Forgotten Realms preview

Wizards of the Coast is offering a preview of the Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide, which is slated for release in September.  The Living Forgotten Realms campaign is set to kick off at Gencon.  (Thanks to Critical Hits for bringing the link to my attention.)

The preview includes PC drow and genasi races, a peek at the swordmage class, and lists of regional benefits.

Drow are identical to their writeup in the Monster Manual, except that they explicitly count as fey creatures now, whereas before Fey Origin was implicit.  There’s some flavor text and a couple of minor changes in wording to the powers, but no real differences.  They’re going to make scary rogues; either one of their encounter powers gives them combat advantage free for a turn.  (Well, the faerie fire — I mean Darkfire, because everyone knows “dark” is cool — has to hit.  But it gets a nice big bonus, and it gives advantage to the drow’s allies, too.)  It’s probably not a big deal in the end, because rogues can generally set up their sneak attack fairly easily if they try.  But it will definitely help fill in in those situations in which the rogue otherwise might not be able to.  And the Cloud of Darkness power has other applications.

Genasi count as elemental creatures, and they get to choose one of five elemental associations.  (Yes, five.  Fire, water, earth, air, and lightning.  Why lightning?  Beats me.)  Each one offers an encounter power, plus an additional benefit, like water breathing, a bonus to a defense, or an elemental resistance.

There’s apparently going to be a racial feat to allow an extra element to be taken, too, so the genasi can have multiple benefits.  Including multiple encounter powers, as far as I can tell, which worries me a bit.  Some of these powers are quite good.  The water power, for instance, is a move action that lets the character shift their speed, move through enemies, ignore difficult terrain, ignore penalties for squeezing through a tight space, and ignore any damage if they move across something that would normally damage them (like a lava pit).  A lot of that is situational, yes, but the “shift your speed” alone is a pretty amazing encounter power.

Genasi get +2 Strength and +2 Intellect, a pretty weak combination for anything other than the new Swordmage class (but very good for that).  They also get +2 bonuses to Endurance and Nature.  Endurance is a pretty nice bonus to have, with its role in fighting off disease, and the knowledge is a knowledge.  Nice, but situational; maybe very useful in a given campaign, maybe not much more than a nifty parlor trick.

Speaking of the new Swordmage class:  it’s an arcane defender.  I was not expecting that.  The “fighter/wizard” of older games was typically a blasty, striker-ish sort, with the smarter ones being controller-like “save or die” specialists.  (Of course, the really smart ones were straight wizards…)

Their powers so far seem to lean toward the controller, much like paladins lean toward leader and fighters to striker.  They’ve got quite a few area-effects in those early levels, including an at-will that’s a close burst 1.  Their damage seems very respectable.  As for their defending, when they mark something that attacks someone else, they can (depending on which build option they chose) either teleport next to their mark and take a basic attack, or they can reduce the damage the mark inflicts.  That could be an interesting mechanic.

Only the first three levels of powers are in the document, and most of those only offer two powers per level.  Those who choose to create swordmages for the Living campaign will be allowed a free “respec” once the book is officially released, to help compensate.  Any drow or genasi also get one, to allow for taking racial feats that aren’t released yet, and such.

Oh, those regional benefits?  They’re not feats this time around.  You just get to pick one.  Mostly, they add a skill to your class skill list and give you either a small bonus with that skill or a “reroll and take the second roll, even if it’s worse” when using that skill.  A couple go beyond that; there’s one that gives resist 2 to fire, cold, and thunder, for instance (which increases to 3, then to 5 at paragon and epic tiers, respectively).

I could take or leave most of this, but I’m kind of looking forward to the swordmage now.  It looks as if it’ll be a different take on the sword-swinging spell-slinger concept.

Knights of the Old Republic: the MMO

Electronic Arts, which bought out Bioware a while ago, has just confirmed that the MMO project Bioware’s been working on since 2006 (and about which virtually nothing else was known) is an entry in the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic line.

KOTOR‘s been out of the spotlight lately.  The first game came out in 2003, and its sequel in December 2004.  The sequel (which was not developed by Bioware, since they were busy working on Jade Empire at the time) was criticized as being rushed and unfinished; there were plot threads that never quite resolved, subplots that were apparently dropped halfway through, and areas that were never completed.  For all that, it was still one of my favorite games at the time.

