In AD&D mages could become exceptionally powerful, perhaps more-so than other classes, and this was reflected in the Dragonlance novels. In 4e not only are all classes more closely balanced, but Rituals are open to pretty much everyone (the Feat cost is really trivial). Given this, could Dragonlance feel like Dragonlance?
Has anyone given it a go (someone who knows the novels well)?
If you're going for a specific flavor, then sure. Remember that the heroes are exceptional and that you shouldn't measure the world by them. Just because they can do certain things doesn't mean others can.
Plus, if your players are as interested in Dragonlance as you are, they won't break the flavor of the world because it's not the point.
Consider the following changes to the world (not the players) and you should at least get pretty close to what you're describing (I don't know much about Dragonlance)
- There are no Martial characters above level 10 other then minions (doesn't apply to the PCs)
- Spellcasters can advance freely and don't start below level 5 (again; doesn't apply to the PCs)
- Ritual casting is reserved for powerful spellcasters only, not NPCs and also not Martial NPCs.
Now, if the players want to play Dragonlance they'll probably not play a Martial PC with Ritual Casting (unless they have a good in-flavor reason for being able to, of course) and if they play Martial characters they'll be larger then life.
While the 12th level Wizard in the party is just an average Wizard amongst Wizards, the 12th level Fighter is the epitomy of Martial ability; a one-of-a-kind warrior and a legend among men... you'll capture the Dragonlance feeling and make the PC special.
On the other hand; you could also just ban Martial PCs entirely, or warn players beforehand that once they hit 10th level or so, their characters will have to be replaced with a magical character as they've reached the Dragonlance peak of martial ability.
Again; all of these things apply flavor to the world without changing the rules for players. And, they all assume your players want to play Dragonlance, because if they don't... well... why are you playing Dragonlance?
Beyond that you may also find that adding a feat or two, removing a feat or two, leaving out one or two classes that just don't fit well with the setting's assumptions, etc is not a big deal, especially with 4e. Dark Sun certainly shows that this isn't a drastically difficult task. The game plays fine without clerics in that setting. DL could play quite well without any old random class or race as well.
I don't really see why you even have to go that far. Look at the setting with fresh eyes.
I like the setting as presented by the novels (of which I've read more than 60).
Is it REALLY absurd for there to be a wise and powerful character in DL that is a powerful fighter and is also in possession of powerful strategic magic?
Yes, for two primary reasons.
In Dragonlance is taught, like modern engineering, through an apprentice-program.
And more importantly, those using spells above 3rd level who are not members of the conclave are Renegade wizards in Dragonlance. These are often hunted and taken care of by the Conclace.
Beyond that you may also find that adding a feat or two, removing a feat or two, leaving out one or two classes that just don't fit well with the setting's assumptions, etc is not a big deal, especially with 4e.
I don't mind leaving stuff out (classes, feats, etc). My point though is do the core mechanics conflict too much with what the Dragonlance novels present?
At first level you can start the game as a knight or a wizard of high sorcerery. You don't need to delay the campaign or main quest to work in a knighting or Test just because you started at level 1 or be forced to start at level 3-5 to avoid that. (But you can choose to have that happen on camera as well). Themes (introduced in the Dark Sun article and included in Dragon content) are perfect for Dragonlance, and solve little problems with how characters can belong to a group while not necassarily having the exact right class. Knights of Solamnia would be a theme, and knights could be fighters or warlords or rangers or even avengers.
Characters are heroic and make a difference at the world at a much lower level. Dragons are large and impressive even at first level. You could easily run the Chronicles/ War of the Lance story as a level 1-10 or 1-15 campaign, starting at 1 and working until mid-Paragon.
Wizards are a little more balanced and less powerful, but that's not too different from the novels. Even less powerful, a level 2 wizard is dramatically more potent than a level 1 minion aka a common farmer or town guard. Wizards are powerful but not unkillable. In Legends, and injured and weary Kitiara all but killed Dalamar. Wizards might not be more powerful than a level 2 fighter, but those represent rare and talented heroes: the Tanises and Caramons.
Speaking of Tanis, he very much strikes me as a warlord. He's always been a bit odd to pin down to a single class. He was a fighter in 1e but he always seemed more like a ranger. In 4e he'd be a skirmish warlord armed with a bow, leading and directing the party while occasionally pulling out his sword and stepping to the front line.
Things that don't work well are many of the new races: eladrin, dragonborn, and shifters. Half-orcs of course don't fit and gnomes are still completely different. You'd have to tweak many of the races, akin to the Neverwinter campaign setting's sub-races. An alternate feature for the gnome and a few different elves.
The edition isn't a perfect match for the novels. There's no weakness inherent in mages when they cast their spells and no vancain magic any more. But there have been differences and inconsistancies since the update to 2nd Edition. And no game will ever perfectly match the novels where a single sword blow is lethal yet heroes don't die on a regular basis.
Themes (introduced in the Dark Sun article and included in Dragon content)
I suppose its not available freely online? It is in Dragon magazine you say? Which number?
Wizards are a little more balanced and less powerful, but that's not too different from the novels.
Didn't Raistlin kill Takhisis...
Things that don't work well are many of the new races: eladrin, dragonborn, and shifters. Half-orcs of course don't fit and gnomes are still completely different.
Ya, I have no problem denying access to certain races.
The edition isn't a perfect match for the novels. There's no weakness inherent in mages when they cast their spells and no vancain magic any more.
I'm not sure how predominant Vancian magic is in the Dragonlance novels. It is mentioned, but there are also times when wizards seem to cast spells in such a manner that would suggest its not Vancian.
But there have been differences and inconsistancies since the update to 2nd Edition. And no game will ever perfectly match the novels where a single sword blow is lethal yet heroes don't die on a regular basis.
I'm still debating, AD&D 2e vs 4e. Fourth is more balanced, and there are more specialised attacks for non-casters. This is great for the console-generation. I have $800 in AD&D 2e soucebooks and campaign settings though (I'm not exagerating), so its hard just to turn away from it all.
I'm tempted to run 2e with some changes (higher starting hit points like 4e, change the alignments to be just "Good, Neutral, Evil", etc)
I don't know.
Themes (introduced in the Dark Sun article and included in Dragon content)
I suppose its not available freely online? It is in Dragon magazine you say? Which number?
Not free (sorry). Available here:
wizards.com/DnD/TOC.aspx?x=dnd/4new/drto...
Wizards are a little more balanced and less powerful, but that's not too different from the novels.
Didn't Raistlin kill Takhisis...
Lots of 4e campaigns end with a dead god. Raistlin solo-ing one is impressive, but he is a little tougher than the average wizard. That's what makes him impressive and Bad-A.
The edition isn't a perfect match for the novels. There's no weakness inherent in mages when they cast their spells and no vancain magic any more.
I'm not sure how predominant Vancian magic is in the Dragonlance novels. It is mentioned, but there are also times when wizards seem to cast spells in such a manner that would suggest its not Vancian.
Exactly. No novel is perfect. The core novels tend to emulate the rules a dash more though.
But there have been differences and inconsistancies since the update to 2nd Edition. And no game will ever perfectly match the novels where a single sword blow is lethal yet heroes don't die on a regular basis.
I'm still debating, AD&D 2e vs 4e. Fourth is more balanced, and there are more specialised attacks for non-casters. This is great for the console-generation. I have $800 in AD&D 2e soucebooks and campaign settings though (I'm not exagerating), so its hard just to turn away from it all.
I'm tempted to run 2e with some changes (higher starting hit points like 4e, change the alignments to be just "Good, Neutral, Evil", etc)
I don't know.
Depends on your players and the game style you want to play. 4e is good for tactical combats and big set piece fights, which Dragonlance has many of. But if 2e floats your boat and you don't want to re-buy books that's valid as well. And if you're struggling to learn and remember new rules, it's going to impact your fun.
I don't really see why you even have to go that far. Look at the setting with fresh eyes.
I like the setting as presented by the novels (of which I've read more than 60).Is it REALLY absurd for there to be a wise and powerful character in DL that is a powerful fighter and is also in possession of powerful strategic magic?
Yes, for two primary reasons.
In Dragonlance is taught, like modern engineering, through an apprentice-program.
And more importantly, those using spells above 3rd level who are not members of the conclave are Renegade wizards in Dragonlance. These are often hunted and taken care of by the Conclace.Beyond that you may also find that adding a feat or two, removing a feat or two, leaving out one or two classes that just don't fit well with the setting's assumptions, etc is not a big deal, especially with 4e.
I don't mind leaving stuff out (classes, feats, etc). My point though is do the core mechanics conflict too much with what the Dragonlance novels present?
Sure, but 'level' is a game mechanical concept, not a SETTING concept. My character spends a few years in the military, then goes to wizard school, where his speciality is using magic for non-combat support purposes. Maybe he's a Warlord with ritual casting. He doesn't particularly cast spells in battle, he's already got the melee weapon chops he needs to handle combat, and he's not a big bruiser anyway. Outside of combat he uses divinations, etc to bolster his team. It seems like a pretty viable concept that doesn't have to violate the DL setting concepts. As a PC my character starts out as a warlord, and maybe he uses some low level ritual magic he picked up. Maybe at level 5 he joins the conclave and starts learning some of the higher level rituals that are 'illegal' otherwise. If he's qualified to take the Wizard MC feat that grants ritual casting he can even power swap in a couple wizard powers later on if it suites him.
The trick is to keep straight in your mind what is an actual setting concept that the inhabitants of the DL world know and understand and which explains the world to them, and separate that from mechanical concepts that were used in AD&D to implement that. Then when someone wants to use 4e mechanics to do specific things in DL the only question is how does that work in the DL world? I'd note that like my warlord 'wizard' example above, 4e can often model certain types of things that are logically possible in the DL world that were simply impossible to implement using AD&D rules. I think you'll also find that in a lot of cases there are just 'lacunae' in DL where the material never says something is impossible or not done, but because it didn't fit with the rules being used it was just untouched. You may find there are aspects of the DL world you can now explore that you couldn't explore in AD&D.
And if you're struggling to learn and remember new rules,
Nah. I'm a computer programmer. I'm overly familiar with having to learn new "rules".
Its just that I miss the mages being *very* powerful (power word kill, travelling the planes of existence, etc). I suppose Rituals replace some of that, but.
I think what really bugs me is that any class can learn a ritual too, just for ONE example, raise dead characters to life. I can see possibly letting paladins do that, but it does not strike me as a wizard/fighter/etc thing to do.
Sure, but 'level' is a game mechanical concept, not a SETTING concept.
I would think that in a "real world" point of view they may not call it "spell level", but they realize that no apprentice can cast fireball his first week (whereas he might be able to cast magic missile).
For example, they would know which spells are forbidden to those who are not a member of the conclave.
You may find there are aspects of the DL world you can now explore that you couldn't explore in AD&D.
Like?
I like Dragonlance because of the novels. Anything that would seem/feel contradictory to status quo would no longer feel like Dragonlance. This is why I stopped reading Dragonlance when the 5th Age nonsense was introduced.
And perhaps a mage only needs a few combat spells, but certainly a large number of utility spells is really useful.
Well if you want Wizards to shine and Fighters to suck, then 4e is definately not the system you are looking for.
Did fighters suck in 2e?
I don't think requiring spellbooks, esp large numbers of them, adjusts game balance at all. Perhaps I just like my Vancian system
Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance. Requiring them to have 10 spellbooks won't, though. As long as you don't actually give them more spells it's fine. Rituals they can buy with their own money (and you can certainly fill a few books with them and they're quite awesome)
Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.
Unless it was a Vancian-blend.
AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.
A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.
... in fact, I quite like this idea
Simple rule:
After every extended rest, you get to pick new powers, any ones you like from your class.
*bam* instantly you have what you're looking for, and it applies to everyone rather then just favoring Wizards.
Alternatively, you could hand out new powers and spells as rewards and let people swap between any powers they know. Then they can quest for a new spell, or a new blessing, or the ability to train under a new master and learn new tricks.
There's no reason to limit something like that just to Wizards.
Why limit it to just the Wizards?
Not just to wiazards. Wizards is my concern is all. I didn't mean to imply it was a wizards only thing.
Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.
Unless it was a Vancian-blend.
AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.
A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.
... in fact, I quite like this idea
If you are looking for god wizards who have access to every spell ever, then 4th edition is porbably not your cup of tea.
However . . .
There is a method of giving them more options, albeit limited ones. Check the end of the "What you may have missed" thread stickied atop this forum for a way to use wands to give wizards or any other wand using arcanist an edge.
Also, Raistlin didn't kill Tiam. . . Thakaisis. Fought yes, delayed yes, killed no. That finally happened at the end of the War of Souls, where she took mortal form and was killed with a spear. *giggles*
And yeah, its fine that AD&D wizards had a specific set of spells, and 4e wizards don't necessarily have exactly the same progression or powers that are perfectly corresponding to the AD&D ones. High level 4e wizards are still pretty awesome. Nobody will scoff at them and they can pull off many rather astounding effects, including the vast majority of the ones that were common in AD&D. Fighters are relatively at parity with wizards in 4e, yes, but honestly if my dim recollections of DL literature is any guide the material in the books probably matches better with the 4e equality than it does with the AD&D lopsided power balance. There were plenty of things in the books IIRC that didn't mesh all that well with the specific details of the 1e/2e rules anyway.
Another thing is, much is fluff. There's no reason why wizards can't own large libraries of books. There are a ton of useful books in 4e. Your wizard might easily own several magical tomes, and in fact it is pretty hard to fit all the spells and rituals a typical wizard will know at high levels into one book (there is a rule for this BTW, spells and rituals take up book pages, and you can and probably will need to obtain extra physical books to hold your 'spell book'). Moreover there's no limit to how many rituals you could acquire. 4e has over 300 of them. I don't know exactly how many pages that takes up, but I'm pretty sure it is far more than a single volume can hold. A high level wizard with a room full of books might well know the vast majority of those 300+ rituals. If so he's going to be pretty well set up because a lot of them are pretty potent.
As for the whole 'but why can a fighter Raise Dead?' again this is 'game thinking'. To the inhabitants of the world there are just people with expertise and knowledge. There's no conceit of the game world that demands that a person couldn't master both fighting and magic, only limitations of the AD&D rules that mostly prevented you from building such a character and playing it. Nor is it necessary to rigidly pigeonhole WORLD roles with GAME roles. Just because my character is built using the fighter class doesn't mean he's not a priest, wizard, etc in terms of his WORLD role. Again, maybe he possesses an atypical skill set, but so what? Beyond that it is pretty easy for the DM to create world consistency here. My fighter can only manage to acquire the Raise Dead ritual because functionally in the world he belongs to a group of people who have that knowledge and he finds a way to access it. Mechanically he takes a feat and pays some money to learn the ritual. In game he goes to the temple, makes a donation, studies, takes some sort of orders or whatever, and acquires the ritual. Maybe he also takes the 'Ordained Priest' theme to represent the commitment that he has to make to the temple and the other benefits of his holy orders or whatever.
Obviously if you're going to want to go scene-by-scene through all the mass of DL novels and justify every single action and fact that you find there with a 4e mechanic for it you'll probably come up short at SOME point. IMHO you'd run into that problem with 1e or 2e as well though. That level of consistency is just not really practical. Given the extreme plasticity of the 4e rules though I think you'll probably not have a large amount of problems there, especially since a LOT of stuff in 4e is more guidelines, fluff, and DM options than it was in previous editions.
Like any organization that controls power, it would be wise to listen to your respective tower of high sorcery. The biggest drawback is not having the original books, like the DragonLance Adventures book from AD&D. Similar to Oriental Adventures, you would only need one book to have the necessary information to bring the world alive.
MOST such people probably take it up early on and stick with it as their primary focus. They're mechanically wizards. Nothing stops a person in that world from having a different life history.
Pidgeon-holing is an important part of D&D. In fact a class-based RPG *is* a pidgeon-holing system. What, you're a Wizard, ok you can do A, B and C, and you can't do X, Y, Z. Allow players to cross boundaries too much, and each specialty (cleric is a healer, rogue is great at sneaking etc, etc) becomes, well, non-special.
