and rumours about the upcoming D&D 4e, and to point out possible or
necessary changes to the CoCo environment.
This thread will be divided into three parts:
- this post, containing basic information und confirmed facts
- the next post, containing rumours, assumptions and a list of ongoing discussions
- the third post, containing ended discussions and already elaborated proposals for changes in the CoCo Environment
Who can participate?
Basically, anyone that wants to play 4e in CoCo or feels he can contribute. Keep in mind though,
that due to the open nature of this discussion, there can't be any certainties of what Elders
will decide later on.
How to contribute?
There are different ways how you can help advancing this thread:
- You've got confirmed information not listed and want it added/corrected? Send a PM. I'll add it ASAP.
- You've got any ideas for changes? Just go ahead and post them.
- You've heard a rumour and want to discuss that as well - go ahead and post them,
if possible with link to the leaked information.
Confirmed Facts
i'll work over those again and again to increase their numbers.
Actions
Each time it’s your turn, you get one standard, one move, and one minor action. Standard actions are usually attacks, move actions are usually used to move, and minor actions are little things like drawing a weapon or opening a door. You can always exchange a standard action for a move action or minor action, or a move action for a minor action. There are also free actions, which take almost no time or effort, such as dropping a held item or talking.
2FC, 3FC, 4FC or no FC?
[post=15321015]whitebaron writes:[/post] With the changes in the DnD environment,
there might be a change of Power or Scalability of Wizards, Fighters etc. in Relation to each other.
It is well worth discussing whether this should have an impact on the current 3-Fight-Cycle of CoCo.
MWB stated he'd like to see a 4FC, i was more thinking along the lines of a 2FC. The even numbers of
our proposals are because of the Action Points, which will be given out on a 1 AP per 2 encounters
ratio. Up and downs of 2FC, 4FC will most likely be decided based on the new expendables presented -
Having limited ressources for a fight still seems like a nice way to add tactical depths.
But, on the other hand, you could also strip the 3FC altogether, since the power of Wizard, Fighter
or Cleric might be supposed to be even. [assumption]
[post=15321015]whitebaron writes:[/post] With the changes in the DnD environment,
there might be a change of Power or Scalability of Wizards, Fighters etc. in Relation to each other.
It is well worth discussing whether this should have an impact on the current 3-Fight-Cycle of CoCo.
MWB stated he'd like to see a 4FC, i was more thinking along the lines of a 2FC. The even numbers of
our proposals are because of the Action Points, which will be given out on a 1 AP per 2 encounters
ratio. Up and downs of 2FC, 4FC will most likely be decided based on the new expendables presented -
Having limited ressources for a fight still seems like a nice way to add tactical depths.
But, on the other hand, you could also strip the 3FC altogether, since the power of Wizard, Fighter
or Cleric might be supposed to be even. [assumption]
None yet
Proposals to the Elders
None yet
to start into the fray, i'll post an initial discussing point - but feel free to bring up other things of your own:
4FC
With the changes in the DnD environment,
there might be a change of Power or Scalability of Wizards, Fighters etc. in Relation to each other.
It is well worth discussing whether this should have an impact on the current 3-Fight-Cycle of CoCo.
MWB stated he'd like to see a 4FC, i was more thinking along the lines of a 2FC. The even numbers of
our proposals are because of the Action Points, which will be given out on a 1 AP per 2 encounters
ratio. Up and downs of 2FC, 4FC will most likely be decided based on the new expendables presented -
Having limited ressources for a fight still seems like a nice way to add tactical depths.
But, on the other hand, you could also strip the 3FC altogether, since the power of Wizard, Fighter
or Cleric might be supposed to be even. [assumption]
---
other things to maybe do:
a monthly summary would be nice.
a todo list would be nice.
I'd love to have something running on day 1, but the reality is we'll need to see the complete rules before making most of the decisions for 4E.
In 3.5 it was a necessary abstraction to bring the spellcasters powerlevel down to other characters. In 4E every class will have their 1/day powers so if everyone can "go Nova" equally well, it should be pretty balanced.
Removing the 3FC reduces "paperwork" for the players and makes it easier for new players to join up.
I bet there'll still be some difference between characters, so scrapping the 3FC may not be optimal
Bluff, Streetwise, Diplomacy, Endurance (On some character sheets but not all)
(Based Off Rumor/Assumptions)
Healing Surges: Might be a better way to deal with fight cycles. While this isn't a 'great' option it might be an interesting way of rewarding efficiency. Switch to a xFC ... where as you get above a certain number you get bonus to rewards. It would encourage the 'wise' use of dailies and allow some of the classes that have very large number of surges to move up while others rest.
Character Parties:
I think they might be more viable in the 4e environment, and I'm not sure how implementation would work.
@Lonewolf:
With the new combat structure the only paper work that needs to be done is Action Point (yes or no), Daily (yes or no), Healing surges remaining. This might get a little more complex at higher levels, but no books
While I think that the 'Nova' idea will go out the window, you could end up dealing with people just looking for the most powerful daily and then we just run a bunch of cookie cutter characters. The idea of a _FC simulates TT as well in that a person has to choose if the daily is needed for this fight. It seems to me that a daily is more of a 'EEK!' button than anything else. I think there should be some motivation to 'not-use' a daily in combat, much like we try to give a reason to 'not go nova' by using the 3FC.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=rpga/ddxp/highlights
Re: xFC: I really want to see something, because daily powers are considerably more potent than encounter ones. With no cycle, you can use them equally often, which results in some strangeness.
I have more mixed feelings about healing surges--to use the eladrin ranger as an example, he can heal up to 30 HP/day, 5/encounter. He has 23 HP. That means that if he loses the first fight and used his Second Wind, it'll take him everything he has to be at full HP for his second fight. We could assume that everyone has a cleric at their disposal, which would add 1d6+Cleric's Wis to each healing surge, but that gets pretty crazy. I think full healing between fights would remain the way to go.
Parties: I can tell you that running a fight in 4e is a bit easier than in 3e, and the story we're getting is that high-level fights are no harder to run than low-level ones. If this is true, parties may be much more viable. Parties might also be necessary in some ways, if each class is going to be generally viable. But that's speculation at this point--some of the mid-level wizard powers that were previewed (here) could work reasonably well one-on-one.
@mcj: i did not want to close the discussion in on certain topics, you seem to have misunderstood me. anything anyone wants to start discussing, will see discussion in here - its just the 3FC was the first part on my personal list
the XFC might not be clearly decidable unless 4e hits the shelves, but we can already see 2 factors that are parts of the 3FC: a) scaling power levels to equals b) limiting ressources so you need to decide for fights.
while a) is really necessary in the current dnd environment, b) is more of a flair issue. and using your dailies in every fight really looks strong, which would pretty much make a 1FC very crunchy.
@rith+individual FCs: i could take a liking in that. just let everybody decide whether they want to end their cycle after fight 2/3/4 (whatever turns out to be a good minimum), or go on with even more limited ressources, netting more XP/GP as they go along.
---edit---
edited the first facts(wizards rules preview/quick reference) into the first post.
will continue friday with informations from the various podcasts, and from articles.
And traps..
From what I understand, Terrain plays a much bigger part in 4e, anyone given any thought about redesigning the various Maps.. and how we can get them added..
And traps..
I would suggest being careful about adding dangerous map features; losing a fight because you accidentally fell into a pit trap (say) wouldn't be very fun.
I would suggest being careful about adding dangerous map features; losing a fight because you accidentally fell into a pit trap (say) wouldn't be very fun.
As far as I understand it, the traps are intended to be a part of the encounters. SOme abilities move your opponents, and with a varied terrain that can mean moving them over a cliff or into a trap.
I think the best way to incorporate those things is to have traps which everyone knows where it's located, but the effect of the trap is rolled randomly on a small table.
Place the trap in an important location on the map, such as guarding a good hiding spot. Then you end with an important element of the tactical situaiton that all sorts of characters can use.
As far as I understand it, the traps are intended to be a part of the encounters. SOme abilities move your opponents, and with a varied terrain that can mean moving them over a cliff or into a trap.
I think the best way to incorporate those things is to have traps which everyone knows where it's located, but the effect of the trap is rolled randomly on a small table.
Place the trap in an important location on the map, such as guarding a good hiding spot. Then you end with an important element of the tactical situaiton that all sorts of characters can use.
This is pretty much what I had in mind, too. There won't be anything as severe as falling into a pit trap and dying--partially because the game won't have anything that unbalanced, and partially because even if it did, we wouldn't use it. Traps have levels, so pitlords will randomly determine the nature of the traps based on level as well as certain other parameters.
Maps like the Sewer will have traps that "block" certain passageways, while maps like the Arena will have terrain features that characters can use to strategic advantage. However, I would like to see new maps in some cases--with the vast number of new and interesting terrain features, and the elimination of complex game effects (like Enlargement), some maps, like the Sewer, simply won't do what they were intended to do anymore. While I will "commission" new maps, we need to have a better idea of what kinds of traps and terrain features will exist before we can discuss what characteristics those maps will need.
Er wait, wrong forum :-) [or is it?? ;) ]
Then there can be some traps that are just a table saw that juts out of the arena, ready to cut your battlebot in half.
Er wait, wrong forum :-) [or is it?? ;) ]
Or you could have something as simple as a shoe kicking a bucket that causes a ball to roll down some stairs into a pipe that hits a rod that causes a ball-bearing to roll down a groove and fall into a bathtub and then land on a diving board that sends a guy flying into a bucket that causes a cage to fall on your
i believe terrain features and traps are all nice gimmicks, that can or have to be put in certain maps. but they should not be a limiting factor on the map either. if i can expect any rogue to be behind the trap sniping, assuming that i can not get past without taking damage or getting slowed or whatever - this won't be a nice way to deal with it.
also, i believe traps and dealing with them increases pitlord improvisation severely - no one will really know when writing tactics, how far those traps will be away from you, or if randomly decided - what they will do to you. But maybe for trapped maps, one can do more threaded-fights. If everything they tell us is true, this will be much less of a hassle towards the pitlord, since the rolls will be more straightforward, so seperate thread fights might get more common.
@sauro&immediate actions: the thing you're referring to, is called "bloodied" - a dragon can use its breath weapon again if bloodied. in the DND podcast 21 mike mearls was whining about players killing his dragon in DnDExperience- they kinda put sleep on the dragon, and bloodied him with a crit while unconscious, therefor keeping most of his nasty features in the dark.
what i like about the new wizard spells: it seems that you have to "sustain" any spell now that is ongoing, even if it only takes the minor action from you (see Power Excerpt by mwb, fly or greater invis spell: "sustain minor")
on the downside, many of the spells have been moved up relatively. fly was useable at level 5 (=7.5 in a 30lvl system), and is now level 15.
new topic: The 30 Level Problem in CoCo
looking at 30 levels worth of characters, gives certain problems:
a) there will be many more levels on the roster. either we will have to strongly increase on pitlords and players, or there needs to be some other solution, or we'll end up with monster fights over monster fights in 3 or 4 months.
b) The current pace of CoCo makes it like 3-6 fights till the next level, if you win at a decent rate. 3x29 = 87 fights minimum to reach level 30. while i like leveling up only so often, i also feel that this is quite a lot. (and this player would have been like 80-7 in his fights) The question is: do we have any inclination to decide how many XP a player will get based on that, or do we simply keep using the XP charts given by wizards for a given ECL/CR(or whatever classed encounters are called now)-encounter?
@contents in post 1: they are already containing dnd podcast 20, podcast 21 will be added in the evening, and i've got still some work to do with the Design & Development articles. i'll leave out the wizard powers pointed out by mwb, as there's no use putting up distinct spells somewhere... also, i'll update post 2 to contain the discussion going on. still waiting for pms with rumours or more sources i missed, though. ;)
There's a good chance that different ECLs will be able to fight each other in the same way that a high-gp ECL4 char fights a low-gp ECL4 char currently. I'm thinking "brackets" of levels might be the best way to go here- unless there are obvious power-take offs that I'm unaware of. My impression has been that leveling is less profound in the new system
As it is now, any bracket with less than 4 or so active characters gets boring rather quickly. You end up in monster fights or interleague or free for all fights more often than not. Although these kinds of fights are enjoyable, the system is setup to favor 1v1 battles as the preferred type.
Anyway my point is that we don't have enough players to run 20 leagues now... therefore running 30 leagues isn't going to be possible at all. We've sort of maxed out at about 15 leagues, and even now we're spread a bit thin. We won't be able to run 30 leagues unless we have at least twice probably more like five times the number of players as we currently have. If we are going to encourage teams to work together, then that also further increases the number of people we need to have as players.
I assume that we'll start in a similar way as CoCo did this last time, ie that it begins with a limited number of leagues that players can participate (3-8). Since the problem will be more sever in 4E, we may consider that we only run even leagues, or some other similar limitation to allow us to spread our competition over the entire array of possible character levels w/o spreading our players too thin.
also, i believe traps and dealing with them increases pitlord improvisation severely - no one will really know when writing tactics, how far those traps will be away from you, or if randomly decided - what they will do to you. But maybe for trapped maps, one can do more threaded-fights. If everything they tell us is true, this will be much less of a hassle towards the pitlord, since the rolls will be more straightforward, so seperate thread fights might get more common.
The traps would effectively be dangerous terrain elements. Some characters may be able to use the terrain as an advantage, say rogues who can avoid trap damage or fighters who can bull-rush opponents. The location of the traps can be predetermined on the map, much like the lava on the temple map and the acid on the sewer map. I was suggesting the effect of the trap would be randomly rolled on a table with 10 or so options and the effect scaled with the ECL... So for ECL10 character the lava trap has a higher save DC and more damage than the ECL5 lava. Or the trap could be acid, cold or even a targeted dispel magic cast at your ECL.
@sauro&immediate actions: the thing you're referring to, is called "bloodied" - a dragon can use its breath weapon again if bloodied. in the DND podcast 21 mike mearls was whining about players killing his dragon in DnDExperience- they kinda put sleep on the dragon, and bloodied him with a crit while unconscious, therefor keeping most of his nasty features in the dark.
I recall an early design and development article about dragons, and that's what I was thinking about when I made my previous comment about immediate actions. In that article, it was a sort of narrative. The author described a character hitting the dragon and wounds it with a crit, and the dragon gets an immediate action breath weapon because it's reduced below half hp. I suppose bloodied is at half hp, and that would correspond with what you've mentioned.
I was really just suggesting that it's another type of action that should probably be listed on the post1 section of actions. Immediate actions are just actions that can be taken at any time even if it's not the character's turn, they may have a trigger that makes them available (say when the character is bloodied).
while i believe it to be necessary to limit the leagues in one way or the other, it might as well be that mcjarvis is right and we could easily pair ecl3-5 together.
ecl3-8 sounds like an idea i won't like. especially since many of the current baseline-abilities of wizards or clerics won't be accessible that early. also, starting out at ecl3 might not be as needed as it is now. currently, the base problem with ecl1 combat is hitpoints - one lucky hit and you're dead. basically, a wizard is always dead against anyone with more hitpoints. currently ecl3 is where it starts to get fair. this might not be true for 4e. as there are now 30 levels of spells to get, i would find it odd to run only every 2nd or 3rd bracket.
re traps: i know what you wanted to do, but: i still feel this limits tactics more than it enhances them. terrain features and traps are REALLY REALLY nice when it comes to tabletop games. but when you have to write tactics, you can only go so far. all the remaining bits and pieces fall additionally on the pitlords. with threaded fights, thats not much of a problem.
re immediate actions: i'd like to include them to the known facts, but basically, i don't have any facts. all we now know is that there will be immediate actions again in the game. i've got no link whatsoever that states how many there will be, what limitations other than being alive and conscious there will be put on them, and so on. so, from the current standing, we know nothing more than we already know about immediate actions - that they can be taken during opponents turns.
I really don't find the lava in the temple(for instance) all that interesting. the end result is it's just an untouchable portion of the floor, unless you're immune to fire(which almost no one is, half-dragons aside)- in which case your tactics turn into "grapple opponent into center before he kills me"
Basically, whenever you add something dangerous to the degree that we have to the arena all it does is make any effect that can move an opponent into a save or die effect. That's just not very interesting, honestly. Similarly, anything that impedes movement is usually just avoided. the swamp in the forest is a good example of this- I'd say 99% of the time it doesn't come into effect at all.
# On the dragon’s turn, the first thing it does is burst out in an inferno of flame, searing every PC within 25 feet—a free action. Then, with a standard action, it slashes out at the fighter and the cleric with its two front claws (even though they’re both 20 feet away). As another free action, it uses its tail to slap the rogue, who was trying to sneak up behind it, and pushes her back 10 feet. It’s getting angry at the wizard, so it uses a special ability to take another standard action: it spits a ball of fire at the wizard, setting him on fire. It has a move action left, which it uses to fly into a better position for its breath weapon. That ends the dragon’s turn.
# It’s the fighter’s turn. He charges the dragon and manages to land a solid blow, dropping the dragon down below half its hit points. Oh—that gives the dragon the opportunity use its breath weapon as an immediate action. A huge cone of fire bursts from the dragon’s mouth, engulfing all four PCs. But at least the dragon is below 500 hit points!
# Now the rogue moves around to flank with the fighter. Ordinarily, that would let the dragon use its tail slap again as an immediate action, but the dragon has used its immediate action already. That’s lucky for the rogue, who actually gets to make an attack this round! Unfortunately, she fails to hit the dragon’s AC of 49.
# The wizard fails to put out the fire, so he takes more damage. Worse yet, the dragon’s breath scoured away the wizard’s fire resistance, so he takes the full amount. He blasts the dragon with a ray of freezing cold, but this isn’t 3rd Edition. The dragon takes normal damage, but it’s not enough to slow it down.
# Finally, the cleric is up. Calling on the power of her god, she swings her halberd at the dragon—a critical hit! The damage isn’t bad, but even better, the wizard gets a nice surge of healing power.
He’s going to need it—it’s the dragon’s turn again.
On the trap discussion, there was another statement about traps from the designers a while back... Not sure where that's at. But they said that most traps would be defeatable with multiple skills. So the rogue may use thievery to defeat a trap, where the fighter can use athletics to jump over it.
Traps and other terrain elements are avoided by players now, because it's easy to do so and it's hard for opponents to make you move through them. The major difference is that in 4E, several distinctive abilities of characters involve forcing the opponent to move in particular ways... Such as the tail slap by the dragon above which knocks the rogue back. That would be different if it knocked the rogue off a cliff, or into a pit of fire. These kinds of tactical movement elements are very hard to achieve in 3.5E, but they appear to be integral to combat in 4E.
Also properly balanced traps will not be save or die effects, like the 20d6 lava in the temple, but rather save or hurt effects. I suggested above how a trap can scale with ECL rather easily, by increasing DC and increasing damage. At ECL5 the temple has a ring of hot coals (dc 13 5d6), and at ECL20 it's a ring of lava (dc 25 20d6)...
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amwhit/PHB_4E_Lite_v1_1.pdf
I just found a compilation of all released 4E rules, bound together in what they call a "PHB Lite". Its pretty interesting:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amwhit/PHB_4E_Lite_v1_1.pdf
Reading through that... I suggest getting prepared for Warlocks.. (Macbrea's Favorate class in 3.5 BTW)..
But until the Actual PHB and DMG get out it's all speculation..
I Know they say Familiars are not going to be included... i am still expecting that to change since Wizards have had familiars Since 1st edition.. (Am expecting it to be a Feat)
I just found a compilation of all released 4E rules, bound together in what they call a "PHB Lite". Its pretty interesting:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amwhit/PHB_4E_Lite_v1_1.pdf
Yeah, Warlocks are awesome for the Coliseum. Spam Eyeblight look broken to anyone in 1v1? And that's only a level 1 at-will power. Ouch!
I just found a compilation of all released 4E rules, bound together in what they call a "PHB Lite". Its pretty interesting:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amwhit/PHB_4E_Lite_v1_1.pdf
this is a very nice find, indeed. what i dislike is that they entered assumptions within rules, without marking all of them properly. (like hitpoints) - will put it in the first thread though, as there are many good summaries in there as well.
@sauro: as i already said, i've read that article already (and btw the traps-article is within design&development, too)
about the traps, again:
i do not doubt that you can defeat traps differently now. the argument was not on "the fighter cannot defeat the traps the rogue easily passed", but from a different perspective:
both might be able to defeat the traps, and since this is known, the rogue will go there nevertheless - all the time. its like the flyers always going up - it's a given. this poses in my opinion not too many additional options. like therador's lava-bathing in the temple is a given. no one thinks too sharply about that. or the thing that happened with the ceiling in the city - everyone that could push someone past that barrier, would do so.
same with traps. any fighter would have in his default tactics "if opp in front of trap, move him into trap" and every character would have "stay away from traps where i could be forcely moved unless otherwise stated in my tactics"
it adds not as much versatility as one could hope - not in PITLORD RUN fights, and not in SINGLE fights. it is very nice for all other options, obviously - but that's not CoCo default at the moment.
Re: immediate actions: the quickstart sheet mentions immediate actions (anything that takes place outside your turn, which includes readied actions and triggered powers) and opportunity actions.
Terrain features: we'll have to see what's available. I admit that ours are either irrelevant or a hindrance most of the time, and overly powerful otherwise. The 4e DMG may have something more interesting to work with, and it also emphasizes inventing your own terrain elements, which we can do and put on a random table. The ones I saw at DDXP were much more interesting than the 3e ones, and I think there's a lot of potential. One trap, which had to be manually activated, swung a lead ball across the room, knocked the victim back and damaged them (on a hit), and there was also a pit filled with glue that you might be able to knock the target into. Another involved a boulder that rolled around the room, giving the PCs the options of staying out of its path, carefully timing their movement around it, trying to hold it back with brute strength, disabling it with Thievery, or just taking the hit. One creative PC even pushed a kobold into the boulder's path, and the kobolds were armed with glue pots. Both seem quite usable in tactics (depending on the map).
What will be particulrly interesting is if players don't know whether there will be a trap, or which one it is, unless they have the skills to do so. Oh, and rogues running straight into traps may not be a hot idea--if they fail the Thievery and/or Perception checks, they could get themselves hurt or crippled before their opponent even shows up.
One question: Several of these things, particularly the changed multiclass rules, will substantially change the face of the CoCo, and make existent (or planned) characters unplayable. Will there still be a 3e CoCo as well for those who prefer the 3e rules and characters, or will it be 4e only (and 3e characters will simply be ditched)?
3.5 e CoCo will continue as long as there is interest in players participating.
3.5 e CoCo will continue as long as there is interest in players participating.
MWB already said so, yes. there is currently no limits or deadlines whatsoever for coco 3.5e - but: being active is part of the interest - i doubt mwb would want to continue 3.5 if the players are inactive or there's hardly a 3.5 fight going on.
MWB already said so, yes. there is currently no limits or deadlines whatsoever for coco 3.5e - but: being active is part of the interest - i doubt mwb would want to continue 3.5 if the players are inactive or there's hardly a 3.5 fight going on.
Exactly. Time will tell--I'm not sure whether the addition of 4e material or the retention of 3e gameplay will end up being the larger draw for us.
In truth, I'm a little worried. 4th edition core rules, will have 8 classes, 12 paragon paths (IIRC), a couple of epic destinies, and something in the neighborhood of 15-20 races. Contrast with our current game, which has 20 classes, 25 prestige classes, 181 races (many of which, admittedly, are non-viable), and that's not even counting UA material. Each character will have more feats but fewer powers, leading to fewer in-combat options (a boon in some ways for TT, but a potential problem here). Already, there are several character archetypes that represent a substantial part of our PC population, and I'm worried that will get even worse. This is why I'm so concerned about designing other aspects of the CoCo that are more interesting.
I think the Challenges still have potential, and may be even better given some of 4e's changes. Some of the changes seem ready-made to our purposes: the Confidence Course will work beautifully with the new trap rules; the Monster Hunt will become a Minion Hunt and the Monster Takedown will become a Solo Takedown; King of the Hill will be a lot more meaningful with all the ways of moving other characters around, and Capture the Flag will be more fun with all the ways characters have of moving themselves. All the little rule changes (fewer buffs, practically no expendables, easier movement, etc.) will help as well, to the point where even a level 30 Grand Melee might be feasible.
I've mentioned this to Rith and Hirumajoe, but something else I'm considering is making 2-PC parties the norm. Running fights is considerably easier in 4e than in 3e, especially when you consider the loss of summons, cohorts, etc. By introducing this combination aspect, the number of potential options balloons to something approximating our current breadth of variety. Alternatively, players might be able to choose between one or two PCs--it looks like such a conversion will still be possible, with 2 PCs having an equivalent "level" of 1 PC 4 levels higher than theirs. That does present problems in one-on-two fights, where the one is Paragon or Epic tier and the two are Heroic or Paragon, respectively, but it's an option.
One more thing: when I asked a month or two ago about OpenRPG, no one said they'd really had any experience with it. Since play-by-post takes so long (too long for a 1-week turnover and, like Cat, I'd rather avoid a 2-week schedule if it's at all possible), and few will have a subscription to DDI (assuming it launches on schedule anyway), OpenRPG seems like a strong option for those games where pre-written tactics aren't ideal. If any of you are willing to give it a try, either off the record or to run your CoCo fights, it could be very helpful to us.
Mostly I feel that those things will work best if they allow more tacical control of the battle. The new DnD is probably going to be more like chess, in that what's the best thing to do will highly depend on where everyone is at and wha'ts going at when your turn comes up, so try to imagine posting "tactics" for a chess game... yea right.
If OpenRPG allows a more controlled battle, then I'm all for it.
Edit: A bit of reading later, and I see that OpenRPG has been discontinued. Some people still use it, but others recommend the resources available at rptools.net instead, although they appear to require slightly more tech savvy.
The downside, however, of any real-time method is that you need a pitlord and gladiators matched in terms of available times, which could be a major problem.
Is there any interest in a "transformation" campaign for CoCo? Many of the campaign settings are being modified by the transition to 4E.
For Gladius the transition to 4E will mean a loss of psionics in addition to a transformation of how magic works with all the classes... The introduction of new races, the loss of others as typical "playable" races, loss of some playable classes and the introduction of other new playable classes all pose a rather significant shift in the way that Gladius works. As a continuity of our Gladius setting, we'll need some kind of story to describe how all these changes take place.
I'd be willing to run/participate in such a campaign?
I've thought about this as well. It's a little more complicated than that, though.
For one, we'll be running 3.5 and 4e at the same time, at least for a while. That means it isn't the whole world that's changing (FR-style), but there's a part of it that doesn't obey the same rules as before. It could be a bunch of new "options" in Gladius (that just aren't compatible with old ones, for no explicable reason), or it could be geographically limited (half of Gladius, or a different city/country elsewhere on Talas or even a different continent on Othala). If it's broken up by district, there could be 3.5e communities and 4e communities within the same system; if it's a different area altogether it could be an aspect of the new Guild system. Also, the new material could be a Spellplague-like revolution, or it could just be discovery of/new interaction with an area that just follows different rules.
As for campaign ideas, I had a couple of ideas, mechanically speaking. One is to just run a normal campaign. Another is to run two campaigns simultaneously, like the Denth campaign, one of them 3.5e and one of them 4e. A third is to open up the campaign specifically for players interested in "converting" their old 3.5e characters into new (1st level) 4e characters, and the campaign could cover that transition using the retraining concepts found in both the 3e PHB 2 and the 4e DMG. If we used this last option, it might be one way to give some characters a jump start in XP so we don't all start at level 1 in June.
Out of character, the same concept can be moved from one area to the other, but this is mechanically equivalent to building the character from scratch at the desired ECL, including credit cost. Also lets us keep the very cool feel of the City of Gladius, as opposed to relocating.
Another group of characters works to generate a demi-plane linked to Gladius, but protected from the spell fire. This transdimensional Gladius would be limited in size, but it would serve as an island of the old ways of magic. Some psionic characters could flee to this new "promised land". Wizards will move to this place where their old magics still work.
I also kind of don't want to have a "spellfire"/Time of Troubles/Spellplague hit Othala. There's a lot of aversion to what's happened with FR, and I don't really want that happening here. Granted, we're a lot less vulnerable, but so many people find it distasteful (including, I know, Zevox and myself) that I feel it's best to avoid it.
I sense a political drama, perhaps ending in a war that will wipe out the 3.5 kids if we ever abandon that system.
For us that's not really necessary. The only major mechanics thing is that there needs to be a different way of working magic and all the consequences that go along with that. The altered cosmology is another thing that needs to be considered.
The other changes are explaining the appearance of the Eldrain and Dragonborn, also the Feywild is something that needs to fit into things somehow...
Perhaps another way to handle this is to have a campaign where someone opens a permanent gate in the center of GLadius that leads to a new universe... This new universe has different laws of nature and magic and is populated by strange creatures. Ie, the points of light standard campaign setting. This strategy would require a whole new geography, history and everything in this new land...
The other changes are explaining the appearance of the Eldrain and Dragonborn, also the Feywild is something that needs to fit into things somehow...
The Eladrin is a new name for an old race--the high and gray elves are now eladrin, and the wood and wild elves are now just elves. The dragonborn, yeah, but I don't see that addition of one new race to need that much effort. Feywild, maybe--it's not like we ever established our cosmology anyway, and it may or may not be necessary to do so in 4e.
Considering we never really did much with the "World of Gladius" to begin with, I don't see creating a whole new world as actually happening.
I think that we don't really need a new World. As MWB said, we may not need a complex cosmology and the addition of new races requires just a little bit of fantasy in writing a nice story.
I personally like the idea of a new Gladius in a remote continent.
World of Gladius is currently defined just for Talas, the main continent.
Nothing forbids the existance of a second continent, still undiscovered by the current 3.5 critters.
