Digital Alterity

Yet another back story for one of my World of Warcraft characters. Bargor is the sort of character that would be really conducive to playing in a D&D group. He’s team-oriented and has a lot of history without being disruptive.

“Mugwort” is actually the nickname of Bargor Corpsehammer, a soldier of Orgrimmar and single-father. Bargor and his wife Chok’la joined with the orcish forces to help repel the Scourge after the orcs fled to Kalimdor (i.e. during the events of Warcraft 3). Chok’la was killed in the fighting, leaving their young son Guksal with only Mugwort to care for him.

During the time of relative peace that followed, Bargor earned an extremely meager living as a day laborer gathering herbs. Upon realizing that he didn’t have enough money for Guksal to be educated, Bargor joined the military and used his stipend to put Guksal into boarding school at the Orgrimmar Orphanage.

During his first tour of duty as a guard in Ashenvale, he earned his botanical nickname by picking flowers and herbs to sell when he returned to Orgrimmar for leave. Using his son’s old schoolbooks, Mugwort taught himself to read and write well enough to earn some extra money as a scribe during his off hours. Mastering the written word has given Mugwort a love for writing long letters home to his son, a past-time he frequently indulges in while other soldiers go out drinking.

Mugwort looks forward to the day when he can retire from active duty and return home to open his own business and take care of his son.

1. Roll up an Alliance alt of a new character class that I haven’t really tried before so that I can “see the Alliance quests”.
2. Play the character up to level 20-30 and really start enjoying the class.
3. Think to myself, “I miss being with my guild. I wish I had an alt of this class on the Horde side.”
4. Wistfully roll an alt of said character class — usually an orc — on a dumping ground RP server.
5. Play said alt up to level 5 or so.
6. Wonder why I didn’t start the alt as an orc in the first place.
7. Delete a character to make an orcish version of said character class “just to hang with my guildmates”.
8. Forget about the Alliance version until it gets deleted to make room for yet another orcish alt.

Rokhar Soulflayer is an older orcish shaman. He no longer uses his honorific last name, earned during his younger years as a warlock in service of the Horde. Rohkar was born on Draenor and is roughly a contemporary of Thrall’s father Durotan. A member of the Dragonmaw Clan, Rokhar was chosen by the ancestors as a shaman at an early age. After completing his training, Rokhar served as one of the Dragonmaw shaman during the events of Rise of the Horde. When Nerzhul offered the shaman a chance to learn the fel magic of warlocks, Rokhar jumped eagerly at the chance. When Guldan demanded that the orcs drink from the chalice of demon’s blood, Rokhar drank deeply. When Guldan and Medivh opened the Dark Portal, Rokhar was part of the furious green Horde that nearly destroyed Azeroth. When Alexstrasza and the red dragonflight tore apart Grim Batol, scattering the Dragonmaw clan, Rohkar began to question where the demonic magics of the Burning Legion had left him, and he began life as a wandering exile.

When Doomhammer and Thrall began liberating orcs from internment camps, Rohkar fell in with the newly formed Horde. He is currently on a journey to convince the elements to entrust him with their power once again before he leaves the mortal realm to be with the ancestors.

Physical Traits

Rokhar’s skin is a brilliant green with fiery red eyes as a legacy of his time under demonic influence. He regards these aspects of his appearance as a shame. His hair is white with age.

I don’t play WoW on an RP server. I don’t run around talking in character. I learned way back in Everquest that most people just look at you confused when you do that. Nonetheless, I consistently score as a Method Actor player type (from Robin’s Laws of Good Gamemastering), and I definitely approach D&D in this fashion — much the chagrin of my players and DMs who have the misfortune to run one of my characters. For me, each character has to have their own motivations, ideals, and voice.

World of Warcraft is no exception.

The trouble is that, even though my characters have their own unique (and often elaborate) back-stories, people at large rarely even know about them. Because I’m a raging narcissist, I have decided to share these character ideas and stories in this post. Feel free to point and yell, “Nerd!” in my general direction.

