Pathfinder, 2nd Edition: Some Early Thoughts

I am excited about yesterday's announcement of Pathfinder, 2nd Edition. While I agree with Wizards of the Coast’s strategy of getting off the edition treadmill, Pathfinder is a different beast. Its roots are old -- almost 20 years old, now -- and deep in soil Paizo did not till. I hope that the 2nd Edition modernizes Pathfinder a bit and helps Paizo own a more concise and structured product that more closely mirrors their design philosophy.

Of course, I also hope they achieve this without fundamentally changing what makes Pathfinder Pathfinder. The purpose of the game at launch was to continue a 30-year legacy that the legacy’s stewards had seemingly decided to abandon. It would be a shame to undo that work now that it is a 40-year legacy, and now that Paizo are acknowledged stewards of that legacy. This could be a challenging tightrope to walk, but I have quite a bit of faith in Paizo’s creative talent.

There’s not a lot of detail in the announcement Paizo has released, but it’s still worth reviewing and assembling some early thoughts.

In the weeks and months leading up to that release, we are going give you an in-depth look at this game, previewing all 12 of the classes and examining many of the most fundamental changes to the game.

Alchemist is an interesting choice for a new core class, just like goblin is an interesting choice for a new core race. I’m not wild about technology-based classes in fantasy roleplaying -- conceptually I’m a big fan, but I’ve never seen an implementation I’ve enjoyed.

Goblins… I just hate Pathfinder goblins. They feel like a complete waste of a humanoid species, played entirely for comic relief, and they have no readily obvious links to hobgoblins or bugbears. The goblinoid races are one of my favorite pieces of Dungeons & Dragons metalore, and I’ve never liked Paizo’s implementation (or lack thereof).  Hopefully their introduction as a core player character race (excuse me, 'ancestry') will improve matters at least somewhat.

Each one of these choices is very important, modifying your starting ability scores, giving you starting proficiencies and class skills, and opening up entire feat chains tailored to your character.

I’m not wild about this strong suggestion of gating. I hope that there is enough flexibility baked into the process such that players can build the character they want and not the character Paizo has laid out. It’s important to remember that while more options gives players greater customizability, they actually restrict personalization, and I think the latter is what players really want. No one gets excited about playing the same character as someone else, no matter how detailed that build is.

Finally, after deciding on all of your choices, the only thing left to do is figure out all of your bonuses, which are now determined by one unified system of proficiency, based on your character's level.

I’m seeing a lot of folks read this as a similarity to D&D5, but it sounds to me more like a nod to D&D4’s system of flat bonuses by level. I really hope Paizo does not go that route. In all honesty I am not in love with either system, but the key differentiator is on which side of proficiency your flat bonus matters.

In D&D5, you apply your proficiency bonus to a few select skills, and as you level your proficiency bonus increases. In D&D4, you apply a proficiency bonus to a few select skills, and as you level, your bonus to all skills increases. It’s a subtle difference, and again, neither system is really personalized, but it is possible to at least feel some ownership over the former.

I think Pathfinder’s skill system is one of the game’s greatest strengths, and I would hate to see it simplified too greatly. D&D5 is good for a lot of things, but skill-focused character design is not one of them.

Encounter mode is what happens when you are in a fight, measuring time in seconds, each one of which can mean life or death. Exploration mode is measured in minutes and hours, representing travel and investigation, finding traps, decoding ancient runes, or even mingling at the queen's coronation ball. Of all the modes of play, exploration is the most flexible, allowing for easy storytelling and a quick moving narrative. Finally, the downtime mode happens when your characters are back in town, or relative safety, allowing them to retrain abilities, practice a trade, lead an organization, craft items, or recuperate from wounds. Downtime is measured in days, generally allowing time to flow by in an instant.

This is a fine nit to pick, but I’m a little disappointed by this characterization of the three pillars as defined in D&D5 (Combat, Exploration, and Roleplay). Some of these word choices: “easy storytelling;” “a quick-moving narrative;” “allowing time to flow by in an instant;” these are not necessarily what I am looking for when it comes to a system’s support for roleplaying.

I am a big believer that roleplaying games should not have rules for roleplaying, but they should require rules around which roleplaying can be built. Things like alignment, a robust selection of arms and armor, non-combat feats, crafting skills, and other elements create a framework that lets players envision their characters as more than a miniature figurine on a vinyl grid. Part and parcel to these rules is that they can’t be given short shrift. Storytelling should be satisfying, not easy. The narrative should take the time it needs to come full circle. Town life should never flow by in an instant.