Later we could have a Columbus travelling to discover one of these and probably a war to wipe out the older Talas inhabitants.
people come here first and foremost for the arena-bit. that there are other things around is really nice and keeps (some) people longer -
but i confess - i have never read a line of it, and it is not of interest to me.
bottom line: whatever the story changes, it will neither deter nor attract new players.
side note:
wizards released some new info again..
about tiers
i believe, not to many newcomers actually look at the world of gladius-thread.
people come here first and foremost for the arena-bit. that there are other things around is really nice and keeps (some) people longer -
but i confess - i have never read a line of it, and it is not of interest to me.
Bah, power players...
But I do want that one point of light, a location for the new Coliseum. Either it replaces the old one and the old one moves somewhere else, or it's erected elsewhere in Gladius, or in another country on Talas, or on another continent in Othala.
The problem with that is that we can never have any significant changes in the 3.5 plot line, because it would affect the 4.0 one retroactively. Placing them on a different continent, or even country, would serve the same purpose well enough, and still leave the option of indirect interaction though a subgame like the guild system.
Not necessarily. What if the exact events in the future/past[whichever 4.0 is] are unknown? Kind of a "dark ages" kind of deal.
Not necessarily. What if the exact events in the future/past[whichever 4.0 is] are unknown? Kind of a "dark ages" kind of deal.
We would still already know how it all worked out, in the end. Only the intermediary steps would be unknown. It works reasonably well in novels, but not as well in D&D since the players know they can never have any real impact.
We would still already know how it all worked out, in the end. Only the intermediary steps would be unknown. It works reasonably well in novels, but not as well in D&D since the players know they can never have any real impact.
Ah, that makes more sense. I was definately thinking about it in terms of writing. [which is the perspective I bring to the table in general...]
4E GSL + SRD details - Lists Details about release date and some details about the upcoming srd. in short: the srd is scheduled to go live the same day the core rulebooks are released.
The Phane - Yet another monster preview. Looks pretty annoying, but is still to high a level for our testing purposes
Customizing Monsters - it seems that upgrading and downsizing monster is much easier now. +1 to pretty much everything, add hitpoints, done. i kinda like it, but we'll see how good it works out.
about playtesting 4e: well, i'd be for it, but i was kinda put to bed the last 1-2 weeks and bound to work the week before. since i cannot guaranteee how much i'll have to catch up, i won't be there in the immediate future for such things as playtesting 4e.
@this threads index: yeah, i know. will get to it... (when?)
wizards will now do previews on a monday-wednesday-friday schedule up till the release of 4e.
this weeks preview features a new core class - [url=http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080421a]The Warlord[/post]
Some of the warlords powers (inspiring presence) feel like the bard is getting back with better powers that really help the party in combat as well...
others are just more melee power.
For example the Phane has a CHA of 22(+19) and the Succubus has a CHA of 22(+10).
Neither of those corresponds to the bonuses we would assign to a CHA score of 22. For PC's that bonus is only +6...
What's up with the huge differences on these stat bonuses for some monsters?
Another thing that interesting is that natural armor bonuses don't stack with armor bonuses from wearing armor... And Int or Dex stat modifiers can apply to the monster's AC. I wonder if that's the case for PC's as well.
I noticed in the MM previews that the stat bonuses look funny...
For example the Phane has a CHA of 22(+19) and the Succubus has a CHA of 22(+10).
Neither of those corresponds to the bonuses we would assign to a CHA score of 22. For PC's that bonus is only +6...
nope, it isn't - that has changed.
basically, every bonus in the game gets better with levels.
since the phane is lvl 26, it gets +13 to ac, bonuses etc.
so its +20 str are: +7 stat + 13 lvl.
about bonusses: well, i believe there might be something similar for PCs as well (a feat maybe?), and about stacking: well, no clue.
I noticed in the MM previews that the stat bonuses look funny...
For example the Phane has a CHA of 22(+19) and the Succubus has a CHA of 22(+10).
Neither of those corresponds to the bonuses we would assign to a CHA score of 22. For PC's that bonus is only +6...
What's up with the huge differences on these stat bonuses for some monsters?
Another thing that interesting is that natural armor bonuses don't stack with armor bonuses from wearing armor... And Int or Dex stat modifiers can apply to the monster's AC. I wonder if that's the case for PC's as well.
Most d20 rolls (attacks, skills) and static "Take 10" values (AC, defenses, Perception) include half the character's or creature's level. The Cha 22 (+10) is for, say, a succubus's untrained Intimidate check: the base modifier of +6 plus half the succubus's level (9), for a total of +10. This is true for PCs as well.
Yes, PCs also get the higher of their Int or Dex to AC. They also get the better of Str or Con to Fortitude defense, Int or Dex to Reflex defense, and Wis or Cha to Will defense. Many folks are predicting that Int will be the new default dump stat, and I'm inclined to agree.
Yes, PCs also get the higher of their Int or Dex to AC. They also get the better of Str or Con to Fortitude defense, Int or Dex to Reflex defense, and Wis or Cha to Will defense. Many folks are predicting that Int will be the new default dump stat, and I'm inclined to agree.
So strength still applies a bonus on to-hit in melee, and dex still applies a bonus on to-hit for ranged, right?
Cuz that will determine if dex or int is the dump stat. Looking at the character abilities, most of the at will abilities are things that use the character's "primary" stat as a damage bonus. So that could be str, dex, cha or int as far as I recall off the top of my head. Depending on where you damage bonus is at, and if you're using ranged or melee your dump stat is someplace else.
I could easily see the newest posted guy, one of the warlords, using Int as a primary stat, and fighting with a melee weapon and good strength for the to-hit.
On another note, as more of the classes are revealed, it's totally clear that solo combat isn't going to work in 4E much... That is unless we're all strikers. About half the classes won't work as intended unless there's another ally to share the effect with. Paladins, Clerics and Warlords all fall into this class, and I'm still unsure how Wizards are going to work out if at all... Anyway, party combat is clearly going to be the norm... Should it be a single player running a group of 4, or 3 or 2 characters? Or would it work better as a team of players who collaborate? Either way has it's strengths and weaknesses.
Also it looks like half the classes have abilities that are highly situational. For example I would be non-plussed if the pitlord used my daily Bastion of Defense at a time when I would have saved it for later or used my Guarding attack on a different foe than the one I would have picked. I really feel like our submission of tactics policy isn't going to work much especially if there are multiple opponents on the map. It's like writing tactics for a chess game... It will work at only a perfunctory level and it will totally depend on how brilliant the pitlord is when handling the details of the tactical situation. I feel like a play by post, or chat based format is going to be necessary for any player's tactical skill to have a significant influence on the outcomes. That carries it's own set of logistical complications, but unless we run a solo character arena I don't think any other way is going to work.
It's kind of a dilemma. We can run a solo arena with tactics, but the striker classes are clearly at an advantage. Or we can run a chat or play by post based arena where groups of characters compete and all the character classes have opportunities to function within their respective rolls successfully, and we accept all the slowness and logistical snafu's associated with that format.
Since you seem to know what's going on with 4E more than I do, I wonder what's going to happen to crafting magic items. The posting a few days back suggested that a character has about 4 magic items, or 3 items with a "level" near the character level, and a collection of "lesser" items like expendables.
So strength still applies a bonus on to-hit in melee, and dex still applies a bonus on to-hit for ranged, right?
Cuz that will determine if dex or int is the dump stat. Looking at the character abilities, most of the at will abilities are things that use the character's "primary" stat as a damage bonus. So that could be str, dex, cha or int as far as I recall off the top of my head. Depending on where you damage bonus is at, and if you're using ranged or melee your dump stat is someplace else.
I could easily see the newest posted guy, one of the warlords, using Int as a primary stat, and fighting with a melee weapon and good strength for the to-hit.
That's correct. If you have an Int-based class feature, Int will be perhaps more important than Dex. But consider:
Str is used for Fort defense, melee attacks and damage, and thrown damage.
Con is used for Fort defense, healing surges, and (minimally) HP.
Dex is used for AC, Reflex defense, intiative, ranged attacks, and ranged damage.
Int is used for AC, Reflex defense, and initiative.
Wis is used for Will defense.
Cha is used for Will defense.
So an optimal character, ignoring class features, will invest in either Wis or Cha (randomly, or whichever is the key attribute for any critical skills), and in Dex. Dex is just plain more useful than Int unless you have a relevant class feature.
On another note, as more of the classes are revealed, it's totally clear that solo combat isn't going to work in 4E much... That is unless we're all strikers. About half the classes won't work as intended unless there's another ally to share the effect with. Paladins, Clerics and Warlords all fall into this class, and I'm still unsure how Wizards are going to work out if at all... Anyway, party combat is clearly going to be the norm... Should it be a single player running a group of 4, or 3 or 2 characters? Or would it work better as a team of players who collaborate? Either way has it's strengths and weaknesses.
I've been strongly considering having 2 PCs per "unit" be the default. Strikers and Defenders are the only classes that work well solo; in our environment I can see an Elf Ranger (speed 7) taking all comers without much difficulty, at least for several levels. Leaders function best with a team, and Controllers best against a team. A possible alternative is for someone who wants a solo character to have it, at 4 levels higher than a team (e.g. 2 level 1 characters vs. 1 level 5 character).
Sidenote: as we have an idea how templates work now (applied to a legal monster, they turn a normal monster into an elite, or an elite into a solo), I've been thinking about how to use this in our game. I'm still thinking about how to do monster encounters (the critical element I'm missing is how much XP a class-levelled NPC is worth), but applying a template to a PC should be possible using LA. Since 4e has no LA, this would be a house rule, but since turning a monster from a normal into an elite doubles its XP value, a templated PC could count as two normal PCs. Or possible 2.5 (six levels above normal) if the NPC treat NPCs as elite monsters.
Also it looks like half the classes have abilities that are highly situational. For example I would be non-plussed if the pitlord used my daily Bastion of Defense at a time when I would have saved it for later or used my Guarding attack on a different foe than the one I would have picked. I really feel like our submission of tactics policy isn't going to work much especially if there are multiple opponents on the map. It's like writing tactics for a chess game... It will work at only a perfunctory level and it will totally depend on how brilliant the pitlord is when handling the details of the tactical situation. I feel like a play by post, or chat based format is going to be necessary for any player's tactical skill to have a significant influence on the outcomes. That carries it's own set of logistical complications, but unless we run a solo character arena I don't think any other way is going to work.
It's kind of a dilemma. We can run a solo arena with tactics, but the striker classes are clearly at an advantage. Or we can run a chat or play by post based arena where groups of characters compete and all the character classes have opportunities to function within their respective rolls successfully, and we accept all the slowness and logistical snafu's associated with that format.
Yes; I have called for volunteers to test online programs (like OpenRPG or rptools) that would facilitate this, but thus far no one has accepted. Play-by-post just takes so darn long....
Since you seem to know what's going on with 4E more than I do, I wonder what's going to happen to crafting magic items. The posting a few days back suggested that a character has about 4 magic items, or 3 items with a "level" near the character level, and a collection of "lesser" items like expendables.
This has been hush-hush, mostly. A new character starts off with 3 "major" items and enough cash for several "lesser" items, but a character who adventures up to that level will have a collection of many "lesser" items (one of the blogs lists a warlock's equipment, and all slots but the ring slot were filled).
As far as crafting goes, it's a ritual. The grapevine has it that Ye Old Magick Stuff Shoppe is being replaced by item creation rituals, which makes the assumption that every party will have a cleric or wizard in it. We may have to assume that everyone has access to these rituals as if a party member had it (the same way we assume that every PC has access to a friend with healing spells between fights) to achieve parity.
Str is used for Fort defense, melee attacks and damage, and thrown damage.
Con is used for Fort defense, healing surges, and (minimally) HP.
Dex is used for AC, Reflex defense, intiative, ranged attacks, and ranged damage.
Int is used for AC, Reflex defense, and initiative.
Wis is used for Will defense.
Cha is used for Will defense.
So an optimal character, ignoring class features, will invest in either Wis or Cha (randomly, or whichever is the key attribute for any critical skills), and in Dex. Dex is just plain more useful than Int unless you have a relevant class feature.
Man... This just makes the wizard suck harder. As an obligate non-melee character he has a need for Dex, but it competes with his primary stat.
Looks like Wis and Cha get the short end of the stick. That is unless will defense is way important compared to reflex and fort.
When the block is over, and summer begins I'll help get you all started on 4E. I can try to demo some of the online things you mentioned. I have no experience with those, so I was hoping you'd check it out and let us know which way is better (openrpg or rptools). If we can get it figured out what system we'll use, then I'll beta test over the summer. Once school kicks in august 1st, then I'll surrender elder status and be a rather intermittent player as much as I can handle between board review and normal course work.
about playing with tools other than the forum: this is a way i would not go with you - i like the ability to submit tactics and be done for the week with this fight, and to time when i run a fight as pitlord - no way i'd swap it in for another online game where i need to be there on fixed times...
Man... This just makes the wizard suck harder. As an obligate non-melee character he has a need for Dex, but it competes with his primary stat.
Actually, quite the reverse, since a wizard should never be using mundane attacks. Magic missile is considered a basic attack--if, for instance, an ally has an ability that allows one ally in range to make a basic ranged attack, the wizard can use magic missile. It's an Int vs. Reflex attack (yes, you can miss) and deals 2d4+Int damage (probably 4d4+Int at level 21). The warlord is who it hurts the most, because if he ever does need to make a ranged attack, he'll need Dex for it--plus, if he wears chainmail, he doesn't even get to add his Dex (or Int) to his AC. I forsee warlords as being the crummiest ranged characters in the game, and perhaps the most probable multiclassers (to wizard or warlock, initially).
Looks like Wis and Cha get the short end of the stick. That is unless will defense is way important compared to reflex and fort.
Looks that way to me, too. But this is different from 3e how, exactly?
I have no experience with those, so I was hoping you'd check it out and let us know which way is better (openrpg or rptools).
It's kind of hard to test a multiplayer tool by oneself. I can take a look, but I won't know how it works in practice without someone else's cooperation.
Once school kicks in august 1st, then I'll surrender elder status and be a rather intermittent player as much as I can handle between board review and normal course work.
I'd been wondering about that. Sorry to see you go. Guess I should start thinking about a new Elder....
Anyway, I wasn't expecting you to do all the testing for the alternative systems. The only thing I was hoping you'd do is figure out which system is easier to use for our purposes... See if they are easy to download, install, and all that. Make sure it has a chat feature and a map which all parties can access, then we should be good to go.
I assume a wizard would still need dex for ranged touch attacks, or is that mechanic changed as well.
Anyway, I wasn't expecting you to do all the testing for the alternative systems. The only thing I was hoping you'd do is figure out which system is easier to use for our purposes... See if they are easy to download, install, and all that. Make sure it has a chat feature and a map which all parties can access, then we should be good to go.
There's no such thing as a ranged touch attack anymore. It's Int for Magic Missile, Int for Ray of Frost, Int for Acid Arrow (which is an area effect now), Int for Sleep, although they target different defenses. AC is AC, there's only the one kind (no flat-footed or touch).
There's no such thing as a ranged touch attack anymore. It's Int for Magic Missile, Int for Ray of Frost, Int for Acid Arrow (which is an area effect now), Int for Sleep, although they target different defenses. AC is AC, there's only the one kind (no flat-footed or touch).
i'd say touch got replaced by reflex.
to be honest: currently i believe coco will need drastic changes or house-rulings in 4e, to stay what it is - competitive, strategy-driven non-realtime-combat.
4e feels a lot more like tactics - short term gain - and power curves seem more balanced, so min-maxing your characters will get a lot harder.
this is something i look forward to for tabletop, as it will make dms lives easier - no need for always custom upgraded monsters just because the party has one specific strength or weakness... but, for coco, this might as well mean a paradigm change.
to be honest: currently i believe coco will need drastic changes or house-rulings in 4e, to stay what it is - competitive, strategy-driven non-realtime-combat.
4e feels a lot more like tactics - short term gain - and power curves seem more balanced, so min-maxing your characters will get a lot harder.
this is something i look forward to for tabletop, as it will make dms lives easier - no need for always custom upgraded monsters just because the party has one specific strength or weakness... but, for coco, this might as well mean a paradigm change.
True. I'm really not sure how well our tactics-based combat system will work, which is why I'm looking into other options. Worst-case scenario, we shift to a two-week schedule to make time for play-by-post.
I'm of two minds about min-maxing. One one hand, yes, I think everything will be a bit more balanced by default (although it only takes one broken combo to break a whole class, so we'll have to see). That does make min-maxing more challenging, which to my mind is a good thing. No more Kineticist FTW. No more expertly-designed warriors losing to slapdash casters. The days of cookie-cutter builds will, hopefully, be over.
That's not that I expect them to die out entirely. I expect certain designs to be more common than others, due simply to our limited design space. For instance, Dragonborn Inspiring Warlords and Halfling Trickster Rogues will be among the more common builds, just because they get 100% synergy with their racial bonuses. I don't know what the paragon paths will look like, but I imagine they'll support the same sort of thing: elf archer-clerics, eladrin arcane archers, tiefling ultimate magi, and so on. There's also the issue that feats are a lot weaker now, replaced by powers as the defining feature of a build, and if you only get to choose one out of four or five options every time you get a new power, there's a certain limit there.
It's also going to be more important than every to have a good variety of maps. The game is designed in such a way that it's assumed you can get into melee if you really want to, though it may not always be easy. Four of our seven maps are essentially wide open--which is why we have very few successful 20-speed characters who don't use mounts. And, of course, terrain features are more important than every as well.
For all these reasons: I need volunteers. We need to test out 4e battles; we have the playtest characters, so we should use them. We need to test out alternative ways of running fights. We need new maps (although we need to see the traps and terrain features in the books before we can do this). I can do some of this myself but not very much--I can pitlord a 4e playtest or play in it but not both, I can't test out P2P-style tools by myself, and making maps is time-consuming and if you wait for me to make them all, it'll take forever.
I can't do this without support from you, the community, and if we don't get this running within a reasonable time after 4e launches we'll lose a lot of our potential growth. I want to be up and running by the end of June if it's at all possible.
Speaking of which, I might as well spill the beans now: I have big plans for the launch. What happened at CoCo the last time we had a whole mess of PCs at the same level? An Iron Man tournament! And so it shall be again. When we open up 4e, it will be with our second Iron Man--and, because 4e permits it, it will be a true Iron Man in that there will be no resting. I'm still trying to figure out if I can get a custom avatar and custom title for the winner again (I think so), but I definitely think that characters (or teams) will be rewarded with one full level per win, to spread everyone out a little.
i have to say, i'm not quite happy with what i believe they're saying there - looks like only one path per class is in the PHB. which means - core without extensions = nearly no options at all. i hope there are more of those in the dmg or will be released soon - or easy to use rules to build them yourselves for the first year or so - else it'll be pretty boring if all you can do(as a cleric for example) is multiclass or play the warpriest...
I'd like to volunteer to try a tactics-based 4e test fight, but I don't have the consistent access to fo play-by-post, so we can use this for comparison. If MWB is willing to play, we just need another player, and the sheets and map. I thought we could use the Arena, but I'd appreciate a point in the direction of the sheets.
If you check in the Playtest thread, you'll find a link to the character sheets, and see that someone volunteered to be a player.
It's pretty much we know of this already, but nevertheless interesting to read all in one place.
What strikes me as odd: You don't need your holy symbol to cast anymore, it's just an additional bonus... but they don't say how much it is... seems like we'll have to wait for that later...
I don't think this reveals much...
but the stat blocks are really easy to read nowadays. thats good.
Summary: You can skip your paragon path to get a multiclass feat that allows you to dabble in another class, and with other feats you can further those options...
what's not really clear to me, is how you can really profit from such a multiclassing, with most utility spells being higher power than you can ever get by those feats (get a wizard power 1/encounter of 4th level or lower?).
also, this means multiclassing is down to 1, maybe 2 decisions in the whole character career - which means either characters are a lot more similar to each other, or they will have to include many many paths to follow for each class. (which does not simplify things compared to 3.5)
- The "Class Training" feats get you a bonus skill and a crippled version of a class feature.
- The "Class Power" feats have a level prerequisite (4, 8, 10) and allow you to swap any of your powers of that type (encounter, utility, daily) for a power of that type from the other class. So yes, you can get a high-level power this way.
- You can opt to swap out your Paragon Path to multiclass more fully; as near as I can tell, this is an entirely seperate option, so you could pick up a 3rd class this way.
- You can use a Class Training feat to qualify for a cross-class paragon path, letting you get several features and powers that don't come directly from your second class, but are thematically related.
- If you wanted to pick up even a 4th class, you could do it by being a half-elf. A little bit, anyway.
So your multiclassing options/choices include 1 race, up to 4 feats, up to 3 powers and one skill granted by those feats, and a path. Not as verastile as 3e, but there's still several ways to go about it.
so basically what they are saying is that you can use a feat you can even have since the beginning (low heroic) to chose another paragon path.
i was reading their table originally to mean either lvl 4 of paragon tier or a lvl 4 power. ... i can see where i was wrong.
Racial Benefits - much anticipated information
Swordwings - new monsters
Information about the GSL - how the future of OGL is like
I'm getting a strange familiar feeling - looks a bit like vampire + successes, but rolled in order and not at the same time?
nevertheless, i like that kind of system. it gives some suspense on more than one roll. also, i like the idea of skill challenges changing the course of a campaign. what i don't like is getting XP or equipment for overcoming skill challenges... but this can be easily regulated with/instead of story-XP, and maybe this is one of those changes where they make the general RP/story XP more regulated.
Things i like:
- Clear definition of weapon types like "axe, bow"
- Proficiency only gives bonuses - someone not proficient with a weapon need not modify anything of his values, which is a good thing. i never liked negative values to account for anyway.
Things i dislike:
- There's nothing about weapon sizes in that preview except that there are additional keywords for small characters, this might mean there won't be weapon sizes in the game. (assumption)
- They simply renamed lots of things, like martial to military and exotic to superior. While this might be more fitting terms, we all were used to it the other way round, and i don't see any real need to change that many terms for 4e (like opportunity attack instead of AoO, or the weapon renaming)
judging by the amount of responses here, i get the strange nagging feeling 4e does not meet with much interest in the coco (hopefully only yet...), or general interest level in coco for 4e is low.
another thing: judging by the playtest fights, i believe threaded fights and at least 2-pcs per player will be the way to go. with the speedup the fights seem to take (see callixs playtests) threaded fights might still be viable to be done within one week, BUT: there's an acitvity problem with those. not every player wants to take 10-20 posts a week to get a threaded fight done, and not every player even has the time each week.
the way i foresee tactics will be written:
a) general part about what i will do
b) contingencies for hitpoints, second winds, healing etc.
c) contingencies against his powers (if he does power a, do counter b)
i don't see much deviation from that, making tactics writing basically one-time stuff. (just add additional contingencies) - concerning this, i made a mistake in this weeks playtest, i believe i could have a shot at Tira despite eyebite, since we both missed something. ;)
judging by the amount of responses here, i get the strange nagging feeling 4e does not meet with much interest in the coco (hopefully only yet...), or general interest level in coco for 4e is low.
I would say that (1) CoCo membership is a minority and (2) interest in analyzing the snippets of 4E as they come out is a minority. So CoCo members who are interesting in analyzing snippets of 4E is a minority within a minority.
(2) interest in analyzing the snippets of 4E as they come out is a minority.
That resonates with me. I hate reading previews for anything, really. Why spend 20+ hours total on reading about these things when I can just wait for the movie/book/video game/4E to come out & enjoy the entire experience? Reading snippets early just would allow me to form judgements based on a small portion of the experience- something I would rather not do anyway.
That resonates with me. I hate reading previews for anything, really. Why spend 20+ hours total on reading about these things when I can just wait for the movie/book/video game/4E to come out & enjoy the entire experience? Reading snippets early just would allow me to form judgements based on a small portion of the experience- something I would rather not do anyway.
In my case, I'd go one step further. Why wait for book 1 of a trilogy to come out when I can wait for the whole trilogy to come out? Why wait for version 1.0 of a video game when I can get a version with some bug patches and extra material? Why wait for the first 4E PHB to come out when there are other rules expansions already in the pipeline?
In my case, I'd go one step further. Why wait for book 1 of a trilogy to come out when I can wait for the whole trilogy to come out? Why wait for version 1.0 of a video game when I can get a version with some bug patches and extra material? Why wait for the first 4E PHB to come out when there are other rules expansions already in the pipeline?
To a limited extend I agree with this too. I don't watch seasons of a tv-show until it is finished and I can just enjoy the entire thing in one weekend. I very much don't like hanging in the balance and prefer to absorb things in one shot.
And, of course, I don't like rules expansions.
about watching series only after they are finished: well, ever watched the simpsons yet?
@both: why watch movie 1 if you can see 1+2+3 in two years of time? simply because you'll have noone to talk about it, except if all your friends share that kind of (lets call it) lazyness. i like previews, and i like getting slowly into things. the all at once approach is quite error prone, and gives way to even more subjective first impressions - if you do 10 3.5 rulebooks at once, you'd never have played dnd35.
There is so much great material out there that is complete & you won't be left waiting on an ending for. Why bother with the hassel of syndication?
with rules expansions, you'll be good to go with 4e. it seems they got pretty much all of it covered in the core, what is in the expansions is just like additional spells in 3.5 - usefull extras, but nothing that changes core mechanics.
I thought the philosophy for 4E was "everything is Core" (i.e. every time a rules expansion comes out, there's one more "Core" book). I could be wrong, though.
about watching series only after they are finished: well, ever watched the simpsons yet?
@both: why watch movie 1 if you can see 1+2+3 in two years of time?
I carefully avoided mentioning TV or movies in my examples above.
With movies, the release schedule is a bit different; there's usually at least 2 years between movie releases in a series. Whereas the 4E PHB is coming out in June, and the "Martial Power" expansion is coming out in October.
With television, I watch lots of TV but I generally avoid shows that you have to watch in chronological order (except for "Heroes").
I really think the best analogy is with a new video game. I just bought "Oblivion" a month ago. Before that, I was playing "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". Hey, they're new to me!
I would say that (1) CoCo membership is a minority and (2) interest in analyzing the snippets of 4E as they come out is a minority. So CoCo members who are interesting in analyzing snippets of 4E is a minority within a minority.
I'm a member of the (2) group here - but even if I wasn't - I haven't really had the time to read through the previews anyway.
I do want to support the CoCo - but right now my ability to support it is limited to what I already know and what I can grab within reach. Hence why I am available to run fights and such but not really handle the 4e stuff.
Magic Item Preview
All i can say is: YES! no more identify! I always disliked a) the need to identify even the basic items anyone has by lvl 5 (+1 sword..) and b) the need to make up some special rule why you can not identify that item you just came along, making the players really suspicious about its power-level since the only thing that cannot be identified would have to be of artifact power-level... (and i just wanted it to be not-known)
Well point b) is not that different even now.
"No, sorry, rest isn't enough to discover what this sword does. Do you want to quest to discover its powers through a ritual?"
Besides this it looks good. I guess 4th edition will be a big improvement over 3.5
---
@ca:
I don't like the idea of such an ongoing Worldgame with ressources. i'd rather see some wars that are more like sudden events, which have a fixed time scale, where the focus changes to some other places than the arena, and then return to the arena after it's finished. like a massive player quest, actually.
Everything that involves bookkeeping, will evolve towards one main thing: more bookkeeping. a friend of mine dearly wants to see a (maybe even dnd 35) computer game: "Accountant - The Final Payment" A lot of the required bookkeeping for coco is actually driving players away, or keeps them less interested. 4e will reduce this a bit, but not necessarily enough. As for an Add-On to coco, it needs to be simpler still - or else players like me would never even take a look at it. I'm not here for World-Building or an rts-style Worldgame. I can dig into RP etc, but this? there are way better ways to play games like these, and if you are interested in these, you could easily do them in addition to coco. (and you'd have larger communities, better game play and standalone servers...)
I agree with you indeed.
The main problem with having a set data of events, wars or similar things is that you'll need a game master who runs the plot for the whole world. And I would have liked to have a self-running system instead.
However the underlying concept is not that bad, and can be probably included in the new world-system to simplify it and lure in more players.
I still need to think more about it, but a solution may be to have the whole politics in pure roleplaying-mode, choosing a few players at start to run the countries and then give each country a maximum number of quests to launch monthly, removing any bookkeeping.
Add in random events and the world system would be up.
One of the ideas I had earlier in my considerations was to use the model of the organizations in PHB2, where each attribute of an organization was a single, small number, and functioned as a modifier to d20 rolls. So if your nation controlled a gold mine, or built a national bank, each of those would give you a +1 to Economics checks (and see d20 Modern for how that might work). No bookkeeping involved.
Ok, I'll try to have a look at PHB2 and d20 modern in my local shop then.
[post=15894210]My first take on a newer river[/post]
Also, we'll need different maps for different tiers of play, or at least different modifiers, to keep advantages for skill-relying players. by level 20, every one could easily balance over the logs, due to the flat+10 to all skills.
Also, due to the newer movement rules, our maps got smaller. when going in the right directions, you can find your opponent in about 2-4 rounds even in such maps as the forest. I am not sure whether thats ok or not, time will tell.
Second:
4e hits shelves in 2 weeks. when do we plan to go live with coco4e? what will be needed till then? a schedule would be nice/should be done. We're currently running a quite slim roster here in 35e, so i believe some advertisement 1-2 weeks earlier on other gleemax sections would do well (especially those were our current members are active on anyway)
Third, new preview:
Minions
You gotta LOVE that concept. no more crappy junk blockers that can't for their life hit anything, and no more overpowered minions that need more hits to kill than their masters.
As world building is a time consuming business, I'd like to have all CoCo members providing some location/countries/cities/organization on their own. If MWB and the other Elders agree we could give out some credits for each proposal which makes it in the new world.
I didn't follow closely the fights preview so I won't comment on those, but I think that everyone of us has the great location/organization which was made for the tabletop adventure and can easily be adapted for Gladius
i believe this is one of the nice-to-have, but irrelevant features.
