On the dark elf matter ones that dwell on the surface are much more likely to be active at night and sleep during the day. There may be some times where they are forced into combat during day time but knowing their disadvantages during daylight hours one would think that in many if not most situations they are willingly entering battle they are doing it at times that are advantageous to them. We also have not seen the GMG yet so there may be items that are reasonably affordable that mitigate that issue easily enough.
Think about what you're saying here. Look at this and think about how you're asking someone to go through all of this just to be able to play with the rest of the party.
Yes I am looking at somebody picking a character from a very unusual background that obviously wants a more challenging game experience and seeing the penalties are about in line what the penalties for dark elves have always had in direct sunlight.
But seriously, this is just a really poor excuse and in the end you and I both know people are just going to outright ignore most of this (or explain it away with magic googles or whatever). It's just a pointless argument waiting to happen or a vindictive punishment depending on your DM.
Edit: And 4E did away with ridiculous racial penalties entirely except for that one book that most people thought was awful.
Re: Drow. For as long as they've been available as player characters, they've been a powergamer/min-maxers dream. It's nice to see them put the kibosh on it, even if it means people will now roll teiflings or whatever.
If I were GMing 5th, I'd enforce it. Then again, I think the entire idea of Drow characters in a non-evil campaign is laughable and I think R.A. Salvatore is a terrible author who created an awful character (though given the success of those novels, I'm sure in I'm the minority). If someone wants to work around it (running to areas where there isn't direct sunlight, only fighting at night under cover, whatever) that's fine with me.
Re: Drow. For as long as they've been available as player characters, they've been a powergamer/min-maxers dream. It's nice to see them put the kibosh on it, even if it means people will now roll teiflings or whatever.
If I were GMing 5th, I'd enforce it. Then again, I think the entire idea of Drow characters in a non-evil campaign is laughable and I think R.A. Salvatore is a terrible author who created an awful character (though given the success of those novels, I'm sure in I'm the minority). If someone wants to work around it (running to areas where there isn't direct sunlight, only fighting at night under cover, whatever) that's fine with me.
Can someone please point me to where the Drow have any advantage over any other race at all, even WITHOUT factoring in their disadvantage? They didn't actually mean to put the kibosh on some rampant drow powergaming problem(?), as evidenced by their huge long paragraph on how Drizzt is super cool and everything and their subsequent free release of a Drizzt greatest hits audiobook.
I'm not even a fan of Drizzt, but the "good member of an evil race" is a pretty big fantasy archetype and it's valid to want to play as one. I'm sure there are tons of people willing to only fight in places that aren't direct sunlight, but by doing that you screw over the rest of your party, so bringing a drow to the table will make you a dick. It's... it's just not good design.
Can someone please point me to where the Drow have any advantage over any other race at all, even WITHOUT factoring in their disadvantage? They didn't actually mean to put the kibosh on some rampant drow powergaming problem(?), as evidenced by their huge long paragraph on how Drizzt is super cool and everything and their subsequent free release of a Drizzt greatest hits audiobook.
I'm not even a fan of Drizzt, but the "good member of an evil race" is a pretty big fantasy archetype and it's valid to want to play as one. I'm sure there are tons of people willing to only fight in places that aren't direct sunlight, but by doing that you screw over the rest of your party, so bringing a drow to the table will make you a dick. It's... it's just not good design.
I was speaking of some previous editions. Darkness, Faerie Fire, etc without a lot of penalties.
I like the idea of PCs as exceptions, but I don't think we need to make the absolutist exception par for the course like this.
Because this is sort of like saying you're all going to play a World War II game, but you're all playing as Mad Jack Churchill.
TIL...
Also, yeah this conversation has probably run its course. There's an app in the works for 5E or something too, but I haven't seen much about that anywhere. anyone know more about it?
edit: OT
tastydonuts on
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I like the idea of PCs as exceptions, but I don't think we need to make the absolutist exception par for the course like this.