Again, this is a lot to infer from a single paragraph. I’m interested to see the direction in which Paizo takes their own interpretation of the pillars, and I have positive expectations.

Most of the game happens in exploration or encounter mode, with the two types of play flowing easily from one to the other. In fact, exploration mode can have a big impact on how combat begins, determining what you roll for your initiative.

If you’ll excuse a moment taken to indulge a pet peeve, initiative is not a rule that needs to become more complex. It impacts a single round of combat. While I have great nostalgia for the days of weapon speed and individual monster initiative, there is a strong argument to be made that even the traditional methods of rolling initiative do not provide a good return on time invested.

After initiative is sorted out and it's your turn to act, you get to take three actions on your turn, in any combination. Gone are different types of actions, which can slow down play and add confusion at the table. Instead, most things, like moving, attacking, or drawing a weapon, take just one action, meaning that you can attack more than once in a single turn! Each attack after the first takes a penalty, but you still have a chance to score a hit. In Pathfinder Second Edition, most spells take two actions to cast, but there are some that take only one. Magic missile, for example, can be cast using from one to three actions, giving you an additional missile for each action you spend on casting it!

I think this might be the most telling paragraph in this entire summary, and I wish I had more to say about it. With so little detail, however, it is impossible to really gauge. This is a huge change, and I think it looks great on paper. However, it feels like this should be more than sufficient to make 2nd Edition fundamentally incompatible with older material. I am very curious to see how Paizo handles this in the playtest. A handwave will not suffice.

Today’s blog update doesn’t really provide much in the way of greater clarity, beyond giving what appear to be two descriptions of possible rounds: “move once, draw your sword, and attack,” and, “move away, draw a potion, and drink it.” These examples do not inspire confidence. They sound pedantic and slow. Getting three actions per round instead of two goes some way toward mitigating that, but if we are tracking every little thing our characters do as an action, now, I’m not convinced that is an improvement over the old system. That feels like a throwback to 20th-century D&D.

Two 7th-level creatures might have different statistics, allowing them to play differently at the table, despite both being appropriate challenges for characters of that level.

I know what Paizo is trying to say here, but it still makes me want to respond with that, “You don’t say?” Nicholas Cage meme.

This also makes it easier for us to present monsters, giving us more space to include special abilities and actions that really make a monster unique. Take the fearsome tyrannosaurus, for example; if this terrifying dinosaur gets you in its jaws, it can take an action to fling you up to 20 feet through the air, dealing tremendous damage to you in the process!  

Hazards are now a more important part of the game, from rangers creating snares to traps that you have to actively fight against if you want to survive. Poisons, curses, and diseases are a far more serious problem to deal with, having varied effects that can cause serious penalties, or even death.

Monsters with unique mechanics and hazards as encounters in their own right were hands-down my favorite things about D&D4, and I absolutely encourage their implementation in any roleplaying game. I wish D&D5 had preserved more of them.

All in all, I see why this announcement is being met with mixed feelings. I think ten years is a respectable length of time between editions, and you could argue that Pathfinder has really been waiting for a substantial update for closer to 20 years. I agree that the game could use a fresh coat of paint. But this summary does not fill me with confidence.

I don’t see the mechanical similarities between this summary and D&D5 that others are decrying, but I do believe the simple approach to fantasy roleplaying is more than adequately covered by D&D5 at the moment. While I’m the last person to advocate gatekeeping through rules complexity, there is something to be said for the fact that greater complexity is Pathfinder’s niche. What I would love to see is more of an effort from Paizo to demystify that complexity and showcase its value, rather than stripping it back.

Nevertheless, it is still early days, and far too soon to be drawing conclusions from such a brief summary.  I look forward to seeing what we learn from Paizo about Pathfinder, 2nd Edition, in the coming days, weeks, and months, and I'll definitely be participating in August's playtest to the best of my ability.  Exciting times!

Mass Market Effect II

It’s been a while since I’ve felt like I had anything worthwhile to say about video games, but here we are again. Thanks for reading.

When talking about Mass Effect 3 I think it’s important to first address the elephant in the room – the ending. In case you haven’t heard, it is apparently very unpopular, and a movement has sprung up to convince BioWare to change it.

Without spoiling it for anyone I can safely say this: the real problem with the ending of Mass Effect 3 is not that it is narratively poor – it logically follows the story. It is that it is inherently unsatisfying. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books, but I dislike the ending. I can appreciate the novel on its artistic merit, even agree with the way the story went, without enjoying it.

