Dungeons and Dragons 4 and the Murder of Faerun

Cafe Society
41

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
A question from one who knows of Forgotten Realms mostly through rumor:

WotC just published “Grand History of the Realms” a couple months back. What was the point of producing this book in the first place, if the updated Forgotten Realms setting is just going to nuke it all?

Surely anyone who might be encouraged to pick up any future products based on this book is going to be kind of dismayed to learn that it’s all suddenly dust in the wind.
[/QUOTE]

I think the book’s more for completists than new fans. It’s basically just a great big timeline, and not really a proper RPG sourcebook at all. I think the intent is more of a retrospective/farewell to an era, before the next big cataclysm blows everything apart. The last entry in the timeline is, apparently, the first big event in the new cosmology they’re putting together.

42

[QUOTE=Johnny Angel]
So, you’re saying Rolemaster is now more like D&D that its famous roots as Chart Master? Rollmaster?
[/QUOTE]
The last re-write of Rolemaster did make an attempt to reduce dice rolling, with mixed results. It is much more like 3e D&D, because Cook adapted many of his ideas from RM to 3e. (And, we used to call it Dicemaster before the Rolemaster Standard System version. Chartmaster would still be appropriate, sadly.)

43

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
I always liked Artemis Entreri, although in the last two bok about him Salvatore basically jumped the shark.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah because a good drow who is a ranger and fights with double scimitars isn’t straight out of jump-the-shark, ultrakewl munchkin fantasy whackoff land. Crap like that are why I only play DND on computers where no one else can see me.

Anyway, Forgotten Realms had its good sides but the characters wasn’t one of them. It was Elminster the crappy Gandalf knockoff and then goddawful shit like Drizzt. I hope the whole cast gets dropped into the Dark Sun world and eaten by feral halflings. I’m glad they’re all getting killed.

44

I’ve been away a long time also, but just got back into it with 3.5 and I agree with the OP.

The treasure your average 1st level shlub is supposed to carry is ridiculous, but the PC’s need it for the inflated prices in everything they’re supposed to get (1500 gp for full plate my ass).

The suggested rolling up systems for character stats makes for PC murder machines, but they need to be to compete with there relevant encounter level.

Taking a class is supposed to leave you with a weakness somewhere in missing skill sets, that’s why you adventure with other people, but the vast array of WotC books with new kit’s, skill point allocations, feats and prestige classes makes each character a party of one.

The encounter levels are lethal enough if the party is healthy without even talking about the fact that this might be the 3 or 4th room they’ve gone in. What is the party supposed to do; go back to town every 5 minutes? continually find chests with healing potions? ‘Save points’?

3.5 has no morale checks, a horde of goblins will fight to the bitter end against overwhelming slaughter.

The DC for many skill checks is insane. I recall the DC for a basic Diplomacy check being 20, which means you have no chance at all to convince a regular NPC of anything and only a 50% chance if you’re 3rd level in a class which has this as a class skill and have been maxing it out. Not even mentioning negative modifiers.

And finally the skills themselves. Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Gather Information, Sense Motive…THIS IS WHAT ROLE PLAYING IS! That’s why it’s not called ROLL playing.
On the plus side 3.5 has made Armor Class no more complicated then it has to be.

45

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]

Drizzt might be alive, since he sells so many books
[/QUOTE]

Given that he’s on the previewed cover of the FR book for 4th edition, I’d say it’s a pretty sure bet.

46

[QUOTE=jayjay]
That IS a good point, actually. Back when they put out the 3rd ed. Forgotten Realms sourcebook (which is sitting about 2 feet away on my shelf here at work right now) in 2001, they said they were going to advance time in the Realms by two years for every five years in real time. So, is this a massive time jump or did this cataclysm come only 2 1/2 years after the slice in time as described in that book?
[/QUOTE]

I think the actual disaster happens “very soon” in the timeline. The game will pick up in a century or so.

