D&D Next Review: Races

Who is Bruenor?

                You only know this if you just so happened to read a select number of the Forgotten Realms books which deal with Drizzt, that drow-gone-good who has probably twenty books written about him now.  When you’re outdoing Robert Jordan for books printed, maybe there’s a problem.

                I’m reading the character creation guideline, and it’s pretty straightforward, but it’s the same in the other editions of D&D.  The problem here lies in the example, as it necessitates previous knowledge of the game, some of which might be considered arcane in how old it is.  The book is as old as I am.

                Moving on, it’s annoying how they present to you three methods of score generation for characters.  Let’s get this out of the way: unless you are rolling for your scores, you are, in essence, creating the same damn character as every other one of your particular class.  4d6 drop the lowest is somewhat acceptable, as I do ascribe to the notion that the types who choose the adventuring life should tend to be above the average person in a few respects.  However, there are very rarely character weaknesses here as regards their statistics.

                It’s somewhat the same way with this damned system of just being given scores, much like the fourth edition used.  Sure, there’s an eight as an ability score, but then you are average or above average in every other case, which is bullshit.  Wizards are nerds who are probably weak with a poor constitution, but they might have some understanding.  Fighters are their opposites.  That’s how classes naturally tend towards certain personalities traits, which have created their tropes. 

                Point buy is stupid, don’t use it.  If you do, consider how you’re just making someone who has no possibility of being really good or really bad at a physical or mental score.

                My preferred method, which I am testing for the third time in a new Pathfinder game I started 3 weeks ago, is a hybrid between rolling in the first method ascribed above, along with how it was done in AD&D.  In it, you get to choose where your scores go, but the dice rolls are different.  4d6 drop the lowest for three of the six, and then for the other three you simply roll 3d6.

                This has the benefit of giving good odds for having some decent above-average scores, maybe that coveted 18, while at the same time making for the possibility of having some poor scores, which you just have to deal with.

                Maybe your guy isn’t smart at all, but he’s got average Wisdom.  You can easily role play that as the character being taciturn, and, when prompted for some knowledge, he is quick to ask around for suggestions to hide his own shortcomings.  Everything, from stats to skills and your other selections, are supposed to affect how you roleplay that character.  If you have a weak Constitution and few hit points, maybe you do your best to not piss people off, or make it so you can just talk your way out of any situation, resorting to violence only when you have a clear and distinct advantage.

                Also, and this is under section four, “Describe Your Character,” you need to spend way more than a few minutes on a name.  It has to impact you in some way, or you come up with a story about how you got your name, or even a nickname.  In a funny way, my own name translates from Latin into “Houselord of Mars.”  No joke.  Spend more time on it, and there could be a personal quest in it for you.

                I’ll talk about races just a little bit.

                Are they trying to push Forgotten Realms or Salvatore with this edition, because it’s very funny how the player in question wants to make “Bruenor,” a name which has already been taken and only shows a lack of imagination, and the first race quote just so happens to be from that particular crazy dwarf.  Also, I shouldn’t have to wait til the third paragraph before actually learning what a fucking dwarf is.  People are saying this is the most newbie-friendly edition yet, but I’m still looking at fourth for taking that particular honor, which it does deserve.

                How many of you can say that you’ve gotten to DM a game wherein the entire party was made of beautiful women?  ;)

                Also, I find the extra “types” of a particular race to be out of place.  Instead of there being a more concrete identity to each of the races, they give you some choices, just so you can tailor your race and class to just what you want to play!  Even in Pathfinder they pull this shit in the books, and I also dislike it there.  Why aren’t there 5 types of Dhampirs I can choose from?  Like, one who actually has a strong Constitution so I don’t have to take a negative to the score I want?

                The humans are by far the most ridiculous.  Each ability score increased by one?!  I’ve never seen a situation where you can instantly outclass everyone else in terms of stats.  Period.  Other races get a +2 here, a +1 there with some other stuff…but there, you get a cumulative +6!  They might lose their free feat at first level, but this would certainly seem to be worth it, if only because you never have to actually worry if you roll that 9 when you’re doing your stats!  So human stats automagically range from 4 to 19.  Because human.  None of the other races seems to have such latent power.

                Except how halflings apparently can never critically botch.  Di immortales!.

                High elves come with a free cantrip.  Fire bolt, anyone?  Holy shit this is good.  Maybe I should not have skipped over to the humans so quickly out of curiosity!