Hemlock

Hemlock started as a Tauren hunter before he was savagely deleted and re-rolled as an orc. You’d think that this reboot would be a retcon, but I wanted an in-story reason for this as well.

Hemlock grew up in Thunder Bluff and remembers clearly when the orcs came to Kalimdor. Hemlock considered it an honor to fight alongside the orcs after the kindness they showed by helping in the Tauren struggle against the centaurs. He ended up paying a high price for honor, however, when he was kidnapped during Admiral Proudmore’s assault on Durotar. Hemlock spent the next two years as a slave in a human camp. When a Forsaken raiding party descended upon the town, taking prisoners of their own for their ghoulish experiments, Hemlock pledged his service to the Royal Apothecary Society in hopes that he could earn his revenge against the humans and their allies.

Hemlock became a cold assassin, killing members of the Alliance at every opportunity. His service to the cause got him noticed by military leaders in the Horde, who sent him out to the front lies of the Burning Crusade in Outlands. When the Lich King brazenly attacked Orgrimmar, it was a foregone conclusion that Hemlock would be at the forefront of the Horde’s military response. Sadly, during the massacre at the Wrath Gate, Hemlock was cut down — not by the Lich King’s minions, but rather by the Royal Apothecary Society itself.

Upon learning of Hemlock’s tragic life, one of the shaman back in Orgrimmar sought to bring Hemlock back to life for another chance at vengeance. Something about the apothecaries’ plague, however, twisted the Ancestral Spirit ritual, returning Hemlock’s spirit to the body of a young orcish grunt who had also fallen during the siege. With a new lease on life, Hemlock is struggling to quickly re-learn his old combat skills and help destroy the Lich King, his undead minions, the traitors in the Royal Apothecary Society, and anyone else that stands in his way.

Lucanth

I originally rolled WoW Lucanth as a Blood Elf Warlock, but it felt too much like I was playing a weird version of my long-running D&D character. The new version of Lucanth is a Blood Elf Paladin, who fits quite neatly into the game’s lore.

Before the Sunwell was destroyed, Lucanth was a minor mage of some ability. That was a lifetime ago. Now there is only the gnawing hunger for magic wherever he can find it. If magic isn’t freely available to lessen the pain, then Lucanth will take it from anything and anyone he can.

As a pre-Outlands paladin, Lucanth is one of the “paladins” who are actively stealing the lifeforce and abilities of the Naaru. His ethos is very much chaotic neutral because of his withdrawal from the magic energies of the Sunwell. Lucanth is a paladin purely because channeling the light makes the pain of withdrawal go away. He is a Retribution paladin, using holy magic to destroy rather than to heal or protect.

Warcraft Lucanth’s story will ultimately hinge on his response to the revelation that the Naaru has been giving freely of his Holy Light to help the suffering of the Blood Elves. I may well change his entire playstyle to reflect this realization once he gets into the Burning Legion storyline in Outlands.

Rusty’s Secret Warlock

When you’re an introvert, sometimes you need to have some time to yourself. Sometimes I need to hide away where I’m not a guild officer or the only healer on someone’s friend list. These days, I tend to play on my secret warlock. She’s undead. She looks like an adorable rag doll.

Before the Scourge descended upon Azeroth, she was a priestess in the Church of the Holy Light. She joined a convent at an early age because her family had too many mouths to feed. She took to the rites and rituals with a fervor that surprised her superiors. She took vows of poverty and gave everything she earned to help poor families like her own.

Then the plague came. She was one of the first to die, and she remembers vividly the unfeeling horror she became. She remembers exactly what it felt like to disembowel the ones she loved. She remembers what the bishop at her rectory tasted like. When the Lich King finally lost control over what would become the Forsaken, she fell into a dreamless nihilistic sleep.

When she woke in the tomb, she felt more like herself. Or at least, she seemed able to make her own decisions. The zombie undertaker told her emotionlessly that she was almost put on the funeral pyre because they thought she was just going to be another of the mindless ones. She felt empty and cold. The ever-present warmth of the Holy Light was nowhere to be found, and rather than feeling terrible and lonely, the absence felt strangely liberating. The Lich King wouldn’t control her, and neither would any church or philosophy. She would live as she wished and pursue whatever delights this world still had.

