I liked dragonlance gnomes...

The entire race exists solely to fail!

Bah that was the fun part of the old Mage. Had a bunch of unemployed Euthanatoi breathing down your neck?
Simply unleash a cloud of aerosolized retroviruses designed to knockout the endogenous cellular topoisomerase, encased in liposomes. Whip out your terafloping PDA and quickly modify the ligands in the liposomes' phospholipid membrane to have a high affinity to acetylcholine receptors, thus increasing your viruses' tropism for neurons. Life 3 Entropy 3. Like falling off a log.

If you were an Iterator just adjust the gun's setting to 'microwave' and you are done.

So yes I'm being obnoxious, but the old Mage and Changeling had a very rich atmosphere and rife with inner and inter conflict. The whole Technocracy vs Magic theme was very well done.

Except gnomes that have WOW style cartoonishly oversized swords that they managed to learn to wield by a massive amount of strength and wierd feats (they become the replacement ammo in the dwarf-a-pult) and magic gnomes. Because nothing says "awesome" like a three foot midget melting faces. Especially when those faces belong to an order of Paladins.

Now that a lot more stuff has been revealed, such as certain base monsters and classes waiting for the annual update books, things like Dragonborn and Tieflings and Eladrin becoming core races, Wizards completely changing, alignment only being defined as "Good" and "Evil", etc, does anybody have any more thoughts based on the various previews that have been released.

http://www.enworld.org/index.php?page=4e

From the moment this was released, those of us involved in RPGA (not the local level, but at the we actually have a budget... correction had a budget... from Wizards level) were like bull crap.

4th Edition is Wizards Attempt to create an MMORPG that they do not need to maintain servers for, or give a crap about bugs really, because they know a DM will fix them. They dumbed it down to a point where an untrained monkey can probably figured it out, and the cherry on top of the cake. THEY CHARGE A MONTHLY FEE to access the online content YOU BOUGHT with the book and for some whipped cream, THEY CHARGE YOU A FIRST TIME ACCESS TO THE ONLINE CONTENT after you buy the book. Vasoline and broom handle is free of charge.

Ah, D&D nerds. Always a lovely bunch. You people complain that your ridiculously overcomplicated gaming system is not complicated enough. All you need is a bunch of clichés and some dice. But noooooo, you gotta have your fancy lead miniatures, and your huge game maps, and your enormous piles of sourcebooks and supplements, and your sixteen different types of dice, and of course your rules that require you to spend five minutes figuring out what happens when a character runs down a corridor.

Everyone knows 4th edition DnD will be total crap. It will be like:
-MMORPG
-Anime
-Dragonball (what, Dragonball is an anime?)
-Harry Potter
-World of Warcraft (see above)
-Harry Potter
-Monopoly
-Anime

And how dare they change dumb down the rules! Everyone knows grappling was intuitive and not clunky at all, and diplomacy rolls were not abusable! Neither were spells like Wish or Celerity! And they are actually making Fighters and other melee classes capable of declaring attacks more sophisticated than "I swing at him with the sword. *yawn* Again."? Blaphemy!


Seriously now, people whined about 3rd edition and it fixed a lot of stuff that was wrong about 2nd. Adding new broken things of course, but there were less of them than before and the game turned out to be more fun in the progress, at least for me. That's not saying much though - I don't really like DnD, so I do not care much about how 4th edition turns out, but I have a feeling of cautious optimism.

But I must admit that anyone who was unable to understand the rules of DnD is a retarded monkey who needs to learn basic math. EDIT: Doesn't mean some of them are clunky and need changing. Like the aforementioned grappling.

That the rules were HARD was not an issue. The problem was the amount of time it took to process all the details. Counting up to 20 takes about the same amount of time whether you're terrible at maths or really good at it - being competent doesn't somehow reduce the volume.

Yeah, you misunderstood what I meant. To use the example from that really cheesy video: I grapple the troll. Let's see, I'm Medium, the troll is Large... or was it Huge? I have an STR of 16, that's +3... oh, and I have a spiked chain, that's... screw this. I attack the troll.