                Actually, a mountain dwarf would be very funny to be a wizard, since you can cast in any armor you are proficient in!

                My opinion here is that the basic human is ridiculously good, high elves a close second, then halflings and everyone else beneath them.  My opinion here is that there’s too much of a clear hierarchy of the races…wait, maybe they were taking AD&D in spirit here…

                Ok, so in AD&D each race had a limit on the number of levels in a given class they could achieve.  They also had very strict racial requirements for some classes.  For instance, Dwarves in AD&D can only go up to level 10 in Cleric, 15 in Fighter, or 12 in Thief (AD&D DMG, 22).  What I see here is actually an echo of that “humans can be better than everyone else at their own game given enough experience” jig.  Never seen anyone unafraid of having a bad odd number in stats.  If this actually is some sort of subtle echo of AD&D, it’s a bad one.  I’m surprised no one I have read has brought this obvious problem with the game’s design up.  So, if there’s something I’ve missed regarding these quickstart races…like the horrible rumor I’ve heard about the drow being a general PC race, do tell me so that we can have a discussion!

Until we meet again, game on!

Preliminaries about D&D 5e

                I would like to begin this review of D&D’s fifth edition with a short primer on price.  As I sit here, my other RPG books around me, I look to four examples of prices I have willingly paid for the ability to have the core books.  Of these, I found my AD&D core books in a used book store for very cheap, something like forty dollars in total for the three, but looking at the prices on the back by the ISBN, back in the day they would have cost a total of ninety.  My 3.5 books?  About the same price.  When fourth edition came out I decided to get the three which came with the large book sleeve to put them in.  That was one hundred and five dollars.  Finally, Pathfinder, which I also got used, the real price being ninety dollars.

                I see a theme here: pay approximately ninety dollars for your three or so core books, and you’re good to go- never have to buy a book again!

                Then tell me, O Wizards of Emptying Wallets, why the new core books cost a collective, shocking one hundred and fifty dollars?!  I have not seen a person bring up the bloody price point as regards this alleged “return to form” of D&D.  In every other case I have found the purchase of RPG books to hold far more value and replayability than any other form of entertainment, especially videogames.

                I question here.  I hear “modular” thrown about as regards this game so much I have to expect them to release books on a similarly insane schedule like they did for fourth edition to just give you extra rules to play by, but only if you want to, I mean, you can just get rid of every rule in the game; it’s D&D!

                Moving along with the “return to form” quip I keep hearing about, it will be profitable to consider which kind of return they’re wanting.  They naturally won’t want to continue on with what they did for fourth edition, if only because sales suffered because they made too many books for 3.5, so the question comes up: Which edition is being returned to?  From what I have read and the words associated with this release, I can only conclude that it’s supposed to be a return to AD&D. 

                My understanding is that third edition was a powergaming nightmare, wrought by the game being bought by Wizards of the Coast, and it being so pissed off all the AD&D gamers who were used to there being more natural danger to the adventuring business.  Combine with this radical changes, some of which were quite good, and the older player base was lost.  Kids who grew up with videogames must have become their target audience then, but three scant years later they “patched” third edition to be more palatable and serviceable. 

                If we assume that they were trying to “bring back” AD&D while making the game something new and appealing to a modern audience, we inherently find a contradiction.  These are two racially different markets: the old players enjoyed the danger and challenge, while gamers today enjoy power while not savoring the difficulty of a game much.

                How do I know this?  Look at the game rules regarding characters for each edition, starting with AD&D.  Then, look to 3.5- characters are much stronger by comparison.  Proficiencies are gone, replaced with “You are good with all X weapons and armors Y and Z.”  Wizards and other arcane casters gained more spells, the ability to scribe scrolls for the former, and generally became much stronger.  Pathfinder does much the same thing, although the monsters strike me as being good enough to still provide a challenge.  Fourth edition gave everyone ridiculous amounts of power, ranging from the at-wills, encounter, and daily powers.  I’m expecting this trend to actually continue once I start looking at the character classes. 

                For brevity’s sake I will end here for now.  To simply recap, the game is damned expensive, especially in today’s money, there’s an inherent contradiction in saying this game is somehow new-yet-old-school, and currently my expectation is for the characters to have too much power early on, just like in the previous edition.

               

Resurrection and Purpose

For over two years I have neglected this small thing which I enjoyed in my spare time.  Two years of development in different ways, and most especially in my tastes regarding role playing games.  D&D Next has been published, everyone's praising it, but we'll see.  I'll start with their free quickstart rules, and give my own opinions with justifications.

