An icon update from yesterday’s Gray Icons effort…

Left to right: At-Will, Encounter, Daily, Item, Monster, Poison, Hazard.

We’ve made it onto RPGCountdown a second time, in the March 11 episode. Listen to Rob Donoghue comment on the design of the Witch Doctor as we clock in at #9: http://rpgcountdown.com/

While we still have an adventure series in the works for the Shroud, as well as one or two other products in mind, we’re getting close to feeling like we can wrap up that particular worldseed. Everything we’ve done so far except for the adventure series, in fact, would work pretty well all bundled up as a print-on-demand collection from Lulu — something we’ve had as a plan on our radar for a while.

Problem is, 4E’s layout — which we’ve been following closely in our own products — is strongly color-driven, in terms of color conveying meaning.  Olive means monster.  Gold means item.  And green, maroon, and dark grey are your at-will, encounter, and daily powers.

It’s those latter bits that are particularly troublesome when moving into print on demand.  Sure, we could do a color print on demand product, but color POD tends to be gigantically expensive — we’d have to set a price-point much higher than other comparable color interior books with the same kind of page count.  So that means we need to consider how to translate our material over into a greyscale presentation.

Monsters and items aren’t really a problem, when it comes down to it — their context tends to be pretty obvious when they show up somewhere.  The real trouble comes with those powers, where you could have a bunch of them in succession, without it being immediately obvious (unless you’re very good at scanning the blocks for a particular keyword) what class of power it is you’re looking at.

Some of those doing third party 4E support have chosen to confront this issue in different ways.  Goodman Games, at least as far as I’ve seen, opts to ignore the concern, while Mongoose has established a trio of icons in the power headers.  These icons are a sequence of “swirls”, progressing from many, smaller swirls for an at-will power, to just a pair of large swirls to signify a daily power.

Personally I favor visual shorthand over no shorthand, so the icon solution (or something similar) seems like the right way to go.  But without an official grayscale look coming out of WOTC, it’s up to us to invent the way we want to do it. Mongoose’s swirls definitely get some of it right, but overall theirs is not a visual language that really gels for me. Sure, I could consider something other than icons to do this job — grayscale powers entries could have different corner styles, borders, or shading — but speaking as the guy doing the layout work, I think all of those alternatives would work out to be some combination of “collossal pain in my ass” and “gaudy or otherwise visually muddled”.

So that leaves me thinking about icons (“dingbats”, if you prefer — the best approach would be to establish a font containing these designs).  And here, it’s best to think about a clear progression from at-will to daily — we’re talking trios of icons, not three icons living in isolation from one another.  The trick there is to figure out how to express the relationship among the three types of powers.  It could be measured by:

• Frequency – How often you get to use the power
• Magnitude – How “big” or “small” the power is relative to the other types
• Complexity – Daily powers might be represented as intricate, at-wills as simple
• Something else I’m not thinking of

So, here’s where Mongoose’s swirls get it right: they represent both frequency (number of swirls) and magnitude (size of each swirl).  So while the swirls don’t work for me as a final visual, they’re still working to express the relationship between power types in more than one way.  So it may simply be a matter of looking at finding the right geometric aesthetic to represent one power use (could be as simple as a diamond or star or circle).

One of the treatments I’ve done for this so far uses a “starburst” icon, stacking three small ones in a pyramid shape for at-will, two slightly larger ones in a column for encounter, and one fat one for a daily.  It works pretty well, but I’m not yet sold on it as the final idea.

That said, there’s nothing to suggest that we must hit more than one of that list for our visual language.  Another possible contender would be to simply focus on magnitude, and play around with moon-phases: crescent moon for an at-will, half-moon for an encounter, full moon for a daily.

What’s your preference for a visual, color-agnostic representation of these things?

I have two boys, one age 5 and the other 15 years old. Both of them have grown up in a house where games are played a lot. Since my older one was a little guy, I have had some form of regular “gaming thing” almost every week. My little one has always been around it, and it’s him I want to focus on here — or, I should say, kids his age.