As for the whole 'but why can a fighter Raise Dead?' again this is 'game thinking'. To the inhabitants of the world there are just people with expertise and knowledge.
But I'm a real person, a player, not a character in the story. Pidgeon-holing is a big part of what makes D&D, well, D&D.
My fighter can only manage to acquire the Raise Dead ritual because functionally in the world he belongs to a group of people who have that knowledge and he finds a way to access it.
Although in a D&D sense it has more to do with devotion to a God, and less to do with technical understanding. At least in Dragonlance.
'Ordained Priest' theme to represent the commitment that he has to make to the temple and the other benefits of his holy orders or whatever.
I really have to find out what this Themes thing is.
And yes, I don't mind that it CAN happen, I worry that it would become the norm.
Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.
Unless it was a Vancian-blend.
AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.
A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.
... in fact, I quite like this idea
I think the issue here is more a lack of a really super detailed look at the 4e wizard. I'm not going to do the math for this AGAIN in this thread. It has been done numerous times before in the older edition war threads. A 4e wizard at a comparable level to an AD&D wizard has at least an equal number of powers available to them. A casual glance at the rules might seem to suggest otherwise, but it is true. Your basic level 30 (roughly 18th level in AD&D terms) character has a baseline AEDU of 2/4/4/7, which is 17 powers. An 18th level AD&D wizard has 34 spell slots. The 4e wizard however has a considerable number of additional powers at his disposal. First of all he's also got another 11 spells in his spell book. There are NUMEROUS ways he can access those, including tomes, mnemonic staff, staff of wizardy, a couple of feats, several epic destinies, etc. There are also ways he can recover powers he's already used. He can also pick up a fairly substantial number of extra powers. His theme, if he has one for instance will add one, as will his race. He can pick up another with the Skill Power feat, and possibly another with an MC feat. You could also use the Mage class, which adds its encounter powers to its spell book as well, giving him another 4 spells to choose from. There are a few other tricks you could use as well. Many of your 4e character's innate abilities are also spell-like. He can detect magic for instance, and a lot of his other skill uses could simply be fluffed as "I wave my hands and open the lock with a simple charm" or such. Then there are of course the rituals we've already noted. Given that most AD&D wizards will only memorize a fairly limited subset of their spell book by default and leave the rest as 'spells of convenience' or for 'strategic spell casting', the 4e wizard is really very similar. He's got some arbitrary number of rituals that he likewise only casts outside of combat (generally, again certain characters can engineer some very limited in-combat ritual casting at high levels). All-in-all if you do a detailed comparison of the 2e and 4e wizards (and especially the 1e magic user) you'll find they are pretty comparable. The main difference is that the 4e fighter at high levels is equally powerful. Wizards haven't really been all that nerfed. It is more that some of the crazy game-breaking stuff tends to be had at epic tier and other classes are at parity, so the 30th level 4e wizard isn't the utterly dominating character that the 18th level 2e wizard is.
MOST such people probably take it up early on and stick with it as their primary focus. They're mechanically wizards. Nothing stops a person in that world from having a different life history.
Pidgeon-holing is an important part of D&D. In fact a class-based RPG *is* a pidgeon-holing system. What, you're a Wizard, ok you can do A, B and C, and you can't do X, Y, Z. Allow players to cross boundaries too much, and each specialty (cleric is a healer, rogue is great at sneaking etc, etc) becomes, well, non-special.As for the whole 'but why can a fighter Raise Dead?' again this is 'game thinking'. To the inhabitants of the world there are just people with expertise and knowledge.
But I'm a real person, a player, not a character in the story. Pidgeon-holing is a big part of what makes D&D, well, D&D.My fighter can only manage to acquire the Raise Dead ritual because functionally in the world he belongs to a group of people who have that knowledge and he finds a way to access it.
Although in a D&D sense it has more to do with devotion to a God, and less to do with technical understanding. At least in Dragonlance.'Ordained Priest' theme to represent the commitment that he has to make to the temple and the other benefits of his holy orders or whatever.
I really have to find out what this Themes thing is.
And yes, I don't mind that it CAN happen, I worry that it would become the norm.
Within 4th ed you have your race, class, and optional backgrounds and themes. Race defines you as a culture to a great extent (Or can be set as a contrast for what you are supposed to be like, in some cases), class defines what you do, background defines who you are (and gives you a single mechanical bonus regardless of how many background you take) while a theme is how you do what you do and grows with the character. For example, an Alchemist rogue might be a rogue to find rare components for their mixtures and to use those mixtures to then be a rogue.
Some themes give powers, some give free feats or other mechanical fun stuff to represent the "how you do"part.
I think the issue here is more a lack of a really super detailed look at the 4e wizard. I'm not going to do the math for this AGAIN in this thread. It has been done numerous times before in the older edition war threads.
I've read the argument for this in the past, and read more than one of those threads.
The end result is that I simply do not agree. My AD&D 2e toon with a 19 inteligence could have hundreds of thousands of spells in his library (for each level!). Yes he can only memorize a small subset of those, but I'm OK with that. To me, reasearching / acquiring new spells was half the fun.
And I *liked* that mages had verbal/somatic/material components for most spells. I was never a fan of at-will powers, such seemed the domain of Gods and certain creatures on a very limited basis.
And yes, I don't mind that it CAN happen, I worry that it would become the norm.
How could that happen? There will be at most a handful of people not abiding by the norm. Everyone else is under the DMs control. The only thing having a player be a Martial Ritual Caster will do is reinforce that the PC is exceptional.
Since he'll be the only one in the universe that managed to get utility magic + martial power mastered.
It's impossible for something to become the norm unless the DM makes it so.
I think the issue here is more a lack of a really super detailed look at the 4e wizard. I'm not going to do the math for this AGAIN in this thread. It has been done numerous times before in the older edition war threads.
I've read the argument for this in the past, and read more than one of those threads.
The end result is that I simply do not agree. My AD&D 2e toon with a 19 inteligence could have hundreds of thousands of spells in his library (for each level!). Yes he can only memorize a small subset of those, but I'm OK with that. To me, reasearching / acquiring new spells was half the fun.
And I *liked* that mages had verbal/somatic/material components for most spells. I was never a fan of at-will powers, such seemed the domain of Gods and certain creatures on a very limited basis.
Well, if you 'do not agree' with cold hard facts, there's really no point in continuing the discussion, is there?
MOST such people probably take it up early on and stick with it as their primary focus. They're mechanically wizards. Nothing stops a person in that world from having a different life history.
Pidgeon-holing is an important part of D&D. In fact a class-based RPG *is* a pidgeon-holing system. What, you're a Wizard, ok you can do A, B and C, and you can't do X, Y, Z. Allow players to cross boundaries too much, and each specialty (cleric is a healer, rogue is great at sneaking etc, etc) becomes, well, non-special.
It is a matter of degree though. 4e is pretty good about niche protection. It is definitely far less rigid than AD&D was. The fighter is still hacking on things, the cleric is still healing things, and the rogue is still sneaking around jumping people. The role concept helps here too. The fighter holds the line and has strong class features that support that. The cleric has healing capacity that dwarfs anything a fighter could acquire no matter how much of his resources he spent on it. A rogue making a surprise attack on an enemy can do damage that no fighter or cleric will match, and has many utility powers and default access to a skillset that insures that he's quite sneaky etc. You CAN make a sneaky fighter, there's just not a whole lot of reason to want to use the fighter class to make that character, and once you do decide to be a fighter you're generally rewarded more by enhancing your built-in abilities than by branching out into some other territory.
As for the whole 'but why can a fighter Raise Dead?' again this is 'game thinking'. To the inhabitants of the world there are just people with expertise and knowledge.
But I'm a real person, a player, not a character in the story. Pidgeon-holing is a big part of what makes D&D, well, D&D.
Sure, up to a point. Consider it this way. Why would I as a player decide to have my fighter acquire Raise Dead? Surely the cleric can get that without spending a feat and will have a higher skill check in Heal in the vast majority of cases. Two possible reasons exist. Either there is for whatever reason no cleric in the party and someone needs this ritual, in which case 4e at least allows for the possibilty. The other case would be some sort of story consideration where I want it because it works with my character concept and ties in with the story somehow. Again the option is nice to have. Personally I've never seen a fighter take ritual casting in 3 years of play though, so the whole thing is more academic than practical.
My fighter can only manage to acquire the Raise Dead ritual because functionally in the world he belongs to a group of people who have that knowledge and he finds a way to access it.
Although in a D&D sense it has more to do with devotion to a God, and less to do with technical understanding. At least in Dragonlance.
Sure, but nothing really says that a fighter can't be as devout as a cleric is. That's an RP consideration. Sure, the 4e rules don't FORCE me to only take the ritual if my character is devout, but then again no edition of the game can really enforce devout behavior mechanically. I guess you could chuck the insincere cleric from his alignment and take his spells away. 4e doesn't enforce such a rule, but the DM certainly could if it matches with the sensibilities of the setting and he makes sure everyone knows about it ahead of time.
'Ordained Priest' theme to represent the commitment that he has to make to the temple and the other benefits of his holy orders or whatever.
I really have to find out what this Themes thing is.
And yes, I don't mind that it CAN happen, I worry that it would become the norm.
Themes first appeared in the Dark Sun setting. They also appear in the Neverwinter setting. There are additionally a number of themes that have been published in Dragon (so you can get them via DDI). They just added a couple new ones the other day for Oriental Adventures, which is this month's magazine feature. They don't cover all the possibilities yet, and some of them are fairly setting specific, but they do let you do some interesting extra things.
I wouldn't be too concerned about it. The truth is most players have a pretty good handle on basic character concept. It may be a bit mutable or fuzzy, but they usually are pretty clear about what falls totally outside that. 4e also 'enforces' a certain amount of separation simply by practical considerations. Your STR/WIS dwarf fighter build clanking around in plate armor CAN use his feats to take Stealth, Acrobatics, and Thievery. Even with training he's simply going to be inferior at those skills than basically every rogue ever. Combine that with the way class features support the typical functions of each class and you find that the party will stick to their archetypes pretty closely most of the time.
The exceptions to that are also instructional. AD&D in particular was a very hard game to use to create a specific concept unless there was an existing class that provided exactly that concept. You also didn't have the option to NOT have certain specific features. You got the whole package or none of the package, if your character didn't fit the existing pigeonholes you were just out of luck. Niche protection was guaranteed, but that too created problems. You HAD to have a cleric. There were no 2 ways about it, a party without a cleric was deaders. That is simply not true anymore, you can graft a bit of healing onto your fighter or druid or whatever (or play a warlord or bard, etc).
Another aspect of this is specific types of games. Suppose you want to play a game of intrigue and spying. In 4e you can build a whole sneaky party with a whole range of classes. Not EVERY build can be everything, but you can make a very nice sneaky fighter, sneaky cleric, sneaky wizard, etc. Now everyone can sneak and they don't need to either hit up the DM for a bunch of magic items to enable that, or rely on a wizard/cleric to magic them all to sneakiness, or just clunk around and force the DM to figure out how to make the plot not rely on sneakiness much. The cool thing is that yes, in this case the whole party is sort of poaching on the rogue's niche, but he's probably still best at it, and even if he's not THE BEST we come back to the 'game concept vs world concept'. I call my super sneaky fighter a rogue! He wears hide armor, wields a rapier, sneaks around, picks locks, pockets, and traps, so really is that a problem? He's just a rogue that uses fighter powers and is a defender in combat. He's probably STILL not as good at every rogue type thing as a rogue class character, but he can perform that function. Likewise I can use the ranger class to make a guy who's an expert archer and hasn't ever set foot outside a city in his life.
I think the issue here is more a lack of a really super detailed look at the 4e wizard. I'm not going to do the math for this AGAIN in this thread. It has been done numerous times before in the older edition war threads.
I've read the argument for this in the past, and read more than one of those threads.
The end result is that I simply do not agree. My AD&D 2e toon with a 19 inteligence could have hundreds of thousands of spells in his library (for each level!). Yes he can only memorize a small subset of those, but I'm OK with that. To me, reasearching / acquiring new spells was half the fun.
And I *liked* that mages had verbal/somatic/material components for most spells. I was never a fan of at-will powers, such seemed the domain of Gods and certain creatures on a very limited basis.
Well, if you 'do not agree' with cold hard facts, there's really no point in continuing the discussion, is there?
Well, in all fairness, this all starts to become hair splitting. There are a couple ways to think about it. IN THEORY he's right, his wizard in 2e is technically not limited to any specific number of spells in his book. OTOH in a practical sense it is a fairly dubious argument in that there are a total in 2e of what, maybe 500 wizard spells, counting every published source of spells in existence as of the day 3e came out. Having a 19 INT is also pretty unusual, so this is somewhat of a corner-case. Technically you could make up new spells and research them and have 100's of spells of every level (maybe 1000's, there's an issue at some point of time). Fairly put you can certainly have a LOT of spells as a 2e wizard. The question is how much practical value does that have in actual play? The existing spell list is quite extensive. It certainly doesn't cover every possibility imaginable by any means, but there is a level of diminishing returns there at some point. As I said before, once you have all the basics covered in terms of combat spells you'll probably just memorize the most effective ones and leave it at that. The rest of your spell library is relegated to either niche situations or 'strategic casting' where you sit in your tower and cast your esoteric spells without the need to consider what is memorized and what isn't. The 4e wizard likewise memorizes his most effective core combat spells, maybe once in a while picks an alternate option, and strategically casts his unlimited library of rituals while sitting in his tower. The end result is pretty much the same. I'd also observe that while 4e lacks an explicit rule for researching new rituals it isn't exactly a major challenge to invent one (lets say 1 week per ritual with a hard DC arcana check at the level of the ritual at the end of the week, or maybe it is 1 week/tier of ritual with an easy/medium/hard arcana check and the material cost is the same as the listed purchase price). I'd also note that your 4e wizard can always retrain a spell. He can only do it once per level, but he's certainly capable within that restriction of accessing ANY wizard power in the game that he can cast, with enough preparation.
Then there are the workarounds. As Salla noted back up thread a ways you can place ANY at-will or encounter arcane power into a wand. There is no real limit to how many wands you can make except your resources. If carrying around a large barrel of wands feels cheezy, well, refluff it as a big book full of spells. You can cast each one once a day or once an encounter for the at-will ones IIRC. The upshot is there are really very few limits to what your wizard can do if he puts his mind to it, and doesn't mind spending the resources.
As for having a distaste for at-will spells (or encounter ones for that matter) what can anyone say? If every way in which 4e differs in the slightest degree from 2e is going to be met with distaste, then clearly one should be playing 2e. It is all a matter of taste at that point. All at-will spells do for you is insure that you have SOMETHING interesting you can do in any situation. Wizards are pretty focused on their daily spells for their big guns, so IMHO again 4e isn't that much different from 2e, once you blow your dailies you're reduced to a lower level of effectiveness. Most any decent level 2e wizard has some sort of wand or something he can fall back on anyway, so it isn't as if having an 'at-will' spell type resource was foreign to 2e. It was just handled in a slightly different way. In fact since a wizard without an implement is a sorry puppy in 4e past 3rd level or so the difference there is actually pretty much moot. Neither the 2e nor the 4e wizard will be worth much once he's expended his big powers and has somehow lost his implement.
community.wizards.com/wiki/Dnd:Heroes_of...
They were very rough drafts based on the stats from Dragons of Mystery and no doubt they could do with a bit of tweaking. None of them are optimised but they might be fun to play.
In our home (Greyhawk) campaign one long-running character converted from 1e/2e/3e is a fighter warlod hybrid with bard multiclass and ritual casting. In previous editions he was just a fighter who developed an obsession with history and legends. In 4e he has picked divination rituals as a specialty so his ritual powers are a bit like Giles in Buffy. I think you can justify a lot of builds by using the right mixture of fluff, themes, and feats. Plus with Kara-Tur themes out now, Dragonlance may not be far behind.
Well, if you 'do not agree' with cold hard facts, there's really no point in continuing the discussion, is there?
