Comments on: Alas, Garnet, We Hardly Knew Ye

By: nick

nick — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:56:01 +0000

First post to OBE. First-time DnD player.

I’ve had the chance to witness Garnet in action and I will miss him in our campaign (tear). I’ve also had the chance to play an 11th level control wizard and I thought the powers were a bit limited.

That being said, I’m anxious to see what justin’s new character brings to the table. After reviewing some of the powers, I am impressed by the granular control that Close Wall Attacks provide (did I miss something, or do all walls have the ability to form whatever shape the caster prefers, so long as the spaces are adjacent?)

FYI: My PC is an Eladrin rogue, named Fin, that I think lends nicely to the group dynamic. Except for the occasional shouting down dungeon halls when attempting to sneak up on NPCs, his powers are extremely versatile.

By: justin

justin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:37:06 +0000

That’s an interesting point, precisely because it’s so counterintuitive. “Oh, if you’re a cleric, you can call down flames from heaven to immolate your enemies.” Uhm, no, you can’t.

By: rob

rob — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:21:44 +0000

Man, seeing it big makes me realize I should have replaced one of those “Flame”s with “Fire”.

But that said, I don’t think I ever really thought about it consciously, but you’re mostly right. There are one or two exceptions where there was some clever mechanic I wanted to find an excuse to showcase, but I mostly started with a visual and went from there. Weirdly, this clears up some confusion about my own work. I’d felt I had successfully made the Witch Doctor’s powers feel more raw than the Wizard, but I couldn’t have said why. This, I think, is the answer.

Tangentially, I also had a very cautionary experience regarding color, the upshot of which is a personal rule: “Do not include the color when you summarize powers for a new player.” We were showing 4E to someone for the first time, and I’d summarized the powers for his cleric on the sheet. As a new player, he logically gravitated to the description of the power rather than the mechanics, and he was frequently frustrated upon discovering he couldn’t light things on fire with Sacred Flame or otherwise do clever things the color text suggested would be reasonable and I think that frustration was an element of his dissatisfaction with the game.

Now, there’s a bigger problem that hints at which is outside the scope of this conversation, but the smaller lesson I take from it is that the closer the color is to the mechanics, the happier everyone will be.