Spells, Feats, and Advancement.

When I was a kid, I fell in love with my dad's collection of Dungeons and Dragon's handbooks, and most especially the lists of spells and things. Sure, they were presented kind of prosaically and weren't laid out in a way that was especially useful, but as little scraps of interest, they were incredibly cool to me, and hinted at the neatness of being a wizard... keeping a prop spellbook, and questing for arcane knowledge to grow in awesomeness and power.

When I was first able to roll up a character, then, I was extremely disappointed to learn that what I actually got was a tiny list of what was more-or-less available, with some obvious Best Choices, and of those, I could only cast a very few times a day, and had to decide how many times I thought I might cast a given thing. Which made the Best Choices at the beginning even more important.

What I thought I wanted, at the time, was a removal of the limits on how many spells I could know/keep in spellbook, and a different way of approaching how many spells I could cast in a given day. And to some extent, I am still in favor of some slotted spells, some at-will cantrips, and prepping the spells themselves, rather than individual castings of the spells. That said, having automatic access to everything in the spell-book at level still wasn't, and isn't, to my mind, especially interesting. The problem, at bottom, was that the way one typically gains the spells is hugely uninteresting: to wit, you level up, and then you (most of the time, some DMs vary) just get access to the spells for your level, within the bounds of your int.

Yawn.

I have two basic issues with these things: one which has to do with the way spells are handed out, and the other which has to do with the way one advances at all. We'll address the first to begin with, since it's actually applicable in D&D, and, some might argue, is the way the game ought to be run in the first place.

It boils down to, "treat spells as treasure." Fully, entrench the spells in the story, as items and artifacts that are a part of the world beyond their utility/combat effectiveness. Sure, it is important that a starting mage have spells they can use and have fun with, but couching that in story about how they learned said spells, and creating the expectation that yes, the players will and can uncover new spells over the course of play that can be added to said spell book (whether or not the user can cast them right at that moment) is kind of nifty. I'd like to remove the idea of gaining spells from the idea of "gaining a level," which also brings me to my second point.

The more I play games, the more I think I'm over the idea of levels as the primary form of advancement. Stands-In-Fire, at one point, suggested a system where you could learn one new skill/ability each session, and the more I think about it, the more I like that idea. I get, and I can pretty much be convinced that, for mages, it's important to limit capacity (ability to cast more powerful spells, and/or number of spells one can cast) in the early game and have that expand, just as I don't necessarily disagree with the argument that a fighter should get better at accuracy and damage as the game progresses. Doing something like that, however, would be antithetical enough to D&D that you might as well start building a new game system around that idea. Which is certainly fine by me. The main idea here, for mages in specific (though I really love the too-underutilized idea of training/specialties as treasure from 4e), is that what advances is now much and at what power you can cast, so the level that matters is the level of the spell. You get new spells through play/research, and pretty specifically through play/research, so it's not grubbing through the boring Player's Handbook pick lists. Importantly to me, though maybe not so interesting to other people, this also removes the desire to plan ahead with spells, because you don't actually know what you're going to find in the course of play, but must think of cool ways to use the spells you earn/learn/find as you go along. Personally, I am not a fan of playing the build game, and I would very much like advancement to be tied directly to what happens in the course of play, rather than planned out in advance based on what is in a rulebook.

But like I said, that could very well just be me.

Since I touched on training treasure above, I want to take a moment to talk about Feat Systems, and why I don't care for the ones I've seen from 3.x to the current iteration in Next (yes, this includes 4e). Largely, I think they encourage optimal combo combo building, which encourages deep system mastery at the expense of newcomers, less devoted to build-play players, and in some cases, the balance of the game itself. The habit of stacking customization in feats, and then handing those feats out at regular level intervals has the effect (once again, to me), of making non-feat levels basically boring stops on one's way to grind to get to the next set of feats.

I don't know what you like to play, but any tabletop game where it seems like a good and worthwhile use of time to grind high-xp monsters over and over to get closer to leveling has missed out on the thing I enjoy about playing a role-playing game: the figuring out of what one needs to go to achieve each individual goal. The goal in these situations is meta (more XP to get to the next level) and it's obvious what one needs to do (grind difficult monsters to get there). And yes, I'm not just talking about 4e-- this happened in 3.x games too. I prefer if the goal is less meta (one of the only times you'll see me say 'less meta' is desirable), more concrete, and more story oriented, for example, "we are seeking the monk who lives atop Forsaken Mountain that she might teach us the Awesome Ways of Awesome." Still, we're talking about advancement, but we're talking about something that's in the story.

And now, I admit that it isn't the feats themselves I mind, it's the way they're handed out, and how they're presented to the players as, essentially, a shopping list to handle at level. I would have no objection to treating them, once again, as treasure, earned through acts and adventuring on the part of the players... you could have tomes of Dwarven Lumberjacking (as a tropetastic example) which teach superior skill in axes, or a cool ability that allows one to do a nifty maneuver while wielding an axe. Or enchantments/blessings that one can temporarily add to weapons, or meditations that allow one to focus one's energy on repelling blows, and improve AC for a time. And these items could pretty easily map to feats as they're written in any of the aforementioned editions, tying their distribution to and through play, rather than to something so arbitrary as level.

To be completely fair, Arcana Evolved _did_ try to do this some with their spellcasting feats, by requiring ceremonies involving certain kinds of beings or creatures in order to obtain them, though the way they were presented was pretty much entirely though the rulebook, rather than being knowledge I think it would ever occur to anyone to organically acquire in play.

Anyway, I also get that, for the most part, this can be handled through the GM's style of game running, rather than needing to be ensconced in rules, unless one is modifying how advancement works, of course. And I imagine that there are already systems in place that do the things I'm talking about more naturally.

But huh, I'd also be open to running a gladiator/arena kind of game where the point was to build an optimal character from the beginning, and swap out pieces/choices between each session to tweak for effectiveness, as something of a crunchy 180 from my play-style, here. Hrm.

The Way of the Rules Chick.

So, I like rules.

The reason I like rules is because, apropos of Shieldhaven's post about Wizards, and some other stuff I've seen in games, when systems don't have comprehensive rules, they go SQUISH! and you're floundering in an undefined world where, it is reasonable to ask, "well, why don't you just teleport Frodo into Mordor" because there's nothing defining what the possibilities actually are.

This is a huge problem when we're talking about magic, but it applies to other systems too, particularly in games, where you want your magic users, your fighters, and your fighter-mages (among your other tropes) to be at about the same competence for amount of time spent building skills.  Yes, I am assuming that game/character balance is a desired thing. And I refrained from saying, of the same level to allow for systems without levels, like Ro3 LARPing, or World of Darkness Tabletop, which define advancement in other ways. 

I know a number of people, however, who do not like rules. At least, they express discomfort with rules which ranges from, "I am just not a rules person," to "I fucking hate rules because they get in the way of my ability to Just Play."

I won't get into the expectations connected with who hates rules and why, but will point out that for most people, the thing isn't that one really hates rules. One hates rules that...

• Seem arbitrary (also called, "are too obvious/visible"), 
• Are badly presented,
• Are convoluted and difficult to parse,
• Change or explode too frequently to keep up with,
• Are 'solved' (there's a right way to do things) or easy to exploit (unbalanced).

So allow me to go into some completely unsolicited advice for people who do think of themselves as Rules People, who love to design, modify, or add to rules systems for fun and/or profit.

Redirect

So, Shieldhaven pretty much went and said exactly what I wanted to say in my last post, and in a much nicer, more coherent, and less hostile way than I managed.

So you should all go read it nao.

Ping.

So, I seem to have agreed to run a Nobilis one-shot next week, in addition to playing Shieldhaven's Yearly One-Shot, a Song of Ice and Fire hack set in his homebrew setting of Aurikesh. So I am focusing on that, and on other writing projects, and yeah.

So anyway, go read This very thoughtful look at Vancian Magic which does a really good job of covering what I actually like about playing a Magister in AE. Though I do agree with Shieldhaven's comment that seeking and finding spells would be super awesome-- I've just never played a game where the DM actually cared about running that kind of thing, or offering that kind of treasure.

...And I still think that 4e isn't bad for doing this, I mean, there's actually rules for handing out powers as Training Treasure, and I imagine that there are ways to make rituals cooler, and more of this kind of flavor.

Which kind of gives me an idea for how I'd run a 4e game, the next time I try (my current game notwithstanding, I am hoping to pick that up in Jan.)... but Shieldhaven's been making noises about wanting some heroic adventure, and I've been making noises about wanting to run something he could play in.

Basically, I'd probably do one of those hacks where either bonuses are built in and divorced from gear (so that gear can be just cool abilities/powers, instead of What You Need To Hit/Not be Hit more), create an interesting list of maybe 12 magical components that have to be combined variously to create different effects for crafting/spell creation, and have them be real things that the players are actively seeking in-game. Also, I'd consider severely limiting the either all Arcane Classes, or maybe just Wizards, to just their At-Wills, and maybe 1 Encounter.

Daily Powers would come soley from rituals, which could be created via a recipe (a certain combination of materials related to the kind of effect one wants), or discovered in play. A Ritual would need to be performed at the end of an Extended Rest, and grants the Wizard their daily for the day. You could only prepare one a day, of course, though you could have a pretty hefty spell-book of Rituals. Perhaps at very high levels, one could have more, and I suppose one could do this for Dailies and Encounters and have lesser and greater Rituals, but I dunno.

I also kind of like the idea of Rituals that would allow you to, say, swap out a power for a multi-charge power that's better, but costs you something, materially.

The big problem I always had with Vancian Magic in D&D wasn't that you had a spell book, and had to prepare spells, it's that the components were undefined and were just, "I dunno, components." and later ones seemed to just assign arbitrary, random components without rhyme or reason... incense, or a 500 gp bowl had no contextual connection to anything, you just know you need them. What I would need to make me happy there would be context. Not unlike the Oblivion alchemy system, where you know, for example, that a certain mushroom cap is super useful in invisibility potions, or strength, or whatnot.

Anyway. I'll think about that more when I don't have a story due today, and you know, actual work. Though it's awesome how I only really have ideas when I've got deadlines.