I think the real, compelling question that Mass Effect 3 and the subsequent fan frenzy over the ending ask is, “is it enough for the ending of a video game to stand on artistic merit?” Novels and movies represent a few hours of investment and require no real effort to reach the ending.

By the time you close up shop in Mass Effect 3, you’ve probably logged 150 or so hours of active playtime into the game’s universe, and that only accounts for a single complete playthrough. That is more than six full days, or almost four 40-hour work weeks. Is it worth investing that kind of time in a story that ends on a gut punch?

I can’t answer that question for anyone else, but for my part, I will think hard before getting invested in another of BioWare’s game franchises, or, at the very least, I will enter into the next devil’s contract with a better understanding of what to expect from the designers.

These are not men with an interest in amusing you – these are men with an unexpectedly grim philosophy regarding the sanctity of narrative. As a writer I can respect that, but when I spend the kind of time and energy I’ve spent on Mass Effect I expect a pat on the back. I like happy endings – so sue me. Or, you know, donate to Child’s Play with a note attached saying I should change my attitude. It could work.

As for the complaint that the ending does not reflect the choices you have made throughout the story, I think that is a more difficult judgment call. BioWare could have limited the ending options for anyone who hadn’t played the original Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2, but doing so would have offended my sensibilities – I believe that when you pay for a thing you should get the whole thing.

It’s part and parcel to why I am opposed to EULAs, “online activation codes,” and to a lesser extent DLC on the whole. Not supporting BioWare in this would be hypocritical.

In the end, Mass Effect 3 does involve the choices you made in the first and second games to a great degree, and it engages them in a quantitative way that does ultimately influence how the end of the game plays out. I did successfully complete the game, but my understanding is that it is absolutely possible to fail, and for that reason I have to dismiss this particular grievance as spurious.

Your choices from all three games do affect the ending of Mass Effect 3 – just not the actual events of the successful ending, which one could argue have been narratively set in stone since long before the main character was even born.

With the matter of the ending dealt with, I have to say that overall, Mass Effect 3 kind of disappointed me. The game has none of the elegance of its immediate predecessor, replaced by rampant sentiment and unrepentant gut punches so frequent that they almost (almost, mind you) become ineffective.

On top of this, the game engine itself is a disaster, with a quest log that's almost as unusable as the inventory system from the original Mass Effect, and frequent freezes (and one legitimate crash to the main menu!) on the Xbox. I’ve never seen that happen before, and installing doesn’t seem to help. I’m told these things are less of an issue in the PC version of the game.

Ultimately, Mass Effect is another great trilogy that will go down in history with a second chapter that is the best out of three. But Mass Effect 3 is still playable and fun and engaging, and worth some bucks, particularly for the multiplayer, which almost feels like the main purpose of the software, it's so well implemented. It's just not a five-star game like Mass Effect 2.

My biggest complaints are that while missions in Mass Effect 2 ended at the perfect length, just as they were getting obnoxious, Mass Effect 3 throws this design concept right out the window in favor of Deep Meaningful Combat – long, confusing battles against powerful foes and challenging environments, meant to evoke hopelessness in the face of overwhelming odds but that are ultimately just frustrating.

The game also uses slow-motion to turn pivotal and dramatic combat moments into thinly veiled reflex minigames. Coupled with get-up-and-make-a-sandwich load times when you fail, the game’s overall approach to combat makes for an annoying disappointment.

Note: I am not “into” Mass Effect’s combat engine – it is possible that these sort of things might entertain more tactically minded players. As a casual gamer who generally plays this trilogy on Normal difficulty, I found it very difficult to stomach.

The narrative of Mass Effect 3 is ultimately its greatest strength, as it has been throughout the trilogy – while it suffers from some of the same opening cognitive dissonance present in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, this is forgivable considering the interactive nature of the story. The writers undertook a tremendous challenge in bringing the variable events in the games to life, and overall I think they did a quality job. The game’s story, while excessively sentimental, is a worthwhile capstone to a living universe.

Bottom line: I give Mass Effect 3.5 stars – the game is worth playing, but it requires a lot of patience with both the technology and the game balance. It just doesn’t quite deserve that fourth star.

D&D4: One Year On

It’s been a little more than a year since Dungeons & Dragons, 4th Edition, launched, and after six months of playing it regularly and six more of watching it evolve I think I have finally defined what it is I don’t like about it.

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy D&D4. I’ve come to terms with it in a way that allows me to enjoy it a great deal as a sort of beer-and-pretzels, fantasy-combat board game, in the same vein as the old DUNGEON! game or the more recent Descent and Runebound. I’m not being flippant – I really do enjoy these games and I consider D&D4 to be one of the best. In a lot of ways, I’ve been waiting for a game like D&D4 my entire life. But I don’t consider D&D4 to be a roleplaying game.

