http://www.incrediblevehicle.com

That’s where I’ll be posting from now on. I’ve imported everything from here to there, so comments and the like should also be there. I poked Dave about changing the feed and link, so hopefully people will be goin’ there instead of here soon.

I have no idea how many people read this via RSS, if anyone, but you might wanna change where you’re getting updates from. I’ll post about this over there, too, but if you want just the roleplaying stuff, this link should sort you out:

http://www.incrediblevehicle.com/category/roleplaying/feed

I’m also going to branch out a bit in terms of topics. I work in the computing field, which takes up a fair amount of my brain space. If you’re not up for that, I’d recommend the feed above. If you prefer bookmarks, then this is your link:

http://www.incrediblevehicle.com/category/roleplaying/

See you later!

As it stands now, I’m nearly 100 pages in— more on that in a moment— and it doesn’t break character. It’s a collection of files, notes, journals, and ephemera detailing people’s encounters with the various nasties in this book. There’s nary a stat to be found and even the credits are at the back of the book rather than the front. Altogether, it’s 300 pages, covering 16 different phenomena. If you were to mistake this for a collection of short stories, you wouldn’t be far off the mark!

It’s definitely in a more Hunter-y context than any of the other games, a plain World of Darkness mortals game being one big possible exception. By that I mean that these stories are laid out more like mysteries than threats. So far, they’re fairly localized phenomena, though for at least a few of these horrors it’s obvious how you could increase their scope, at least to the point where they might give any of the other supernaturals cause for concern.

Anyway, it’s a real treat so far. It adds a lot to what might come to mind when you think about Hunter: the Vigil in particular and the sorts of things you’d see in World of Darkness in general.

All that said, I imagine you’ll get a bunch more more mileage out of it if you pick up Collection of Horrors. From what I can tell, it gives you something more concrete than a story, using the SAS system, various props (incl. audio) (!), and presumably statistics for some of the phenomena concerned. I’m intrigued, to the point where I’m considering buying the bundle. I like it when companies experiment like this, and I suspect these would be ideal for one-shots.

Since it’s evening when I’m writing this, I’m going to have at the rest of the book.

Finishing a campaign has freed up some amount of brain-space. I’m still into D&D, but it’s a bit easier to think about other things now that I don’t feel guilty about my game languishing. And listening to the White Wolf podcasts has allowed a lot of the World of Darkness stuff to burrow into to my brain once again. There’s also been some Geist stuff out and about, like the teaser in Epitaph. That piqued my interest.

I think this year, when Giest comes out, I’ll do something a bit different the usual. In previous years, I’ve read through the book, posted some thoughts here and there, daydreamed about games I could run, and that was more or less the end of it. This year? This year, I think I’ll run it once I’ve read it.

Yeah, all right, I’m not sure how that’ll work. The chief obstacle is that I’ll surely be the only one I know with a copy. (We had kind of a running joke back in college that one of our friends, Dan, was the guy who owned all the books. In Seattle, it appears that I’ve fallen into that role.) If the game inspires me, I’ll try to make it work. There should be a quickstart, right? Maybe that’ll be enough to get people familiar with the concept.

The point is that I need to run more games and that, in particular, I should probably run more WoD. Those books make up the vast majority of my collection. They tend to mesh well with my preferred play-style on top of being a highly enjoyable read. So what’s the freaking problem? I ain’t get my shit together, that’s what. I won’t say “No more!” because I’m well aware that thouse could be famous last words. But this sounds like a solid plan.

There’s another idea kicking around in my head that’s related.

I’m thinking about challenging myself to use every single one of the WoD books I own at least once. One-shots, open-ended campaign, limited run game— it doesn’t matter. More games means more fun for everyone (?), and more confidence for me when it comes to game-mastering, which in turn leads to more games. Everybody wins, right?

The penultimate fight was way shorter than I planned. I’d forgotten how badass the PCs were, so I had a bunch of level 3 guys which went down really, really quickly. I always underestimate the players. That said, it worked out really well in the end— the PCs took those guys down fast and hard, which left more time for the final fight and the epilogue.

The last fight went well. I had Evan take over a custom-designed monster, whom I was afraid would steamroll the PCs. Probably he could’ve been more interesting— he had a few fairly powerful encounter powers, most of which were Standard actions, meaning that he could only use them kind of slowly. One of them was a recharge power, but it probably should’ve been another one instead of his ability to reconsitute goblins into pesky zombie minions. I probably should’ve weeded out one or more attacks in order to replace them with something that could be a move or a minor. Maybe a Flaming Sphere-like ability, for example.