The problem is that its not cold hard facts, its arbitrary opinions. And yes with a LOT of min/maxing you can change the situation a bit, but you disadvantage yourself a lot in feat expenditure just to emulate something which is not meant to be emulated.
Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.
Unless it was a Vancian-blend.
AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.
A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.
... in fact, I quite like this idea
Roll out the way back machine...
When I got the 3.o new third edition Player's Handbook in my hands, I was pouring over the overall book when I came across the Wizard and Sorcerer. Now, I am not the brightest bulb on the fixture, but the Sorcerer had different mechanics while the Wizard was stuck shifting spells and having to "Prepare" multiple spells to cast Magic Missile, for example, more than once. I had wondered why both these classes was there, why the Sorcerer still seemed a bit light, and scratched my head over the need to cling to the Vancian casting system.
4th edition took this away, except for the Dailies for the Wizard, and created Rituals (Remember those) to replace the daily preperations and the crafting skills.
Essentials expanded the Vancian aspect to Encounters for the Wizard, to the point that I don't want to play them at all anymore.
Vancian Casting needed to be gone in 3rd Edition, but Wizards wimped out and provided the Sorcerer as an alternative instead. It needed to be completely gone, but the Wizard held on to the last vestiges and Wizards expanded on it in Essentials.
In 5th edition, The Wizard needs to Hot Cast his choices, have access to his spells without having to guess which one to "Prepare" before being in the situation for it. Vancian Casting needs to die. Painfully. With a lot of blood and a long, agonizing last look before exhaling it's last, bubbly breath.
In addition, someone has already converted Dragons of Despair in 4e.
wotl4e.pbworks.com/f/DL1%20Despair.pdf
The biggest problem I've had to deal with so far is recreating the WoHS. It's rather challenging with 4e because I don't feel like anything I try is really making them feel like the WoHS. Previous editions restricted access to schools and granted bonus spells depending on the phases of the moon. but that is rather hard to do in 4e. I've seen other ideas with themes and feats, but even they don't manage to recreate the WoHS. Then there is the added problem of what to do with all the other 'arcane' classes in 4e. Why would anyone care to be a wizard and pass a test (a test that could kill them) if they could just become a non-wizard arcane class? Clearly any solution has to encompass all the arcane classes or they have to be barred from dragonlance.
The biggest problem I've had to deal with so far is recreating the WoHS. It's rather challenging with 4e because I don't feel like anything I try is really making them feel like the WoHS. Previous editions restricted access to schools and granted bonus spells depending on the phases of the moon. but that is rather hard to do in 4e. I've seen other ideas with themes and feats, but even they don't manage to recreate the WoHS. Then there is the added problem of what to do with all the other 'arcane' classes in 4e. Why would anyone care to be a wizard and pass a test (a test that could kill them) if they could just become a non-wizard arcane class? Clearly any solution has to encompass all the arcane classes or they have to be barred from dragonlance.
Easy solution: All arcane classes, with the exception of the Bard, are just Wizards who simply have different foci.
An Artifacer is simply a Wizard who likes allies and has an affinity for Magic items. The Sorcerer is simply a Wizard who likes blowing things up. A Swordmage and Bladesinger are simply Wizards who enjoy a bit of swordplay. A Warlock is simply a Wizard who skirts the traditions and utilizes magic from extra-planar beings.
Plus, a Warlock can just be a 'vanilla' wizard as well; the pact is just fluff.
Why except the bard? No reason it can't just be a wizard, too.
Plus, a Warlock can just be a 'vanilla' wizard as well; the pact is just fluff.
I couldn't remember if there was a lot of fluff for the Bard in Dragonlance or not, so I was erring on the side of caution. If the setting doesn't have fluff for the class, then yes, its just a Wizard who likes stories, knowledge and, perhaps, music.
I think the biggest thing that works in favor of the DL world is the ability to have clerics and paladins and such of every god, much as there were dark Knights of Thakisis that were essentially eeeeeeevil paladins.
I could see, with the return of the gods, how invoker magic would rise, the use of the primal spirits as an alternative to the ordered ways of religion or the arcane, and even the possible effects that could create a rise in psionic powers. Dragonborn would be hard to explain, unless they were manufactured as the "good" versions of Draconians to battle said Draconians.
And so on.
Why except the bard? No reason it can't just be a wizard, too.
Plus, a Warlock can just be a 'vanilla' wizard as well; the pact is just fluff.
I couldn't remember if there was a lot of fluff for the Bard in Dragonlance or not, so I was erring on the side of caution. If the setting doesn't have fluff for the class, then yes, its just a Wizard who likes stories, knowledge and, perhaps, music.
Doesn't matter if the setting does or not. If you want to play a bard that doesn't perform in any setting, it's fine. Fluff is mutable.
The biggest problem I've had to deal with so far is recreating the WoHS. It's rather challenging with 4e because I don't feel like anything I try is really making them feel like the WoHS. Previous editions restricted access to schools and granted bonus spells depending on the phases of the moon. but that is rather hard to do in 4e. I've seen other ideas with themes and feats, but even they don't manage to recreate the WoHS. Then there is the added problem of what to do with all the other 'arcane' classes in 4e. Why would anyone care to be a wizard and pass a test (a test that could kill them) if they could just become a non-wizard arcane class? Clearly any solution has to encompass all the arcane classes or they have to be barred from dragonlance.
Easy solution: All arcane classes, with the exception of the Bard, are just Wizards who simply have different foci.
An Artifacer is simply a Wizard who likes allies and has an affinity for Magic items. The Sorcerer is simply a Wizard who likes blowing things up. A Swordmage and Bladesinger are simply Wizards who enjoy a bit of swordplay. A Warlock is simply a Wizard who skirts the traditions and utilizes magic from extra-planar beings.
Well some of those classes allow you to use armor which isn't very WoHS like. With that concept what defines you as a black robe wizard? Would it be only your alignment? Also, would you force every arcane caster to take the test? And then what defines you as a Renegade? Is that a theme, a background, or feat? Would a renegade be like the FR's red wizard of thay theme? If so, don't forget that even though a WoHS has passed the test he could still become a renegade if he dabbles in magic that is forbidden. And therein lies the problem with 4e there is no such thing as forbidden magical spells because everything that is available to your class is all you'll ever have. With 4e there are no magical rules that you as a a player must decide to follow. Then again there are no role playing requirements /restrictions for any of the classes in 4e. Lastly, how would you allow the moons to influence all these classes? With moon magic you'll need to ensure that it affects combat. For example, it should be far more difficult to defeat a black robe when nuitari is in high sanction and your moon is in low sanction.
.
I built Goldmoon as primarily a bard as a way of reflecting the fact that there was no divine magic to start off. I don't think you need to be totally restrictive in you approach though. Despite the 'arcane' power source, a lot of powers can be retooled to be less magical. A wizard of High Sorcery theme could grant bonuses to certain powers or rituals but apply to many arcane classes. A 'wizard' does not have to be a wizard in 4e in the same way that the traditional druids and clerics have been broken up into different niche classes. You could also restrict the access of certain rituals to certain classess.
What you do here is simply allow Goldmoon to access her spells via a property of the blue crystal staff.
Property: The Blue Crystal Staff allows a user belonging to a divine class toaccess class features and powers normally, even if cut off somehow from hisor her deity.
That's what they did in the Dragons of despair conversion anyway.
Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.
Unless it was a Vancian-blend.
AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.
A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.
... in fact, I quite like this idea
Roll out the way back machine...
When I got the 3.o new third edition Player's Handbook in my hands, I was pouring over the overall book when I came across the Wizard and Sorcerer. Now, I am not the brightest bulb on the fixture, but the Sorcerer had different mechanics while the Wizard was stuck shifting spells and having to "Prepare" multiple spells to cast Magic Missile, for example, more than once. I had wondered why both these classes was there, why the Sorcerer still seemed a bit light, and scratched my head over the need to cling to the Vancian casting system.
4th edition took this away, except for the Dailies for the Wizard, and created Rituals (Remember those) to replace the daily preperations and the crafting skills.
Essentials expanded the Vancian aspect to Encounters for the Wizard, to the point that I don't want to play them at all anymore.
Vancian Casting needed to be gone in 3rd Edition, but Wizards wimped out and provided the Sorcerer as an alternative instead. It needed to be completely gone, but the Wizard held on to the last vestiges and Wizards expanded on it in Essentials.
In 5th edition, The Wizard needs to Hot Cast his choices, have access to his spells without having to guess which one to "Prepare" before being in the situation for it. Vancian Casting needs to die. Painfully. With a lot of blood and a long, agonizing last look before exhaling it's last, bubbly breath.
It's like you're a machine designed by aliens to produce the maximum number of wrong opinions possible in one average human lifetime. :P
There really isn't anything wrong with the spellbook class feature for Wizards. All it does is allow you to have access to a secondary set of spells that you will usually ignore, except when you know you're heading into an enviroment that will benefit from them. Basically, your pyro mage needs some non fire magic on base for when there's a bunch of fire immune things running around, or monsters that get positive effects from fire or somesuch. Or just when there's a strong need for him or her to act more like a controller, and less like a nuke striker. Just as one quick example.
Nothing is restricted by the feature. At all. In the absence of that feature, wizards wouldn't be able to pick between spells on the fly, in all likelyhood.
Now, what I'd prefer is something like this:
You have a spellbook. In that book are a number of spells, some powers and some rituals. Any time you use a power from Power Slot: Level One Encounter, that power slot closes until you take a short rest, or otherwise regain the use of an encounter power. Each power slot has a couple options, by default. So Level One Encounter has two powers to choose from, say Burning Hands and Acid Spray. If you use Burning Hands in round one, you can't use it or Acid Spray again until you regain encounter powers.
At extended rests, you can change out what spells you have readied. So you can basically retrain Acid Spray for Bongo's Bubbling Breath; a burst 1 within 10 that dazes targets and does psychic damage, and has the illusion keyword.
If you know you're going to the Icemorn Caverns to hunt Rycambrix the White Dragon and his frosty minions, you can get rid of your ice powers, and load up on more appropriate powers.
I also wouldn't limit this feature to wizards. Mostly arcane classes would call it a spellbook, and some classes might not have it at all, though. And the Wizard would probably have the most support for expanding their spellbook.
But the idea of prepared spells and spellbooks as implimented with the wizard isn't a horrible feature that needs to be fired out a cannon into a lake of acid. It's pretty fun, actually.
Also, Raistlin didn't kill Tiam. . . Thakaisis. Fought yes, delayed yes, killed no. That finally happened at the end of the War of Souls, where she took mortal form and was killed with a spear. *giggles*
Raistlin killed the gods, and took their places. Then, he realized that he couldn't do it. He was a terrible god who couldn't rule without just destroying what he wanted to rule, so he undid what he'd done, and died for it.
Now, what I'd prefer is something like this:
You have a spellbook. In that book are a number of spells, some powers and some rituals. Any time you use a power from Power Slot: Level One Encounter, that power slot closes until you take a short rest, or otherwise regain the use of an encounter power. Each power slot has a couple options, by default. So Level One Encounter has two powers to choose from, say Burning Hands and Acid Spray. If you use Burning Hands in round one, you can't use it or Acid Spray again until you regain encounter powers.
At extended rests, you can change out what spells you have readied. So you can basically retrain Acid Spray for Bongo's Bubbling Breath; a burst 1 within 10 that dazes targets and does psychic damage, and has the illusion keyword.
If you know you're going to the Icemorn Caverns to hunt Rycambrix the White Dragon and his frosty minions, you can get rid of your ice powers, and load up on more appropriate powers.
I would rather have a system that allows you to cast the same encounter power more than once per encounter.
I also really miss how important preparation was in previous editions, but I wouldn't want to resurect vancian spell casting. In 4e knowing that you're up against ice creatures or undead means absolutely nothing because there isn't anyting you need to do to prepare. PCs can just walk into each encounter without ever needing any information at all. In addition, allowing just one class to pick new powers makes 4e an incomplete system.
Well some of those classes allow you to use armor which isn't very WoHS like.
Unless one advances the stroy of the world to where the WoHS feel they must start to armor themselves from those around them. A concept which I quite enjoy the idea of.
With that concept what defines you as a black robe wizard? Would it be only your alignment?
That would be fair enough, except that the mechanical implications of alignment are no longer neccesary. so instead the question would be, "What makes one a follower of Nuitari? Evil? Willingness to do what you must? A focus on the magic of shadows and death?
Also, would you force every arcane caster to take the test?
Making the WoHS a theme allowed only to arcane classes would provide the mechanical implications and area for a life of service to the tower and the moons, I should think. Individual backgrounds could be used to separate the white, red and black robed mages and their talented areas.
And then what defines you as a Renegade? Is that a theme, a background, or feat? Would a renegade be like the FR's red wizard of thay theme? If so, don't forget that even though a WoHS has passed the test he could still become a renegade if he dabbles in magic that is forbidden.
I think the best way to handle the Renegade issue is one of DM intervention: The DM fluff would explain ho an arcane class becomes a renegade, much as the Dark Sun Fluff explains how one defiles. Since defiling has mechanical implications, they are listed as well; I can't remember if such mechanical implications were on the magi of DL, but if so, then perhaps a replacement of theme? It would highly depend on if the mage could not use the power of the moons if they were a renegade, if the theme was attached to the moons or the order, etc.
And therein lies the problem with 4e there is no such thing as forbidden magical spells because everything that is available to your class is all you'll ever have. With 4e there are no magical rules that you as a a player must decide to follow. Then again there are no role playing requirements /restrictions for any of the classes in 4e.
I don't see this as a problem at all. Again, in dark sun players are told that if they are arcane and do not serve the sorcer-king dudes, they had better disguise their magic. In that setting, doing magic has role-play rammifications, provided that the DM actually follows them and doesn't just ignore them. So to fix this percieved lack, the DL world would need caveats for what was "forbidden" to WoHS members.
Lastly, how would you allow the moons to influence all these classes? With moon magic you'll need to ensure that it affects combat. For example, it should be far more difficult to defeat a black robe when nuitari is in high sanction and your moon is in low sanction.
The problem with this specific thing is that the DM rules when each moon is where, meaning that any background, theme or class power meant to rely on the power of the moons then depends on the DM; if the DM is fickle, your moon may rise less or more, or battles may be perfectly timed to not allow you to ever use your "moon powers". So that point, that very last of your points is the hardest sticking point. In order to have a game mechanic that works in cycles, you must convince the DM to use it fairly.
Unless one advances the stroy of the world to where the WoHS feel they must start to armor themselves from those around them. A concept which I quite enjoy the idea of.
Yeah that wouldn't work for my campaign which is set just after the war of the lance. I would like a system that allows you to play in any era.
That would be fair enough, except that the mechanical implications of alignment are no longer neccesary. so instead the question would be, "What makes one a follower of Nuitari? Evil? Willingness to do what you must? A focus on the magic of shadows and death?
So what you are saying here is that some classes are inherently black robe classes (shadow and death powers). The problem with this is that there might not be any other class that are inherently white robe or red robe classes.
The DM fluff would explain ho an arcane class becomes a renegade, much as the Dark Sun Fluff explains how one defiles. Since defiling has mechanical implications, they are listed as well;
Thanks I'll have to look at the defiling rules for Dark Sun. It might give me some ideas.
So that point, that very last of your points is the hardest sticking point. In order to have a game mechanic that works in cycles, you must convince the DM to use it fairly.
Well DL always had the moon tracking charts and that's what the dm and the players should use. Just have that chart on the table and each time the calendar day changes the chart is updated accordingly.
Unless one advances the stroy of the world to where the WoHS feel they must start to armor themselves from those around them. A concept which I quite enjoy the idea of.
Yeah that wouldn't work for my campaign which is set just after the war of the lance. I would like a system that allows you to play in any era.
Well, if such a system existed within 4th ed, it would have to reject many of the newer classes on the basis that those classes didn't exist at the time of the War of the Lance, most specifically because they didn't exist at least as base classes within the original system which the War of the Lance used as it's base.
