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.