In terms of having a player control an NPC, I’d say it went well. I trusted Evan to do the right thing after telling him to not, say, just fly over the PCs and plink them. This group worked well enough that I don’t think Evan had a problem with being killed in the end.

In fact, let me state for the record that this was Evan’s idea originally— I didn’t just take over his PC without his consent! The jumping off point was when he said he could see himself turning into an antagonist, someone that the party would have to fight. It was such a great idea that I couldn’t resist.

Pacing went well. The pacing went relatively well. I didn’t feel too bad about not giving them in-game “stuff” for some things like the supply room, as it offered clues (read: it had been undisturbed for a long time).

Expository stuff for Rubican could’ve used work. This was fun for Evan and I and more boring for others, I suspect. I like doing one on one stuff, and that’s fine in itself. The problem was that nobody else had any idea what was happening, which was kind of a shame after all that build-up. Perhaps the party could’ve seen/heard the last set of visions. Admittedly, some of this was due to the fact that I wanted to end it, which meant I didn’t have time for more interesting expository stuff. In the future, I plan to involve multiple players in “side” plots.

Improv went well. I’m not sure how much I should reveal what was made up and what wasn’t. I don’t want to ruin the impression for any of my players that everything wasn’t prepared, but let’s be honest: I didn’t prepare everything. So if you’re a player from my game and you don’t want to know, skip this!

I made up the weapons at the end on the spot. I had a dungeon tile for the corner there, forgot to do anything with it, and decided it had to be something good when people decided to explore it. Likewise, I gave them some books that I hadn’t planned originally— one of them for creating portals, and a couple of zolem manuals. I didn’t plan my descriptions for the staging area. Aaaand I didn’t plan anything past the PCs teleporting back to Er-Eret.

In the end, I’m happy with how all that went.

I finished a goddamn game. And now I can say that my game finished! It took god only knows how long. At least six months. …nine months, judging by when I put up session #1! Awesome. As I may’ve mentioned, most of my games end in neglect, either due to scheduling conflicts or my interest wanes.

What’s next?

Good question. Most likely it’s an Arcane Power game, since that book is out and Divine Power isn’t. The player roster will probably see some changes, and it will more than likely be a different format of play. I’ve also got a couple of things I might want to try and execute on in my next game (e.g., “rituals are important”).

You’re in a room

The PCs were in a room that ostensibly acted as a barracks. After examining the room, they noticed that there were runes of warding that protected the room. Since Ratha and Rubican had reasonable familiarity with the language of Bael-Turath, they were able to complete the spell and rest.

They deciphered the missives, of which there were two. One concerned a portal, and contained orders to shut down the portal in order to retreat to the Usurper’s strongpoint. There were also orders to execute any prisoners. The other missive was from an inferior officer who begged the addressee to keep the portal open.

The PCs discussed the implications of there being a portal here— questions as to whether the goblins were using this arose, whether the goblins were actually being exploited by something else— and before long they decided to rest.

Rubican had a dream, where the Usurper made him kneel. Rubican resisted and although it chagrined the Usurper, he congratulated Rubican on his persistence and strength of will. Then he disappeared. Rubican didn’t wake up; rather, he saw across the clearing a woman who radiated heat. He approached her, and offered a hand despite the scorching air around her. She cut the shard out of his hand, and showed him a vision of plains of endless fire.

The next day they explored the rest of the complex. They found a storage room, which contained little of value beyond what could be considered historical artifacts. They found the holding cells, wherein the executed prisoners had risen back to life, still locked in cells, and more or less harmless.

Finally, they found the portal room. There was a bright sphere of light and a runic circle. On the floor were ashes, which had been undisturbed. The presence of ash was conclusive proof that this place had been undisturbed.

They entered the portal and explored a bit after realizing that the portal had closed behind them and that they were stuck. The notion was that the room they arrived in was a staging area for troops. This became clearer as, once they explored, they discovered that there were other, now dormant, portal circles. They also heard voices, and chose to investigate.

The last confrontation

When they found the source of the voices, they saw a bunch of goblins, one of whom was attempting to build a new Zombie/Zolem/Zombie fat-man. The rest were gambling.