That would be fair enough, except that the mechanical implications of alignment are no longer neccesary. so instead the question would be, "What makes one a follower of Nuitari? Evil? Willingness to do what you must? A focus on the magic of shadows and death?
So what you are saying here is that some classes are inherently black robe classes (shadow and death powers). The problem with this is that there might not be any other class that are inherently white robe or red robe classes.
Not specifically shadow and death, no. Notice my question marks.
Still, one might at least assum that for a wizard, the darker schools of Essentials would be black robe material; I'd also consider traficking in dark powers or devil assistance (dark and infernal pacts) would probably be black robe activities. That is not, however, to claim that a mage with no shadow/death powers or a pact with horrible things would not be a black robe. In fact, because of the heavy emphasis on the neccesary "evil" of having the black robes around, one might need to look towards allowing all alignments in as a matter of rule for the setting, and let that in fact be the indicator. Honestly I know how I'd do it, barring any rules intervention from the source.
So that point, that very last of your points is the hardest sticking point. In order to have a game mechanic that works in cycles, you must convince the DM to use it fairly.
Well DL always had the moon tracking charts and that's what the dm and the players should use. Just have that chart on the table and each time the calendar day changes the chart is updated accordingly.
With a table visible, and no way for the DM to cheat, I think that would be fantastic. Hell, it makes me want to create a beautiful graphic representaition of the moon's cycles for that world, complete with a marker. I'd assume that since all mages (in the case of all arcane classes being mages meaning each and every arcane class) connect to a moon in that world, a mage would have to choose their moon as a facet of beginning their character, and that whatever functions would enhance them would be listed under the class abilities.
Wizards etc in 4e RARELY wear armor, though warlocks and bards are usually an exception to that. So what? I'm not thinking having a few casters around that happen to wear armor now and then is a major revolution in the setting. Your typical casters wear cloth and cloth is traditional garb. The whole thing was a quirk of AD&D anyway.
Different schools of magic aren't really a big deal. Just link the three lunar magic types to Mage schools. It should be relatively straightforward since it is just a simplification of the same concept anyway. For other classes they can pick a moon, use a moon pact, etc. Black casters will favor magic that works well under the black moon, etc.
There is a certain basic amount of work you'd do, like creating some themes for the WoHS and maybe a couple others too, but it sounds like people have already made some sort of attempt at it. Really, it isn't going to be a particularly hard setting to do up, certainly easier than DS, though it is more quirky than FR or GH.
Now, what I'd prefer is something like this:
You have a spellbook. In that book are a number of spells, some powers and some rituals. Any time you use a power from Power Slot: Level One Encounter, that power slot closes until you take a short rest, or otherwise regain the use of an encounter power. Each power slot has a couple options, by default. So Level One Encounter has two powers to choose from, say Burning Hands and Acid Spray. If you use Burning Hands in round one, you can't use it or Acid Spray again until you regain encounter powers.
At extended rests, you can change out what spells you have readied. So you can basically retrain Acid Spray for Bongo's Bubbling Breath; a burst 1 within 10 that dazes targets and does psychic damage, and has the illusion keyword.
If you know you're going to the Icemorn Caverns to hunt Rycambrix the White Dragon and his frosty minions, you can get rid of your ice powers, and load up on more appropriate powers.
I would rather have a system that allows you to cast the same encounter power more than once per encounter.
I also really miss how important preparation was in previous editions, but I wouldn't want to resurect vancian spell casting. In 4e knowing that you're up against ice creatures or undead means absolutely nothing because there isn't anyting you need to do to prepare. PCs can just walk into each encounter without ever needing any information at all. In addition, allowing just one class to pick new powers makes 4e an incomplete system.
I'm not talking about resurecting Vancian spellcasting. I'm talking about a new system that has some of the thematic trappings of older editions, but is mechanically quite different. For instance, I'd rather not see an attempt to make a system where you can use the same encounter or daily power over and over again work. Even if it had power level restrictions.
Also, you seem to have missed the part where I specifically stated that wizards woudn't be the only class with a similar power choice system.
Now, what I'd prefer is something like this:
You have a spellbook. In that book are a number of spells, some powers and some rituals. Any time you use a power from Power Slot: Level One Encounter, that power slot closes until you take a short rest, or otherwise regain the use of an encounter power. Each power slot has a couple options, by default. So Level One Encounter has two powers to choose from, say Burning Hands and Acid Spray. If you use Burning Hands in round one, you can't use it or Acid Spray again until you regain encounter powers.
At extended rests, you can change out what spells you have readied. So you can basically retrain Acid Spray for Bongo's Bubbling Breath; a burst 1 within 10 that dazes targets and does psychic damage, and has the illusion keyword.
If you know you're going to the Icemorn Caverns to hunt Rycambrix the White Dragon and his frosty minions, you can get rid of your ice powers, and load up on more appropriate powers.
I would rather have a system that allows you to cast the same encounter power more than once per encounter.
I also really miss how important preparation was in previous editions, but I wouldn't want to resurect vancian spell casting. In 4e knowing that you're up against ice creatures or undead means absolutely nothing because there isn't anyting you need to do to prepare. PCs can just walk into each encounter without ever needing any information at all. In addition, allowing just one class to pick new powers makes 4e an incomplete system.
I'm not talking about resurecting Vancian spellcasting. I'm talking about a new system that has some of the thematic trappings of older editions, but is mechanically quite different. For instance, I'd rather not see an attempt to make a system where you can use the same encounter or daily power over and over again work. Even if it had power level restrictions.
Also, you seem to have missed the part where I specifically stated that wizards woudn't be the only class with a similar power choice system.
Yes I did see that. I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I do think that encounter powers should be allowed to be cast more than once. For example if I'm fighting an ice creature and I have 4 encounter powers I might want to cast my fire based encounter power 4 times. I see no reason why 4e has to force you to use an encounter power only once. At-wills can be used over and over again so why not encounter powers? After all what if only one of your 4 enounter powers are usefull against the monster?
Well, if such a system existed within 4th ed, it would have to reject many of the newer classes on the basis that those classes didn't exist at the time of the War of the Lance, most specifically because they didn't exist at least as base classes within the original system which the War of the Lance used as it's base.
I don't think this is a problem because the novels of the dragonlance world only need to have a small selection of the classes available.
Tanis for example makes a good Warlord.
Not specifically shadow and death, no. Notice my question marks.
Still, one might at least assum that for a wizard, the darker schools of Essentials would be black robe material; I'd also consider traficking in dark powers or devil assistance (dark and infernal pacts) would probably be black robe activities. That is not, however, to claim that a mage with no shadow/death powers or a pact with horrible things would not be a black robe. In fact, because of the heavy emphasis on the neccesary "evil" of having the black robes around, one might need to look towards allowing all alignments in as a matter of rule for the setting, and let that in fact be the indicator. Honestly I know how I'd do it, barring any rules intervention from the source.
I truely think that in order to make Dragonlance work Good, Neutrality, and Evil must be real forces in the campaign world. I would make Metallic Dragons good and Chromatic dragons evil. There is just too much of this embedded in the lore of dragonlance that you would have to ignore if you didn't.
With a table visible, and no way for the DM to cheat, I think that would be fantastic. Hell, it makes me want to create a beautiful graphic representaition of the moon's cycles for that world, complete with a marker. I'd assume that since all mages (in the case of all arcane classes being mages meaning each and every arcane class) connect to a moon in that world, a mage would have to choose their moon as a facet of beginning their character, and that whatever functions would enhance them would be listed under the class abilities.
Actually, the nexus has already created a chart for this.
www.dlnexus.com/weather/moons.aspx
www.dlnexus.com/fan/rules/11899.aspx
For example, the existence of mages that were more powerful than other classes was not something idiosyncratic to Dragonlance; rather, it was simply a part of 2E D&D and found in every setting.
On the other hand, the Towers of High Sorcery and the different robed orders of wizards was something unique and special about Dragonlance, as were the Knights of Solomnia.
So, rather than asking if you can use 4E with Dragonlance, a better question is: what do you prefer, the mechanics of 2E or 4E? If you prefer 2E, then use it with the old Dragonlance rules. If you prefer 4E, then think of how the Dragonlance setting would exist under the new ruleset. And work to separate the fluff of the setting from the mechanics of 2E. Don't get caught up on how things were, simply because newer stuff didn't exist.
Arcane classes wearing armor is an example of this. Did all wizards in 2E Dragonlance go without armor? Of course, because in 2E wizards didn't wear armor. But in 4E you can have Warlocks and Swordmages in leather armor, and Bards in chain (and any of them can wear heavier armor by spending feats). But a wizard in armor doesn't ruin the Dragonlance setting. The wizards of dragonlance didn't go without armor because of special Dragonlance fluff, they did it because that was how 2E worked.
I think it is important to separate aspects of the setting from aspects of the older edition of D&D.
For example, the existence of mages that were more powerful than other classes was not something idiosyncratic to Dragonlance; rather, it was simply a part of 2E D&D and found in every setting.
On the other hand, the Towers of High Sorcery and the different robed orders of wizards was something unique and special about Dragonlance, as were the Knights of Solomnia.
So, rather than asking if you can use 4E with Dragonlance, a better question is: what do you prefer, the mechanics of 2E or 4E? If you prefer 2E, then use it with the old Dragonlance rules. If you prefer 4E, then think of how the Dragonlance setting would exist under the new ruleset. And work to separate the fluff of the setting from the mechanics of 2E. Don't get caught up on how things were, simply because newer stuff didn't exist.
Arcane classes wearing armor is an example of this. Did all wizards in 2E Dragonlance go without armor? Of course, because in 2E wizards didn't wear armor. But in 4E you can have Warlocks and Swordmages in leather armor, and Bards in chain (and any of them can wear heavier armor by spending feats). But a wizard in armor doesn't ruin the Dragonlance setting. The wizards of dragonlance didn't go without armor because of special Dragonlance fluff, they did it because that was how 2E worked.
Yes you are correct, this is the main problem with dragonlance . The fluff of dragonlance was designed around the mechanics of 2e. In addition, the novels were written arround the mechanics of 2e. Then again I do recal people wondering how Raistlin casted a lightning bolt when he was a black robed wizard or something like that, which apparently was against the rules. So even those novels got it wrong back then.
It really is hard to change something when the lore is completely built around it.
Anyway the one thought I had that makes everything simple for the WoHS was the following.
Wizard's of High Sorcery
White Robes
Requirements:
Alignment: Good
Level / Class: 4th Level Arcane Class
Must take the test of high sorcery and take the multi-class Invoker feat.
Red Robes
Requirements:
Alignment: Unaligned
Level / Class: 4th Level Arcane Class
Must take the test of high sorcery and take the multi-class Sorcerer feat.
Black robes
Requirements:
Alignment: Evil
Level / Class: 4th Level Arcane Class
Must take the test of high sorcery and take the multi-class Warlock feat.
If you don't take the multi-class feat you're a renegade.
Then for moon magic you can give them a bonus/penalty to saves and attack rolls depending on phase of the moon. There is also a Pearl of Power in MME that gave me an idea for the bounus spells.
Now, what I'd prefer is something like this:
You have a spellbook. In that book are a number of spells, some powers and some rituals. Any time you use a power from Power Slot: Level One Encounter, that power slot closes until you take a short rest, or otherwise regain the use of an encounter power. Each power slot has a couple options, by default. So Level One Encounter has two powers to choose from, say Burning Hands and Acid Spray. If you use Burning Hands in round one, you can't use it or Acid Spray again until you regain encounter powers.
At extended rests, you can change out what spells you have readied. So you can basically retrain Acid Spray for Bongo's Bubbling Breath; a burst 1 within 10 that dazes targets and does psychic damage, and has the illusion keyword.
If you know you're going to the Icemorn Caverns to hunt Rycambrix the White Dragon and his frosty minions, you can get rid of your ice powers, and load up on more appropriate powers.
I would rather have a system that allows you to cast the same encounter power more than once per encounter.
I also really miss how important preparation was in previous editions, but I wouldn't want to resurect vancian spell casting. In 4e knowing that you're up against ice creatures or undead means absolutely nothing because there isn't anyting you need to do to prepare. PCs can just walk into each encounter without ever needing any information at all. In addition, allowing just one class to pick new powers makes 4e an incomplete system.
I'm not talking about resurecting Vancian spellcasting. I'm talking about a new system that has some of the thematic trappings of older editions, but is mechanically quite different. For instance, I'd rather not see an attempt to make a system where you can use the same encounter or daily power over and over again work. Even if it had power level restrictions.
Also, you seem to have missed the part where I specifically stated that wizards woudn't be the only class with a similar power choice system.
Yes I did see that. I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I do think that encounter powers should be allowed to be cast more than once. For example if I'm fighting an ice creature and I have 4 encounter powers I might want to cast my fire based encounter power 4 times. I see no reason why 4e has to force you to use an encounter power only once. At-wills can be used over and over again so why not encounter powers? After all what if only one of your 4 enounter powers are usefull against the monster?
In that case one of two things has to happen.
1. All encounter powers have to be equal in power at a given level. That means either you pick from the same list every time, or they all scale.
2. A trade up system similar to trading action types. IE, a level one power would be like a minor action to a level 3 power's move action.
I'm not really fond of either option, personally.
Well, here's a few thoughts...
1. Armored casters...
Refluff non-magical armor as a class feature - none of the "armored" casters except the hexblade and the bard get hide armor, so you could work it like this:
(This basically brings back the feel of the armor spell failure of previous editions, as well)
Any arcane character class proficient with anything more than cloth armor gains the Arcane Armor class feature.
[b
Arcane Armor[/b] class feature]
Arcane Armor
Over the long years of your magical study, you have spent countless hours enhancing your personal magical defenses.
This class feature replaces any armor proficiency the character gains from their class other than cloth armor.
When not wearing armor of any sort, the arcane caster gains an armor bonus to their AC. Choose a type of armor that the character would have been proficient with had they not chosen this class feature. The armor bonus given by this class feature equals the armor bonus of a suit of masterwork armor of that type of the character's level. If the armor type chosen for this class feature has any skill check or speed penalties, the character also suffers those penalties. The Arcane Armor class feature occupies the character's magical armor slot and can be enchanted with armor enchantments appropriate to the armor type chosen.
If the character wears any sort of non-magical or magical armor, or any item that bestows an armor bonus, they lose the effects of this class feature until they remove the armor or item and take an extended rest.
The armor type chosen for the Arcane Armor class feature can only be changed when gaining a character level and counts as the character's retraining for that level.
Arcane Armor
Over the long years of your magical study, you have spent countless hours enhancing your personal magical defenses.
This class feature replaces any armor proficiency the character gains from their class other than cloth armor.
When not wearing armor of any sort, the arcane caster gains an armor bonus to their AC. Choose a type of armor that the character would have been proficient with had they not chosen this class feature. The armor bonus given by this class feature equals the armor bonus of a suit of masterwork armor of that type of the character's level. If the armor type chosen for this class feature has any skill check or speed penalties, the character also suffers those penalties. The Arcane Armor class feature occupies the character's magical armor slot and can be enchanted with armor enchantments appropriate to the armor type chosen.
If the character wears any sort of non-magical or magical armor, or any item that bestows an armor bonus, they lose the effects of this class feature until they remove the armor or item and take an extended rest.
The armor type chosen for the Arcane Armor class feature can only be changed when gaining a character level and counts as the character's retraining for that level.
Wizards actually wore armor in older editions. A combination of Mage Armor (hello, Int bonus to AC) and Bracers of Armor (hello, refluffed Chain)
But they didn't in Dragonlance and they explained why. They also explained in Dragonlance why Wizards could only use a dagger and a staff. The reason they could use a dagger was in honor of the wizard Magius who fought with Huma against the dragons. A Fighter/Wizard could wear armor, Gilthanas did but straight Wizards could not.
It sounds like "Wizards can't mechanically wear armor, so lets find a flavor reason why they don't"
'sides it's easy enough to call both the Swordmage and the Bard a Fighter/Wizard since both also fight with weapons.
Also, Bracers of Armor and Mage Armor were probably still allowed? Neither really counts as "armor" except for the mechanical "grants an Armor bonus to AC" part.