I have to define ‘roleplaying game,’ because I’ve come to realize that the term means something different for everyone, and that my definition is somewhat more strict than most. First and foremost, I consider a roleplaying game to be a system of rules in which I feel comfortable telling an interactive story for the benefit of a group of players. It has been said that a good roleplayer doesn’t need rules to roleplay, and I agree with this sentiment – I spent much of my youth ‘roleplaying’ adventures with my friends in the woods behind my parents’ house – but roleplaying without rules is just improvisational acting, not a game. Likewise, a game like Dungeons & Dragons without rules for roleplaying is just a fantasy combat simulation.

When D&D was originally released back in 1974, that’s all it was – a fantasy mod for a squad-level medieval wargame. Even the concept of setting beyond a hole in the ground with a city nearby wouldn’t be published for another year. I bring up original D&D to illustrate that I’m not trying to make a value judgement or a comparison to the ‘good old days,’ here – just because a particular game is not roleplaying, or a spate of roleplaying is not a game, doesn’t imply that they are somehow diminished. They’re just in a different genre, by my definition.

I have a deep and abiding respect for Gary Gygax (may he rest in peace), and I shared many of his opinions, but this is one topic on which we differed. He was of the opinion that roleplaying was something that happened outside the rules. To me, that’s not a roleplaying game; that’s acting while wargaming. There’s nothing wrong with that – in fact, it is exactly how I tend to play the fantasy board games I love so much. But to me, a roleplaying game is a game that unifies roleplaying and combat under a single rule system, or at least with related rules systems. There need to be out-of-combat rules strict enough to provide challenge when performing tasks outside the dungeon, and in-combat rules relaxed enough to provide opportunity for character personality to emerge in battle. This is where D&D4 falls short for me, on both counts: its vestigial skill system and its exhaustive power list.

I’ve been mocked, in the past, for wanting to expend character resources on a skill like ‘pottery,’ because doing so limits the dungeon-crawling efficiency of my character. But for me, creating a character is not about creating a single-purpose tool. My favorite campaigns are the ones where characters purchase homes, open businesses, and marry townsfolk (or other adventurers), and in so doing become relevant not only to the success of the campaign but to the success of the setting. In short, my favorite campaigns are the ones that encapsulate an entire life rather than individual dungeon escapades. I have trouble explaining this to other D&D players, I think because they consider activities like these to be external to the game, or at best a secondary game. But for me, spending hard-earned gold on a permanent home or business is just as viable an investment as purchasing a new weapon or suit of armor. I believe, therefore, that the same rules should govern both.

Most D&D4 gamers I speak to seem to agree that the skill system is crippled, but many of them don’t seem to mind it as its impact on traditional 4th Edition play is minimal. For me, the lack of a flexible, diverse skill system is damning – it robs me of even the most basic system of adjudication for non-combat actions. This is apparently not a common concern, but it is mine. If I want my character to make some money on the side shoeing horses, there should be a difficulty associated with the required tasks just as there is a difficulty associated with dungeon crawling. It’s all part of the same game.

My complaint with D&D4’s power list is more esoteric, and harder to explain. Players railing against D&D4 often claim that there is less choice involved in creating a D&D4 character than there was in previous editions of the game, and this is pretty patently untrue, as fans of the system are quick to point out. Wizards and clerics have lost a lot of options, but everyone else has definitely gained in the variety department. I think what my fellow discontents are trying to say, rather, is that in D&D4 all choices are laid out for the player, even hard coded, and there is no creativity involved in their selection.

In previous editions of D&D, players had fewer choices to make in the rules, but there was a lot of empty space in character generation as a result. Room to extrapolate on things. A character became a person not because he was extensively customized with established rules, but because he was so similar to every other member of his class and race that you had to look between the rules to personalize him. In D&D4, between powers and feats, characters are watertight. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great game design. I just don’t think spamming ‘Twin Strike’ encourages creativity, and I consider creativity to be a very important part of roleplaying. Can you rename Twin Strike? Can you reflavor it? Sure, but at the end of the day, every power has its own established, unique rules for execution and result. There’s only so much modification you can do without changing the mechanics. The mechanics of a power are definitive.