Because this is sort of like saying you're all going to play a World War II game, but you're all playing as Mad Jack Churchill.
TIL...
Also, yeah this conversation has probably run its course. There's an app in the works for 5E or something too, but I haven't seen much about that anywhere. anyone know more about it?
edit: OT
It'll probably cost money, because that's what it means when your company says that the pricing model of an app can't be determined right now.
You will need to be connected to the internet to build characters, although iOS and android tablets will be able to have their character sheets offline. PC will not be able to use it offline at all (as it is a browser based deal).
If you feel like wading through buzzwords and marketing doublespeak, google "Codename Morningstar" and look through their site.
I don't mind paying for a product, but the thing with my DDI subs is I didn't really use it all that much. In practice I'd log in to reference a single power that I didn't have because of their stance on digital media, then log out. Though I realize now that was probably the marketing team's goal with that nonsense since I probably paid about as much as a player who would have bought all the hardcopy stuff over the duration of my subscription, heh. Would be nice to know if it's a subs app or not.
But really, the only thing I truly want is just a single epub or pdf or something to view on a tablet, offline or online. I'll even settle for an app that's just the books' contents with a GUI strapped around it because of the naive belief that the words wouldn't be mined out of it to get a single flat document. That's the vibe I'm getting from the random sentences and blurbs thrown about, but I guess it remains to be seen. Searching the for rules stuff was cumbersome, so I hope they don't do it that way.
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KalnaurI See Rain . . .Centralia, WARegistered Userregular
I like the idea of PCs as exceptions, but I don't think we need to make the absolutist exception par for the course like this.
Because this is sort of like saying you're all going to play a World War II game, but you're all playing as Mad Jack Churchill.
TIL...
Also, yeah this conversation has probably run its course. There's an app in the works for 5E or something too, but I haven't seen much about that anywhere. anyone know more about it?
edit: OT
It'll probably cost money, because that's what it means when your company says that the pricing model of an app can't be determined right now.
You will need to be connected to the internet to build characters, although iOS and android tablets will be able to have their character sheets offline. PC will not be able to use it offline at all (as it is a browser based deal).
If you feel like wading through buzzwords and marketing doublespeak, google "Codename Morningstar" and look through their site.
Always online-style DRM blended with subscription style methods is about the most asinine of software combinations possible.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
meh, I'm super excited for it because making characters is fun for me and I don't mind subscription models. To each their own, I guess.
Until Wizards entirely messes it up and makes it inoperable.
The 4E Online Character builder was a complete farce.
I recall operating it quite a bit personally...
I actually largely quit 4E because wizards made both the online character builder and monster builder basically entirely impossible for me to actually use.
Their incompetency in functional electronic tools continued for years. I have seen nothing to suggest they are magically going to improve.
meh, I'm super excited for it because making characters is fun for me and I don't mind subscription models. To each their own, I guess.
Until Wizards entirely messes it up and makes it inoperable.
The 4E Online Character builder was a complete farce.
While the online builder (at least for the short time I had access to it) could be used, it's overall usability was (A) limited in the face of how well their previous builder worked (B) was unintuitive (C) created a sort of de facto paywall between you and your characters, at least inasmuch as it required you to print out and refigure by hand any characters you might want to access without paying them for the pleasure of housing those characters and (D) assumed wrongly that internet access itself is ubiquitous and finally (E) that the software used to create it was far from widely adopted, even by the company that made it.
I am sure that for the gaming enthusiast with no monthly data cap, no spotty connections, no timeouts in their service and plenty of extra cash to pay for both DDI and said internet connection, the Online builder was a fine idea.
However, I found it severely lacking in usability as well as customer relations. So while I would not go so far as to say that it was inoperable, what I would say is that it felt like a half-baked idea to "combat piracy", or more specifically to wall off those willing to pay for just books from those who could both buy books and also pay monthly fees for "digital content" (i.e. their character builder that couldn't be hacked and engineered with more compatibility this time, right?)
