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Switch to Forum Live View Dragonlance and 4e?
2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 11:47AM #11
AdrianLP
Date Joined: Jun 28, 2004
Posts: 424
I think another big difference is that, as seen in Dragonlance novels, mages in Dragonlance can have *lots* of spellbooks. Perhaps even a librariy full of them. But in 4e this is reduced to a ritual book or two. Doesn't really have the same flare (in my opinion anyway).

And perhaps a mage only needs a few combat spells, but certainly a large number of utility spells is really useful. 
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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 11:50AM #12
Pluisjen
Date Joined: May 13, 2009
Posts: 14,168
Well if you want Wizards to shine and Fighters to suck, then 4e is definately not the system you are looking for.
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Want to give your players a kingdom of their own? I made a 4e rule system to make it happen!

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Update 5th Sep 2011: Added a sample kingdom, as well as sample of play.
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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 11:54AM #13
AdrianLP
Date Joined: Jun 28, 2004
Posts: 424

Oct 16, 2011 -- 11:50AM, Pluisjen wrote:

Well if you want Wizards to shine and Fighters to suck, then 4e is definately not the system you are looking for.




Did fighters suck in 2e?

I don't think requiring spellbooks, esp large numbers of them, adjusts game balance at all. Perhaps I just like my Vancian system  

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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 11:57AM #14
Pluisjen
Date Joined: May 13, 2009
Posts: 14,168
I didn't play 2e, but with all your "Wizards used to be soooooo powerful" I'm more or less assuming you're aiming to have them be sucky.

Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance. Requiring them to have 10 spellbooks won't, though. As long as you don't actually give them more spells it's fine. Rituals they can buy with their own money (and you can certainly fill a few books with them and they're quite awesome)
Epic Dungeon Master



Want to give your players a kingdom of their own? I made a 4e rule system to make it happen!

Your Kingdom awaits!


Update 5th Sep 2011: Added a sample kingdom, as well as sample of play.
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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 12:02PM #15
AdrianLP
Date Joined: Jun 28, 2004
Posts: 424

Oct 16, 2011 -- 11:57AM, Pluisjen wrote:

Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.




Unless it was a Vancian-blend.

AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.

A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.

... in fact, I quite like this idea

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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 12:07PM #16
Pluisjen
Date Joined: May 13, 2009
Posts: 14,168
Why limit it to just the Wizards?

Simple rule:

After every extended rest, you get to pick new powers, any ones you like from your class.

*bam* instantly you have what you're looking for, and it applies to everyone rather then just favoring Wizards.

Alternatively, you could hand out new powers and spells as rewards and let people swap between any powers they know. Then they can quest for a new spell, or a new blessing, or the ability to train under a new master and learn new tricks.

There's no reason to limit something like that just to Wizards. 
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Want to give your players a kingdom of their own? I made a 4e rule system to make it happen!

Your Kingdom awaits!


Update 5th Sep 2011: Added a sample kingdom, as well as sample of play.
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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 12:11PM #17
AdrianLP
Date Joined: Jun 28, 2004
Posts: 424

Oct 16, 2011 -- 12:07PM, Pluisjen wrote:

Why limit it to just the Wizards?




Not just to wiazards. Wizards is my concern is all. I didn't mean to imply it was a wizards only thing.

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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 12:17PM #18
Kalnaur
Date Joined: Oct 19, 2008
Posts: 4,874

Oct 16, 2011 -- 12:02PM, AdrianLP wrote:

Oct 16, 2011 -- 11:57AM, Pluisjen wrote:

Also, giving Wizards more spells will probably upset the balance.




Unless it was a Vancian-blend.

AD&D 2e used a Vancian casting system. This meant a wizard might have 100s of spells in their spellbooks, but the beginning of each day the player had to choose which spells his character would memorize that day, and the wizard was limited by how many spells he could cast per day.

A vancian blend in 4e might allow a wizard to potentially have hundreds of spells (like in previous editions), but each in-game day perhaps the wizard would have to choose which spells he has access too on that day.

... in fact, I quite like this idea




If you are looking for god wizards who have access to every spell ever, then 4th edition is porbably not your cup of tea.

However . . .

There is a method of giving them more options, albeit limited ones.  Check the end of the "What you may have missed" thread stickied atop this forum for a way to use wands to give wizards or any other wand using arcanist an edge.

Also, Raistlin didn't kill Tiam. . . Thakaisis.  Fought yes, delayed yes, killed no.  That finally happened at the end of the War of Souls, where she took mortal form and was killed with a spear. *giggles*

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." --Bill Cosby (1937- )

Vanador: OK. You ripped a gateway to Hell, killed half the town, and raised the dead as feral zombies. We're going to kill you. But it can go two ways. We want you to run as fast as you possibly can toward the south of the town to draw the Zombies to you, and right before they catch you, I'll put an arrow through your head to end it instantly. If you don't agree to do this, we'll tie you this building and let the Zombies rip you apart slowly.
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Feb 3, 2011 -- 6:30AM, Dane_McArdy wrote:

You have to do the work first, and show you can do the work, before someone is going to pay you for it.


Apr 26, 2011 -- 10:42AM, Timmeh wrote:

If you can't understand how someone yelling at another person would make them fight harder and longer, then you need to look at the forums a bit closer.

quote author=56832398 post=519321747]Considering DnD is a game wouldn't all styles be gamist?