But didn't they because that was a core part of the flavor of the game, or didn't they because those were the rules so they had to come up with a reason for it?
It sounds like "Wizards can't mechanically wear armor, so lets find a flavor reason why they don't"
'sides it's easy enough to call both the Swordmage and the Bard a Fighter/Wizard since both also fight with weapons.
Also, Bracers of Armor and Mage Armor were probably still allowed? Neither really counts as "armor" except for the mechanical "grants an Armor bonus to AC" part.
Actually back then it said that Wizards could not wear armour because it interfered with their spellcasting. What Dragonlance did was it gave a flavour reason to go with the mechanical reason why they couldn't. With regards to weapons other than the staff and a few others was because Wizards didn't have time to study the use of other weapons.
Bracers of Armour and Rings of Protection were perfectly fine to wear.
If you flip it around, what prevents a Wizard from taking the time to learn to wield a weapon? Just because most don't, doesn't mean none do. The PCs are just 5 in a world of millions, and they're generally non-traditionalists anyway.
Vancian Casting needs to die. Painfully. With a lot of blood and a long, agonizing last look before exhaling it's last, bubbly breath.
I like Vancian, it feels like the novels with which I'm very familiar.
This new system feels like an arcade game (granted 4e looks/feels a lot like World of Warcraft to me anyway), and I don't like that.
I think it is important to separate aspects of the setting from aspects of the older edition of D&D.
For example, the existence of mages that were more powerful than other classes was not something idiosyncratic to Dragonlance; rather, it was simply a part of 2E D&D and found in every setting.
On the other hand, the Towers of High Sorcery and the different robed orders of wizards was something unique and special about Dragonlance, as were the Knights of Solomnia.
So, rather than asking if you can use 4E with Dragonlance, a better question is: what do you prefer, the mechanics of 2E or 4E? If you prefer 2E, then use it with the old Dragonlance rules. If you prefer 4E, then think of how the Dragonlance setting would exist under the new ruleset. And work to separate the fluff of the setting from the mechanics of 2E. Don't get caught up on how things were, simply because newer stuff didn't exist.
Arcane classes wearing armor is an example of this. Did all wizards in 2E Dragonlance go without armor? Of course, because in 2E wizards didn't wear armor. But in 4E you can have Warlocks and Swordmages in leather armor, and Bards in chain (and any of them can wear heavier armor by spending feats). But a wizard in armor doesn't ruin the Dragonlance setting. The wizards of dragonlance didn't go without armor because of special Dragonlance fluff, they did it because that was how 2E worked.
You missed something important. There are 200+ Dragonlance novels. In them mages did not wear armour (I don't care what the reason). If they released another novel where suddenly mages wore armour, it would not feel like Dragonlance. There is a status quo that must be preserved.
Likewise, D&D is medieval fantasy. Imagine if 5th edition the core books included lightsabers, Death Stars, blasters, starfighters, droids, etc. Imagine how silly the argument would be to say, "Dragonlance only didn't have these things before simply because game mechanics didn't allow them. Just add them to your campaign now that they're available, and it will still feel like Dragonlance."
Then there is the added problem of what to do with all the other 'arcane' classes in 4e. Why would anyone care to be a wizard and pass a test (a test that could kill them) if they could just become a non-wizard arcane class?
Its not the class that matters, its the type of spell. Divide your casters into arcane and divine types, and *all* arcane casters must take the test once casting spells of a given level.
because you don't understand it
A child could understand it.
The reason they turned it into W.O.W., however, is beyond me
because you don't understand it
A child could understand it.
The reason they turned it into W.O.W., however, is beyond me
I don't think it is as complicated as it's made out to be.
First, the Dragonlance Nexus has made some very good conversion materials for things like races. Otherwise there are some easy conversions to make- kender are halflings, half-ogres are goliaths, etc.
Second, you will have to enforce some restrictions to keep the 'flavor' of the old game. But some of these can be mechanical (limited class selection- no Sorcerers/Blade Singers/Swordmages, only Wizards/Clerics/Invokers can take Ritual Casting (bards can do 'Bard' rituals only)), and some can be in-world social enforcement. Sure, a wizard can learn to wear plate armor, but the local Conclave is going to track them down and have some serious questions about why they are violating the laws handed down by the gods of magic. No Tiefling or Dragonborn. If players complain about restricted options, it's worth thinking about why they want to play the setting at all if they want to be a Shardling Psionic on Krynn.
Warlords, Bards, etc.- their powers aren't really regarded as magical.
Divine-source classes don't really exist before the return of the gods if you're playing Age of Despair.
Warlocks- rare, and Renegades by default. One of the novels (the Tasselhoff book in the Meetings Sextet, if I recall) has a failed Wizard who gains powers from Hiddukel in a manner that seems quite Warlock-like. A player chosing this class would face some serious scrutiny from the local Wizards Conclave.
Wizards in 4e do have a choice of spells in their Daily and Utility powers, which are picked from a spellbook. Rituals must be discovered, bought, etc. You can use the old spellbook sizing rules- 1 page per level, books are in the 100-200 page range- if you want to force multiple spellbooks.
As long as you limit the classes/races to the 4e PHB, enforce a few rules, and fluff a few things (Silvenesti elves use Eladrin stats, etc.) I don't see any problem. In return, you get a system that is much more balanced mechanically (man it was fun saying 'I hit him with my sword' every round of combat as a 2e fighter...) and easier to DM.
You missed something important. There are 200+ Dragonlance novels. In them mages did not wear armour (I don't care what the reason). If they released another novel where suddenly mages wore armour, it would not feel like Dragonlance. There is a status quo that must be preserved.
Likewise, D&D is medieval fantasy. Imagine if 5th edition the core books included lightsabers, Death Stars, blasters, starfighters, droids, etc. Imagine how silly the argument would be to say, "Dragonlance only didn't have these things before simply because game mechanics didn't allow them. Just add them to your campaign now that they're available, and it will still feel like Dragonlance."
Nothing obliges you to add every single thing that is released into your personal game, or ever has. AD&D added psionics without them being obligatory to include in Dragonlance (I never saw them appear in any official module that I can recall). If you take the good and leave what doesn't fit, you can play Dragonlance in 4e without any problem, and with a system that has fixed a lot of broken older things (like Wizards with one hit point and one spell for the whole day- remember that Dragonlance novel where a main character died on the first page because he stepped on a nail? Yeah, me neither- because the authors ignored mechanical considerations when they were inconvenient to telling the story).
In Dragonlance the WoHS represent the iconic form of the wizard complete with robes, staff, and dagger. In that setting, no self respecting wizard would wield a greatsword and sit on the conclave. He just wouldn't get any respect from his peers. Using armor and weapons would be a sign of weakness in magic. If I was the DM and a player wanted to wear armor and wield a non-WoHS type weapon he wouldn't have any respect at the towers of HS. I would seriously have the NPCs of his order chastise him for it.
I think that in order to make Dragonlance work the iconic form of the wizard must be maintained. I agree with AdrianLP that there is a status quo that must be preserved. Even if many of the concepts introduced into the game are based on the 2e rule system, those concepts need to be preserved.
Still I have yet to see a version of the WoTH for 4e that fits well with the novels.
I think it is important to separate aspects of the setting from aspects of the older edition of D&D.
For example, the existence of mages that were more powerful than other classes was not something idiosyncratic to Dragonlance; rather, it was simply a part of 2E D&D and found in every setting.
On the other hand, the Towers of High Sorcery and the different robed orders of wizards was something unique and special about Dragonlance, as were the Knights of Solomnia.
So, rather than asking if you can use 4E with Dragonlance, a better question is: what do you prefer, the mechanics of 2E or 4E? If you prefer 2E, then use it with the old Dragonlance rules. If you prefer 4E, then think of how the Dragonlance setting would exist under the new ruleset. And work to separate the fluff of the setting from the mechanics of 2E. Don't get caught up on how things were, simply because newer stuff didn't exist.
Arcane classes wearing armor is an example of this. Did all wizards in 2E Dragonlance go without armor? Of course, because in 2E wizards didn't wear armor. But in 4E you can have Warlocks and Swordmages in leather armor, and Bards in chain (and any of them can wear heavier armor by spending feats). But a wizard in armor doesn't ruin the Dragonlance setting. The wizards of dragonlance didn't go without armor because of special Dragonlance fluff, they did it because that was how 2E worked.
You missed something important. There are 200+ Dragonlance novels. In them mages did not wear armour (I don't care what the reason). If they released another novel where suddenly mages wore armour, it would not feel like Dragonlance. There is a status quo that must be preserved.
Likewise, D&D is medieval fantasy. Imagine if 5th edition the core books included lightsabers, Death Stars, blasters, starfighters, droids, etc. Imagine how silly the argument would be to say, "Dragonlance only didn't have these things before simply because game mechanics didn't allow them. Just add them to your campaign now that they're available, and it will still feel like Dragonlance."
I agree with Pluisjen: you have already made your decision. There doesn't seem to be any reason at all for you to use 4E, because from everything you have said it appears that you simply prefer the mechanics of 2E.
The telling line is when you say, "I don't care what the reason" in reference to all the mages in the DL novels not wearing armor. To you, that is an important part of DL fluff, whereas I see it as simpy a part of the 2E mechanics. To me, the fluff of the setting can be boiled down to things other than what weapons/armor/powers certain classes can use, but for you, those mechanics are fully melded with the fluff. This is fine, there is no right way to do it, which is why I asked my question in the first place.
So, rather than tell me that I missed something important (which I don't think I did...your response was directly in line with what I asked), just go off and enjoy playing 2E DL.
In regards to adding new things to old campaigns: I don't think it is silly at all. Forgotten Realms now has Dragonborn, Wilden, Shardminds, etc. The fact that older versions of FR did not have these races was not because the designers decided such an absence was a crutial part of the fluff of the campaign setting; they didn't have those races because they hadn't been invented yet. We are not talking about actual history here: they are fantasy worlds in which everything is a construct of the authors. But again, as you say, you don't care about the reasons. You prefer 2E mechanics, and so there is really nothing to discuss or argue. Initially it seemed as if your thread was created to help you bring DL to 4E, but now it seems you created it to prove how inferior 4E is because it can't handle DL. Whatever. Go play and have fun.
Then there is the added problem of what to do with all the other 'arcane' classes in 4e. Why would anyone care to be a wizard and pass a test (a test that could kill them) if they could just become a non-wizard arcane class?
Its not the class that matters, its the type of spell. Divide your casters into arcane and divine types, and *all* arcane casters must take the test once casting spells of a given level.
At one point I toyed with lumping all the arcane powers into a huge list categorized by the schools of magic as they were in previous editions. I discovered that it can be done in 4e. In fact, there are plenty of spells for each of the eight schools of magic. My idea was to make 3 arcane classes that could buy into those spells. White robes would be a defender arcane caster, Red robes would be controllers, and black robes strikers. In the end it was simply too much work and I gave up.
Right. Thread over. Enjoy your silly "4e is WoW" and go back to playing AD&D. And please, stop asking questions if you don't care about the answers and wasting everyone's time.
Yeah, I guess I will have to join you at this point Pluisjen. It was an interesting discussion in general on fluff, but I think I'll go work on my "WoW" game now, lol. Do have fun with your game AdrianLP, it is all a matter of taste, but there's just no point in talking about it anymore at this point, we've heard it all before and it can't go anywhere but downhill from here. I played AD&D for 20 years, and it was quite fun. 4e is even MORE fun IMHO if you can open your mind a crack...
Then there is the added problem of what to do with all the other 'arcane' classes in 4e. Why would anyone care to be a wizard and pass a test (a test that could kill them) if they could just become a non-wizard arcane class?
Its not the class that matters, its the type of spell. Divide your casters into arcane and divine types, and *all* arcane casters must take the test once casting spells of a given level.
At one point I toyed with lumping all the arcane powers into a huge list categorized by the schools of magic as they were in previous editions. I discovered that it can be done in 4e. In fact, there are plenty of spells for each of the eight schools of magic. My idea was to make 3 arcane classes that could buy into those spells. White robes would be a defender arcane caster, Red robes would be controllers, and black robes strikers. In the end it was simply too much work and I gave up.
I think the arcane classes can be handled without too much trouble- sorcerers you can either ban or limit to races outside the purview of the Conclave, like the Irda, Draconians, etc. Bards are tapping into a primodrial sort of charismatic/luck force that is unrelated to what Wizards do- limiting their ritual access would enforce this prohibition and help keep them seperate from Wizards. Swordmages were created specific to the FR setting, so I don't see a reason to add them if you don't like them. Warlocks, as I mentioned above, can be essentially Renegades who have sold their souls to Hiddukel or some other dark power to gain power for themselves, and would probably be hunted by the Conclave (similar position to Defilers/preservers in most of Dark Sun).
Wizards of High Sorcery could work very well as a theme. Give White Robes a bonus to radiant/defensive magic, black robes a bonus to necrotic/charm magic, Red Robes get a bonus to illusion or conjuration... a few extra powers, maybe say that certain rituals are the domain of a certain Order, and they won't be taught to outsiders without risking being branded a Renegade, add a few themed powers... etc.
Personally, I would say that Wizards are ready to take their Test at level one. Anything beyond basic cantrips would seem to be in the realm of 'more powerful magic', particularly rituals. The level 3 thing was just a convention- I think it was raised to level 5 either in 3e or in one of the 2e revised boxed sets.
And I'm also really tired of the WoW comments - In wow, I can't have my 85 shaman swing from chandeliers to try to kick the lich king in the face. I can't try to negotiate with the Defias instead of kicking their faces in, nor can I decide the Defias were right and instead try to take down Stormwind. In WoW, I can't have my rogue break into the auction house at night and steal any of the items up for sale, nor can I multi-class into another class to diversify myself. The fighter in WoW can't charge an enemy and knock them down prone, granting the rogue a chance to shoot an arrow off that does sneak attack damage. I can't teleport up to a ledge preventing the enemies from hitting me in WoW, as everything is more or less considered a level plane and everything can find you anyhow. What, because you see the presentation of powers and assume little buttons to be clicked? Because we have finally put names to the roles (which are fairly flexible anyways in 4e)? Because we have the ability to heal up inbetween combat encounters?
Bah, there are quite a few things from older editions (especially 2nd) that I miss - But as someone who has been outright addicted to MMORPGS, the flavor and feel of WoW (or EverQuest I or II, or City of Heroes, or Champions Online, or Guildwars, or Final Fantasy XI, etc.) is nothing like, and will never be like playing an actual pen and paper game of ANY sort no matter what they do to the game. The closest you will ever get is playing the actual world of warcraft game for 3.5.
1. An arcane class that fails to take the test becomes a renegade.
2. A WoHS that disobeys the order and/or indulges in renegade/restricted magic becomes a renegade
3. A renegade must be allowed to be redeemed.
I really think, there has to be a temptation for every wizard to become a renegade.
Maybe being a renegade is more like a curse. The Dragonlance 4e system could have a magic corruption level that works like a disease track, one in which only in game actions (not skill checks) can change.
I do remember Raistlin mentioning that daggers were the only weapon Wizards were allowed to use, but I don't see this as ingrained in the system.
I suppose It was an Oath Wizards swore after taking the Test "I shall only use Daggers to defend myself if my magic fails me", but, same as armor, I don't see how this is a "system" problem.
Dragonlance aside, you could create your own campaign world where you have an organization of Fighters that only use Longsword. Does it mean you can't use 4E ruleset?
So, the way I see it, Wizard of High Sorcery it's not a class apart, it's (just) an organization, with e specific set of rules whose adherents are supposed to follow.
Nothing to do with "the rules of the game".
I'm not sure the Renegade can be a class or a theme. Whatever the solution, it has to meet the following conditions.
1. An arcane class that fails to take the test becomes a renegade.
2. A WoHS that disobeys the order and/or indulges in renegade/restricted magic becomes a renegade
3. A renegade must be allowed to be redeemed.
I really think, there has to be a temptation for every wizard to become a renegade.
