Community

Nov 9, 2012 -- 2:06PM, WotC_Trevor wrote:

Nov 9, 2012 -- 1:57PM, mexrage wrote:

i facepalm when they discussed the warlord...they just don't get it...

A CLASS should NEVER be a identity, is a set of abilities that your character can do. And once again, they are stuck and held back by older edition paradigms...

I hear what you're saying, and I agree with where I think you're coming from, but I disagree on the idea that a class name shouldn't be linked to the identity.

The name of a class should resonate with the mechanics and basic idea of that class. Sure, it doesn't mean that people in game are wandering around referring to the character as a warlord, rogue or whatever. But, when someone reads the name of a class, and then sees what that class does, there shouldn't be any dissonance or confusion if possible. A person shouldn't look at the class name and the concept information in the class description and think, "well that doesn't make sense."

I am playing a Gloom Pact Hexblade in mechanics, but in reality she is an assassin/spy that use magic that originate from the Underdark (is not even the source from the pact i use on mechanics)...my class identity doesn't have to do anything with my character identity, it just made sense because the abilities i get from that class and build fit my character identity.

There was nothing i hated the most when i played my first rogue, who was a noble that was basically James Bond/Sam Fisher/Jack Bauer for a kingdom, yet the DM and the party (who were more into the old style of D&D) identify him as a Thief... a freaking thief....

I know a player who's barbarian was more like a mafia mobster, who's CHA and INT were at 16 at level 5...his rages made sense because he had a very sociopath psychological profile and moments of extreme anger are not rare on those kind of people...he wasn't a tribal, he wasn't a person that wander the wasteland seminaked wailing his flail like a maniac while chargin on the battlefield.

EDIT: did you designed the dragonborn siege tower on Monster Vault: threats of nethir vale? if yes, i must congratulate you for such awesome thing, we need more of those things 

Nov 9, 2012 -- 2:11PM, Cypher2009 wrote:

Here is a question for the next session: Why doesn't one designer of the D&DN crew (or even Mike) come to this forum regulary to discuss points brought up by your playtesters/fans?

Developers have to walk a fine line, you must understand. I'm going to use the single largest example I can find, and that is the WoW forums. The WoW dev team decided to start interacting with the posters and replying. While this has it's ups, it completely ruined any real discussion amongst the players. All threads became "Blizzard listen to me" and threads lived or died based on whether a Dev posted in them or not. It also puts a huge strain on the dev team and moderators as well :P

I, personally, don't want to repeat that. I'd rather them reply to us in articles or "patch notes", rather than everyone just spamming threads until a dev member answers. It will just fill the forums with garbage and kill any/all reall discussion amongst players.

I think this works great on the shadowrun forums where the freelancers post and interact but the top guys seldom post. What would help is if someone did post when there was mass confusion and it would help clear things up. Take twf and the rogue maneuvers. Would have been helpful if clarity was added earlier.

Nov 9, 2012 -- 2:26PM, Zardnaar wrote:

THey could have 1 or 2 stickied threads though where the developers do post. Would require maybe stricter moderation. Any insults directed at developer= perma ban sort of thing. Play nicce or get out.

+1/2. I think that this kind of thing COULD be good, but as they discussed in the hangout a lot of time they want to view our reaction to something. Explaining it first might not give them the reactions they want. Remember that a new player buying a 5e book won't have a dev telling him why this mechanic is the way it is. This is probably what they are looking for.

Nov 9, 2012 -- 2:27PM, Jenks wrote:

Nov 9, 2012 -- 2:26PM, Zardnaar wrote:

THey could have 1 or 2 stickied threads though where the developers do post. Would require maybe stricter moderation. Any insults directed at developer= perma ban sort of thing. Play nicce or get out.

+1/2. I think that this kind of thing COULD be good, but as they discussed in the hangout a lot of time they want to view our reaction to something. Explaining it first might not give them the reactions they want. Remember that a new player buying a 5e book won't have a dev telling him why this mechanic is the way it is. This is probably what they are looking for.

Well they could get the reaction, then post a week later...