Game on!

Class Design: The Runepriest

Honestly, I love this class so much that I don't think it should be changed at all.  Take the Cleric for greater healing, take a Runepriest for buffs and status effects.  Probably the most fun I've had is having a Dwarf Runepriest two-hand a Warhammer with the Dwarven Weapon Training feat.  +3 damage before any ability modifiers, coupled with his buffs and status effects, and that's a pretty stalwart front-line priest.  :D

While I haven't written much here, I'm going to throw out a few concepts that I've been working on to apply to the Wizard.

First, schools of magic need to come back.  Second, speciality needs to come back.  Further, I think that a wizard who specializes should get a bonus encounter spell, while giving up two other schools.  Unfortunately, this will require writing every single spell into one of the schools, and coming up with a bunch of new ones to make that sacrifice worth something. :/

Also, familiars should come back.  I think that scribing scrolls can work, but how to do so will be problematic, given how many spells are available to a wizard from 1st level.

Class Design: The Cleric

Continuing the trend of minimalist changes, here's the cleric!

He's a terrific healer.  Leave him that way.

Surge value + d6 PLUS WIS mod.  Damn that's a lot.

Add:

Turn Undead as a power that has a number of daily uses equal to CHA modifier, to a minimum of 1.

Cleric can gain his deity's Channel Divinity without taking a feat.

;) I think this works by minimizing messing with the class.  Yay!

Feat Design: Two-Weapon Fighting

Here is another lost artifact from 3.5: the capacity of a character to pick up two weapons and fight with them.  Some characters' entire concept depended on this, and those players undoubtedly felt alienated with the new edition.  I tossed around a few ideas on how to work this within the 4th edition concept of characters actually being beginner heroes at level 1.

Two-Weapon Fighting
The character has been trained to use two one-handed weapons in unison for combat, allowing her to perform two basic attacks with one standard action.  The naturally unwieldy nature of such a technique incurs a -4 penalty  to the attack roll of each attack.

This primarily helps take care of some of the balance issues in giving a character the opportunity to double the amount of damage one may do in a single turn, yet the negatives make is such that, while the character will not be very proficient early on, gaining +1 to hit every two character levels gives a very natural and enjoyable progression as he/she improves with the weapons.

Cheers!

Which Races?

And here's another huge problem with 4th edition: too many PC races, some of which are insane.  Dragonborn and Eladrin are pretty big here.  They should be in the Monster Manuals if anything.  Same with the Tiefling.  Being a race in a PHB is kind of a status declaration: that those in the front of the book are more prominent in the world they have created than those that can be found in the Monster Manuals.

To fix this, let's begin with the basics:

Human
Elf
Dwarf
Halfling
Gnome
Half-Orc

Excepting the gnome, these are the races we've all grown up with, and, for better or worse, Tolkien is still affecting our perceptions of how fantasy characters should be.  So, let me look and see which additional races I would include, and why.

Ok, I admit, there's only one race I'd like to add, just to give the party an option of having a really out-there addition to the party: the shardmind.  I like this race because of its role in that big Gate thing that kept the Cthuloid monsters away from Earth, and when they gained sentience post its destruction, they still try to kill off as many creatures from the Far Realm as possible.  This is amazing for character motivation, and they're prime material to be a spellcasting class.  Beyond that, any additional character races should be in the back of the MMs.

Class Design: The Paladin

Salvete,

Continuing my ideas of how to redesign some of the classes to be distinct in their own way, it's time to work on the Paladin.  I think 4th edition has it right that there can be paladins of different Gods of different alignments, so I won't be changing that.  Sacrilege, I know.

First off, no plate at level 1.  For anybody.

Next, I want to bring back Detect X, where X is the opposite of the second part of your alignment.  So it's either Detect Evil, or Detect Good.  With that in mind, I can then bring back a really cool class feature: Smite.

Smite
Encounter
Charisma vs. Will
12 + Charisma modifier damage.
Special: A paladin may only use this power a number of times per day equal to his Charisma modifier, with a minimum of one.  This power may be used only against monsters that one's Detect ability identifies.  The base damage increases to 24 at 11th level, and 36 at 21st level.

Finally, I would like to bring back the whole "special mount" thing.  At fifth level, the paladin gains the service of a superior example of an animal.  The mount can be called once per day, and it remains for a number of hours equal to one's paladin level.