Pacts with the demons of the Burning Legion? The church had it all wrong. If you were strong enough, you bound the demons to your will — not the other way around. She summoned her own imp and even learned how to harness their own fel magic to use against them. Inspired by the plague, she became especially adept at cursing her enemies and watching them slowly die. The world needed neither Light nor Shadow; it needed people willing to make a third way, their own way.

She loves to cook, but her lack of smell makes her dishes quite dubious. The stitches holding what’s left of her face together make her not much for dinner conversation. Frankly, she doesn’t hate the living so much as she just doesn’t care about anyone, living or undead. She’s not the most social being, but her thirst for new knowledge — no matter how forbidden — make her the ghoul to check with when you need an answer on matters of the arcane.

Besom

At last we come to my Tauren Druid main. I ♥ Besom.

Growing up, Besom was a real tomboy. She was so rough and tumble that she was often mistaken for a boy. She spent most of her youth gallivanting around with her best friend Schmoo and helping the local elders with anything that let her be rowdy.

Besom has a relatively short attention span. She always knew that she was going to be a druid, but during her time as an initiate she has dabbled in nearly every aspect of the druidic traditions. As a Druid of the Claw, she got to get up close and fight in her animal form, but as a Balance druid, she got to call down storms and knock enemies around with sudden winds. These days, she’s still a dabbler, but an earnest desire to heal the land has led her to focus on the Restoration tradition when in Northrend.

Besom is a very social Tauren, and she loves the feeling of being part of a herd or family. In her early days as an adventurer, she became associated with a guild of similarly genki people, the rowdy denizens of Lunatic Fringe. Besom loves to dance at guild gatherings, but honestly, she knows she’s not very good at it. She learned one dance back when she was a young bovine, and she just breaks that dance out for every occasion. The Besom Dance gets progressively more…interesting as she gets drunker.

Besom isn’t flighty, however. She often worries about being able to do a great job when working with others. She’s somewhat self-conscious around non-Taurens, a feeling that’s probably exacerbated by her relationship with the druidic Cenarion Circle.

Besom deals with all the same challenges that Hemlock, for example, has, but she remains steadfastly untainted by it. The world is a party for Besom, and it’s full of excuses to dance. Poorly. And occasionally moo at confused members of the Alliance.

Dear DPS classes/specs,

Let me start off by saying that I love you. You make the really big numbers show up above the monsters’ heads and make them stop hitting the tank before I run out of mana. This is a critical part of any group, and I want to /hug each one of you.

I would, however, like to broach a difficult subject. You see, as your party healer in a heroic instance, most of my attention has to be focused on the tank. You know, the big guy up front with all the armor and damage mitigation. If I don’t keep dropping HoTs and Nourish on him, he will expire and make the monsters come rape you. No one wants that. If I’m not ready for an emergency Swiftmend during damage spikes, then that poor bugger is going to die horribly.

Please look at your health bar. It’s the little bar beside your picture at the upper-left of your screen. When that bar starts dropping, please make it stop.

If the big ugly monster is hitting you, you did more damage than the tank could compensate for. This isn’t how you win. Use your abilities like Cower, Fade, or Feign Death to make them hate the tank all over again.

If the floor beneath you looks like it’s on fire, it probably is. Move out of that fire.

I understand that a certain amount of AoE damage is going to happen. I’m happy to fire off a quick Rejuvenation at you to top you off. Heck, during really hairy moments, I’ll even throw you a lifebloom. However, if you’re taking more damage than my Wild Growth AoE heal is giving you back, you’re going to have trouble. Every spell that I cast on you is a spell that I’m not casting on the main tank. If you persist, in taking damage, I’m probably going to have to let you die. And, no, I’m not going to use my combat rez on you. You’ll get rezzed when we’re out of combat.

I’m a healer; I don’t want anyone to die. I just don’t have much choice when you’re committing suicide over and over and over again.