[quote=Grossbottom]
Yeah because a good drow who is a ranger and fights with double scimitars isn’t straight out of jump-the-shark, ultrakewl munchkin fantasy whackoff land. Crap like that are why I only play DND on computers where no one else can see me.

Fanwankish yes, but it was pretty standard for the setting. And to be fair, the character actually got fairly intersting in the more recent books.

Entreri started out being pretty one-dimensional, but he beccame much more complex and intriguing. What happened in the most recent books about it are:

(a) His “friend” Jarlaxle dragged him into a horrendously stupid array of hyper-lethal enemies with immensely horrific odds.
(b) Entreri was revealed basically had the single worst parent in the history of parenting. His childhood was actually vastly worse than Drizz’t’s, in that his diseased whore mother had him by a corrupt Cleric of Gileam (?) posing as a Cleric of Selune. His filthy satanically-evil-but-petty-two pimp “daddy” sold him to a pedophile for 15 copper. In his entire life, no one ever actually was nice to him except in the hopes of using him.
(c) During an ambush, he accidentally pushes a woman off the cart; she slips and gets run over. Her broken back is meaningless as by that time she’d been massively poisoned and was going to die one way or the other.
(d) Her best friend, Calihye, declares undying veangence upon Entreri.
(e) The “Paladin” turns out to be a treacherous backstabbing mercenary murderer working for the uber-evil assassins. She’s killed. A decent, honest Ranger is killed.
(f) Calihye forgives Enteri and they become lovers. Enteri thinks about retiring from the adventurer life.
(g) Enteri and Jarlaxle go off and kill a dracolich. Actually, **Jarlaxle abandons Enteri ** and Artemis kills him mano-a-mano with a fire-ball spewing magic item. Enteri put it on autofire (more or less) and glued it in the monster’s empty skull.
(h) There was no treasure and Entreri went flat broke.
(i) Enteri is named a Knight, a title he disdains.
(j) Jarlaxle, for no reason except his own amusement, messes things up. He builds himself a mighty castle (don’t ask) and names Enteri King Artemis the First. Enteri is not amused, especially as the actual King’s army and handful of lvl 30 buddies is coming for him.
(k) Jarlaxle, having had his jollies, flees through the Underdark with Bregan D’aerthe. Enteri says “go eff yourself.” He walks out to face the music.
(l) Enteri humiliates a belligerent epic Ranger. A super-fanwank monk knocks Enteri out.
(m) The Paladin King realizes that Enteri didn’t actually do anything, but absolutely despises everything which calls itself good. Especially paladins.
(n) Enteri is exiled. His girlfriend tries to kill him during nookie. Enteri realizes she was just wanting to kill him the whole time and pushes her out the window. Later he may have somewhat regretted it, but never found her again. Jarlaxle saved both their lives in the deal… for his own amusement.
(o) Enteri goes back “home” to find and kill his father. He finds out that his real dad was the fake-preist-of-Selune. He finds out his mother died just after sending him off. He never finds her grave.
(p) He wanted to die in the deal, but as it happens Jarlaxle saves him. He leaves Jarlaxle and goes back to Calimshan.

47

[QUOTE=Sitnam]
The DC for many skill checks is insane. I recall the DC for a basic Diplomacy check being 20, which means you have no chance at all to convince a regular NPC of anything and only a 50% chance if you’re 3rd level in a class which has this as a class skill and have been maxing it out. Not even mentioning negative modifiers.
[/quote]
Not to get into a hijack about 3.5, but I guess I will. You happened to pick the one skill that is retardedly simple to game without even really trying. A level 3 Bard (6 max ranks in a skill) with 16 Charisma (+3), 5 ranks in Sense Motive (+2), and 5 ranks in Knowledge/nobility and royalty (+2) will have +13 to Diplomacy. If you’re really into it, Skill Focus/Diplomacy adds +3, Negotiator adds +2, and choosing Half-Elf as your race gives you another +2, for a total of +20 to Diplomacy. At level 3, using only SRD feats and races. Granted, you’ve specialized in Diplomacy so much you can’t really do much else, but you could charm the pants off an orc.