The chieftain nearly lost his wits when he saw Ratha and Rubican together, as he had some sense that Rubican was affiliated with the Usurper, and after having moved a bunch, it was evident that Ratha was of the Star Pact. The PCs tried to extract more information, and found mostly that he was struggling to rebuilt the goblin army. Evenutally the PCs convinced him that he’d been betrayed, at which point he lost all reason and ordered his goblins to attack.

It was a short fight. Once the goblins all died, though, the jeweled finery that the chief goblin had been wearing began to crack and explode. A mist formed, which took on a humanoid shape, and rushed at Rubican.

At this point, Rubican had another vision. The Usurper demanded Rubican’s full cooperation. The Mother of Embers, as she identified herself, appeared behind the Usurper. When the Usurper noticed, he flew into a rage, and offered Rubican power and wealth at his side. Rubican chose the Mother of Embers. In response, the Usurper assumed control of Rubican and the battle began.

It was a longer fight than before, but odds were against the Usurper, even though he was able to reconstitute the goblins and raise the Zolem. Once the final blow was struck, the Usurper combusted and dissipated, leaving behind a fine white ash, almost like sand.

The PCs searched the room and found a number of books preserved. This was the Usurper’s lab, perhaps one of many. One of these books had a scroll of teleportation in it, which necessitated that someone involved have an intimate connection with the teleport destination.

Another thing they found were some old Bael-Turathi weapons, obviously magical but clearly outside the bounds of what magic was available in modern times.

They cast the teleportation ritual, and appeared in Er-Eret.

Epilogue

Eventually, Sighni, Ansa, Ratha, Lexa, and Alec got together and discussed the implications of what happened, and resolved to do some more research. Ansa advised against keeping the Bael-Turathi weaponry, as it might awaken or attract evil. They were also acutely aware that this was probably not the end of the Usurper.

Lexa hung on to a couple of the daggers. They whispered to her, and with each passing day, she grew closer to understanding. We decided that, in all probability, she would go insane, especially since her beloved crime lord was in such a dangerous line of work.

Long-term, Alac’s plan was to raise money for Er-Eret from the antiquities they found in the outpost.

That night, when they were celebrating, they saw a familiar face reflected in the bonfire: Rubican, who lived on in some parallel realm of pure and scorching fire.

Done!

I’ll have more in the postmortem, but it was nice to have a not-entirely-shitty resolution to this campaign. Everyone seemed pleased enough, and I was glad I could put it to rest.

I also got my hands on Arcane Power, which of course looks pretty sweet so far.

That’s all for now, though, blog. I must has my sleeps, you see.

To review, I’ve entered the following books into my little database: PHB, FR PHB, Martial Power, and PHB2. I haven’t added any builds or content from Dungeon or Dragon, including the Artificer. I haven’t added the Dark Pact warlock, but I probably should.

Well, now! The long-tooth shifter seems to have cornered the market on the highest number of viable classes and builds. That’s in part because Strength remains king; the half-orc, goliath, and long-tooth are all within the top five most viable races, in no small part because PHB2 adds more Strength-based classes. What’s interesting is that now Wisdom narrowly beats Charisma as the second most valuable attribute.

Wisdom’s increased prominence means the dwarf has picked up three top tier classes and a bucketful of new builds due to Constitution appearing in a few classes. I still find it more than a little amusing that a dwarf is a viable bard, of all things. (It’s not that I can’t see the thematic possibilities— it’s that prior to 4e, it would’ve been a ridiculous, awful choice for a bunch of reasons.) What I find more amusing is the prospect of a goliath bard, a 7’5″ bard made of rocks. Think on that!

Speaking of the bard, half-elves now have a bard build as a top-tier choice! Eladrin still only have one, though, and dragonborn picked up two more top-tier builds, bringing them up to six (with the caveat that three of those are warlord builds).

Another thing I notice is that new classes are, at worst, on par with many of the races from PHB1 in terms of the sheer number of options. On average, PHB2 races have ~3.3 top tier builds, whereas PHB1 classes have more like ~2.8.  They have ~35 viable builds on average, compared to ~28 for PHB1 classes. I’m not going to read a whole lot into this, but it is vaguely interesting.

Again with the context

As I said in my previous post, this is based on a fairly simplistic analysis of what’s viable and what’s not. Some classes have racial abilities that complement classes nicely, whereas others are a poor choice for other reasons.