With much love,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Druid Healer

I wanted to offer a bit of insight into the math behind Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. Having run the system for nearly a year now, I can tell you that subjectively the system feels pretty balanced. Subjectivity is always a bit of a rub, however. When dealing with systems governed by numbers, feelings are no substitute for calculations and arithmetic. Just for grins, I wanted to calculate the average damage per round (DPR) for the two martial strikers — the rogue and the ranger — to see how they compare. Both classes are, after all, designed for single-target damage and mobility.

Getting the average ACs by level is pretty easy since the Dungeon Masters Guide conveniently provides the information necessary for creating your own monsters. The skirmisher, we are told, is essentially the baseline monster. Soldiers will be a little harder to hit; brutes will be easier to hit, etc. The skirmisher’s AC should be around 15 at first level (character level + 14).

Rogues get a bonus to hit with daggers, so I used the humble dagger as my weapon for this theoretical rogue. In addition, I choose to base this series of calculations using at-will attacks since they are repeatable until the encounter is over. For the rogue, Sly Flourish seems to be a pretty powerful at-will attack, adding both Dexterity and Charisma to the final damage. Since we’re intentionally min-maxing, we’ll choose a halfling for our trickster rogue. Using the standard array, our rogue will have an 18 DEX and a 16 CHA. With all of the bonuses to hit (+3 proficiency bonus, +1 class bonus using daggers, +4 dexterity), our rogue has a 70% chance to hit our baseline skirmisher.

When it comes to damage, our rogue is going to do 1d4+7, and at least some of the time, he’s also going to do sneak attack damage. Based on what I’ve seen in my ongoing 4e game, I’m going to assume that our rogue can get combat advantage 75% of the time. Honestly, with proper tactics and power selection, this is probably a conservative estimate. Given all of these factors, our rogue will do 11.4 DPR. If he takes the Backstabber feat, his DPR goes up to 12.6. Keep in mind that rogue damage is rather situational. If you can only get combat advantage 50% of the time your numbers will drop to 10.5 DPR with backstabber or 9.4 DPR without it.

Rangers require a bit more complicated math since we’re going to use Twin Strike as our at-will power. Rangers get to add their Hunter’s Quarry bonus if they hit with at least one of their attacks. Given this, we have to calculate the probability of events which are not mutually exclusive. This is governed by the equation P(A) + P(B) – P(A and B).

For melee rangers, we’ll assume that our ranger has an 18 STR (to match our rogue’s 18 DEX above) and that she’s using a +3 proficiency weapon like longswords or bastard swords. Because rangers don’t get a class bonus for melee weapons, we’re looking at a 65% chance to hit our skirmisher. Given this percentage chance, we can calculate that our ranger is going to apply Hunter’s Quarry damage 87.75% of the time. But not so fast, since our melee ranger is also up in the thick of combat, he should also be maneuvering for combat advantage at all times. Increasing your chance to hit, increases your overall DPR.

Considering damage for our melee ranger, we’ll assume that she’s either going to take Weapon Proficiency (Bastard Sword) or Lethal Quarry (+1d8 damage for Hunter’s Quarry rather than +1d6) as her first level feat. The numbers work out to be 10.2 DPR for our bastard sword ranger and 9.8 for our Lethal Quarry / longsword ranger. So, if you’re building a melee ranger for damage, pick up the weapon proficiency feat before Lethal Quarry. Also, worth noting is that combat advantage doesn’t cause our damage to spike upward like the rogue. Assuming only 50% combat advantage, our average DPR only drops by about 0.3-0.4 — a far cry from the 2.0-2.1 DPR that the rogue loses with the same calculations.

Archer rangers have to be a bit more strategic with their shots. Normally, bow users have a slightly lower chance to hit because of the lower proficiency bonus (+2 for both the longbow and the greatbow), but the Prime Shot class ability compensates for this somewhat, giving a +1 bonus to hit as long as the ranger is the closest party member to the target. Without Prime Shot, archer rangers have a 60% chance to hit, but prime shot will bring that right back up to 65%. With prime shot, our chance to land at least one attack and therefore do our Hunter’s Quarry damage is exactly that of our melee ranger: 87.75% of the time. Being further away means a modest drop to 84%.

