Re: [4e] RE: Design and Development - The Zombie

Malachias Invictus wrote:
tussock wrote:

Hmm, sorry 'bout the upcoming ramble.

No problem. Split for readability. This one is part 1.

Thanks.

<snips>

Characters often totally run out of powers five minutes after getting
them, so everyone needs useful unlimited stuff.

I agree with this completely. If the Wizard has to fall back to
crossbow use, I consider that a failure.

Of the guy playing the Wizard. Scribe Scroll isn't there to fill in
space on the character ***.

A starting character does not have scrolls, nor the experience and gold
needed to make them.

At levle one, each standard encounter is enough gp each for *six*
scrolls on average, and the XP just doesn't matter after the first fight.
You can burn a third of your gp on consumables and never fall more than a
level behind in wealth, easily made up by sharing the love, two scrolls
per fight from day one (with starting funds initially).
Personally, I'm a big fan of a Wizard spending *everything* on
scrolls until 4th level, hundreds of them, with a Wand for favoured
spells if you like, pausing only for a BBB when the party wants to chip
in. Plus, with that campaign style alive in the world, NPCs carry lots of
them too.

Reserve feats fix this somewhat, but it could be done better.

Pick spells with a concentration duration, use your scrolls, use
your cantrips (which you'd know to do if you played more 1st level),

Are you kidding? I have guys using cantrips regularly all the way up.
Ghost Sound is a great distraction at any level, for example.

Good man, now use more charged stuff. You can't take it with you, eh.

and use more scrolls. I really don't get how people are burning
everything up in one encounter.

I suppose it depends on the encounter. It also depends on how much
money you are willing to burn on a given encounter. Wizards need plenty
of gold for their spellbooks as it is. That is why I am so surprised
that other groups don't use the Wizard Capitalism model like we do.

Boccob's Blessed Books are cheap, spell exchanges easy for any
guilded law-abiding Wizard (or a Wizard who knows one who is, or has a
cutpurse for a friend, or who kills a Wizard, ...).

The per day/per encounter/per round thing is a great idea, because it
allows for a more precise degree of balancing playability.

Straitjacketing, I think you'll find.

I doubt it. A combination of feats and Bo9S maneuvers accomplishes the
same thing, and it does not remotely feel like straitjacketing.

It's nice that they've made it comfortable. 8]

A better option is open slots that can take either type of thing at the
player's option, which they may well be doing.

That is even better. A given slot can be a minor effect every round, a
medium effect once per encounter, or a major effect once a day.

Indeed.

On the other hand, it is a different design paradigm to make groups of
rooms synergize well into a single encounter. It is not often done in
official adventures, for example.

3e framerates suffer with too many enemies in view. 4e is lowering
the polygon count, allowing the level designers more freedom to go all
Doom II on things.

Funny analogy. That may have something to do with some monsters being
too much of a pain in the ass to run in large groups.

Yep. I've simplified 3e where I could, but I still can't really do
the things I used to with numbers and variety of monsters in ADnD or
Basic. It used to be nothing to throw a dozen levelled fighters at a
party, and by name level you could do running battles against hundreds in
the open.
Hell, a few modules used to include battles against a hundred foes at
a time, all 10th-16th level in a ravenloft one I played. Insanely hard
fights for the most part, but felt pretty good to just run away from.

Very much my experience with first-person shooters too.


<Re: Epic types>

Darksun 21-30?

Interesting, at least for that setting.

I quite liked it for the most part. The Player's Option: High Level
Campaigns book did similar things, IIRC. A fair bit of it's become normal
mid-level options in 3rd edition, even similar transformation classes
have shown up along the way, so it's probably too low powered these days.
Inflation's a bitch.

I reckon they're not doing any of
that, just stretching 20th level power out to level 30, and removing
epic alltogether. But that's mostly guesswork. 8]

They *have* mentioned that level 20 in 4E will be roughly equivalent in
power to level 20 in 3.5E.

Except that the current 9th level spells will be spread out a bit
higher, IIRC. Which is good, some of them are pretty obscene.

--
tussock

Aspie at work, sorry in advance.
.