CoCo started in the Character optimization boards, and players usually don't enter an arena for the nice fluff they get around, but for the hard facts: how do i create a character, how can i pit him against opponents, what are the rules and limitations i have to follow, what are the maps and conditions prevailing on them? At the very heart of it, CoCo is powergaming and minmaxing characters. Everything built around it is first and foremost something to keep players who got bored by the 219th incarnation of the produce flame halfling druid.
those are the questions that have to be answered first in order to attract new people - world building can wait. a nice background story on why 4e comes to gladius would help, yes. but it is not a necessity at all.
the focus needs to be on 4e rules for coco, not additional fluff to explain 4e in coco. Once the arena is running again, this is fine and all - but without its heart, everything else you do is like trying to revive a zombie by brushing his hair and moistening his skin.
I think that if we want to offer a decent play we must offer both things:
- A fun arena
- A fun world
The arena is the main thing which leads people to the CoCo. Its rules needs to be:
1) Easy
2) Not-time consuming
3) Fun.
However once a player gets involved in the arena he usually like to develop even the roleplaying aspect of the character. And he needs a well written setting around it.
I'm not telling you that the world is the first priority. I just disagree on the fact the world is useless to lure in new players.
I guess we have some players which won't care if there is a world or not, but other would like to know that they aren't in a simple arena but they can have more options. It's all a matter of personal tastes in the end.
For this reason I think that we need to have both the Arena and the World up in two weeks.
Is it impossible? I don't think so. You and a small group of other CoCo members are playtesting since a while and I think you are able to come up with a first draft of 4th edition rules.
On the other hand we have lots of players uninvolved with that aspect and who could cooperate to write the world. Many of these players wouldn't be writing the Arena rules, so why waste community resources?
I had the time to check over the wealth rules. They are a good base for us, I think. What I like is their simplicity.
We could have each country starting with a Wealth score just like a character. 2d4 and assign each country one or 2 locations which may have benefits on it.
From that on the wealth score of the country would increase as a result of quests, owning economic locations and random events.
Shopping will be dealed by simply attempting a wealth check against the set DC for the unit.
The main question is now if and how we should include martial and magic scores in the country.
I'd like to have them in, but for consistency we would need to find a way to treat them with a similar approach.
A military score could be used to purchase military units of different experience, while the magic one artifacts, magic items and sources of power.
But then how to link them with the economic score? We could link them by reducing both scores when shopping from the two lists of military and magical units. That would represent the strain of recruiting the unit on the nation economy.
The reduction in the appropriate score (military or magical) would instead represent the reduced availability of experienced men or magical supplies.
If we accept this approach then the economic score would be used to:
- fund quests
- build economic locations
- equip units
the military score to
- recruit units of different experience
- build military locations
and the magical score to
- recruit special units
- build magical locations
- create artifacts
Everything would be treated as a check against a set DC.
How is it looking?
I also believe that you could help with working on the new ruleset and formulations even without 4e knowledge. Speech is tricky, and needs as many eyes as possible to get simple and still usable.
--
about the multiple scores: if you can buy with a check, how often can you buy, and who tracks this? this leads to bookkeeping, again.
i believe you can do everything with just one wealth score (aka money or budget) and be fine with that. i'd rather not have that big ongoing changes like upkeep or sales, or economy in general - it should be fine with events costing something (like say, 100°), quests/missions/campaigns earning something(like say 10° per player per week), and players who'd like to sit out for their nation should be allowed to do so, too (like 5° a week, albeit with a limitation, that you need to do other things as well in between - else you'll get those "gone till christmas" - messages all over again)
It would be entirely up to the nation what it wants to do for its defenses, and if a mission by a rival nation would go into that nation, the questlord could ask its "king" where it's ressources are located, and the party could decide to go somewhere - if they destroy something, the "money" of the attacked nation goes down.
I imagine it like this:
Royal Nation of Gondor
Wealth: 2570
Locations:
Minas Tirith, Capital 1800 points [links to points taken and won]
[sblock-fluff]
Osgiliath, Ancient Ruin 200 points [links to points taken and won]
[sblock-fluff]
Pelargir, Harbor of the Kings 500 points [links to points taken and won]
[sblock-fluff]
Military forces:
City-Guard of the Kings, 70 points
--
Aragorn and Legolas [2* ECL 25] go on a 3 weeks-mission to re-recruite the Army of the Dead to guard Pelargir.
this would give to Gondor ECL*10 points of wealth.
--
Gimli and Faramir [2* ECL 10] want to destroy something in Minas Morgul. They decide to go on a miniquest, and thus on success could destroy ECL*2 points of wealth.
--
Gwerdan [ECL 8] wants to make his home in the farmlands around the city, and starts to build a Farm. This nets the Nation of Gondor 5° for his one week of work. He'll have to go and explore before he can further this building. Maybe he would like to go on a quest and catch some deer to breed?
etc. etc. exakt numbers are not to be held against me - this is just a basic idea.
i don't believe its necessary to divide power into three or more categories. even with one wealth-source/score, it is annoying to keep the books.
Example Limitations to preserve weaker nations:
- it should be impossible to lower points below 1000
- it should be impossible to destroy more than points/10 of wealth in a single mission.
well, we already _have_ a world. a pretty big one at that. all thats missing is a location or reason why 4e should be there, too, and maybe later, some kind of overhaul to make the questing in it and reading about it more enjoyable.
I also believe that you could help with working on the new ruleset and formulations even without 4e knowledge. Speech is tricky, and needs as many eyes as possible to get simple and still usable. .
I would help with those rules, it's just that my time is limited, really limited.
I bet that could apply to other people as well, so I want to focus on just one thing. If I find the time I'll gladly comment everyone's proposal.
Back to the world issue.
We have a world right now, but we need to come up with a reason why:
1) 4th edition races come to Gladius
2) 3.5 doesn't disappear.
3) they never met each other.
The solution I liked more (and a few others as well, from the comments I read) is to have a new continent in the Gladius world, so that inhabitants of the two continents can continue their life until we decide to destroy 3.5 critters.
Now, building a whole continent IS a time consuming thing, that's why I'd like to have the most details written by the community.
I briefly read your proposal and I reserve to comment it later when I'm less tired (just ended 8 hours of writing).
To answer your question, this is what I had in mind. (pratical example)
1) Once a month there are wealth checks. You can buy as many things as your wealth check allows.
2) Example Nation:
Breland. Economic score +11. Military score +5. Magical Score +10
Owns: 1 Iron mine (+1 economics), 1 barrack (+1 military), 1 Arcane School (+1 magical)
Economics shop list:
- Iron mine DC 25
- Lodging camp DC 30
- ECL 3-6 quest DC 10
- ECL 7-10 quest DC 15
- ECL 11-15 Quest DC 20
Breland nation could, for example, wage unlimited ECL 3-6 quests, but when waging a ECL 7-10 quest its economics score would be reduced to 10 (see wealth rules for reference)
If Breland gets lucky and manages to roll a 19 it could estabilish a Lodging Camp. In that case, however, it would take 2d6 damage to its wealth bonus.
As you can see there is no upkeep whatsoever. Simply buying expensive things reduces the score.
The bookkeeping would really be limited (roll a few dices, check results, add/decrease bonus).
If we wanted to simplify it even more sticking to a single score is possible
4e hits shelves in 2 weeks. when do we plan to go live with coco4e? what will be needed till then? a schedule would be nice/should be done. We're currently running a quite slim roster here in 35e, so i believe some advertisement 1-2 weeks earlier on other gleemax sections would do well (especially those were our current members are active on anyway)
I want to be ready to go by July 9, to launch the 4e inaugural Iron Man. That doesn't mean everything has to be hammered out (e.g. monster fights), but the bulk of it should. We might need to postpone that, but I'd prefer not to.
We need:
- A fight format. Considering the "heroic" aspect of 4e, I really do prefer to go with play-by-post, but it just might not be possible. 'Joe and mine worked well, but we had no intermediary pitlord. The one this week isn't going to be done on time. OpenRPG, rptools, DDI, or the like might work--fights should take no more than an hour or two--but that's hard to organize, especially internationally. With the decrease in expendables and spells, it might be reasonable to expect players to come up with contingency plans about when to burn their action points and dailies (see my PbP game--I had no preconceived notion about when to pull out Mara's AP, but I might have if I'd thought about it). But I want some more playtesting to make a final decision.
- Backstory. Hell, I'll just post a poll.
- Other: There will undoubtedly be some rules I don't know exist, that we'll have to figure out with the books in hand. Mounts, perhaps.
Anyone have anything I missed?
Advertising is good, but not until we're mostly ready to go. No more than 2 weeks before July 9, no less than 1 week before. Other forums (including non-Gleemax ones) are a good place to go; I'll also blog a couple of times on Gleemax.
First of all, i believe for 4e the maps would need a terrain overhaul :
[post=15894210]My first take on a newer river[/post]
Also, we'll need different maps for different tiers of play, or at least different modifiers, to keep advantages for skill-relying players. by level 20, every one could easily balance over the logs, due to the flat+10 to all skills.
Also, due to the newer movement rules, our maps got smaller. when going in the right directions, you can find your opponent in about 2-4 rounds even in such maps as the forest. I am not sure whether thats ok or not, time will tell.
I like the new speed a lot. The forest was always the most painful map to use, and that's no longer going to be the case. We will need either different maps or scaling features, true, but I don't want to change anything until we see the new terrain rules, plus rules for swimming, climbing, and the like. I like your ideas, but I want them to be founded on how the core rules actually work.
Well, those monster previews are getting boring after a while...
all you can do is look at some nice gfx, and see: ah, another statscard - you don't get any idea(yet) by looking at it how hard this monster will be in combat.
@mwb: what about starting a new rules thread then when we get the books?
what we could decide even without knowing some of the facts:
- how fast do we want players to level? (this decision should be really independent from the XP progression proposed by wizards, even though we might find a system to fit the real values in later)
- do we want maps with lots of environmental hazards, or just some?
- xFC? with action points given out every 2 encounters, a 2fc or 4fc is in order. maybe we could have players decide whether they want to go on?
what i propose is something like this:
let the players decide when they want to take a short or extended rest. do some kind of bonus system for players on a later fight in the cycle. use 4FC as standard, you could stop after 2 fights at a penalty, after 4 fights normally, fight 5+6 give 25% bonus and so on...
or start at F3 already, like F3 10%, F4 20%, F5 30% ....
@fight format: i believe PBP to be a suboptimal format. the main reason i keep messing up my PBP fights is that the others always seem to post at times where i'm absolutely out of time, or worse, motivation. for me, it's easier as a pitlord to reserve time at once than get motivated to update every 6 hours...
@fight format#2: have we decided yet on 1on1 or 2on2? I believe both would be possible, with 1on1 having better tactics-writing-capabilities and 2on2 would favor pbp. i still believe we can write useful tactics for 2on2, it's just that the tactics shift more to contingencies than general combat plans - so you need to shift your writing from strategy to tactics.
- xFC? with action points given out every 2 encounters, a 2fc or 4fc is in order. maybe we could have players decide whether they want to go on?
what i propose is something like this:
let the players decide when they want to take a short or extended rest. do some kind of bonus system for players on a later fight in the cycle. use 4FC as standard, you could stop after 2 fights at a penalty, after 4 fights normally, fight 5+6 give 25% bonus and so on...
or start at F3 already, like F3 10%, F4 20%, F5 30% ....
I think that may become too complex. D&D is already a game with quite some bookkeeping, usually and I don't think 4th edition will change that a lot.
A clear choice is better than each player figuring out up and downs with short or long fight cycles, IMHO.
2FC seems a bit too short to me.
@fight format: i believe PBP to be a suboptimal format. the main reason i keep messing up my PBP fights is that the others always seem to post at times where i'm absolutely out of time, or worse, motivation. for me, it's easier as a pitlord to reserve time at once than get motivated to update every 6 hours...
That's a real issue, indeed. We could force players to post at least x rounds of actions and a few general contingencies (different from if x then stop and ask me) so the pitlord can run the fight more easily
and yes, 4e will change that a lot.
---
well, forcing players to post more tactics at once might look like a nice idea, but i can say as much: IT DOES NOT WORK.
one crit or two lucky shots, and everything changes in such a format. and you don't want players to post contingencies and play pbp - this would be a mess.
---
about 4FC: this might be to long, as healing capabilities based on surge seem low on some classes, what should be considered, too, is the speed of leveling. if you level after an average of 2.2 won fights(or 2 with special packages, which would need some tuning from those we use nowadays), you'd be right in the middle of your cycle, with many new powers gained which you can't use, since you used your daily in another fight and can't switch your prepared things...
i'd have another proposal, which i'd really like: if we can keep levelling at short terms, we could do a cycle based on progression. so you don't get your dailies etc. back until you level up.
---
about progression:
with 30 levels of character progression, i'd like to keep it speedy no matter what wizards say an NPC of equal level should be worth. let's take a look at some current coco characters:
longshot, started lvl 6, 30 fights, now lvl 14
istima, started lvl 3, 25 fights, various quests and missions totalling 20 weeks, now lvl 14
valen, started lvl 3, 44 fights, now lvl 13
lorian, started lvl 3, 38 fights, now lvl 15.
basically: GR characters take about 3.5 weeks to advance, all others around 5. With PC this can be further increased.
as an extreme example, one of my characters: lelenia achieved GR and got pretty maxed out PC, for 5 level ups in 14 fights. (this must be somewhat the fastest anyone has seen here :D - and yes, i'm the most surprised at her luck)
so: if we want to have any chance of seeing epic destinies in coco, we cannot take the current progression (statistically: 3.34 fights won). i'd like to set some base amount that is aimed for.
2.1/2.2 won fights looked to me like a good way to go. As PC might be gone forever (having obly one trained skill to get the package is really not an option here), or could be redone as coco-specific feat, i won't take that into account, so:
starting at ecl1, with 50% win rate, a player would need ~ 30 weeks to get to paragon level, and ~ 30 further weeks to achieve an epic destiny. this still seems quite a lot. 90 weeks = 2 years to reach the very top of the hill. It's likely many players get bored with their characters long before that.
I think the "unpitlorded" PbP fight that was done a few weeks ago is probably the right format for what we're looking for. We can still have a "pitlord" assigned to watch the fights and make sure rules are being applied properly and resolve disputes (and probably taking on more than one fight in this way to earn their credit), but it removes the element of needing to have three people have time to resolve actions to move the fight forward.
@mwb: what about starting a new rules thread then when we get the books?
This thread is hardly overburdened. I don't see the need for a new one.
what we could decide even without knowing some of the facts:
- how fast do we want players to level? (this decision should be really independent from the XP progression proposed by wizards, even though we might find a system to fit the real values in later)
As CoCo 3e works, I would like the XP earned by defeating another PC to be the same as the XP earned by defeating an NPC of the same level. I don't know, at this time, how much that will be. However, if such an NPC counts as an elite opponent of its level (which I think is probable), then it would take a PC 5 wins to level, which is clearly too much (it's currently about 3 1/3 wins, or 10 losses).
About the fastest I'd be willing to go is about 2.5 wins per fight, with losses earning 1/2 XP rather than 1/3.
- do we want maps with lots of environmental hazards, or just some?
Some variation, I think. One map with none (for level 1 characters), a few maps with few, and one or two maps with many. They may not necessarily be "hazards," but just "features" that might be beneficial as well as harmful.
I also really like the idea of having random features. A map might have designated locations where such features appear, but what exactly those features are can be selected randomly from a list, and the PC's skills in Dungeoneering, Nature, Arcana, and especially Perception will help them identify them.
- xFC? with action points given out every 2 encounters, a 2fc or 4fc is in order. maybe we could have players decide whether they want to go on?
what i propose is something like this:
let the players decide when they want to take a short or extended rest. do some kind of bonus system for players on a later fight in the cycle. use 4FC as standard, you could stop after 2 fights at a penalty, after 4 fights normally, fight 5+6 give 25% bonus and so on...
or start at F3 already, like F3 10%, F4 20%, F5 30% ....
I don't like this for reasons I've mentioned before: a player who wants to advance quickly will just keep on going; a player who cares about win/loss record will stop at the earliest opportunity. It creates an imbalance based on an extraneous feature (player goals).
@fight format: i believe PBP to be a suboptimal format. the main reason i keep messing up my PBP fights is that the others always seem to post at times where i'm absolutely out of time, or worse, motivation. for me, it's easier as a pitlord to reserve time at once than get motivated to update every 6 hours...
From what I've seen so far, we may have to make tactics the default, with PbP/DDI/rptools/OpenRPG recommended alternatives if all parties agree (and mutually accepting any late penalties).
@fight format#2: have we decided yet on 1on1 or 2on2? I believe both would be possible, with 1on1 having better tactics-writing-capabilities and 2on2 would favor pbp. i still believe we can write useful tactics for 2on2, it's just that the tactics shift more to contingencies than general combat plans - so you need to shift your writing from strategy to tactics.
Seeing how swingy fights seem to be so far, I'm strongly leaning toward 2v2. Two lucky shots and a 1v1 fight is over, probably at any level.
Re: PbP
I think the "unpitlorded" PbP fight that was done a few weeks ago is probably the right format for what we're looking for. We can still have a "pitlord" assigned to watch the fights and make sure rules are being applied properly and resolve disputes (and probably taking on more than one fight in this way to earn their credit), but it removes the element of needing to have three people have time to resolve actions to move the fight forward.
Won't work. It can work to a limited extent, but if players lack LOS to each other at any time, the pitlord has to run it. The playtest 'Joe and I ran worked because we trust each other, and the other playtests rely on an honor system to not peek at the others' sblocks. For those of you who haven't been here very long, I should mention that the CoCo hasn't always been the happy cooperative place it is now; even if we currently have a high level of trust, we do need to keep things so that that trust isn't necessary. It only takes one person willing to abuse the system to ruin it for everyone.
This thread is hardly overburdened. I don't see the need for a new one.
true, am still hoping for some more participation here. ;)
About the fastest I'd be willing to go is about 2.5 wins per fight, with losses earning 1/2 XP rather than 1/3.
not sure if i like that - but is certainly an option, which seems to go in 4e direction - you won't be penalized to much in any place, only can get more than others. also it keeps the fight to level expectations more closely together. (not that many Undurions or want-to-losers anymore)
Some variation, I think. One map with none (for level 1 characters), a few maps with few, and one or two maps with many. They may not necessarily be "hazards," but just "features" that might be beneficial as well as harmful.
i really like the idea of moving map features - like the river moving you, a rolling rock etc. do you have any easy mapping program at hand that is free?
I also really like the idea of having random features. A map might have designated locations where such features appear, but what exactly those features are can be selected randomly from a list, and the PC's skills in Dungeoneering, Nature, Arcana, and especially Perception will help them identify them.
if we find a way to incorporate packages into the new coco (i still like the way of building custom feats to accomplish some of the things we now do with skill packages) one might as well be to know those traps upfront.
I don't like this for reasons I've mentioned before: a player who wants to advance quickly will just keep on going; a player who cares about win/loss record will stop at the earliest opportunity.
Well, this bonus should not allow you to get near the XP you get for winning - i'd cap it at say, 30% or so - but i still can see what you are playing at - with a fight cycle dailies will not be as important, so you can easily go without. this system could work, though, if you need your healing surges to heal between fights...
From what I've seen so far, we may have to make tactics the default, with PbP/DDI/rptools/OpenRPG recommended alternatives if all parties agree (and mutually accepting any late penalties).
so: basically no change to the current system. i believe this is good as it leaves timing issues etc at a known pace.
Seeing how swingy fights seem to be so far, I'm strongly leaning toward 2v2. Two lucky shots and a 1v1 fight is over, probably at any level.Won't work.
We'll need to playtest some at higher levels, but seeing that damage scales with level, and player hitdice only do partially, i agree completely.
on the trust issue: sad, but true.
i really like the idea of moving map features - like the river moving you, a rolling rock etc. do you have any easy mapping program at hand that is free?
AutoREALM is the best free one I've seen, but it's not what I'd call "easy," nor does it produce attractive maps. I'd sooner go with Photoshop. Fractal Mapper and Dundjinni aren't free, but they're good. What I've been doing is using a trial version of Dundjinni, which doesn't allow you to export or save maps, but I take a screen capture, paste it into Paint Shop, and edit it from there. Caterane sent me a whole mess of map features to use with it that I downloaded off his personal website (they're free, but they take a lot of time to hunt down).
If you use Photoshop/Paint Shop/whatever to create a map (please, no ASCII) and it's chosen for use, I'll find time at some point to make it pretty with Dundjinni.
some temple-like map created within 2 minutes in dcrafter3, including re-coloring the center squares in another tool:
major drawback though: you can not save your maps, only export to png/jpeg. so better get it done in one run, or continue with another tool afterwards.
i ran across a program called dungeon crafter, which really really really is simple - though its tiles are quite limited, too. (but you can simply put your own tiles and objects within a folder and it will be useable)
some temple-like map created within 2 minutes in dcrafter3, including re-coloring the center squares in another tool:
major drawback though: you can not save your maps, only export to png/jpeg. so better get it done in one run, or continue with another tool afterwards.
I use Dungeonforge for my PbEM game maps. It's extremely bare-bones too, but it's free and you can save/edit maps.
I use Dungeonforge for my PbEM game maps. It's extremely bare-bones too, but it's free and you can save/edit maps.
i came along that, too
except for nagging me to registrate, i could not find anything on that site? got a link or description where to get it once i register?
i came along that, too
except for nagging me to registrate, i could not find anything on that site? got a link or description where to get it once i register?
Yes; once you register, there's a download area you can visit. At least that was the case when I downloaded it a couple of years ago.
Yes; once you register, there's a download area you can visit. At least that was the case when I downloaded it a couple of years ago.
nope, the link to that area is hidden like the one to area 51 ...
but i like the simplicity of dungeoncrafter anyway...
just remember to do everything in one run, and you're fine.
nope, the link to that area is hidden like the one to area 51 ...
but i like the simplicity of dungeoncrafter anyway...
just remember to do everything in one run, and you're fine.
Gehen Sie hier, bitte:
http://www.dungeonmapping.com/df/public_html/index.php?name=Downloads
It even has Dungeoncrafter as a possible download.
this link was not somewhere on the starting page, was it?
thank you very much.
this link was not somewhere on the starting page, was it?
After you log in, it's in the sidebar:
* Main Menu -> Community -> Downloads
I admit that I had to search around for it the first time.
they feel much more a nuisance, and deadlier than before...
and what i have to say from the previews... looks like wizards did a very good job in their monster manual, to create a lot more versatility for monsters - not just 3 swarms, 2 orcs, but always varieties even in the initial monster manual...
Nasty preview... Swarms
they feel much more a nuisance, and deadlier than before...
and what i have to say from the previews... looks like wizards did a very good job in their monster manual, to create a lot more versatility for monsters - not just 3 swarms, 2 orcs, but always varieties even in the initial monster manual...
Well, it's a trade-off. We get, for instance, at least two types of fire giants, but no frost giants. I assume the same is true for golems (we have flesh and stone, but no clay or iron). We get three versions of each chromatic dragon, and each one looks pretty darn interesting--no more "it flies really fast, has crappy sorcerer spells, a breath weapon, and a mess of natural weapons"--but no metallic dragons. So while we get many versions of almost every creature, there are some "categorical" monsters that we lose a bunch of.
Not that this is necesarily a bad thing. I have to agree that hill, stone, frost, fire, cloud, and storm giants were basically all scaled-up versions of each other. Now a fire giant actually has fire attacks, a storm giant has lightning and thunder attacks, and so on. A bronze dragon was, in nearly all respects, a blue dragon with an additional (and mostly useless) breath weapon, that you almost never fought because it was Lawful Good. It messes with existing campaign settings, but the decision makes sense.
on another note: i'll get my copy of the keep next week most likely... anything we want to try out or research based on that?
i never saw much differences in those giants anyway - and i like scaled up encounters - no need to have different names for different brutes - different hobgoblins just do fine.
It also helps that manual scaling is so easy now. A level 6 monster can, with a minimum of math and reasonable balance, be between levels 1 and 11.
on another note: i'll get my copy of the keep next week most likely... anything we want to try out or research based on that?
I don't think so. We have the characters and the monsters (for those who are willing to use them). Folks on ENWorld have mentioned pretty much everything crunchy in it, nearly all of which we already knew.
I found a rather large game store near me today & I signed up for one of the eight-twelve sessions they have going for the 4th edition game day deal. I have good reason to believe I'll be getting a tabletop game out of this too.
Up until now I had my doubts of whether I would make time for 4th ed. but if I have a tabletop game- I'll definitely be an asset to CoCo for it.
Up until now I had my doubts of whether I would make time for 4th ed. but if I have a tabletop game- I'll definitely be an asset to CoCo for it.
glad to hear this.
---
Another Preview - Fallcrest
Good for the lazy or unexperienced DM - a full-fledged town ready to use. What i don't like is the space it's taking up in the DMG - would rather have such things like basic towns in a seperate supplement or "starting-dm-companion".
---
about keep on the shadowfell: if there's interest i could run a part of it as some kind of 4e-preview for the coco community. there are about 20 encounters in it.
glad to hear this.
---
Another Preview - Fallcrest
Good for the lazy or unexperienced DM - a full-fledged town ready to use. What i don't like is the space it's taking up in the DMG - would rather have such things like basic towns in a seperate supplement or "starting-dm-companion".
---
about keep on the shadowfell: if there's interest i could run a part of it as some kind of 4e-preview for the coco community. there are about 20 encounters in it.
Yep, I'd like it.
I agree on your comment on Fallcrest. It was better to have a web-enhancement for that.
Apparently Buy.com has broken street date and has shipped the core rulebooks. Lots of folks are posting content on ENWorld and RPG.net.
It seems that the first comments are somewhat good.. what are we going to do? Are we going to start with some 4th arenas shortly?
2) that said, i would not like to have any of that currently quite illegal content in a system i support.
3) mwb's proposed start date for coco 4e: 9th of july. i believe the leakage of some sourcebooks won't change anything in regards to that.
4) new excerpts:
Rituals
Undead
5) well, what about a session in the keep? ;)
2) that said, i would not like to have any of that currently quite illegal content in a system i support.
3) mwb's proposed start date for coco 4e: 9th of july. i believe the leakage of some sourcebooks won't change anything in regards to that.
It's hardly illegal, unless you get some .pdf version from the "rivers".
After all the one doing an illegal thing is the distributor, not the buyer which come in possession of the books in good faith.
The buyer cannot be held responsible for the behaviour of the seller, and he surely can discuss everything he wants with his friends, even if they are over the net (and across the ocean).
Having the chance to know about some material could help defining better rules earlier. Too bad I'm too busy right now to fully concentrate on it. That and EU 3: In Nomine is coming out today as well
5) well, what about a session in the keep? ;)
I'm ready when you are :P
Just be advised that my time is limited and be forgiving on my roleplaying.
If I'm going to start putting together characters as suggested by MWB, I'll need a consolidated list of what's out and about the various classes. Any idea where a consolidated review of the leaks for the PHB is at?
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=221806
about amazon: at least in europe, they have a best-price guarantee. - even compared to themselves. usually there should be a button next to your order (once it was sent) where you can get your money back... if not, just call them... customer support is usually friendly as if their lives depended on it.
I'm slightly miffed that I pre-ordered the set through Amazon way back in March paying $63, and the set is now on sale for $58.
If I'm going to start putting together characters as suggested by MWB, I'll need a consolidated list of what's out and about the various classes. Any idea where a consolidated review of the leaks for the PHB is at?
Can't you simply cancel the preorder and get a refund, then order it again or in another place?
I don't think there's any consolidated list right now.
edit: ninja'd
I'm slightly miffed that I pre-ordered the set through Amazon way back in March paying $63, and the set is now on sale for $58.
If I'm going to start putting together characters as suggested by MWB, I'll need a consolidated list of what's out and about the various classes. Any idea where a consolidated review of the leaks for the PHB is at?
Are you sure that's what you were charged? I preordered in February, and it was $58, plus they do have the best-price guarantee. Double check on that.
The PrRC is by far the best source of officially released info. I know of no compilation of unofficially leaked info, and nothing that's been posted (and not subsequently deleted by moderators) is in full detail.
There's the standard array of 16,14,13,12,11,10 or the point buy method from the 3.5 dmg or the "new" point buy. And if we're using the point buy method, then 28, 30 or 36 points?
Which stat system are we using?
There's the standard array of 16,14,13,12,11,10 or the point buy method from the 3.5 dmg or the "new" point buy. And if we're using the point buy method, then 28, 30 or 36 points?
I'd allow customization. The new point buy seems to be 22 points, starting from 10,10,10,10,10,8. Also, 8-13 costs 1, 14-16 2, 17 3 and 18 4 points. (source: rpg.net thread)
I seem to have received a special surprise when I came home from work today. I'm a little overwhelmed since I didn't read any of the previews, though...wow....
So, get ready to answer all our questions, lucky b*****d :P
So, get ready to answer all our questions, lucky b*****d :P
Am I even allowed on wizards boards?
Am I even allowed on wizards boards?
Yea, there are lots of others who have received early releases by accident, and they are making posts which aren't being deleted by the moderators.
Yea, there are lots of others who have received early releases by accident, and they are making posts which aren't being deleted by the moderators.
Ok. I will do my best to answer questions- but I'm only going to answer posts from CoCo reg's. No need to make this forum another 4E release party.
edit- And I am around all night tonight, so feel free to hit with Q's any time.
Well, the first question is what's the stat options for new character creation? How does the point buy system they have work?
I can answer this one, and in fact CrazyArtificer already did, post #167 above. The third option is the old standby of 4d6 drop 1.
I'd like to know more about build options, such as Artful Dodger/Brutal Scoundrel for the rogue, and Inspiring Presence/Tactical Presence for the warlord. Also, I had some concern that no one's been able to allay for me: it's possible to get into a Paragon Path for a class other than your own by taking the class-specific multiclass feat for that class. However, it seems like all the warlock and ranger paragon paths require you to not only be a member of that class, but to have chosen a particular class feature. So is it possible by RAW for, say, a Paladin to take a Warlock or Ranger paragon path?