I think the best way to illustrate this particular point is to suggest an alternative. Even if a player likes the power list as written, I doubt they would argue that it would not be even better to have the capacity to design custom powers for their characters. And that is the “choice” that my fellow discontents are missing in D&D4. When all attacks were a d20 roll against THAC0 followed by rolling weapon damage – or to put it another way, when there was only one rule for attacking – there was a lot more room for personal embellishment. Every attack was different because every attack could be – the d20 roll governed only its success or failure. The power list removes that wiggle room by rigidly defining a character’s options during combat, and discourages embellishment by providing an effortless and universally recognized alternative.

And that about sums it up. By my definition, D&D4 is not a roleplaying game. It seems to me that D&D4 cripples roleplaying coming and going, as its combat rules are too detailed and its out-of-combat rules not detailed enough. Now, plenty of people are roleplaying using the D&D4 rules and enjoying it, and I don’t mean this piece to suggest that they are somehow doing it wrong. As long as they are enjoying themselves, that’s the ultimate goal, and I am glad to see them achieving it. The above are just the reasons why the new system doesn’t work for me personally. I had hoped for a long time that an increased number of supplements would ‘rescue’ D&D4 for me, but these issues are fairly substantive, and present in the core of the system. It seems unlikely they will ever be “fixed” in this iteration of the game, so I continue to look elsewhere for a roleplaying game with a system that will support the kind of long-running immersive campaign I prefer to dungeon master. I will, however, continue to enjoy playing D&D4 modules for enjoyment’s sake.

Mirror's Edge: Holding On By Its Fingertips

Two-and-a-half stars out of five.

Mirror’s Edge, from EA DICE, is as far as I know video gaming’s first foray into the world of parkour. It executes the subject admirably. The innovative engine it uses to simulate running along rooftops and jumping from foothold to handhold to foothold is excellent; neither so difficult that it quickly becomes frustrating nor so forgiving that the player does not feel like he is working hard for every meter of ground. I frequently found myself holding my breath during particularly challenging leaps. The parkour portion of Mirror’s Edge could be a game in itself. In fact, it probably should have been.

I bought Mirror’s Edge despite warnings that it contained SWAT teams because I assumed that, as one friend described it, the enemies would be there to discourage slowing down. An important part of parkour is the speed with which one travels from point A to point B, and in a game with a plot that has nothing to do with the sport of parkour, there should be something in place to create a sense of urgency. I do not have a thematic objection to the presence of enemies in the game. Indeed, there are many ways that the police in Mirror’s Edge could have been utilized well to encourage constant movement, and on rare occasion the game does hit on one or two of them. Unfortunately, the developers do not seem to have recognized their value, and instead incorporate enemies as an unpredictable and frustrating element of their puzzle construction.

In fact, despite the game’s early warnings that hostiles should be avoided rather than fought, Mirror’s Edge is constantly putting the player in situations where direct confrontration, if not conflict, is required by the environment. The player’s radio contact repeatedly warns her to “be ready for a fight” from about the third chapter on. Police appear directly in the path of the player without explanation, even when that path involves overcoming considerable inaccessibility. And these are not the blue-uniformed pistol-bearing cops of the downloadable free demo. These are armored men carrying assault shotguns and rifles, and in some cases 50-caliber machine guns. If there is one message I want to express clearly in this review, it is this: the police are everywhere in this game. Expect the majority of this game to be parkour, but parkour under automatic weapons fire.

Even this could be forgiven, despite the fact that they are armed in this fashion to deal with the threat of a single woman armed only with her speed, if the police had good code governing them. But they do not. There is no stealth system in Mirror’s Edge. Enemies become aware of the player when they are activated, regardless of the player’s actions or concealment. And once they are aware of the player, they never lose track of her, no matter how insane or hidden her movements. The player will never step out of cover in Mirror’s Edge and not be greeted by a hail of bullets. The police can and do track the player around corners and through solid objects.

In many cases, the police do not spawn until the player has wasted too much time in a single area, but this is not universally the case, and there are a few locations in the game that contain enemies from the start and require the player to perform a time-consuming task while there, outside of cover and essentially stationary. The game never explicitly requires combat, but when climbing a pipe or opening a hatch takes two or three seconds, and the pipe or hatch are not protected, failing to deal with the armed men beforehand has predictable results.

In the end, what makes the combat in Mirror’s Edge a failure is not its inclusion but its execution. It would have been a simple matter to always have the police in a pursuit role, or if that became too contrived or difficult, to make the player significantly more vulnerable to gunfire while stationary and significantly less vulnerable while moving. Instead, the enemies are often directly in the players’ path, and gunfire is extremely erratic, to the extent that the player can make a run under fire without taking a single bullet that on a previous attempt resulted in her being gunned down instantly – and vice versa. If a designer is going to use gunfire in puzzle design, their algorithms for accuracy simply have to be more reliable than that. The demo could be beaten without taking a single bullet by making no more than two well-aimed slide kicks. If the whole game had played like that, this would have been a very different review.