I’m a bit ambivalent about this.  As much as I like KOTOR, I can’t help but recall the first Star Wars MMO.  While I have to admit I never played it and lack firsthand knowledge, my understanding is that it was fairly complicated at launch, with some questionable design choices (like requiring a long process of mastering random professions to unlock Jedi characters, who were then subject to permanent death) — and that it later underwent massive revisions, such as reductions in the number of available professions which angered many of its players.

These were the fault of the implementation, of course, not the Star Wars property.  But the implementation was by Sony/Verant, so it’s not as though the developers were new to MMOs.  I can picture EA/Bioware making similar mistakes.

On the other hand, Bioware has a pretty good record as far as I’m concerned.  Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, Jade Empire — good stuff.  For the most part, I trust Bioware to know how to make an entertaining game.

Of course, if I were an Everquest player, I might have said the same about Verant regarding Galaxies.

I can say this:  I feel more inclined to try this MMO than I did Galaxies.

4e Errata Released

Wizards of the Coast has released the first round of 4e errata.  That was quick.  A few highlights:

Blade Cascade:  This level 15 power became somewhat infamous for allowing almost arbitrarily long strings of attacks when the attack roll was boosted enough through bonuses, especially if the character could reroll.  It’s now limited to a maximum of 5 attacks.  This is still pretty good damage for a level 15 daily, mitigated by the fact multiple attack rolls are necessary to deal it all.  I was looking at house-ruling it to a cap of 6 attacks, so 5 works for me.

Ranger, Rogue, Warlock:  In order to gain the striker bonus damage dice, the character has to hit the target.  They don’t get to add bonus damage to a miss if the power does damage on a miss.

Flaming Sphere:  The sphere occupies a square, so it can’t be moved through.

Skills:  DCs mentioning the target’s level (eg. Insight) now add half the target’s level instead.  That should help scaling.

Shield Push feat:  Replace the text in the special section with “You must be using a shield to benefit from this feat.” I had to mention this one because it’s a silly argument.  The printed text says “You must carry a shield to benefit from this feat.”  Evidently people were arguing that they would swing a two-handed weapon while a shield was strapped to their back, and use the feat.  Sheesh.  Still, I kind of wish they’d added a similar note for the Rogue Weapon Talent, though; I’ve seen people try to pull the same thing with holding a shuriken or a dagger in the offhand, while attacking with a more damaging weapon.

Surprised condition:  You can’t take free actions while surprised.  No more yelling warnings about the ambush that took you unaware.  I think I like this one — it makes the “take him out before he can alert the others!” approach a lot more likely.

DMG Page 42:  The DCs all get reduced by 5, basically, and the footnotes to the table are stricken.  This goes a long way toward fixing skill challenges.  The skill check DCs on page 61 also get reduced by 5.

More skill challenge fixes:  All challenges now end at 3 failures, baseline.  It’s not dependent on the complexity of the challenge any more.  This makes the more complex challenges actually harder, rather than making them easier after a certain point.  Also, using an “unusual” skill in a skill challenge is no longer automatically a hard DC; now it’s “usually moderate or hard.”  And of the “Assist Another chain,” the following advice is given:  “On checks that aren’t described as group checks, consider limiting the number of characters who can assist another character’s skill check to one or two. The goal of a skill challenge isn’t for the entire party to line up behind one expert but for the entire group to contribute in different and meaningful ways.” Makes sense.

I’ll have to try these new skill challenge rules, but offhand, they seem to address the problems of the published system.  Again, they’re pretty similar to what I’d already house-ruled, so I’m happy in that respect.

Resistance:  If you hit with a combined-damage-type attack, resistance only reduces the damage if the monster has resistance to both damage types, and then only by the lower amount.  So if you hit for 15 fire and acid damage against something with 10 fire resistance but no acid resistance, you do 15 damage.  If it had 10 fire resistance and 5 acid resistance, you’d do 10 damage.  This makes “blended” damage a lot better.

There are also a couple of monster changes, mostly corrections to hit points or damage.

This errata addresses most of the problems I’ve run into with 4e.  There are a few that didn’t get touched upon yet, though:

* Seal of Binding:  This cleric power allows for easily taking out any monster that can be hit with a single Wisdom vs. Will attack, provided the party has some means of healing the cleric.  My fix for this:  The cleric is unable to be affected by any effect other than Seal of Binding while sustaining the power.  Also, the target is immune to damage (other than Seal of Binding), not simply to attacks; that addresses some issues such as Arcane Gate/Slashing Wake combination being used to inflict damage without technically making an attack.