Well, the first question is what's the stat options for new character creation? How does the point buy system they have work?
Start with 1 8 and the rest 10's. Then it's a point buy similar to what we have.
So if you start with the 8...
0 pts- 8
1 pts- 9
2 pts - 10
...
5 pts - 13
7 pts - 14
9 pts - 15
11 pts - 16
13 pts- 17
16 pts- 18
Of course, all those costs are reduced by 2 for all the 10's you start with. They seem to suggest a 22 point buy.
edit- looks like crazy answered it even better than I. I'll try to keep responses short...I know I'm a bit long winded sometimes
I can answer this one, and in fact CrazyArtificer already did, post #167 above. The third option is the old standby of 4d6 drop 1.
I'd like to know more about build options, such as Artful Dodger/Brutal Scoundrel for the rogue, and Inspiring Presence/Tactical Presence for the warlord. Also, I had some concern that no one's been able to allay for me: it's possible to get into a Paragon Path for a class other than your own by taking the class-specific multiclass feat for that class. However, it seems like all the warlock and ranger paragon paths require you to not only be a member of that class, but to have chosen a particular class feature. So is it possible by RAW for, say, a Paladin to take a Warlock or Ranger paragon path?
Wow, ok, that's alot. Bear with me- I'm probably the worst choice to have access to this stuff since I'm learning everything right now. Try to keep questions clear and concise so I know what I'm looking for.
Answers forthcoming...
So does an 18 cost 16 pts or 18 pts?
There's a difference between what McJ posted on the high stats and what CA posted... Both of them say a 16 costs 11 pts, but they differ on costs of an 18.
So does an 18 cost 16 pts or 18 pts?
16 if it modifies your ability score that is a 10, 18 if it modifies your ability score that is an 8. I posted the costs for adjusting the 8 ability score. [you start with 1 8 and 5 10's.]
I'd like to know more about build options, such as Artful Dodger/Brutal Scoundrel for the rogue, and Inspiring Presence/Tactical Presence for the warlord.
Artful Dodge/Brutal Scoundral: Artful dodger lets you apply charisma to AC vs opportunity attacks(are those AoO's?). Brutal scoundral lets you apply str mod to sneak attacks. Furthermore, the one of these you choose will affect how powers you choose with the class play out. For the rogue none of the at-wills are affected, but the exploits have 1 each(encounter) for level 1's. Example: "Positioning strike" is an ability that lets you move = charisma after attacking if you're an artful dodger, and torturous strike gives you a bonus to damage roll equal to str mod. [brutal scoundral]
It looks like your "style" or whatever it is only comes into play for encounter exploits- and only a few select ones.
Inspiring Presence/Tactical:
Inspiring: when allies spend action points to gain extra actions, they regain lost hp modified by your level & charisma.
Tactical: when allies spend an action point for an extra attack, the ally gains a bonus to-hit equal to one half your int mod.
Just like the rogue abilities, which "style" you choose affects certain per encounter abilities.
Also, I had some concern that no one's been able to allay for me: it's possible to get into a Paragon Path for a class other than your own by taking the class-specific multiclass feat for that class. However, it seems like all the warlock and ranger paragon paths require you to not only be a member of that class, but to have chosen a particular class feature. So is it possible by RAW for, say, a Paladin to take a Warlock or Ranger paragon path?
The multiclass section specifically says that if you take a multiclass feat, you qualify for paragon paths as if you were a member of the class the multiclass feat applies to.
However, some paragon classes require both that you be of a certain class & have a specific "style". the multiclass feats don't seem to fulfill this prereq...unless there is something I am missing, some paragons are unenterable except via regular classing.
The ranger has no such language.
Artful Dodge/Brutal Scoundral: Artful dodger lets you apply charisma to AC vs opportunity attacks(are those AoO's?). Brutal scoundral lets you apply str mod to sneak attacks. Furthermore, the one of these you choose will affect how powers you choose with the class play out. For the rogue none of the at-wills are affected, but the exploits have 1 each(encounter) for level 1's. Example: "Positioning strike" is an ability that lets you move = charisma after attacking if you're an artful dodger, and torturous strike gives you a bonus to damage roll equal to str mod. [brutal scoundral]
It looks like your "style" or whatever it is only comes into play for encounter exploits- and only a few select ones.
Inspiring Presence/Tactical:
Inspiring: when allies spend action points to gain extra actions, they regain lost hp modified by your level & charisma.
Tactical: when allies spend an action point for an extra attack, the ally gains a bonus to-hit equal to one half your int mod.
Just like the rogue abilities, which "style" you choose affects certain per encounter abilities.
Whoops... sorry, I phrased that question wrong. These are the two that have already been officially announced... I meant to ask about the parallel "choice" features for other classes.
Re: point buy: Hmm, it looks like that was changed from DDXP, and not too many people noticed it. It used to be 3 points 16->17 and 4 points 17->18, but I guess now it's 2 and 3, respectively. Makes 18's a lot more affordable.
Re: warlock: Well, that's half my fear alleviated. But it looks like Maravanna will probably be stillborn--she can't get into an archery PP, and I just found out at ENWorld that the 1/encounter Hunter's Quarry from Warrior of the Wild lasts only until the end of your next turn (per forthcoming errata).
Whoops... sorry, I phrased that question wrong. These are the two that have already been officially announced... I meant to ask about the parallel "choice" features for other classes.
Cleric's, fighters, and paladins don't seem to have a parallel choice.
rangers:
Archer fighting style- bonus feat(defensive mobility)
Two-blade fighting style- you can weild a one-handed weapon in your off hand as if it were an off-hand weapon, you gain toughness as a bonus feat.
warlock:
fey pact- you gain a variety of teleportation-like abilities(you turn into miss, move three squares, etc) & the "eyebite" spell
infernal pact- when someone under a curse of yours reaches 0 hp, you immediately gain temp hp equal to your level. you also get the "hellish rebuke" at will spell.
star pact- if an enemy drops to 0 hp, you can apply a +1 bonus to any d20 roll until your next turn. This is cumulative- so if many enemies drop, you get a +x bonus.
wizards-
you choose an "impliment", an orb staff or wand. each of these gives a large block of text in abilities that I'm too lazy to type out unless you ask for it specifically.
there are four epic destinies presented in the book. The archmage requires you be a 21st level wizard, the deadly trickster has a host of prereqs that involve either being dextrous or charismatic, then you have to have one of four skills you are trained in [all of them sound roguish]
Then demigod and eternal seeker both only have a prereq of 21st character level. I guess that's what most people will be 21st+ level.
edit- oh, and ladies and gentlemen- humans are finally in the MM. :D
edit2- also, strangely, there are now specific xp values for every monster listed in the monster manual. And I guess you can't be a PC gnome, 'cause I see now "(monster) as characters" sections.
Several key game elements are not recovered after each encounter like daily powers, healing surges and action points. Also the raise dead ritual is a bit different from true resurrection, it has a penalty that lasts till you pass 3 milestones.
Also the milestones are key points in the course of an adventure. The characters refresh their action points every two encounters and when they pass a milestone.
So we need to figure out how we're going to handle the pacing of our arena encounters within a framework of short rests, long rests, milestones and the death penalty.
The obvious way to handle the death penalty is to simply negate it, saying that the nimbus grants resurrection w/o any gp cost or penalty. Although we could do some other interesting things instead, such as keep the penalty and allow it to serve as an effective "bonus" to new characters or characters with long winning streaks.
As for the resting between battles offering free healing to everyone like the way we do it now is certainly an option, but we can also run a series of battles in a way more akin to a dungeon delve. Let me pitch an alternative that sounds interesting to me right now...
Ditch the 3FC, and instead let the players track an "Encounter Series" that continues until the character suffers a defeat. Each contest begins as normal, and resolves with a defeat. The winner can take a short rest after the battle. The looser gets raise dead at no cost, they take the -1 penalty, and they get a long rest before reentering the arena. Three or four victories in a row counts as a "milestone" where the character gets a long rest and a bonus action point. This can continue as long as the character continues to win. After a few months, there'll be a new built in "Great Renown" as those who have won enough fights to pass 3 milestones will have no death penalty. The looser also has a built in balance, since he gets to refresh his daily powers sooner. Characters can buy stuff after a loss or a milestone, ie at the same time they refresh their daily powers (or we can let them do that at any time, it depends on the effects/power of expendables).
This little system has the appeal of being "core" in the sense that there's no house rules involved. We don't have to modify the raise dead ritual much, only eliminating the gp cost.
Also (here's the kicker) winner and looser get the same xp and gp rewards. This is very important for CoCo to work logistically. Remember when ECL10 was unfrozen. There were 16 characters, and rapidly the winners got more xp so they leveled ahead so that the characters were spread around 3 or 4 ECL instead of one where they could fight one another. This got boring fast, since players went from 15 other characters to fight against to 4 or 5 within a few weeks. If you have loosers make the same xp, they level the same and move through the ECL range as a cohort (in the statical sense of the word). The problem of spreading characters across the ECL range is bigger with 4E, since there are 30 levels instead of 20. This cohort idea is one way to deal with it, and allow players to visit all the levels in time w/o requiring CoCo have hundreds of players.
edit2- also, strangely, there are now specific xp values for every monster listed in the monster manual. And I guess you can't be a PC gnome, 'cause I see now "(monster) as characters" sections.
Check the appendix. There's a whole ton of monsters confirmed to be playable.
@Sauro:
First of all, a milestone is typically two encounters, but it's based on XP. If we follow the RAW, it might be the case that every encounter is a milestone for us. (Actually, McJ, can you confirm this? What's the definition of a milestone?)
What you suggest will have a -1 penalty on almost everyone all the time, except for new characters. I'm not sure I like that. It's unintuitive to say the least.
Making winners and losers earn the same XP has a couple of problems in my mind. One is the idea of a "cohort": what you see as a benefit, I see as a hindrance, because it means PCs will be facing the same opponents throughout their career, if they activate every week. If they don't, it defeats the purpose.
Having PCs continue until they lose... I dunno. It penalizes the best characters, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I have to think about that one.
Also, remember that the notion on the table right now is to have parties of 2 (controlled by the same player) be the default, rather than solo characters. This creates havoc with your notion, if one dies and the other keeps going.
Along the same lines, healing surges will be a problem. Those refresh only on an extended rest, so it's quite possible that a character with a long winning streak will go into a fight with only a couple of hit points remaining.
Thx for the info on the appendix. Looks like warforged and shifters are in- I certainly didn't expect that. I like the feel the races have- the powers granted to each one suggests they fight a certain way based on culture, which is far more distinctive than races are in 3.5, IMO.
First the idea of equal rewards for winners and loosers. Let's formulate it as such. Pairings are only run if there are at least 8 characters in an ECL (# is debatable could be 6), and after a fight winners and loosers get the same rewards.
You mention that it's a bad thing since you are basically stuck in a cohort of characters, and fight the same people. I don't see that as a problem in comparison to the current system. Right now, go look at ECL16... There's a grand total of 4 characters... and only 2 are active. So that's a problem causing rematches over and over, week after week.
My suggestion causes large groups to form. Say it's a group of 8 that we set as the minimum to run pairings in an ECL. That allows for rematches every 7 fights or so. Compared to how we run it now, that's not much repetition. After 7 fights the opponent has probably leveled at least once and has new abilities, so it'll be a different fight.
A character can move to a new cohort, if they are willing to wait out a few weeks/months for the next cohort to move through the ECL. It gives a refreshing cyclical nature to the fighting and character building... Every few weeks, your character and all the opponents are leveling at the same time... so there'll be lots of excitement to figure out how everyone's changed.
I'm interested in what the arcane implements do. Can you give a quick run down on those?
So far I gather that the wand grants a +2 on attacks using the wand. Is that it? How about the others?
McJ,
I'm interested in what the arcane implements do. Can you give a quick run down on those?
So far I gather that the wand grants a +2 on attacks using the wand. Is that it? How about the others?
As far as I understand it, most(if not every) class has a specific implement that is keyed to it's abilities. Holy symbols for clerics/paladins, rods and certain types of knives for warlocks, wands/orbs/staves for wizards. These implements are sort of like weapons are in 3.5- you can put boni on them to get a bonus to-hit and damage with class abilities. So a +2 wand will give your fireball a +2 to-hit vs reflex & +2 damage. A +2 holy symbol will allow a paladin to get an addition +2 to hit/damage on a bolstering strike attack.
In addition, wizards choose to specialize in one of their three impliments. Depending on which one they carry, they will earn different abilities. A staff helps with defense, a magic ball helps extend magical effects, and wands help make your effects more accurate.
Also note- these items can hold powers themselves. In 3.5 terms- I think this works somewhat like a sword of spellstoring. It's a +1 sword, but it can also have a shocking grasp spell inside it.
As a sidenote(and unrelated)- it appears that ritual casting is the "mega feat" for this edition- except it's even sicker than Craft Wondrous Items. From what I can tell, having the arcana skill & the feat ritual casting gives you an entire chapter worth of abilities- including brewing potions, enchanting weapons, etc, etc. At least it's open to anyone with the arcana or religion skill- or anyone willing to burn a feat to be a multiclass (class with one of those skills)
In addition, wizards choose to specialize in one of their three impliments. Depending on which one they carry, they will earn different abilities. A staff helps with defense, a magic ball helps extend magical effects, and wands help make your effects more accurate.
I'm trying to put together a wizard, so I'm wondering what those abilities are. If you can summarize them for me that'd be great...
Also I saw something about a Paragon feat that allows you to train with two implements, does that allow you to simultaneously get bonuses from both implements? I mean this not in the sense of the +1 orb's effect, but rather the special bonus of orbs in general... so if I have a wizard specialized in staff, who takes this feat to get a second specialization in wand, does he get the accuracy bonus for wands and the defense bonus for staffs?
I'm trying to put together a wizard, so I'm wondering what those abilities are. If you can summarize them for me that'd be great...
Also I saw something about a Paragon feat that allows you to train with two implements, does that allow you to simultaneously get bonuses from both implements? I mean this not in the sense of the +1 orb's effect, but rather the special bonus of orbs in general... so if I have a wizard specialized in staff, who takes this feat to get a second specialization in wand, does he get the accuracy bonus for wands and the defense bonus for staffs?
Forms of mastery:
Orb of Imposition: Once per encounter, use orb to gain one of two effects. You can choose one critter under a spell that requires a saving throw to end it, and that critter gets a penalty to saving throws equal to your wis mod. (against the specific effect you have the critter under)
or
you can extend the effect of an at-will spell that would normally end after this turn to end at the end of your next turn.
staff of defense: +1 bonus to AC. once per encounter you can gain a bonus to defense equal to your con mod, as an immediate action. you can declare this after the DM tells you the damage total.
wand of accuracy: once per encounter as free action, gain bonus to single attack roll equal to dex mod.
the feat your talking about lets you gain a second implement class feature. You still have to wield the implement to garner its effects, though- so I don't think you can get two at once.
You may want to do a Ranger/Cleric, MWB- without the paragon.
Are we doing this as:
Start at -8, and point buy with 32 pts.
Start at 10,10,10,10,10,-8 and point buy with 22 pts.
Because it makes a difference. The guys over in the playtest thread are all illegal if we use the 2nd system...
Also I want to make sure of something. The point buy system listed by CA is "Also, 8-13 costs 1, 14-16 2, 17 3 and 18 4 points". Then McJ listed a different one... Let me compare:
So, wizards can choose Con, Dex, or Wis as their secondary attribute, it seems. Interesting.
From what I'd gathered about paragon multiclassing (which may or may not be accurate), the process goes like this:
- You take the class-specific multiclass feat and all three power-swapping feats before you reach level 11 (using 4 of your 6 feats).
- You forego a paragon path at level 11. This costs you three paragon path features, one of which is an alternate use of action points--the only way to accomplish this.
- In exchange, you get to swap one of each type of power (at-will, encounter, utility, and daily) for one from the new class, although there are level limits to these. This leaves you permanently with one power fewer than other characters in all categories but at-will, because they get their Paragon powers in addition to their class powers.
- I have no idea how this interacts with class features--I haven't heard that you get any of the features of your secondary class.
To me, that sounds like a bum deal. Sure, there's an extra layer of customizability, but it costs a lot.
Here's a very CoCo-type question for you: How does weapon resizing work? I ask because rumor has it that Minotaur PCs get Powerful Build....
--------------------
Equal rewards for losing might be a viable option. It seems odd to me right now, but that may be because I'm stuck in a rut. It would certainly allow us to standardize progression rates, and make it so that the ones who skyrocket through the ECLs aren't the ones who just kick that much butt--and then have to wait for everyone to catch up. A minimum of 6 parties to pair a league might be viable as well, encouraging everyone to coordinate.
The characters in the playtest thread are definitely illegal, given the new intel. The math CA used was based on the 1preview character with a score of 18 (Skamos, the tiefling wizard), with no subsequent conformation. Most likely, that cost was toned down (I always thought it was excessive). Go with what McJ said unless he checks himself and sees he got it wrong (unlikely).
Also, remember that the notion on the table right now is to have parties of 2 (controlled by the same player) be the default, rather than solo characters.
What about having solo characters which can team up with different characters each week at their choice?
At least for me, it will be enough trouble to try min-maxing wizards, so before trying another character I would build 4-5 wizards.
And a party of 2 wizards shouldn't be effective as a party with different "roles"
I like Sauro's proposal of scrapping the Fight Cycle and dishing out equal xp rewards.
However the idea of losing and getting almost the same benefits of the winning character pisses me off a bit.
What about giving equal XP rewards but different gold ones? That may cause some balancing issues though. Or maybe more AP.
---
about point buy:
official 4e stats generation:
a) you take a standard array 16 14 13 12 11 10
b) starting scores 8 10 10 10 10 10, 22 point buy.
cost over 10: 1,2,3,5,7,9,12,16
---
about paragon paths: basically, you're right about that.
you get lower level class powers instead of your paragon powers. you don't get class abilities.
you still get your normal class powers, though.
---
weapon resizing: there will still be progressions like 1d8->1d10. it seems the progression is a lot slower though.
--about npc characters: they are counted as standard monsters for XP issues. so this is not at all applicable to coco (100 XP for lvl 1 means 10 fights to level.)
about FCs: coco can't work without, since everyone would do his daily power every time, which is supposed to be a limited ressource.
Daily powers refresh with extended rest. You could take extended rest either by losing or after winning 2 fights in a row, for example, and when you take an extended rest you shop.
---
about point buy:
official 4e stats generation:
a) you take a standard array 16 14 13 12 11 10
b) starting scores 8 10 10 10 10 10, 22 point buy.
cost over 10: 1,2,3,5,7,9,12,16
---
That equals my point buy version, then.
--about npc characters: they are counted as standard monsters for XP issues. so this is not at all applicable to coco (100 XP for lvl 1 means 10 fights to level.)
But NPC doesn't have action points, right? So maybe we could consider actual PCs stronger and thus elite monsters.
still, npcs are ordinary monsters according to the rules.
about your point of the rest: that's exactly the thing mwb wants to avoid, and i can see why. fixed FCs are way better than generic ones. you need to track quite some bits already at ecl1, like action points, daily use items or daily use powers, and this is bound to increase with levels. having to recalculate your action points etc. is not a nice thing to be. dnd4 is all about streamlining - coco should ahere to that scheme and try to get rid of uneccessary bookkeeping.
giving out flat xp per fight is an option, yes - but i don't think it should be handled completely like that, as it reduces the importance of actually winning a fight. i agree the gap between winning and losing should be slimmer than it is today.
btw mwb: there are no official minotaur PCs. they are only available as NPCs, with the DM's option to allow players to play it. (as a TT dm can allow pretty everything, it's a useless point to even mention that in the MM, but well...)
The thing is, the ritual casting feat is essentially a type of multiclassing that you don't need to expend character resources to fuel. [just gp]. They have things like raise dead, cure disease, knock, overland flight, phantom steed, passwall, shadowwalk, etc, etc. On top of that- I can definitely see more rituals coming out, so it is a feat that will probably have "creeping" power. Also note that the gp costs for the vast majority of these spells are pretty minor, unless gp is suddenly worth a ton more.
All that aside- because of the nature of gaining more rituals as you become richer, the feat effectively upgrades itself. The multiclass feats are the same way, in this regard.
RE: Multiclassing: Yeah, you spend some pretty significant character resources towards the build, but you don't need to spend more once you reach level 11. Compared to other feats(which are all fairly bad at pre-10th level) the multiclass feats in _very_ useful, IMO, since they offer tools that evolve over time. [you can swap out powers as you level up for free, since every level you treat yourself as if you "just received" the multiclass feat.
On them being lower level- it isn't like at 10th level you suddenly get 1st level powers. Since you never actually take levels in any class but your base class(paragon levels only "augment" your normal class), they phrase it this way:
At 11th level, you can replace an at-will power with one from your second class.
In place of a paragon power, you can select any encounter power 7th level or lower from your second class.
Instead of paragon utility at 12th level, you pick a utility power of 10th level or lower from second class.
At 20th level you gain a daily power of 19th level or lower from your second class.
---
So essentially, multiclassing is _very_ similar in power to paragon classes- with one pretty big difference. Choice. You can cherrypick powers from the large number of powers listed for each class instead of being forced to take particular powers the paragon class gives you.
RE: Ritual Casting
All that aside- because of the nature of gaining more rituals as you become richer, the feat effectively upgrades itself. The multiclass feats are the same way, in this regard.
So essentially, multiclassing is _very_ similar in power to paragon classes- with one pretty big difference. Choice. You can cherrypick powers from the large number of powers listed for each class instead of being forced to take particular powers the paragon class gives you.
Ok, I should get the books...
Just think about the combination of crazy powers you will be able to do..
Could you also take a paragon for the class you multiclassed into? Will you still get powers based on your original class?
I'm already planning a Paladin/Warlock with all multiclass feats & ritual casting. He'll be an effective 3-way multiclassed character :D ;)
well, rituals take a long time to do - so in coco, rituals might not be nearly as powerful as they are in tabletop. item creation and some long-duration spells where already pretty powerful in tt, so i don't see the big difference. also, requiring skill checks to fuel rituals is a good way to restrict certain combos to higher level characters.
I suppose you could prebuff with some rituals... at least if they last a few hours.
What about starting races? Given that there's a MM appendix which lists possible starting races, will CoCo allow all of them?
@McJ: I'm already toying with a wizard/cleric buffer which uses the orb to extend his powers.. bwahaha
Or the phantom steed, which lasts 11 or 12 hours..
What about starting races? Given that there's a MM appendix which lists possible starting races, will CoCo allow all of them?
This I doubt. There is a strong warning about getting DM permission to use them, and there is no such thing as LA that I can see...so I am unsure if these races are more powerful than the rest.
RE: Wiz/Cleric buffer: cool man. Just keep in mind that multiclassing, while providing options, doesn't give main class features. So this will have to be a wizard -> cleric multiclass, and not the other way around.
You are right that most of the rituals would not be good in CoCo and that they have long casting times- but many of them have long _effect_ times. So you use your ritual, then you gain the ability from then on to say a word and have a specific item return to your hand. [ritual of recalling- works once before you have to re-ritual].
Or the phantom steed, which lasts 11 or 12 hours..
1) well, since it's oneshot, it's not like it would be overly powerful, especially since drawing is a minor action now.
2) phantom steed: well, one hit and it's gone. they are not nearly as good as they used to be.
3) cleric/wizard: i'planning warlord/cleric or the like. looks like you get really lots of options from the start, but we'll have to see live how it plays out in actual play.
starting races: the mm appendix would not give you any playable race without DM decision. so i believe they should be banned from 4e coco, at least for the first few *cough* years..
3) cleric/wizard: i'planning warlord/cleric or the like. looks like you get really lots of options from the start, but we'll have to see live how it plays out in actual play.
I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment, indeed.
starting races: the mm appendix would not give you any playable race without DM decision. so i believe they should be banned from 4e coco, at least for the first few *cough* years..
Tell the truth.. you fear the power of gnomes!
From the balance perspective, I dont believe that there is a problem with allowing those races. none of them look like they are more powerful than the base races and you also lack the option of those nifty racial feats.
=> they are MUCH more balanced than monster races were in 3.5
=> I see no real reason not to allow them.
What happens when a player takes a week off. Eventually, his "cohort" is going to out level him, and then its quite possible he'll be stuck until the next wave comes along. This could in fact happen to all characters he's running (since presumably all of them missed that xp for a week). Does this mean he'll be forced to make a new character if he wants to play at all, or simply wait until the next cohort comes along (which depending on leveling rates might be a week or months)?
Just saying there are some corner cases you may want to consider how to deal with. (Let people level up without actually fighting just to get them into a "cohort" if they're only a level or two behind?)
We could allow some wiggle in the definition of a cohort, saying that it includes characters at ECL8 +/-1. Then you're OK as long as you don't fall more than a full ECL behind. At that point you'll have to wait for the next cohort.
I'm not sure what the prefect system is, but one of the things I know won't work is to simply use our current system in 4E... At the height CoCo had ~100 characters active in one week. If you spread those around 30 ECL, then that's only 3 or 4 characters/ECL... That'll never work. With that system and the attrition of characters through levels you'll never have enough characters to enter the Paragon Tier. It's simply not enough to make a system which is playable, we need to make a system which allows the kind of play that interests us. For me that means that I can expect to eventually play the entire sequence of levels all the way to ECL30. Moving groups of players through all the levels as a cohort is one way to make sure that's possible, but there will be quirks to that system. If we can deal with the quirks in an elegant way, then we'll have a winner.
about FCs: coco can't work without, since everyone would do his daily power every time, which is supposed to be a limited ressource.
Agreed. I'm suggesting we ditch the 3FC, and allow a variable FC.
As far as I know, the DMG doesn't tell us precisely how many encounters/day the characters are intended to face. So we need to come up with some kind of system to decide when the characters get a long rest. Previously we decided this happened at 3 fights, but what number will we choose now?
What I'm suggesting is that the cycle runs till you die or hit 6 wins in a row, whichever comes first. This has a few effects.
1) Since after a few weeks most everyone has died and been raised, everyone will have a -1 penalty imposed by the Raise Dead Ritual. This is a bit odd, having everyone suffer a penalty most of the time. This isn't a large penalty, but it becomes useful in the next effect.
2) If you win 6 fights in a row (same as 3 milestones) you get a "reward", where the -1 penalty is lifted.
3) If you loose, then you get a long rest and refresh your dailies and surges. This serves as a feedback which helps people out of the pit of perpetual losses, where players become discouraged.
@Sauro: winning 6 fights in a row might prove hard. What about not dying for 6? You could still lose, as long as you don't die.
Throwing in another issue.. now that 1st level characters have more hps and some decent powers, are we going to start at 1st level?
@Sauro: winning 6 fights in a row might prove hard. What about not dying for 6? You could still lose, as long as you don't die.
MWB had said he'd like to start at 1st. I see no reason not to.
I can see your point with respect to loosing vs death. It may be better to keep track of death and loss separately, but that does cause three possible outcomes for any fight... Win/Loss/Death... That makes bookkeeping a tad more complicated, especially if there are 2 characters/team where one may die but the other may in fact win the fight. Now there are 6 possible outcomes of any fight.
Also it forces us to deal with how "loss" is different from "death" with respect to granting a long rest or a milestone.
about FCs: coco can't work without, since everyone would do his daily power every time, which is supposed to be a limited ressource.
Well, Sauro is talking about an xFC, where X is the number of fights you can go before losing. So it's not entirely impossible.
about paragon paths: basically, you're right about that.
you get lower level class powers instead of your paragon powers. you don't get class abilities.
you still get your normal class powers, though.
Grr... then it seems like paragon muticlassing really is a bum deal. The paragon features are very good.
--about npc characters: they are counted as standard monsters for XP issues. so this is not at all applicable to coco (100 XP for lvl 1 means 10 fights to level.)
So a level 1 party of 4 characters is expected to fight 4 level 1 NPCs and have it be in their favor? That makes no sense.
only characters and solo monsters have action points.
Unless they changed it post-review, some high-level elites have action points.
btw mwb: there are no official minotaur PCs. they are only available as NPCs, with the DM's option to allow players to play it. (as a TT dm can allow pretty everything, it's a useless point to even mention that in the MM, but well...)
This I doubt. There is a strong warning about getting DM permission to use them, and there is no such thing as LA that I can see...so I am unsure if these races are more powerful than the rest.
If there are rules for it in the MM, we should allow it. They ought to be decently balanced--and even if they're not, who cares? This is the CoCo, we're about optimizing. They also take an inherent hit in that there are no racial feats for them. Maybe it can be a credit-cost thing, though (to make up for no-LA races).
RE: Multiclassing: Yeah, you spend some pretty significant character resources towards the build, but you don't need to spend more once you reach level 11. Compared to other feats(which are all fairly bad at pre-10th level) the multiclass feats in _very_ useful, IMO, since they offer tools that evolve over time. [you can swap out powers as you level up for free, since every level you treat yourself as if you "just received" the multiclass feat.
Bear in mind (if the preview was correct) that you can swap out heroic-tier feats for paragon-tier feats via retraining. By the time you hit Epic, you should only have about 1-2 heroic feats left unless they're critical to your build. I hope they changed that before it went to press, but if they didn't, "locking in" feats is a significant opportunity cost.
At 11th level, you can replace an at-will power with one from your second class.
In place of a paragon power, you can select any encounter power 7th level or lower from your second class.
Instead of paragon utility at 12th level, you pick a utility power of 10th level or lower from second class.
At 20th level you gain a daily power of 19th level or lower from your second class.
Ah, so except for the at-will, it's an addition, not a replacement. That helps a little. But the loss of paragon features still stings.
You are right that most of the rituals would not be good in CoCo and that they have long casting times- but many of them have long _effect_ times.
They also cost GP, although that cost is inconsequential after a few levels.
Throwing in another issue.. now that 1st level characters have more hps and some decent powers, are we going to start at 1st level?
Definitely.