The only thing keeping Mirror’s Edge from being a two-star game, despite the excellent parkour engine, is the time trial mode. These are genuinely fun rehashes of the parkour in the game’s story mode, often with some changes to the required route to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, in order to unlock these, you have to first beat the story mode of the game. The speedrun mode of the game is just the story mode with a timer attached, and adds no real value. Hopefully, if DICE produces a sequel, they will make the time trials available from the start and will also do something to eliminate or at least reduce the ubiquitous combat content from the original. Mirror’s Edge is not the game it should have been.

The final encounter of Mirror’s Edge is a short, entertaining boss fight that does not involve combat (only about half the “boss fights” in the game don’t), but rather quick and skillful use of parkour abilities. I successfully executed the required maneuver first try and happily watched the villain receive his comeuppance, only to then immediately succumb to the numerous high-powered gunshot wounds to my back. The experience defines Mirror’s Edge pretty well, in my mind – a good game ruined by poorly designed content that was irrelevant to begin with.

Also published at Gamestop.com and Amazon.com.

D&D4: Two Months In

So it’s been almost two months since the launch of Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition. I’ve run several sessions using the new system. My opinion can be summed up as follows:

The game has its issues: needless complexity is greatly reduced, for instance, but this does not necessarily equate to faster play because rejiggered combat math means higher hit point totals and lower accuracies. Players calling out the same power names in every round and in every combat becomes extremely monotonous, but this is easily circumvented by forbidding players to call their powers by name. D&D4, like Third Edition and 3.5, still builds adventures around encounters, not encounters around adventures, and the rules for non-combat encounters have only made this more pronounced. The tactical reinvention of monsters and character classes means that the use of a battle mat is almost a necessity. But the game is fun. It is simple, engaging, and intuitive, and I look forward to playing well into the future.

Now, when can we expect the release of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition?

As much as I enjoy it, this game is simply not a substitute for any of the previous numbered editions of the game. It is the spiritual successor of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia and the original D&D boxed sets. I totally see where Wizards was going with this, and it was a good idea. It is very playable. But it is so simple that even I am a little squeamish, and I love games like Runebound, Descent, DUNGEON!, Talisman, and other RPG-like board games. That experience isn’t quite what I’m looking for when I sit down with friends to play D&D. It was sufficient when I was first starting to dungeon master for my friends in 6th grade. Now we all expect something that requires a little more thought and a little more initiative from the players.

From the ground up, characters are terrifyingly without flaw, in the new edition. There are no more ability scores below eight, and the guidelines don’t advise anything below 10. We are advised with extreme prejudice that evil alignment ruins the game. Whether or not you agree with the inclusion of alignment is immaterial – the exclusion of evil gods (and their Channel Divinity feats) from the PHB is a clear, mechanical indictment of that style of play that has nothing to do with philosophy. The races have no penalties to anything – they are each good at everything, and even better at a subset of things.

The classes in D&D4 are an exercise in simplicity. Even at 30th level, a character has a choice between only 17 actions to take in a given combat round, and seven of those choices are utility powers, not necessarily attacks. Both of those numbers drop quickly as encounter and daily powers are used. Note that this has nothing to do with the powers available in the book. This is not a problem caused by lack of splat. No matter how many powers a player can choose from, he will be limited by the 17 slots he has to put them in.

Now, admittedly, I have yet to play in a high-level D&D4 game, but it looks to my trained eye like combat that is already monotonous on the heroic tier is only going to get more monotonous once you pass 10th level. By that point, you’ve basically already got all the powers you are going to get – any future power gains replace powers you already have (with the notable exception of your three paragon path powers). Epic destinies don’t grant powers, for the most part – just traits. More survivability is always good, but choice is also nice, especially when you are high level and sporting aspects of two classes, a paragon path, and an epic destiny. I expected to find variety, and instead it looks like advancement only limits a character’s options.

The skill system in the game was no surprise – we knew how it was going to work for some time. I was never overly fond of it, but I accepted it on the basis of simplicity (if I never roll up a high-level D&D3.5 rogue again, I will be a happy man). The trouble is that the skill system, as it turns out, is indicative of an overarching simplicity that takes a lot of the personality out of the game. Athletics covers just about everything your average dungeoneer will need to do that does not involve his sword. Climbing, jumping, lifting, pulling, pushing… and everything that isn’t covered here is covered by Endurance or Acrobatics. Why don’t we call a spade a spade and acknowledge that these are nothing more than Strength, Constitution, and Dexterity bonuses, respectively? We’re back to First Edition, here. These aren’t skills. Some consolidation seems wise – Stealth, for instance, never made much sense to me as separate checks to conceal oneself visibly and audibly. But Thievery? Really? Why not just have a skill called “Fighting” and roll it repeatedly in combat?