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Seriously, you click a button to go from 16 STR to 17 STR and you have to wait ten seconds for the entire thing to be sent to the WotC servers and then back to you. It was absolutely infuriating even on otherwise fine connections.
Seriously, you click a button to go from 16 STR to 17 STR and you have to wait ten seconds for the entire thing to be sent to the WotC servers and then back to you. It was absolutely infuriating even on otherwise fine connections.
It's the price we pay so they can have enough income to produce top notch quality 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons material for the discerning consumer.
I hope that hurt others as much as it hurt me to type it.
I make art things! deviantART:Kalnaur ::: Origin: Kalnaur ::: UPlay: Kalnaur
What killed me was that paying customers ended up with a really crappy builder that barely functioned, and couldn't get PDF's of the books.
Pirates, on the other hand, got their amazing offline builder (that was fully customizable), as well as PDFs of every goddamn book. For free.
Punishing people for giving you money isn't exactly a stellar business plan.
(Also, didn't they JUST shut down the CBLoader guys? Now, when it's less relevant than ever?)
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oxybeEntei is appaled and disappointed in youRegistered Userregular
I think most TTRPG digital offerings are generally bad, mainly because (like most TTRPGs) they're not made by people who will either be using the product or understand how most users will be using it.
The other pathfinder SRD (d20pfsrd) is causing me like... 12 different headaches at the moment. My character was bitten by a wereshark and has likely contracted the curse. I am trying to figure out how exactly this will affect my character and someone just recently brought to my attention a bit of information I wasn't aware of.
The bit of information? That i transform when hurt. Nowhere else does it mention this... this isn't even mentioned in the Wereshark entry, but it is in the Werewolf's.
And this is maintained by fans, if I remember correctly, and not the actual Paizo staff.
Trust me. The 4th ed online offerings aren't the only ones that could use more work.
you can read my collected ravings at oxybesothertumbr.tumblr.com
I've used the online builder for my group, and I haven't found it that bad.
Assuming:
-I'm on my home computer
-I use a browser I only use for the online builder because Silverlight doesn't play well with Mac and Chrome
-I have plenty of time for it to do its thing
But an iPad version which I could take to actual game sessions would be far superior.
It's not that the 4e online builder was bad taken on its own. It is functional in the right circumstances.
It's that it was an unmitigated massive step backwards from the thing they had already created and given us and then took away again whilst lying through their teeth about improvements and progress!
The original builder was so, so good. The future of RPGs incarnate. I was more than happy paying a monthly sub for that.
Seriously, you click a button to go from 16 STR to 17 STR and you have to wait ten seconds for the entire thing to be sent to the WotC servers and then back to you. It was absolutely infuriating even on otherwise fine connections.
It's the price we pay so they can have enough income to produce top notch quality 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons material for the discerning consumer.
I hope that hurt others as much as it hurt me to type it.
Seriously, you click a button to go from 16 STR to 17 STR and you have to wait ten seconds for the entire thing to be sent to the WotC servers and then back to you. It was absolutely infuriating even on otherwise fine connections.
It's the price we pay so they can have enough income to produce top notch quality 4th 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons material for the discerning consumer.
I hope that hurt others as much as it hurt me to type it.
What killed me was that paying customers ended up with a really crappy builder that barely functioned, and couldn't get PDF's of the books.
Pirates, on the other hand, got their amazing offline builder (that was fully customizable), as well as PDFs of every goddamn book. For free.
Punishing people for giving you money isn't exactly a stellar business plan.
(Also, didn't they JUST shut down the CBLoader guys? Now, when it's less relevant than ever?)
I'm not sure if they shut it down, but you can't connect to the update server any more.
Fortunately, the last real update to any of the files was in like January of this year, so anyone who updated after that but before the shutdown is probably fine for life, given WoTC isn't updating 4E any more.