Given these percentages, we can calculate that our greatbow ranger will do 10.74 DPR without Prime Shot and 11.5 DPR with it. Our longbow / Lethal Quarry ranger will output 10.38 DPR without Prime Shot or 11.1 DPR with it.

The end results look something like this.

tl;dr The two PHB martial strikers are on pretty even ground. If you have a mind for tactics, then the rogue might be your best choice. If you can consistently get combat advantage through flanking, your damage scales up accordingly.

Some time last week, I had an idea for a new D&D character that just wouldn’t let me go. Those of you who are writers probably have some inkling of what this is like. Suddenly, I was hit by character background, common phrases he would utter, appearance, cultural history — essentially everything I would need for a really detailed character background. After days wasting brain cycles on this thing, I eventually had to commit the character to paper.

Belgar is definitely a player character. I have no desire to “waste” him as an NPC when he strikes me as really fun to play. He’s very definitely a 4e character, but I’m tempted to fire up some kind of 3e warlock if we start lowbie characters sometime soon in my Gainesville gaming group.

Does this write-up inspire you? Feel free to use Belgar in your game. Heck, feel free to play your own version of Belgar. I certainly wish I were.

The Story Thus Far

In the early days of the world, when the world itself was still cooling from being forged by the hammer of Moradin himself, the Primordial Chaos was always one short breath away. Looking with boundless love upon his dwarven children, the Soul Forger gave unto them the mountains filled with sturdy stone, precious metals, and the finest of gems. Unto us he gave the bountiful stone and the wisdom to harvest the mountain’s bounty and even the sacred runes to inscribe the song of the earth itself. One thing he did ask of us: Delve not into the secret core of the mountain for that knowledge is not for mortal minds to keep.

If history were merely a record of the greatest deeds and most frightful tragedies of a people, then the tale of the Hammerforge clan of dwarves would be on the lips of every mortal alive. In their efforts to uncover ever more pure veins of precious metals, those ambitious dwarves delved too deep, opening a portal into the very Elemental Chaos that the gods had pushed aside to order the world into the realm we know. There in that realm of madness, the Hammerforge dwarves made the acquaintance of an eldritch being built from purest, most draconian evil. With honeyed words, the fiend convinced the dwarves to exchange their servitude for the power to drive the giants away from their mountain homes. Thus were born the first of the dwarven warlocks.

When the church of Moradin saw the success of Clan Hammerforge in their campaigns against the storm giants, they began to inquire into the sudden and overwhelming victories. When the bishops detected the brimstone stench of devils upon the Knight Generals of Clan Hammerforge, however, the mountain itself was torn into a vicious civil war. The church emerged victorious in the end and systematically purged all records of the Hammerforge Clan and even of the war itself.

Belgar Stonebreaker was born in the mountain halls that marked the ancestral home of his clan for countless generations. However, at a young age, his family was chased out of their caverns after a siege by frost giants and settled in a predominantly human township. His family, indeed a large number of his clan, maintained a close-knit dwarven culture in the town, creating something of a dwarven ghetto. The humans gladly took the dwarves in, viewing the weaponsmiths and gem-cutters as a welcome boon to trade with the neighboring settlements. The cross-cultural relationship over the years has been a strong one born of mutual benefit.

Belgar was always an apt pupil in the subject of history, looking to connect with the dwarven heritage that he felt deprived of. He spent nearly every spare moment in the temple of Moradin, digging through old birth records, military histories, and census data. The dusty tomes and delicate scrolls became a refuge for young Belgar, a home that no giant could ever drive him away from. The lay priests welcomed Belgar’s dedicated efforts and came to depend on the bright young scholar’s efforts to categorize the mountains of information that the church had become the caretakers of.