I know that is clunky and needs changing. What I mean is that there are people who have trouble figuring out if they beat 16 AC with a roll of 12 with their level 1 Fighter who has an attack bonus of +5 (16 Str, 1 base, 1 favoured weapon). I know such people from Giant in the Playground's forum. How is that not mathematically retarded? Especially since, apart from this, their posts read like if they were completely normal and intelligent.

Also, I forgot Final Fantasy. 4th edition will be like Final Fantasy.

The better question is: How is it mathematically retarded?

I remember when I went to high school, students always scored lower on word problems than number problems. I bet if you just gave them the numbers straight out, it'd be easier, but when you start adding in all kinds of terminology (attack bonuses, bonuses from strength, favoured weapon bonus, AC, rolls... aaaaaieeee, how does it all come together? Help me, Divinity of Some Sort! And please don't zap me!) I can easily see how it gets confusing.

I guess the summary is: Just because it's easy for you to pick up the system, does not mean it is easy for everyone.

Meh. That's why you count up your bonuses beforehand and put the total into the neat place titled "attack bonus" on your character sheet. Or if you don't have the knowledge to do that, let the DM do it for you. That was the case here - the guy in question had problems judging if 16 is higher than 12+5.

2nd Edition rules were, quite frankly, fine. Yes they had a really sharp learning curve, but once you figured out THACO, it was all down hill from there. There were problems in 2nd yes, however when Wizards took over from TSR, they announced 3rd, and I was excited. By the time they released 3rd, I was excited until I started to read the material.

They fixed some of the problems in 2nd, yes, but they threw the baby out with the bath water, and then tried to cover it up. The initiative system is crap. It favors the warrior with a greataxe everytime. Being a 'dexterity' fighter is not possible unless the DM allows some of those awfully broken 3rd party sources in. Bards went from the most insanly OMGWTF class in the game, to crappy backline 'Enjoy my +1... even though I am level 20, and you'd think I could do more... oh look sound burst...' (Yes I know bards can be a lot more, and me and a friend have made 3rd Edition bards quite playable, however we can get the exact same result from a wizard but with more flexibility.) And whoever mentioned earlier that casters were overpowered in 3rd, never played in the 3rd edition rules, at least correctly. If you are a level 12 wizard, anything you face with a CR of 8 or higher should make all the saves without much work, and neuters your spell list to those that do half damage with a save, or do not require a save. Magic missile has also been neutered a bit with the massive increase in hitpoints in 3rd. (2nd average hitpoint at 17 would be 80-90 for a fighter class and around 30-60 for just about everyone else. 3rd, fighters can easily break 100 by 6 or 7.)

3rd Edition broke DnD to a great extent, but I stuck with it because I enjoyed the fact that I didn't have to teach as much, and the RPGA community kicked ass, if you got involved.

Then, when 3rd Edition is near its height, when the problems have finally started to get worked out, they announce a new edition, not only is it a new edition, but they threw the baby out with the water again. Although I will be honest, I am not even caring about the dumbing down of the rules, I am looking more at the blatant attempt to rip off what had been loyal customers, with the 'Online Content' bull.

You pay 40 (I think the core book will be raised to 60) dollars to buy a book. That book is incomplete, although they say it is complete. In order to complete it, you have to log on to wizards digital crap, and pay another 5-10 fee to 'register' your book online. Don't forget, you have to spend 14-20 dollars a month, just to have the privilege to view the complete sources. If you stop paying, you sacrifice your fee and lose the online content.

Out of the last California RPGA Meet, most of the Marshals had already moved onto another system, or had decided to stick with 3rd and just make new content. Out of my fellow game masters, only a few of us were even considering sticking with the 3rd edition stuff, mostly in the form of d20 modern which was not being touched as of yet. Although, for the first time since I joined RPGA, our staff behind the scenes game was not DnD... we played Changeling.

DnD will still exist, but those of us who remembered AD&D, early 3rd, and before... well we wont recognize it anymore, and that is a shame.



(By the way, fighters always had more options the swing the sword, but that requires roleplaying, something that is no longer required by DnD...)