Maybe being a renegade is more like a curse. The Dragonlance 4e system could have a magic corruption level that works like a disease track, one in which only in game actions (not skill checks) can change.
Yeah, 'Renegade' obviously covers a lot of situations- it's not a mechanic, it's an in-world identity, like being a disgraced Solomnic knight or a dark elf. You could use it as the basis for a paragon path for Arcane classes I suppose, or a theme. I was just thinking of Warlocks as an example of one type of Renegade- people who gain their power by consorting with extra-planar powers rather than through study or the clerical magic. Reconciling a warlock to the conclave might not be possible, however.
Dragonlance did feature a lot of "alignment mechanics", which I was never fond of. Not sure what I would do with those. They were somewhat important for clerics, knights, and wizards though.
Enjoy your silly "4e is WoW"
So I'm the only person to have ever see the many similarities?
stop asking questions if you don't care about the answers and wasting everyone's time.
I take the answers I like, and make note of them.
However, please don't assume that just because someone took the time to answer means I must consider it a brilliant solution to the problem.
So I'm the only person to have ever made that mistake?
Not at all. Lots of people mistakenly think 4e is like WoW.
And I'm also really tired of the WoW comments
So I'm not the only one to observe the similarities.
- In wow, I can't have my 85 shaman swing from chandeliers to try to kick the lich king in the face
I'm sorry, I don't remember saying, "they are identical in every single way, and absolutely everything you can do in D&D you can do in WOW."
Bah, there are quite a few things from older editions (especially 2nd) that I miss - But as someone who has been outright addicted to MMORPGS, the flavor and feel of WoW (or EverQuest I or II, or City of Heroes, or Champions Online, or Guildwars, or Final Fantasy XI, etc.) is nothing like, and will never be like playing an actual pen and paper game of ANY sort no matter what they do to the game. The closest you will ever get is playing the actual world of warcraft game for 3.5.
I think you misinterpreted "similar" for "they are exactly the same in every single way."
So I'm the only person to have ever made that mistake?
Not at all. Lots of people mistakenly think 4e is like WoW.
and at what point do you begin to wonder why they have this perception, and why people in number have this perception?
I've played WOW for about four years. I've played D&D (basic, 2e, 3e, and some 4e) for about 16 years. So I think my opinion on the matter is hardly out of ignorance.
So I'm the only person to have ever made that mistake?
Not at all. Lots of people mistakenly think 4e is like WoW.
and at what point do you begin to wonder why they have this perception, and why people in number have this perception?
I've played WOW for about four years. I've played D&D (basic, 2e, 3e, and some 4e) for about 16 years. So I think my opinion on the matter is hardly out of ignorance.
Doesn't matter if I got hundreds of people telling me the Earth is flat. It ain't.
And even if 4e is like WoW ... who cares? D&D's whole existence is stolen from SOMEWHERE, what difference does it make if WoW's one of the sources?
I agree with Pluisjen: you have already made your decision. There doesn't seem to be any reason at all for you to use 4E
No reason at all? I can think of a few:
- Characters are survive easier at low levels
- There is more for melee-types to do other then just "attack with my sword"
- Mages are useful in combat at very low levels
- I prefer the incresed health and non-random health gains
- It is the only forum-supported edition
- It is the only edition which receives official updates
etc
Doesn't matter if I got hundreds of people telling me the Earth is flat. It ain't.
You understand the difference between facts and opinions right?
Abstract a lot, they are both games, hence they are similar in that way. It doesn't stop there of course. Many of the new classes seemed to be influenced by WOW, many of the new class abilities are very similar to WOW's (And in some cases are named about the same), the explicit breaking down of groups into roles is very WOW-like (yes a fighter was always better in melee than the average mage, but its emphasised much more now as it is in WOW), etc These are not the only similarities, there are lots more.
and its not just that D&D has a lot of similarities with WOW, its the timing that makes it suspicious.
Themes (introduced in the Dark Sun article and included in Dragon content)
I suppose its not available freely online? It is in Dragon magazine you say? Which number?
Not free (sorry). Available here:
wizards.com/DnD/TOC.aspx?x=dnd/4new/drto...
This looks like its just a continuation of Themes. Does this edition explain how to use themes? Any idea which magazine was the first to introduce themes?
Doesn't matter if I got hundreds of people telling me the Earth is flat. It ain't.
You understand the difference between facts and opinions right?
Abstract a lot, they are both games, hence they are similar in that way. It doesn't stop there of course. Many of the new classes seemed to be influenced by WOW, many of the new class abilities are very similar to WOW's (And in some cases are named about the same), the explicit breaking down of groups into roles is very WOW-like (yes a fighter was always better in melee than the average mage, but its emphasised much more now as it is in WOW), etc These are not the only similarities, there are lots more.
and its not just that D&D has a lot of similarities with WOW, its the timing that makes it suspicious.
WoW stole most of those from D&D. Not vice versa. I could claim that WoW is more like previous editions because they each had crafting skills, and sub systems to handle problems where 4e uses a unified mechanic to solve most issues. Making it not very WoW like at all. There is also no rules for respawning, no raids, no looking for group, no general chat, no random wandering wolves marching around with zebras seemingly oblivious to each other to grind for xp.... They really share nothing in common.
The powers system really doesn't resemble anything like WoW, either. The power system is a new take on the old vancian system. Abilities with limited use requiring a rest to refresh them. Sounds like every edition of D&D to me.
By the way, there is already a WoW tabletop RPG. Note the edition.
www.amazon.com/World-Warcraft-Roleplayin...
WoW stole most of those from D&D.
I don't think any of them existed in D&D previous. Can you cite specific examples?
WoW stole most of those from D&D.
I don't think any of them existed in D&D previous. Can you cite specific examples?
Faerie Fire. Can you cite specific examples of 4e stealing names from WoW? Also, if that's the best you've got, stealing names from something, then you're basically just grasping at straws here. 4e also has a heavy focus on game balance. As anyone can tell you, WoW has never been balanced, at all. If they wanted to take a few things here and there, there's also nothing wrong with that. WoW is basically the greatest selling thing.... ever.
I haven't played it in over 2 years, but I have to admit that Blizzard really knows how to find the people. Taking notes from them is probably the best thing anyone can ever do.
It isn't like WoW at all, though. The combat system is highly tactical in nature. WoW is hack and slash and beat it until it dies, and occasionally jump out of the way of some missile or something... or randomly have to kill some extra monsters that pop up. If I were to compare it to any video game, and this would still be a stretch, it would be Final Fantasy Tactics.
WoW stole most of those from D&D.
I don't think any of them existed in D&D previous. Can you cite specific examples?
Faerie Fire.
I don't remember mentioning Faerie Fire, are you avoiding my question?
Can you cite specific examples of 4e stealing names from WoW?
I think you read just one of many things I listed.
WoW is hack and slash and beat it until it dies
heh, and that is not like D&D at all is it?
D&D is a combat simular so disinterested in non-combat solutions that they hardly even bother writing rules for such. Heck I thought 2e was too much of hack and slash, and 4e seems to further abstract non-combat skills.
Can you come up with creative non-combat solutions to problems in WOW? Sure you can, I never said otherwise. But the focus of the D&D rules certainly favours combat.
WoW stole most of those from D&D.
I don't think any of them existed in D&D previous. Can you cite specific examples?
Faerie Fire.
I don't remember mentioning Faerie Fire, are you avoiding my question?Can you cite specific examples of 4e stealing names from WoW?
I think you read just one of many things I listed.WoW is hack and slash and beat it until it dies
heh, and that is not like D&D at all is it?
D&D is a combat simular so disinterested in non-combat solutions that they hardly even bother writing rules for such. Heck I thought 2e was too much of hack and slash, and 4e seems to further abstract non-combat skills.
Can you come up with creative non-combat solutions to problems in WOW? Sure you can, I never said otherwise. But the focus of the D&D rules certainly favours combat.
That's because you don't need rules to roleplay.
Once you play the game, it's very clear the two don't have much in common, under than the underlying RPG (that is to say, D&D) DNA.
The powers system actually simulates Vancian magic in some ways for Wizards, but steps up the level of power. Think of a mid-high level Mage from 3/2e. They have:
-a few spells at their highest level only castable 1/day
-mid-level spells, of which they can cast enough to cast 1-3 in each encounter.
-low-level and utility spells, which they can cast several of in each encounter-maybe 3+per encounter
You probably pick carefully your highest level and non-combat spells, while your low-mid level spells you're often using the same selections over and over.
So in 4e you have daily, encounter, and at-will spells. The encounter length (which is tuned by the improved balance) means that you aren't casting 100 at-wills. You can swap out your daily and utility spells, and rituals round out the non-combat utility options. They are component-limited as well because their components cost gold, just like the ritual-like spells in previous editions.
That's because you don't need rules to roleplay.
That is a fairly weak argument though.
You don't need rules to do combat either. Kids do this all the time when they play cops and robbers, and system like the diceless Argument system has no more rules for combat than it does for non-combat (which is to say, it is a bare frmaework).
WoW stole most of those from D&D.
I don't think any of them existed in D&D previous. Can you cite specific examples?
Faerie Fire.
I don't remember mentioning Faerie Fire, are you avoiding my question?Can you cite specific examples of 4e stealing names from WoW?
I think you read just one of many things I listed.WoW is hack and slash and beat it until it dies
heh, and that is not like D&D at all is it?
D&D is a combat simular so disinterested in non-combat solutions that they hardly even bother writing rules for such. Heck I thought 2e was too much of hack and slash, and 4e seems to further abstract non-combat skills.
Can you come up with creative non-combat solutions to problems in WOW? Sure you can, I never said otherwise. But the focus of the D&D rules certainly favours combat.
The focus of the rules in EVERY edition of D&D has been combat. It's DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. It evolved from a miniatures combat game. There are plenty of tools for non combat in 4e. What it did was create a unified system for doing just about everything. You could run an entire game off of page 42, and never use anything else if you wanted to. No more need for a sub system to handle every little detail.
What specific rules do you think it's missing?
That's because you don't need rules to roleplay.
That is a fairly weak argument though.
You don't need rules to do combat either. Kids do this all the time when they play cops and robbers, and system like the diceless Argument system has no more rules for combat than it does for non-combat (which is to say, it is a bare frmaework).
You need rules for combat, because cops and robbers degrades into "I SHOT YOU!" "NO! YOU MISSED! I MOVED OUT OF THE WAY!"
Roleplaying is just that, roleplaying. I'm interested to see what rules for roleplaying you think 4e lacks, though.
Or, perhaps this is what you're after?
You need rules for combat, because cops and robbers degrades into "I SHOT YOU!" "NO! YOU MISSED! I MOVED OUT OF THE WAY!"
Roleplaying is just that, roleplaying. I'm interested to see what rules for roleplaying you think 4e lacks, though.
I've seen D&D's dice-driven combat resole to that. Even with dice, there is still a LOT of DM arbitration (who monsters will attack, why, etc)
But combat works quite well in story-telling (ie: few to no rules) RPG systems.
As for your picture, I don't think you even need nearly as many combat rules as we have. With proper co-operative story telling you can do without rules entirely (try the freely available Argument system for example).
I would say that if you feel you need as many rules as we currently have, then that book is for you, not I
That's because you don't need rules to roleplay.
That is a fairly weak argument though.
You don't need rules to do combat either. Kids do this all the time when they play cops and robbers, and system like the diceless Argument system has no more rules for combat than it does for non-combat (which is to say, it is a bare frmaework).
D&D has always had a combat focus. The abstraction in this edition doesn't limit what you can do, it just penalizes you less for having non-combat options. There were a lot of useless non-weapon proficiencies in the old editions, or ones that were way over-specialized (especially 2e). I think a lot of people find detailed rules for conducting out of combat options either never were used, or tended to swamp actual roleplaying (no need to say what I would tell the elven ambassador- just consult the Convincing Diplomacy Check Result table.)
In 2/3e, if you focused on non-combat stuff you sat and were useless in combat, because Cha was a dump stat for nearly everyone, and because a wizard using non-combat spells as his preps was reduced to uselessness. 4e assumes it isn't fun to play a character who is useless at whole chunks of the game. It ups the perceived power level of characters slightly asa result.
You need rules for combat, because cops and robbers degrades into "I SHOT YOU!" "NO! YOU MISSED! I MOVED OUT OF THE WAY!"
Roleplaying is just that, roleplaying. I'm interested to see what rules for roleplaying you think 4e lacks, though.
I've seen D&D's dice-driven combat resole to that. Even with dice, there is still a LOT of DM arbitration (who monsters will attack, why, etc)
But combat works quite well in story-telling (ie: few to no rules) RPG systems.
I prefer rules light, unified systems myself like World of Darkness. One mechanics pretty much governs everything. It helps games move faster when everything is done using one rule. In that specific example, it's skill + ability +/- conditional modifiers = dice pool. That's the only mechanics you're ever gonna use.
However, D&D has always had combat focused rules. I'm still wondering what rules for roleplay you think it lacks.
4e can be as deadly as you want it to be. I've run grim deathtrap scenarios where the party will only survive if they take immediate and decisive action. You can make 100% sure death death traps if you want. Go look at FourthCore if you want examples. 4e is a very flexible game where you can play a game of spying and intrigue with magic and all kinds of skullduggery, and a game of Arthurian knights questing after beasts and jousting each other for the favors of fair maidens. If it gained some inspiration from any source so what? It gained inspiration from other editions of D&D, Indy games, etc. Even if you decide that a specific mechanic in 4e springs from one in WoW, it is totally unlike that thing. No more alike than marking is to WoW aggro. They almost kinda serve a similar purpose, but they actually work completely differently, and WoW got the idea from the 3.x/AD&D fighter that stood in the front line and gave Mr Wizmatic time to rev up his blender. Who stole from who exactly? 3.x has had most of the things that are in 4e in some form another for a long time. Again, it really just isn't important.
What IS important is that they are totally different types of games. Playing one is not at all like playing the other in any important ways.
And really, you kinda gotta understand. You're talking to, as I know because I talk to these people here all the time, 100's of years worth of DMing and game design experience. We're just offering you opinions, yet basically all we've gotten back is the punk back alley insult to 4e and a lot of nose in the air "my my, but that is plebian, my 2e makes such a vastly better wizard" nonsense. lol. I mean, I played AD&D since the literal very day the 1e PHB was handed out of boxes. I know ALL about AD&D and 4e. You don't have to like one more than the other, no biggie, but if you're going to ASK, then maybe just have the decency to say "well, OK, that would be a way to do that in 4e". We're not here to convince you that is the RIGHT way to play DL and thank you we can have our own opinions about it that are perfectly respectable. I don't recall edition warring on you. If you have other things you want to talk about or need any other ideas please do ask.
I think you've got the rundown pretty much now on 2e and 4e wizards. Try out the 4e version and make some characters and maybe PLAY, then make up your mind how to use it in DL or not if you aren't going to play 4e.
I prefer rules light, unified systems myself like World of Darkness. One mechanics pretty much governs everything. It helps games move faster when everything is done using one rule. In that specific example, it's skill + ability +/- conditional modifiers = dice pool. That's the only mechanics you're ever gonna use.
However, D&D has always had combat focused rules. I'm still wondering what rules for roleplay you think it lacks.
I don't remember saying it lacked ruels. I said it's imbalance of combat rules to non-combat shows its focus. Remove about half of the combar rules and I'd be happy.
I loved West End Games D6 system. Here is a Star Wars game I've been developing for my children (my son loves Star Wars): www.fileden.com/files/2011/10/8/3206298/... Not a finished work yet, but my children love it.
We're just offering you opinions, yet basically all we've gotten back is the punk back alley insult to 4e and a lot of nose in the air "my my, but that is plebian, my 2e makes such a vastly better wizard" nonsense.
I've given my opinion freely. As I've aspergers, I tend to do that. I've never said I've not learned anything useful, not even implied it.
But just because someone gives me their opinion doesn't mean its brilliant.
I think you've got the rundown pretty much now on 2e and 4e wizards. Try out the 4e version and make some characters and maybe PLAY, then make up your mind how to use it in DL or not if you aren't going to play 4e.