Granted I haven't used it for years, but when I did use it, It was great. and Mearls just did a podcast with Gamers With Jobs and hit things pretty much on the head for me. In most table groups, you'll have the DM, who usually buys everything, and maybe one or two more PHBs at the table, but there are going to be people who never pay for anything, just show up for the social aspect. And that's what my table was like. YMMV because we exist in a seperate world--that of posting on a forum about the game-- but for me I subscribbed to DDI and then just gave my password to everyone else. They got to make their characters and print out their sheets. I was the DM, I had the core books and everything, and printed out cards as they needed them.
So, like I said, it was okay for me and now that the previews are comming out for Dungeonscape, I'm even more excited. 5e is better for me than 4e was and I am just having fun left right and center. Gonna finally pick up the PHB tonight.
There was a set of conditions where the Online Builder functioned about as well as the old Builder. High bandwidth without a data cap, on a Windows machine that had Silverlight installed on it, and using less popular browsers. These conditions were very easily disrupted and more over.....are basically MORE restrictive than what the offline Builder required. (I'd net out .NET and Silverlight, leaving the bandwidth requirement) Adding insult to injury there was that this never materialized into enhanced connectivity because NO phones or tablets could run Silverlight.
It was a decision without even a fig leaf to hide it's anti-consumer nature. When dug into on a technical side (via Infidel) it was found it did some amazingly stupid things like sending the entire sheet back and forth after every change.
If it was eventually usable on some sort of Mobile platform I would have been fine with the price of progress but the poor technical development crippled that from the outset.
Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Yeah, using a platform (Silverlight) that the platform's own developer (Microsoft) abandoned before you started the project? That was never gonna fly. The fact that they then went ahead and did it badly…
I don't mind paying for a product, but the thing with my DDI subs is I didn't really use it all that much. In practice I'd log in to reference a single power that I didn't have because of their stance on digital media, then log out. Though I realize now that was probably the marketing team's goal with that nonsense since I probably paid about as much as a player who would have bought all the hardcopy stuff over the duration of my subscription, heh. Would be nice to know if it's a subs app or not.
But really, the only thing I truly want is just a single epub or pdf or something to view on a tablet, offline or online. I'll even settle for an app that's just the books' contents with a GUI strapped around it because of the naive belief that the words wouldn't be mined out of it to get a single flat document. That's the vibe I'm getting from the random sentences and blurbs thrown about, but I guess it remains to be seen. Searching the for rules stuff was cumbersome, so I hope they don't do it that way.
I actually use(d) DDI for literally everything in my 4E game, and never purchased a single book. With the character builder, the compendium for referencing iffy rules questions, and being able to use sites like kassoon to build encounters with compendium data, I never had the need to actually reference any of the books. Maybe that's actually the opposite of what they want.
I'm very curious to see how the 5E tools go, given that they've at least had the wisdom to farm them out to someone else this time, and those guys (I hope) have a better development team.
The DCI continues to impress me with how aggressively mediocre their GM's and adventures are.
EDIT: I mean, when your GM basically says, "I'm just doing this for the free monster manual" up front at the start of the adventure, completely blocks players from using their skills from role playing, and the plot is straight-up ripped from a Scooby-Doo episode...
Two words: "ghost ship."
knew it was going to be bad going in, wish I just played more Shadowrun instead. The Mission GM's have always been awesome and love running for the sale of running the events.
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I don't mind paying for a product, but the thing with my DDI subs is I didn't really use it all that much. In practice I'd log in to reference a single power that I didn't have because of their stance on digital media, then log out. Though I realize now that was probably the marketing team's goal with that nonsense since I probably paid about as much as a player who would have bought all the hardcopy stuff over the duration of my subscription, heh. Would be nice to know if it's a subs app or not.