To try and keep the paladin similar to the fighter, I think that taking away his at-will powers will help make them more similar.  Both classes will keep their special challenges though.

As for the Channel Divinity class feature, add an option where the paladin can get his chosen deity's divinity power without spending a feat, because those things are damned precious.

Truthfully, I'm fine with keeping the rest of the class as-is, and I find that these new features will help differentiate him outside of being able to wear heavier armor than the fighter, as well as getting healing abilities.

Which Armor?

So, there are two simple methods to incorporate light, medium, and heavy armor into the game.

Method 1: Bring back the armor chart from 3.5

Method 2: In the 4th edition rulebook, there are 6 sections of armor.  Divide the first two into light, the second into medium, the final into the heavy category.

I'm leaning towards the former method.  The categories are already extant, and there's a very clear progression in how characters' armor improves in a few ways when he's able to get new stuff.  Full Plate giving 8 AC and +1 from DEX is pretty nice.  It also gives several different kinds of shields, each of which begs to be circumvented by a flail.  Naturally, just about everything concerning the MMs would have to change to incorporate this difference, but I think that it would be worth it, and not require too much effort.  If nothing else, just use it for humanoids that wear armor, and you're good to go.

Finesse Weapons

I hate the Weapon Finesse feat.  Your character gets only ONE feat at first level, and if your character concept is a rogue or some kind of DEX-based person without a high STR, then you have a stupid disadvantage to hitting enemies just because weapons to-hit and damage rolls use Strength.  With that in mind, as well as the stereotypes associated with such weapons, I thought of a list of certain weapons that could be considered "finesse," allowing one to use either STR or DEX at least on the to-hit roll.

So far, I've considered that the dagger, quarterstaff, one-handed spear, and rapier should be considered finesse weapons.  Also, I think it would be neat if every character could take the Weapon Finesse feat anyway, just then it would apply to all weapons.

I think this primarily helps those classes who may just want to use a weapon so they can use their DEX mod to help with fighting.

:D

Class Design: The Fighter Part 2

So, I've been thinking about two class features that would be cool for the fighter, given his lack of at-will powers to make it slightly more fun than "I hit it with my sword."  To that end, I think I should detail two class features: Fighter Weapon Specialization and Stances.

Class Design: The Fighter Part 1

One of the iconic classes of the game, the Fighter has the poor position of only being as good as his weapon.  In essence, the class concept is "I hit it with my X," which works in previous editions, yet is infernally boring without having extra combat options unavailable to other classes, as well as having interesting weapons to work with in the first place.

Which Classes?

Here's a big problem with 4th, much like with any other RPG: too many classes, no balance.

Which Skills?

Continuing my idea of how to improve 4th edition, I'm wondering on how to fix skills.  There need to be more, and most of those on the character sheet need to be unpacked.  I'll start with the skills I think should stay packed together:

Hmm.  Every rogue will take hide and move silently, but it should be an option to play a rogue who kinda plays against type by maybe not being much of a lock picker, but more of just a gearhead who likes disarming and making traps.  Furthermore, I think that plenty of characters can benefit from sleight of hand.  

Keep Stealth, diffuse Thievery.

I also dislike Perception and Insight.  Also, those passive Perception and Insight stats are stupid.  Toss them, bring back Sense Motive, Spot, Search, and just about all the other skills.  I think one of the funniest things that can happen to a party is having some of them being terrible Riders, which is part of what I think makes Siuan Sanche so hilarious.

Furthermore, reduce Craft, Perform, and Profession down to just a single skill each.  The additional spaces can be used for these.  Also, leave the knowledges as they are, rasae tabulae to be filled in.

Huh.  It's quite funny how easily fixed that was.  Now characters will be able to make themselves known for being skilled at something that the other characters may not have access to.  The question then becomes how to fix the class skills such that characters can actually make themselves differentiated by having enough different skills to be trained in.

;) Just a little differentiation to fix something that was over-corrected.

Anyone else think that the "Basic Attack" section on the 4.0 Character Sheet is unneeded and hilarious?

4th Edition D&D: What Worked, What Did Not

To begin, I find that only in 4th Edition has my character ever felt like he/she/it stands well above normal people in that he was able to take more hits, fight for longer, and be a damned hero at level 1.  Previous editions have you cringing from encounter to encounter with only very few healing sources available.  Cowardice is not heroic. :P

So, I'm going to start with the Character Sheet, and move on from there, going from concept to concept.