My experiments on creating a D&D 4e game he could participate on was really driven by him. He was at EndGame’s last Anniversary party where some short two hour 4e demos were being run by members of the RPGA and he was allowed to sit in on one. For a 5 year old to sit patiently for two hours and play just about anything blew me away. After that, I knew I had something to work with.

So, why 4e? The discrete “encounters” in the game make for a very comfortably timed session for someone young. I know I could do the same things with any number of different systems out there, and skin it with a fantasy theme… but why? The grid and painted plastic figures I can easily acquire for D&D make my own personal barrier to entry in terms of set-up time almost non-existent. He also really gets the idea of a board-game, which is what combat in 4e looks like to someone so little. Having defined squares, and a defined way to move gives him a chance to really visualize what is happening in the game not only through the story we tell, but through looking at the table.

So why not just play Heroscape or something, you may ask…?  Well, keep readin’.

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The centerpiece of Poisoncraft: Codex Venenorum, Ed. IV is the free-form poison creation system. Scaling poison damage is a simple affair. However, most poisons have a condition component in addition to the damage component, e.g., ongoing 5 poison damage and weakened. Establishing a hierarchy for conditions and evaluating their interconnection is more complicated. Therein, lies one of the more interesting design challenges of the forthcoming Codex.

Conditions cover the full spectrum. Some conditions scale inherently, and some scale poorly or not at all. And sometimes this isn’t obvious. A character who is weakened deals half damage whether their performing a simple stab to the face or unleashing a fusillade of arrows to each enemy in range, whether their dealing 1d6 damage or 20d6. That would seem to scale rather obviously. However, at higher levels of play, characters are able to produce significantly greater effects than merely dealing damage. Thus, weakened becomes less problematic; it does not scale perfectly.

As part of my work, I did a thorough examination of all of the conditions in the PHB. Below is a portion of the work, including some of my thoughts on each. In addition to some insight on the Codex, you might find the analysis useful in your own creations, e.g., a new creature or magic item.

Blinded: This includes a typical parcel of effects, i.e., granting combat advantage and being unable to flank. The Perception penalty should not be overlooked (see, deafened), but it’s less relevant since the condition itself grants combat advantage. Notably, all of your targets have total concealment. Normally, this does not affect close and area attacks. However, it is important to consider that some such powers specifically require that the character be able to see the target—look at virtually all of the close powers of the fighter, ranger, and rogue. This condition can be highly problematic. Definitively paragon tier (the rogue’s blinding barrage daily power being the exception that proves the rule).

Dazed: Another CA/no-flank condition. This one also strips an action from the victim. However, that effect is tempered by access to action points. Similarly, with at least one action available, the victim can still seek refuge or otherwise defend to prevent the multiplicative effect of some, more-onerous conditions. Notably, many heroic-tier powers cause the dazed condition, e.g., cleric’s wrathful thunder, wizard’s chill strike, etc. Heroic tier.

Deafened: Much less onerous than blinded, for obvious reasons. Indeed, the deafness can occasionally be a boon, e.g., vs. a harpy. Still, the penalty to Perception is comically large, to the point where it is supposed to make the character fail in all but the most extreme cases. Failing a Perception check in combat is principally relevant for one reason: using Stealth to gain combat advantage. In essence, the condition grants combat advantage. Still, deafened is relatively easier to deal with. Interestingly, none of the core PHB classes have abilities that cause the deafened condition, but still easy to slot as heroic tier.

Dominated: Not generally applicable to poison since it specifically assumes a third-party actor, i.e., the dominating creature. I could conceive of a poison that, say, made the victim impressionable, which allowed a person to make a Diplomacy or Intimidate check to dominate until the end of the turn or something like that. A little too kludgy for my tastes.