Feats, fortunately, I have little problem with. Eighteen feats in thirty levels! There’s some customizability for you. I even feel like Wizards has managed to make every feat worthwhile to someone who might want to take it. There are still mechanically great feats and mechanically terrible feats, but at least the mechanically terrible feats don’t seem like they will destroy your character. I rolled up a dual-wielding level 30 wizard/rogue/daggermaster/demigod and wound up with two feat slots I didn’t know what to do with. That was a really welcome experience. The downside to the feat system is that feats serve to make an already perfect character even more perfect. I would really have liked to see some kind of drawback or disadvantage system to offset the rampaging effectiveness of the D&D4 character. Character flaws are apparently passé, in the new age of D&D.

Equipment seems to obey a few simple rules, and with a few exceptions, weapon power in a given class (one-handed or two-handed, simple or military) seem to fall into an easily recognized equation. This is important to me because I’ve always felt like characters shouldn’t be penalized for their equipment. There ought to be advantages to playing a knife fighter over a halberd fighter that make up for the massive loss in damage, and when you take into account the fact that the dagger is a one-handed simple weapon and the halberd is a two-handed military weapon, everything does seem to even out to a greater or lesser degree. I’m not terribly impressed with the superior weapons – the rapier in particular is clearly designed for rogues and only rogues. The shuriken is even more ridiculous – it’s a dagger that can’t be used in melee that you need a feat to use at all. Unless you’re a rogue, in which case it does more damage and you don’t need the feat. I’ve house ruled the shuriken out of existence and have given rogues that 1d6 damage with thrown daggers. Seems like a much simpler solution to me than having a spare superior weapon that no one will ever use. I’ve told my players that calling their thrown daggers “shuriken” is completely acceptable, if it makes them happy.

Magic items… good lord. The system that adjudicates magic items is fine, I suppose – it’s uniform, if straightforward, and it looks like fun – but there’s no way to randomize them. I’m not averse to throwing the PCs magic they can use once in a while, but I find this idea that dungeons should be stocked with treasure appropriate to the homicidal lunatics about to raid it a bit insulting. The treasure “tables” in general are completely devoid of randomization. Players beat monster X, they receive treasure X. And a LOT of treasure X. I’ve tried selecting treasure parcels using a 10-sided die… and I don’t recommend it. The gold piece has apparently been devalued, because everyone’s got a lot of them, suddenly. Some goblins could be using their stash for armor.

Combat seems stripped down until you realize that the new Combat chapter in the Player’s Handbook is the Classes chapter. Everything you could do in D&D3.5 you can still do in D&D4… if you’re a member of a party with a few martial heroes in it. Cooperation is much more important in the tactical environment of D&D4, because suddenly only the fighter can sunder weapons and armor (and only temporarily) and only the rogue can disarm (and only temporarily). Forget about using a ranged weapon unless you’re a ranger… but then, that’s nothing new. I like the new combat system, to be honest – I rarely, if ever, looked up from the PHB while adjudicating D&D3.5 combat, and I get more fresh air thanks to D&D4. But I feel for fighters, who seem to have traded their player-strategy-driven combat superiority for more-effective but ultimately less-satisfying game-system-dictated combat superiority. Marking is some seriously weak sauce, from a roleplaying perspective.

Behind the screen, encounter design no longer takes hours – that’s a major, major plus. I don’t have great faith in the “simple” level-adjustment system for monsters (I think it breaks down after only two or three levels in either direction, rather than five levels as Wizards claims), but that’s still better than the guesswork of the First and Second Edition Monster Manuals and Monstrous Compendia, or D&D3.5’s clearly arbitrary and never-playtested DC system. Creating new monsters is not quite as straightforward as it was in D&D3.5, but I welcome a return to intuitive dungeon mastering. The only real objection that I have is what I mentioned before about adventures following encounters, and not the other way around.

The black-and-white short rest and extended rest system works very well in a dungeon context, but overland it becomes a straitjacket. Logically, the party should encounter fewer and weaker monsters outside of dungeons. Fewer battles, however, means a better-rested party, which means more powerful encounters are required to provide challenge. Weaker encounters would mean that adventurers have to be attacked multiple times in a single day, in order to provide challenge. As a result of this and other symptoms, I feel pressure to orient my sessions around encounters rather than around story. I suppose this is not a new phenomenon, but I feel that the design of D&D4 brings it to an ugly head.