Of course, this highlights a couple of other ‘issues’ with 3.5, namely the power scale is out of control to old fogies, but skill checks aren’t exactly hard to make for some classes.

Not really. I’m a schlub in person, and not a very convincing public speaker. Should that prevent me from playing a silver-tongued, quick-witted Bard? The skills are there to properly represent a character’s abilities that a player can’t match. Or do you expect a Barbarian’s player to have to attack a target with a real sword during combat instead of rolling their D20? This is entirely off-base.

48

[QUOTE=Miller]

“Murder of Faerun.” For fuck’s sake. You’ve written a 10,00 word rant about a game you haven’t even seen yet. You’re one of maybe five people on this planet to whom I can legitimatly say, “Get a life.”
[/QUOTE]

Well, I’ve playtested the combat system, and I have to say “Stinks like dead monkey ass” is too high a praise for it.

I don’t know anything about what they’ve done to Forgotten Realms, and it’s never been that big a deal to me, so I don’t care.

But the combat system? Holy hell does it suck. Our group playtested a ten-encounter scenario over two game nights. After the first night, we had a good discussion by email about, “Maybe we played the things we really hated wrong, I’m going to check the .pdfs”. Nope. We did everything correctly according to all the rules we had.

Going through the second night was just a test of endurance. We all hated it. We’ve actually talked about it quite a bit, and no, it’s not because it’s a change. It’s because it’s all a bad change. Maybe somewhere in the 4e books it will explain if I can teleport “once per encounter”, how often I can teleport when I’m NOT in an encounter. You know, like if I want to just pop onto the roof for a look around.

On the positive side, in encouraged me to finally buy some 3.5 books, because I could quite safely say that I sure as hell won’t be getting any 4e stuff.

-Joe

49

I presume you had an opportunity to provide feedback? I would imagine that’s what a playtest is for, after all.

50

[QUOTE=Merijeek]

On the positive side, in encouraged me to finally buy some 3.5 books, because I could quite safely say that I sure as hell won’t be getting any 4e stuff.

-Joe
[/QUOTE]
That’s a good idea, I think I’ll pick me some stuff too especially since they won’t be able to screw with 3.x from now on.

51

I might as well go on record here to say that not only do I think 3.5 was a significant improvement over AD&D, but I also eagerly await 4.0 despite my initial skepticism. From what I read of it, I think I will enjoy the mechanics immensely. Naturally, I have an alternative viewpoint on every issue with D&D that Sitnam has raised above.

E.T.A.: I think WotC should have done the world a favor and put the Realms out of its misery a decade ago, but evidently, reasonable opinion differs. It is hard for me to imagine a canned campaign world that I would want to play in less than FR.

52

I don’t know much about FR but it seems about as bland and generic as possible from what I’ve heard of it. Even the 1st edition Greyhawk setting, which at the time consisted of less amount of firm material than most good DMs (including myself) have for their custom-built worlds, still had a little character to it.

53

[QUOTE=Ludovic]
I don’t know much about FR but it seems about as bland and generic as possible from what I’ve heard of it. Even the 1st edition Greyhawk setting, which at the time consisted of less amount of firm material than most good DMs (including myself) have for their custom-built worlds, still had a little character to it.
[/QUOTE]

I think the problem is not that there is too little character, but way too much character. With all of the Elminsters, Khelben Blackstaffs, and Lord Manshoons running around, what is the right place to pitch the PCs? Is there any problem you can’t scramble to an absurd NPC to resolve? How many dei ex machina will it take for everything to get sorted out? I kind of like the fact that D&D is finally conceding defeat: it built an unsupportable edifice that it is only now knocking down. The sooner the developers start again, the better.

54

I guess that the synthesis of our statements would be that if you have a world that tries to be all things to all players (by including craploads of different places, characters, etc.) it doesn’t come off with any overall feel to it, which is sort of what I was trying to say but you reminded me of a way to say it better.