But really, the only thing I truly want is just a single epub or pdf or something to view on a tablet, offline or online. I'll even settle for an app that's just the books' contents with a GUI strapped around it because of the naive belief that the words wouldn't be mined out of it to get a single flat document. That's the vibe I'm getting from the random sentences and blurbs thrown about, but I guess it remains to be seen. Searching the for rules stuff was cumbersome, so I hope they don't do it that way.
I actually use(d) DDI for literally everything in my 4E game, and never purchased a single book. With the character builder, the compendium for referencing iffy rules questions, and being able to use sites like kassoon to build encounters with compendium data, I never had the need to actually reference any of the books. Maybe that's actually the opposite of what they want.
I'm very curious to see how the 5E tools go, given that they've at least had the wisdom to farm them out to someone else this time, and those guys (I hope) have a better development team.
Once they axed digital books, I stopped buying them, so everything from the later stuff I had to get out of the compendium.
I couldn't get behind the CBLoader thing, either, but since I was running games vs playing in them it wasn't that big of a deal either. So I suppose my involvement with 5E will depend greatly on those tools.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
The DCI continues to impress me with how aggressively mediocre their GM's and adventures are.
I DM'ed at Winter Fantasy one year when it was still a thing. The requirements were....uh, know somebody who knows somebody who would say you weren't an utter shit DM?
In a way I feel for them. That trip I took a day off work and paid to fly down to DC and two meals a day in order to DM for strangers for 12 hours each day. For this I got a couple free books and they comped my shared hotel room. I really doubt they made any money on that con, I sorta have doubts they covered the expenses but at the time it was a Promotional thing for Wizards.
Gen Con is similar. Practically anybody who would be there has other things they would rather be doing there then DMing. Last I knew they are also really stingy with the perks.
Still, this doesn't excuse shitty mercenary DMs or make it any less annoying when you get one. Just think about it from the other side when you get a decent DM who is like a real person...they are likely there as an act of altruism.
I don't mind paying for a product, but the thing with my DDI subs is I didn't really use it all that much. In practice I'd log in to reference a single power that I didn't have because of their stance on digital media, then log out. Though I realize now that was probably the marketing team's goal with that nonsense since I probably paid about as much as a player who would have bought all the hardcopy stuff over the duration of my subscription, heh. Would be nice to know if it's a subs app or not.
But really, the only thing I truly want is just a single epub or pdf or something to view on a tablet, offline or online. I'll even settle for an app that's just the books' contents with a GUI strapped around it because of the naive belief that the words wouldn't be mined out of it to get a single flat document. That's the vibe I'm getting from the random sentences and blurbs thrown about, but I guess it remains to be seen. Searching the for rules stuff was cumbersome, so I hope they don't do it that way.
I actually use(d) DDI for literally everything in my 4E game, and never purchased a single book. With the character builder, the compendium for referencing iffy rules questions, and being able to use sites like kassoon to build encounters with compendium data, I never had the need to actually reference any of the books. Maybe that's actually the opposite of what they want.
I'm very curious to see how the 5E tools go, given that they've at least had the wisdom to farm them out to someone else this time, and those guys (I hope) have a better development team.
The ability to subscribe and not purchase the books is what lead to a lot of people's misconceptions about the game being all crunch and no fluff, I think. All the great role-playing stuff was in the print books while the character builder was just the relevant stats.
As great as the offline builder is/was, I prefer to get players looking at the books when considering characters just so they get more flavorful ideas.
So they went through a few hoops to get the Dragonborn into Forgotten Realms.
... are they still in it with 5th edition and things going back to more like it used to? Also is there a list of dead gods that are back to life or is it just Bhaal? (I thought he was coming back at least)
I don't mind paying for a product, but the thing with my DDI subs is I didn't really use it all that much. In practice I'd log in to reference a single power that I didn't have because of their stance on digital media, then log out. Though I realize now that was probably the marketing team's goal with that nonsense since I probably paid about as much as a player who would have bought all the hardcopy stuff over the duration of my subscription, heh. Would be nice to know if it's a subs app or not.