In leafing through a shipment of uncategorized tomes sent from a distant temple, Belgar stumbled upon the tragic tale of Clan Hammerforge, a legend that gripped his heart in a way that wouldn’t leave him. The fascination quietly became an obsession, and Belgar kept an eager eye open for any scraps of forbidden knowledge related to the Hammerforge Pact. His search eventually led him far afield of his town and his clan and into the libraries of the larger cities. After two years of searching, he found the keystone that pulled together all of the secret knowledge he had gathered thus far. Belgar had found a timeworn ritual that claimed to be the exact rite that the Hammerforge clan had used to bind the infernal powers to do as they bid. Secretly gathering together all the materials for the rite certainly proved to be an ordeal, but Belgar’s obsession wouldn’t leave him until he at least tried the binding.

In dark shadows of the mountain he believed to be the exact mountain the marked the genesis of the Hammerforge Pact, Belgar scribed all the right ritual circles, chanted all the right liturgies, and burned all the right herbs as incense. When the apex of the ritual beckoned, convinced by the swirl of arcane energy he could feel coursing through his spirit, the dedicated scholar thrust his left hand into the very embers of the ritual fire, expecting that the magical energies would certainly protect him from harm.

Since that day, Belgar commands infernal forces as a warlock of the Hammerforge Pact. No being has contacted him to collect on the bargain, but Belgar now understands that ritual bound him to service and not the other way around. Belgar remains committed to the side of ordered civilization and dwarven virtue, but he knows full well the danger of the powers he has dealt with. He intends to use evil’s own power against itself, and if he has to sacrifice himself to save the world, he’s willing to go down fighting with a dwarven curse on his lips and the taste of ale in his throat.

Mannerisms and Minutia

• Belgar has been away from his clan for going on three years now, but he maintains strong ties with his family and with the remnants of his larger clan. His letters home, entrusted to caravans and merchants along the road, tell of the faraway places and interesting cultures he encounters in his travels.
• Belgar always wears a pair of black leather hand gloves that he uses to hide the lingering scars on his left hand from the binding ritual that gave him his powers.
• Like all members of his clan, Belgar is trained in the use of warhammers and chain mail.
• When Belgar inflicts an enemy with his warlock curse, a ghostly pentagram appears on their foreheads.
• The infernal forces that power the Hammerforge Pact are bound to the lower planes by Moradin’s own hand. In order to affect the world, they can act only through the warlocks that serve as their agents. The fiends depend on their warlocks who in turn depend on their devilish patrons for the power to affect the world.

Technorati Tags: D&D, Warlock, Roleplaying, RPG, Dwarf

While on a recent vacation, I bought the Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Players Handbook. I immediately launched into reading it during a marathon Starbucks session. After finishing up the PHB, I went down to the bookstore and immediately bought the other two core rulebooks. I’ve made my way almost halfway through the Dungeon Masters Guide, and I finally couldn’t bear not sharing my thoughts here on the site.

Save versus Wall of Text…

Things I Like About 4e

Rudimentary tanking is built into the core game mechanics. As readers of this blog and followers of my life likely already know, I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately. One of my favorite parts of any MMORPG is the specialization of roles that PVE combat provides. Generally speaking you have a heavily armored tank up front taking hits and generally keeping monsters interested in / hating him, so that your damage dealers can kill off the monster with relative safety. Add in a dedicated healer to keep the tank from dying, and you’ve got the holy trinity of online RPG combat. The first time I experienced this style of combat, it felt like an absolute revelation.

The problem is that this style of combat has never really worked in D&D. Generally speaking, as a DM, you tried to target the healers and the mages since they were the biggest threat. This inadvertently shifted fighters into more of a damage-dealing role. In other words, rather than attempting to hold the line and take the hits, D&D fighters typically have had to just attempt to kill the monsters before they start chewing out your wizard’s spine.

In 4e, fighters and paladins can “mark” or “challenge” individual monsters. This doesn’t explicitly force the monster to attack him, but the enemy is at a rolling disadvantage (-2) when attempting to attack anyone other than the figher or paladin that marked him. In addition, fighters get to take a swing if this happens, and paladins get to deal radiant (holy) damage. This strikes me as kind of a “free market” approach to tanking. The invisible hand of the game system guides monsters to attack your defenders.