RoadTrip Inspiration

As may have been mentioned before, Shieldhaven and I go on a number of road trips, usually to Georgia, which involves many hours of natter. And not a little of this natter, of various sorts, is about random design ideas and the like. The chief topic of discussion this time were a pair of branching ideas, stemming from his thinking about how to make martial combat in D&D 4e feel more parry and thrust... have a certain amount of dynamic action, where one can actually respond to attacks in a way that is logical given one's particular class (read: Martial School). One hopes he will expound further on the topic, as it was a really cool idea, and I contend that it is not that difficult, in 4e, to do something like this by adding minor action powers to classes.

However, when he was first pitching the idea, I managed to completely misunderstand what he was trying to do, sticking on the point of, "a purely martial system." Which made me think about, "wait, why no mages? What if there were NOTHING BUT mages?"

Now, it occurs to me that most of the time, when one winds up talking about any given tabletop game system, one is actually talking about combat systems. There's a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that it is more clear-cut to reduce combat actions to roll something, do something, than the huge and open field of social endeavors that people can undertake.

And then there's magic. Magic, especially in earlier editions of D&D, is pretty much a box of tools a mage can use to fight, sure, but realistically they have a potentially huge number of applications, limited only by whether or not you're the sort of person who would do well in Spontaneous Competitions in Odyssey of the Mind. So what happens in a world where everyone is basically a wily tool-user, and there's none of the beloved hack-and-slashers to stand before our dress-wearing wimpiness and take the damage?

Well, first of all, rather than dispense with the question of why there are no fighter PCs, let's come up with some answers.

Pwny Island, 4e-- act 1.

So, I didn't mention this in my last Roundup, but I've been playing Pony Island quite a bit also, as an Attention Eater for my normal workday. And there was a forum thread about a player who wanted to run a one-shot D&D game, 3.5e, using the pony breeds as the races. Which made me want to do the same for 4e, since it seems to me that reskinning races is a lot easier in 4e, ultimately. There are some serious complications here as far as playability, which I'll lay out in the initial.

Here's the complete list of pony breeds and their PI stats. PI was kind enough to supply base Strength, Intelligence, Agility, and Charisma scores for all of their breeds; which track pretty well to potential D&D bonuses-- except that WIS and CON are out in the cold. I'm going to attempt to convert the stats given for each race into reasonable bonuses based on a) the PI base stats as much as possible, and b) expected 4e classes. All ponies will be medium sized creatures, and there are some races, that while I list them here for completeness, I'm likely to leave out of the final conversion (ie, all of the aquatic breeds). Anyway, if you would like to read the descriptions that I'm going to be working with, you can look here

Earth Pony (your basic, no-frills pony): [IN: 7 | ST: 10 | AG: 6 | CH: 7]
Flutter Pony (flier): [IN: 5 | ST: 5 | AG: 12 | CH: 8]
Pegasus Pony (flier): [IN: 7 | ST: 8 | AG: 5 | CH: 10]
Unicorn: [IN: 11 | ST: 5 | AG: 5 | CH: 9]
Fairy Pony (flier): [IN: 6 | ST: 3 | AG: 9 | CH: 12]
Dragon Pony: [IN: 12 | ST: 12 | AG: 8 | CH: 2]
Winged Unicorn (flier): [IN: 11 | ST: 8 | AG: 5 | CH: 10]
Wishing Pony (flier): [IN: 12 | ST: 5 | AG: 8 | CH: 15]
Valkyrie: [IN: 13 | ST: 6 | AG: 13 | CH: 2]
PhoenixPony: [IN: 8 | ST: 4 | AG: 12 | CH: 10]
Kirin: [IN: 14 | ST: 6 | AG: 6 | CH: 12]
Purr Pony: [IN: 9 | ST: 9 | AG: 14 | CH: 8]
Reindeer Pony: [IN: 9 | ST: 5 | AG: 13 | CH: 13]
Mountain Pony (flier): [IN: 6 | ST: 13 | AG: 13 | CH: 8]

Aquatic ponies, either left out or for another type of campaign:

SeaPony: [IN: 6 | ST: 6 | AG: 10 | CH: 8]
ShellPony: [IN: 8 | ST: 12 | AG: 4 | CH: 6]
MerPony: [IN: 8 | ST: 4 | AG: 11 | CH: 10]
MerDragon (flier) : [IN: 10 | ST: 10 | AG: 10 | CH: 10]

Right out of the gate, we've got an issue with with fliers, because the ability to fly is Just Plain Better. Although this is a subject of considerable obnoxious debate, Fly speeds are the shit, as are potentially avoiding attacks of opportunity by flying over someone's head. Also, the chance of making the game just unplayable for non-flying PC characters, because they can't follow their flier friends, is a worry. There are certain types of campaigns that you can have with a party of fliers that you have a harder time with, using non-fliers. Earth Ponies are pretty much the humans of the world, and making them competitive will be something of a trick.

Secondly, there's how nothing in D&D is really designed for quadrupeds. I am getting around that by assuming that a Pony Game would be ponies only, and so all armor/items/etc exist in a pony-friendly version. This will be harder to justify for weapons like swords, axes, bows & crossbows, et al, unless they are mounted on the armor somehow. Ponies have the advantage of having things like hooves, teeth, and (in some cases) horns, which can be easily weaponized. Anyway, I'll deal with Pony Itemization in a later post.

I'll be using some of the ideas and versions of the powers shown for the Gritaur, here. Specifically, I am thinking I will grant flying races the following power (modified from Sabelkatten's Gritaur racial of the same name):

Take Wing Flying Pony Racial Power
With a powerful thrust of your wings you launch into the air to find a better spot from which to engage your enemies.
Encounter
Move Action Personal
Effect: Until the end of your turn you may fly your speed +2. If you don't end your turn on solid ground, you glide to the ground without taking falling damage.

Dungeon Project: Expanded Room 4, and Room 5.

For the previously mentioned Dungeon Project, sector 1, and after this:

Room 4

The red lines in the hallway leading up to here are heavy, barred iron doors with locked gates, much like the ones to the cells in room 1. A DC 15 Thievery check will pick the locks.

The chamber itself contains six 10'X10' cells with heavy metal doors of solid steel. Each of them have a narrow slit at about eye-height, with a sliding panel over it. Each door has a numeral 1-6 scratched into it. If the doors are locked, it is a DC 20 Thievery check to pick them. The door to cell 5, in the south-east corner, should be locked; it contains a rough-hewn tunnel to room 5, hidden under a trap door under dirt (DC 15 Perception, DC 17 Thievery, +2 to thievery, or potentially Arcana (DC 20, you're following the malevolent feel from the cells) checks to disarm with previous successful perception rolls).

When in this chamber, an Arcana 20+ check detects a faint malevolent energy from each of the locked cells. If actually in one of the cells, the DC on that check drops to 12 for the cell one occupies. A better check under those circumstances (17+) implies that the energy is necrotic, and growing in strength.

Each cell has 1-3 silent skeletons collapsed upon the floor, or on small, wooden stools, or the like, and one Skeleton slumped against the wall on the outside of the cell. If the trap-door is triggered without being disarmed, they'll wake up and attack. I'm going with nine Tortured Skeletons, plus a Stonespawn Skeleton in its own cell, and two Skeletal Legionaries. Between them, they should drop around 2o sp total in corroded coins. One of the legionaries should be the one that was outside of the cell; this one has a large, iron key hanging from its rotted belt.

Room 5

A room that looks like it was used mostly for hiding out than a potential escape route. There is a dusty cot piled up with rat-nibbled blankets and pillows, oily rags, a lantern, a deck of old playing cards, and numerous other oddiments and living detritus. A stack of books are piled up in one corner with many pages torn out; largely, they look like lists of names with various numbers beside them. A streetwise check (DC 15) or history check (DC 17) reveals that it is a book of prisoner names. Potentially, one of these is Palambro Alieri.

One of the corners contains what seems to be a crude set-up of alchemical components from what looks like prison cookware and cutlery. There's perhaps 50 gp worth of Residuum there, and a vial of crimson aether. There is also a page that is another list of names and numbers on one side, and on the other, says the following:

"These are the ways of travel, for the lost:

--by Knife

--By Water

--By Fiery Air

--By Night

--By Stone

--By Direct Command

--By Forgetting what is True."

***

So I'll be doing room 3 in a separate post, sometime when I have the brains to do it.

Three Gates Prison: section 1

For the previously mentioned Dungeon Project, sector 1:


I'll copy here the rules that Shieldhaven is using in his version of the dungeon, which is connected to mine:

Ground Rules

For the creation of this dungeon, I will be doing the following.
1. Using 4e rules.
2. Assuming that the scale of this map is 1 square = 10 feet. 4e, and 3.x to a lesser degree, requires space to move. The game is less fun when all of those lovely movement powers are unusable because there's nowhere to stand. Also, the tactical decisions of positioning go out the window. (If you hate minis combat, you won't understand this reasoning, but you're probably also not playing 4e.)
3. Connecting my dungeon to the dungeon Shieldhaven is writing. This particular entry is based on his above-linked version and our various conversations, and things may get changed around a bit as writing goes on.
4. Writing in story goals. While I'd like any DM to be able to plug this into a campaign without hassle, I think that defining spaces for those plug-ins and showing some cool ideas of my own are the way to make that work.
5. Rejecting any obligation whatsoever to use symbols on the map for their original purpose.
6. Statting fights for five characters of about 6th level.

The Big Idea

The core conceit of connection between Kainenchen's crypts (The Prison at Three Gates) and Harbinger's halls (The Dungeon of the Three Deceits) is that this dungeon, the one I'm writing, is connected by certain psychic strands. Barriers in one dungeon may be removed by solving a puzzle or winning a fight in the other. The specific do A to achieve B connections are the main things that I expect to see change as we go, because we haven't written everything before writing everything. See the tag at the bottom of the page that says, "you get what you pay for?"

Story Hooks

1. Six magical daggers are spread through the two dungeons. Each is imbued with one energy type. These daggers are also shaped to be keys to a certain very unusual lock.
2. There is a very powerful, very dangerous creature called the Living Shadow of Ugrazhe that has been fragmented into six beings, and can only be destroyed while in this fragmented state.
3. By activating the six waystones, portals to a heretofore-undefined Elsewhere open, and the dungeon becomes a travel node for portals.