I have played 4e. Not nearly as much as I played AD&D in my teens, but I haven't 0 experience either.
The other thing that bugs me is the wizard's implements. I could simply remove them, but I should find a way to balance out that loss if I do.The implement thing to me just feels so... childish. I'm not sure why. I suppose the wand-use makes me feel too much like Harry Potter (which I like, but only in Harry Potter). I get this 4e vibe like I'm trying to fill slots on my character. Min/maxing items on head, chest, hand, etc. And I really don't like that feeling.
I prefer rules light, unified systems myself like World of Darkness. One mechanics pretty much governs everything. It helps games move faster when everything is done using one rule. In that specific example, it's skill + ability +/- conditional modifiers = dice pool. That's the only mechanics you're ever gonna use.
However, D&D has always had combat focused rules. I'm still wondering what rules for roleplay you think it lacks.
I don't remember saying it lacked ruels. I said it's imbalance of combat rules to non-combat shows its focus. Remove about half of the combar rules and I'd be happy.
I loved West End Games D6 system. Here is a Star Wars game I've been developing for my children (my son loves Star Wars): www.fileden.com/files/2011/10/8/3206298/... Not a finished work yet, but my children love it.
Yeah, well, one way to look at it is that in practice all the mass of say 3.5 non-combat rules more got in the way than did anything huge for you. Basically 4e expresses in page what 3.5 expressed in a chapter (at best). AD&D is nice for a few specific types of game, but the non-combat part of it is very klunky. Again 4e expressed in a small amount of space what 2e took various sections of many different chapters to say.
I've seen 100 proposals for adding chapters of 'stuff' onto 4e non-combat systems and even looking at all the stuff WotC HAS added to it since PHB1, which is a lot really, none of it really adds a heck of a lot to the basic simple KISS 'this gets the job done well' of what 4e provides. It isn't a perfect game at all, but I don't see a superabundance of useful non-combat options in 2e. It HAS some, but what is your sheet covered with? Mostly numbers and stuff that relate to combat, and/or basic success/fail skill type mechanics. Which is better, using a d20 for all that and condensing it into a couple of tables and letting all classes have various mixes of skills or AD&D where every one uses some different type of dice and for whatever reason only guys in leather armor that wield daggers and short swords can climb a wall or pick a pocket? In other words is the fact that 2/3 of the pages in the 4e PHB are taken up by feats or powers that you would probably use mostly in combat a PROBLEM, or a sign that the game succeeded?
I'd still like to know what rules for non combat you'd like to see added that can't be handled in the current system.
I'm not sure I even said that. What I said is there is an imbalance. I said even 2e was too hack'n'slash. Honestly.
But if I were to add non-combat rules they might be detailed rules on things like spell research/creation (AD&D 2e did this in the wizard sourcebook).
As far as research/creation of spells... no reason you couldn't do that for rituals at all. In fact, it would be a really good way to gain them.
There really isn't an imbalance, though. Page 42 can handle pretty much anything you want to throw at it for both combat and non combat.
I don't know, it just seems like they abstracted the heck out of non-combat skills, and went into details for combat skills (a warrior has more than a single attack right?). To me this is an imbalance of focus.
Not really. It created a unified mechanic for combat, and a unified mechanic to handle everything else. Sub systems are redundant. Essentials kinda scrubbed the unified combat mechanics, but still. The power system isn't all about combat, though. There's plenty of uses for just about anything out of combat if you put your mind to it. Especially utilities.
So why not abstract combat as much as they do non-combat? Unless one is willing to say that combat is more important, then it makes sense.
So why not abstract combat as much as they do non-combat?
They did.
HP are not necessarily physical damage. They represent everything from luck and general defensive ability to fighting spirit (see: Warlord's non-magical healing).
Weapons and armor can look like anything you want them to.
You can describe your powers in whatever manner you desire. You may push a Frost Giant, not because you're shoving it, but because you made it stumble backwards. You can inflict the prone condition on oozes ... because you hit them hard enough to affect their equilibreum, meaning they need to take a move action to pull themselves together ('stand up') before not suffering penalties.
Not really. It created a unified mechanic for combat, and a unified mechanic to handle everything else. Sub systems are redundant. Essentials kinda scrubbed the unified combat mechanics, but still. The power system isn't all about combat, though. There's plenty of uses for just about anything out of combat if you put your mind to it. Especially utilities.
So why not abstract combat as much as they do non-combat? Unless one is willing to say that combat is more important, then it makes sense.
What details would you want added to non-combat to put them on par? Combat seems to admit a level of technical detail, whereas social interactions can mostly be resolved by talking in character.
My hope for 5th edition is much like the suggested "slot" casting that was mentioned, except the caster (most likely Wizard) would choose from the list of that level's spells to cast at the time of casting. The slots would be the same as the power structure. This is what should have been implimented in this edition. (and could still be errated in, if Wizard's was bold enough)
There should be no pick and choose in the dead of night as the character is out of battle. There is little that the Wizard knows about the future in this game. Spells that scry into the future to deen some intelict into what is to come are DM headaches. I never understood why it was kept in 3rd Edition, and why the Wizard is still trudging it out in this one.
So why not abstract combat as much as they do non-combat?
They did.
Are there no more pages dedicated to combat rules (spells, daily/encounter/at-will powers) than there are to non-combat?
Not really. It created a unified mechanic for combat, and a unified mechanic to handle everything else. Sub systems are redundant. Essentials kinda scrubbed the unified combat mechanics, but still. The power system isn't all about combat, though. There's plenty of uses for just about anything out of combat if you put your mind to it. Especially utilities.
So why not abstract combat as much as they do non-combat? Unless one is willing to say that combat is more important, then it makes sense.
Combat is largely abstract now. Fluff being disconnected from mechanics allows this. As Salla stated, it's all a matter of putting whatever flavor to it you want now. 4e puts a lot of narrative power in the hands of the players (and encourages them to use it), and I am extremely thankful for that. Imagination has power again.
What details would you want added to non-combat to put them on par?
I answered this twice previously. Ideallyl I like rules-like systems. The fewer the rules, the better. Take a look at WEG's D6 for example, or the freely available Argument system.
If I were to add non-combat rules, it would be things like spell research/creation (as in the wiards handbook from 2e).
What details would you want added to non-combat to put them on par?
I answered this twice previously. Ideallyl I like rules-like systems. The fewer the rules, the better. Take a look at WEG's D6 for example, or the freely available Argument system.
If I were to add non-combat rules, it would be things like spell research/creation (as in the wiards handbook from 2e).
You're talking about rules-lite, but then talking about adding more rules. D&D will never be rules-lite. Being very crunchy is a sacred cow that I don't ever see going away. 4e is just the first edition of it that has drawn me in, because while it has a lot of rules, at least those rules were consistent (up until recently).
Now, as far as Dragonlance goes, give it a shot. Personally, I never liked the setting (Gully Dwarves and Kender make me want to shove a spoon in my ear to distract myself from the pain), but I won't knock anyone for liking it.
You might find a lot of help here: community.wizards.com/go/forum/view/7588...
You might even find someone else asking the same questions that have been answered.
You're talking about rules-lite, but then talking about adding more rules.
I think I initially said there is too much focus on combat. Or at least a lot more on combat than non-combat.
I was then asked if I were to add any non-combat rules which would I add. I believe I initially said I would sooner remove combat rules. But after being asked 3 or 4 times I made a suggestion.
I'm not sure where the problem lays.
Enjoy your silly "4e is WoW"
So I'm the only person to have ever see the many similarities?
I saw wow and said immediately look somebody took a D&D game and put it online.... and sure enough thats basically what the designers of WoW said too.... gee... looks like you got it backwards like all the others before you...
You're talking about rules-lite, but then talking about adding more rules.
I think I initially said there is too much focus on combat. Or at least a lot more on combat than non-combat.
I was then asked if I were to add any non-combat rules which would I add. I believe I initially said I would sooner remove combat rules. But after being asked 3 or 4 times I made a suggestion.
I'm not sure where the problem lays.
Well, various people have made house-rules for more abstract combat. In a sense it isn't 'less rules' in that lets face it, attack powers will always be useful in combat. A good number of them can be used in other situations as well, and even with more abstract combat you have those powers around. You can pare back on them if you really feel like that will help. You can also simply run page 42 improvised attacks with DCs and effects that make using them at least as attractive as a power, and you basically have ad-hoc 'make up an attack and its effect' combat. You could combine that with Wrecan's Sarn Fu community.wizards.com/wrecan/blog/2009/0...
You may find all of this bends, spindles, and mutilates the concept of character differentiation somewhat in combat situations, but presumably the fighter will still be tough and sticky, etc. You may also find that the players settle down on a fairly limited repertoire of things they typically do that they're best at as well. I think in a sense this is really the genesis of powers. They take up a lot of page space, but OTOH they do reduce the conceptual load for the players a lot when they are fighting, and allow for a rather natural "hey, now my big move" kind of thing.
Still, if you look at the basic 4e engine it is really a fairly 'lite' system. Everything is d20 high, you roll either one of the small list of skills or maybe an attribute check to resolve anything you want to do except an attack, which is fundamentally a once-per-round check. There are certainly a lot of things you could in theory rip out. The game would play differently, and might feel a good bit less like D&D, but overall it would be OK. In this one respect 4e is a lot like 3.5, it definitely caters to people who like a lot of build options. 2e sort of got to that point near the end, but overall AD&D was very much more "here's the short list of things you can do, go be an X class character and use those".
And, really, no matter how you cut it 4e combat is going to be somewhat tactical and detailed. Some amount of rules (actions, LoS/LoE, lighting, really the bulk of chapter 9) is needed in some form to do that. So yes, it is a more complicated game in some sense than 2e. OTOH by my reckoning 2e spends only a bit less of its total page space on stuff that is most likely to be used in combat too. The majority of spells, the actual combat rules, the greater number of class features, etc.
Is it that rude and impolite to point that, beyond a certain point of disagreement, it is better to use the edition you prefer? Why 'forcing' yourself to like something you do not enjoy, or change it SO MUCH it is another game entirely, 'mimicking' past memories and all - but at those times, why not just use the OLD rules then?
Also, "I like rules light systems, therefore I'm trying to decide between the system that has 50 rulebooks or the one that has 75 rulesbooks". Dude, really? You even know about rules light systems. You have no excuse. Why on earth are you even considering D&D?
And I'm also really tired of the WoW comments
So I'm not the only one to observe the similarities.
Nope, and you're also not the first one to make the statement without providing anything to back it up. Based on the rest of this thread I don't think you could since you don't seem to have a firm grasp on 4e anyways.
Why should anybody you have no actual interest.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
I'm not interested in posts making claims to what others have said without providing citations.
Look, instead of smuggling and haughtily trying to prove you have the 'truth' on what is 'real' D&D/rpg, and mock us 'newbies', why not you move on?
I'm a little confused how you drew that intention from the post you quoted.
Nope, and you're also not the first one to make the statement without providing anything to back it up.
Actually I listed several examples (in a single post in fact).
Dude, really? You even know about rules light systems. You have no excuse. Why on earth are you even considering D&D?
It *feels* like medieval fantasy.
but at those times, why not just use the OLD rules then?
She?
There are things I like about 4e. I named them previous. Some of them were:
- Improved survivability at low levels
- Its more fun for non-casters in that they can do more than just swing their sword, again
- Non-random Hit Point progression
etc
Dude, really? You even know about rules light systems. You have no excuse. Why on earth are you even considering D&D?
It *feels* like medieval fantasy.
Lots of systems do. Find one with the same vibe and less rules.
Nope, and you're also not the first one to make the statement without providing anything to back it up.
Actually I listed several examples (in a single post in fact).
You did, please point to which post - mind you I responded to you back in the 70s and there was nothing there that provided any clear comparisons other than your feeling of it being more balanced, which plenty of podcasts from the development of 4e are available that will let you hear why they were going that way - it has little to do with a "let's be more like MMOs"
After my response, you still never posted any clear, concise reasons comparing the two - you had plenty of discussion on what you wanted for a rules system and the finer points of wizards - but up to where I responded, really all there was is this:
I'm still debating, AD&D 2e vs 4e. Fourth is more balanced, and there are more specialised attacks for non-casters. This is great for the console-generation. I have $800 in AD&D 2e soucebooks and campaign settings though (I'm not exagerating), so its hard just to turn away from it all.
I like Vancian, it feels like the novels with which I'm very familiar. This new system feels like an arcade game (granted 4e looks/feels a lot like World of Warcraft to me anyway), and I don't like that.
A child could understand it. The reason they turned it into W.O.W., however, is beyond me
Cause if so, I'd like to repeat what Andy Collins said to me when I mentioned that I loved video games, and that 4th ed was the first ed to make sense to me. He said "I won't deny that video games have helped us build a better D&D." Certain things like the always castable magic missile was inspired by, for example, Gauntlet Legends. And the idea that a mage not doing magic was about as fun as a fighter with no weapon. The powers themselves, however, came from a laying out of most to least powerful daily resources. Same brainstorming that gave us healing surges. And many other supposedly video game things. Again, as he said, "They've been taking things from D&D for years, why not take something back?"; their intent was to look at what was fun for a game.
Now, why mention all this? Because not once was WoW mentioned. I remember other ones such as a few SRPGs and some Action RPGs being mentioned, and some straight up action fantasy games. But never WoW. I don't think they want to be WoW, WoW is a different animal. No, this game they have scuplted is closer to a crazy game of Let's Pretend crossed with Final Fantasy Tactics/Disgaea crossed with Oblivion crossed with Gauntlet Legends.
Now, as to the elements you seem to feel are intrinsic to the Dragonlance world, regardless of their origin (i.e. the irrevocable tie to the rules that spawned their literary justification in the first place) if the DM feels those are needed, then the DM does what the DM needs. 'Course, if I remember, the only reason mages didn't use armor in them olden times is that that much metal was supposed to screw with their casting. So either require them to wear hide at best, give them a -1 penalty to casting in armor, or just don't sweat it. Whatever you do, it's your game. But note that some things such as the unlimited spellbook are gone. That doesn't mean that a mage can't have a collection of wands-reflavoured-as-pages-from-a-spellbook-since-they-have-no-weight-and-can-hold-any-encounter-power-a-wand-using-arcane-class-can-know-and-can-thus-be-used-similar-to-spell-scrolls-in-older-editions (too many hyphens? Yeah probably). The system can still work to give a player options, and a DM that wants rituals to be important will make them important and thus give the wizard more of a reason to seek out teachers of rituals, and I could go on but I'm babbling.
Point is 4th can do Dragonlance. Might not be the 2nd edition Dragonlance, but that's because the rules you'd be using aren't 2nd edition.
That doesn't mean, however, that the gameplay experience can't be close to what you remember.Also, what on earth would the rules need for out-of-combat stuff that it doesn't have? Both out-of-combat and combat is covered fully, at least from my angle.
Point is 4th can do Dragonlance.
There is now a Heros of the Lance in the creative character build collection (in my sig), not one of mine but the writer was enthusiastic and put some effor into evoking the characters. I was reading this thread with the intent of mentioning it.
Seems like the main question WRT DL is still mostly whether or not the details of mechanics of AD&D are too embedded into the setting to make it work with newer editions. That seems to be a matter of debate and preference.
A wise answer for sure, but you're going to be labelled a heretic. The others will tell you I'm an idiot, troll, etc for simply pointing out that this may be the case.
Anyway, I was going to say that you could refluff implement types as robes
Ya, I think that is what I shall do.
You could also use the Essentials schools and just leave out the PHB1 Wizard, he's really redundant to the Mage anyway. It just depends on which way better matches the fluff of the different robes. I'd maybe suggest though instead of making more restrictions on which spells can be cast by whom, use the carrot. That's the way the mage schools work in Essentials. You're just plain better at casting spells from your school, so you take those spells. If you REALLY want an off-school spell, well you can take it. There's just not much reason to normally. The WoHS might get bent by someone doing that too. Maybe you get kicked out for being a non-conformist or whatever, so it is an RP choice. There were plenty of situations in the various books where the spell restrictions were ignored anyway.
