Guild Wars Elementalist

by dither on May 1, 2013 at 11:59 am
Posted In: Start in a Tavern, The Ascalon Horror

This completes a set of six core Guild Wars professions.

Here’s the Heroic Elementalist class for reference:
Essentials Dungeons & Dragons GW Elementalist Class (v0.1)

The Elementalist is a controller first and a leader second, but it’s a close race. Each at-will attack makes targets easier for allies to hit — whether by reducing defenses, providing a power bonus to hit, or setting up combat advantage.

I had decided before I ever got to the Elementalist that I was looking beyond the primary attribute for basic class features, though it became clear the Elementalist didn’t have a clear theme in any one attribute. And I was sticking to “core” skills.

At first I was struck by wards, sigils, and the “attunement” concept — all of which are unique to the Elementalist. I noticed a mechanic I was familiar with as Exhaustion, had been renamed to “Overcast,” and some skills had received tweaks to go with it.

It seemed simple enough to me to create an Overcast power, which savvy Fourth Edition players will recognize bears a resemblance to Power Strike. My research into existing D&D Arcane-source options brought me to the Arcane Reserves feat.

And thus, a class feature was born.

When the Elementalist expends all her uses of Overcast, she gains a flat bonus to Elemental at-will attacks. It isn’t an enormous bonus, but it represents an interesting shift in power. As she gains more uses of Overcast at higher levels, it takes a little bit longer to gain that damage bonus. A leader can help her get there faster though.

Combined with Aura of Restoration, it then becomes a viable strategy for the Elementalist to skip a short rest and instead rely on regaining hit points by attacking (or receiving in-combat aid), and leaving Overcast expended.

When enemies are too spread out for the Elementalist to hit them with Deep Freeze, she can switch to more defensive tactics by slowing enemies within 5 squares. At 6th level, she can forgo the defense bonus from Second Wind or Total Defense to obscure terrain in a 5-square radius. (The Elementalist and allies are unaffected.)

I will no doubt tweak these classes in the coming weeks, and I will certainly compile them for easier access — in addition to setting aside a page for them — but I’m going to be taking a short break (a short rest, if you will), from designing classes.

I think the next Guild Wars-related project I think will be to make themes of the secondary attributes. Using themes will better emulate Guild Wars’s particular multiclassing scheme — choosing a primary and secondary profession.

While the though of multiclassing to ease more power out of a class annoys me to no end, it seems to me that there is a “viable alternative” in character themes. It could be that a theme might enable a character access to related class-exclusive feats.

And there should certainly be no harm in a fighter taking a fighter theme, either. More power to them, in fact. It opens up new possibilities that ought to be explored.

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Guild Wars Monk Class

by dither on April 30, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Posted In: Start in a Tavern, The Ascalon Horror

So it has come to this.

Here’s the Heroic Monk class for reference:
Essentials Dungeons & Dragons GW Monk Class (v0.1)

I was faced with the two most difficult profession for opposite reasons — the Monk, whose main schtick is healing, and the Elementalist, who pretty much just blows stuff up. They’re both kind of boring to me since they’re so uncomplicated.

I mean, without some variation, what is there to build from?

I began preliminary design work on the Monk when I was between the Warrior and the Ranger and trying to decide what to work on next. I copy-pasted Healing Word (which I didn’t use), and I wrote the initial version of the Divine Boon power.

And then I let it sit.

Working on the Ranger helped me to realize a professions “primary attribute” wasn’t necessarily the best one to draw from when building a D&D class, so by the time I got to the Monk, I had pretty much figured out that I was going to focus on designing Protection Prayers instead of Divine Favor.

When I sat down to work on the Monk, the first power I wrote was Shielding Hands. This is maybe the strangest leader-heal power yet, even though it borrows a bit from the 4e artificer. It doesn’t heal … immediately. Instead, Shielding Hands rewards the strategist — use it on the character you think will take the most damage.

Next I wrote Life Bond, Reversal of Fortune, and Mend Ailments. From the time I wrote the power until nearly the time I uploaded the PDF, I agonized over the effect of Mend Ailments. I can’t know if the world is ready for an at-will healing power.