Rules of Travel Between the Dungeons

The locations with what is traditionally a "staircase" symbol - rooms 1, 30, and 39 - are stable lines of travel. When traveling across a stable strand in either direction:

• luminous water becomes crimson aether (dissipates if not contained);
• crimson aether becomes nightskein;
• nightskein becomes luminous water, which begins to lose its light again (10 round duration, as before);
• one randomly-determined character loses a healing surge; a second randomly-determined character gains a healing surge; and
• travel takes one standard action.

Background of the Prison

Part of the plan here is to make something that is easy to plug into whatever campaign, though for my part, I generally design dungeons to be the whole, or at least the centerpiece, of a given game. I do believe strongly that players need reasons to care about places, and they should have interesting histories that players could potentially know something about. This is largely turning out to be a statement of intent, I'll get into details later. But either way, the place is an old, dark and sinister prison. I'm sort of seeing it as set near the ocean, possibly near a delta inlet or somesuch.

Room 1

(In this instance, the 'staircase' symbol is both a stable strand and a staircase.)

This is one of the two 'official' entry points to the prison. One comes down from the stone admittance tower aboveground by way of the long staircase in the north, which leads to the room marked 1 on the map. There are 4 10'X10' holding cells in each corner with bars of wrought iron and heavy padlocks (DC 15 Thievery). Three of these cells are empty but for a hard, wooden bench, a battered tin plate, and a larger metal bowl. There are metal plates in the back walls of each, above the bench, where manacles were at one point attached; the northwest and southeast panels still have pieces of shattered manacle dangling from the plates. The fourth, where 'B' is marked on the map, contains a skeleton lying on the floor, ragged pieces of cloth still clinging to its frame. Searching the skeleton yields a sunrod and a couple of silver pieces (DC 12). Down one ratted pantleg (DC 17), there is a throwing knife-blade with a blue stone at the base of it, lashed to a stick with a bit of sinew. It is identifiable as a throwing-knife +1 (10 Arcana), and also something else (15+ Arcana) which can't be quite placed, but (20+ Arcana) perhaps something like a key.

On either side of the staircase, there are stone stands, the tops are carved into gargoyle faces with wide, gaping mouths and obsidian eyes. A DC 12 Arcana check shows a magical aura emanating from the stands, 15+ indicates that there is something like a gate or teleportation magic involved, and it's kind of icky, a roll of 20+ identifies the energy as necrotic and lightning, and gives one the indication that it is some kind of magical switch. A DC 12 perception check shows that there in a thin, horizontal slot in the back of the throat of the left hand gargoyle mouth. On a 17 or better, the PCs find small pressure blocks in the bottoms of the mouths. If both are depressed at the same time, the stable strand activates, and a sheet of wavering, opalescent-black energy conceals the hallway. If PCs search here, they can find small stones or use fragments of bone from the skeleton in the corner to use to hold down the buttons; about 10 copper pieces will work as well. Passing through this field takes the PCs to room 1 of the Dungeon of the Three Deceits. Also, it destroys whatever was in the mouths (assuming it's non-magical material like small stones; if they use something magical, then it scores it black, but doesn't destroy it) holding down the pressure blocks, reducing them to ash. If the PCs are holding the blocks down when someone passes through, the gargoyles deal 10 Necrotic and Lightning damage to those PCs. If they do it again, it will do the same amount of damage, and grant vulnerability 5 necrotic. Subsequent attempts do not stack this vulnerability.

If the throwing knife found above is inserted in the slot in the mouth of the left-hand gargoyle, it fits, but nothing obvious happens.

In the east wall, there's an alcove in which a tunnel has been hollowed by crude hand-tools.

Room 2

On the other side of a rough, rocky tunnel, this natural stone cavern allows a stream of brackish water in through the north wall, where it widens into a pool and seeps out through the southern wall. The water is very shallow, not more than 3 feet deep at the deepest, and tastes acrid and salty if drunk. In the center of the north wall, it looks like the tunneling continues, but stops about 5 feet in. The aforementioned crude implements lie on the floor, any wooden handles rotted away and the blades rusted.

Digging in the cavern wall will trigger a stealth check on the part of whoever does it (DC 17); upon failure, this will wake up an angry Geonid, and 3 level 4 lesser Earth Elementals. A perception check at a DC of 25 reveals the presence of something living in the rocks.

Near the pool (A), a black, somewhat glittering and thready material clings to the stones in fragile pieces. Perception or Arcana (DC 12) reveals it as nightskien.

Room 3 will belong to a later update.

Room 4

The red lines in the hallway leading up to here are heavy, barred iron doors with locked gates, much like the ones to the cells in room 1. A DC 15 Thievery check will pick the locks.

The chamber itself contains six 10'X10' cells with heavy metal doors of solid steel. Each of them have a narrow slit at about eye-height, with a sliding panel over it. Each door has a numeral 1-6 scratched into it. If the doors are locked, it is a DC 20 Thievery check to pick them. The door to cell 5, in the south-east corner, should be locked; it contains a rough-hewn tunnel to room 5.

And I will get to room 5 later, as I've got to dash the hellz out of here. Peace!

Session Roundup #7

This week was dominated by video games and by me running my D&D game last Sunday. Yay punting!

Sunday: Tradya's Workshop-- After last session with the theatre and the rats and everything, it was about time for a low/no combat session. Which was great, because I hadn't the brain to prepare any stat-blocks for a special encounter or anything, and odd, coz I had no idea where the players would go next, but being that this is a fairly old-school dungeon crawl, the options were limited by the long pre-existing map. So they were pretty much going to go explore the northern part of the first level, which they'd looked at a bit before, or were going to go south and explore the few things that remained down there. This latter is what they wound up doing, which permitted them to get their hands on another one of their quest objects, and had them find the entrance to the hidden library maze. I won't go too deeply into the mechanics of the maze, as they haven't explored all of it yet, but it might sound a little familiar to people who really like, say, Sean Connery in monk robes.

Basically, they found themselves in a large, octagonal room with four doors, one in each wall, and stacks of books of various kinds in concentric circles. They rolled skills to see what sort of books were in the room, and if they found anything particularly useful, and also marked that above each door, there was a letter-- in order, T, R, A, & J. They knew, from the previous adventure, that the dude what owned the dungeon was called Jaylamer Tradya, so they decided to take the J path, and see if the subsequent rooms would have the rest of the letters of his name. And lo, they did! Each room was a trapezoid-shaped chamber filled with books on a common theme, with varying numbers of doors and a letter over each. This was consistent until the room with the final 'R' in Jaylamer, anyway, which contained 2 doors which had no letter. They found some palimpsests (not to be confused with the city of the same name... or were they?); the Avenger was able to create a rubbing to see the note that used to exist on the page. This gave them a couple of hints as to what they could find in each direction, and they decided to go through the one at the top of the trapezoid, which said it led to 'the center'. This took them back to the first, octagonal room, and of course, going back the same way did not work. Alas!

In the course of their searching, I remembered that this was the sort of party where I could give them magic treasure what didn't have any combat application, and so they found the following trinket:

Box of Delicious Creation

An ornate silver box with a lid of black wood, just large enough to hold a mug of something tasty.

Daily (standard): Creates a single item of food or drink, which is wonderfully delicious and comforting. Use of this daily item does not count against other daily magic item uses.

Random, I know, but the players seemed to really like it, and that made me happy.

Also, a couple of other plot advancement items were accomplished that I prefer not to discuss here, but which pleased me greatly.

Shadow Hearts: Covenant-- So, I forget which day it was-- possibly Monday?-- but the day sucked holy ass, and required that I go out to dinner with Shieldhaven immediately, and also buy a video game. Instead of doing so, however, I bought a PS2, and set about playing another run through of my favorite JRPG, Shadow Hearts: Covenant. It's frigging hilarious, and also a festive testament to the Japanese obsession with Jewish Mysticism. Fun!

I also have the first one, but the second added depth and scope in a way that I've only seen in games like Overlord and Overlord 2. Here you have the perfect setup what people ask for-- give me a sequel that's a game changer, keeps what we loved about the original, but does something new and better. The full customization of the judgement ring combat mechanic, having the turn based combat care where you stand for AOEs, and the addition of a combo system were all that is awesome, and I'm enjoying my second playthrough quite a bit.

Pretty much the rest of my whole world is eaten by culture packet writing for Dust to Dust, so yeah. That.

Session Roundup #3

The only gaming this week would have been the run of my game, in which we finished up an encounter that had been called in the previous session on account of snow.

It was a pretty darn elaborate set-up, and I tried a lot of fiddly moving parts for it. There was a big stage with a dias about 3 feet up, and large stone pillars. Two members of the party (The Rogue and the Avenger, my trouble twins) had been sucked into performing as the "Hero" Wizard who had built the dungeon and his sidekick, while the rest of the party were stuck in the audience. They could affect various things by making skill checks to interact with the Shadow Attendants who worked as stagehands.

In the meantime, the two actors made skill checks to carry out tasks narrated by a booming, invisible voice, in sort of a 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' way. Successes gave them bonuses to successive checks, or affected the outcome of the play. Also, I had given them stage swords, which (though they weren't entirely aware of it), ignored the Insubstantial quality. This would be important later.

Or, pretty immediately, as they were attacked by shadowy-wererat minions pretty quickly. Yes, that means dire rats with the Insubstantial quality (though they did not regenerate). Fun! They dispatched them all right, and then were sucked into a plot where the Hero-Wizard was dragged off and forced to become engaged to a Shadow-Actor "Rat Queen," much to the Dismay of her "Royal Vizier".

According to the narrator, the Wizard had crafted a magic wedding-ring, which turned the Queen into a beautiful Eladrin woman, causing her to scream and faint dead away, and the Vizier (an Elite) to be pissed as all hell.

Roll for initiative.

The rest of the party then Diplomacied a Shadow Stagehand to take them to the greenroom, so they could "join the play".

Okay, so the setup.

First of all, many thanks to Shieldhaven for writing up the statblocks for me, as I was creating this stuff at the very last minute. Also, everything I've described so far happened in the previous session, more than a month ago. Yippee!

Anyway. There were more stage weapons available at the sides of the stage, which would solve the Insubstantial problem for the weapon users. The implement users however had a real problem. My solution was to have three spotlights, which moved around the stage, which allowed magic to do full damage. Also, I decided (though this could just be the case) that insubstantial meant that the minions just didn't take damage from normal weapons. Bad times.

