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I think it’s time to take a good long, hard look at controllers. What works and what does not.

I’ve looked at the roles a couple times before, dedicating this blog to assumptions of controllers, and this blog to the various roles. I’ve been thinking about this again lately, tweeting about it and even discussed it on the At-Will web-chat.

(If you haven’t tried the At-Will chat, why the heck not?? All the cool kids are doing it. And a couple weeks back Steve “WotC_Huscarl” Winter dropped by to answer question.)

When In Warcraft...

This is another blog inspired by World of Warcraft.

Control is a very minor part of that game, spread out over multiple classes. Mages can polymorph, shamans can hex, warlocks can fear, and rogues can sap. Really, every damage

There is an astonishing amount of vitriol for D&D Essentials and its related products, including the newly released Heroes of Shadow. Many have dismissed HoS as an “Essentials product”, completely ignoring all of its content. There are reviews on websites that give HoS 1 star, solely because it follows the Essentials design. I find this was interesting, as not every Essentials class is different from the base classes and not all the content is incompatible. My classic 4e druid uses a utility power from Essentials (goodberry as we have a large group but only one leader, so a dash of extra healing is good).

Very little of the content seems inaccessible.

It’s interesting how a minor change that only affects some classes and content, while not being imbalanced, can be so

Balance is completely unimportant to D&D. It makes the game rigid and is detrimental to fun.

I doubt I could have started with a more inflammatory comment without mentioning fundamental Islam, Hitler, and homosexuality. Or possibly tying the three together in a single statement of epic inflammation.

But I stand by what I said as completely and utterly true. Except when it isn’t.

Here’s the unfortunate catch, the importance of balance is subject to personal opinion. To some balance is paramount, to others it falls second to fun, while others still ignore balance altogether. The differing opinions were highlighted nicely in a Legends & Lore poll on the importance of balance with the results found here .

And, after I decided to weigh in on this important topic,

In case you hadn’t heard the news, D&D is dying. The game is digging its grave while on its last legs and circling the drain of over-used mixed metaphors. WotC is preparing to launch a new edition to bolster its sales, possibly as a last-ditch effort to keep Hasbro from cancelling the product line. Meanwhile, Essentials was a badly received bomb that has greatly hurt sales as fans have rejected that product line.

Or not.

Let’s look at this issue a little deeper.

Sagging Sales

First, let’s look at the issue of sagging sales. There’s little evidence to back this up as WotC does not release its sales figures. But it’s still possible to guesstimate the line’s health. From its launch, 4e was doing well but could have done better. It wasn’t as successful

Today, I’m looking at magic items, as requested by ramius613 a little while back. I’ve mentioned magic items quite a few times, but I don’t believe I’ve dedicated an entire blog to the fail that is 4e’s magic items. Or, at least not since 2009 and this embarrassingly early blog.

Rarity

I think my biggest problem comes from the inherent lack of rarity of magic items. Magic items are assumed for the math of the game. It wasn’t until the DMG2 and its addition of optional inherent bonuses – a full year into the edition – where a low(er) magic game became possible. And that rule is buried in the back of the book, hidden under a wall of text. I can never find it when I needed and often turn to the Dark Sun book where the rule was reprinted

Responding to a older Rule-of-Three article today. The idea of monstrous PC races was again brought up, spear-headed by folk wanting to play kobolds, which continues to be a fan-favourite monster race for reasons that defy reason. But it could also include goblins, orcs, and the like.

The author(s) of Rule-of-Three wanted feedback, so I decided to blog my thoughts and look at the issue.

I have discussed this topic before here, with a more historical slant) and quoted the interesting Gygaxian rant on the subject here. There’s also the forum discussion here, which descended more into a discussion of the merits of shifty as a power and less on monsters in general.

The excuse given for why we don’t see kobold is two-fold. The first is that their racial power is too

Last week's blog (found here) on "Fixing Skills" proved quite popular, receiving quite a few reads and more than its share of comments. I don't write this blog planning to be read by as many people as possible or purposely inflammatory or for response numbers, and am not going to drop my planned forthcoming blogs just for numbers. But, the comments raised a number of solid points that I felt needed to be addressed.

First, a link to Wrecan's blogs on skills can be found here and here. While I haven't read those blogs in some time, he did it first and credit where credit is due. Oh, and kilpatds also recently did a blog on skills that’s solid, so here’s a link to that too.

Other Options

In the comments there were a few alternatives or revisions to the systems I suggested.

Let's break the ice with some wild hyperbole. Skills in 4e are broken. Skills are the most broken part of the edition. When they're selling 5e in 1-3 years they will be mocking skills like they mocked grappling and THAC0. Skills were only given a half-assed update between editions and not subjected to the same rigorous balancing or "hard math" they subjected on the combat system.

Backblog

Before I start (attempting) to justify that statement, this isn't my first blog on skills. I've mostly focused on Skill Challenges in prior blogs, so those have received the bulk of my attention.

I wrote about Secondary Skills, Non-Combat Skill Systems, new rules for Skill Challenges, Failure in Skill Challenges, and most importantly for this discussion my Problems with Skill Challenges. I'll reiterate

This is not an old discussion. It was discussed very well by Dread Gazebo here and others wrote here and here. I myself dicussed it numerous times such as here and here and a little here. It even came-up as a topic of conversation on the DM Round Table podcast here. But I was reminded of this again recently, during a forum discussion.

To very briefly summarize the core of the conversation, one side was saying that the eventual 5e should further emulate and draw inspiration from video games while the other side was concerned about drawing too much inspiration from video games. In full disclosure, I was arguing on the latter side.

Bad Inspiration

Let’s start with one clarification: I do not believe video games are a poor source of inspiration and are not to be emulated