But really, the only thing I truly want is just a single epub or pdf or something to view on a tablet, offline or online. I'll even settle for an app that's just the books' contents with a GUI strapped around it because of the naive belief that the words wouldn't be mined out of it to get a single flat document. That's the vibe I'm getting from the random sentences and blurbs thrown about, but I guess it remains to be seen. Searching the for rules stuff was cumbersome, so I hope they don't do it that way.
I actually use(d) DDI for literally everything in my 4E game, and never purchased a single book. With the character builder, the compendium for referencing iffy rules questions, and being able to use sites like kassoon to build encounters with compendium data, I never had the need to actually reference any of the books. Maybe that's actually the opposite of what they want.
I'm very curious to see how the 5E tools go, given that they've at least had the wisdom to farm them out to someone else this time, and those guys (I hope) have a better development team.
The ability to subscribe and not purchase the books is what lead to a lot of people's misconceptions about the game being all crunch and no fluff, I think. All the great role-playing stuff was in the print books while the character builder was just the relevant stats.
As great as the offline builder is/was, I prefer to get players looking at the books when considering characters just so they get more flavorful ideas.
That was never an issue with my players, but I'm playing mostly with the same people I played 2nd and 3rd and 3.5 with, so all the roleplaying stuff is in our bones at this point.
That said, I do like how 5E has seemingly made the whole backgrounds thing a much bigger part of making a character, with a lot of lists of cool character quirks and background details. It's helpful the less roleplaying-oriented people. On the other hand, people like my friend who's been running a pyromancer in my current game, and writes in-character journals and shit (and went so far as to write his own version of "Let It Go", with a fire theme) doesn't need any help.
This is a completely serious question and not remotely snark:
Does it actually matter what iteration of the pantheon they push? Anyone who knows enough about an older version to prefer it can just put the band back together in whatever configuration they want, can't they?
Posts
But seriously, this is just a really poor excuse and in the end you and I both know people are just going to outright ignore most of this (or explain it away with magic googles or whatever). It's just a pointless argument waiting to happen or a vindictive punishment depending on your DM.
Edit: And 4E did away with ridiculous racial penalties entirely except for that one book that most people thought was awful.
If I were GMing 5th, I'd enforce it. Then again, I think the entire idea of Drow characters in a non-evil campaign is laughable and I think R.A. Salvatore is a terrible author who created an awful character (though given the success of those novels, I'm sure in I'm the minority). If someone wants to work around it (running to areas where there isn't direct sunlight, only fighting at night under cover, whatever) that's fine with me.
Can someone please point me to where the Drow have any advantage over any other race at all, even WITHOUT factoring in their disadvantage? They didn't actually mean to put the kibosh on some rampant drow powergaming problem(?), as evidenced by their huge long paragraph on how Drizzt is super cool and everything and their subsequent free release of a Drizzt greatest hits audiobook.
I'm not even a fan of Drizzt, but the "good member of an evil race" is a pretty big fantasy archetype and it's valid to want to play as one. I'm sure there are tons of people willing to only fight in places that aren't direct sunlight, but by doing that you screw over the rest of your party, so bringing a drow to the table will make you a dick. It's... it's just not good design.
I was speaking of some previous editions. Darkness, Faerie Fire, etc without a lot of penalties.
Eh, I'm done with this conversation. If I had a DM think like that, I wouldn't be playing their game. I'll just wait until the next topic comes up.
Because this is sort of like saying you're all going to play a World War II game, but you're all playing as Mad Jack Churchill.
TIL...
Also, yeah this conversation has probably run its course. There's an app in the works for 5E or something too, but I haven't seen much about that anywhere. anyone know more about it?
edit: OT
It'll probably cost money, because that's what it means when your company says that the pricing model of an app can't be determined right now.