The problem was getting the players to figure this out. Some really amazing Arcana checks hinted at it strongly, and one of the wererats was a standard Leader, who also had to stand in the spotlight to use any of his abilities The Vizier alone didn't have this problem. It wound up not mattering for the Vizier, for a couple of reasons.

At each quarter of health, the Vizier summoned 8 or so wererat minions and 2 standards-- a skirmisher and a Leader. So that was fun. The Vizier managed to do his first summon just before the rest of the party made it to the stage, which created some problems with the rats having advantage of position, and the newcomers not having stage weapons yet.

For starters, the Rogue used a sneaky trick, concentrating on a magic necklace in her possession, and changed into the fainted Rat Queen, bluffing the Vizier into believing that she was really said Queen. His insight bonus being all right, but not awesome, he fell for it hook, line and sinker. They managed to interrupt combat, and convince him to send the Real Rat Queen off for questioning with two of the standards, and to dismiss the minions. It also gave the Cleric time to filch some stage weapons for all the magic users. Once that was done, they got back in a fight and beat him down pretty hard, which piffed his bloodied summon of minions, and brought down the curtain on the first act.

Now, Minions that can't be killed are a pain in the ass-- since no one in the party figured out the spotlights in time to use them. However, I made a punt when the party entered the stage that wound up sort of invalidating, quite by accident, my previous mechanic.

So when the party came on stage, they wanted to wear costumes, which were available, though I had no idea what should be. I rolled on a random list of dungeon dressing for inspiration. The Invoker got a fiery gown (from rolling 'matches'), the Artificer got a cloud (from rolling 'pillow'), and the Cleric got a sort of faunish, leafy thing (from rolling 'pipes'). Once they were on stage, their costumes made them seem like elementals, and I decided that damage sources that worked with their costumes would ignore insubstantial.

Yeah, so the invoker can deal full fire damage, and the Artificer with the Lightning Spheres cam do full thunder/lightning. So... yeah.

After a short rest, they went back out for the second act, which involved fighting the Rat Queen-- a level 4 (I think) Solo. She got off one attack and a summon of a bunch of minions before the Rogue changed back to herself and convinced her, through bluffing hard, that really, all she wanted to do really was marry her, and the Vizier was a traitor. The Rat Queen's insight being even worse than the Vizier's, I gave them a round of skill checks to extract themselves from the battle. Yeah, everyone rolled like, 25s on each skill they used. Fully. So the end of the play had the Wizard-Hero properly marry the queen, and granted them a magic item of rat summoning pipes. It also gave them enough xp to level them to 4th.

Went pretty well, for being 2 sessions with a month in between, and the party really liked being able to get out of combat with a skill check. I do not have the crazy skill-check fu that Stands-In-Fire has, so I'm sure there were ways to make it a bit smoother. But once again, I do so love using skills in 4e.

Apart from that I've mostly been playing Fallout: New Vegas or watching Shieldhaven play Overlord, which are good times both. Sadly, since I am a sniveling, console-monkey weakling, I have to be content with the slim playlist offered by New Vegas radio and the few other stations offered by the game, and the damn bug that replays, "Ain't That a Kick In the Head?" all the time, when I'd rather hear "Mad About the Boy" or the one about the Ranger with the Big Bar on His Hip.

Tonight is another DtD Update, which is cool, as people seem to dig getting LARP rules/website patch notes. Who knew! Software Development Practices are awesome!

Go through the motions of exploring the familiar.

In my last post, I mentioned This Post of Shieldhaven's, and now Wombat's gone and responded here. So now, I must needs venture my opinions on the topic.

I have an odd position in the groups I game with, in that I'm generally the only Person of Color(tm; also, unless you count the Angry Cuban in our AE games). Incidentally, until having the conversation with Wombat (who is white, but a jew), I was also the only person who generally felt that the presence of humans was okay, sure, but not necessary in a game world.

So, how this conversation even started:

Shieldhaven was talking about the new races he'd created during his late night maundering, and mentioned that, in order to have people actually pick his classes, perhaps he should strip a game with them in down to just humans and the new races. To which my question was, "Er... why include humans?"

Now, as implied above, I realise that my question and feelings on the matter are solidly in the minority. Anyone who knows me even a little will not be shocked by this. Shieldhaven felt, at base, that giving the players something understandable and familiar-- i.e., humans-- was important, so as not to lose them. I marked that the new races-- the Veytikka in particular-- were written in such a way that they kind of did not make sense unless you had another, baseline race to compare them to. The Beruch as well, and the Rindari have not been written yet, but-- they were all designed to be minorities. And while this was not, from talking about it, a conscious decision on Shieldhaven's part, it was... curious to me.

And here is where I will dispense (for the moment), with the issue of player investment and whether or not players will buy into a game setting where there's no human baseline. I, personally, would like to play a race in the context of what they're like internally, _without_ comparing them to a human genero-culture. As is pointed out in both of the posts I mention, there's sort of a problem with humans-- they typically wind up with their racial trait being, "generic". Of course we know what humans are like-- we are humans, aren't we?

Thing is, as game designers are themselves human, apart from some physiological details, and a pointed attempt to make the things that they feel, do, or care about completely unrelatable, any new race is going to be some variety of "like humans, but..."

Take the Veytikka. They have certain physiological features (claws, snout-like faces) that make them inhuman and change the way they interact with their environment, but as far as their attitudes and actions go, they're actually pretty darn human, but...

...They eat carrion. They're well designed for it, and for them it is the right and proper thing to do. Thing is, a human culture could just as well do that, out of some philosophical inclination, and then we get into trickier issues of intra-species race. Apart from that, the racial culture is given as tribal, and they are suited to some specific classes, like most D&D races. They're statted to fit into 3e and 4e D&D, so they'll be further colored by the rather familiar expectations of the classes they choose. Tl;dr, the text already explains the ways that Veyttika differ from humans in the context of the player's own person and culture, so why would there need to be humans in play to underscore the difference?

As part of my objection to the philosophical part of the "people need a familiar race to be the point of reference" is actually the "point of reference" part. Because I am human, I will automatically be thinking of how this race is different from a human. It bothers me, to then have to, in play, be ever conscious of my character in the context of, "I am different from this other group, which is normal."

I realise that this does not address the issue of turning off players through an excess of difference, but I feel that that aspect of the question is dealt with at length and better elsewhere, and I'd like to deal with the aspects so avoided, which are, frankly, relevant to me. Let it also be said that I don't blame anyone for choosing not to deal with stickier issues and assumptions when it comes to race in gaming, but... well, I think that it's just possible that part of the reason for my preferences in story telling and roles therein might have something to do with my own background, and the same for other folks. This doesn't say anything about myself or anyone else as people, but is objectively interesting to me.

Let me use another example, which has about an equal chance of refuting or supporting my point: the 4e race, Wilden.

Wilden are supposed to be a new race just out of the feywild, terribly curious and eager to learn about new cultures and races. They're a tablua rasa, looking for things to ape so they can learn how to be actual people. They have a hatred of abominations, but apart from that... well, they're plant people.

And let me tell you, they're hard as hell to play, esp in the party I'm in.

I picked one up in Chessenta as a power gaming option-- I wanted to play a Protection Shaman, and they had the best stat options, and were also something I've never played before. Now, I am in a party with two humans and an Orc-- fighter, avenger, and rogue. Given that my racial MO seems to be, "try to be like the others you're around," how do you suppose I play my character?

Answer: Well, like a bear shaman. Because that's what I'm actually doing, leaves or no leaves. The role of the Shaman is much stronger than the role implied by my race, except in the (hasn't actually happened yet) incidence where I need to use a racial power. And the same is true for humans, actually-- except in AE, where humans are marginalised as compared to Giants, I generally see human players playing the trope for their class. Only Grish, the Orc, plays a racial trope to any extent, and even that is second to his outstanding thievery. Well, and Ullentarni the Dragonborn, but that's because his racial story was supported by the game, and the circumstances in which we encountered him. For the rest of us, race doesn't actually matter, or much inform how we play.

So... what does all of that mean for the presentation of a game, before and during play?

First of all, I have the strong temptation to strip stats from races, and give them basically the human stat choice. If including humans in the game, I'd be further inclined to write specific racial abilities for them which were something other than, "I'm so generic, I can do anything with my generic self," depending on the setting. That is to say-- If other races have specific, geographically or otherwise bound cultures, it makes more sense in a given setting to have the humans be so too, than otherwise. In my game, I get around it by having most races be pretty much ubiquitous-- only races of a fey or outsider sort of origin are in any way concentrated, or have cultural norms outside of the norms for their region. I did not go so far as to change up races that much, mostly because my game is at least partially about teaching 4e to its players. But I think next time, I might, so as to make the race choice more purely about preference, vs. optimization.

And I'm tempted, especially if offering a setting where it makes sense to do so or I am offering all-new races, to just not have humans in the game. Now, it's at this point that the Player Investment issues come to the fore. We'll go ahead and take it as read that players dislike having high barriers to entry, and/or having to do a lot of reading in order to play a game, or understand their characters, unless doing said research was their idea in the first place. So let's think about how to address this.

1) First of all, sticking to a well known system, OR a system where everyone is expecting to do reading because it is all new. Personally, I prefer the former, partly because I like D&D so well and well... I am used to it. This could, however, work okay in a system where the expectation of newness is working for you. Nonetheless, I think that changing as little as possible about a system that the players (assuming all the players are familiar with said system) know, and explaining early on the conciets of the setting, you'll probably have a better chance of not throwing them off. In particular, I would not introduce any new classes, but have everyone stick to existing stuff.

2) Keep written material to a minimum. At most, I'd keep the info about the size of any racial write-up in a character creation book. If the setting is such that it demands it, include info about how the race fits into the world, how they behave amongst themselves, and what, if any, prejudices and assumptions they have about the rest of the world. This is the part where you're pretty much highlighting what makes them different from humans, what sorts of stories they are likely to have as a race. In all other ways, it should be clear, or at least safely assumed, that they are just like any other people.