Dying: On the one hand, this seems inherently scalable. Essentially, it deals damage equal to your hit point level. However, it’s still an incredibly damaging, and thus potent, effect in any case. Additionally, more than many of the other conditions, it is far easier for epic-level characters to deal with dying. The Heal check to stabilize is a flat DC15, which is essentially automatic in the epic tier. Also see the life charm in AV.

Helpless: This is a one-trick pony, and its name is coup de grace. The CDG is even more potent than dying. Where the latter provides a clock in the form of death saves, the former opens the possibility to immediate death—difficult to pull of, but still possible. Epic tier.

Immobilized: One of the less impactful conditions, this one doesn’t scale very well. At higher levels, alternate methods of movement, specifically teleportation, are more common. Heroic tier.

Marked: Like dominated, not generally applicable to poison. Again, it’s possible to come up with a way of using it, but….

Petrified: This is an interesting one. In a general sense, it’s not nearly as bad as the other take-no-action conditions as a result of the damage resistance. In other words, the target is unlikely to suffer additional harm of serious consequence. The problem of course arises due to the fact that, in most instances, petrified is a permanent condition. A poison with “petrified (save ends)” is not as detrimental as dying, helpless, or unconscious. However, it’s still obviously more problematic than other conditions that merely limit the actions of the target. I peg this one as epic tier, if on the low end.

Prone: This is an odd one because it’s not a condition so much as a position, like kneeling or standing on tippy-toes. However, like an inverse example of petrified, we can play around with how the condition is used. Consider: “prone (save ends)”. And don’t forget the errata (which clarifies the movement restrictions when prone). In any case, it’s a minimally complicating condition. Heroic tier.

Restrained: Obviously, simply a more dramatic example of immobilized. Paragon tier.

Slowed: Easily one of the least complicating conditions—probably the single least complicating. Quintessentially heroic tier.

Stunned/Surprised: If you didn’t catch the errata, you don’t realize that these two conditions are now identical. Here we have the CA/no-flank combo with a take-no-action effect as well. This is essentially a middle ground between the limiting conditions of heroic tier and the more lethal conditions of epic tier. Thus, paragon tier.

Unconscious: Just another flavor of helpless. “Helpless-plus” if you will. The rogue’s 9th-level knockout power is, again, the exception that proves the rule. Indeed, compare it to the 15th-level garrote grip power. Easily epic tier.

Weakened: The ultimate auto-scaler, weakened is minimally problematic. Along with slowed, quintessentially heroic-tier.

Open Gods is a push by One Bad Egg to create an open resource — a pantheon, complete with the attendant channel divinity powers — that other 4E publishers can make use of, at no cost.  One of our frustrations when working on our own products has been that none of the Player’s Handbook gods (nor the powers that come along for the ride) are available to us when writing up our own products.  Whether it’s a minor annoyance like a sample Paladin and its god to be mentioned in passing, or a bigger hurdle like a Cleric NPC for an adventure with all the fun power stuff, it came down to us needing to cook up our own pantheon if we wanted to smooth out the bumps.  We figure other publishers shouldn’t have to do that work if they don’t want to.

Curious? Learn more about it at our Open Gods page!

I have two beautiful daughters, Jadyn and Jara. You’ll pardon the lightness of this post. I was supposed to post a quick preview of my work on the Codex Venenorum, Ed. IV, but I didn’t have much time yesterday as I was taking care of the kids.

Jara (left) & Jadyn (right)

See, cute as a button. As anyone with kids knows–that would be Chris, and Rob is only just beginning to see what I’m talking about–they somehow manage to suck all of the time out of the day. My “regular” D&D game plays once a month–if we’re lucky. So I have to squeeze in some of my design work while the kids are playing nearby, and I often have a lot of my D&D stuff lying around, which occasionally draws interest.

For Jadyn, it’s my big bag of dots and little men. For those who don’t speak three-year-old, that’s dice and minis. And Jadyn absolutely loves playing with them. Usually, this involves Jadyn pretending that the dice, multi-colored as they are, are different kinds of foods. Oh, that yellow icosahedron, apparently it’s a banana.