Life Bond and Reversal of Fortune have very specific uses and benefits. Life Bond is most valuable when the damage you’ll take is less than half what your ally will take from the triggering attack. Reversal of Fortune is best when the damage is a lot more than that — basically when the character goes unconscious. But you only get one.

The beauty in the balance is that receive a single immediate action from one turn to the next. You want to make sure you use one of the two powers, but you have to make sure it’s the right one. You don’t have anything to lose from using one of them, but you want to try and use the best one. The most effective immediate action.

As was pointed out by one of the guys in my gaming group, Shielding Hands works to protect the Monk from damage taken when using Life Bond. If you want lots of fun, consider pairing one of these Monks with a Mesmer, and see how far you can get — the Monk and Mesmer can work together to prevent a lot of damage.

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Guild Wars Mesmer Class

by dither on April 29, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Posted In: Start in a Tavern, The Ascalon Horror

Squishiest. Defender. Ever.

The Mesmer embodies a lot of the things I’ve been trying to say about defenders for a long time now — they’re about potential damage rather than simply blocking hits. To me, the Mesmer is a much better expression of the “arcane defender” the Swordmage should have been — regardless of how much fun teleporting attacks can be.

Here’s the Heroic Mesmer class for reference:
Essentials Dungeons & Dragons GW Mesmer Class (v0.1)

The Mesmer uses twelve-sided dice for damage. I hope you’re all okay with that. I’m really tired of seeing parades of dee-fours, dee-sixes, and dee-eights in spellcaster powers, so the Mesmer uses dee-twelves. I think it’s appropriate.

Now, the Mesmer has two main modes to keep in mind: dampening melee attacks and punishing ranged attacks. You might look at this and think the Mesmer has everything you might ever want from a character ever. Then reality hits like a ton of bricks.

Mesmers have a wizard’s hit points. Ten plus four per level is hard to live with — and with the amount of punishment you’ll be handing out, it’s going to be very hard to live with only that much. Then there’s the fact that a Mesmer’s Domination Magic only works when defending allies — you can’t use Empathy on attacks against yourself.

Despite having Charisma (Will) as a primary ability, and Intelligence (AC, Reflex) as a secondary ability, the Mesmer has very little to protect them from attacks in the first place. Compounding that is the fact they can only equip cloth armor to start.

Slippery Mind is inspired by both the Third Edition rogue feature of the same name, and the Fourth Edition warden’s Font of Life feature. Immediate and Opportunity actions are so important to the Mesmer, they try to keep them at all times.

Mesmers get some goodies at higher levels, like Cry of Frustration that allows them to mark all enemies within 5 squares whenever they use Second Wind or Total Defense. And believe me, you’ll want to use them for the +2 defenses they grant. Plus, who wouldn’t want to draw the maximum possible attention to one’s self?

Shatter Hex, based on the Guild Wars skill of the same name, grants an ally a saving throw against an ongoing condition, with the chance to blow up said condition in the face of nearby enemies. Imagine an ettercap’s surprise when the stunned warrior suddenly stops being stunned. (Also, Intelligence modifier damage. Huzzah!)

I think Mind Wrack is one of my favorite Heroic capstone features — adding the psychic keyword to powers with the force keyword. It makes the damage these powers deal that much harder to resist — force resistance is already pretty rare, as is psychic resistance, but “psychic force” damage? That’s some scariness right there.

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Four-Hour Extended Rest

by dither on April 29, 2013 at 2:00 pm
Posted In: Game of Roles, Start in a Tavern

I read an article a week, maybe two weeks ago, about a study conducted on the nature of sleep — with a regard to literary references of sleep and sleeping. In particular, the study spoke of “two sleeps” — an initial period of sleep lasting approximately four hours, and then a short break, followed by a “second sleep.”

One of the things that apparently helped spark interest in the study was the recurring reference to a “second sleep,” as though there were always two. The study suggested that before the advent of cheap, reliable household and street lighting, darkness was more inhibiting to nocturnal activities. But it can stay dark for quite a long time…

And so the idea that people (at least in certain parts of the world) may have slept in “shifts,” lasting about four hours apiece and separated by an hour or two of light activity — isn’t so difficult to believe. Not everyone can sleep twelve hours straight every night after all. Sometimes sleeping so long is as exhausting as staying awake.

Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons has some of the better rules for resting of the tabletop roleplaying games I’ve played — separating rests into “short” and “extended” periods that enable players to recover encounter and daily resources respectively.

Recently the question came up in my group (a couple weeks ago at this point), as to how often characters could take an extended rest. A couple of us knew it was twelve hours between extended rests, but I couldn’t remember how I knew.

Though it became obvious the rule was right in the Player’s Handbook – limit one extended rest per day, minimum twelve hours between rest periods — the question about the limitation stuck with me for some reason. And so I thought about it.

There’s a topic of discussion found among Character Optimization groups that references the “fifteen minute workday.” I’ll admit that I’ve only experienced the phenomena recently (within the last few years), in Fourth Edition.

Now I’ve never had a problem slogging through encounters without access to my character’s daily resources, or making the hard decision to halt a quest when it became too difficult to proceed without help — apparently it’s really common for a group to just stop in the middle of their adventure to sleep for eight hours.

Of course I have a problem with this because it sounds ridiculous. Especially in the middle of a dungeon or some other hostile environment where there’s nowhere safe for the party to stop, let alone sleep for eight hours at a time.

But then I started to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something wrong with how resources work to begin with — daily resources like healing surges and attack powers are sometimes vital to the party’s success, and yet each recharge is a minimum of eighteen hours away — that’s a little unreasonable when you think about it.

So I had a couple of ideas for how to address this: first is to decrease the number of daily resources characters rely on in combat. That seems like a no-brainer. The more fights they can face without rest, the less they feel like they need to rest.

Second, reduce the amount of time the characters spend resting — my idea here is to reduce 6-8 hour extended rests to a mere 4 hours — and also reduce the amount of time spent waiting for the next extended rest — from twelve hours to two.

Finally, find incentives for the party to rest. I think the rest system would be a great way to tie in non-combat activities like elaborate feasts, combat training, spell research and other information-gathering, item creation, and complex rituals.

I’ll see if I can find a way to codify non-combat activities and ways to tie them into rests (short and extended), and post my results here.

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Another Ranger Revision

by dither on April 29, 2013 at 11:33 am
Posted In: Start in a Tavern, The Ascalon Horror

I’ve been stewing over this for a couple days. The Ranger I designed felt overly complex for all that I put into it, and in spite of attempts to simplify companion rules.

Here’s version 2 of the Ranger (now more playable than before!):
Essentials Dungeons & Dragons GW Ranger Class (v0.2)

Dexterity has a lot of power in Third and Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons. There’s initiative checks, ranged attacks, Armor Class and Reflex saves/defense, among other things. There’s a complex relationship between Dexterity and various derived traits.

For all of that, I didn’t see a way that I could make Constitution work as a replacement for Dexterity unless the entire class was built around it — and that really isn’t what I wanted. I’m looking for “a better archer warlord,” which is how I got here.

In addition to swapping Dexterity for Constitution, I gave up on trying to make some of the more complex Beast-keyword powers work and settled for a class feature to help round out some similar features I’ve designed for the other Guild Wars classes.

Beast Mastery now works similarly to the Second Wind/Total Defense features, in that it enables the Ranger to move his Beast Companion whenever he uses a Move action for to walk, run, or shift. This closely mirrors the “core” methods of moving a beast companion, but here the companion is integrated into the class itself.

This, as opposed to having the rules detailing the actions and movement of the beast companion on a different page, unrelated to the character class itself — I’m looking at you Martial Power 2. The player has fewer page-lookups to play their character.

Finally, I changed the damage bonus from flanking with the beast to enemies adjacent to the beast. This should make up for the loss of the ally-moving power and help cement the beast companion more firmly into the class’s chassis. You still have the positioning stunts as a core concept to playing a Ranger, and it’s simpler than before.

Hopefully I’ll have a design for the Mesmer up today or tomorrow.

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