Notes all over the place.

[alexandraerin]

Hey, if you're looking for a good cause to give to this holiday season, there are a couple of them linked to in this article about the problems facing women returning home from combat duty overseas. Highlighting this is not meant to diminish the reality that all our armed forces personnel and veterans need support, but so much of the existing infrastructure and good will is directed towards "our boys in uniform". Our boys are not alone, and in the midst of insurgency and guerrilla warfare, there is no "front line" to keep women away from.

I'm tempted to say something about the ETA of me having a working desktop computer again, but I don't want to jinx anything. I've run out of how many times bitten and how many times shy I am at this point. If I don't have a working computer on hand at the end of the week, I'll come up with alternative arrangements for some of the things I've been putting off.

Random note: now is a great time to get into 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons... they're offering a limited release holiday bundle of the first two players' handbooks at $34.95. One of the more common laments from people who thought the new edition looked cool was that several classes that were core under 3rd Edition weren't present at launch. With PHB 1 and 2, you get all the 3E core classes except Monk, plus several nifty original ones.

The next PHB that comes out (I think in March?) is going to be a major game-changer. The test version of the rules it includes for making hybrid character classes are already accessible online and through the character creator. I love the game as it is, but I think this upcoming release is going to really cement its place and bring its full potential into fruition. Buying the bundle now could save you money in the long run if you think you might get into the game eventually... you can avoid having to buy every splatbook that comes out and still get all the various foo for your characters through the character generator, but having the core PHBs actually on hand adds a lot to the experience of learning the game and making characters, in my opinion.

The Q&A is more work than I expected... I didn't expect as many responses, and I didn't realize how many I had when I started compiling them. Don't be fooled by the fact that the first two updates both spanned about three letters... the characters' names and the number of questions per character are far from evenly distributed across the alphabet. The whole thing is actually a little under half done. In case people are curious about why I included the "Dear Amaranth, why do you suck so much?" questions, it's because I felt the character deserved a chance to answer them in her own words. I also had a feeling that posting them would bring her supporters... who often get drowned out in the comments... out of the woodwork.

My day started off very nicely today, despite a lack of sleep the night before: I got a confirmation/reminder email from Priceline.com about my flight to Maryland, which leaves two weeks from today.

Comments

Re: D&D

[lystania.livejournal.com]

As to the "training wheels for newbies"... Fighters weren't just training wheels for newbies in 3E. They were power-houses, starting at level 1 and continuing through the progression.

Give me an intelligently-geared fighter, and I'll take out the wizard or druid of the same level and gear power, almost every time (with the almost part referring to me failing my fort or die save, and the always part referring to me killing them in the first or second round from massive damage.). Like I said, 4E is probably better balanced. That is a good thing.

But it would be nice if the balance didn't come at the expense of some old D&D standbys. I'll admit that some of the features sound interesting, and sure most fighters end of developing signature moves in anime over the course of their careers, but I'd prefer if it was an optional investment, not an assumed one. Like the feats for leap attack and such in 3E - those made for some very interesting character choices, but you could also invest in things with constant bonuses, but smaller one-round effectiveness.

Sometimes when I play, I have my mind primed for strategic casting. Sometimes when I play, my mind is too brain-dead from exhaustion for me to enjoy anything but rolling dice and watching stuff fall down. I know most people have those moments - and if they frequently coincide with your D&D schedule, it's nice to have a class available to fulfill that need to not make any choices other than what to hit next. (Like I presume Belinda feels in a battle)

I'm not saying that *all* warrior classes should be that way. But I think having one that is - or having the option to craft one that way - is a good thing, not a bad thing.

As long as it is neither over-powered nor under-powered either at end-game or in the beginning.

Which has been D&D's problem since the beginning, hmm? I know that balance has been a huge problem since 1E.

They started off saying that Fighters should be easier in the beginning but less useful in the end. They continued this line of thought in 2E.

Then 3E came along, and they thought that they fixed it by making Fighters have a steady power progression, without realizing that they nerfed the capabilities of magic with a poor magic defense (fort, ref, will) system.

I call it poor, because monsters ended up being designed to be hittable by a fighter of the correct level, but with enough hit points to survive a blow - which meant either more HD (which pumped all of their magic defense like crazy) or more Con (which pumped part of their magic defense like crazy, and weakened the stat pool for Str).

In 4E, they really tried to build the classes off similar and mostly equal templates (from the brief look I gave it), which would certainly be more balanced than the "Half-Giant Barbarian crushes Gnomish Sorcerer in the first round of combat" concept of gaming.

I wasn't trying to say that 4E didn't have it's perks - I even said originally "there's lots of interesting stuff in 4th" - I was just expressing that my main problems with it were not the same one you mentioned in your post.

It's certainly an interesting and different direction, and I think that the genre will grow from it, but I also hope that the "slugger" makes a reappearance.

And having a character that is only good at "the basics" of gameplay, but is FAR better at them then other classes, doesn't have to *just* be training wheels for newbies. But it can be a comfortable way for them to get into the game, while also being a refreshingly simple character concept for a veteran who's tired of slinging meteors or turning into trees and beasties.

Re: D&D

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Your experience of Fighters being powerhouses is very different from that of most people I know who played 3E, and I suspect it comes down to playing style. In a "dice battle" (start combat, roll until someone's dead), Fighters can devastate. The meme of spellcasters as the classes that render everybody else obsolete, though, is based in Batman-style play: you win the fight by being ready before it starts.

Yeah, the Half-Giant Barbarian could win the fight in one round, but what do you do if the fight's effectively over before that?

Either approach can be fun, but they're not what I'm interested in. What I like about 4E is that the battles are won and lost based not on what spells are prepared and cast before the battle starts or what you roll but on the tactical decisions made round by round. You will never win any but the easiest fights on autopilot... especially at higher levels, where by design monsters' base combat numbers scale up faster than PCs.

If the party is working together, not everybody has to think... when I'm not DMing, I usually end up in a leader role and part of what I end up doing is figuring out the strategy that the members of the party who would be the "sluggers" implement. We fought one battle where our Barbarian's player was half-asleep from driving all day. She was just "Who am I hitting this time?" It worked.

But you are right that resource management is not something you can get away from any more no matter what you choose, but I think it's still not all that complex, especially if you're playing with cards so you have a visual and tangible reminder of what you can choose from.

And yes, if you glance at them, the characters will seem to be very similar because all their abilities do fit into the same templates instead of being separate and unrelated subsystems. But actual play is very different, and in fact the character classes still vary considerably in their complexity. Wizards still have a vestige of spell preparation that means their resource management extends beyond combat. Arcane and Divine characters still tend to be more complex in their capabilities than Martial ones. Fighters are still towards the shallow end of the pool... though I won't deny that the shallow end is deeper than it was.