3) Support the races in-world. Once you're in the game, the structures and social constructs of the world should reflect the people who live in it, and the GM's job is to convey this to the players in as seamless a manner as possible. Players are likely to look to NPCs for clues on whether a thing is common or unusual, good or bad if they have no other guide, and a couple of lines of dialogue can speak volumes about how the players should feel about a given situation or people. It's all right for there to be minorities and marginalized groups, or majorities that are not generic, but it's important for the world itself to convey that that actually means.

The example I can think of at the moment is actually pretty problematic-- Karnath, in the Eberron setting, specifically as run by Wombat. This is a place where Undead Soldiers are the norm, and the whole country supports that construct pretty completely. If we, the players, had been playing all Karnathi, the world did a very good job of playing this particular social construct up as normal, and we'd have had to do some twisting to not be at least tolerant of it. As it was, we all played people from elsewhere, at least one of whom had character reasons for objecting strongly. My character, being from a country that had formerly allied with Karnath (and which no longer exists), didn't really have an opinion one way or the other until very late, though she had some very strong in-game pressure to find the Karnathi Military Structure pretty darn appalling. I am marginally curious as to what would happen if we _had_ all been playing people who were raised to accept this situation as normal.

Permit me, for a moment, to refer to a thing that I mentioned earlier, about my problems with a culture that can only be viewed through the lens of a somebody else. That can be done well, and the ways in which it is done, interestingly, change the "point of reference" race/culture. Let's look at the Veytikka, for example. In a world where this race is common and reasonably accepted, it'd make a certain amount of sense for some non-Veytikka races to say, be all right with having established places to dispose of their dead, for Veytikka to come and clear away, in a symbiotic sort of way. Or to have some shady characters try to scoop up all the dead things before the Veytikka can get to them, and try to sell them back at a profit, controlling their food supply. It all depends on where you want to go with them, and if you're having the Veytikka be hunters who kill and eat their food raw, or if they say, disdain hunting and prefer finding as a cultural Thing.

But anyway, there is a certain point to be made there about the usefulness of humans-- it is easier to change them, and the way they see things or act, to accommodate their relationships to other races, than it is to do the same for races where one's understanding of them is learned. When we're talking about human vs. non-human, that's pretty much all of them.

I'll save this topic as it relates to non-European-based cultures amongst humans in Sci-fi/Fantasy/Gaming for another post, as this one has gotten really quite rambly and long.

Session Roundup #1

Partially for my own benefit, and partially to satisfy my own nonsensical desire to order the universe, I am going to try, each Thursday, writing up a brief rundown of the previous week's games. It is possible that All My Gaming will be changing up soon, which makes me very sad. Also there's been some breaks in the schedule of late, but the past two sessions of various games have been worth mentioning.

B's Game, last Tuesday-- We finished up a storyline in which, from the little we could tell, the Raven Queen sent her minions after Hane, my Revenant Assassin. We didn't find out much of what was going on, but she'd taken over the Imperial Palace, and we had the Crown Prince (a 6th level warlord) with us. We had him wait outside the door to the throne room while we tackled a couple of Ebony Guard and two Gawd Awful Hounds with a nasty fear aura, that dropped our attacks by 2 when we were in aura 5. Yeah, bad times.

On top of that, after we'd committed to wiping out the Guard as fast as possible (so we could deal with the hounds, which we'd fought before and which have unholy hit points), a Revenant Lurker showed up, with poison daggers and an eye towards making our lives bloody miserable. Fortunately, (though the player wasn't there, we had a Bard.

And the Bard had Insult to Passivity.

Insult To Passivity basically dazes an enemy until their are attacked. This is important-- they can take damage and stay dazed, so long as they're not attacked. Enter My Assassin's Shroud, and the feat that allows me to deal shroud damage without removing the shrouds when I use my Dark Reaping racial ability.

So this chick was super unhappy, trying to get close enough to hit us with daggers on her next turn, and eventually trying to run off... but we got there first and shut the doors on her. So sad for her, not having phasing. Finally, after we'd (well, mostly I'd) been wrecked by the hounds, and pretty much put them down, Our Mageblade went and started wailing on her, so she could finally use her powers. Which were pretty brutal-- she immediately went invis on us and hid behind some tapistries.

Shame I'd put Hunter's Eye on her, since she was my shroud target, and thus could find her no matter where she went. It also gave me +2 to attack her, but that's neither here nor there. Also, Norman-the-Runepriest-Barbarian-Hybrid-Dwarf (Also my Assassin's descendant) had Earthsense, and could tell where she went.

Oops.

So we wrecked her pretty hard, and that was awesome. I have to say, this was a really cool fight, and everyone got a chance to feel pretty awesome. Our Mageblade has specialized in AC improving stuff, and the things that targeted AC were balanced in such a way that while they could get most of us, they couldn't get him, most of the time. Norman also did some splendid damage, combined with healing like a madman, and our Wizard was... well, our wizard. But enough about Magic Missile in 4e. Because we wrecked her so hard, we didn't find out much more about what was going on, but the Crown Prince and the Emperor were very happy with us, the Raven Queen's shroud went away, and we all were extremely satisfied to leave the encounter with pretty much nothing left but at-wills.

Chessenta, monday-- Chessenta: Book of Serpents is run by He Who Stands in Fire, and is the most brutal game in which I play. This session was no different.

As of last session, we wound up in the town where we'd received our first quest-- we had the Axe that we were supposed to return to the town's church, and had, uh... gotten sidetracked helping out some Brass Dragons before taking it back. Of course, when we get there, the entire town's been swallowed by the Shadowfell.

Oops.

We made our way into the Shadow-Copy of the town last session, via a pretty darn neat gating system which stuck each of us in a black room with a horrible monster. For me, this meant sitting there trying not stay alive while my poor Shaman was wailed upon brutally. The others killed their monsters and teleported to another of the four rooms. Naturally, they got to me last.

But I was just fine.

Anyway, after I was rescued by my buddies, we found ourselves attempting to sneak through a city full of undead and shadow creatures towards a church. It was really just one of those sessions where we could not pass a skill challenge to save our hides. The sheer quantity of 1s rolled on 20 sided die were staggering. Thus, we wound up in two really quite brutal encounters with shadow creatures and horrible undead fleshy-monsters, one of which dropped some interesting papers. The second encounter involved these dudes who not only were able to turn invisible (and threw poisoned daggers), they created huge freaking zones of total darkness. Ultimately, we had to just frigging run away, and then try to lay in wait for them, hoping that they'd go back visible. That worked all right, and once we could, you know, hit them, we did so with much vigor. Also, our combat rolls suddenly got better. We then got to the church, rescued the mayor of the real town, and realised that we were going to have to go into the creepy sewers beneath the shadow town after all. The best part was hanging the axe back up in the church, which got us a happy quest reward: all of our weapons now do Radiant Damage as long as we're in the Shadowfell.

Hurrah super useful quest rewards!

So, more about my game... custom gods and feats.

In the company of Such Illustrious Game Designers (by which I mean thems what has actually found themselves paid for this sort of thing. Whereas I have only been paid for the heartless crushing of dreams), it is with a little trepidation that I offer up my humble efforts in this realm for scrutiny. Nevertheless, it is perhaps of interest to some few of you to see the ways in which I have potentially broken my D&D game horribly with a few extra Divine Feats.

To explain. In the setting I have created, a world called Liel, the most prevalent form of religion is called the Giedame. In this faith, each worshiper claims a personal pantheon of six gods, which may be any god in this setting, or any other setting for which rules exist in 4e-- and if rules/feat choices did not exist for a deity a player of mine wanted, I promised to make some up. As for setting deities, I provided the local pantheon of Ar'Siva, the island continent where the main of the game takes place. Entering the worship of each god allows access to that god's feats, which may be taken at any level. In the interest of avoiding tl;dr, I'll break this up into groups. So here's the first bunch:

The Hero-Gods (Atailan)

The Hero-Gods, Begaren, Vai'Varin, and Pi'kati, are called thus because of their roles in various myths and stories. It is not known whether they were once people who lived and were later deified, but the stories treat them as if they once, indeed, lived in the world like men.

Begaren

-- The God of Honor, Valour, and Nobility, his worship is common to warriors and those who value codes of honor above all else. In Ar'Siva, he is a favorite god of Military Knights, though his worship is more common in the other countries. His worship suggests proficiency with all manner of heavy (not thrown) swords and/or shields. His symbols are a sword cutting through tendrils of dark energy coming from below, or a shield with a hand and three orbs upon it, parting a wave of dark energy from above. Those who consider themselves Dedicate to Begaren may choose from the following divine Feats:

Shield Brethren

If you have shield proficiency, grant +2 to a defense as an immediate interrupt, once per encounter to one ally who is adjacent to you, or adjacent to the attacking enemy.

Sword Brethren

If you have proficiency in light or heavy blades and have a sword equipped, +1 to attack rolls for flanking allies using melee weapons.

Vai'Varin

-- The God of Humility, this god is never himself depicted, though like Begaren, he is considered a hero-god, and spoken of as such. His symbol is a common household item-- a shoe, a kettle, a broom, et al-- held singly, or on a plain field. Leaders benefit most from the worship of Vai'varin, and many warlords serve him. He is a common household god on Ar'Siva. Those who consider themselves Dedicate to Vai'Varin may choose from the following Background Feats:

Helping Hand

Adjacent Ally gains a +3 bonus to their surge value when they spend their second wind, +5 at 11th level and +7 at 21st.

50 Feet of Rope

You may spend your move action to grant one ally an extra 5 move before the end of your next turn. Allies who start a climb or a jump adjacent to you gain +2 to their Athletics check.

The Best Cook Ever

During an Extended Rest, you may sacrifice a Healing Surge to add +2 to all Allies Surge Value, as you are up cooking the entire time.

Pi'kati

-- the God of Tricksters and Rogues, he is a god widely worshipped by people in all walks of life. He is especially popular in Ar'Siva, in the country and among the proleteriat. It is not uncommon, apart from those who are of the Rogue or Bard profession, for someone to feel themselves Pi'kati's in Soul, and honor him thusly. His symbol is a four-holed flute with one hand open and one hand closed; sometimes with his grinning Face behind it. Those who consider themselves Followers of Pi'kati may choose from the following Divine Feats:

Unassuming Pickpocket

+2 to stealth and thievery or you may also treat Stealth and Thievery as trained skills, even if your class does not permit it. Once per encounter, you may make a bluff check as a minor action to gain combat advantage over an enemy within close burst 10.