In a larger sense, it’s fascinating to have kids of this age exposed to the trappings of D&D. She’s not old enough to understand that it’s a game, but she’s old enough to ask a lot of questions of the why-is-the-sky-blue variety. Often, this forces me to think creatively when answering. “What’s that?” she asks, pointing to a mini of a bug-eyed kuo-toa with a long spear. “Uhm, he is a fisherman. He uses the spear to catch fish–just like that dog in Go Dog Go!” “What’s this?” she asks, pointing to a picture of a vaasi assault mech in a copy of Dawning Star lying around the house. “That’s a robot,” I say. “Like Wall-e?” she asks excitedly. “Yep, just like that.”

Guest Egghead: Eric Finley

So, I’m just starting up a D&D 4th ed. game, basically as a nostalgia jag (I’m one of those snooty indie gamers from the Forge crowd – grin). And I ran across your Witch Doctor when looking for something else, and offered it to my players. One of them really likes the idea, but the whole primal-animist thing doesn’t really mesh with her background, so we’re re-skinning it. And I figured I’d share.

See full background below. (Hakeem is another PC, a cleric.) Basically, what we’ve got is an empire built around ancestor-reverence and longing for the days of power to return. And the upper tiers of what is essentially a priesthood-slash-secret-service are tiefling witch doctors … renamed for this use to Ancestor Channelers, tapping into the heavy-duty magic of the ancient days without actually having magical talent themselves.

The witch doctor’s mask re-skins to a veil, a very important part of their identity. Don’t touch the veil, trust me – can you say involuntary Infernal Wrath and Chains of Spirit? Veil of the Ancestors is of course the most common (and is our PC’s choice).  The staff is more of a wizard(esque) staff, rather than a medicine stick or the like. Most of the rest of it carries across very nicely indeed.

(The player hates earthquakes but likes the Close Wall powers a lot, so I’ve also given her Twisting Fire as a fire-keyword skin over Tremor Strike.  I figure the fire keyword cancels out, between possible ways to improve it and the relatively high likelihood of encountering resistant enemies, and certainly I can tweak it so that’s true.)

So far, so good.  Chargen was last night, and the Ancestor Channeler’s player is very jazzed about her character. I’ll let you know how it goes, especially if the WD-specific elements end up prominent at any point.

Oh, and here’s an item I added to the adventure’s treasure (actually the best item in the set, this being a level 1 party’s first adventure). Basically it makes Evil Eye “sticky” for one instance of an effect. In theory it’s not WD-specific … but in practice it’s certainly intended to complement that class. If you’d like to use it either direct or as inspiration when fleshing out the Witch Doctor in his final incarnation, I grant you full rights to do so without compensation, as a thank-you for making this interesting class available.

[Awesome campaign background behind the cut....]

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This is a fun one, precisely because it highlights the design difference between 3e and 4e. I don’t think I need to remind anyone of what a prickly pear the whole polymorph bugaboo was under 3e. (Well, maybe just one example for kicks. Oh, what’s that, you want one more?) In 3e, the spell suffered from having to operate too broadly. Indeed, the solution over the life of that edition was to progressively limit the scope and effect of the spell. This culiminated in the polymorph/baleful polymorph split.

Now we get to 4e. In this edition, a more narrow focus is entirely appropriate and allows us to recast this classic to function as it did 99% of the time: turning the dragon into a goldfish and watching it flop around.

As always, feedback is appreciated. I could easily see a utility version of the spell that, say, allows the wizard to grant a variety of abilities based on the form chosen, e.g., fly speed for winged creatures, swim speed for aquatic creatures, tiny creatures, insubstantial creatures, etc.

