Thursday, February 28, 2008

4.0, and why I'm mad at WOTC

Where to start.

D&D 4.0 is coming out soon. I'm skeptical of it in a lot of ways because a lot of things they're doing feel like fan service add ons that change the essential feel of the game, and the rest of it feels like they're making an MMO

Which I would be all in favor of if it was a video game. MMOs work great online, on a video game system, and preferably on a PC. The formulas which make good ones DO NOT WORK as dice games.

That's part of the rant.

The rest of the rant deals with my key problem that I have with D&D 3.5, the current edition. There's another rant here, mid rant, but I'm fairly certain I've already given it, and the gist of it is that 3.5 was bullshit, and that 3.0 was released before it was done, because Wizard of the Coast has to pay for coke and whores (and coke for their whores) somehow.

Anyway my main gripe with D&D as it is now is that there's too much errata. I have a few players in the group I'm DMing that are upset that I've limited them to only Eight books. Counting all the races of, the completes, and the various other crap there are probably upwards of 30 books, and it pisses me off because they keep expanding on things they've already expanded upon. There's a very simple rule that I would love them to use. If you've already made a whole book of errata focusing on one thing, you can't make any more books for that thing. Complete Arcane should've meant that they weren't allowed to make complete mage. The Draconomicon should've meant that they weren't allowed to make Dragon Magic. Libris Mortis should've had a giant BY DM DISCRESSION ONLY sticker on the front of it.

And if they're going to make book after book after book of errata at least make it all realtively the same power level. The ones who are mad about my restrictions are the ones who want to make their character into unstoppable power gods, and that's not the point. It's D&D, there's a person controlling what's going on, if you're super powerful it becomes craps without the gambling. The goal here is to create a challenge, to create a sense of triumph, and if you hand one player the rules for being a Dragonfire adept and someone else is playing a fighter then you've fucked up!.

And you can't say that I'm not right about that. You. Just. Cant. I have proof. Nerds who are playing along at home go get your players handbook, and then go get your spell compendium, and if you can get your PHB2. I for one only own one of those books, that's the way I like it because the spell compendium has been outdated since a month after they printed it, and the PHB2 is overpowered. Now, in relative power. Compare any class in the PHB, to a duskblade. Also, look up quicken spell, look up expedious retreat, and then look up the bullshit spell "Swift expedious retreat" which is a version of it for the same damn class and quickened for no reason. You want to update how expedious retreat works? fine, but don't make a new separate spell, just change the existing spell.

Damn futile rage. I'm so full of it, but it's just so... futile.

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