Made You Look...

Once per encounter, as a move action, you may shift from a square adjacent to an enemy to another square adjacent to the same enemy. You have cover from enemies until the end of your next turn as long as you remain adjacent to that enemy.

Coming next: The Gods of Ascension and the Gods of Detriment.

I will also note that thanks to DDI, adding custom feats and making them apply correctly is really bloody difficult, and thus a hard thing to have 4e players do. Also, I have not really dealt with Divine Power dailies for these gods, except for Vai'Varin, as my Cleric and my Artificer worship him (The Rogue and the Avenger primarily worship Pi'kati). Still, the most efficient way of breaking one's game is through handing out utterly stupid custom magic items. But more on that later.

Semi-weekly maunderings.

So today is (likely) B's Game, meaning that there's been one episode of the same, a Chessenta game, and an Eberron Game since the last time I posted on tabletop. Also a session of mine. And yet, my thoughts on such are all that is scattered and lame. But.

A thing to which I wish to give more thought-- probably aided by intense scrutiny of the monster manuals-- is keeping controllers alive. In my last game, I wound up doubling an encounter because (though they had very good plot reasons to do so), the players pretty much alpha struck the Controller before she could do any of the cool things she could have done to wreck them. On the one hand, this is good-- do the players really need to know how awful the controller's stuff is? This being something that my players ran into in their very first encounter, when they let the Goblin Hexer hang out and do horrible things to them through its allies. Alpha striking necromancers = absolutely the right thing to do.

On the other hand, there's something... I dunno, weak? About the alpha strike being too easy to pull off. There's a balance there, or a right set of additional baddies that are just nasty enough to protect the Controller by drawing off aggro, without just rolling the party hard. As last weekend's LARP reminded me-- if the GM wants dead players, they can always have them. It's not that hard. What's hard is live PCs who feel like they were actually at risk of dying horribly.

Anyway, it's a lowby something to think about, but something I am thinking about RightNowThisMinute.

Indecent Indexes.

For ease of reference, I shall list the recurring games in which I am participating, of all genres. Coz otherwise... ja, confusing.

4e

• B's Game (Formerly Road to Bael Turath; original world based on Dust to Dust)-- Revenant Assassin, Hane Al'Druth.
• Eberron (Armistice, run by G., who also plays in Planescape and Chessenta)-- Tiefling Artificer, Ballast.
• Planescape (The Custodians, run by Standing In Fire, who plays in B's Game and Eberron also.)-- Aasimar Psion, Sa'réja.
• Chessenta (Book of Serpents, run by Standing In Fire) -- Wilden Shaman, Kinnav Vinnet.
  
• My Game (Keep waffling on a name, Original World + Old Skool Dungeon Crawl).

3.x and variants.

• Arcana Evolved (Cloud and Shade, run by Nemo.)-- Human Magister, Basel Atullican.

LARPs

• King's Gate-- Full time NPC.
• Eclipse-- Harper Kell, Imperial Swordswoman.
• Dust to Dust (Website in Progress)-- Campaign Committee.

Also, I play a level 57 (mostly) Holy Paladin on Whisperwind in WoW. I'm not actively playing any other MMOs at the moment due to crappy computer-having, but I actually liked Age of Conan-- probably the result of playing mostly the Destiny Stuff in Tortage.

Right now, perhaps my greatest personal tragedy is that I have neither time nor money to play much Magic the Gathering, as my old Magic group was a) through my old work and b) pretty much over it when Zendikar came out. I dunno about you, but after being used to the Alara Block and the ones before it, the name of which I forget and am too lazy to look up right now, Zendikar was way too slow and (in terms of mana cost for cards) expensive. I'm curious about the Scars of Mirrodin set, but-- once again, time and funds for Drafting. Meh.

Speaking of time, there are a few other things that I'd like to either run or play, and the first of these is a Psychic/Horror Game based on the Dawning Star setting, where I am still waffling on the actual ruleset I want to use. Dawning Star was written to be a setting for D20 Modern/Future, but I am not sure that I will be able to get the right horror feel for it. Call of Cthulu has some good things about it, but the sanity/mythos mechanic isn't really appropriate here. 4e has some interesting possibilities as far as cool terrain stuff and having combat that I adore, though psionics in 4e don't fit-- look for a post about how awesome is the setting psionic mechanism, Red Truth, coming soon. Some of the White Wolf stuff (as in the Second Sight splatbook) may be good, but not sure yet. Anyway, the plan is for this to be a 3 session (or so) short-run game with pre-gen characters. We'll see how that goes.

And that's the break down, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's.

...So, About My Game...

(Last Direct LJ Re-Post for a while, I swear. This one is, surprise surprise, after the first session of my current game. Context is so awesome.)

All right, finally, I'm gonna talk about the game I am running in specific. I have five players, all girls, only two of which (not counting myself) are currently playing another tabletop game. Two others have played before, but not for years and not 4e, and one has never played a tabletop game ever. The party makeup is as follows:

Juuntzi -- Shadar-Kai Avenger (Never played 4e)
Rory -- Halfling Trickster Rogue (Never played 4e)
Dhalia -- Deva Invoker (Also plays in Chessenta)
Aretha-- Deva Artificer (Never played tabletop before)
Dian-- Human Cleric (Strength) (Also plays in Planescape)

So, if you know anything about 4e roles, the first thing you'll notice about this party is that there is no defender. the Avenger has also spiked Dex, which was an interesting choice, but I believe she's gone with the Pursuing Avenger build, which is all right for that. The only one with a Strength score at all is the Cleric, which is all right since there is a second Leader in the party to heal her. The most interesting thing about that is how much of the party decided to go for daggers (the Rogue, the Artificer, and I think the Avenger are all using daggers)-- we'll see how that goes in the long run.

I suppose that the adjective which applies here is 'naturally'-- naturally, this is a fairly roleplay focused group, but the interesting thing that I've noticed is that there isn't really more rp than the other games I'm in. This may have to do with how, since everyone is pretty new, the level of tutorial and rules/strategy table talk is pretty high, and this group may want to cut it out later, but I'm unsure on that. There's a lot of table talk in my other games, and, at least in those, since pretty much everyone is involved in it and setting up what they're going to do, it doesn't slow things down too much. There are certainly games where it could, and I've been in games (though I've been playing 4e with pretty much the same bunch, so those not so much) where the chatter just got obnoxious. We'll see how it goes. Either way, the introductory bit, where the party got their instructions from the half-elf components merchant who has hired them, went pretty okay, and the party used it to help them get into their characters by and large. The Rogue and the Avenger, as it was pointed out-- probably by Dian or Aretha, I don't remember which-- are set up to be quite the pair of Trouble Twins, both being thieves by profession. The Invoker, Dhalia, and the Artificer, Aretha are fairly quiet by comparison, and Dian the Cleric is the grounded, Rational One.

A moment about Clerics in this campaign. All PCs have the option of worshipping a pantheon of 6 gods called a Giedame; they can choose from any deity in the game, or the ones I've created. They can only purchase god-related feats (or Channel Divinity powers) that are for a god in their pantheon, and, though it's a bit rules-breaky, I am allowing Clerics to use an extra Channel Divinity power that is specific to one of their 6 gods once per day, which does not count towards the 1 Channel DIvinity power per combat. I may also make that for divine classes in general, though I'm still mulling it over. I'm not really worried about the power level in this game just yet, though that may well change.

As they left the tavern and approached the curio shop which is the entrance to the Dungeon, I threw them directly into combat with a bunch of goblins that had come out of there-- the party is not sure why, natch. Being that this was my first time running a 4e combat, I went with a fairly basic spread-- 1 3rd level Goblin Hexer (controller/leader), two Goblin Warriors (1st level skirmishers) and 7 ist level minions.

The important thing to keep in mind about goblins, who are sneaky little bastards, is this right here:

Goblin Tactics (At-Will)
Trigger: The goblin is missed by an attack.
Effect (Immediate Reaction): The goblin shifts 1 square.

All of the goblins have this. This is compounded by the following power of the Goblin Hexer:

Incite Bravery (immediate reaction, when an ally uses goblin tactics, at-will)
Ranged 10; the targeted ally can shift 2 squares and make an attack.

But initially, they had just seen the two warriors, who were behind the rogue and the Avenger in the initiative order. So Rory and Juuntzi decided to try their hand at tanking, ran as close as they could, and started throwing daggers and oaths around, to some effect. The Warriors, being skirmishers, skirted the group and threw javalins, getting +1d6 to their damage if they moved at least 4 squares. Then came the minions-- all seven of 'em, dogpiling on the closest good guy-- in this case, the poor halfling.

Which is why controllers are awesome. When it came Dhalia's turn, her Area Burst 1 attack took out all but two of the minions, bam!

Then came the Hexer, who has a lockdown ability that resets, a blinding ability, and this awfulness:

Vexing Cloud (standard; sustain minor, encounter) Zone
Area burst 3 within 10; automatic hit; all enemies within the zone take a -2 penalty to attack rolls. The zone grants concealment to the goblin hexer and its allies. The goblin hexer can sustain the zone as a minor action, moving it up to 5 squares

After a couple of turns, the Warriors were finally locked down into melee with the Avenger, and the Rogue was locked down by the the Hexer's Stinging Gaze, which does 3d6+1 if you move on your turn once it's hit you (save ends). Un-fun. This is also the part where Goblin Tactics and Inspire Bravery started to really suck, as the goblin warriors kept getting an extra attack on Juuntzi, while trying to be sure that they were both adjacent to her at the same time. She did a pretty good job of this when it came time for her to use her Oath of Emnity, and poor Rory did the best she could with ranged attacks. So the Hexer decided to help out his buddies by dropping the Vexing Cloud on Rory, Juuntzi, and the Warriors, and then high-tailing it out of there.

At this point, the Cleric decides to charge the Hexer. And we start to get into that whole Economy of Action thing that I love so much. All class healing, and quite a lot of general healing is done as a minor action, which means that Dian can heal Rory after her pummeling, then charge down and try to smack that Hexer. Which she does successfully, because her melee basic attack is pretty darn decent.