55

[QUOTE=Bosstone]
Not to get into a hijack about 3.5, but I guess I will. You happened to pick the one skill that is retardedly simple to game without even really trying. A level 3 Bard (6 max ranks in a skill) with 16 Charisma (+3), 5 ranks in Sense Motive (+2), and 5 ranks in Knowledge/nobility and royalty (+2) will have +13 to Diplomacy. If you’re really into it, Skill Focus/Diplomacy adds +3, Negotiator adds +2, and choosing Half-Elf as your race gives you another +2, for a total of +20 to Diplomacy. At level 3, using only SRD feats and races. Granted, you’ve specialized in Diplomacy so much you can’t really do much else, but you could charm the pants off an orc.
[/QUOTE]

So, you’re going to use Diplomacy in combat? Going to take the full minute (assuming you rush it at -10, IIRC)?

How many 3rd level bards can stand there for 10 combat rounds while an orc is swinging at them?

56

[QUOTE=Bosstone]
I presume you had an opportunity to provide feedback? I would imagine that’s what a playtest is for, after all.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, and I convinced my group to not follow the plan of submitting a playtest sheet consisting of the word “crap” in large letters.

But we’re not talking about “I think it should be a +2, not a +3”, we’re talking about major, complete rewrites of the main rules.

So…not gonna make a difference. Not even a little bit.

-Joe

57

[QUOTE=Merijeek]
So, you’re going to use Diplomacy in combat? Going to take the full minute (assuming you rush it at -10, IIRC)?

How many 3rd level bards can stand there for 10 combat rounds while an orc is swinging at them?
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think I said anything about combat.

A half-fey in my current campaign was able to negotiate passage through hostile kobold territory, though, despite the fact that we’d killed about 30 kobolds on our way to see the chief. A character doesn’t have to be useful in combat, necessarily.

58

[QUOTE=jayjay]
You know, I think we’ve found the one definite issue on which you and I agree wholeheartedly. I can only wish I had the money and the sources to collect all of the old late 1st/2nd ed. sourcebooks and boxed sets. I’d love to have everything from gray-box FR to Spelljammer to Al-Qadim to Ravenloft to Oriental Adventures to Birthright to etc.etc.etc…

I’m a bit of a sourcebook fiend, though. I just like to read them.
[/QUOTE]

If I dig up my Spelljammer boxed set, I’ll let you know, so you can give it a good home.

59

[QUOTE=Scuba_Ben]
If I dig up my Spelljammer boxed set, I’ll let you know, so you can give it a good home.
[/QUOTE]

If you weren’t definitely heterosexual I’d kiss you!

60

Yikes. Rarely have I needed Page Down so much for any thread on the 'Dope. Screen after screen of thick blocks of text that are nothing more than fanboy rants just make my eyes glaze over. Even worse, it turned into a Drizzt discussion somewhere in there. Oh, my eyes!

At least I didn’t see any damn whinging about the damn Golden Wyvern stuff. It’s enough trying to ignore that crap on RPG boards.

Anyway. I’ve played every edition of D&D – my first book was Gods, Demigods, & Heroes (slight difficulty in playing D&D with just that book, BTW). I’ve played D&D, AD&D, Basic, Advanced, Expert, Immortal, 3.0, 3.5…

I can still play 'em all, matter of fact.

And, although I don’t need WotC to put out any more books for any of those games to enjoy them, I’m interested in what they’re suggesting 4.0 is going to look like. Star Wars Saga looks interesting. The changes they’re proposing, also interesting. If they can fix things like how damn hard it is in 3.5 to stat up encounters, or the PC reliance on magic items, all the better.

And what they’re proposing for the Forgotten Realms is, essentially, cutting out the crap that it has been so richly and deservedly mocked for.

All things that will likely mean good sales for 4.0 and for WotC. Internet fanboy rants? Also likely to contribute to better sales. They have to love the marketing boost all this frustrated outrage is creating.

So I say, bring it on, WotC. I’ve got disposable income, you’re making new books I might be interested in, and I still get to keep all the old ones I liked. Best of all worlds, really.