I was reading about the idea of bringing some “classic feel” to 4th edition the other day, and it got my mind to whirring. I’ve never much been a fan of the “zero to hero” aspect of earlier editions of D&D — my great and powerful wizard dying when an irate badger poked him with a spoon just didn’t gel for me — but all the same I get why some folks would want that phenomenon, whether the urge comes from Skywalker roots or some other point of origin.  Part of it may be about feeling like you’ve earned your badass privileges, and 4E definitely flies right in the face of that — you start out pretty freaking competent.

So how do you get to the “zero” level of 4th edition?  How stripped down can you get?  Here’s my thoughts.  (And I’m curious — is it something you’d be interested in seeing expanded into an actual product? Or is this better left as a wee little blog post tossed out there on GM’s Day?) Full Story »

Let me tell you about my character.

I’ve been playing in a regular game for several years now. We made the switch over to 4e, and after years at the DM helm, I got to play a PC. I was immediately drawn to a tiefling starlock. My DM sensibilities–meticulous attention to worldbuilding detail, a nigh-encyclopedic comprehension of the rules, etc.–combined with my thirst for actually playing a PC combined for me to go a little overboard. I spent hours coming up with his background and hours more tweaking my build. I think I spent a couple of hours just deciding which feat to take.

Playing Garnet was a blast. He was a godless cuss with a touch of Locke Lamora in him. He carried a huge greatsword strapped to his back, which he couldn’t unsheathe much less wield. He delivered the killing blow on Balgron the Fat. He just got his rod of dark reward.

Last week, I dumped my beloved Garnet for the sexy new guy on the block.

After three levels, I’m switching characters so I can play a witch doctor. Not just any witch doctor: Exton, the gnome with the mask of the elements and an unhealthy obsession with fire. I’m still nuts, mind you.

So why the change? Because the witch doctor is fun. (It didn’t hurt that our wizard was also looking to make a change, freeing up the controller role.)

As I was editing the witch doctor, I noticed something I didn’t pick up on with a cursory review. Read through the witch doctor’s power array, really look at what they are doing, and you’ll see something interesting. With most of the core classes, there’s this bare interplay between the color and the effect of the power. In many cases–not all, certainly–you get the feeling that the effects were created and then a bit of flavor text was drafted to suit.

With the witch doctor, I am convinced that Rob went about it the other way round. (And, no, I haven’t asked him.) That is, he thought about what kinds of cool effects should a witch doctor be able to create? Now, how can I draft a power to suit? This is a subtle but dramatic design methodology, because it creates a stronger link between color and mechanics.

A great example of this is inevitable progress of flame:

So a witch doctor creates a serpent of fire that slithers across the battlefield immolating all enemies in its path. Now, how can we create that effect mechanically? Rob makes it a wall (close wall, natch) that removes 1 square of one end and adds it to the other each round. (I’m proud to say that the bit about spending a move action to repeate the advance was my suggestion.)

So I can’t wait to take Exton out for a spin. (Now, if only I can find a suitable mini for a gnome witch doctor.) I’ll post here about our next session and how it goes. In the meantime, I’m happy to report that Mike, our DM, has co-opted Garnet as an NPC. So I’m sure we’ll be seeing the fruits of his twisted, nefarious plotting down the road.

We had a near miss with the Witch Doctor. As it was approaching completion, the preview content for the PHB2 came out, and it turned out that one of the WD Paragon Paths (the Totem Caller) bore a great deal of resemblance to the new Shaman class. It’s a kind of validating problem to have, but all the same it meant that we had to scratch that path and put in a new one. It wasn’t a big deal, but I admit I’m really glad for the preview content, since I think I would have been mortified with that kind of overlap.

That’s probably the most iconic example of how outside forces ended up steering this project, starting from its roots as a weird Polynesian/Viking/World of Warcraft Troll mashup and ending with that last-minute fix. But while it is easy to point to those individual things and the impact they had, they fall far short of the total impact of all the fantastic feedback we got from people on the original Witch Doctor class preview. I think you’re going to find that we listened very closely, and a lot of things that were unclear or worked poorly have been smoothed over and swapped out, and the class is infinitely better for it, and you have my thanks.