* Divine Miracle:  People have posited various bits of brokenness involving this Demigod power, all of which rely on it being able to restore an unlimited number of encounter powers per turn — because as soon as one is used, another can be recalled, as written.  My fix:  It works once per round.  The Demigod still never runs out of encounter powers, but he can’t do things like retrieve Elven Accuracy unlimited times until a critical hit is scored.

* Stealth:  On various forums I visit, people seem to have some trouble applying the stealth rules.  I think this probably goes beyond the scope of errata, though — I’m not convinced that it’s a problem with the rules, per se, just a certain amount of confusion.  I suspect there could be a Dragon article in this.  Perhaps I’ll pitch one.

* Rerolls:  Mostly this involved Blade Cascade (which the errata addressed) and Divine Miracle/Elven Accuracy, and I’m not sure it’s necessary any more.  I’ve been using the following house rule though:  A given die can only be rerolled once.  If you’re an elf and an Epic Trickster, you don’t get to reroll an attack four times — just once.  You can pick whether to use Elven Accuracy or your Trickster rerolls.  It might not be broken any more to allow for more, but I’m keeping it for now because it limits the amount of time one character gets to spend making his attack, and keeps things moving.

On that last one, I should note that I separate abilities that allow “roll twice” from ones that allow a reroll.  So a Divine Oracle making a Will-targeted attack would roll two dice for the class feature, and could then reroll one of those dice (the higher one in this case, since that’s the one the class feature specifies is used) if he wishes to.

All the same, I’m pleased that WotC managed to get errata out so quickly, and also that there’s so little of it.  I’m sure there will be more; it’s the nature of the beast.  But it’s a good start.

A Cogent Observation

Following the comments on Chatty DM’s “The Tyranny of Fun is a load of baloney” blog entry, I came across the following, from poster Donny:

What is the biggest change in 4E? It’s not really the rules per se, its that there is no longer any place for a lone wolf character anymore. You see a little of that in the default party becoming one larger (it was 4 from 2nd – 3.5) now it is 5. The tactical aspect HEAVILY encourages teamwork and balance above all other considerations.

This was a revelation to me.  I hadn’t put the thought together in quite that way, in spite of stumbling around the edges of it pretty consistently.  Donny’s absolutely right:  4e puts emphasis on a group of characters that is a party of adventureres, rather than on a group of adventurers that happens to have formed a party.  Teamwork is much more central to 4e than to earlier editions.

Donny suggests that this is part of what’s behind the “edition war”:  a rift between those whose players preferred team play to begin with (the group I’m among, for the record) and those whose players preferred individual heroics and moments of glory.

I think there’s some truth to that; one of the most frequent pieces of criticism and praise (depending on the writer’s camp) I’ve often seen regarding 4e is the change in the wizard class from “weak early on, godlike later” to more balanced across all levels.  Even in my own overview, I touched on that.  But it’s not just wizards — everyone’s more dependent on the team now.  The rogue or ranger can still be sneaky, but when it comes to a fight, they’ll want backup.

I like that idea.  But of course, teamwork is my style of game.  I’m not heavily invested in my character being powerful in and of himself when I play, and when I GM, I very much prefer my party to stick together and share the spotlight.  4e makes this easier.

That’s not to say it’s bad to play the lone wolf.  I’ve done it.  It’s just not my preference.  But those who do prefer it will find it more difficult with 4e.  It’s obvious, once it’s pointed out.  And from that perspective, the animosity toward balance is easier to understand, even if I still don’t sympathize.

The Absurdity of “The Tyranny of Fun”

There’s a recent argument regarding the perceived absurdity of certain 4e rules.  The focus of this argument is “The Tyranny of Fun,” as one of its proponents put it — a phrase that seems to be propagating a bit.  The original argument spawned from this RPGSite thread, whose original subject was the use of game jargon by players during combat, as opposed to narrative description.  In other words, a player might say “I want to shift and then attack the orc” rather than “I leap across the table, my blade darting toward the orc’s throat.”

The following quote by James Wyatt was brought up:  “In past editions, we’d describe things like cave slime as if the DC of the Acrobatics check to avoid slipping in it were an objective, scientific measurement of its physical properties. “How slippery is cave slime? It’s DC 30 slippery.”  Bur setting a fixed number like that limits its usefulness — cave slime would be too challenging for low-level characters and irrelevant for high-level characters. In 4th Edition, we tell you to set the DC to avoid slipping based on the level of the characters, using the Difficulty Class and Damage by Level table. So when 5th-level characters encounter cave slime, they’ll be making a check against DC 22, but 25th-level characters have to make a DC 33 check.”