But yes, you heard right, those of you who don't play 4e and don't know why anyone would. This is why. Because the party healer can heal you in combat, and also hit things ever. Also, most Leader powers, in addition to doing damage, hand out smexxy buffs to the party. This does not mean the other classes are short-shrifted, oh no, they can grant movement, combat advantage, knock things prone, and do all kinds of other stuff to help everyone out. So yeah, you're a team, in mechanic as well as attitude. And no one is useless. Really, you want everyone to be as effective as possible, because if you all as a party are running at max efficency, you are bloody unstoppable. It takes time to get there, of course, but yeah. It's a really cool feeling to me-- that no really, you'll pass up something that might upgrade you, if it means making up an item deficit for another party member. Also, resource management matters to everyone. No one is standing there looking and feeling useless because they're out of stuff-- only if they've gotten stunned or something. But I digress. If there had been no other changes but this, I would swear by this edition for it. But moving on.

Unfortunately, the Hexer's rolls were all really gross, and he wound up blinding poor Dian (save ends) and locking her down with a reset Stinging Gaze. Doubleplus not-awesome. She wound up going down shortly, as one of the warriors and the last were dispatched and the Hexer and the other Warrior tried to take off. Which is why having a second Leader in a Two Striker Party is so very good an idea. The Artificer, having not spent any of her heals yet, was able to get in close burst 5 and get Dian up within the round, and the party chased the Hexer down-- while being careful to stay on the outside of the gawd-awful zone that the Hexer was hiding in. The Avenger pulled him to the edge of it, and-- I forget who killed the last warrior-- but Aretha nailed the Hexer finally for Exactly Enough damage. It was at that point that I realised that the only one who did not have a magic weapon/impliment was the Invoker, who had had some issues with the fight-- fortunately, the Hexer had a +1 Hexer Rod on him, and she-- well well!-- uses a rod impliment. So that worked out well for everyone.

The party now being free to explore the curio shop and the dungeon entrance, they did so, and this is where I'll stop, though they did some more exploring-- one because this is getting very long, and two, because that encounter is not entirely over. I did it as sort of an informal skill challenge, which I think I would have preferred to have more... tight? Alors.

Anyway, I want to maunder on the topic of skill challenges some other time, but for now, sine.

Blinded.

(almost done with the direct reposts from LJ. This one is from July, and linky here.)

So, had our first introduction to Paragon tier 4e D&D last night. As I had hoped, Standing In Fire did an excellent write up of it here, and I've some reflections about this aussi, as well as D20 in general, just at the moment.

So, there's no question-- 4e does low level gameplay right. I'm probably going to start my D&D game (which I ought to be picking up next month as a 2Xmonth game) at 1st level, because I /can/ and the power level seems right. 1st level in a 4e game /feels/ roughly equivalent to 3rd level in a 2e/3.x game, largely due to the fact that in previous editions, that's when wizards start to feel useful at all.

As for high-level gameplay... well, we'll see. It's completely changed the game, that's for sure, for both GM and players. For starters, there was already a ridiculous amount of stuff resolving at any given time-- this is especially true for my Revenant Assassin, which I would possibly have a better handle on if I had not started her at 10. Lemme 'Splain.

I adore this character. I cannot stress this enough. She is an awesome undead-dwarf of the badass with the stealth score from the Grim Prison, and probably the first character that I just gave up and min-maxed to all hell, with no hedging. Fortunately, she also seems to work okay in the world, but I digress.

Assassins are these terribly gross, terribly brutal strikers who have a pretty neat not-exactly-marking mechanic-- that is to say unlike marks, it doesn't care whether or not the target makes an attack that includes you or not. It's pretty much a damage-widget that gets a kick at 11th level. Also, they have a built in at-will teleport (you have to begin it and end it next to a creature) that goes up a square at 11th. Also, especially if they are revenants, they can do a whole shit-ton of necrotic damage, because they are the only class at the moment to use the Shadow power source. Combine this with Revenant-- no really, you want to combine this with Revenant. For starters, revenants have the correct stat bonuses-- dex & con-- and there are a bunch of feats specifically for Revenant Assassins, most of which have to do with the Revenant racial power, Dark Reaping. I have a ton of things that resolve when I use Dark Reaping-- first off, I can drop an extra shroud (yon mark-not-mark damage kicker) on my shroud target when I invoke the power (someone within 5 of me drops to 0 hp). Then, when I actually invoke the power (next hit I make before the end of my next turn), then dark reaping does 1d8+5 necrotic damage, and my shroud target takes the full damage of the shrouds on them-- 1 d6+3 (since I am 11th level) per shroud, up to 4 shrouds max. Those shrouds do not disappear, as they normally do when I invoke them. Ja, awesome. I neglected to have anything else happen when I use dark reaping for my feat, but believe me, it was possible. Instead, there's a metric shitton of stuff that happens when I use an action point, including crap that lets me phase through walls and go insubstantial and yeah... it's a mess to keep track of. And worse for the GM, who is doing his best to keep up with all of the monsters that are hitting us at the same time, and well...

Nonetheless. We got to a point where the huge and nasty Minotaur was about to charge a red swath through the whole lot of us-- and lo, but it triggered every nasty thing under the sun-- the hybrid barbarian/runepriest used an immediate interrupt to do some radiant damage and blind it, putting it at -5 to hit everyone, in an already pretty high defense party. This was on top of the 10 ongoing untyped it had from my Shared Suffering Armor, and some fire damage (less, because it was resistant to fire) that it took from an ability of our Mageblade's, that did damage when it moved.

All of this resolved at about the same time. And I don't hardly blame B for throwing up his hands in frustration and amazement. We hadn't expected to be quite as awesome as we suddenly were either. 4e apparently tells you, as a GM, that yes-- at Paragon you've got to increase your game in some pretty specific ways-- but here you run into a serious problem that has scared a lot of people I know off of 4e-- information presentation. The main of the books you'll find are all character stats-- huge lists of powers and feats and racial stats and OH GOD, for crying out loud just download DDI Character Builder already and not have to deal with this madness. Because you're going to miss something. Without question. Or else you're me, and you're going to want to play a class that is only found in Dragon Magazine anyway. I'm starting to feel like releasing PC class books ought to be seriously de-emphasized-- or at least set up for what it is-- and the emphasis switched to getting folks hooked up with DDI, and making it more houserulable (it isn't. At all. Dear Lord.) But the PHBs are pretty much all stat blocks, and that's kind of eye-crossingly frustrating to look at.

the DMGs, the Planes books, and some of the Setting Guides are better, but not explicitly so. Clearly, there's a fall-through when it comes to explaining the balancing math from Heroic to Paragon tier, so it still feels as though you have to fudge things around a lot-- the biggest issue I've seen in 4e is that most DMs will under-stat their monsters in Heroic, thinking that they're throwing stuff that is /way/ too powerful at the PCs... only to have the whole encounter mopped up out of hand. And then there's the one or two who run encounters straight, and nearly wipe the party out of hand. Which leads into my first point of advice for folks who have never run 4e before-- START AT 1ST LEVEL. Getting a feel for how your party plays, and getting them used to using their powers at lower levels is vital, and not something you can do easily if you jump into high level encounters. Modding an existing game without resetting it is a bad idea as well, methinks.... this is not going to feel like the games you've played before. For me anyway, that was /awesome/. I have hated 2e/3.x combat for ages while sort-of enduring it, without being able to put my finger on why I hated it. The answer has to do with economy of action. In earlier editions, you don't have it. Everything is a standard action. Heaven forbid you heal anyone and hit anyone in the same turn! You've got to make a choice between working on killing a d00d, and maybe keeping your other middling damage dealing friend from getting killed-- depending on if you're a cleric, or a wizard with heals (like an Arcana Evolved Magister, which conceptually I do really like), or what. And this frustrates me hugely, even more than the whole running out of spells idea (and don't get me started on spell prep. I am one of those who never got used to trying to gauge how many of what spell I was going to use in a day. When they came out with Sorcerer, I never went back). So...

If I were running this game in 3.x again, I would probably houserule a lot of healing to be minor actions, as long as that is all that they do. I have a much more complicated short-run Dawning Star game (d20 modern) that I seriously need to work on, and the biggest obstacle I have run into is considering how I want to deal with combat, as I really suck at running it (thusfar), and I really hate most d20 combat mechanics. A lot will depend on the nature of the creatures that the players will be fighting, but... hrm. I know, this has gotten fairly far afield of high level 4e maundering, but meh.

Combat can be fun!

(Another re-post from LJ, originally viewable here. Incidentally, you will sometimes see references to a gentleman called B. B is a fellow gamer, one of my DMs, and also my boyfriend ~K.)

Instead of the post I was going to originally make, which was a run-down of my problems with 2e and 3.x D&D, I am going to sum those up, and get to a topic about which I actually care a good deal more. To wit, earlier editions do not have 4e's barriers to player entry, obtuse and overwhelming character creation system, or near-necessary online program that pisses you off when you realise you need it after having spent a ton of cash on books. 4e does not have the huge vagaries and limitations of role that previous editions do, and adds economy of action to many different things, healing in particular-- plus you realise from the outset when you've built a character badly, instead of only figuring it out 6 levels later, after you've been convincing yourself this whole time that one day, you'd be awesome, really. Proponents of both systems argue that it is the other one which is actually limiting and frustrating-- I know that I do. So, I have come to the conclusion that it is a matter of A) what one is used to, and what sorts of limitations you are willing to accept in presentation, and b) What tools help you, personally, become immersed in the game. I would like to think that there are ways for those who love the old editions to share their preferred format with those (i.e.-- me) who have become spoiled by 4e, and for those who are skeptical or downright hostile to 4e come into it in such a way that they'll enjoy the new things that are coming out for the system.

First of all, let's talk about what not to do if you're running or playing in your first 4e game. Primarily, and while I have said this before, it bears repeating-- Start At First Level. When I ran 1/2e/3.x, I generally would start a game at 3rd level, particularly if there were any spellcasters in the party. 2 words-- Haste, fireball. Also, you might possibly have a hit point or two by now. This will not be so much an issue in 4e, so it's better to get used to the way things work from 1st, than to try to jump up. Also, this is easier on the DM, so that they can get a feel for how to stat encounters for this party.