You also have my apologies – at least some of you are already playing Witch Doctors, and some of these changes are pretty drastic. Drastic enough that you may need to rebuild from scratch. I feel bad about that, but I am confident that your newly tuned Witch Doctor will have new tricks that should very much be worth the effort of making thechange.

This is, ultimately, one of the strengths and weaknesses of being a small company – we could have stuck with the Witch Doctor as we first presented it, maybe tweaked it a little, and it would have been pretty good and we would have looked more ‘professional’ because hey, we got it right the first time! Changing it is a bit more risky. That we were able and willing to look at the feedback and make changes is something that excites me, but it also risk alienating people who were kind enough to invest themselves in the original version. I think it makes for a better product, but I have no real sense of who’s going to be annoyed by the changes.

So we roll the dice and take our chances.

However that roll turns out, I just want to reiterate my thanks for the feedback, discussion and comments I’ve received about the Witch Doctor. It’s been a great process, and I’m proud of what we made.

The Witch Doctor Player Class

Every village must make its own arrangements with the spirit world, and they depend upon wise men and women to speak to those spirits and the primal forces they command. These people are witch doctors, and they use the powers of the spirit world to strike down their enemies with fire, lightning, spirit, and earth.

These are powerful forces, and each witch doctor chooses how to use them. Some demand service or payment for their intercession with the spirits. Others wander like nomads and deal with the creatures that threaten the places they visit. Some, eternally loyal to their duty, are patient protectors of sacred places. These powers are raw and primal — unrefined and crude, some say — but you understand their power. It is up to you how you will use it.

This is the Witch Doctor player class, the most ambitious undertaking yet from the minds at One Bad Egg. Learn more about it at our store page!

Fans of One Bad Egg should head on over to the One Bad Egg Bookshelf for an early Sunday pre-release of our next product.

Those of you who aren’t hooked into the bookshelf (and why not?!), keep your eyes peeled tomorrow as we put this one out on our other sales venues — IPR, RPGNow, etc.

It’s our biggest one yet … and maybe the most hotly anticipated.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Judd sharing a really interesting link, I’ve been turned on to a really good 4e blog, At Will.  I’m still working my way through the archives, but there’s a lot of really good, really meaty stuff there (notably, some really great articles about Skill Challenges).  This is serious, quality stuff, and I want to give it a shout out as something well worth your time.

My honorable work on the Codex Venenorum, Ed. IV. continues. Now in 3e, we had the always fun, but quintessentially fiddly confused condition. If you need a refresher, here’s what confused looked like in the last edition:

A confused character’s actions are determined by rolling d% at the beginning of his turn: 01-10, attack caster with melee or ranged weapons (or close with caster if atacking is not possible); 11-20, act normally; 21-50, do nothing but babble incoherently; 51-70, flee away from caster at top possible speed; 71-100, attack nearest creature (for this purpose, a familiar counts as part of the subject’s self). A confused character who can’t carry out the indicated action does nothing but babble incoherently. Attackers are not at any special advantage when attacking a confused character. Any confused character who is attacked automatically attacks its attackers on its next turn, as long as it is still confused when its turn comes. A confused character does not make attacks of opportunity against any creature that it is not already devoted to attacking (either because of its most recent action or because it has just been attacked).

That is so not 4e. Yet, confused is a worthwhile condition to have in the game for both plot and strategy purposes. So how do we spoof confusion for 4e? We can start by looking out how the wizards at Wizards did it.

Confusion: The 27th-level wizard spell is an obvious place to begin. Essentially, it lets you dominate the target, moving him and making a basic attack against one of his allies.

Umber Hulk: The master of confusion himself is another obvious example. The target slides and is dazed.