To wit, a dwarf avenger with an Execution Axe and Dwarven Weapon Training is quite terrifying. With 18 Wisdom, he’s rolling at least 9 damage on every attack! He’s also less mobile. And, since avengers start with Cloth only, it’ll cost feats to take advantage of dwarves’ “Speed 5 with heavy armor” schtick. It’s a tradeoff, in other words.

The other thing is that suboptimal builds have some recourse as of PHB2— now you can shore up your slightly lower to-hit with feats like Weapon or Implement Mastery. Of course optimal builds can take those, too, but that’s potentially at the cost of a feat that’s more interesting or relevant.

You’re a what now?

In the end, I like doing this analysis not in order to find the most optimal builds, but rather to find those that are unexpectedly viable and thus offer interesting ways to depart from the norm. The half-elf barbarian, goliath bard, half-orc cleric, and tiefling shaman are each combinations that are (by the above standard) viable as well as delightfully off the beaten path. I might have missed them if I hadn’t written this tool. Depending on whether or not I find time to polish my little app, I might be able to make it available, with this purpose chiefly in mind.

Thanks for reading!

See, I didn’t want to print all those character sheets out. Having all four characters on a computer would save ink, paper, and time spent fiddling with papers. But I don’t have a Windows laptop. I have a MacBook, and I replaced Windows with Ubuntu Linux on my ~4 year old Toshiba because it ran like moleasses (no sense in wasting an otherwise viable machine).  The rub? The D&D Character Builder doesn’t offer PDF exporting!

I don’t know whether this was by design or not but fortunately there’s a workaround: if a program lets you print, chances are you can save to PDF. There are various paid tools out there— I believe this functionality comes with Acrobat Pro— but of course there’s are free alternatives. PDFCreator is what I used.

Brief HowTo

Download and install PDFCreator.

Open an existing character or create a character in the Character Builder. Click Character Sheet.

Go to File > Print, and select PDFCreator instead of your usual printer. It’ll prompt you to provide some metadata for your PDF, like author and so on. Change it if you want, or leave it alone.

Click Save, which will prompt you to save your file someplace.

To survey your handiwork, open the file you just created in your favorite PDF viewer. (I recommend FoxIt Reader due to its speed and non-bloatedness.)

Bonus tip

I don’t know whether it was something with my network configuration, but I had a heck of a time getting the .NET 3.5 runtime installed at one point. smallestdotnet didn’t help. The installer linked off of the Character Builder page would error out after spending about ~10 minutes trying to download the installation data. There was no bleeding way I was going to download the 235mb (!) .NET installer.

In the end, going through Windows Update to install .NET 3.5 worked, so try Windows Update if you’re  having trouble.I would add one caveat, which is that that while Windows has been my primary OS for a while (I’m trying to remedy this), I’m no guru.

It’s also special in part because no Er-Eret tonight. It’s going to be a weeknight next week! It has to be. I’m determined. And I’m more than a little tempted to bring this to a close post-haste.

Anyway, I’ve only had a chance to skim PHB2 as of this writing. Even though my assessment is half-baked, I do have one or two impressions which are even more half-assed and ill-thought-out than usual!

Classes

Compared to previous editions, the barbarian is seems more meaty than dodgy: Strength is primary, and from there it’s Charisma or Constitution, leaving little room for improving AC via Intelligence or Dexterity. Picking up heavier armor is an interesting tradeoff— you’re spending a feat to forfeit +1 Reflex and 1 Speed in exchange for +2 AC.

Can we talk about dwarves? As I mentioned in a previous post, dwarves have a lot to gain from PHB2. There are tons of races that have Constitution, Wisdom, or both. In the top tier, we have druid, invoker, and shaman. All but a couple of classes have one or the other: avenger, barbarian, bard (!!!), and warden. For those of you counting, that’s seven out of eight of the classes in PHB2. 

If you were looking for more evidence of how much of a departure 4e is from 3.x, you have only to look at the half-orc: two physical traits up, Strength and Dex. 

I guess I have no excuse not to play a gnome bard. This time around, though, it’ll be far more interesting. No more goddamn talking to goddamn burrowing animals. And the bard? I could honestly see myself playing it, at least from a mechanical perspective. It’s viable as all get out and I want in on that shit. 

Shamans get a lot of at-wills to choose from. Six! This is on top of a couple of other at-wills. This is one class that took some flak over at Critical Hits. After browsing the level 1 abilities, it’s hard for me to see what the fuss is about. They seem as solid as any warlord, and if I’m in the mood to play a leader, they’d most certainly be in the running.