A poster by the handle Jackalope, in reply, wrote:  “This is the most absolutely idiotic thing I’ve ever read. So basically, no matter how good a character gets, everything should remain an identical challenge? Nobody gets better, the numbers just get bigger. I just don’t get it.” (Note, this poster has not read the 4e rules, nor played the game — he’s going by the description, which is fair enough.)

To which a third poster replied, in part (the full post can be read on his blog or on the previously-linked thread), “Jackalope, its based on the absurd and utterly idiotic idea that the PCs have to be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME at all times or else the world ends. [...] FUN MUST BE HAD AT ALL TIMES! [...] They’re idiots. [...] the domination of Jargon in 4e is part of a conscious attempt to try to destroy (exterminate, if you will) the very possibility of experiencing “immersion” in D&D.” This poster later used the “Tyranny of Fun” phrase to refer to this… idea.

So that’s the background.

I’d initially come across it, shrugged, and moved on.  But then I came across it again, while reading The Chatty DM’s rant on the subject.

Needless to say, I broadly agree with Chatty on the matter.  I’m reproducing below my comments in response to his blog post:

I find the argument boils down to two things, really:

1. “Change is bad.” These are the arguments that are recycled from previous edition changes. (Seriously, I remember reading some of these posts almost word for word when 3e came out… and when 2e came out.) This is, arguably, the biggest change to the game yet, but these arguments still boil down to liking the old system better.

There’s nothing stopping anyone from playing the old system. True, there won’t be any first-party support, and probably there’ll be a lot less third-party support. That never stopped the die-hard 1e players, though. If the desire’s still there, the rulebooks (and modules, and whatever else) are still there.

2. “I wanted a different style of game.” Over the years, the focus has changed. 1e was really a low-fantasy, swords-and-sorcery style game, until you got to high levels. There was a real chance that a character wouldn’t have so much as a +1 weapon at level 6, or maybe even at level 9. At the higher levels, this broke down some, and if you got into some third-party stuff (like Primal elements), it could be as epic-high-fantasy as anything in 4e, but the root game was more pulp-style. And it was designed with the expectation that very few would reach those high levels, anyway — in fact, most PC races simply couldn’t, if you applied the rules as written. Half-elf cleric? Level 5 maximum, thanks.

2e was much the same, though it relaxed level restrictions, and allowed for a bit more flexibility on the part of the players. Thief skills, for instance, were no longer set quantities.

3e shifted more toward the high-fantasy aspect, with ‘expected wealth.’ Wizards were still broken, at even earlier levels. Noncasters were still increasingly useless at higher levels, but now “higher levels” started as early as level 7 or so. But one thing 3e did, even more so than earlier editions, was to simulate a world.

4e is high fantasy, unabashedly. It’s not as wizard-slanted as earlier editions, and the overall power level is a bit lower because of it, but the game’s slanted toward providing an epic-fantasy feel. And it doesn’t simulate a world. PCs aren’t the same as NPCs, even in theory. PCs are different and special.

Some people don’t like that. Some people just want lower fantasy, which is reasonable. Some just don’t like PCs being special, which I don’t get. But fair enough.

But 4e doesn’t cater to them.

In a nutshell, 1e would be a comfortable setting for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. 3e would be a comfortable setting for Elric or Conan in his more over-the-top appearances. 4e would be a comfortable setting for the more mystical Arthurian tales, like Gawain and the Green Knight or the more fantastic Merlin stories, and for epics along the lines of most Lord of the Rings imitators. (As for the Rings themselves, I’m not so sure… that’s hard to classify.)

4e does that sort of game very well, mind you.

What I can’t understand are the people complaining about the “loss” of such mechanics as save-or-die and level draining. Just goes to show you, I guess.

But now it’s been on my mind, and I feel the need to go further into the matter.  Because it really is an absurd argument, from where I stand.

Now, I’ll want to be clear on this:  Reasonable people can enjoy different styles of game.  Some people like a game where they’re average joes bootstrapping themselves and (assuming they survive the whims of fate) becoming great heroes.  Some people like a game where they’re hapless saps caught up in a word beyond their control, where every day is a struggle to survive, and where there’s little glory to be won and victory means living to fight some more tomorrow.  I’ve enjoyed games like that.