Were the spell restrictions ignored? Many of the novels hinted that the Gods of magic granted the spells, and could revoke such? If this was the case, perhaps that is why there was an off-school for each of the robes?
You mentioned Essentials, what did you mean?
All this talk of "scrap this, scrap that, change such, remove so" makes me wonder if Adrian already has a group and whether or not they're on board with it, or if he doesn't, if he'll ever find one.
I like to think about things, challenge things, play devil's advocate sometimes (that is the only really way you can prove anything I feel).
[edit]Often I will even challenge my own beliefs and thoughts just to ensure that such beliefs are deeply engrained enough to bother with in the first place. I used to be a priest you know, an ordained lay minister. Used to be.[/edit]Also people who say "I don't want Roles" are basically saying "I prefer struggling and making the occasionally entirely useless character over the game just simply stating how the class was designed".
Roles are a good thing, they make D&D feel like D&D. My issue with roles, from a game mechanics point of view, is that they may also encourage min/maxing. Perhaps I want my paladin, a defender, to wield a spear two handed instead of using sword/shield simply because I like the appearance of it.
and if I want my character to appear as though carrying a spear, he IS going to carry a spear.
Roles are a good thing, they make D&D feel like D&D. My issue with roles, from a game mechanics point of view, is that they may also encourage min/maxing. Perhaps I want my paladin, a defender, to wield a spear two handed instead of using sword/shield simply because I like the appearance of it.
and if I want my character to appear as though carrying a spear, he IS going to carry a spear.
Nothing stops you from wielding a spear. You don't even need to reflavor.
Roles are a good thing, they make D&D feel like D&D. My issue with roles, from a game mechanics point of view, is that they may also encourage min/maxing. Perhaps I want my paladin, a defender, to wield a spear two handed instead of using sword/shield simply because I like the appearance of it.
and if I want my character to appear as though carrying a spear, he IS going to carry a spear.
For as long as you have any numerical values in the game - you are going to have min/maxing. Older editions had it (I mean, if you rolled a 9 in STR and 16 in INT, you are going to choose wizard unless you WANTED to be difficult and less effective as a Fighter)
And I agree, If you want to play a paladin with a spear, do so. You lose out on the shield bonus but likely gain the advantage of reach - and there are quite a few decent feats you can pick up that will help you be an good defender. You may not be the most optimized based on the CharOp board - but unless you purposefully tried to sabatoge yourself you are likely going to do fine.
All this talk of "scrap this, scrap that, change such, remove so" makes me wonder if Adrian already has a group and whether or not they're on board with it, or if he doesn't, if he'll ever find one.
I like to think about things, challenge things, play devil's advocate sometimes (that is the only really way you can prove anything I feel).
[edit]Often I will even challenge my own beliefs and thoughts just to ensure that such beliefs are deeply engrained enough to bother with in the first place. I used to be a priest you know, an ordained lay minister. Used to be.[/edit]Also people who say "I don't want Roles" are basically saying "I prefer struggling and making the occasionally entirely useless character over the game just simply stating how the class was designed".
Roles are a good thing, they make D&D feel like D&D. My issue with roles, from a game mechanics point of view, is that they may also encourage min/maxing. Perhaps I want my paladin, a defender, to wield a spear two handed instead of using sword/shield simply because I like the appearance of it.
and if I want my character to appear as though carrying a spear, he IS going to carry a spear.
Well, people can min/max, sure. I figure they could do that in any edition, to some extent. In 2e as I recall being a ranger and taking double specialization in darts was the way to go, assuming you didn't want to just play cleric, druid, or wizard and be better than the fighters and rogues after level 4 or so. At least now you can min/max any class. Most builds in 4e are at least reasonably useful, except maybe Ruthless Ruffian...
Essentials are a set of softcover books WotC released last year. Heroes of the Fallen Lands has the Mage, Slayer, Knight, Cavalier, Thief, and Warpriest. They are remakes of the PHB1 classes, sort of. Somewhat different style of builds. The Mage is almost identical to the Wizard but uses schools instead of implement mastery. The Warpriest has a couple builds, Sun and Storm IIRC. Some of their powers are hard coded by build. Slayer is a striker type fighter without daily powers and a fixed encounter power. The knight is a defender type fighter with an aura and powers like the Slayer. Thief is a rogue with fixed powers too, anothe striker. The Cavalier is a paladin, again similar to the knight/slayer he has some fixed powers and a couple of builds that are each based on a virtue. Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms has a druid, a couple ranger types, etc. Basically (except for the Mage) they all have more restricted power lists, use basic attacks with enhancements for most of their attacks, and just generally have a bit less options. You still get feats and whatever so you can customize a bunch, but not as much as with PHB1 style classes. Some of them might match DL thematics more than some of the PHB series classes though.
Yeah, you don't have to take refluffing to an extreme. I am mostly of the same mind. You want a spear, take a spear and figure out how to use it effectively. There are a lot of options there though, spears are pretty decent weapons. As good as swords or whatever, just a bit different. Each weapon type tends to have its strong points. Spears and pole arms are good weapons for 'crowd control' kinds of things, push people around, immobilize them, use Hafted Defense to get a better AC, etc. Swords are good for doing OA tricks and such. Axes are nice for high basic damage output, especially if you're a dwarf. Hammers are good for doing a lot of auto-damage, again dwarves like them, but they're good for any high CON character. Light blades work well too, lots of tricks you can play with those. Maces and picks are kind of meh, though they have gotten better with some new feat support lately.
Anyway... Mages use 2e style school builds instead of implement mastery builds. So you get some bonuses to damage and whatever with spells in your school.
Roles are a good thing, they make D&D feel like D&D. My issue with roles, from a game mechanics point of view, is that they may also encourage min/maxing. Perhaps I want my paladin, a defender, to wield a spear two handed instead of using sword/shield simply because I like the appearance of it.
Min/Maxing is an accepted and encuraged part of 4e. The system was designed to allow for this. I guess WoTC took a look at how people were delibrately trying to break 3e and decided that they wanted to make it part of the game. All this dispite the fact that if you were playing that way you were completely missing the point of D&D. Your ability to function in terms of your mechanical role and contribute to combat is of paramount importance now. Your character needs to be min/maxed. Now, you'll rarely find a 4e player who willingly makes his character weak for a role playing reason.
Your example of the paladin is exactly how my group used to play 2e. We designed our characters out of a role playing concept. I can recal one player who always gave up his gold and magical items to his church. Another would refuse to use magical items simply because his character feared magic. We focused more on the non-combat aspects of the game and on role playing than on how well we contributed to combat. For us combat was just a means to an end and not the primary focus of the game as it is now. Sadly this is what happens when a system redefines the term 'role' to mean something that is purely mechanical.
In my 4e game, I still use all the role playing concepts from the 2e complete book like, "The Dangrous Antagonist", "The Doomed Champion", the "Natural Leader". Which brings up an interesting point. Why can't a fighter be a Leader? Isn't a leader simply a person who is in charge and contanstly focused on the team's goals? Isn't that simply a personality? Apparently, some people think that you need to have a mechanical class to be a leader. After all it's called 'role' playing... lol.. give me a break.
Giving items and gold to your church is not at all an issue; that's what the Inherent Bonus system is for. Just award the player Boons based on his donations and he can roleplay the donator and have cool tricks to do. Same with those that don't want magic items.
As for the focus on combat; welcome to D&D. It's always been there. Feel free to deny it, it just makes you sound silly.
Also the book literally spells out that you don't need to be a Leader to be a leader and that you're not automatically the leader to be the Leader. So that's just showing your ignorance. A Fighter can definately be the party leader. Nothing stops him. The only thing he can't do is have the Leader role in combat, because then he'd be a Warlord (which, incidentally, is a Fighter who is a Leader)
So those "some people that think" are wrong, misinformed and/or ignorant. But that's no fault of the system.
Actually, Min/Maxing is not a requirement. Pulling your weight is, but that's not very hard. Actively being bad in combat is frowned upon by the system because it makes the DMs job harder and tends to not be fun to anyone (including the player of said character who can't do much during combat, and his party members who are constantly trying to save his bacon) but there's very little reason otherwise.
Giving items and gold to your church is not at all an issue; that's what the Inherent Bonus system is for. Just award the player Boons based on his donations and he can roleplay the donator and have cool tricks to do. Same with those that don't want magic items.
As for the focus on combat; welcome to D&D. It's always been there. Feel free to deny it, it just makes you sound silly.
Is it me or just the 2e DMG that sounds silly when it boldy says, "This is not a combat game" under the section titled Combat.
At one time combat was a means to an end. If you wanted a combat game you played Warhammer.
I think it's great that you provided a solution to fix the game for the role player of the group.
And 2e assumed the same thing.
Actually, Min/Maxing is not a requirement. Pulling your weight is, but that's not very hard. Actively being bad in combat is frowned upon by the system because it makes the DMs job harder and tends to not be fun to anyone (including the player of said character who can't do much during combat, and his party members who are constantly trying to save his bacon) but there's very little reason otherwise.
Giving items and gold to your church is not at all an issue; that's what the Inherent Bonus system is for. Just award the player Boons based on his donations and he can roleplay the donator and have cool tricks to do. Same with those that don't want magic items.
As for the focus on combat; welcome to D&D. It's always been there. Feel free to deny it, it just makes you sound silly.
Also the book literally spells out that you don't need to be a Leader to be a leader and that you're not automatically the leader to be the Leader. So that's just showing your ignorance. A Fighter can definately be the party leader. Nothing stops him. The only thing he can't do is have the Leader role in combat, because then he'd be a Warlord (which, incidentally, is a Fighter who is a Leader)
So those "some people that think" are wrong, misinformed and/or ignorant. But that's no fault of the system.
Exactly.
You also have to put all this in context. In 3.x min/maxing A) requires a LOT of system mastery, and B) the difference between a nievely built character and a min/maxed one was the difference between ineffective and utterly dominating to the point where the rest of the party was irrelevant most of the time. In 2e min/maxing was fairly limited (unless you use the Character Options and some other late 2e books) but the results were horrendously silly since you really had to gimmick things (like using darts for your main weapon). The situation in 4e is totally different. Basic effective character design requires no more intricate understanding of the system than realizing that a fighter should have a good STR score. There's no standard array in the PHB that won't give you a 16 in your prime score assuming you bother to use a race with a +2 in that stat. A 16 is an effective base, so you're pretty much all set. If you pick a few obvious logical choices like "Gosh, I'm going to wield a big sword, I'll take Fighter Weapon Talent 2h weapons for my class feature!" and "wow, I can get a bigger sword if I take Weapon Proficiency Fullblade!" you're well on your way to being highly effective. I have yet to meet a player that won't 'optimize' to that degree and I have yet to meet a character concept where that kind of thing doesn't make sense. You certainly CAN increase your combat effectiveness by min/maxing, somewhat. Most of the elements you'd use to do that however are pretty thematic for whatever build you're using, so even then you don't generally end up with some kind of Frankenstein Monster character. Given that you have quite a few feat slots there's always some available for adding in whatever concept stuff you want that doesn't exactly fit with being able to kill stuff better.
And really, IME the vast majority of players don't care THAT much about optimization. Everyone wants to be effective, but that's no more unusual or disruptive to other aspects of the game than deciding in 2e to put your highest stat in STR if you were going to be a fighter, or DEX if you were going to be a rogue.
Well I recall playing a fighter who put his highest stat in INT. I did this for the sake of playing a character that was forced to use his brains over brawn. What defined him as being smart wasn't how he used his sword in combat, but how I role played him. In this situation combat wasn't the focus of my character at all. It was everything I did outside of combat that kept him alive.
Sure, but there are a few ways to look at that.
First of all you don't need to have a massively high INT to be clever and resourceful. In other words if your character had a STR of 16 and an INT of 14 you're not really measurably gimping your character build-wise in 4e and at the same time you're a rather smart fellow. Right up there in the top quartile if you assume the distribution is more-or-less the same as the 3d6 bell curve.
Secondly you can certainly have a STR 16, INT 16 character too if you want. You might not be able to do that with any arbitrary race, but you can with most of them. Again, you'll be effective and now you have an INT as high as your STR.
The third way to look at this is "what do you mean by fighter?" Sure, thats the class you used in 2e because that was the main option for a guy that fights with weapons, ranger being more specialized and barbarian (if you had access to that class at all) was definitely specialized. In 4e you have tons of options for "guy who fights in melee combat" including ranger, fighter, and rogue, plus certainly warlord. That doesn't even count barbarian and warden for instance, which are all basically 'uses melee weapons to hit stuff' classes. Warlord even has an INT secondary build, and you could even use Bard as well, which again has INT secondary. Any of these can be run as "a warrior type" and you can spin the other class features almost however you want. So the clever fighter implemented using warlord would fit quite well and his story is just that he's a highly resourceful guy that thinks his way through fights.
The advantage of course is that this character is going to be able to do this stuff and be quite effective. The 2e "highest stat in INT" fighter was probably sacrificing a decent amount of damage and an XP bonus.
What defined him as being smart wasn't how he used his sword in combat, but how I role played him.
Winners play to there strengths..
A warlord would allow you to use that intelligence in how your character fights too or an essentials fighter with Melee Training Intelligence in a different way .. or a reflavored as Martial Swordmage (No the swordmage route is not very easy)
Perception in real life is identified with intelligence and its one of the attributes of the wisdom stat in game you would be justified in making a fighter who was Sherlock holmes style incredible intelligence with lots of wisdom stat independent of his int stat.
Or you might notice that creative intelligence is pretty much a Charisma attribute and do something Einstein like with high Charisma (he was also an incredible diplomat in later life and got a math friend to help on mathlematics for his theories because he wasnt that great at it (might even have had mediocre int stat))
Kev:
Your "High Int / Low Str" Fighter from the previous edition would be better realized as a Warlord in 4E. It sounds like you played the character as if he were a 4E Warlord. Now there are mechanics that fit your vision. Bravo!
No because all of a sudden he would have a bunch of powers that I don't want. All he had before was a simple attack with his longsword and that's all he needed. It just wouldn't be the same character. He would be effective in combat and wouldn't have a reason to avoid it or even prepare for it. What I mean is that the INT part of that character was role played not 'Power' played. I had to force myself to realy think through the situations the DM put us in. I couldn't just charge into to a group of Zhentilar warriors and expect to win. In those games I played being effective in combat was far less important that what you did outside of combat.
kev777...
I can understand the feeling and powers would not be the same, so...
But so.. you are fine with doing just attack, attack, attack, like a game of FFI - who, while fluffable to be enjoyable, are always the SAME?
Sorry, but I do not want to go back to those days.
And again, this logic fallacies to say you can not walk and chew gum - yes, you can have combat stuff and rping. Numbers cruching, and thespian stuff.
Also, do you need extensive rules out of combat? No.
Zero decisions required in combat sure doesnt sound like an intelligent fighter sounds like a button masher in combat.
Again you're just focused on combat I'm not. I don't see it that way.
Zero decisions required in combat sure doesnt sound like an intelligent fighter sounds like a button masher in combat.
Again you're just focused on combat I'm not. I don't see it that way.
No, you have felt for a certain White Wolfesque 'I'm a roleplayer, I'm a better gamer' mindset perhaps.
Well, it is generally decided, that when posting something on a single-language-speaking forum, you should have a pretty basic understanding of said language. If I posted on a French forum, I would try to do my best to learn said words, before posting on that forum. It is not a specific thing about "pleasing one culture".
My english is actually better than many native speakers on the 'intrawebz', sadly or nicely.
BTW, an intraweb is a web using all HTTP nodes of a local, or communications network. For example, Brighthouse I-Comms.
My english is actually better than many native speakers on the 'intrawebz', sadly or nicely.
I think your english is great - a few dropped connecting words and a few phrases that dont flow totally smooth but over all great. I am a stream of conciousness style native English speaker who may choose to use the language in more poetic ways than normal and probably quite terrible at times myself, particularly with regards to not useing punctuation and capitalisation.
Thank you for your posts on the forum. (I sent a friend request by the way)