Skill challenges provide non-combat encounters with the drama of D&D combat. I have a habit of playing characters that are somewhat gimped with respect to combat. Some of my favorite 3e characters have been purely designed for roleplaying and therefore supporting roles in their party. My rogue/wizard/cleric might not be able to singlehandedly down a dragon, but he can probably con the local duke into sending a garrison of troops to do the dirty work for him. There’s not a lot of drama in this though, and it also has a very real tendency to become a one-man show. While one character is making skill checks against various esoteric DCs, the other people at the table are tuning out.

Enter the skill challenge. Everyone at the table rolls initiative — just as they would for a combat. The catch? They take turns rolling skill checks applicable to the situation in an attempt to meet a threshold of successes before they accrue too many failures.

An example is probably in order. Your party is trying to convince the local church of Lathander that a murder cult of Cyric has infiltrated the city.

DM: Okay. This is going to be a skill challenge to convince the bishop of Lathander that the cult is here in the Dalelands. Your key skills for this one are going to be Religion, Diplomacy, and History. You need to get eight successes before you get four failures. Everyone roll initiative.
PC1: Okay, I got an 18, so I go first. I’m going to use my Religion skill to remind the duke of the dark tenets of Cyric’s faith and how serious this matter is. I rolled a 21.
DM: (Checking against a DC of 20) The bishop nods his head. “You’re right on that one, lad. Cyric worshippers are not to be trifled with.”
PC2: Okay, my initiative was 14, so I’m up next. I’m going to use History to speak about past incursions from the Cyric worshippers. I got a 25!
DM: (Checking against a DC of 18) You remember that Cyric himself was active during the Dalelands during the time of troubles. When you tell the bishop this, he gets a pained look on his face. You can now use the insight skill once in the course of this challenge.
PC3: I’m up next, and I have Insight trained. I’m going to use my Insight check to see what’s wrong. I got a 16.
DM: (Checking against a DC of 15) It seems to you that the bishop might have lost someone important during the time of troubles. You remind him of those dark times.
PC4: I’m not really trained in anything relevant to this sort of thing, but I’ll try a Diplomacy check try and convince him that we can help with this problem. Aw crap! I rolled an 8!
DM: (Checking against a DC of 18) The bishop seems a little darker. “I see how this is…you come butter me up with honeyed words so that you can get paid to solve a non-existent problem.”
PC5: No no no! I’ll attempt a Diplomacy check to convince him that we’re not con men. Whew…Natural 20, so…28.
DM: (Checking against a DC of 18) “Okay, lad. I believe you’re being honest with me, and we all agree that Cyric is a serious threat. But how are you so sure that we’re dealing with a Cyric cult?”

This is the end of the round. The players currently have four successes and 1 failure. See what I mean about exciting non-combat encounters? Can’t you feel the drama? Skill challenges engage everyone at the table, and they turn dry skill check rolls into something memorable.

The DMG includes tons of actual general-case DM advice that I wish I had years ago. The first few chapters in the DMG have almost no 4e-specific information. Instead, they seem intent on helping novice DMs understand player types, group dynamic, and game management. The breakdown of player types is fair, helpful, and non-judgmental. The concrete advice on how to track initiative is the sort of thing you always wished some other DM would share with you. Moving all the magical items out of here and into the PHB opened up space for more DMG-appropriate information.

Building encounters seems a bit easier and more formulaic. I really like charts. I’m less of a fan of calculation. Yes, I could and did calculate out encounter levels for monster groups in 3e, but 4e really seems to take almost all of the work out of it. The DMG even provides handy charts of different (relative) levels of monsters that you can throw together to build just the encounter you want. Everything is broken down by monster roles, and they even include some rudimentary tactics for the squad. I honestly feel like I could throw together an impromptu night of gaming with just an hour to prepare.

At-will powers make all characters feel exciting to play every round of every game. If you’ve ever played a low-level wizard in previous editions of D&D, then you know what it’s like to feel useless. When you’re all out of magic missiles for the day, you get the joy of sitting back and rolling to hit with your crossbow against monsters designed to challenge the fighters and paladins. 4e take a novel approach to fixing this. Every single class becomes something like the sorcerer.