@Sauro: winning 6 fights in a row might prove hard. What about not dying for 6? You could still lose, as long as you don't die.
That's a good point--most of the time, unconscious characters aren't dead. It seems silly to impose the -1 death penalty in this case.
I'm strongly against the "permanent -1" in any case. It's annoying, it's unintuitive, it gives new players a feeling of discouragement after their first loss, and it gives a further advantage to characters who are already doing well.
MWB had said he'd like to start at 1st. I see no reason not to.
So, we know about characters in CoCo that:
- They start at 1st level
- They use 22 point buy
With a decision about races we could have already the starting decisions covered.
I can see your point with respect to loosing vs death. It may be better to keep track of death and loss separately, but that does cause three possible outcomes for any fight... Win/Loss/Death... That makes bookkeeping a tad more complicated, especially if there are 2 characters/team where one may die but the other may in fact win the fight. Now there are 6 possible outcomes of any fight.
Also it forces us to deal with how "loss" is different from "death" with respect to granting a long rest or a milestone.
The solution could come from some sort of magic item to include in the arena maps. The item would (at will) teleport you in the positive energy plane (does it exist?) and then bring you back just outside of the arena just before you die. No deaths at all. However we wouldn't have any difference between winner and losers then..
I'm strongly against the "permanent -1" in any case. It's annoying, it's unintuitive, it gives new players a feeling of discouragement after their first loss, and it gives a further advantage to characters who are already doing well.
So I suppose it's necessary to rewrite the Raise Dead Ritual, or at least write a new house Rule Ritual that's similar... Such as:
Nimbus Resurrection
Level: 1
Category: Restoration
Time: 10 Minutes
Duration: Instantaneous
Component Cost: Free
Market Price: Free
Key Skill: Heal (no check)
To perform the Nimbus Resurrection ritual, you must have the complete corpse of a creature that died no more than 7 days ago and be located within the area of the Nimbus. You evoke the energies of the Nimbus to restore the dead creature’s life. The subject returns to life with full hp and is freed of any temporary conditions suffered at death, but permanent conditions remain.
So I suppose it's necessary to rewrite the Raise Dead Ritual, or at least write a new house Rule Ritual that's similar...
Why rewrite anything? The Nimbus is a hand-wave to begin with to make the CoCo function, and it was never revised to work on, say, undead PCs. All we need to know is that it works.
There are a few things that are inherent problems for the CoCo model if we try to simply squish 4E into the same mold.
1) We don't have a well defined daily encounter # for balance. We have two encounters between milestones, so we could simply say 1milestone=1day and have long rests at every milestone. We could use the Raise Dead ritual as a guideline, with the penalty wearing off at 3 milestones, and say that 3 milestones = 1day. We could pick another number that fits our sense of balance, saying perhaps 4 or 5 encounters = 1day. I was suggesting s system where we let the players win/loss determine when the long rests come. However if there's no penalty for loss, or reward for winning, then there's no point to try and win more than a handful of fights in a row... Go ahead and loose to refresh the dailies.
2) There are way more ECL that characters spread around into. If we use the current system, it's clear that paragon tier won't get much play, and epic will never be seen. My proposed cohort system allows groups of characters to move through the whole ECL range together, and it forces us to deal with how to handle situations where someone falls behind. There are other ways. We could only play odd numbered levels, and have everyone jump two levels whenever they reach the next level. That decreases us to a 15 ECL range which is more manageable. Or we could accept that we'll never see the upper levels. Or there may be other options I cannot think of right now.
3) Lots of the class abilities involve allies being on the maps, so these classes need to fight in teams. That makes the combat itself more complex to adjudicate and plan with tactics. So we'll probably end up doing play by post with all the potential problems tied to that. This can become very sticky if we are doing the cohort system. For example we have to decide how to deal with fights that don't get resolved in 1 week.
4) If 10 on level encounters are needed to increase to the next level, then that's lots more fighting to go up a level than we now use... Assuming that a group of 2 earns twice as much xp for the same encounter as a group of 4, that gets us to 5 fights/level which is closer to our current system. But that's an assumption that I'm not sure is true... Can McJ confirm this? In any case, we may want to tweak that a bit.
In any case if you do something like this, then there's no penalty for death. If the rewards for win or loss are the same, then there's no reward for winning... And there's not much of a point to win except bragging rights. Feels rather flat and uninspiring. If we give alternative gp rewards for winning, then we cause a wealth imbalance which is a problem. If we give alternative xp and gp rewards for winning, like we now do, then we'll need about a thousand active characters to fill all the ECL leagues up to 30.
These are very good points, but I think win/loss record is more motivating for most people than you believe. I stand by my reasons for not liking the perpetual death penalty.
1) We don't have a well defined daily encounter # for balance. We have two encounters between milestones, so we could simply say 1milestone=1day and have long rests at every milestone. We could use the Raise Dead ritual as a guideline, with the penalty wearing off at 3 milestones, and say that 3 milestones = 1day. We could pick another number that fits our sense of balance, saying perhaps 4 or 5 encounters = 1day. I was suggesting s system where we let the players win/loss determine when the long rests come. However if there's no penalty for loss, or reward for winning, then there's no point to try and win more than a handful of fights in a row... Go ahead and loose to refresh the dailies.
You'd also have to win 6 fights in a row to get rid of the -1. That's harsh, and most players will (correctly) realise that this is not a typically attainable goal. Especially since 4e fights seem to be more swingy.
2) There are way more ECL that characters spread around into. If we use the current system, it's clear that paragon tier won't get much play, and epic will never be seen. My proposed cohort system allows groups of characters to move through the whole ECL range together, and it forces us to deal with how to handle situations where someone falls behind. There are other ways. We could only play odd numbered levels, and have everyone jump two levels whenever they reach the next level. That decreases us to a 15 ECL range which is more manageable. Or we could accept that we'll never see the upper levels. Or there may be other options I cannot think of right now.
I'm looking at collapsing the leagues as well. Since you only gain +1's to stuff at every even-numbered level, I think collapsing levels 2 and 3 to fight together, 4 and 5, 6 and 7, & 8 and 9 should work well. There's a differential in powers, but in general one level is much less meaningful than it was in 3e. I don't want to collapse 10 and 11 because that straddles a tier change, which is significant. Alternatively, we could collapse 1 and 2 together, and so on, but then the higher-level characters will have +1 to everything and I'm not sure that's a good idea.
3) Lots of the class abilities involve allies being on the maps, so these classes need to fight in teams. That makes the combat itself more complex to adjudicate and plan with tactics. So we'll probably end up doing play by post with all the potential problems tied to that. This can become very sticky if we are doing the cohort system. For example we have to decide how to deal with fights that don't get resolved in 1 week.
If 1 player is controlling 2 characters, it won't be much worse than now. I think that with the loss of nearly all expendables and the dramatic decrease in powers (spells), it will if anything be easier. As I mentioned earlier, I think making tactics the default with PbP/DDI/OpenRPG/rpgtools strongly recommended will work, making it clear that if tactics-based fights are not used, then all parties bear the consequences for being late.
4) If 10 on level encounters are needed to increase to the next level, then that's lots more fighting to go up a level than we now use... Assuming that a group of 2 earns twice as much xp for the same encounter as a group of 4, that gets us to 5 fights/level which is closer to our current system. But that's an assumption that I'm not sure is true... Can McJ confirm this? In any case, we may want to tweak that a bit.
Treating PCs as if they were elite monsters of their level seems to be approximately accurate from what I've seen. That would be 5 fights to level, as you say. 10 levels in a year of constant activation. 3 years to max out the chart. That's at the slow end of what I'd consider acceptable.
Treating PCs as if they were elite monsters of their level seems to be approximately accurate from what I've seen. That would be 5 fights to level, as you say. 10 levels in a year of constant activation. 3 years to max out the chart. That's at the slow end of what I'd consider acceptable.
That seems a bit too much to me. I'd say we don't need to follow exactly all rules in the manuals. We are the CoCo, we can freely decide how much xp should be given out for each win. I think that 3 fights are the best anyway before leveling up. No-one can be active costantly, and that would average in 10 levels in 9-10 months.
Btw, with the 4th edition supposed increased teamwork, we could add a few more "fights", beside the arena ones.
- We could have "level" fights where all players in a given level are teamed in 2 different teams and the last team standing wins.
- We could have capture the flag missions
- We could have "defend your keep" maps where a location gets stormed by minions/monsters and the players must resist. The longest resistance wins.
Look more closely at the advancement chart. ECL2 gets you a +1 bonus, a feat and a utility power. ECL3 gives you a 3rd level encounter power. ECL5 gives another daily power. As you go down the list, you'll see that even levels give the +1 bonus, an extra feat, and either an ability boost or a utility power. All the odd levels give encounter or daily powers. So the odd levels increase combat options, while the even levels increase your stats. I wouldn't want to be the ECL4 guy with one daily power looking across the room at the ECL5 guy with 2 daily powers as an "even match". That looks to me to be a significant advantage.
I'd rather just skip the odd or even levels. Having people level through two levels whenever they hit the threshold for the next level.
In fact. How about this. Instead of tracking xp and gp, we simply have a wealth scale tied to the ECL scale. We can have players track "history points" or "victory points" or whatever, and each win is worth X history points and loss is worth Y history points. Add them all up, and check the "Advancement Table" that uses history points instead of XP. That'll list your total wealth along side the powers, ability bonuses and so on appropriate for the character level.
This has a huge advantage, in that there's no need to keep track of a long history of used/sold/lost items (which can get very long if there are hundreds of fights in a character's history till ECL30). This standardizes wealth, so that all potential things that could mess with the wealth balance are taken care of at once. It also standardizes rewards, so that pitlords don't have to keep track of it.
What about if we only have all the odd leagues active?
=> if a lvl1 character accumulates enough xp to advance to lvl 2 he advances to level 3 instead(and gains the appropriate amount of gold)
That way we have only 15 leagues instead of 30 and all types of gameplay(heroic-paragon-epic) are present. You will never have the chance to play a lvl4 character, but who cares?
EDIT: ninja´d....
Re: No inventory tracking: I would permit this only under one condition: no healing potions. As I understand it, they're the only real expendables, and the high-level ones can be quite potent (the Potion of Life is worth 10,000 gp!).
I don't really see a difference between tracking wins/losses vs. XP as an advancement system. If we're skipping even-numbered levels, I suppose they're equally unintuitive--either we don't use XP (weird) or folks get sudden bursts of XP and GP when they level.
@McJ or anyone else who has the books: Is there a wealth-by-level table?
Re: Skipping even levels: It's... odd... but it just might work.
Nice pun.
Re: No inventory tracking: I would permit this only under one condition: no healing potions. As I understand it, they're the only real expendables, and the high-level ones can be quite potent (the Potion of Life is worth 10,000 gp!).
Yea I thought about expendables as well. Banning them outright is one way to deal with it. Another option is to limit them similarly to how we now do it. For example we can say that wealth only refreshes at a level increase where you can have only one potion, and this goes to two and three potions at the paragon and epic tiers respectively. Or we can put a gp limit that scales with level, like we now have. Or we can have the potions only usable between fights, so they can be used instead of healing surges to prep for the next fight. Imagine that players have to budget their gp so that they have enough potions to heal between fights for a whole level.
I don't really see a difference between tracking wins/losses vs. XP as an advancement system. If we're skipping even-numbered levels, I suppose they're equally unintuitive--either we don't use XP (weird) or folks get sudden bursts of XP and GP when they level.
The difference is a slight decrease in work load. When a pitlord ends a fight, he simply says Tom wins, Bob looses. Instead of looking at the encounter xp budget table and figuring that at this level, the fight was worth 12345xp and 67890gp. Also the player simply lists the used abilities, and marks off a win or loss. Using a win/loss total simplifies the pitlord's job and the player's job for accounting.
So here's another idea to deal with one of our other problems. Say that the fight cycle is determined by the level thresholds. So you enter into a fight cycle at 1st level, and continue at that fight cycle till you level. At that point you go up to 3rd level, get the wealth of a 3rd level character, take a long rest and start in the ECL3 league where you stay in a fight cycle till you level again. The player effectively keeps track of a character's history of used items/abilities for the span of a single level, and then refreshes.
It's the ultimate equalizer. Anyone who's dealing with a mistake only has to make it to the end of the level... Then it's water under the bridge as you start at the same place as everyone else in the beginning of the league.
@McJ or anyone else who has the books: Is there a wealth-by-level table?
No, but there are guidelines.
Mundane: When creating a higher level character, pick whatever mundane equipment you want.
Magic Items: Choose 1 of your level +1, one of your level, and one of your level -1. Also give yourself gold pieces equal to the value of one magic item of your level - 1.
No, but there are guidelines.
Mundane: When creating a higher level character, pick whatever mundane equipment you want.
Magic Items: Choose 1 of your level +1, one of your level, and one of your level -1. Also give yourself gold pieces equal to the value of one magic item of your level - 1.
There's also the wealth/encounter tables, right?
With those, and the assumption that most wealth isn't spent on expendables and knowledge about # of encounters/level we can add up the total wealth accumulated by a character over various levels.
There are very few tables in the DMG as compared to 3.5
There's also the wealth/encounter tables, right?
With those, and the assumption that most wealth isn't spent on expendables and knowledge about # of encounters/level we can add up the total wealth accumulated by a character over various levels.
The problem here is: no. There isn't.
Instead, a party gets 10 "treasure packets" in the course of one level. These consist of 4 magic items (level +1, +2, +3, and +4) and 6 packets of wealth or wealth-equivalent. This is for a 5-person party; dunno if it varies for parties of other sizes.
First of all, I'd really doubt it if there are packets for parties of 1-2 PCs. Maybe. Second, the wealth value gets wacky, because if you like what you get, you have a high wealth-by-level value, but if you don't like it, you have to sell it at 1/5 (!) market price.
We could automatically assume that everyone sells everything, and let them spend the cash as they will; the loss of money from this policy would be significantly countered by the fact that they're not spending money on rituals and healing potions throughout their career, or going through multiple buying and reselling cycles. Or we could assume that no one ever sells anything, and give them the full GP value of everything they find, but this will put them solidly above recommended wealth values. Or we could compromise, e.g. give them the full GP value of one item per level and assume they sell the rest.
Note that, in the DMG, when you create a new character at higher levels, you get spit--3 magic items of about your level and enough cash for a fourth, when if you'd gotten there the hard way you'd have a couple of items at +1 to +3 above your level, several at or a little below your level, and a ton well below your level, plus more cash.
Re: level/cycles: Not bad. Since I'd been favoring a 4FC before this discussion, it would make sense to make 4 fights = 1+1 level and an extended rest, including the right to shop and refresh your stock of healing potions. 5 fights in a cycle seems long to me, based on my own playtest experience, especially if we allow healing potions (which, BTW, use healing surges, so they're primarily an in-combat option).
Re: level/cycles: Not bad. Since I'd been favoring a 4FC before this discussion, it would make sense to make 4 fights = 1+1 level and an extended rest, including the right to shop and refresh your stock of healing potions. 5 fights in a cycle seems long to me, based on my own playtest experience, especially if we allow healing potions (which, BTW, use healing surges, so they're primarily an in-combat option).
Also here's the bit that separates winning from loosing... ready... (sweeps cloth off the shiny new idea).
Wins count toward a milestone in the midst of a cycle. Losses don't. So the result of a win is that you get one step closer to refreshing your action point.
If we want wins and losses to count the same toward the "victory points" of gaining your next level, then it's 4 fights/level all the time. Another option is to have losses count as 2/3 of a win... Then it's 6 losses to level. That could be too hard, but it's an option to consider. You've done far more playtest than I have, so you'd know.
"each character can only activate a few different magic item powers in a given day, so the guy who brings a loaded pack full of flashy items doesn’t get as much bang for his buck"
McJ can you elaborate on that for me. Is there some kind of limit that a character can only use 3 magic item powers/day (or whatever the limit is)?
Andy Collin's thing about magic items says this:
"each character can only activate a few different magic item powers in a given day, so the guy who brings a loaded pack full of flashy items doesn’t get as much bang for his buck"
McJ can you elaborate on that for me. Is there some kind of limit that a character can only use 3 magic item powers/day (or whatever the limit is)?
I don't really see what he's talking about. There are not many wondrous items that are not slotted, though. [oh- and the wondrous items are completely sorted by body slot. Or rather, there are "body slot" sections, then a wondrous item section covering the items that are not slotted.]
I don't really see what he's talking about. There are not many wondrous items that are not slotted, though. [oh- and the wondrous items are completely sorted by body slot. Or rather, there are "body slot" sections, then a wondrous item section covering the items that are not slotted.]
So I've got 9 slots, and then potions and wondrous items (unslotted things). So that's a total of 9 "slots" and 9 useful magic items right?
Do Ioun stones take up a slot?
So I've got 9 slots, and then potions and wondrous items (unslotted things). So that's a total of 9 "slots" and 9 useful magic items right?
Do Ioun stones take up a slot?
I count arms/feet/hands/head/neck/rings(2)/waist.
so 8 slots?
Ioun stones take up the head slot.
I count arms/feet/hands/head/neck/rings(2)/waist.
so 8 slots?
Ioun stones take up the head slot.
Also you have the body (armor) and the weapon/implement. So that's a total of 10 I guess.
These things are really freakishly expensive. I don't see anyone using them anytime soon. There are only healing ones in the PhB
The problem here is: no. There isn't.
Instead, a party gets 10 "treasure packets" in the course of one level. These consist of 4 magic items (level +1, +2, +3, and +4) and 6 packets of wealth or wealth-equivalent. This is for a 5-person party; dunno if it varies for parties of other sizes.
First of all, I'd really doubt it if there are packets for parties of 1-2 PCs. Maybe. Second, the wealth value gets wacky, because if you like what you get, you have a high wealth-by-level value, but if you don't like it, you have to sell it at 1/5 (!) market price.
We could automatically assume that everyone sells everything, and let them spend the cash as they will; the loss of money from this policy would be significantly countered by the fact that they're not spending money on rituals and healing potions throughout their career, or going through multiple buying and reselling cycles. Or we could assume that no one ever sells anything, and give them the full GP value of everything they find, but this will put them solidly above recommended wealth values. Or we could compromise, e.g. give them the full GP value of one item per level and assume they sell the rest.
The guys who made the pre-release compendium have put together a table (from the excerpts on wizards site) that gives the total monetary treasure and items treasure for each level... I can plug this into an excel sheet, and get a cumulative gp value for any ECL. Also we'll have a huge list of total items... It's very regular. So right now I can figure that an ECL11 party of 5 who just finished ECL10 will have received a total of 40800gp monetary treasure (total of all levels 1-10). Also they'll have:
1 item of 2nd level and 1 of 14th level
2 items of 3rd level and 2 of 13th level
3 items of 4th level and 3 of 12th level
4 items of 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th and 11th level each
Ok... so that's a party of 5. That's also a total of 50 body slots and only 40 items. You don't actually fill all the body slots with items till about ECL 13 or 14, assuming that all the items found are slotted...
So I could add up the total gp and item value for the party divide by 5 and figure the total value of an average character in that party. This works up to ECL 13 or so when all the item slots in the party are filled and you start to ditch the old items. At this point, I expect the effect of the old items which will be sold starts to be negligable. They are nearly worthless compared to the current party wealth. At ECL 13 you're selling the 2nd level items worth only 104gp on the market (for a loss of 416gp). At this level you're finding items worth 65,000gp. So the loss of 416 to total party wealth is negligable.
How about this? I'll run the excel table and work out the total gp value of an average party member in the above scenario. I can do it for all the ECL. I can even see if the numbers change when you keep the "newest" 50 items and ditch the old stuff. I can run it for 100% loss on the old stuff or just 80% loss on the old stuff. The numbers are for a party of 5, so I can just average it out to a single character.
Now also the rule of thumb for creating a new character produces wealth that's way lower than the wealth generated by normal leveling. For example a character in the "standard" party of 5 at the end of ECL9 (starting 10) has an average wealth of 35,450gp. The character who's made at ECL10 with one 11th, one 10th, one 9th and gold for 1 9th level items has a total wealth of only 22,400gp.
This decreased value of a character generated with this rule holds true through all the levels above 2nd. The newly generated character has wealth that hovers around 60-68% of the characters who've leveled all the way through. Well actually at the end of level 2 (starting 3) the "generated" character has 4 magic items worth of wealth, and the average party member has only 1/5th of a total of 8 items, so they are worth nearly 100% of the average party member at this point... But it rapidly declines and stabilizes around 60-68% at the end of ECL8 (starting 9th level).
So using this chart I've made, I can easily make a table of expected character wealth at any level. I can also modify it easily. I can assume that gp wealth is lost, or whatever else you want. FOr example, we can assume that 5% of wealth is lost due to rituals and expandable items and other "costs". Or I could assume that all the gp rewards are lost, in the expenses of running an adventuring carrier.
If there's negligable wealth lost over the levels, then it looks that by the time you hit 5th level you'll be worth 8 items of your level. From their, you'll fluctuate around 7-10 items of your level in total worth. You can trade in that value for items of higher level, and have fewer.
Edited: I noticed a mistake, and corrected it in the numbers above.
Andy Collin's thing about magic items says this:
"each character can only activate a few different magic item powers in a given day, so the guy who brings a loaded pack full of flashy items doesn’t get as much bang for his buck"
McJ can you elaborate on that for me. Is there some kind of limit that a character can only use 3 magic item powers/day (or whatever the limit is)?
Heroic tier you can use 1 magic item Daily Power per day, Paragon tier you can use 2, Epic tier you can use 3.
Every time you reach a milestone you can use an additional magic item Daily Power, but only Daily Powers you haven't already used of course.
After an extended rest all of your magic item Daily Powers recharge, and the # of magic item Daily Powers you can use is also reset. At-will and Encounter Powers for magic items have the normal limitations that class abilities have.
1) about magic items: first of all, most magic items are limited to a 1/day usage, secondly, see cerberus post
items now come in different strengths. different strength = different bonus, damage, price. sometimes the items give a level dependent bonus, but most of the time you need to heavily invest into the item to have it scale to your level.
2) about level differences:
i propose having players in different leagues be paired against each other.
we could really use the advancement for monsters here, so:
the lower level gets a
+1 bonus to defenses, attacks, skills per 1 level
+additional HP according to his role per level
+1 damage per 2 levels
As long as this happens within a reasonable range (+/- 4) there should be no problem whatsoever. the weaker one gets rewarded for this fight with way better saves than he'd normally have. Pairing different tiers of play should be avoided, though, due to obvious reasons.
3) progression/pacing:
i don't like invalidating wins as the means of progression. so there should be less XP for losing, so your character progresses slower. this also means, that characters should earn definitely more XP than they would get for defeating an elite character, since losing will slow them (a bit)
my take at advancement: make it a 4FC. (proposed fights/day is still 3 i believe) at the end of the 4FC, count a players wins in that FC. 1-2wins = +1 Level, 3 wins +2 Levels, 4 wins = +3 Levels. Reduces the need for bookkeeping XP and GP. give out items according to the gained levels.
Have them automatically achieve a milestone (+1ap, +1 daily usage of powers) after 2 fights.
4) random pairing: new idea: we could make standard characters for use as an ally if someone does not like to play a team, but allow teams of two as well. make 2on2 default. so, you could get paired as a team (either fixed or 1 player driven), you could get a standard partner you can use (from the fixed list, chosen at random), or you could get a partner who is an actual player. This gives players who want to have different partners the ability to do so, while keeping the default format 2on2. Also, retired characters could be volunteered by their respective players to be added to their bracket as default characters, thus increasing the number of available non-players.
5) monster fighting: as monsters are now that entirely different to players, i'd say that you have to request monster fights via questing or campaigns, and they be scrapped from the standard arena completely. (and we can use characters to fill for that)
Let me add my 2 cents.
1) Leveling up 2 levels at a time: good, that will speed up things and make sure balance is preserved.
2) Using victory or history points instead than xp: good again. Less bookkeeping is always good. 3 history points for a win, 2 for a losses and every 12 you level up. Takes 4 wins or 6 losses.
3) A cookie for Sauro for doing all that calculation. I'd award 90-95% of the result from your table in a lump sum every time you level up.
4) Magic Items: it seems that with these rules you won't need all that magic items with you. Even if you had 4, you could use only 1 until you rest or reach a milestone (2 victories) until you are below 11th level.
EDIT: 5) I like whitebaron idea of random pairings. I dislike the complexity involved in the proposed FC compared to point 2 here.
also, tracking victories within a 4fc is really not hard for bookkeeping - i don't see much differences to track victory points instead.
about milestones: i would not use 2 victories for milestones in the coco, but 2 fights. else characters doing badly won't get any second use of their magic items or action points for their whole FC.
a second look @sauros calculations: yes, the freshly made character would have fewer money, but he'd have them adjusted to exactly his style and will, whilst the others would have to sell lots of unused stuff - it's not just the old stuff, you'd likely find 5 armors in a dungeon, but only 2 characters able to wear it - same holds true for magic weapons, implements and the like - so basically, magic item selling is much more common than you seem to factor in.
i dislike leveling up mid-cycle. this creates unneccessary complex rules, like "what happens to your powers when you level" - on one level, you could swap a power, do you get it as used or fresh? etc... also, 4 wins to level up means 1 year to reach paragon level. leveling up 2 at a time will give worse power and pairing issues than doing even levels as well, since you could easily pair characters with different levels (see my post above) - the increased bonus would make up for most of the powers you gain.. unless it's different tiers of play.
also, tracking victories within a 4fc is really not hard for bookkeeping - i don't see much differences to track victory points instead.
I don't see how leveling up 2 at a time would give worse results. You simply get paired with people of your level, so? 4 wins to level will make you level up in 6 months.
To solve the problem of leveling up mid level we could force everyone to level just at the end of the cycle. that means fighting 2-3 more times without leveling, though.
Alternatively we could find an appropriate set of houserules. Leveling 3 times in 4 fights seems a bit too fast to me.
about milestones: i would not use 2 victories for milestones in the coco, but 2 fights. else characters doing badly won't get any second use of their magic items or action points for their whole FC.
but if you award milestones every 2 fights everyone would have an incentive to blast the hell in the first 2 fights, given they get refreshed later. With 2 wins one must be a bit more careful, I think
You simply get paired with people of your level, so?
If you have PCS advance always 2 levels, the gap between players that activate often and players that activate every other week will increase even more, making it impossible to cross-pair them even if you'd liked to. the monster adjustment rules are there for a reason in the dmg, and i believe they are good as they are. also, leaving out levels makes one thing 4e wants to do absolutely useless: level jumps are less of an impact on the character than they used to be. reduce it to half the levels, and you'll end up with a new feat, +1 to all, 1-2 powers and 4 new magic items every time you level. seems like a very big boost every time you level up...
Alternatively we could find an appropriate set of houserules. Leveling 3 times in 4 fights seems a bit too fast to me.
this was meant to be a bonus for very successful players. it's not like many pcs actually can pull that feat off, especially given the new format is more prone to swinging fights around due to one lucky hit.
but if you award milestones every 2 fights everyone would have an incentive to blast the hell in the first 2 fights, given they get refreshed later. With 2 wins one must be a bit more careful, I think
well, it's not like milestones enable you to blast like hell - you get one usage of a daily item power, and one action point. you don't get any other daily powers back and your items don't recharge. so it is really minor compared to the bookkeeping/checking involved.
i dislike leveling up mid-cycle. this creates unneccessary complex rules, like "what happens to your powers when you level" - on one level, you could swap a power, do you get it as used or fresh? etc... also, 4 wins to level up means 1 year to reach paragon level. leveling up 2 at a time will give worse power and pairing issues than doing even levels as well, since you could easily pair characters with different levels (see my post above) - the increased bonus would make up for most of the powers you gain.. unless it's different tiers of play.
You seem to not fully understand here. Let me summarize:
1) A fight cycle is however long it takes to make it to the next level (4-6 fights). So You begin each new level with a long rest, and you don't get another long rest till the beginning of the next ECL. So there is no such thing as leveling mid cycle. The cycle is by definition the same as the time when you level.
2) Instead of tracking XP and GP, we have victory points (VP) awarded by wins and losses. A Win awards 3 VP, a Loss awards 2 VP and 12 VP gets you to the next level (actually it gets you up two levels in one jump). This has the advantage of eliminating the need for an XP table. It also makes us use smaller numbers, so there's less possibility for mistakes. I've made the mistake before where I thought that going to the next level was 27,000xp, when it was in fact 28,000 and I had to "de-level" a character. A simple VP system makes it easier on the accounting side, but it's no different from XP really, just a tad simpler.
3) Wealth is tied to ECL, so all characters starting ECL7 have the same wealth. This eliminates the need to track used and sold items. It also has the advantage of standardizing wealth, so that all fights at a particular ECL have the same wealth on each side of the fight. We either ban or severely limit potions, but otherwise we can forget about the accounting usually tied to item sales and upgrading.
4) Skipping even levels allows us to run CoCo with the same kind of pairings as we now use (no need for cohorts or interleague fights). It makes it possible for us to reasonably fill all the leagues with active characters. At our height, we could have had 15 active character levels, and I think this is a reasonable goal. It would take probably 4 times that many players to fill 30 leagues, and I'm not sure CoCo will ever get that big.
a second look @sauros calculations: yes, the freshly made character would have fewer money, but he'd have them adjusted to exactly his style and will, whilst the others would have to sell lots of unused stuff - it's not just the old stuff, you'd likely find 5 armors in a dungeon, but only 2 characters able to wear it - same holds true for magic weapons, implements and the like - so basically, magic item selling is much more common than you seem to factor in.
If my DM gave the party 5 suites of armor as major treasure, he sucks. Make sure you read about the treasure and the way it's handled. The game assumes that monsters have "magic" items which are ignored by the players all the time. This is apparent in the "Magic Threshold" mechanic on the monsters. Monsters 6-10th level are assumed to have +1 items which aren't listed in the monster stat blocks, but the bonus is their. The ECL10 treasure bundles only includes items above ECL10. So every magic suite of armor doesn't show up as treasure for the party. Only items that cross their path and are above the party level are then counted as treasure.