You will need to be connected to the internet to build characters, although iOS and android tablets will be able to have their character sheets offline. PC will not be able to use it offline at all (as it is a browser based deal).
If you feel like wading through buzzwords and marketing doublespeak, google "Codename Morningstar" and look through their site.
But really, the only thing I truly want is just a single epub or pdf or something to view on a tablet, offline or online. I'll even settle for an app that's just the books' contents with a GUI strapped around it because of the naive belief that the words wouldn't be mined out of it to get a single flat document. That's the vibe I'm getting from the random sentences and blurbs thrown about, but I guess it remains to be seen. Searching the for rules stuff was cumbersome, so I hope they don't do it that way.
Always online-style DRM blended with subscription style methods is about the most asinine of software combinations possible.
Until Wizards entirely messes it up and makes it inoperable.
The 4E Online Character builder was a complete farce.
I recall operating it quite a bit personally...
Can't imagine what it'd be like, using that with a monthly data cap.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I actually largely quit 4E because wizards made both the online character builder and monster builder basically entirely impossible for me to actually use.
Their incompetency in functional electronic tools continued for years. I have seen nothing to suggest they are magically going to improve.
While the online builder (at least for the short time I had access to it) could be used, it's overall usability was (A) limited in the face of how well their previous builder worked (B) was unintuitive (C) created a sort of de facto paywall between you and your characters, at least inasmuch as it required you to print out and refigure by hand any characters you might want to access without paying them for the pleasure of housing those characters and (D) assumed wrongly that internet access itself is ubiquitous and finally (E) that the software used to create it was far from widely adopted, even by the company that made it.
I am sure that for the gaming enthusiast with no monthly data cap, no spotty connections, no timeouts in their service and plenty of extra cash to pay for both DDI and said internet connection, the Online builder was a fine idea.
However, I found it severely lacking in usability as well as customer relations. So while I would not go so far as to say that it was inoperable, what I would say is that it felt like a half-baked idea to "combat piracy", or more specifically to wall off those willing to pay for just books from those who could both buy books and also pay monthly fees for "digital content" (i.e. their character builder that couldn't be hacked and engineered with more compatibility this time, right?)
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's the price we pay so they can have enough income to produce top notch quality 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons material for the discerning consumer.
Pirates, on the other hand, got their amazing offline builder (that was fully customizable), as well as PDFs of every goddamn book. For free.
Punishing people for giving you money isn't exactly a stellar business plan.
(Also, didn't they JUST shut down the CBLoader guys? Now, when it's less relevant than ever?)
The other pathfinder SRD (d20pfsrd) is causing me like... 12 different headaches at the moment. My character was bitten by a wereshark and has likely contracted the curse. I am trying to figure out how exactly this will affect my character and someone just recently brought to my attention a bit of information I wasn't aware of.
there are the four tabs i initially had open:
humanoid - lycantrope
template - lycantrope
Universal monster rules - Curse of lycantropy
animal - shark
and then we told me there this tab:
curse - lycantropy (werewolf)
The bit of information? That i transform when hurt. Nowhere else does it mention this... this isn't even mentioned in the Wereshark entry, but it is in the Werewolf's.
And this is maintained by fans, if I remember correctly, and not the actual Paizo staff.
Trust me. The 4th ed online offerings aren't the only ones that could use more work.
Assuming:
-I'm on my home computer
-I use a browser I only use for the online builder because Silverlight doesn't play well with Mac and Chrome
-I have plenty of time for it to do its thing
But an iPad version which I could take to actual game sessions would be far superior.
It's that it was an unmitigated massive step backwards from the thing they had already created and given us and then took away again whilst lying through their teeth about improvements and progress!
The original builder was so, so good. The future of RPGs incarnate. I was more than happy paying a monthly sub for that.
Why you gotta be so mean to me????
Fixed that for you.
I'm not sure if they shut it down, but you can't connect to the update server any more.
