:Kill the Wizard First

With one of my extant D&D games winding down due to the GM’s impending departure from the region (job, moving, &c.), I have a suspiciously game-sized hole in my schedule.

I also have a whole stack of rules revisions that I’d like to see on the table. Stuff like class replacements, a refactored economy and magic item system - big changes, including some stuff cribbed from The Gaming Den, and some stuff Seth’s been working on. So it looks like I’m going to be running an experimental playtest game, and we’ll see how some of these changes work out. I’ll try to post reports and summaries here, so I have a compiled reference of what works and what doesn’t.

Since my Ptolus group badgered me into running a semi-weekly Sidereals game, I don’t really have time to put a campaign together, but I do have a bunch of adventure modules I’d like to try out.

We’ll see how this goes.

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So, I’ve been following the Paizo Pathfinder thing. And mostly, my first reaction is good - I think that keeping the 3e ruleset in print in some form is a neat idea, I think it can totally coexist with 4e, and kudos and best of luck to them for doing it. I’m also really thrilled by the way they’re drawing the community into the design processes.

I’ve read the current version, though, and so far I’m less than thrilled. They’ve fixed a few things, but by and large, they haven’t gone nearly far enough in bringing the classes into balance or fixing gaping loopholes. I’m neutral on the skill changes - more skills are fine, but they might have gone overboard. I dislike the feats, and massively prefer Frank & K’s scaling feats.

But the nice thing about the design process is they still have time to iron all this stuff out. I’ll be interested to see what emerges.

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Iron, Flame, and Shadow has ended, after a year and a half of experimentation, adventuring, and triumph. We pushed Ptolus to the limit, with six (five, towards the end when one moved out of town) optimized gestault characters romping their way from underground Yuan-Ti cities, through the Banewarrens, and all the way up to Goth Gulgamel and the Orb of Entropy. Levels 1-13, and good times had by all. Longest continuous game I’ve run since my (fairly epic) two and a half year Mage: The Ascension game in college, and all the more challenging since several of us had real jobs this time around.

I had a really hard time challenging this group. To get an idea of how good these players were: the final series of encounters were, with only a few minutes between each (and bearing in mind, these are level 13 characters): EL 15, with four Cthorn undead fighters and two Cthorn undead wizards (from the Ptolus book); 18, an undead modified Titan; 18, eight slightly modified Darkweavers (Fiend Folio) who reformed into an advanced Darkweaver when enough were killed; and 17, two Phantasmal Slayers (Heroes of Horror). And while I like to think I was pressing them in the end, I’m pretty sure they had a few more tricks to go.

It was an educational game. I learned a lot about 3.5, about Ptolus, and about how to run both. And it was fun as hell, even when they were making my encounters cry.

So here’s a salute to Monte Cook, for Ptolus and the Banewarrens, and to my players, for putting up with all the horrible things I did to them. Thanks, guys, and one day, Screaming Mike will forgive me for what I inflicted on his paladin. It was good times all the way through, and may all my games be as entertaining.

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The 4th ed rogue has been posted.

This article contains the first two design decisions I’ve heard about so far that I unambiguously and completely agree with.

First, they changed the HP scaling - it’s much higher at first level (class + constitution score), but grows more slowly (fixed by class). Fixes one of my biggest gripes about low-level D&D (the crappy survival rate of the characters), and removes one of the more obnoxious recalculations in the game, re-mathing your HP when you get a temporary constitution change.

Second, it looks (though this cannot be confirmed yet) like they’re grouping weapons and assigning proficiencies like that. “Light blades” probably covers daggers, short swords, possibly rapiers, etc. It makes a lot more sense than the 3.5 proficiency system. They’re also tying abilities to specific weapon groups, which I suppose isn’t a bad idea, but as with practically everything else I’ve heard, I’ll have to wait to see how that works out in actual play.

I remain, as ever, slightly pessimistic, but interested.

In other news, I present today’s Very Short Review: Scion: Demigod is like Scion: Hero but louder and more poorly balanced. I just picked up Scion: God and predict it will be more of the same. Cool setting, decent system, but wow, does it need some house ruling.

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I’m still alive. Just distracted. Trying to come up with a more regular routine for this blog, because I certainly haven’t slacked off in my book purchases (even if I’m down to one table game these days).

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Two games coming to an end. The Exalted game I’m playing in has about one session left, as we throw down with all the forces of Creation and the Underworld and try to decide who are the bigger liers, the Sidereals or the Deathlords. And my Mage game has probably two to three sessions left while the PCs and the Department of Void Engineering try to keep an angel from accidentally wiping Chicago, retroactively.

Ptolus is on winter hiatus, since we finished up the Banewarrens. Was a fun run, but I think everyone will be glad to go back to above-ground urban adventure.

Picked up some choice books at Pandemonium over Thanksgiving. Looking forward to flipping through All Tomorrow’s Zombies, and grabbed some well-recommended indie books. Now that I’m mostly through the console rush, I should have time to put up some serious reviews.

D&D 4th Ed. I’ve been following it, and so far, it’s receiving a resounding “meh” from me. Some things sound good, like making saves more like AC and getting away from the four-encounters-per-day balance point. Somethings, not so good - making dragonborn a core race is painfully unnecessary, I’ve heard conflicting reports about how multiclassing will work and I don’t like any of them, and what I’m hearing about feats and talents sounds like it’s the 3.X fighter waiting to happen. We will see.

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This is a bad season for me and tabletop games. Because I’m also into video gaming, and the October-December block is when every game company on the planet decides to bring all its good games to market. So I’m largely in maintenance mode at the moment, mostly just keeping up with new Exalted releases.

Speaking of which, Roll of Glorious Divinities I: Gods & Elementals: Pretty good. Great selection of spirit charms, good writeups of gods, elementals, and the differences between them. Not required for a game, but a nice addition to it. Also includes our first look at the second edition version of the summoning and binding rules from 1e’s Games of Divinity. I assume more will be touched on in RoGD2: Demons & whatever (undead?).

Anyway, haven’t bought many new game books lately, or had time to work through my backlog of reviews.

Ptolus continues to be good times. Nearing the end of the Banewarrens, and I’m glad - running it has been fun, and using a pre-written adventure saves a lot of time on prep work, but I think everyone’s getting a bit of dungeon fatigue and is looking forward to getting back to urban adventuring.

So, since I haven’t really had time to follow the scene, what other new releases should I be buying? Is there anything interesting on the horizon?

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Alternate Title: Never trust a grand vizier.

Being a review of Manual of Exalted Power: Sidereals, published by White Wolf.

Summery: Sidereals are cheating cheaters, which can make it tremendously difficult to fit them into a game. Their entire strategy revolves around using auto-win powers when they can, and running away when they can’t. They have a brittle Charm set, bizarre and frequently overpriced defenses, a Celestial Bureaucracy that doesn’t like them very much, and a severe lack of numbers. All of that is still true, but they’ve been fleshed out considerably. Overall, there are a few key balance concerns to house-rule over, and some lack of clarity where certain rules are concerned, but the presentation of the Sidereal mandate is top-notch and they get some very nice write-ups.
Read the rest of ‘An Epic Kung Fu Ninja Wizard Did It’ »

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Dungeons & Dragons: Celebrating 30 years of very stupid monsters.

(Via Twenty Sided.)

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Posting as “James” now. No real reason for the switch, just felt like it.

Scion: Demigod came in, I’ll be giving it a look (and a review) shortly, along with an overdue review for Changeling: The Lost.

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