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Aug 17, 2012 -- 10:54AM, Ogiwan wrote:

My favorite example is a PC in one of my Eberron games. She was the captain of an airship, and drew on the twin powers of her Dragonmark and a piece of her airship's elemental (who would follow her around) to fight in combat. People usually peg her for a Wizard, or an Artificer when I describe her. In actuality, she was a Shaman who was just thoroughly re-flavored.

One of my favorite characters was a young Eladrin that was a member of a trading family.  In the setting we were using, the points of light were basically asteroids that people had built homes and villages on, with the rest of space being where we adventured.  Movement between these places was either magical or via flying mount, like a Drake.  My family was struggling to maintain a trading empire with goods netted between drakes because we had lost favor with the dragons that had helped us previously.  I, on the other hand, had befriended a young shadow dragon while I was away at a respected wizardry school, and he followed me around and teleported from place to place on the battlefield and was generally just a whiny little guy, but he was the key to my family's future.

This was of course a reflavored Stalker Shaman.

Aug 17, 2012 -- 10:48AM, Valdark wrote:

I think Zyph is right here. I came from 2e where most additions to the game were details and equipment with ways to modify your class. Then I moved to 3e where each addition seemed to further imbalance the system and invalidate core classes.

See, we differed in regards to 2nd edition and 3e but still had similar experiences.

In 2e, I loved the "Complete Book of..." series of things. A TON of flavor, new items, little things like kits, but largely it was just adding either history, flavor, or more of what was already there and TYPICALLY seemed SOMEWHAT balanced (Go away Chromatic Orb you horrible horrible horrible thing)

However, I abhored Skills & Power and that entire set of books. I don't want umpteen billion codified and laid out options. One, as soon as something becomes official in a book players are more apt to get persistant in saying to a DM "We should put this in". Especially if they spent money on a book. I always found it easier to say "no" to unofficial sources than when people are pulling a TSR or WOTC book and saying "It HAS to be balanced and good, it's coming from them". Skills & powers...and it could've been due to some of the people I was around when it first came out...was just an option book that sprang forth from the dreams of a min-maxing fiend. Hated it.

I loved 3rd editions core rules. Did it have problems? Absolutely. But to this day, if I had to pick a core 3 books to play from with the only tweaks being off the cuff created house rules, I'd go back to that one. However, in 3e, I grew to hate the Splat Books.

The 3e equivilent of the "Complete Book of..." seemed to forgo the flavor of ther others in exchange for overpowered additions that would spur sales because "Hey, Hey, DM, WOTC says its okay!". Again, it also became TOO many options. I very much enjoyed core 3e, but ultimately found much of the splat books to not be useful and only used bits and pieces of them at most. However, they were often soft cover...so not too expensive...and so I still often bought them to support the hobby that gave me such long hours of fun.

Then 4th edition comes out and I have the core books preordered but was away from my group. It was a while before I got to play 4th edition and when I did I was less than happy with the core system to be honest. I had people suggesting to go buy a few other books for some better options but the stigma was there. The stigma 3e left me fearing the "splat" books would be over powered, and the stigma 2e left me fearing the "optional rule" books would be a min-maxers dream. And so I just didn't have the trust to invest that much extra money into hard backs when I already felt like I wasted nearly $100.

I love that they're being modular and trying to pleaes everyone here and giving people help in coming up with ways to tweak the game to their liking. And I know it's a business and they need to make money. But above all else, my biggest hope for Next is that their Core 3 books...stand alone...provide the versatility of style, play preference, and design needed to make the game enjoyable fully on it's own without needing to buy additional books to gain access to what are basically essentials, or near essentials, of the game.

Aug 17, 2012 -- 10:59AM, mexrage wrote:

There is also another thing that is very useful on 4e..."Swarm Type" monsters.  They are a group of weaker creatures represented as a single unit or group, single target attacks deals less damage to them, and area attacks deals extra damage to them (wish make sense).

a kobold may be level 1, have 12 hp and deals 1d4+2 damage, but a swarm of kobold as a group may be level 8, have 80 hp, deals  1d10+9 damage, and can attack a PC when he/she starts it's turn within the kobold horde's reach.  You can make the swarm bigger (increase it in size) and raise the level of the swarm (damage, accuracy, defenses) to be able to keep up with the party when you want to have that kind of low level creature to be relevant as a threat to the party without the need of having like 50 of them on the encounter.

So it's quick and just becomes a Mob rather than 23 individual Kolbolds. What happens when they close to melee? Then are they individual?

Aug 17, 2012 -- 11:05AM, Brightmantle wrote:

To foxface- That is way deatailed and complicated but i get that it's strength was in covering the variabes. Not sure about how i feel about this Skill check concept. I always enjoy the story driven departure from the norm in negotiations myself. The roleplay overcoming the mechanics to further the plotline. I reward good roleplay sessions and in Ad&d your example could take up a session. I've had plenty of full r.p. sessions with no combats.  This is what I dig. A system that rewards that.

Well, in 4e all that is still possible.  You can still, as DM, call for skill checks (or respond to player's requests for skill checks) and just go with it as you always have.  None of that changed.  Skill Challenges are, as Leichenreiter said, a framework for adjudicating success or failure in complex scenes that would require lots of skill checks, ideally from every player involved.

Personally, the best Skill Challenges for me are the ones where the PCs don't know they are in a skill challenge at all.  They are merely calling for checks, or responding to my requests for checks, based on what is happening in front of them.  The Skill Challenge framework is actually for me, the DM, to provide guidance for what skill checks to ask for next, or what new complications and/or results derive from checks already attempted, and to help me determine an appropriate point to say "Okay, you've accomplished this goal.  Have [an appropriate amount of] XP."