Fortunately, the last real update to any of the files was in like January of this year, so anyone who updated after that but before the shutdown is probably fine for life, given WoTC isn't updating 4E any more.
So, like I said, it was okay for me and now that the previews are comming out for Dungeonscape, I'm even more excited. 5e is better for me than 4e was and I am just having fun left right and center. Gonna finally pick up the PHB tonight.
It was a decision without even a fig leaf to hide it's anti-consumer nature. When dug into on a technical side (via Infidel) it was found it did some amazingly stupid things like sending the entire sheet back and forth after every change.
If it was eventually usable on some sort of Mobile platform I would have been fine with the price of progress but the poor technical development crippled that from the outset.
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I actually use(d) DDI for literally everything in my 4E game, and never purchased a single book. With the character builder, the compendium for referencing iffy rules questions, and being able to use sites like kassoon to build encounters with compendium data, I never had the need to actually reference any of the books. Maybe that's actually the opposite of what they want.
I'm very curious to see how the 5E tools go, given that they've at least had the wisdom to farm them out to someone else this time, and those guys (I hope) have a better development team.
The DCI continues to impress me with how aggressively mediocre their GM's and adventures are.
EDIT: I mean, when your GM basically says, "I'm just doing this for the free monster manual" up front at the start of the adventure, completely blocks players from using their skills from role playing, and the plot is straight-up ripped from a Scooby-Doo episode...
Two words: "ghost ship."
knew it was going to be bad going in, wish I just played more Shadowrun instead. The Mission GM's have always been awesome and love running for the sale of running the events.
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Once they axed digital books, I stopped buying them, so everything from the later stuff I had to get out of the compendium.
I couldn't get behind the CBLoader thing, either, but since I was running games vs playing in them it wasn't that big of a deal either. So I suppose my involvement with 5E will depend greatly on those tools.
I DM'ed at Winter Fantasy one year when it was still a thing. The requirements were....uh, know somebody who knows somebody who would say you weren't an utter shit DM?
In a way I feel for them. That trip I took a day off work and paid to fly down to DC and two meals a day in order to DM for strangers for 12 hours each day. For this I got a couple free books and they comped my shared hotel room. I really doubt they made any money on that con, I sorta have doubts they covered the expenses but at the time it was a Promotional thing for Wizards.
Gen Con is similar. Practically anybody who would be there has other things they would rather be doing there then DMing. Last I knew they are also really stingy with the perks.
Still, this doesn't excuse shitty mercenary DMs or make it any less annoying when you get one. Just think about it from the other side when you get a decent DM who is like a real person...they are likely there as an act of altruism.
The ability to subscribe and not purchase the books is what lead to a lot of people's misconceptions about the game being all crunch and no fluff, I think. All the great role-playing stuff was in the print books while the character builder was just the relevant stats.
As great as the offline builder is/was, I prefer to get players looking at the books when considering characters just so they get more flavorful ideas.
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So they went through a few hoops to get the Dragonborn into Forgotten Realms.
... are they still in it with 5th edition and things going back to more like it used to? Also is there a list of dead gods that are back to life or is it just Bhaal? (I thought he was coming back at least)
That was never an issue with my players, but I'm playing mostly with the same people I played 2nd and 3rd and 3.5 with, so all the roleplaying stuff is in our bones at this point.
That said, I do like how 5E has seemingly made the whole backgrounds thing a much bigger part of making a character, with a lot of lists of cool character quirks and background details. It's helpful the less roleplaying-oriented people. On the other hand, people like my friend who's been running a pyromancer in my current game, and writes in-character journals and shit (and went so far as to write his own version of "Let It Go", with a fire theme) doesn't need any help.
Including like the lesser drow pantheon and the elven pantheon that many of them were just forms of other greater gods/goddesses?
Does it actually matter what iteration of the pantheon they push? Anyone who knows enough about an older version to prefer it can just put the band back together in whatever configuration they want, can't they?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.