I’m not a fan of these iterations. They don’t actually model confusion all that well since the enemy dictates the actions. In the case of the wizard’s spell, the player always gets a strategic advantage from the effect. Likewise, for the umber hulk, the DM gets to position the PC as best he can. These effects lack the randomness that should be inherent to confusion.

So, a couple more:

Beholder: The confusion ray forces the victim to charge his nearest ally and make a basic attack.

Black Lotus: This DMG poison is particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. Basic attack against the nearest creature (whether friend or foe).

These are good. They have that randomness. But I think we can do better. Here are some confused effects I’ve come up with:

• The target drops all items he is carrying and pulls off any clothes or armor he is wearing (perhaps simulating hallucinations of crawling bugs).
• The target uses an encounter attack power to attack a phantom enemy in an empty square.
• The target attacks himself with a basic attack.
• The target moves double his speed, changing direction each square and never entering the same square twice, provoking attacks of opportunity as normal.

So what can you come up with?

For Valentines Day, Mike Mearls wrote a love letter to resistances which reads more like a harsh breakup than a declaration of love. Mike’s got some serious objections to the role of resistances which I paraphrase as follows:

1. They’re boring.
2. They unbalance the utility of energy types
3. They undermine theme

I differ a bit on #1 but I am sympathetic to these concerns. However, they lead me to reach some very different conclusions, many of which are reflected in the hopefully-near-final draft of the Witch Doctor that I’ve handed off for editing. But before I get to that, let’s give these concerns a closer look.

1. They’re Boring

Ok, Mike doesn’t come right out and say this, but it’s pretty much implicit in his solution. He proposes more dynamic response, so that when you hit a fire creature with fire, something happens. Maybe it makes an attack or gains an action point or something else, but there’s a reaction.

This is an appealing thought, but as a DM I don’t view it as boring so much as it’s easy to keep track of and easy to speak to mechanically. One off abilities like that are things I might give a named boss, but if they’re too ubiquitous, you encounter a problem that already exists in 4e with vulnerability. Specifically, there’s a cool feat that keys off creatures that are vulnerable to cold, but it falls flat in practice because so few creatures are vulnerable to cold. There are several of creature who are penalized when they’re hit with cold (they’re slowed, for example) but they aren’t actually vulnerable to cold, so the feat does not apply. It’s a frustrating arrangement, but it highlights the problem with these one-offs. The creatures are definitely more colorful and interesting than they would be if they just took more damage, but it’s that much harder to tie that into the rest of the game.*

2. They Unbalance the Utility of Energy Types

He’s totally right about this one. While this was much more prevalent in 3e, it’s still an issue in 4e. Even setting aside non-elemental keywords like Charm and Fear, it’s a more useful to have An Acid weapon than a Fire one (though a Radiant one may be best of all) , and it’s more useful to have resistance to Fire or Necrotic than it is to Acid. It’s simple math – more creatures are resistant to fire, so it is pound for pound less useful. Similarly, fewer creatures are immune to Acid than are immune to Fire.

This is a problem that will never go away. Even if resistances are changed to something else, it will still remain because some elements will see more use than others, both universally and in the specific.

3. They Undermine Theme

Again, totally right. If you’re an arctic wizard, then it would make thematic sense that you have lots of ice spells. Unfortunately, since everything you’re going to run into is also arctic, they’re all pretty much immune to your spells, so the mechanically correct choice is for you to stock up on Fire spells. That’s kind of lame.

However, this is a problem that is intrinsic to the elemental keywords, and which will not be solved by changing resistances to something more dynamic. If you’re and arctic wizard and you know that your spells will not damage your arctic neighbors but will also make them more awesome, then your practical choice is once again weighted towards fire.

You’ll notice that 2 and 3 have the same underlying problem – that they’re really problems with the concept of elemental pairings than they are about the specific failings of resistance. That overlap means that they have the same solution – to make the elements more useful in their own right.

And this is where we come around to one of my frustrations with 4e as it stands. The current swath of elemental-oriented feats are pretty lame in just about every way. The pairings, stat requirements and overwhelming sameness of them all form a potent combination of things that are only so useful, often impossible to get, and flipping the bird to Wizards, who really need more & better feat options.