In the calculations I did assume that all the treasure given to a party of 5 is useful until the party has 50 items, when they start to sell the older stuff. I feel this is a modest assumption. A party of 5 has 50 item slots, and a large party has lots of ability to put new items to use (as compared to a party of 2). That doesn't include the unslotted wondrous items either, which probably won't get sold cuz it's hard to get a better handy haversack. I feel that unless your GM is a jackass, a party of 5 will get new items that are distributed around so that there's a minimum of selling high level stuff just because it's unusable. And I ran the numbers, if you're selling off stuff that's 10 levels behind, then the wealth loss is minor (0.4% of the total to be exact).
As it turns out I noticed this morning that we can slide the items for a newly generated character up one level and nearly hit the wealth of a party raised character... So for example say we're in ECL 17. At this level an average character has 483,440gp in wealth. If we generate a character with items of 19,18,17 and gold worth 17th level then we end with Total 400,00gp wealth. From level 8 on, this value hovers around 92-82% of the wealth of a character coming through all the levels in a party.
Edit: BTW, anyone can wear armor now. There's Cloth armor for wizards. So even if you got 5 set of armor, you probably can use them. That is unless it's 5 sets of plate.
- Rules for character creation (level, point buy, races)
- Fight Cycle definition
- Wealth by level amounts
I propose to put this under voting and immediately start with a playtest phase.
If we can pull it off, we may lure in as playtesters all the people willing to test their ideal builds when they'll get the books next week.
if you already do badly, you are rewarded by additional penalties, like not getting to refresh powers, no more healing surges, don't get additional action points (as you are likely to never reach a milestone), and your items don't reset? - i see this as a big disadvantage of your system. rp-wise this might be ok, but i see it as really disencouraging for players who run into a bad streak.
out of healing, out of powers, but i still need 4 vp - this looks like a nightmare to me, and is likely to give birth to tactics like that:
tactics
i resign... sorry for that but there's no chance i can win against someone with full powers...
Fight cycle, I think we are still discussing options and probably need to until everyone has the books
Wealth ... same thing.
@WB: Do you have a suggestion using the VP option and how it would interact with different ECLs if we went full 1-30? I'm still mostly on the fence about this one and have a few ideas that I'm not quite sure I can articulate yet.
@ca: i feel like a train is just hitting me - do you really suppose building coco 4e based on a single day worth of discussion and a hasty vote?
Actually, yes.
Mainly because we risk discussing things forever and getting into "ideological" arguments with little chances to be proven unless trying them the hard way.
It seems to me that the main issue is about the FC and levels. Some people came up with a possibly balanced idea and the only way to know if it works or not is to test it the hard way: ie, make a character and run the fights.
For example your objection on tactics may be true.. or may be wrong. It's hard to factor in all elements when you never played a 4th edition fight (like me, for example).
I can say that having encounter powers and at will powers wouldn't make it impossible to win a fight against an enemy. It's unlikely that all the enemies you face will use daily powers against you, and action points are pretty limited, as well.
Also, out of 2 party members, one could still have a daily power left, expecially if we go with the "random coupling" idea you come up a few posts ago.
All in all, rather than engaging in long philosophical discussions, I'd prefer some playtesting to have a better grasp of 4th mechanics and evaluate things based on some real data.
We haven't really discussed about how to deal with milestones. At the time we were talking about having the same rewards for winning and loosing, I suggested that winning count toward a milestone, and loosing wouldn't. But that was in a different framework from what's on the table right now.
If we decide to have 4 fights (win or loss) per level, then milestones should probably be treated differently for a win or a loss. At least in some way, there'd be a mechanical difference between winning and loosing.
If we decide to have the 12 VP per level, with a win worth 3 and a loss worth 2, then that's probably all the difference between winning and loosing which is needed. In any case you only fight 4-6 fights each two levels. That's not terribly long, even if you're loosing. Compare it to how many fights you need to loose in 3.5 to go up a level (the answer is about 10).
In any case you'll always have your encounter and at-will powers in every fight, so you'll never be "out of powers". And as has been mentioned, the 4E fights are thought to be rather swingy in that a couple lucky rolls can swing the outcome regardless of powers.
The way wealth is distributed has changed in 4E. It sounds like you're taking the ideas of how wealth is distributed in 3.5 and trying to apply it to 4E. This won't work very well. So as a DM in 4E, you'd need to do a lot of work to rejigger the treasure in a 3.5 adventure. The guideline is that for a party of 5 you distribute 10 "batches" of treasure per level, and that includes 4 items and wealth for 2 more. So a party at ECL10 gets wealth for 2 10th level items in addition to 4 items ranging from 11th-14th level. That's not much treasure on the way to ECL11. Basically only 6 items are distributed to a party of 5 per level. None of those items are below your level, they are all new high level items. If you only get 1 item per level and the GM gives you some crap... well then you should probably communicate with the GM a bit about that situation.
I understand that characters will get some stuff they cannot use, and there will be some amount of attrition as the old stuff becomes out of date, but I get the impression that selling newly discovered high level items isn't something that parties are expected to be doing very often. So few items are distributed, and they sell for so low, that selling items won't happen much.
Imagine... your party is 10th level, and you just got a useless 14th level item... The entirety of 10th level the whole party earns 70K gp. This useless 14th level item eats up 21K of that total, so the GM just screwed the party out of 25% of the treasure for that level.
Having looked at the treasure thing, and run the numbers, it's clear to me that gone are the days where the GM just gives you 5 +2 large greatclubs and 5 large size +2 hide armor after you take out the Ogre Chief's guards. There's not enough room in the treasure batches for that kind of thing. As a GM I'm only giving 4 magic items in 10 encounters, so it's easy for me to make them count. I give a staff to my spell casting monster, a magic shield and some magic armor to his body guard, a magic cloak to the hired rogue and I'm done putting magic items in this dungeon. All other magic items like +1 swords or +1 shields are fluff, unmentioned and unmentionable with respect to treasure for the party.
*Shrug* The more I think about it, the more clear it is. Characters are intended to survive off the treasure handed out, and stuff crafted at character level from the gp rewards. Sale of old magic items is intended to be a negligable part of the wealth of the party.
Actually, yes.
Mainly because we risk discussing things forever and getting into "ideological" arguments with little chances to be proven unless trying them the hard way.
this is called democracy, yes. hard and fast i believe is called - dictatorship? A vote without previous discussion is worthless - its mostly about
For example your objection on tactics may be true.. or may be wrong.
you have already decided for yourself it is wrong, so there's no need to talk about it anymore, right? also: this already happens now, in3.5e - why should it change if the players stay the same?
Also, out of 2 party members, one could still have a daily power left, expecially if we go with the "random coupling" idea you come up a few posts ago.
could, yes. but if you keep losing, you'll likely try to put all into one shot. miss it, and you're doomed?
All in all, rather than engaging in long philosophical discussions, I'd prefer some playtesting to have a better grasp of 4th mechanics and evaluate things based on some real data.
well, that's what i've been doing all the way since this thread started. where were all the people then? maybe i should start a preview-campaign for 4e for elders and people willing to do some 4e research, obviously that would take some time, but we've got keep on the shadowfell readily available...
@sauro - milestones: well, this was not made clear when you came up with your new proposal.
i dislike:
- having the same rewards for winning and losing
=> reason: wins count nothing more than losses, and some people will only sit out till their build peeks, with no real intention to do well before that. other people will get angry about that, since the opponents of such players are likely to save some ressources.
- having to keep on fighting without refreshing powers.
=> reason: frustration level. you should reach a milestone every two fights, no matter if you win or lose. losing in TT often means restarting from scratch, so we have an entirely different situation here, where wipes cannot really happen...
@sauro - wealth: wizards already told that items will get nerved a lot in 4e. so: maybe it's not only me judging 4e from a 3e perspective. it's not like necessarily every item will get used right away.. players might just keep them for later use if they find a reason to use them. by your interpretation, the whole keep on shadowfell adventure would be useless and the items misplaced and badly chosen.
@rith: will come back to that, need to think a bit about it first.
Having looked at the treasure thing, and run the numbers, it's clear to me that gone are the days where the GM just gives you 5 +2 large greatclubs and 5 large size +2 hide armor after you take out the Ogre Chief's guards. There's not enough room in the treasure batches for that kind of thing. As a GM I'm only giving 4 magic items in 10 encounters, so it's easy for me to make them count. I give a staff to my spell casting monster, a magic shield and some magic armor to his body guard, a magic cloak to the hired rogue and I'm done putting magic items in this dungeon. All other magic items like +1 swords or +1 shields are fluff, unmentioned and unmentionable with respect to treasure for the party.
There are also rituals to address this kind of thing. I know that if the ogre chief is using a Large Flaming Greatsword +2, a ritual can be used to turn it into a Medium Flaming Greatsword +2 at a marginal cost. At an earlier stage of development, it was mentioned that, at a slightly higher cost, you could transfer the Flaming +2 enchantment onto, say, a warhammer. Same goes for armor. So there will very rarely be treasure that is totally unusable.
Things I like so far:
- Skipping levels. The alternative is to fight cross-league using rules designed for monsters. Not only is that an unnecessarily complex rule, but it fails to capture the addition of powers. A level 10 character with +1 to everything and a level's worth of hit points is still going to be at a substantial disadvantage against a level 11 character. It also creates wonkiness where a character with an "artificial" level boost will have higher values than a character who makes it there normally.
- Static XP and wealth. It's easy, and it also balances the problem we get sometimes, especially at ECL 3, where one character will be at the beginning of the level and the other at the end, and there's a noticable wealth differential.
Thing I dislike:
- Variable fight cycles, especially ones as long as 6 fights. The main concern I have here is healing surges. If you have a Leader in the party, and you use a couple of healing potions, you probably won't have enough healing surges to last that long. The dailies and magic items are less of a concern, but the healing surges are a big one. Also, if a character ends up with an odd number of fights in a cycle, they'll get an unnatural power boost for the last fight, because they have 1 milestone's worth of stuff to last 1 fight instead of 2.
Other thoughts:
- Solo characters: I see a few ways of doing this. One is to provide free "mercenaries" to fill out the other half of the team, as wb suggested; I think we'd need 1 of each role per level (another reason to collapse levels). Another is to pair solos together randomly, the way we do ad-hoc teams now; the disadvantages are that you might get someone who doesn't synergise well with you, and then you need extra time to either write tactics or do a PbP/"live" online game. We'd still need a way to deal with an odd number of participants, so we'd probably need mercenaries anyway. A third is to allow solo characters to just be solo; based on the XP formulae, a solo character should be equivalent to 2 characters of a level 4 lower (level 5 solo vs. 2 level 1's). I'd recommend this method only under limitations (e.g. credit cost, or you need a level 5 team before being allowed to create a solo level 5 character).
- Levelling up mid-cycle: I actually think it's easier than ever. Your used stuff doesn't refresh; if you retrain a daily, the "slot" is still expended. A daily you learn from your level is unused. If you gain healing surges, they're just added in to however many you had left. I don't foresee any problems.
- Leveling up mid-cycle: I actually think it's easier than ever. Your used stuff doesn't refresh; if you retrain a daily, the "slot" is still expended. A daily you learn from your level is unused. If you gain healing surges, they're just added in to however many you had left. I don't foresee any problems.
The best way I can think to deal with this is to simply have a fight cycle be the same as the level cycle...
Any team fights till they level, then get a rest. This makes it impossible for anyone to level mid-cycle by definition.
Healing surges are something to think about if a cycle can be from 4-6 fights long. But I feel that 6 fights as the max length of a cycle is totally workable. All classes get 6 healing surges. Everyone gets one second wind/fight, so you'll only get into trouble if you start burning up your healing surges with abilities and items.
Everyone gets one second wind/fight, so you'll only get into trouble if you start burning up your healing surges with abilities and items.
...which many characters will have, including one entire role. And we're talking about allowing a limited number of healing potions. One of the playtest fights I was in, my healing surges were already starting to run a bit low.
The best way I can think to deal with this is to simply have a fight cycle be the same as the level cycle...
Healing surges are something to think about if a cycle can be from 4-6 fights long. But I feel that 6 fights as the max length of a cycle is totally workable. All classes get 6 healing surges. Everyone gets one second wind/fight, so you'll only get into trouble if you start burning up your healing surges with abilities and items.
How would quests interact with a system like this? Would people be required to do quests at the begining of a cycle to prevent leveling mid quest?
I think MWB's suggestions on leveling mid-cycle seem resonable.
The best way I can think to deal with this is to simply have a fight cycle be the same as the level cycle...
Any team fights till they level, then get a rest. This makes it impossible for anyone to level mid-cycle by definition.
But this creates either variable fight cycles or identical rewards no matter if you win or lose. I would like to avoid both of those if at all possible.
Healing surges are something to think about if a cycle can be from 4-6 fights long. But I feel that 6 fights as the max length of a cycle is totally workable. All classes get 6 healing surges. Everyone gets one second wind/fight, so you'll only get into trouble if you start burning up your healing surges with abilities and items.
Youre assuming here that PCs get healed between fights for free, which isnt as necessary as it was in 3.5.
Youre assuming here that PCs get healed between fights for free, which isnt as necessary as it was in 3.5.
It isn't as necessary, but it is necessary, IMO. If you lose your first two fights, or even come close, you won't have enough healing surges for a third. Potions don't help very much. Unless we want to go with 2FCs, PCs need to get free healing between fights.
...which many characters will have, including one entire role. And we're talking about allowing a limited number of healing potions. One of the playtest fights I was in, my healing surges were already starting to run a bit low.
Of course you're spending all your healing surges in a playtest fight... you don't get another chance to spend them if you don't do it when your character is wounded. In normal DnD, you die, you're dead. You'd do the same with all your memorized spells as well, in 3.5 if you're party is going down. CoCo is totally different. In a normal playtest fight, while you're spending action to use healing surges, you have 3 or 4 other party members who're dealing with the Ogre Chief. In CoCo, a level 1 character probably has a healing surge of 6hp, and that's about equal to one attack from an opponent. So if you're staring down the Ogre Chief mono-e-mono and spending healing surges, you're just buying time with resources and not getting ahead.
If you're not looking at permanent death, the healing surges are a possibly scarce resource. It just becomes a resource management thing. Everyone can count on having 1 surge/fight, and if your Con is high or your a certain class then you'll have extras. If you use them up too fast, that's your problem. Or you can try to save them for later when the battle swings against you early on.
It's like 7th level spells on a 13th level wizard in 3.5. If he has 3 slots and uses them all in the 1st fight, that's the player's problem with resource allocation, not a fault with the 3FC being too long.
But this creates either variable fight cycles or identical rewards no matter if you win or lose. I would like to avoid both of those if at all possible.
What do you have against a variable length fight cycle? Personally I really like it. I feel that the uncertainty of fight cycle length introduces lots of great tactical problems to deal with. Like if I'm going into fight 4, and I still have my daily on the paladin... do I use it now, or save it for fight 5? If I use it now, then I'm more likely to win now and I'll have a milestone so I get a fresh daily from an item for fight 5 and that would be my last fight... you know it's a tactical decision, because I have to figure the possibility I'll loose both and end up in a 6th fight. The uncertainty makes for better suspense and drama.
How would quests interact with a system like this? Would people be required to do quests at the beginning of a cycle to prevent leveling mid quest?
I'd think that quests can be signed up for variable length as well. The length would be limited by how close you are to the end of the level. So if you need 4 victory points to reach the end of the level, you cannot have a quest longer than 2 encounters. But if you need 7 VP to hit the next level, you can do a 3 encounter quest. Or even longer, depending on how many VP you need to reach the next level.
Of course you're spending all your healing surges in a playtest fight... you don't get another chance to spend them if you don't do it when your character is wounded.
Actually, it was because I was thinking in terms of per-encounter resources. I had a cleric and a paladin; the cleric gets Healing Word 2/encounter and the paladin (as I believed at the time) got Lay on Hands 3/day. I didn't even use Second Wind, but I still used up 3/10 Healing Surges for one character. Partly it's because the same character was getting beat up all the time, but that's likely to be true in most fights.
I'm just expressing my point of view, as you do.
I tend to quote more your posts just because yours are the ones I find more things to discuss about.
this is called democracy, yes. hard and fast i believe is called - dictatorship? A vote without previous discussion is worthless - its mostly about
No-one is trying to deprive people chances to discuss.
Just in case it wasn't clear I was proposing this sequence:
a) Decision---> b)Test---> c)Are our decision correct? Can we improve them some way? If Yes--> d) Go live. If no--> back to a)
The main advantage is that you're going to have some real feedback rather than words..
you have already decided for yourself it is wrong, so there's no need to talk about it anymore, right? also: this already happens now, in3.5e - why should it change if the players stay the same?
I just came up with a reason why I think it wouldn't be like 3.5.
In 3.5 you are toasted if you are a wizard out of spells, or facing an enemy with abilities you cannot stop some way.
In 4e you got at will and encounter powers which will be the base of your attacking capabilities. If you got just 3 dailies and you wipe them in 2 fights, how is that different from a 1st level wizard spending his 3 first level spell in 2 fights?
It's different because the said wizard got nothing left (ok, he got the xbow..), the 4e character can still rely on at will and encounter.
That's why I think a long fight cycle wouldn't prove as difficult as now.
Feel free to disagree, as no-one decided anything, mainly because no-one even played a 4e campaign.
could, yes. but if you keep losing, you'll likely try to put all into one shot. miss it, and you're doomed?
That's your tactical choice and you must be ready to face the consequences if you do.
well, that's what i've been doing all the way since this thread started. where were all the people then? maybe i should start a preview-campaign for 4e for elders and people willing to do some 4e research, obviously that would take some time, but we've got keep on the shadowfell readily available...
I really appreciated your effort in bringing news and I've costantly read this thread. Most people won't care about a new edition unless they have the books under their nose though.
A 4e campaign is long. It would be better to try non-stop fights to crunch more numbers.
I think it's imperative to test, test and test again.
It isn't as necessary, but it is necessary, IMO. If you lose your first two fights, or even come close, you won't have enough healing surges for a third. Potions don't help very much. Unless we want to go with 2FCs, PCs need to get free healing between fights.
One thing to consider is that feats seems much less tasty than before, so I can see many people spending one on Durable, which gives you 2 bonus surges.
High Con also increases your surges. I think it would be just a matter of balancing your surges over the fights.
I really encourage all of us to do some "heavy" combat playtest. Let's come up with a few characters and go with non-stop fights for a week or 2, testing this variable fight cycle idea.
I think that with 2 characters for each player 6 playtesters could be enough, and that would mean 3 pitlords as well.
That's your tactical choice and you must be ready to face the consequences if you do.
please note, that the terms strategy and tactics are very often used falsely.
Strategy: Long-term
Tactics: Short-term
So anything that is done for a new fight, is a strategical decision, and has nothing to do with tactics. Tactics are more like: "go left, go right, use second wind if..." Strategy is more like: "i need to preserve ressources for my next fight so i should limit myself to..., i want to gain as much XP as possible so i need to maximize my PC even if it costs me offensive power, i need a horse to function, so i should invest in PC sooner or later so i don't take 4 years to level"
A 4e campaign is long. It would be better to try non-stop fights to crunch more numbers.
Again: I did not want much RP, just play the encounters. - and this could be done quickly, given some basic rules like: players should look into the forums twice per day, if they can't someone else decides for them, everyone rolls their rolls themselves, etc.
I think it's imperative to test, test and test again.
well, i still can't see the difference to the tests we tried to do when the preview information was first up, and now. - it's not like that many of us actually have the books ready to use.
@sauro: about treasure: starting treasure can be made easy, as can be treasure for players leveling: just give out treasure parcels like in the dmg, freely chooseable by the player. of course, someone would have to add it up for all levels - but then it would be no more a problem, right? also, 4e has not really many expendables - the potions can be neglected or banned outright, the only stuff that could lessen your money are rituals - which i'm sure we can define a good standard-expense for each level that you gain less gp if you start at the higher levels.
@sauro: about treasure: starting treasure can be made easy, as can be treasure for players leveling: just give out treasure parcels like in the dmg, freely chooseable by the player. of course, someone would have to add it up for all levels - but then it would be no more a problem, right? also, 4e has not really many expendables - the potions can be neglected or banned outright, the only stuff that could lessen your money are rituals - which i'm sure we can define a good standard-expense for each level that you gain less gp if you start at the higher levels.
I've already done this. I have an excel spreadsheet with all the values in it calculating average treasure for each member in a party of 5. I don't think it's going to be useful for me to type the whole thing into a code block (cut&paste doesn't work). So I was trying to talk about the results, so that I only need to type up something close to a final draft.
I've already mentioned several neat observations I get when I see the tabulated party treasure. In any case once we agree on how much wealth is "lost" over the course of a level, I'll be happy to type up the code block for the table. That could be anything from about 0-40% depending on what you're looking at as "reasonable" assumptions.
also, there are different treasures for different party-sizes, so should we even start calculating with parties of 5?
I need a bunch of email accounts. Who wants this thing?
to do that, you go into your document, then hit "share" (top right) ->
on the lower left there should be an option
"Anyone can [view|edit] this document WITHOUT LOGGING IN at:"
and below, there' should be an url, like
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRawkYWWe-sYii0WGkVDJWw&hl=en
naturally, i'd advise to only share and not allow anyone who happens to come across this file to edit it - this demo above is editable by the public, though.
also, you could only hit the publish button -
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pRawkYWWe-sYii0WGkVDJWw
this would only give the current version to the public, not your working draft.
i really like google docs - it gets really easy, if you take the 20 minutes to learn its features. ;)
@crazy: i was just miffed about some of the tendencies i see here - especially since i feel i have done the most 4e fights(maybe mwb, don't know for sure how many he did @dndxp) thus far of all people discussing here.
Fine. I just wanted to make sure you didn't see any personal attack behind my posts. Case closed ;)
please note, that the terms strategy and tactics are very often used falsely.
Strategy: Long-term
Tactics: Short-term
So anything that is done for a new fight, is a strategical decision, and has nothing to do with tactics. Tactics are more like: "go left, go right, use second wind if..." Strategy is more like: "i need to preserve ressources for my next fight so i should limit myself to..., i want to gain as much XP as possible so i need to maximize my PC even if it costs me offensive power, i need a horse to function, so i should invest in PC sooner or later so i don't take 4 years to level"
What I meant was simply that one should always be careful when using his resources, knowing that there could be more fights. If he's going to take a chance and risk, well.. it's up to him.
Abysmal chances won't keep people from playing the lottery, it seems.
Again: I did not want much RP, just play the encounters. - and this could be done quickly, given some basic rules like: players should look into the forums twice per day, if they can't someone else decides for them, everyone rolls their rolls themselves, etc.
well, i still can't see the difference to the tests we tried to do when the preview information was first up, and now. - it's not like that many of us actually have the books ready to use.
So I'd say we agree. Let's start with these fights. We need just a few members for that.
on the books: while it's true that not everyone got them, there are some readily available information which would help in creating a character already on gleemax forum. For example that's a 1st level wizard already posted in CO forum, and we could "borrow" the character.
I'm going to buy the PH next Saturday.
So I'd say we agree. Let's start with these fights. We need just a few members for that.
well, just bring them on. i can provide the premade characters found in it:
-halfling rogue
-dwarf fighter
-human wizard
-halfelf cleric
-dragonborn paladin
there's also a web-enhancement available:
-tiefling warlord
each of those characters comes ready-to-play with lvl 2 and lvl 3 options already chosen by the designers.
of course, there'd be also the option to make one up of your own or use the preview characters.
i'll be waiting for further elder input or mwb on this topic.
on the books: while it's true that not everyone got them, there are some readily available information which would help in creating a character already on gleemax forum. For example that's a 1st level wizard already posted in CO forum, and we could "borrow" the character.
well, i'd rather not do such a thing before the official release date - but 4e will hit shelves this week anyway, so no need to do it that 3 days earlier illegally.
Also, i guess we will still be using something like OGL here, else it would be very hard to check on every character - let's see what the new license exactly does - it will be hitting the internet once the books are out. (said to be the same date, but we will see)
I'm going to buy the PH next Saturday.
my gift set is preordered since a long time... let's see when it really arrives.
I'd say you and whitebaron could be the pitlords/campaignlords depending on how we want to handle it, based on your experience with 4e fights.
I'd be ready to run some characters, what about the others?
I have started creating a 4e conversion of Dentik - but I'm finding the information in the pre-release compendium to be too lacking to go far with it.
I like victory points and the extended rest at the start of each level, but I'll rather use 2 for a win and 1 for a loss, and level up after 8 points. Not really an issue, it's just more appealing to make victories count really more than defeats.
What about let the nexus function half-way? At the end of the encounter you are brought to full bloodied status (half hp's) so it's up to you to spend healing surges or not to recover (else many characters will use their second wind once per encounter and that's all, they'll end up with most healing surges unused)
If you aren't bloodied or dying, the nexus doesn't heal you (it only removes penalties)
I don't think that characters should die even if they reach 0 hp's so there is not need to let them rest after a resurrection.
At 0 hp a character loses, but doesn't die.
This could be one issue with VPs - though in general I am in support of them.
Actually, I am half-inclined to go with a more "radical" route and suggest we go back to the "dark ages" of the CoCo - as in - you level up if you win, you don't if you lose. No fight cycle, no restrictions - nothing.
This has the benefit of letting us see a wide array of levels quickly and to curtail things as we go. It has the major downside that "development" goes straight out the window and if dailies are as powerful as they seem to be - it might just become a "Use Daily, Use Encounter, Use Encounter - if opponent is still up - start using at wills..." I'm not sold on it - but it might not be a bad idea if only for the playtesting we are in now.
Ok could someone summarize whats been decided for coco4e.. I know about it being a new City, on a new Continent (personnelly i would prefer to use the Pirate Isles)
And thank you in advance..
Basically we will have a new continent and a neutral location on it where people fights.
There is a subgame proposal which would like to have different nations on that continent and people should be able to choose which nation to support.
Still, there's no final decision on the subgame rules.
Right now there are proposals on the Fight Cycle.
1) One side would like to have variable fight cycles and leveling up based on Victory Points (4 wins or 6 losses at most, FC lasts until you level).
2) Some others dislikes variable FC and proposed a 4FC
3) Some people came up with the idea of equal rewards, either you win or lose, and a 4FC.
4) TelinArtho proposed that you level up if you win once.
Sorry for not reporting all the people who sustain one PoV or the other.
Another proposal is to level up 2 levels at a time to have less dispersion of active characters (15 leagues instead of 30)
Right now we'll move into Playtests to have more datas about tactics writing and use of resources in a typical fight.
We'll have a playtest campaign running and several playtest fights, as well. The target is to be ready on July, 9th.
Some of you may have noticed i am not active lately.. I am in a VA hospital in Upstate NY and I get 1 hr a day to be online.. makes it hard to catch up.. But I go home on June 20th.. and My bday is June 22 (i get the books for turning 43)..
What's a VA hospital? I hope you are fine, though.
Just ordered my books. Was hoping that I might be able to gank an early copy from the local bookstore - but they were good... At least this way I end up saving about the cost of one of the books anyway.
I'm really liking Barnes & Noble here...List Price of $104.95, Preorder Price of $68.21, -10% Member Bonus, -20% Online Member Registration Bonus, Free Expedited Shipping, I pay $50.83. Total Savings vs. List Price: $54.12.
Edit: And it'd be even less if I didn't live in the same state as B&N's offices, since then I could avoid sales tax.
What's a VA hospital? I hope you are fine, though.
VA = Veteran's Administration
What's a VA hospital? I hope you are fine, though.
Veteran's Administration for Post Traumatic Stress (combat related).
Just learning how to adapt to it so i don't go off the deep end..
Edit>> Dang Ninja's
Veteran's Administration for Post Traumatic Stress (combat related).
Just learning how to adapt to it so i don't go off the deep end..
Edit>> Dang Ninja's
My best wishes for a prompt recovery! Never give up.
I'm really liking Barnes & Noble here...List Price of $104.95, Preorder Price of $68.21, -10% Member Bonus, -20% Online Member Registration Bonus, Free Expedited Shipping, I pay $50.83. Total Savings vs. List Price: $54.12.
Edit: And it'd be even less if I didn't live in the same state as B&N's offices, since then I could avoid sales tax.
I just don't have the member bonuses there - but I also had gift cards from my brother (2 of them) and my sister in law (1 more) to cover $70 of the $71.64 I paid...
Net charge out of my pocket: $1.64
LF
Attributes
STR 10 (+1) [00 pts] [10 Base]
DEX 18 (+4) [09 pts] [16 Base, +2 racial]
CON 12 (+2) [02 pts] [12 Base]
INT 10 (+0) [00 pts] [10 Base]
WIS 10 (+0) [00 pts] [10 Base]
CHA 18 (+4) [09 pts] [16 Base, +2 racial]
Miscellaneous Statistics
Hit Points: 24[1 HD] [12(warlock 1) + 12(Con)]
Healing Surges: 8/day
Armor Class: 16[10 Base, +4 Dex, +2 Armor]
Fortitude Defense: 10[10 Base]
Reflex Defense: 15[10 Base, +4 Dex,+1 Warlock]
Will Defense: 15[10 Base, +4 Cha,+1 Warlock]
Initiative: +4
Speed (Land): 6 squares
Class Features:
Eldritch blast
Eldritch Pact (Fey)
Eyebite: You know the eyebite at-will spell.
Misty Step: When an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is
reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, you can
immediately teleport 3 squares as a free action.
Prime Shot :If none of your allies are nearer to your target than you are, you receive a +1 bonus to ranged attack rolls against that target
Shadow Walk :On your turn, if you move at least 3 squares away from where you started your turn, you gain concealment until the end of your next turn
Warlock’s Curse :minor action +1d6
At-Will Powers:
Eldritch blast
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 10.... Dark Energy bolt.
Cha vs Ref
Hit: 1d10+4 force damage
Eye bite
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 10.... Mental Assault.