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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 12:22PM #19
AbdulAlhazred
Date Joined: Jan 9, 2009
Posts: 10,244
Yeah, again I'm not sure where the issue lies exactly. My warlord cum student of magic knows that if he wants to master powerful magic (lets say we just decree that up to 4th level magic is 'too trivial' to be illegal) then he is going to have to either refrain from using 5th level or higher rituals (or spells if he power swaps) or else he's going to have to be a rogue caster, or he's going to have to join the Conclave, or he's going to have to be VERY discrete. An AD&D wizard faced the same set of choices. The difference being there was no option for him to come from a martial background where he might have gained substantial non-magical expertise before he made that choice. My warlord doesn't violate any precept of the DL setting that I'm aware of. The inhabitants of the world don't know about levels. They don't even strictly speaking know about classes and the mechanical restrictions on what class abilities can be combined. To a hypothetical inhabitant of that world some people have the talent and interest to take up magic. MOST such people probably take it up early on and stick with it as their primary focus. They're mechanically wizards. Nothing stops a person in that world from having a different life history. If we for instance used an analogy 'mathematician' might be a way to model certain people in the real world mechanically, but there are plenty of people who don't spend their entire lives studying math. Many of them do other things and might not be well modeled by a mathematician class, yet we who inhabit this world find nothing astounding about a 35 year old truck driver who decides to get a Ph.D in math. It may be remarkable enough to take note of, but it certainly doesn't violate the consistency of our real world. Likewise AFAIK my warlord doesn't violate the consistency of the DL world just because his class isn't 'Wizard'.

And yeah, its fine that AD&D wizards had a specific set of spells, and 4e wizards don't necessarily have exactly the same progression or powers that are perfectly corresponding to the AD&D ones. High level 4e wizards are still pretty awesome. Nobody will scoff at them and they can pull off many rather astounding effects, including the vast majority of the ones that were common in AD&D. Fighters are relatively at parity with wizards in 4e, yes, but honestly if my dim recollections of DL literature is any guide the material in the books probably matches better with the 4e equality than it does with the AD&D lopsided power balance. There were plenty of things in the books IIRC that didn't mesh all that well with the specific details of the 1e/2e rules anyway.

Another thing is, much is fluff. There's no reason why wizards can't own large libraries of books. There are a ton of useful books in 4e. Your wizard might easily own several magical tomes, and in fact it is pretty hard to fit all the spells and rituals a typical wizard will know at high levels into one book (there is a rule for this BTW, spells and rituals take up book pages, and you can and probably will need to obtain extra physical books to hold your 'spell book'). Moreover there's no limit to how many rituals you could acquire. 4e has over 300 of them. I don't know exactly how many pages that takes up, but I'm pretty sure it is far more than a single volume can hold. A high level wizard with a room full of books might well know the vast majority of those 300+ rituals. If so he's going to be pretty well set up because a lot of them are pretty potent.

As for the whole 'but why can a fighter Raise Dead?' again this is 'game thinking'. To the inhabitants of the world there are just people with expertise and knowledge. There's no conceit of the game world that demands that a person couldn't master both fighting and magic, only limitations of the AD&D rules that mostly prevented you from building such a character and playing it. Nor is it necessary to rigidly pigeonhole WORLD roles with GAME roles. Just because my character is built using the fighter class doesn't mean he's not a priest, wizard, etc in terms of his WORLD role. Again, maybe he possesses an atypical skill set, but so what? Beyond that it is pretty easy for the DM to create world consistency here. My fighter can only manage to acquire the Raise Dead ritual because functionally in the world he belongs to a group of people who have that knowledge and he finds a way to access it. Mechanically he takes a feat and pays some money to learn the ritual. In game he goes to the temple, makes a donation, studies, takes some sort of orders or whatever, and acquires the ritual. Maybe he also takes the 'Ordained Priest' theme to represent the commitment that he has to make to the temple and the other benefits of his holy orders or whatever.

Obviously if you're going to want to go scene-by-scene through all the mass of DL novels and justify every single action and fact that you find there with a 4e mechanic for it you'll probably come up short at SOME point. IMHO you'd run into that problem with 1e or 2e as well though. That level of consistency is just not really practical. Given the extreme plasticity of the 4e rules though I think you'll probably not have a large amount of problems there, especially since a LOT of stuff in 4e is more guidelines, fluff, and DM options than it was in previous editions.
That is not dead which may eternal lie
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2 years ago  ::  Oct 16, 2011 - 12:27PM #20
Uchawi
Date Joined: Jun 22, 2010
Posts: 1,748
I ran a dragonlance game in GURPS for 3 years and it worked perfectly fine, so 4E should be no stranger to the setting. The only thing that would need to be "ported" over are the schools of magic based on the red, white and black moons, and it is easy to balance within itself with casters if you run the moon cycles in the game (full, waning and waxing), so the caster becomes more powerful at full moon, but weaker when there is none. Add in the cycles of the other moons and it gets interesting.  You would also have pay consideration to divine casters as well, and depending on the timeline, it would be rare to find a true priest of faith.

Like any organization that controls power, it would be wise to listen to your respective tower of high sorcery. The biggest drawback is not having the original books, like the DragonLance Adventures book from AD&D. Similar to Oriental Adventures, you would only need one book to have the necessary information to bring the world alive.
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