Quoted for absolute truth. Even the Wizards forums (which aren't even the Wizards forums, anymore, but have since been shifted over to Gleemax) are rife with idiots who (ignoring the actual D20 game in print) have made a WoW version of D&D... complete with inventory slots, respawning upon death, corpse runs, and creatures that actually drop treasure. I've always enjoyed RPGs for those first, all-important letters: R & P. I enjoy the epic scope of a grand Forgotten Realms campaign that spans decades of a character's life and culminates in a final, climactic battle with the Avatar of Gruumsh, the gritty realism and supernatural undercurrent of a rough-and-tumble Shadowrun gone horribly awry, and the wonder and magic of a Changeling game in which a hard-fought battle against Banality ends in mixed triumph and tragedy. Sadly, the overwhelming majority of players these days are only interested in making the most powerful character possible, gaining the most godlike equipment, and "winning." Things like character tournaments (creating a character, pitting it against other characters just to see who can come up with the best build) are the norm, rather than the exception, and the evolution of D&D under WOTC has only encouraged the mindset that it's a game of killing things and gaining experience, rather than a game of epic adventure and fantastic worlds.

I won't be having anything to do with this new edition. Instead, my gaming group will continue to bastardize settings as we see fit, tearing out the things that don't work and replacing them with things that do. We will continue to tell stories and play, rather than degenerate into a bunch of pseudo-mathematicians who are only looking for uber stats and vast numbers of goblins to kill.

As an aside, I have nothing against those sorts of games in general. The Halo series, for example, is a vastly entertaining way of killing time, along with countless aliens. I just wish Wizards would stop pretending it's a role-playing game.

I don't buy the "no RP" argument. No one forces you to hack&slash, no matter what edition. And the game doesn't become more hack&slashy - it was 100% hack and slash at the start. Tabletops STARTED as hack and slash. You can only go up from there, on the H&S/RP scale.

As for warriors having other options if you RP them - a basic attack, no matter how well-described, is still an attack. In the meantime, the Wizard or the Cleric can cast a lot of spells, having the same RP options but more variety. Or you could play with Tome of Battle classes, but they are "too powerful" and "too anime".


Okay. You have no idea how to play a wizard. This isn't an opinion, it's a fact. I will find a guide and post a link for you to read.

EDIT: Here it is. As the thread says, Wizards are the Batman of DnD 3rd edition. With preparation, they beat everyone. If you know how to play one, you overpower the party's melee guys easily. If you are willing to use cheese, you overpower the WORLD. I'm not even mentioning Clerics and Druids here - the term CoDzilla came from somewhere. They are the newbie classes - you need knowhow to play a powerful wizard, but even a newbie can play a powerful Cleric or Druid. And you need Tome of Battle (or Shocktrooper cheese) to play an effective melee character. That, or 4th edition - hopefully.

I really wish I had people to play with! I'm sure there are, but I just don't know how to find them. I've never played before, so I'm a bit nervous.

What you do is start a new thread asking for other players and a DM.

Warning: what Xavius said doesn't work. Trust me here.

Yeah, I don't play wizards, in fact I don't play DnD very much these days, been having more fun with d20 Modern. When I do play DnD I normally play fighters, or rogues, which I have a ball with. Where the wizard is sitting there picking spells, I am working out the best way to attack the situation, and taking all of my skills and feats into consideration.

The game is far more enjoyable when I try and roleplay my fighter acting like a fighter, making feints and so on. Hell, I make frequent use of trips, feints, grapples, and so on... why? Because they work, and make a fighter a lot more fun and useful.

You dismiss them because they are 'to hard.'

But, no matter what I say, you have already made it clear to me that you will plug your ears and scream as loud as you can if anyone says anything bad about 4th. I think, from what they have shown the world, that 4th is going to be dumb, but I am reserving final judgment. What I am opposed to the most is the anal rapping WOTC is attempting to do to wallets.

Like I said though, moot argument.

I do not find trips, feints and all too hard - the mechanics are too clunky and need changing, that's a subtle difference. But nevertheless, a fighter will be inferior in terms of raw power to a wizard or a druid, unless you play on low levels and the caster has no idea what he's doing.

And you already made it clear to me that no matter what I post, you will consider 4th Ed to be "anal raping our wallets" to use your charming choice of words (but correcting the typo). So further arguments are moot, indeed.