Cha vs Will
Hit: 1d6+4 psychic damage
Encounter Powers:
WitchFire
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 10.... Mystical Energy.
Cha vs Will
Hit: 2d6+4 Fire damage,and the target takes a –2 penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn
Magic Missile
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 20.... Fluffy bolt of force.
Int vs Ref
Hit: 2d4 force damage
Second Chance
Personnel, Immediate interrupt
force an enemy to roll the attack again(-2 penalty). The enemy uses the second roll, even if it’s lower.
Daily Power:
Curse of the Dark Dream
Standard Action, Ranged 10
Cha vs Will.
Hit: 3d8+4 psychic damage, And Slide the target 3 squares
Sustain Minor: Slide target 1 square wheather you hit or miss (save ends)
Feats:
Halfling Agility: When you use your halfling second chance ability, the attacker takes a –2 penalty to the new attack roll.
Skills:
Arcana +5
Streetwise +9
Thievery +11 (+13 with tools)
Insight +5
Racial Features
Second Chance
BEING SMALL
*You can’t use two-handed weapons, such as greatswords and halberds.
* When you use a versatile weapon, such as a longsword, you must use it two-handed, but you don’t deal additional damage for doing so.
Equipment
Leather Armor +2 Ac, 25 gp
Arcane Implement-- Rod 0, 12 gp
Thieving tools (Varies), 20 gp
Attributes
STR 10 (+1) [00 pts] [10 Base]
DEX 18 (+4) [09 pts] [16 Base, +2 racial]
CON 12 (+2) [02 pts] [12 Base]
INT 10 (+0) [00 pts] [10 Base]
WIS 10 (+0) [00 pts] [10 Base]
CHA 18 (+4) [09 pts] [16 Base, +2 racial]
Miscellaneous Statistics
Hit Points: 24[1 HD] [12(warlock 1) + 12(Con)]
Healing Surges: 8/day
Armor Class: 16[10 Base, +4 Dex, +2 Armor]
Fortitude Defense: 10[10 Base]
Reflex Defense: 15[10 Base, +4 Dex,+1 Warlock]
Will Defense: 15[10 Base, +4 Cha,+1 Warlock]
Initiative: +4
Speed (Land): 6 squares
Class Features:
Eldritch blast
Eldritch Pact (Fey)
Eyebite: You know the eyebite at-will spell.
Misty Step: When an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is
reduced to 0 hit points or fewer, you can
immediately teleport 3 squares as a free action.
Prime Shot :If none of your allies are nearer to your target than you are, you receive a +1 bonus to ranged attack rolls against that target
Shadow Walk :On your turn, if you move at least 3 squares away from where you started your turn, you gain concealment until the end of your next turn
Warlock’s Curse :minor action +1d6
At-Will Powers:
Eldritch blast
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 10.... Dark Energy bolt.
Cha vs Ref
Hit: 1d10+4 force damage
Eye bite
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 10.... Mental Assault.
Cha vs Will
Hit: 1d6+4 psychic damage
Encounter Powers:
WitchFire
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 10.... Mystical Energy.
Cha vs Will
Hit: 2d6+4 Fire damage,and the target takes a –2 penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn
Magic Missile
Ranged basic attack, Standard Action, Ranged 20.... Fluffy bolt of force.
Int vs Ref
Hit: 2d4 force damage
Second Chance
Personnel, Immediate interrupt
force an enemy to roll the attack again(-2 penalty). The enemy uses the second roll, even if it’s lower.
Daily Power:
Curse of the Dark Dream
Standard Action, Ranged 10
Cha vs Will.
Hit: 3d8+4 psychic damage, And Slide the target 3 squares
Sustain Minor: Slide target 1 square wheather you hit or miss (save ends)
Feats:
Halfling Agility: When you use your halfling second chance ability, the attacker takes a –2 penalty to the new attack roll.
Skills:
Arcana +5
Streetwise +9
Thievery +11 (+13 with tools)
Insight +5
Racial Features
Second Chance
BEING SMALL
*You can’t use two-handed weapons, such as greatswords and halberds.
* When you use a versatile weapon, such as a longsword, you must use it two-handed, but you don’t deal additional damage for doing so.
Equipment
Leather Armor +2 Ac, 25 gp
Arcane Implement-- Rod 0, 12 gp
Thieving tools (Varies), 20 gp
- Dazed: Take only Std, Move, OR minor action
- Weakened: All damage is halved
When you have those two conditions on you, and a save doesn't end them, you want to get away so that you can use your full range of abilities. Also this dragon was a lurker not a brute. so it was better at being sneaky. If Joe and I had been Pros, we would have brought it away from the water, then marked it.
The darkness is also a sustain minor, so he couldn't sustain it and attack while dazed. We were doing a pretty good job of keeping that thing down.
We also drew the dragon out of the darkness by using some of the natural cover surrounding the area, so it couldn't attack us while it stayed in the darkness. MWB was rolling bad on the recharges as well. Believe me he was trying to kill at least one of us.
also, simply marking would not force it to stay near you. darkness is all it needs to retreat - it should not use it overly to attack, maybe that's the problem. also, even solo monsters should have some minions or other helpers... they quite clearly say so in the encounter building section of the dmg.
what where the character levels again? x* lvl y vs a lvl 11 solo black dragon?
--edit--
note on the black dragon: i believe its stat entry is wrong. should be +15 on the breath weapon and +18 on the bite, giving it 10% more to-hit on both of those attacks. just look at the other dragons (lvl 4 and higher) for comparison... i believe we'll get quite some erratas on some monsters...
this was 4*12lvl. Most of the time the mark was kept because the Warlord (MC into wizard) was dropping slow effects, or the fighter would use 'come and get it' forcing the dragon to shift back up into melee. We didn't keep it marked long, heck we didn't even bloody it before it finally got away. We were also rolling like fanatics and hitting even when we were in the darkness sometimes.
After it got away, things got harder, but we figured out the Warlord/Fighter tech to keep the dragon locked down. Then it was just a matter of dice ... and time ...
this is EL 13 then, something a lot more like it. also, i dislike basing encounters on budget - they tend to get to easy once the party settles in (tactically), like you can see in the shadowfell encounters already played.
next time, please write a combat report. ;)
--edit--
another note: a dragon should be a hard encounter. so if you have a budget of 7000*4/10=2800 xp for the jump from 12 to 13, the dragon encounter should be well worth from 3500-4500 xp, and some other encounters before or after get tuned down by using lots of minions and such stuff to keep up the challenge, but reduce the xp gain. also, i believe the dragon should use up maybe the whole 2 encounters worth of xp, just because it is an iconic monster - you won't be able to fight such a thing on a daily basis, and you should feel that in every move it does.
Additional things learned
- 4 year olds can play 4e. Even if they want to be the robot mini as a rogue, just give them cards and explain 'sword = attack' and then ask them to pick one.
Additional things learned
- 4 year olds can play 4e. Even if they want to be the robot mini as a rogue, just give them cards and explain 'sword = attack' and then ask them to pick one.
My kids sometimes join my group for the first half-hour of the game (when we start before their bedtime). Heck - when I play Battletech (online) - my daughter tends to pick out armies for me to use... (she's been quite good at picking winners I might add...).
And for what its worth - my first time playing D&D was when I was 5...
question about the mass of "updates", previously called erratas:
what will be the coco stance for this in 4e?
already the half-elf was pretty substantially changed - and this could be no mere coincidence or printing error.
(half elves now get an at-will power from another class instead of one normal at-will power, they no longer gain it as an encounter power, which is pretty silly - the word dilletante fitted better to the at-will-turns-encounter-scheme.)
What?
The revision is minor, and made to reflect the intent of the rules. People were picking up things like Lay on Hands, when it was supposed to be an at-will power from the normal list of selectable 1st-level at-will attack powers. It's still usable once per encounter.
But yes, we will be adopting the errata. As near as I can tell, all of the errata is intended to correct obvious errors or ambiguities.
i already start hating whoever does those erratas again. they should really colorcode it -
Replace “an at-will power” with “a 1st-level at-will attack power.”
this read to me like it was the whole wording of the dilletante feature...
what it meant was:
+a 1st-level at-will attack power.
-an at-will power
and i really hate this being necessary - the intent was pretty clear -
seems like one really needs to ALWAYS state that hamsters are not to be dried in the microwave ....
seems like one really needs to ALWAYS state that hamsters are not to be dried in the microwave ....
you don't dry your hamsters in the Microwave???? But i was told Everyone does that... *eyes McJarvis*
but in all honestly.. i wish the erratas were done so they didn't have to be decoded to read
seems like one really needs to ALWAYS state that hamsters are not to be dried in the microwave ....
Oh you can dry Hamsters in the microwave, so long as long as you put tin-foil hats on them so they're brains don't get scrambled.
This way the spell deals the full amount of damage, but is balanced by the fact that it takes time until the fireball reaches its destiny.
2) I think Magic Missile should always hit even if it will cause only int dmg.
There are enough powers that cause dmg without hitting, and I don't understand the reason for changing the spell.
Attacks not auto hitting:
I think one thing they wanted to move away from was having a battle of 20!s vs 1!s. So everything has a chance to hit, but there are also no longer any spells/abilities that make you immune to one type of effect (or at least multiple attacks against the same thing). Damage also feels scaled way down. I doubt we will see much in the way of 70+ hp crits till 20s or so when some of the 5W stuff starts to kick in.
Some of it is that there is just a need to play a few times to get a feel for the system before making comments. I personally like the balance that there is between all the classes in that each class is useful.
I doubt we will be doing many house rules to the existing spells/prayers/exploits. Those are more likely to take place at a TT setting.
- fight till you win twice , then +2 lvl?, vps? - if so, how many of them are needed?
when would milestones be?
- milestone every 2 fights?
- milestone after each win?
- milestone after two wins?
just asking because: if you do things like that, daily powers will still be spammed as they would in a 1FC. after all, their damage output is much higher, and you've got lots to gain when winning. Only doing a milestone on winning should obviously not be an option, since this would make weak characters even weaker.
- A milestone is after 2 encounters(win or lose).
- You need 3 victory points to gain a level. Winning nets you a point, losing half a point. => 3-6 fights needed to level up
Yes you can spam your action points and dailys in the first fight, but then you still have to win 2 fights until you level up, which wont be easy.
And yes, I still think its a good idea to skip all the even leagues and have everyone gain 2 levels after each FC.
The solution is not perfect, but I think it can work well enough and its the best one so far.
Also, the idea of "until you lose or level up" fight cycles seems fairly viable to me.
While I agree that variable FCs are viable, I have a small suggestion that might make things work: You continue the cycle until you choose to rest. When you rest, that team cannot be paired that week. While it allows people to be "always fresh" for good win/loss ratios, it slows them down considerably, as they have 1/2 as many fights, and doesn't cause losing teams to become less effective. Obviously, a "free" rest on leveling would be a good idea.
Bad idea.
A character should not get any advantages or disadvantages because of an action the player does. The only way I can see voluntary resting work if it resets your victory points to 0. That way a character that has lost 2 times and used up his dailys and action points can reset his FC, no harm done.
But we really cant have characters that blow all their dailys EVERY fight they do.
Bad idea.
A character should not get any advantages or disadvantages because of an action the player does. The only way I can see voluntary resting work if it resets your victory points to 0. That way a character that has lost 2 times and used up his dailys and action points can reset his FC, no harm done.
But we really cant have characters that blow all their dailys EVERY fight they do.
Then why does 3.5 make crafting magic items take up activations? That's a fairly clear correlation between player time investment and increased power. While it does require some investment in-character and an in-character cost, the biggest cost for high-level crafters is months of inactivity, with the player either losing credits or activating fewer characters.
For that matter, credits themselves are a way to boost a character's power based on a player's investment of time.
I'm not saying my idea is perfect. But don't dismiss it out of hand for illogical reasons.
Then why does 3.5 make crafting magic items take up activations? That's a fairly clear correlation between player time investment and increased power. While it does require some investment in-character and an in-character cost, the biggest cost for high-level crafters is months of inactivity, with the player either losing credits or activating fewer characters.
Thats a concept I´ve been fighting for some time now.
For that matter, credits themselves are a way to boost a character's power based on a player's investment of time.
I also argued that things that increase the power of characters(UA variants, custom magic items, etc) shouldnt cost credits(either allow them or ban them for all) and only things that help a player without increasing the power of the character(higher level entry, Quest, campaigns, etc) should.
Unfortunately I wasnt able to convince enough people for that change but I really hope that now with the start of a new CoCo we dont make the same mistakes again.
Thats a concept I´ve been fighting for some time now.
I also argued that things that increase the power of characters(UA variants, custom magic items, etc) shouldnt cost credits(either allow them or ban them for all) and only things that help a player without increasing the power of the character(higher level entry, Quest, campaigns, etc) should.
Unfortunately I wasnt able to convince enough people for that change but I really hope that now with the start of a new CoCo we dont make the same mistakes again.
Fair enough. I'll stand down from my idea. I still support a fight cycle that lasts until you lose or level. It acts to bring characters closer in power, rather than further apart. Most of the other variable FCs tend to favour the already powerful.
as for credits: campaigns and quest, it should be, yes. still, one does not go that often on quests and campaigns, so most people would just stop pitlording because their credits start to pile up (aka: people like me,48° left going into 4e) and they can't even spend them with quests (doing 2 quests every week to keep your credits at +0 is nothing i'd embrace or even enjoy)
http://www.wizards.com/d20
It looks like the only material they are making available now are the names of powers/monsters and the syntax used for various things such as power blocks and magic items. Bit of a bummer to not have a quick web reference for material anymore....
Nimbus
Ahh the Nimbus, it solves so many things under the rules of 3.x. While we don’t have to have the Nimbus in our new city, but there is a sense that there might need to be something.
Options:
1) As it functions now: Full healing, no healing surges
- Pros: Never start a fight without being a full hps.
- Cons: Reduces the class features of having a high number of healing surges or healing surge feats.
2) Nimbus functions as a booster to healing: Healing surges function at double strength or 1/3 of hp or other selected fraction of total hp or variation on HS value. This function (or any function that we choose where a character has to use healing surges outside of combat) would run into the question of what to do if a character runs out of healing? The options would be to have the character fight with less than full hps, or to have the Nimbus augment the healing. I think this option would work well with a variable fight cycle option.
- Pro: Does not limit classes/races/feats with healing surge augmentation.
- Con: What happens if a character runs out of HS
(If there was the variable fight cycle a character who ran out of HS would be forced to extended rest or fight with low hp. This has the side effect of not ‘hording’ daily attack powers for a ‘nova’ fight.)
3) Nimbus will heal ‘spare’ hp that is less than a HS value: This assumes that there is some form of #2 is in effect, but could be optional. Ex. If your HS value is 20 hp and you are down say … 5 hps. Rather than having to spend a HS, the Nimbus would heal this value
- Pro: Deals with the issue of ‘spare change’ hps so that gladiators don’t have to deal with hp bookkeeping.
- Con: Free Healing? Other?
Options:
1) As it functions now: Full healing, no healing surges
- Pros: Never start a fight without being a full hps.
- Cons: Reduces the class features of having a high number of healing surges or healing surge feats.
2) Nimbus functions as a booster to healing: Healing surges function at double strength or 1/3 of hp or other selected fraction of total hp or variation on HS value. This function (or any function that we choose where a character has to use healing surges outside of combat) would run into the question of what to do if a character runs out of healing? The options would be to have the character fight with less than full hps, or to have the Nimbus augment the healing. I think this option would work well with a variable fight cycle option.
- Pro: Does not limit classes/races/feats with healing surge augmentation.
- Con: What happens if a character runs out of HS
(If there was the variable fight cycle a character who ran out of HS would be forced to extended rest or fight with low hp. This has the side effect of not ‘hording’ daily attack powers for a ‘nova’ fight.)
3) Nimbus will heal ‘spare’ hp that is less than a HS value: This assumes that there is some form of #2 is in effect, but could be optional. Ex. If your HS value is 20 hp and you are down say … 5 hps. Rather than having to spend a HS, the Nimbus would heal this value
- Pro: Deals with the issue of ‘spare change’ hps so that gladiators don’t have to deal with hp bookkeeping.
- Con: Free Healing? Other?
Nimbus and Dying in Combat
1) The Nimbus
i believe, the nimbus should be still there, maybe with different name (new edition, other functions),
and I'd propose the following: the pitlord has to deduct 1 healing surge in your summary, if you are below max hitpoints. always 1 healing surge, no matter how injured you are - the nimbus basically works as a super-empowered healing word.
This also gets rid of things like "how to deal with a party that has healing words, can they take lots of short rests?"
Which brings me to another pretty annoying fact: Death rolls. If there are two dead characters, and the others are still evenly matched, this is mass rolling for the pitlord, and a pretty useless one at that:
What about a house rule that dead gladiators stabilize automatically, with neither the option to return to live with a natural 20, nor the option to die with 3 unsuccessful rolls.
1) The Nimbus
i believe, the nimbus should be still there, maybe with different name (new edition, other functions),
and I'd propose the following: the pitlord has to deduct 1 healing surge in your summary, if you are below max hitpoints. always 1 healing surge, no matter how injured you are - the nimbus basically works as a super-empowered healing word.
This also gets rid of things like "how to deal with a party that has healing words, can they take lots of short rests?"
Which brings me to another pretty annoying fact: Death rolls. If there are two dead characters, and the others are still evenly matched, this is mass rolling for the pitlord, and a pretty useless one at that:
What about a house rule that dead gladiators stabilize automatically, with neither the option to return to live with a natural 20, nor the option to die with 3 unsuccessful rolls.
1) The Nimbus
i believe, the nimbus should be still there, maybe with different name (new edition, other functions),
and I'd propose the following: the pitlord has to deduct 1 healing surge in your summary, if you are below max hitpoints. always 1 healing surge, no matter how injured you are - the nimbus basically works as a super-empowered healing word.
This also gets rid of things like "how to deal with a party that has healing words, can they take lots of short rests?"
agreed
Which brings me to another pretty annoying fact: Death rolls. If there are two dead characters, and the others are still evenly matched, this is mass rolling for the pitlord, and a pretty useless one at that:
What about a house rule that dead gladiators stabilize automatically, with neither the option to return to live with a natural 20, nor the option to die with 3 unsuccessful rolls.
Im not sure about that one. Rolling maximum 2 extra d20ies without any modifiers each round isnt that much of a deal IMHO. I dont think its necessary to houserule this one. But Im not extremely opposed to the idea either.
2a)Fight Cycle
First of all, i want to say that this is dependent not only on how we level, but also how we acquire milestones.
My proposal is still: 2 fights = 1 milestone. (no matter win or lose)
-- reason: no additional penalty for doing bad in a fight should be imposed...
agreed
I'd like the idea of Variable Fight Cycle most if:
-a) There'd be some bonus for going on longer and leveling does not stop you
-b) OR there'd be some malus for running out of HS and rest.
Leveling should stop your Fight Cycle. While we probably could come up with a solution how midcycle leveling works I dont think that it is necessary to tap into that mess.
2b) Leveling
While i can see that it might be necessary to limit the number of leagues, i don't like the idea of entering paragon or epic tiers already "2 levels in" - this should be something like a big change. Playing mostly even levels is preferable for the bonuses you get there (feats, +1 due to level etc.)
Thus, i can see those as a nice options:
- play levels 2,4,6,8,10,11,12,14,16,18,20,21,22,24,26,28,30 (17 leagues)
- play levels 2,4,6,8,11,12,14,16,18,21,22,24,26,28,30 (15 leagues)
just looking at powers gained, i believe these levels should be a fixture, though: (which kinda invalidates my second model)
2(starting)
4,8,10(power swap-feats)
11(start of paragon)
12(first paragon power)
20(paragon super-power)
21(start of epic)
24(epic power)
30(the final stage)
I dont see much of a difference between entering the Paragon Path at lvl11 or directly at 12(you just also get the Paragon path utility power), but why not simply use all the odd levels instead?
1,3,5,7,9,...
either way, youre always getting 2 levels worth of abilities at once. I dont see much of a problem there.
2c) Victory Points
Advancing at half pace when losing feels about right. whether this is expressed in VP XP oder whatever, is not important.
agreed
2d) Equipment & Bookkeeping
The Rules for equipping higher level characters are crap. - one does not always want to have only 3 very powerful items and money for some others.
Since the Magic Items section does not provide for switching items like the Magic Item Compendium did, we should really give out only a fixed GP,
worth the Items he should get. (Item Level cap: Your Level+1, Most likely extensible to +2/+3 by using credits?)
agreed
Summarized: My Proposal
Extended Rests can be taken whenever the players want to, but it is only free if you leveled the fight before. (so most players will want to rest when they level, but not necessarily everyone)
Win: 2 VP
Lose: 1 VP
agreed
League-up: 6 VP, or 8 VP if entering a new tier (i can easily see this as something like 5@Heroic, 6@Paragon, 7@Epic, too, helps keeping the faster advancing players on a similar pace)
Extended Rest: -2VP @Heroic, -3VP@Paragon, -4 VP@Epic, Free@L-Up.
Here I have a problem: I dont hink its a good idea to increase the number of necessary VPs to advance a level. You dont get more Healing Surge(at least not significantly, except your pushing you Con all the time) so I dont think you will be able to pull of more fights without an extended rest. Similary the penalty for an extra extended rest(an Idea I basically like) should be the same for all tiers. Also this penalty shouldnt get you below 0VP though.
Leagues played: 2,4,6,8,10,11,12,14,16,18,20,21,22,24,26,28,30 (17 leagues)
as noted above, I prefere all the odd leagues(15 total) If there are enough players, we can maybe expand this further, but I doubt that will happen.
Equipment: since almost no expendables are present at the moment, skip them altogether. Also, don't have players track things like Arrows, Bolts, Torches or other minor items. (but have them put it onto their sheets for encumbrance...)
give out equipment according to your Level as Gold worth Item+1,Item,2*Item-1 (the dmg method translates into gold), item level cap: Level+1. No other limits should be necessary.
agreed
-option a: If you level, you can choose freely for the full GP value, your item value will have to be within the quota for your level. (no bookkeeping involved, only need is to check the totals)
-option b: If you level, you get all the difference to the last level in gold - but since you can only sell at 1/5th value, you need to plan ahead for your items. Upgrading of course, is possible. (more bookkeeping, but less item cherry picking for just some levels)
I prefere option a. Everything that removes bookkeeping is a good thing. I dont believe there will be many abuses.
Nimbus: heals back up to full and removes any diseases, poisons, conditions at the cost of 1 HS. Healing is mandatory even if you are missing only 1 HP.
If you don't have that healing surge, you can either take an extended Rest, or a -1 death penalty as described in the PHB.
Sounds good
I´ll comment on the rest of that a bit later when I have more time
Im not sure about that one. Rolling maximum 2 extra d20ies without any modifiers each round isnt that much of a deal IMHO. I dont think its necessary to houserule this one. But Im not extremely opposed to the idea either.
the problem i see with death rolls is this: reviving characters gives a huge shift in power, it could basically change the outcome of a complete tactic if someone was specially lucky. that's why i dislike it for our format.
Leveling should stop your Fight Cycle. While we probably could come up with a solution how midcycle leveling works I dont think that it is necessary to tap into that mess.
mwb already said that you just have x encounter, x daily expended - if you swap the power, it still stays expended. if you swap an unused power, it is still unused. new powers are always unused. this would be better trackable than it is now with casters.
I dont see much of a difference between entering the Paragon Path at lvl11 or directly at 12(you just also get the Paragon path utility power), but why not simply use all the odd levels instead?
1,3,5,7,9,...
either way, youre always getting 2 levels worth of abilities at once. I dont see much of a problem there.
my main idea here is, to keep characters a bit longer at levels that are special. first entering paragon/epic is something special, and usually harder at that. (need more xp)
Here I have a problem: I dont hink its a good idea to increase the number of necessary VPs to advance a level. You dont get more Healing Surge(at least not significantly, except your pushing you Con all the time) so I dont think you will be able to pull of more fights without an extended rest. Similary the penalty for an extra extended rest(an Idea I basically like) should be the same for all tiers. Also this penalty shouldnt get you below 0VP though.
i don't see a problem here. basically, i've only made heroic a tad easier and epic a tad harder (max difference: 1 fight). # of Healing surges should not be as limiting to these rules as you believe them to be. (6/6/6 or 5/6/7 is not that different - basically you can reach 5/6 and 6/7 within the same fight.)
I agree that the increased penalty for taking an extended Rest seems a bit harsh. maybe tune it down to 1/1/2 or 2/2/3 - but you get a lot more power back on epic than on heroic if you rest, and this is something i wanted to reflect.
Also, the +2 VP to gain a new tier might be interesting, but i agree that this is overly complex. => get rid of that idea.
I prefere option a. Everything that removes bookkeeping is a good thing. I dont believe there will be many abuses.
we'll see, and if this becomes an issue, there'll likely be an elder vote to ban/change it ;)
the problem i see with death rolls is this: reviving characters gives a huge shift in power, it could basically change the outcome of a complete tactic if someone was specially lucky. that's why i dislike it for our format.
Ideally, I'd like to avoid additional house rules whenever possible. I admit a revived character is a big shift in power, but this isn't the only way that happens. A heal skill check (with an unused second wind) or any healing power usable on an ally does the exact same thing. Why remove this innate power from everyone (and only leave certain classes with the ability to revive others) when its not necessary. Sure its random, but isn't that the nature of the game?
I'd say leave the dying rules as is.
my main idea here is, to keep characters a bit longer at levels that are special. first entering paragon/epic is something special, and usually harder at that. (need more xp)
Why is the level just entering a tier more special than the level just leaving a tier? Or in the middle of the tier when you've actually got paragon or epic level equipment as opposed to still mostly heroic or paragon when you enter?
I'd rather see a simple rule that can be expressed in a single sentence that doesn't require a table. Someone is going to level their character straight to 12, or accidently add +1 to all the level depend values when they go to 11 because thats what they've done the last 4-5 times.
I'd actually suggest all even levels as opposed to odd, simply because it includes the final level, 30. Just feels weird stopping at 29.
i don't see a problem here. basically, i've only made heroic a tad easier and epic a tad harder (max difference: 1 fight). # of Healing surges should not be as limiting to these rules as you believe them to be. (6/6/6 or 5/6/7 is not that different - basically you can reach 5/6 and 6/7 within the same fight.)
I agree that the increased penalty for taking an extended Rest seems a bit harsh. maybe tune it down to 1/1/2 or 2/2/3 - but you get a lot more power back on epic than on heroic if you rest, and this is something i wanted to reflect.
Also, the +2 VP to gain a new tier might be interesting, but i agree that this is overly complex. => get rid of that idea.
If there's no real difference between 5, 6, and 7, why make them different in the first place, other than extra complexity? The DMG suggests 8-10 encounters make up a level, which doesn't change from tier to tier. It also won't bring people together level wise, because both the fast and slow levelers still need to get the same number of VP to get to the same level.
Make it a single number (say 6) and you'll find fewer mistakes happening. (Not to mention a shorter rules page new players need to read through).
The problem I see with extended rests at will: You're going to have people who only care about record going nova in hard fights, winning, then taking an extended rest afterwards, rinsing and repeating. If you can actually level this way (i.e. win = 2, lose = 1, extend rest = -1) you will see people going nova every fight and just taking 6 sessions to level with their perfect record. Unless they're up against someone doing the same, which takes something out of the strategy involved.
A skill in 4th edition is the ability to ration your abilities correctly. If you go nova in a fight, there *should* be consequences. As long as healing between fights is sensibly handled, I don't think at will extended rests are necessary. Worst case is 5 more fights until you get your abilities back (and only 1 more fight until you get action points back). If your opponent is rationing appropriately, each fight is only down 1 (or maybe 2) dailies. And you've still got at-wills and encounter powers.
we'll see, and if this becomes an issue, there'll likely be an elder vote to ban/change it ;)
I agree, no book keeping is a big plus. Character sheets can be kept much shorter if every used arrow and potions doesn't need to be tracked. And accounting mistakes will become much rarer. Expendables will need their own rules, either nothing above a certain value, or a max % of your level's cash can be spent on them, or simply saying no to them.
epic challenges should feel harder, reaching a new tier should feel harder - both is reflected in the XP tables(11 fights for 10->11, 12 fights for 20->21) and also the monsters in the dmg get harder, since they advance at +1/lvl and players at around 0.8/lvl(static 0.5+ability increases), which naturally makes the difference in epic the greatest.
I just wanted to apply the same to coco - each tier gets a bit harder. if you believe people will make mistakes with that - how do you ever expect them to correct their magic missile damage, weapon focus or other stuff?
as for the levels: i already gave a list why i think some levels are special/more interesting to play. and yet again, i believe players that can do a +1 to all attributes at lvl 11/21 and +1 to 2 attributes at lvl 4/8/14/18/24/28 can cope with different leagues as well as with "all odd" or "all even"
The problem I see with extended rests at will: You're going to have people who only care about record going nova in hard fights, winning, then taking an extended rest afterwards, rinsing and repeating. If you can actually level this way (i.e. win = 2, lose = 1, extend rest = -1) you will see people going nova every fight and just taking 6 sessions to level with their perfect record. Unless they're up against someone doing the same, which takes something out of the strategy involved.
first of all, you're NOT GUARANTEED to win going nova. second, that's why i wanted to penalize rests at higher tiers more. third, a defensively focusses party can not work like that (surely not enough healing surges for the healing a leader can provide) - you're invalidating a whole type of build for our format. fourth, please read my initial post first, before you reply to a later stage in the discussion...
A skill in 4th edition is the ability to ration your abilities correctly. If you go nova in a fight, there *should* be consequences. As long as healing between fights is sensibly handled, I don't think at will extended rests are necessary. Worst case is 5 more fights until you get your abilities back (and only 1 more fight until you get action points back). If your opponent is rationing appropriately, each fight is only down 1 (or maybe 2) dailies. And you've still got at-wills and encounter powers.