Fourth edition is not that game.  That’s not the kind of world it assumes.  This is not a design flaw, it’s a conscious design decision.  Even the “Tyranny of Fun” bandwagon seems to mostly acknowledge that; they just feel that it was the wrong decision and it’s not true to the history of the game.  Additionally, many feel that it’d responsible for the erosion of roleplay.  One or two seem to feel it’s responsible for the decline of Western civilization, but they’re not representative.

Thing is, they’re wrong, on just about every count.

On the original poster’s comment, and as noted by many other replies in the thread:  4e doesn’t cause the use of jargon.  I’ve been in games in 3e, 2e, 1e, and OD&D where mechanics intervened to the detriment of narrative, too.  No shifts, of course, but plenty of “I make a full attack” in 3e or “I start casting my spell.  It’ll go off on segment 6″ in 1e.  Narrative is entirely the responsibility of the players and GM.  Insofar as 4e is a “crunchy,” rules-emphasizing system, it does encourage the use of some jargon, whereas a diceless game such as Amber or Nobilis doesn’t — but even in those systems, there are times when the mechanics intervene.  (“I spend 2 miracle points on a Lesser Creation of Strength.”)

On to immersion, then.  To a small extent, they’re correct here:  3e was more simulationist in nature; it modeled a fantasy world with more verisimilitude.  DC 30 cave slime is “realistic” in that it’s always slippery to a certain extent.  4e is more narrativist in nature; it models a fantasy epic, where the story matters more than the “realism” of the world.  Cave slime is more slippery at higher levels in order to pose an appropriate challenge, because if it wasn’t more slippery, then it might as well no longer be there at high levels.

Does it break immersion more to have higher-level characters encounter slime that’s more slippery, or to effectively no longer encounter it at all?

But leaving that aside… another comment was that you’re supposed to work up to the dragon.  This is based on a misunderstanding of 4e:  not every monster will automatically be an appropriate challenge.  The DMG doesn’t even come close to suggesting such a thing.  If your first-level characters go dragon hunting, you won’t run into a first-level dragon.

Furthermore, an interesting comparison:  In 4e, the weakest dragon is the white wyrmling (a level 3 Solo monster).  In 3e, the white wyrmling was… 3 HD.  In the D&D basic set, the white dragon was 6 HD, and a note in the dragon description suggested that younger dragons might have about 3 fewer HD, which would make a white wyrmling… you guessed it, 3 HD.  That’s not a lot to “work up to.”  Bigger dragons?  Well, the ancient red in 4e is a level 30 Solo monster… maximum level seems like some “working up” might be involved.

And third, there’s the implication that previous editions encouraged immersion, where 4e does not.  This is untrue on both counts.  For the latter, the 4e DMG does talk a good deal about encouraging immersion — because it’s part of the fun.  It simply recognizes that there are times when game jargon should be used for clarity.  For the former, in any D&D game I’ve ever played, in any edition, there were times when the rules and mechanics simply killed immersion.  Why, exactly, can’t half-elves reach level 6, or level 60, as a cleric?  The DM could come up with a reason, but the real reason was:  The rules said so.

(Of course, like most groups I’ve ever heard of, mine house-ruled away the level restrictions.  We also allowed humans to multiclass.)

And for that matter, “cave slime is DC 30 slippery” doesn’t sound very immersive to me, either.  I prefer “the blue-tinged slime that coats the rocks underfoot makes every step potentially treacherous as you face down the illithid band.”  Who cares if my party is level 29?  The slime makes every step potentially treacherous.  Because that leads to a more interesting combat than “Slime?  That won’t bother anyone above level 5.  We’ll just treat it as a level, dry floor.”

PCs have to be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME at all times?  Damn straight, I say.  And their opponents should be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME too.  Maybe not at all times — the walk-over or the “way out of our league” keeps things fun and varied too (and the rules encourage this, explicitly — another thing the Tyranny crowd seems to have overlooked in its complaining about balance).  But in 4e, yes, each and every fight should have the PCs doing awesome things, and most of them should have the NPCs doing awesome things right back.  They should largely take place in awesome settings, with awesome scene elements making for a more awesome fight.

I can’t see this as a bad thing.

Finally, the Tyranny crowd is wrong to equate “4e should be fun” with “the players always get whatever it is they want without effort.”  The effort’s fun, too.  Hell, losing can be fun — just as long as it’s not arbitrary.  And that’s right there in the rules, too.