Every class gets daily powers that they can only use once per day, encounter powers that can only be used once per encounter, and at will powers that can be used without worry about running out of uses. Wizards and clerics don’t have to pre-memorize spells. You just choose a power off your list and use it. Wizards can use magic missile every single round of combat. Indefinitely. Likewise fighters rarely have a reason just make a basic melee attack. While just swing for damage when you can swing for damage and do damage to an adjacent enemy at the same time for free? Even when your encounter and daily powers are gone, you’re not reduced to doing things your class simply isn’t good at. No one chooses to play a wizard because they love standing in the back and having a 25% chance to hit with a crossbow every turn.

Combat seems like it would really fly. Early levels in 3e fly. You have limited choices for actions, and you only get one or two things to do each round. As you begin to near epic levels, however, full attack actions start taking a bit of rolling to resolve. In addition, you have so many spellcasting choices that it can take some time to decide your best course of action. Of course, our characters need to become more powerful and more useful as they gain experience, but what’s the best way to do this without drastically increasing the time spent resolving combat? 4e seems to approach this game requirement through the use of powers. Powers allow for a game that scales up as you go up in level without having to give each character 6-7 attacks. Rather than making multiple swings, 4e scales up the damage of your powers as you level. In addition, powers seem to just target one defense rather than requiring a to-hit roll, a spell resistance roll, and then a will save roll. And for those times when you really do need an extra action to finish off a dangerous enemy, you can always just spend your action point and take that extra action.

Things I’m Not Thrilled About in 4e

The lack of certain classes/races in the PHB makes me fear an avalanche of supplemental books. The number one thing I hated about 2e was the sheer amount of books full of kits and strange races and optional rules. When 3e came out, I was thrilled as could be. The game was enjoyable with just the core rulebooks. Nearly any character you could dream of could be created with some weird alchemy of multiclassing. Shaman? Sounds like a druid/sorcerer/barbarian to me. A samurai? I think you mean a monk/paladin. I’m not really a fan of supplements. The economic side doesn’t really bother me since there’s no real requirement to buy them. No, the part that bugs me about them is that they’re generally not as playtested for balance. This is especially true of third-party supplements. Yeah, there are some awesome gems out there, but there’s also some totally imbalanced stinkers. As a DM, you have to keep a very watchful eye on which supplements you allow. With no druids, bards, or monks, I fear what people are going to whip up in the interim while we wait for the PHB2.

Converting 3e characters is a practical impossibility. I think it’s quite fair to say that 3e D&D had more flexible character building options. You could multiclass all to hell. You could take cross-class skills. You could spread your skill points all over to build just the character you dreamed. Now, it’s not at all a negative thing to have less flexibility in the character design of 4e; frankly, it’s a design decision. Heck, even if you’re trying to convert a single class character, moving that character into 4e will seem like an out-of-body experience. If my gaming group converted to 4e and we wanted to have our favorite PCs available for high-level 4e play, we would really have to resign ourselves to treating our characters as completely new entities that coincidentally have the same life experiences as our old 3e PCs. I’m reluctant to even put this on the negative list because I actually respect the clean break aspect. Unfortunately it adds a bit of inertia when it comes to considering the switch.

Technorati Tags: Dungeons and Dragons, 4e, D&D

I finally got exalted reputation with Orgrimmar in World of Warcraft this morning on my day off. I promptly zoomed off to the orc capital city and got my spiffy new timber wolf mount.

I have spent so much of my gaming time working for this mount that I actually feel like I’ve accomplished something. I understand that I just increased an integer in Blizzard’s database(s) above a required threshold, but that tiny little SQL update feels like I just earned something.

And, yes, people I don’t know, this in my main character in WoW. I’m the last person alive who doesn’t have a level 70 character.

me: is it sexist that i’m tempted to re-roll my orc shaman as a male?
when there’s no difference whatsoever between the sexes?
Allyson: are you sure you don’t want to rick-roll her?
that might be sexist.
no boobies
me: i can’t rickroll her because there’s a very real chance that i will “run around and desert [her]” for another toon.
Allyson: Hah