Another Week Goes By...

It’s been over a month now since I’ve played D&D.
I’ve felt very few signs of withdrawal so far; just a few twinges to install a D&D computer game.

I might be able to play one Friday coming up soon, but that’s not guaranteed. Hopefully a couple other of us will be free to play as well.

In spite of my drastic reduction in free time I still fit in some time to peruse ENWorld, including looking for 4E info that is more than simple speculation.

It appears that the wealth of initial 4E information has slowed to a trickle for now. Anything new seems to be teasers or more fluff that means nothing to me.

Though WotC did release one small thing that gave a wealth of information; a teaser of what the 4E monster stat blocks will look like in the form of a demon/devil. I am in fact impressed with its simplicity. I’m not 100% pleased with it, but nothing I can’t let go until I get more information. The info also leads several people (on ENWorld) to believe that bonuses from ability scores will start at 6 rather than 12. So it looks to me like they’re working hard to turn 4E into an additive game as much as possible with less subtraction to force the mathematically inept from having to change gears so much.

I finally got around listening to the “Monsters, Monsters, Monsters” D&D podcast. My opinion of it is “eh”. They’re making a big deal of monster “roles” in combat and how many foes a party can or should face. I just don’t see how much of a difference the monsters make; it’s how the PC’s are different that makes or breaks this game. My opinion of them putting specialized monsters in the MM4 & MM5 was low because I can make a leveled drow on my own. I know how to run monsters and how to make them stronger so shut up and make new monsters or remake old ones.

If you just have to make monsters with levels, do it with what you would expect to see. The goblin chief should have some levels of rogue, the orc warlord should have levels of barbarian, elf tree-hugger archers should be made with levels of ranger, and so on. Those might save me some time, but making a score of gnolls with different class levels does not a monster manual make.

Sometimes I wonder if the designers are too busy trying to figure out new and interesting things to make that they forget to deal with the basics first.

Since I’ve exhausted my remedial wealth of 4E information, I guess it’s time to move on to my Rappan Athuk planning.

Let’s see I’ve already talked about making it gestalt, upping the hit points for classes, XP modification (if needed), alignment, spell non-changes, allowed classes and class options, party treasure, and some speeding up of the game.

So let’s talk about speeding up the game some more; since it is the biggest bane of 3E’s existence in my experience.

Well for one since I’ve cut down on the number of spell choices allowed to PC’s by allowing only sorcerers and favored souls as the arcane and divine classes, buffs probably won’t be too varied. And even if a player does take a lot of buff spells for his PC, that’s ok. It will be the same buff spells over and over so the math won’t be much of an issue. We could just use our “spell note cards” and have them ready at all times.

One thing in our group that seems to cause a lot of time sink in a game is thinking too much about your movement. First you need to figure out where you want to go, then you have to determine the best route while avoiding attacks of opportunity, and then you might have to make some tumble rolls, and so on. Screw that! For this game, you only suffer movement AoO’s during your first step of movement. Just grab your mini and move it. I’m sure this will interact with other bits of the game where some feats gain power and others lose, but I think things will be fine.

I’m also -this- close to kicking the “5’ step” to the curb. Unfortunately it’s too ingrained into the system to remove easily without penalizing the PC’s.

And if PC movement still takes too long, I’m canning the battle-mat, tossing the minis into the bin, and we’re going to play without any table representation of what’s going on. Sometimes I wonder if we’d be happier doing that anyway. With no battle-mat, the tactical part of the game turns into an imaginary battle-mat where not everyone has the same view, but players’ individual turns can go so much faster, and the only time a table is needed is for dice rolling and something hard to write on.

Let’s see, what else?
Oh yeah, the Power Attack feat. It’s either all on, or all off. That way you only have one set of numbers to deal with that will only change when you level rather than a formula you need to figure out every round. This is kind of a thing from way back in the Basic D&D Master’s Set that allowed you to pull your punch, but you couldn’t partially pull it; it was all or nothing. Same concept here; you either throw everything you have with abandon, or you continue with the controlled attacks that deal less damage but hit more often.

Since only paladins will have the turn undead, I think it’s fitting that we should use the holy bomb rules like we did with Ravenloft. Though instead of a way overpowered 60’ radius blast, I think I’ll limit it to a 30’ cone. At higher levels that could still hurt some undead and gives paladins something they don’t usually have, area nukes.

I thought about making everyone’s saving throw bonus equal to their level like in D&D minis, but I realized that a change like that could actually hurt the gestalt part of the game. Gestalt PC’s tend to have some sweet saving throws as one of their strengths (unless you pick classes with the same good saves).

I’m debating on changing the death at -10 hit point rule. Potentially -10 or “negative your level”, whichever is greater. I’m still waffling on this one, but leaning towards no change at all.

Sudden Metamagic Feats – gone. I want to remove the allure of “blowing your wad” early (the 5 minute adventuring day), and if anything, these feats encourage that mindset. Regular metamagic feats are fine.

Dodge (and all feats similar to it) – like I’ve done in previous campaigns, it gives a +1 dodge bonus vs. all attackers, not just one specific attacker.

I think I’ve already mentioned that there is a small village that exists near Rappan Athuk, and as much I can, I’m going to make that village a living and breathing place.

It will have the standard places that should exist to support adventurers, and in this case “adventurer tourism” is the bread and butter of the town. Several businesses in the town exist simply to supply equipment to new and foolhardy adventurers looking for their fame in Rappan Athuk; though many of their customers don’t come back.

There will be places the PC’s can buy magic items, but by no means can they buy anything they want. The shops only have what can be made locally, shipped in from elsewhere, or sold to them by other adventurers. And the prices will be adjusted according to supply and demand since I’m going to attempt to give this town a working economy.

There will be temples that can help the party, but the Church of Wee Jas isn’t among the friendliest churches around.

In other words, if an adventurer needs something, it just might be there. All they have to do is find it and bring money.

I’ll start the group off at level 1, allowing the group some time to learn to work together and get used to the gestalt power.

For PC equipment, everyone gets 200gp but they may not buy anything magical. Now you may freely save some of that money to buy magic items later at a shop, but don’t expect 200gp to go far, if anywhere. Otherwise PC’s can buy whatever standard equipment they can carry, so long as that equipment won’t kill game speed with special or complicated rules (like a spiked chain).

I would like to tie some other potential 4E changes into this game, but I just don’t know enough about it yet. So I’ll just reserve the right to change aspects of the game that slow the game down too much if I can find a better alternative I like.

As for actual stat generation, I almost don’t care. I don’t want broken stats, and a 25 point buy is too low for gestalt PC’s to split up between two classes. This issue should probably get player input.

In fact I should talk to my group and see what ideas they might have that could speed up the game.

Maybe that’s what my next blog entry could be about.