Converting your current game to 4e and keeping going is a really bad idea for every possible reason. For one, you're still in the old game mindset, people are used to what they can and can't do, you have established mechanics and ways of doing things that are natural to the characters and the game. Suddenly switching to Powersets, condensed skill lists, magic items that work a lot differently (and this is huge-- changing up people's stuff is a really good way to tear them out of your world and make them angry, /especially/ if it is something they use all the time-- also, You Don't Want To Convert Them All, Trust Me), non-combat characters suddenly becoming Useful and Important in combat-- no no, is too much. Play out your current campaign in the way you're accustomed, and run your 4e game new. This will also give you, the DM, the ability to get used to the Monster Manual, and the way statblocks work for monsters.

I hadn't noticed, but a friend pointed out this weekend that the Monster Manuals don't physically describe the monsters. Spacewise, you see, it seems to make so much more sense to include blurbs about how the monsters fight tactically-- so that if you're say, throwing goblins at your players (this being the 1st 4e encounter that I've run, and yesh), you can throw a bunch of different kinds of goblins who all fight differently, and have powers that help out their allies and do horrid things to the players. This is pretty durned neat to me. Goblin Tactics is awesome. As players encounter more of them, they learn who to kill first and how-- and it isn't always the caster, though sometimes, ja (If the caster is a Goblin Hexer and there are other goblins on the board, OMG KILL IT FIRST, KILL IT WITH FIRE). Anyway, hit dice don't really exist-- all monsters of a given name and level are going to have the same hp. This is something, by the by, that the players a) don't know unless you tell them and b) if you really want to, you can modify. It is very easy to raise/lower hp if you really want to, or if you want to tweak fight length, but it's not likely to be necessary. Also, there's the matter of minions-- don't skimp on them. Your AOE casters will really like being able to mop them up, and they have some interesting strategic uses for the standard monsters in a given encounter.

Which brings me to another potentially problematic bit-- if you are not used to using minis and a map (grid, not hex) in your campaigns, in 4e you pretty much have to. 4e has a lot of forced movement, terrain with various effects, and variable ranges. This can be a roadblock for players who are either not used to those, or are not used to the sheer, laid-open mechanics of movement and move actions being so much a part of the game. When learning it, I completely understand it breaking one from immersion. Here's a place where the DM and Player aspect can fix this-- it is, like so many things, a matter of describing what you're doing. A lot of powers have wonderful descriptions, as for instance:

Forceful Drag
You dig your fingers into a foe and drag the struggling opponent across the battlefield.
Encounter Martial
Move Action Personal
Requirement: You must have a creature grabbed.
Effect: You move your speed. For each square you move, you slide a creature grabbed by you 1 square to a square adjacent to you. The creature remains grabbed, and you do not provoke an opportunity attack from the grabbed creature for this movement. At the end of the move, you can end the grab to knock the creature prone.
Published in Martial Power 2.

Here's where the roleplay part comes in-- and it is some badass roleplay, as your fighter, having grabbed ahold of some critter or bad guy explains how they are hauling their sorry ass across the field, and then deciding whether they want to knock dude to the floor or not. Hells. Yeah.

I really want to talk about limitation, and who can do things like grab monsters and how, and the differing roles of skills and their base stats and the like, but I have realised suddenly that this is a heap big topic that I'll have to maunder about at another time.

So playing with map and minis in 4e has convinced me that one of my big mistakes in previous editions was not using them for combat. The inclination to use very small spaces and non-specific locations made combat kind of arbitrary, like turn-based video game combat. This is not a problem with previous systems themselves, but it is a problem with how I played and ran them. In going back to 3.x or earlier, I might be tempted not only to go to map & minis, but to limit ranges on spells and effects so that their use is more strategic. But that brings me to another issue, which I guess I'll go ahead and bring up now. Since we're talking about straight up mechanics. Which, of course, is marking.

But before I get to marking, I have to talk about roles, which are another new thing, and which for me were difficult to wrap my head around initially. You have the Leader, which means, basically 'Healer'. That is to say, the classes that fill the Leader role are generally going to have some power, usable as a minor action, which allows them to drop healing, usually 2x per combat. And here I restrain myself again for going into what I feel is the biggest strength of the system-- economy of action. /ahem. So we've got Strikers, which are there to do huge buckets of damage, and are kind of squishy otherwise. Then Controllers, who are also squishy, generally work best from range, and move things around and set them up so that other people can do huge buckets of damage to them. Also-- AoEs. And finally, Defenders, who have a Mark.

Marks are excellent. Marks are what permit Defenders to truly protect the other roles from games of SmashCaster. Basically, it's an ability that punishes x enemy for attacking people who are not the Defender, so that if said enemy is standing next to a Wizard and a Fighter, and can only attack one of them, he's not going after the wizard for being all cloth-wearing and tasty-- except at a -2 penalty. No, he's going after the paladin-chick with the effing axe who has been hacking at him for the last 5 rounds. As it makes sense from a story standpoint for him to do so, it also gives a material benefit that is good for everyone in the party, and allows the Defenders to do what they're good at-- tank!

This is, however, an extremely visible gears mechanic that some folks might find a turn off. I think that it's a case of explaining why, from a narrative/simulation standpoint, that focused attention effects are cool. I think the best example is actually a first level bard power:

Misdirected Mark
You conceal your arcane attack, tricking your foe into thinking the attack came from one of your allies.
At-Will Arcane, Implement
Standard Action Ranged 10
Target: One creature
Attack: Charisma vs. Reflex
Hit: 1d8 + Charisma modifier damage, and the target is marked by an ally within 5 squares of you until the end of your next turn.
Level 21: 2d8 + Charisma modifier damage.

Once again, the description is what's important here-- in which our tricksy bard makes the ogre think that the paladin chick over there? Yeah, she totally smacked you upside the head while running past you. I am just an inoffensive dude with a mandolin. Now go away.

So hopefully, the Narrativist types (I am one of those, btw) will like this enough to accept it. This is Gameism at it's finest, so I assume that the Gameists are way ahead of me. But I can still see the Simulationists being somewhat dubious, and making arguments that marks are arbitrary. This is a harder one to see a good solution for, to make it more palatable to older edition sorts. I do think that it is something that can be simulated in 3.x with a generic mark, used as a minor action or something, that a fighter could use to hold the attention of probably a single enemy, if you wanted to make the argument that a fighter could probably only hold the attention of one at a time. But seriously, it's a mechanic I'd like to see done backwards-- I don't know if there's something similar previously, but I've never seen it.

All of this said, here's the hard part, and something that I could stand to keep in mind as I continue with my game-- run things straight before you start changing stuff. And the corollary-- once you understand how the mechanics work, don't be afraid to change stuff.

Game balance in 4e can be a sort of scary thing to contemplate-- as you play through encounters, you'll notice that, as written, they look ridiculously brutal on paper. Thing is, the player? Ridiculously brutal. Heroic tier is effing heroic. Go with the basics initially to get a feel for what sort of damage the party can do, and what of their defenses are strong and weak-- you only roll saves when you have a condition on you in 4e, generally, attacks are rolled against the appropriate defense. Yes, this means wizards can miss or fizzle their spells. But since they're not frying a spell slot, that doesn't screw them in the same way it would have previously. The experience point chart is a pretty good guideline for what you ought to be throwing, and you can always pad out the numbers with minions, or extra standards if say, you've got a party with 2 controllers who basically mop them up like crazy. The players will figure out fast that a lot of their abilities do things that help out their allies, or otherwise effect their allies. This means that there is likely to be a lot of mechanical table talk, as they try to suss out what they can and can't do, and how it helps their pals. The biggest difference in feel that I ran into in changing to this edition was that I didn't feel as though I was acting in a bubble. What I chose to do mattered-- not just to me, but to everyone standing next to me, and I might save a power that gives attack bonuses or resistances to adjacent allies till I was, say, next to the greatest number of allies. Effects look at the battle and apply only when certain conditions are met, so-- and here's another zap for you-- you've got to pay attention not just to your turn, but to everyone else, to see what they've done to the enemies, and how they're moving, so that you can adjust your actions accordingly. Versus getting up and wandering out of the room till it's your turn again, while the hasted et al fighter takes a bazillion actions.

Which brings me to another point-- in 4e, no seriously, don't play evil. Or even crazy-chaotic neutral. I know that people telling you not to do that was arbitrary and sort of lame in earlier editions, but in 4e, you won't have a good time. What will happen is that you could lose the 'ally' status with the other people in the party, which means their enemy only stuff will hit you, you'll be cut off from buffs and bonuses, the enemies still don't necessarily count you as /their/ ally, and the chances of you getting asked back sink to pretty much no. I cannot stress enough how much you /really/ want to get along with your party. And if you do, the more cohesive you are, the more awesome you are. Which is why most games will not use tribal and guild feats. The more cohesive you as a party get, the more powerful you are by orders of magnitude, even if your numbers don't look it.

So, what I want to know here-- how would any of you, as DMs or Players, build a similar kind of party cohesion in a 3.x or earlier game? How would you suggest that I, as a player, build my character so that I can support the party in combat, and not also be ineffective elsewhere? I suspect that the skills system might have some solutions, since they are fairly vague, but I am very open to suggestions.

And a 4e question to go along with that-- if you wish to run a game with intra-party suspicion and paranoia, the way that the party mechanics work, you seriously risk making combat situations un-fun if they party winds up disliking each other enough. In our Planescape game, for example, which is a pretty awesome game and my first intro to how much fun skill challenges could be, all of the PCs belong to different factions in Sigil, some of which, like my Sensate and B's Doomguard, are very much opposed to each other. Nonetheless, due to the nature of the game, we all wind up getting along much better than we perhaps ought. Now, some of this is that the histories written for the various characters are all sort of middling when it comes to faction loyalty-- but playing someone who was a hardline factionist would be /really/ difficult both from a story perspective, and from a game mechanics perspective. ETA: Well, admittedly, this game isn't the best example because it is Planescape-- if we are too fractious on faction lines, the Lady of Pain will personally send us all to the Maze. Bad times. Personally, I prefer in this instance just accepting that it's going to be collaborative and move on, but I can definitely see situations and games where one would really want to make party schism-- or at least suspicion-- possible, without completely screwing everyone.