tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1790030420507335953.post8889001334742200620..comments2024-03-23T08:21:07.075-07:00Comments on Points of Light: My Next WishlistDavid Guyllhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16299128722345607123noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1790030420507335953.post-45940767117136752672013-09-14T19:47:43.600-07:002013-09-14T19:47:43.600-07:00Agreed. In most of my Next experience fights were ...Agreed. In most of my Next experience fights were pretty easy and/or boring. As a DM I felt frustrated that so many monsters could not really do much (either attack bonuses or saving throws too low).<br /><br />The disappointing part is that they developed a lot of really good rules and ideas in 4th Edition (though even 3rd Edition had its share), they just seem to be refusing to refine them.David Guyllhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16299128722345607123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1790030420507335953.post-12388711992289276922013-09-14T16:37:30.023-07:002013-09-14T16:37:30.023-07:00I'm definitely not a defender of the "adv...I'm definitely not a defender of the "adventuring day" paradigm. It generally boils down to the 5-minute-workday, and then either there's no tension at all, or every battle becomes a long and deadly crap-shoot when the DM tries to ramp up the stakes. I just think we should recognize that the Next developers have either no intention or no capability to support balanced encounter-based pacing with the rules they're designing. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050117888158477528noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1790030420507335953.post-16018650900069505032013-09-14T10:08:23.785-07:002013-09-14T10:08:23.785-07:00In my experience there was really never any tensio...In my experience there was really never any tension in the game: in the first real adventure I ran from scratch the characters invaded a ruined keep, killed most of the bandits, then slept before going into the basement area (where they found some ghouls and such).<br /><br />There was no tension because they could just go back up, take a nap, and go into the next room topped off the next day. If they were concerned about undead attacking, they could just pile rubble in front of the door to give them plenty of warning.<br /><br />When they fought a semi-major villain, they just chased him into a building and knocked him out in a couple rounds. He had so little hit points (I was using the average of a monster for his level, plus some extra) that if he would have stood around he would have just gotten beat down a couple rounds sooner.<br /><br />When pacing mattered that just made the game that much harder to work with, because if they fought something too difficult but had to keep going then they would probably die. This is where I take issue with per-day resources and magical healing: it makes pacing a nightmare and a string of bad rolls (if you even need a string) could wreak havoc on an adventure.<br /><br />What would serve the game best, I think, is stop with the whole "adventuring day" mentality. It just makes things harder to juggle. Some things could still be per day (like a per-day healing rate, or tracking method to remove persistent conditions), but a better unit of measuring character effectiveness would be encounters, or whatever unit of time they assume to be used to track exploration turns.David Guyllhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16299128722345607123noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1790030420507335953.post-54397498240844038982013-09-14T09:09:46.282-07:002013-09-14T09:09:46.282-07:00Magical healing as a daily resource has severely l...Magical healing as a daily resource has severely limited the design of Next. While Mike Mearls has promised a module that will introduce healing surges, I have to conclude that the Next development team does not understand the deeper ramifications of this claim. For the healing surge module to fulfill the same purpose surges did in 4e, the module would need to introduce a form of proportional healing that made hitpoints an encounter resource instead of a daily resource.<br /><br />Next's classes, monsters, and encounters are all designed for daily resource cycles, so if the healing surge module manages to fulfill its proper function it creates system-wide imbalance. After all, encounters in Next are designed to chip away at the PC's and build tension through attrition. The differences in daily resource reliance from different classes only compounds the problem. Some classes, like fighter, have hitpoints as their only significant daily resource. As a result, the Next encounter system will lose any tension or threat.<br /><br />To correct for this would require modifying character classes, monsters, and probably the DM's encounter budget system. That would mean virtually an entirely new game worth of content. Similar issues exist with many of the proposed modules that Mike and Rodney have discussed in the past. Consequently, to function as they they claim, many of these modules will either have compatibility issues or just be fundamentally incompatible with each other.<br /><br />Given the rampant and widespread balance issues in the Next playtest, it's quite likely that the developers are either simply ignorant to most of these design issues or they just don't care. After all, if the core rules aren't even balanced, who cares what healing surges do to that balance? It seems that under the Next paradigm balance is sole burden of the DM, not the designer.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05050117888158477528noreply@blogger.com