Now, there is a reasonable explanation for this lameness. The last thing anyone wants in 4e is a set of stacking elemental effects that result in a wizard who gets 5 or 6 improvements for a specific keyword that all stack in an abusive fashion. I dig that concern, but I think the PHB is far too conservative in its handling of these feats. That’s a subjective interpretation, but the rub is that I think a character choosing to specialize in an element should get at least as much benefit as a martial character gets out of his weapon choice.

For comparison, weapon choice offers an array of mechanical extras (including the non GSL ones in Adventurer’s Vault) and is the root of a number of feat choices. Consider the synergy between weapon focus and proficiency in an exotic weapon: with those two feats (or 1, if your a dwarf) you really shape how you are going to fight. It does not seem unreasonable to expect that the choice of element could have a similar effect.  The paragon level feats are a nice nod in this direction, but they are ultimately a little thin on the ground.

It’s this line of thinking that has shaped the feat section of the Witch Doctor, and lead it to include a number of feats that will probably be of no use to Witch Doctors. The goal with them is to model after weapon feats, so that elementally inclined characters have some more choices available to them that are in line with the benefits that martial characters have. I am, I admit, genuinely excited to see them reach the light of day.

* - There is a subtle point in Mike’s solution that also bears mentioning: It speeds up fights. 4e has occasional problems with enemies that take too long to die. Resistance increases their staying power which exacerbates the issue. However, I think that’s a separate concern, and it is perhaps no coincidence that it’s a problem we’ve been working on solutions for.

One other point in defense of Mike’s idea (because, shockingly, the man knows what he’s talking about) is that you could remove the mechanical disconnect with a unified nomenclature.  That means  vulnerability  could include other descriptors than just a numeric.  Thus, ‘vulnerable cold 5′ could become “vulnerable cold: Slowed (save ends)” Or “vulnerable fire: immobilized until the end of next turn”, so that everything still keys off the word “Vulnerable” and you can now tie other mechanics into it ( the colon is optional, but I admit I just kind of like it).  It might also work to use “vulnerable cold 0″ but that seems a little awkward.

This requires only a very small hack to work, but because it changes the core rules, it’s kind of a dead end to offer up as an option.  Since there’s no way to meaningful contribute it to the body of rules, it would wither on the vine. Still, I encourage people to adopt the notation – maybe it will enter common use and prove my cynicism wrong.

That still only solves problem #1, but I mention it to illustrate that Mike’s solution and mine can easily work in parallel with just a few tweaks.

Even if you missed our WHERE ARE YOUR GODS NOW promotion yesterday, you’ll find that Gods of the Shroud remains on sale (now at the bookshelf, IPR, and RPGNow)  — at $1 off — through the NEXT Friday the 13th, coming in March!

… and I happily played 3e for years, but anyone who wants to know why I’m a full-fledged 4e-phile need only look at this entry for Paizo’s RPG Superstar. That statblock is absurd and, for any given adventure, 90% useless. And yet, as Clark Peterson says downthread:

This kind of mind-numbing number crunching is one of the things that make [sic] me look to 4E for simplicity. But 3E/Pathfinder is complex for a reason–because it really works well. So being able to put this together is something an RPG Superstar needs to be able to do.

I’ll keep my shiny new epic-level-dragon-statblock-in-seven-column-inches ruleset, thank you very much.

It’s Friday the 13th — perfect time for a WHERE ARE YOUR GODS NOW sale.

For the next 24 hours (or so — until I change it back), GODS OF THE SHROUD will be discounted an extra $1.30 on both the One Bad Egg Bookshelf and IPR.

If you haven’t picked this one up yet, we really think it’s one of our underappreciated gems. But don’t take our word for it — read this review: http://grandwiki.wikidot.com/rvgods-of-the-shroud