That about sums it up. I’ve not given up on D&D4 yet, but I find myself missing D&D3.5, and I never thought I’d feel that way. By the end of its lifetime, D&D3.5 was a terrible mess, and I dreaded every game I ran with it. I’ve recently been exposed to Earthdawn, Second Edition, and the elegance of that system (once you learn the step chart) has definitely spoiled me. D&D4 is fun, but it is less and less what I want to be running, as time goes on. If combat were faster, it would be a great beer and pretzels game. Perhaps future supplements will improve matters – I always enjoy a good board game expansion.

Cross-posted on the official Dungeons & Dragons forums.

WoW - Wrath of the Lich King update: Dragonblight

Blizzard Entertainment has updated the Wrath of the Lich King expansion preview on their World of Warcraft website with the latest in a series of zone descriptions, this time focusing on the dragon graveyard known as the Dragonblight.

My initial reaction is that I would be a lot more impressed if dragon skulls and spines weren't already standard palette for zone design in WoW. Instead, there are simply going to be more dragon skeletons in the Dragonblight than there are in any other zone, which I'm sad to say makes me shrug with indifference. The existence of this zone is not a surprise -- it has been included in WoW Roleplaying Game canon for at least two years (Lands of Mystery was published in April of 2006), and one would think that Blizzard could have prepared accordingly. I fully acknowledge that I'm geeking out, here, and that this seems like a fairly minor issue, but the zone seems riddled with similar unusual design choices.

Most notably is the revelation that the first humans to be infected with the Scourge lived in the Dragonblight. The flash video on the website features what seems to be a sizeable abandoned human settlement. It just seems unbelievable to me that the dragons, who are fiercely untrusting and protective of their secrets everywhere else in Azeroth, would allow anyone to settle in their sacred grounds in such numbers. A small tauren settlement does not stretch the limits of the imagination, but a large human town seems very out of place in a zone that is home to the dragonflight shrines and Wyrmrest Keep, and which is presumably littered with the spirits of the draconic dead.

The revelation that the red dragonflight will be joining the bronze as an ally to characters who are willing to do the necessary legwork is very welcome, although the establishment of the blue dragonflight as inimical is yet another disappointment. The lore paints the dragonflights (with the exception of the blacks) as being honorable, if distant, guardians, interested overall in the advancement of life and peace. In game, however, interaction with dragons comes primarily in the form of combat, even with those dragonflights with which occasional interaction of other kinds is possible.

I understand the lore supporting Malygos turning on the mortal races, and obviously, why his dragonflight would follow him. I do not understand why the bronze dragons were hostile to everyone before the Caverns of Time were opened (or, alternately, why they are so "welcoming," now). I don't understand why the red dragons around Grim Batol are hostile to everyone. I gather that the green dragonflight has somehow been corrupted by Hakkar's influence on the Emerald Dream, but that story remains to be told in full, and it will likely remain murky until the Emerald Dream is opened as a playable zone or instance. All in all, I feel as though the issue of draconic involvement in mortal affairs has been schizophrenic at best, and could really have been handled with more grace throughout the evolution of the game. But I'm diverging into another topic -- the handling of factions in general -- and I should save that for another post.

I am made really nervous by the mention of Angrathar, the Wrath Gate, and the Horde and Alliance "gearing up for the siege." This sounds suspiciously like the war effort event that was required to open the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, which essentially involved the entire server slaving over fetch and gather quests, earning gear rewards, so that a few top-tier 40-man raiding guilds could get their content on. This entire premise seems completely backward to me, since it is the majority of the server population (including raiders, of course) that cares about content, but really just the raiders and PvPers who care about better gear. It seems to me that it would be better to give the raiders epic fetch quests for epic gear, and just make the new content five-mannable. I know that it bothers the designers that so many WoW players never see their work. But I acknowledge that my attitude is a bit radical. Content accessibility is another pet peeve of mine -- I'll leave that for another update, as well.

All in all, I think Wrath of the Lich King is shaping up to be more of the same, which is to say that it will be good stuff -- for a given value of good. Many of the improvements and additions to the way the game is played sound like they are going to be a lot of fun, but the new content is looking increasingly like it will be either irrelevant or inaccessible, which has proven to be par for the course. I look forward to discussing the expansion further as more information is revealed in the coming months.