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December 31, 2008 in Roleplaying | 1 comment
I wrote most of this post before I got my hands on Manual of the Planes, so it’s a little outdated and the language reflects that. Still, I plan to talk more about Manual of the Planes soon, so this’ll make for a good segue. :P
Out of all of the supplements I’ve read, seen, or heard about so far, Manual of the Planes is the one that excites me the most overall. Here’s why.
Tags: 4e, D&D, Planescape
December 8, 2008 in Roleplaying | 1 comment
I was pokin’ around, looking at the druid (sub. req.). It’s a very cool take on a controller, possibly better at it than the wizard, and the way they implemented beast form stuff is also neat. Given these powers and abilities, I think that druids are pretty much guaranteed to have interesting choices to make in character creation and combat.
Tags: 4e, D&D, D&D Insider
December 7, 2008 in Roleplaying | 1 comment
I heard about the layoffs through this month’s Ampersand column (sub. req.). I noticed that, f’rex, Dave Noonan’s name wasn’t in the list of designers, but failed to read anything into it. Call me naive, I guess.
It wasn’t until Jonathan Drain’s latest round of links popped up on my feed reader that I dug deeper. (Aaaaand I just noticed that this update happened to include me. Wow. Thx, Jonathan!)
Tags: D&D
December 5, 2008 in Roleplaying | 1 comment
I got my grubby little mitts on a copy of Martial Power, and I had some time to peruse it. Here’s what I think so far!
For the most part, I think this is a great supplement. But I think I’m already running into supplement fatigue.
Tags: 4e, D&D, First impressions
November 22, 2008 in Roleplaying | 2 comments
Via Critical Hits, what is this I see? Why, it’s an Editorial Calendar!
All right, so if you’ve clicked that Critical Hits link or read the subject line here, you already know why I’m here, writing to you, dear blog.
After reading the bard and barbarian playtests (more on those later?), I’m excited about the druid. I’m really curious to see which builds they put in. I heard that they’re going to have a shifter-based built. These are magical words that excite me.
Also, what the hell is this? Invoker? Dave pretty much says it all, except that he lies. He says we’ll find out “soon enough.” You’re not fooling me, Dave. December is, like, eleventy-billion days away!
Do you know what other magical words excite me? (There’s a whole list of ‘em!) Here is one word that excites me: Mercykiller.
I can’t remember if I’ve talked about how Planescape: Torment is my favorite video game of all time, and by extension that Planescape is my favorite D&D setting of all time. A case in point is the Factol’s Manifesto. This book reads more like White Wolf than D&D, given that most of the stuff in there has little to no crunch and is just pure setting.
This’ll degenerate into wank if I don’t get to the point soon.
So, yes, playtest. Mercykiller. I’m not sure that it’s a paragon path like Dave says, though. Paragon paths are fairly discrete in terms of what they do; I don’t see much need for long-term tuning. Consider also that all of the playtest articles on the table, with the exception of the Adventurer’s Vault 2, feature new classes.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. In fact, I’m probably setting myself up for disappointment. Still, a playtest article implies something a bit more meaty to me. Could the Mercykiller be some kind of divine striker, perhaps? THE MIND REELS.
Tags: 4e, D&D, Planescape
November 19, 2008 in Roleplaying | 2 comments
I’m just whining here, so if that doesn’t interest you, I encourage you to move on.
So I’m officially involved in two D&D games. My friend Avi has run a couple of sessions of his game, and I’ve started my game back up again. These were basically my criteria for subscribing to D&D Insider: running one game, and playing at least one other.
There’s just one problem: I can’t subscribe! Yeah. It’s a bad scene. Apparently there’s something related to my bank not releasing information to Digital River. They’re working on something, allegedly, but in the meantime I am dead in the water.
As luck would have it, this was before they even announced the character creator beta. I guess you get to keep your existing rate when they launch it, as long as you’ve already subscribed? That’s the icing on the cake.
Am I desperate enough to beg a friend to pay & I reimburse them? Possibly! I like having D&D stuff to read in between major releases, or even stuff to rip off for existing campaigns. I’m also burning with curiosity about the bard, which was among my least favorite classes from 3e. Is it cool, or is it merely viable?
Actually, speaking of which, isn’t Martial Power out this week? I’m a little bit afraid of power creep but some of the new builds sound terribly interesting. I’m quite curious to see how they manage the economy of actions with regard to the beastmaster ranger. Or does it slow down play as someone has two sets of abilities to choose from? I MUST KNOW.
Tags: 4e, D&D, D&D Insider
November 3, 2008 in Roleplaying | No comments
It started off with a question: is there a way for a character to have 10 in a Defense at level 2?
You’ll need a penalty, obviously, to cancel out the half-level bonus. An 8 in a stat won’t do it because you take the higher of the two when calculating defenses.
The solution? I’ll warn you: it’s ridiculous.
October 14, 2008 in Roleplaying | No comments
Edit: Tomorrow? It’s today! I’m not sure what I was thinkin’.
It’s official: tomorrow D&D Insider goes behind a pay wall. They’ll keep some select stuff free (including the barbarian playtest, which is cool), but it sounds like most of it will go behind a pay wall. Let’s talk about that, eh?
October 4, 2008 in Roleplaying | 2 comments
Hello, blog. I’m done traveling. I’m still working a bunch, though. I think I’ve got enough fodder for posting to last me through the next couple of weeks, after which things should die down.
In the meantime, let’s have a post! I got my grubby little mitts on a copy of Adventurer’s Vault, a book full of new equipment, and I’ve had some time to peruse it.
The short and sweet? There’s some really neat stuff in here for anyone who regularly plays D&D 4th Edition.
September 7, 2008 in Roleplaying | No comments
Are you ready for this? This combination is an interesting thought experiment. It’s clearly suboptimal, and kind of a one-trick build, mechanically speaking. And it’s not even that great of a trick!
For this build, we’ll go with level 5. Why level 5? Because that’s what level we were in the Moathouse adventure I played at PAX.
Tags: 4e, D&D, suboptimal