Someone pointed out that PHB2 classes a lot going on, and that seems pretty accurate. Barbarians have rage; sorcerers have their quirks; wardens shapeshift after a fashion, and druids more so. I’d say they’re definitely more mechanically ambitious than PHB1 classes at first glance. This is something worth discussing more in a separate post, so I’ll stop there.

Races

I have to say that demi-humans are the hardest part of D&D for me to get excited about. At the risk of repeating myself, my “ideal” fantasy game would be all human, but with similar mechanical benefits due to background. That said, there’re one or two bits that are interesting.

Deva make a great control wizard. In particular, imagine one at level 5— Cloud of Daggers or Thunderwave operating at 5 squares? -5 to enemy saves? Intriguing.

The rest Goliaths are sick barbarians, half-orcs are asshole brutal rogues, and gnomes can make for some pretty nasty fae-pact warlocks (COINCIDENCE? YOU DECIDE). It’s fairly standard, though one interesting bit is that a great number of these races are quite viable when it comes to PHB1.

Maybe the only complaint I’d voice about races is the proliferation of top tier race/class combinations. The math is transparent enough that you can adjust difficulty quite easily, whether or not the game assumes these highly optimized classes. Still, it makes me sad that, for example, the eladrin are still a ways behind the other races in terms of top tier class options. 

I’ll have more data on races later, once I’ve updated my data to include these new races and classes.

kthxbai

Aaaand on that note I’m going to adjourn. Expect more commentary in a later post.

Yax is stirring the pot! 

Is 4E the deadliest D&D?

Shit, isn’t one of people’s biggest complaints about D&D 4th Edition that it’s too hard to kill players? I don’t pretend to understand but these people really miss things like save-or-die effects or ridiculous crits, I guess.

That’s all right, though. I will happily indulge Yax, and I’ll even try to be constructive about it.

heals plz

Any character in 4e who rests for 8 hours recovers all of his hit points. Any character in 2nd Edition who rests for the night recovers a single hit point. A 3rd level character in 3.5 recovers three.

In 4th Edition, a cleric with 18 in his primary can heal a quarter of a character’s hit points, at a minimum, twice per encounter. In practice, it’s closer to half or more, and more than once per encounter due to things like Healing Strike and Beacon of Hope.

Clerics in 2nd Edition can heal somewhere a few d8 per day. It’s a bit better for clerics in 3rd Edition, but this has its own problems (i.e., cleric as heal-bot).

Woe betide thee, child, for thou hast rolled a 1.

A 3rd level fighter in 4th Edition will have, at a minimum, 35 hit points. In 2nd edition, a fighter will have a minimum of 3 hit points. In 3.5e, a 3rd level fighter who rolled a lousy Con score could have as few as 11 hit points.

We can take stats out of the picture: assume that the fighter has something reasonable for Con, like 16. The 4th Edition character has 43 hit points. The 3rd Edition character has anywhere from 21 to 39. 

How can you balance monsters and traps with that kind of spread? Easy: you don’t. The guys who have the misfortune of rolling 1s and 2s just die a lot.

Expectations, my man! 

All right, so maybe Yax doesn’t really believe that 4th Edition is the most deadly. What he describes sounds like the DM spring too much complexity on the players all at once. The players were used to straightforward encounters until then, so when the DM changed it up, the players weren’t ready for it.

If you want to add new tactical concepts, you do it gradually, in small chunks. This is different from a “tutorial” quest in that you don’t hit players over the head with it. Think less along the lines of a traditional video game tutorial and more like Half-Life 2 or Portal: the players should learn new concepts by doing.

For example, if you want to introduce them to difficult terrain, construct an easy combat with difficult terrain as a minor element. Think out loud so the PCs can see how the terrain impacts’ monsters decisions. Point out situations where they can use it to their advantage.

Also, don’t let them forget about their abilities! If the elf keeps forgetting he can shift into difficult terrain, remind him. If they’re just double moving to get into melee, remind them that they move and charge. This can also get them across difficult terrain or simply a big battlefield. If night is falling, ask them why they’re hoarding their daily powers. Point out where they can set up a particularly effective flank, or where an Icy Terrain spell might make a big difference.

Of course, this assumes that the players really are interested in the same kind of gameplay you’re offering. Maybe they’re not, which means you have a bigger problem: you want a game with some amount of teamwork and tactics, and perhaps they just want to show up and kill things.