Why we need rests: not the powers, but the surges. If things go bad for a clerical team, they could use up ~4 surges per player each fight. No one can have that many surges, even with high con and durable.
Expendables will need their own rules, either nothing above a certain value, or a max % of your level's cash can be spent on them, or simply saying no to them.
expendables = healing potions, there's really nothing else. so ban them outright, they're not necessary.
1) As it functions now: Full healing, no healing surges
- Pros: Never start a fight without being a full hps.
- Cons: Reduces the class features of having a high number of healing surges or healing surge feats.
I disagree with the Con assessment.
Given some of the later comments, the min cycle is likely to be 3 fights, the max 6, and the average being 4. Classes with a high number of healing surges (Fighter, Paladin, Warlord, Cleric) are the same ones who have the ability to use those healing surges in combat. So even in the shortest cycle, a single leader in the heroic and half-way through paragon tiers can use 2 additional healing surges per fight, in addition to the 2 second winds (one each character). Assuming a maxed 18 con and the feat which adds 2 healing surges, a leader paired with a basic class can burn 24 surges (6x4), out of about 25 (7+4+2 + 6+4+2) surges on a poor run through (i.e. 6 loses). Thats just on class features, not including actual powers which use healing surges.
At paragon and epic levels, such a team could burn through 30 on a poor run through. Again, not even counting selected powers. Counting abilities, a 6th level warlord or cleric paired with a non-healing character could run through 6 healing surges in a single fight, every fight - i.e. not including dailies. Thats 36 surges on a bad run, or 24 on an average run, or 18 on a good run.
Lastly, I don't believe the healing surge mechanic was designed to deal with fights where you're expected to be losing half of them, and thus by rights should be using 8 surges after *each* fight. If we're going to change the mechanic, I say we change it to the simplest one, this one.
2) Nimbus functions as a booster to healing: Healing surges function at double strength or 1/3 of hp or other selected fraction of total hp or variation on HS value.
The way to think about this: 1 over the fraction you choose, times 2 (for each character) is the number of healing surges you're charging each losing team each time. Using any more than 1 surge after a fight, *will* make a typical character run out on a losing streak, mandating some method of extended rest in the middle of the cycle. Which I think opens up more cans of worms than it solves.
3) Nimbus will heal ‘spare’ hp that is less than a HS value:
This doesn't help the losers in any way, unless the value is larger than a single HS, and at that point, you might as well just heal it all for free. Why charge losing teams more and put them at more of a disadvantage (since those are the teams that are going to be fighting more).
3) Fight till you level:
I'd prefer this method, especially with 6 VP needed, 2 for win, 1 for loss. Average is going to be 4 (which feels about right in terms of fights till rest), with winners gaining a slight advantage although also requiring them to risk a little more (i.e. expend more quickly and hope they *do* win) to take advantage of it. It easily removes any questions about what happens when people rest mid-cycle. When coupled with free healing after a fight, you don't have to worry about people running out of healing surges. It feels simple and elegant. As for milestones, just saying 2 fights count as a milestone, whether you win or lose feels about right to me.
Combined, these can be written out easily and succinctly, probably in 3 or 4 sentences, without clauses and exceptions.
1 Player controlling 2 characters:
2 players 2 characters:
I agree with these two team types.
All that being said I would like to propose the following course of action
1) Nimbus - How does it work?
2) Fight cycle - How do we run it?
3) Leveling - Based on the Cycle, how much do we need to level
- Equipment - How do we handle it?
4) Types of Teams - Is there a discussion
5) Types of Fights - What do we start with?
6) Write the rules, create the threads, Open them
7) Start setting up the Iron Man opening tourney
My opinions:
1) Free (no surges used) and complete healing after each fight.
2 & 3) 6 VP to a level, 2 earned for a win, 1 earned for a loss, and you are considered to take an extended rest when you get 6 VP. You gain 2 levels once reaching 6 or more VP, and your VP are reset to 0. You start at level 2.
Equipment- Book method converted to cash equivalent? (whitebaron's suggestions are fine, or Sauro's list would work as well)
4) I don't think so.
5) Just versus
All of the new Gladius summed up in 8 lines. No tables or exceptions necessary.
All of the new Gladius summed up in 8 lines. No tables or exceptions necessary.
...
When you answer the door this afternoon, be careful I might have a whip cream pie for your face ...
Alright lets put some votes up here. (Elders/Oldtimers this is your cue to stop lurking.) Please note that all votes will be helpful as this is a community rebuild facilitated by the elders. Most of the discussion has been summed up in the 5-10 posts before this post.
Nimbus:
1) Free Healing (Hirm)
2) Spend 1 HS between each fight (wb, Rith, lonewolf)
Fight Cycle:
1) Fight till you Level (6VP, 2 for win, 1 for loss) (Hirm, Rith)
2) Variable Fight Cycle (details to be worked out) (Lonewolf, wb)
Leveling (Vote may be irrelevant with outcome of Fight Cycle)
Levels to use:
1) Evens (Hirm, Rith)
2) Odds (Lonewolf)
3) Evens + 11,21 (wb)
@Lonewolf, wb: If I have misconstrued your opinions above, I'm just doing it from what I can sort out from your posts. Let me know and I'll change your votes.
...
When you answer the door this afternoon, be careful I might have a whip cream pie for your face ...
I probably deserve it.
Note to self: Get daughter to answer door.
Edit: Although you sure you have your own votes right? 1 HS used after each fight *and* fight till you level? I mean, I'm voting to limiting healing somewhat, but ouch... Both together seems a bit extreme. A typical character having 2-4 healing surges to spread over the entire fight cycle? That might not even be enough for second winds each fight.
this is where we don't yet agree - he thinks i'm to expensive on higher tiers, hirm thinks that it is to cheap altogether and will drive people to go nova.
rethinking my original intentions, i believe taking 2@heroic, 3@paragon, 4@epic would be the right course. as already pointed out, this is consistent with core game rules to have different modifiers at each level - this would be just another of those.
i thought of another argument for lowering VP in lower levels: like this, new players get to see mid-level-action earlier, this could keep some people more interested. (which should be a major concern for coco 4e - look at how quiet it has become)
btw: you only spend surges between fights if you actually have lost hitpoints. ;)
about levels: i'd rather like my proposal, but if it cannot be helped, evens would be better. starting at 2 especially would give us all game elements present, and no need to construct rules for lvl 1 - we simply don't know how much a lvl 0 item would be worth.
what i think should be voted as well, which is relatively simple:
Equipment
Starting:
1) with magic items according to DMG
2) with gold related to DMG-item-method (lonewolf, wb)
3) with gold or items calculated from other ressources.
Levelling:
a) gain new items or gold as you would as an adventurer
b) just gain a new maximum-amount of gold/items you can have according to the chosen method in "Starting".No selling or earning involved. (hirum, lonewolf, wb)
Expendables: (currently: Rituals and potions)
I) ban outright (wb, lonewolf)
II) restrict to a maximum amount
III) return to bookkeeping for money
pros for 2: multiple-item-dependent builds cannot work if you get a fixed number of high level items.
pros for b: reduces bookkeeping to tracking fights and dailys.
pros for I: we dont want bookkeeping, and there's no real need to provide everyone with free potions for each fight, thus pretty much devaluating clerics as healers.
@wb: One of the things I'm trying to moderate at the moment is trying to do the whole thing at once. I can see that we are going to need to do votes on those things, but I'm hoping that we can do it in small chunks so we don't suffer from info overload. If it is ok, can we hold voting on those things till we get some of the other things finalized?
sure thing. though i believe, a voting-thread would fare better than here. i know coco-stance is to avoid lots of threads. from my experience, though, it is best if certain things get spread...
sure thing. though i believe, a voting-thread would fare better than here. i know coco-stance is to avoid lots of threads. from my experience, though, it is best if certain things get spread...
Noted.
I'll see Hirm and MWB today for TT gaming, and we will have a quick quorum about how to best work through this process. It might be needed to be in multiple threads, we might be able to work it here. We might need to unsticky the current 3.X threads to make way for the new 4e threads, but all in due time.
To be honest I think one of our worst enemies right now is the temperamental boards server.
Teams: If two players want to control one team, sure. Counts as half a team's worth of activation for each of them (round up), and if it results in a delay they both suffer the penalty.
Nimbus/Healing Surges: I don't want to invent a complicated rule for newcomers to have to figure out right away. That means that either the Nimbus heals you or it doesn't, or we use a very simple rule, like it heals you to half and the rest is your problem. or 1 surge=100% healing.
Having the Nimbus not help with HP at all is clearly not an option. I have mixed feelings about the other two options. I disagree that having large numbers of healing surges is devalued--or, at least, it isn't always devalued. If you have a party member that makes/lets you burn a lot of surges, it can still be quite valuable.
It's also important to consider this decision in combination with the fight cycle decision. For instance, if a losing character gets 6 fights in a cycle, they'll need a minimum of 10 healing surges just to recover half their HP, or to recover all their HP at double effectiveness--and that's without using a single surge in combat. Even using 5 surges per cycle automatically is pretty pricey if you use healing words/healing potions/second winds in combat.
Death rolls: It is a bit tedious for a pitlord, but the "dramatic recovery" option is an important one, I think. Best to leave it in to avoid confusion.
Fight Cycles: One of my main concerns is people getting stuck. Being stuck for 3 more fights with all your dalies gone is no fun, especially if you keep going up against opponents who've been winning more. Losers lose more and winners win more. That's the kind of construct I'd like to avoid.
I have absolutely no problem with mid-cycle levelling.
PbP/Tactics: I've spoken about this before.
Monster fights: I think it can work, but I'm not at all sure how. The fact that NPCs are considered to be monsters of their level is just strange--it's because they have fewer options and items than PCs. This is something that will have to be playtested extensively (to shoot for a 50/50 win rate), but after we have everything else set up.
Levelling: Victory points and skipping levels are both ideas I think we can go with.
I think VP needs should be constant, and I think 2 VP per win and 1 per loss is about right. I don't like the idea of spending VP to rest, because, again, it creates an artificial dichotomy between those who want to level faster and those who want better win ratios. You shouldn't have to choose between those.
I prefer odd-numbered levels. I don't want new players to have to start at level 2--level 1 is just more intuitive, and easier, and I don't want to throw away the fact that for once we actually can make fun level 1 characters. When PCs "graduate" from level 29, they can become level 30, getting the powerful epic capstone ability, and become frozen. With VP/fixed treasure values, it's almost meaningless to have frozen levels as we're used to thinking of them, but at level 30 the only alternative is to implement destiny quests (which defeats our purpose).
Treasure: I like Sauro's method for treasure. We do need to put in a rule for healing potions--either ban them or give a fixed allotment. I think a rule about cheap equipment is good--mundane equipment should basically be free past level 1.
Rituals are indeed pretty pointless for our format. Quests and campaigns are the only uses. Wizards are forbidden from selling their free rituals gained from levelling up!
Initiative: I don't think we need a special rule. Although in PbP, having teams act more-or-less together might speed things up, there are so many immediate actions that this can often do more harm than good.
Sitting out: Now that we have no more crafting in the traditional sense, this is a pointless and un-fun type of cost.
Credits: We never did do that much-needed credit overhaul, but now maybe it's just as well. I do think that starting off with only one free activation is probably a good thing. We can increase it later as the population dynamics change.
Black Market/Training Hall: We do need to invent new uses for credits. There's still a little bit of room for custom items, though not much. But I disagree that the Training Hall will ne unnecessary--the retraining rules leave a lot to be desired, since to use them optimally, you have to save them to upgrade feats from heroic to paragon to epic.
------------
So, my votes:
Nimbus: Contingent on fight cycles. If they have even a possibility of exceeding 4 fights per cycle, I vote for free healing. If 4 is the maximum (fixed or otherwise), 1 surge for 100% healing is good.
Fight Cycle: I dislike variable cycles at all, because it throws an extraneous element (player styles and preferences) into fight difficulty. My preference is still for a 4FC--it works well with milestones and with daily attack powers. Given the choice between the various flavors of variable cycles, I'd have to see the full proposals before I could compare anything.
Levelling: Odds +30.
Equipment, starting: 100 gp at level 1, per PHB; Sauro's formula for approximating cumulative career wealth thereafter.
Equipment, levelling: "Fire and forget" method. No history tracking.
Expendables: Either banning them or restricting them to a fixed handout are both fine by me.
2vp for win, 1 vp for loss. - this seems to be consesus already decided.
a) hirm system: you fight till you level up. no other options possible. after your level up, you get to take an extended rest.
b) my system: you fight till you level up(still debatable) or take an extended rest. resting though, costs you VP.
c) telins initial idea/system: you fight till you win a fight, then level up. - i believe this was not further discussed or refined, and based on a coco using each level.
as for starting level and leagues: doing a lvl 1 character is pretty quick, sure. it's also boring, item-wise. most of the good stuff kicks in at even levels... ability boosts, feats, utility powers, paragon features, epic features...
Using pbp will make this worse.
A loser PC will have to rest after 4 fights-> He'll be left with net 2 VP = 1/4 of a winning PC that doesn't have too spend VP on resting. This will be very hard for a new player that doesn't have as much experience with maxing out PCs. I think that a rest should just delay leveling in an equal way no matter the previous fight result. (For example: if a PC won the two last fight he'll pay 2VP for a rest, if he lost one he'll pay 1.5, and if he lost both he'll Pay 1 VP)
The CoCo was built for comparing PC by throwing them into a pit until one dies. A gladiator winning a lot is a good build. If the gladiators don't have a chance to fight monsters, your missing some of the aspects of a good gladiator.
Maybe a PC'll need 4 VP + a success vs. a monster?
Edit:
I posted into an undated page, thus missing MWB post.
I don't think that I deserve a vote, but I hope that I could convince you all.
...
When you answer the door this afternoon, be careful I might have a whip cream pie for your face ...
Alright lets put some votes up here. (Elders/Oldtimers this is your cue to stop lurking.) Please note that all votes will be helpful as this is a community rebuild facilitated by the elders. Most of the discussion has been summed up in the 5-10 posts before this post.
Nimbus:
1) Free Healing (Hirm)
2) Spend 1 HS between each fight (wb, Rith, lonewolf)
Fight Cycle:
1) Fight till you Level (6VP, 2 for win, 1 for loss) (Hirm, Rith)
2) Variable Fight Cycle (details to be worked out) (Lonewolf, wb)
Leveling (Vote may be irrelevant with outcome of Fight Cycle)
Levels to use:
1) Evens (Hirm, Rith)
2) Odds (Lonewolf)
3) Evens + 11,21 (wb)
@Lonewolf, wb: If I have misconstrued your opinions above, I'm just doing it from what I can sort out from your posts. Let me know and I'll change your votes.
Sorry - the server instability has made me so angry that I have stopped popping in too much. I hate wasting my time with it - so if they continue - don't be surprised if my presence declines as well.
Anyway:
Nimbus To me, free healing seems the way to go. Using one between fights just seems like so much an artificial construct that I'd rather go whole hog than just partially there. Honestly though, either way would work for me.
Fight Cycle I am with MWB on this - a set fight cycle would be preferable than a variable one. I am also fine with starting with 4 and seeing if we need to adjust it later. Mid-cycle level ups would also be fine by me. I would not be horribly opposed to a variable fight cycle - but at the same time I don't think it would serve our purposes better than a set one.
Levels to use I would prefer to see level 1 used (because we already have a steep learning curve - having people start at level 1 just seems more "newbie friendly" to me - but beyond that - I don't much care whether we choose all levels, every odd or every even. I'm not worried about what happens around level 30 - that's still a long way away.
Haven't had the time to read more of the current issues - as I get to them - I'll post my thoughts on them.
as for the time issues: what to do, then? there's still that idea of starting the ironman tournament @ 9th of july, and if you want to advertise and get some people interested at least one week earlier, there are about 5 days left to make the rules, get the new threads started, have a new character sheet, and maybe some coco-regulars who jump into the characters thread right away and start their teams as examples, so others are not disheartened by the initial lack of participants.
Re: Iron Man: I think we have to postpone it. Two reasons: one is that we're just too far behind (although we're catching up). I think we could still manage, but the number two reason is that a massive proportion of players ordered their books on Amazon, which has delayed the bulk of their deliveries until mid-July. That's literally thousands of D&D players who would benefit a lot from starting after July 18. So I think that pushing the IMT back to the 23rd is in our best interests.
about the thousands of dnd players: well, and like that, imt might miss thousands of players due to summer vacations.
currently, everything you need to create a character can also be found online for free (dnd-insider-compendium) - anyone interested could be pretty much ready to go.
In other news, my books have shipped--apparently they left the Amazon distribution center yesterday, and will arrive at my place, which is half an hour away, by next week. Sigh.
Time to go make sure I have that $1.62 in my bank account to pay for them...
My current inclination is if its expendable, just ditch it for now. It makes book keeping alot easier.
seconded
@holy symbol: you have to hold the symbol in hand to gain its +x bonus, powers and properties work fine though whilst only wearing it.
With regard to bookkeeping, I am inclined to remove Audits from the list of options. Audits were necessary in order to keep track of changes over the course of a character's career. Now though, I don't see that being anywhere near as necessary as before.
Lastly - @MWB - I thought we were changing to one team active for free - any additional cost credits. The way it reads currently in the rules looks like two are free. Not sure if you changed your mind on the subject or just missed it.
Re: ad-hoc bonuses to rolls: that's even more artificial than skipping levels, and less intuitive. Telling players "you are now level X" is a lot easier than telling them "you get +2 to A, B, C, and D, +1 to E and F, for balancing reasons." Adding balancing bonuses also means that a CoCo character would almost never work the same was as its TT counterpart, which defeats the purpose.
Don't forget that Sauro rarely has 5 minutes to think of something (he's a medical student now, after all), and he's been a part of this discussion all along.
Oh, and regarding my progress on the rules: the situation at home has hit some speedbumps; I don't know when I'll be able to put decent amounts of time into CoCo again. It should be sometime within a month or so (I know, I've said that before!). If no one can cover for me in the meantime, that should be when I'll be able to fulfil my old duties again.
Re: ad-hoc bonuses to rolls: that's even more artificial than skipping levels, and less intuitive.
While I agree it is more complicated: ad-hoc DM boni are far more "within" the rules than skipping entire character levels. Most modules I have seen even have those green circles that give misc boni.
Your solution would give +1 to attack/damage/defenses/skills to the lvl1 party for beeing a level lower. But the lvl2 party already has this +1 bonus to everything for beeing a lvl2 party PLUS additional hitpoints, another feat, an utility power and better equipment.
That solution works only on the first glance, and to truly balance it out you would need a much more complicated system that would be very cumbersome.
The solution to skip every even level isnt perfect, but I think it will work good enough and should be used for now.
And while I am also very happy that Cat choose to get involved with CoCo again, Im not sure if its very helpful to start discussing things that we already agreed on a month ago. What CoCo needs right now is one person to implement the rules that we agreed on, get the game going and advertise to get the required member base. I believe that both Cat and MWB could be that person.
We had now 2 months without pairings. That is way to long. If there are problems with the rules we can still fix them while the game is running, but if we dont start it up again soon, I dont think that CoCo will survive.
The point is that I'm happy to talk now and again, but I cannot do any projects or fill any roll with obligations. Honestly I posted a character team and promptly decided to change it, but I haven't had the time to go back and edit the sheets. In fact I'm not sure I ever finished the first sheets posted.
Since the # of leagues is being discussed again, we can go over that to make sure everyone's on the same page. The discussion was way back in this thread, I think. The summary is as follows:
Main Problem:
1) With 30 levels, there's way too many leagues than we could ever hope to fill with each league involving a single level.
Solution1: Group various levels of characters into leagues with some squish room, so that characters of level X are possibly fighting against characters of levels Y or X.
1.1 Problem) Fairness is a big deal in CoCo, and this is especially so if you're dealing with the idea of matching people into fights that have uneven character level and wealth.
1.2 Problem) Certain levels have huge jumps in powers available. There's a big difference between a 3rd and a 1st level character. Beyond the simple bonuses on attacks and defense, the higher level characters have more feats, items and more daily or encounter powers. The # and relative potency of the powers is probably the biggest deal, and it's the one we cannot simply slap a bonus on the lower level character and equalize.
Solution 2: Skip various levels, and run the fights at a series of levels which we feel is a "representative sample" of all the character levels. Thereby we hope to preserve the sense of designing a build that works over the entire level spectrum, but also solve the logistical problem of having more levels than we could possibly run. (Currently suggested 1,3,5,...,29,30.)
2.1 Problem) This method lacks a sense of continuity. Although you're still required to level your character through choices in a cumulative manner, the fact that you skip levels doesn't match well with how 4E works in the books and at the table.
Personally, I feel that 4E is not as well suited for PvP arena style combat as 3.5 was. The levels increment in power less significantly as compared to 3.5. So the difference between a 3rd and 2nd level wizard in 4E is not as great as it was in 3.5, but the difference is not negligable (especially in a PvP setting where pride's on the line for some people.)
Given these two options which have been widely discussed, I prefer playing at a selected sample of levels. I'm not bothered as much by the discontinuity as others may be. The suggestion that you totally recreate a character if you level more than one level doesn't ring true for me. In 4E, the levels aren't much of a big deal, since you only get a minor change to the character each time. At every level you get +4-+6 HP and one new power and one other thing. This makes levels 7 and 8 almost the same as far as playing your character (but different enough that I wouldn't want to be the level 7 fighting the level8). If you level 2 levels up instead of 1, then all you're doing is that instead of picking one new power and one of the others you get a couple new powers and a couple of the other bonuses. Since all the decisions are cumulative, we're effectively making a level a slightly bigger deal.
As for your concerns:
1) Yea I know 15 Leagues is probably too many. Combining levels into 3/league doesn't help that much more, also it allows imbalances that are more than a +1 or +2 here or there, those extra powers and feats are combat advantage that's hard to correct with a simple patch. We could skip more levels, doing 1,3,5,7,9,11, then jump to the paragon powers, 21, then jump to the epic powers.
2) I don't have any trouble with leveling a bit faster. I ran Raskos for almost 3 years solid and he made it to ECL 13, that's a bit slow by my tastes. Besides, we can control how fast you level by scaling how many XP you get for a win or loss. We've already talked about using a victory point system in place of the XP, that way we have a replacement that uses small numbers and is easy to think about. The VP in stead of XP system allows us to determine if you play 3 or 10 fights at each level. With that we can allow plenty of time to get familiar with how your character works against a variety of foes, or we could slow it down and make you fight more fights at each stage.
3)When you take your car to the shop and they test the breaks, they don't test the stopping distance from every possible speed... They test it stopping from a couple speeds, like 30 mph or 60 mph. They choose to test the system at representative speeds, that allow them to gauge the system's performance over a range.
Since the levels in 4E are very small increments of power, it's not much of a loss to skip some of those increments in favor of building a system that allows for fair combat over a "representative sample" of the level range. I don't have my books with me now, so I cannot say for sure, but I recall that there are lots of levels where most of what you get are a +1 bonus to everything and maybe a feat (which are more minor now than they once were). Skipping those levels doesn't really defeat the argument that CoCo allows you to test your character...
4)Considering that 4E is the first edition who's leveling and combat mechanics are expressly designed to play at the TT in parties, and has a huge tactical combat component, and synergy between characters in the party, there's lots of parts of 4E that won't work as well in CoCo as they do at the table. We're going to have to do some things that are artificial to smash the system of 4E designed for party combat against monsters into the form of a PvP arena combat system. If the most drastic thing we do is modify the way that characters gain levels so that we have a workable system for characters to move through our testing groups, then we'll be in great shape.
Re: ad-hoc bonuses to rolls: that's even more artificial than skipping levels, and less intuitive. Telling players "you are now level X" is a lot easier than telling them "you get +2 to A, B, C, and D, +1 to E and F, for balancing reasons." Adding balancing bonuses also means that a CoCo character would almost never work the same was as its TT counterpart, which defeats the purpose.
Giving out boni is absolutely within the range of the rules or tools of a DM. It is also totally logical or why is it always deemed easier to have a home football match than one away from home? Because of the audience bonus ;) Secondly, the exaggeration, it wouldn't be +2 to ABC and +1 to XYZ. It would be +1 to attack and damage per level in difference. Period. And for this "difficult" mechanic, you'll get all levels from 1-30 instead of only a quarter of them. Sounds good to me.
If it were as simple to balance things out as giving the lower level party +1 to everything for each level they are below the other party, that would be a solution I could like.
Actually, it is that simple... see below:
Your solution would give +1 to attack/damage/defenses/skills to the lvl1 party for beeing a level lower. But the lvl2 party already has this +1 bonus to everything for beeing a lvl2 party PLUS additional hitpoints, another feat, an utility power and better equipment.
Attack/Damage only as skills are neglectable. Anyway, the additional feat you might have, the 5 additional hp and the additional power are a minor advantage. In 3.5 coco, the difference was sometimes greater within the same league (because better equipment was very powerful). And! The +1 audience bonus is better than the +0.5 level bonus the higher-level PC has thus letting the small gap shrink further. All in all, the higher PC retains a very minor advantage but nothing compared what a 3.5 PC short of leveling up and with a bunch of invested credits on his sheet had over that coco newby who just entered a new league. It's been balanced enough then so this proposal which is even more balanced should be okay too.
Im not sure if its very helpful to start discussing things that we already agreed on a month ago.
Well, if someone comes up with a better system no matter when, I would have updated the rules anytime. In this case, we're lucky that the rules ain't written yet and we can improve them before wasted work went into that.
I find it amusing that you think skipping even levels would be too fast, since Classic CoCo levelled a character up after every win!
...and that was the first thing I changed with the beginning of Living Gladius. It was a remnant from the time before coco became a board.
With 30 levels, we need to level fast if we want to experience the full range of the game. If the alternative is frozen leagues, give me fast levelling every time.
My proposal didn't say you have to level slowly. You can just aswell level as fast as you wish; I'm just giving everyone a chance to experience each level, instead of every second or as it seems you'll be forced to: every third or fourth level only.
Fairness is a big deal in CoCo, and this is especially so if you're dealing with the idea of matching people into fights that have uneven character level and wealth.
Already addressed above. The difference in power is minimal and the patch of a +X bonus to attack/damage very simple and working. Besides, you even said that yourself in your post:
Quote from Sauro:
"Since the levels in 4E are very small increments of power[...]"
or
"[...]most of what you get are a +1 bonus to everything and maybe a feat (which are more minor now than they once were)."
Certain levels have huge jumps in powers available. There's a big difference between a 3rd and a 1st level character.
Yeah, but only in this specific case. I'd suggest to start at level 3 as we always did. Problem solved.
Anyhow, I wanted to ask about 4e action points. Allowed? If allowed, per fight or per round (meaning the 4-fight CoCo round)?
Players will be allowed to start at higher levels with credits.
I would personnelly like to Fight my team a couple of times to work out the kinks of 2 strikers
I don't think we need to reduce the number of leagues below 10, so level 1 + every multiple of 3 is pretty close (I'd prefer skipping level 1, but apparently others don't agree :p). Playing every level does not work. Right now, we're looking at an average of 4 fights per level, and we're skipping every other level. If we want to go through every level, just to match the same level of progression characters would have to level an average of once every 2 fights. This results in two problems. First, how do you set up victory points so we level an average of once every 2 fights without allowing for the possibility of leveling in 1 fight? Things obviously get far more difficult if we want to match the progression of using every third or every fourth level. Second, it creates more work because people would have to level their characters more often.
More importantly, it's difficult to balance different level characters. As lonewolf pointed out, adding +1 attack/defense isn't enough. For instance, giving the bonus to an odd-level character against an even-level character of 1 level higher isn't enough because the even-level character already has that bonus by virtue of the 1/2*level bonus, plus the extra feat and HP and items etc. that comes with being 1 level higher.
I have ideas for a different system but I am not going to put them up here until I finally get the chance to actually run with the PvP system, but after a few sessions I am starting to have my doubts about the system (4th).
@nab: i do not believe that 4e is better suited to arena combat, at least not in our format. but we'll see how it works out...
It seems that in this 4e arena you build two characters and fight two vs two, not only one vs one.
If it was one vs one I'd fully agree with you, 4e isn't designed for 1 vs 1. But 2 vs 2 will surely work better, and I hope that 2 vs 2 will be the right solution.
@nab: i do not believe that 4e is better suited to arena combat, at least not in our format. but we'll see how it works out...
@huan:
you state that you streamlined the dates to gmt, but still i find lots of these in there:
Your First Fight
So, Wednesday 12 PM PST/3 PM EST
seems you missed it in some posts.
Hm, so it seems... though I know I corrected those exact spots (not sure why it didn't save ...) Anyway, they are corrected for sure, so thanks for the catch.
Also, while I agree with you that 4e is not better suited for arena combat, I would not say it can't be done, much less done where it can be fun.
Quick question- will Sagaris apply standard retraining rules from the PHB? I can't find anything that indicated this in the Quickstart guide and rules. My suspicion is that the answer is yes; during level ups players can retrain feats/powers, etc. It just doesnt say it anywhere explicitly.
Thanks, and I look forward to my first fight.
The Rules of Sagaris is a work in progress. I think it is enough to get started with as far as playing, and we add to it as needed.
If the workload is not too great, I can add the pairings in with my regular pairings task. That said - it would be great if someone could compile a Team Roster.
And of course, you'll need to dredge up pitlords or prepare to take on the task yourself.
Also, since monster fights aren't up and running yet - any odd number of opponents will go unpaired for now - just luck of the draw on that. When I have time to activate my own teams I might use them to mitigate that - but I just can't do it this week.
I welcome all to pitlord. Pitlording is covered in the Rules of Sagaris [post=18116746]here[/post] and is pretty similar to the way we run it in 3.5e in terms of practice. The important thing to remember is that everyone is going to be new to pitlording 4e - so I would expect a fair amount of a learning curve from both players (who need to work out more precise tactics that work in 4e) and from pitlords (who need to adjust to the 4e rules).