What Do Leaders Want

by dither on May 10, 2013 at 11:40 am
Posted In: Game of Roles, Start in a Tavern

I’ve been playing an enabler warlord for almost a year now and I’m still not sure what makes a good warlord. I think part of the problem lies in the fact that most leaders as-written are appalling bad at fulfilling their stated role.

Part of the problem lies in the reactive nature of healing, the leader’s “main schtick.” When you’re healing a character as a leader, it’s ’cause the defender failed to stop the attacker from landing a blow. The striker failed to take down the enemy. It’s because the controller failed to lock-down the threat.

But all the “good” leaders — mainly the cleric and the warlord, though particular builds for other leaders approach the same effectiveness — have some way of facilitating the duties that the other roles perform. They hand out accuracy and damage, impose vulnerabilities, or grant positioning (or withdrawal) moves, or additional attacks.

I haven’t had the same kind of huge “revelations” about the nature of the leader role the same way I have about the defender. The defender is a role that I think I really “get.” I’ve made lots of different kinds of defenders. I’m starting to get a better feel for the controller. The jester is an odd duck — dealing almost no damage at all.

(Does the spelling “sprightly” look wrong to you? I want it to be “spritely” but the online dictionary I use keeps insisting that I’m in the right. Oh well.)

Something tells me that I will “get” the leader once I “get” the controller, if only because then I’ll have very-definitely defined both “strategic axes,” as it were. Character roles fall into Direct versus Indirect and Active versus Passive. Leaders are indirect and passive — which makes them very interesting to design for — what do they do?

I think the leader’s primary qualities may fall on either side of the defender’s — where the defender has unmitigated access to Opportunity Actions in order to respond to threats as they come, the leader should be utilizing Immediate Actions like there’s no tomorrow — Immediate and Readied actions, I think.

Maybe that’s where I’ve been limiting myself this time — Opportunity Actions are fairly straightforward to design for, but Readied actions present so many problems when it comes to initiative order that they’re almost universally loathed and ignored.

According to the D&D Compendium, triggering a readied action moves a character’s position in the initiative order. I can’t begin to describe how annoying this is, or how much trouble it can cause when simply remembering the initiative order is a chore.

Perhaps I can find some clever combination of keywords, or a particular phrasing or format to make Readied actions more palatable? It’s a nearly untapped area of the game, and maybe Readied actions would find more use if there was some clear-cut uses for them, or some standardization built into the system.

Now here’s a thought — what about some Standard action powers that also set up a Readied action with an easy trigger? I can try to write a couple of those.

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Game of Roles: The Wayfarer

by dither on May 9, 2013 at 11:46 am
Posted In: Game of Roles, Start in a Tavern

The Fourth Edition Wizard sucks, as do most of its multiple spin-offs. The main problems are in the fact that its control powers are locked away in encounter and daily powers, and that its so-called versatility doesn’t uh, “versatile” or whatever.

I’ve been working on a wizard fix for a while now.

Here’s the heroic Wayfarer class for reference:
Essentials Dungeons & Dragons Wayfarer Class (v0.1)

This is the second in a series of “remix” designs that are intended to show what some of the “classic” Player’s Handbook character classes might look like if you trimmed the fat and somehow made sure they actually did what they’re supposed to do.

First things first, the wayfarer has a familiar. This familiar doesn’t suck. Call Familiar is based on a previous design “Call Beast Companion,” that showed up in my Guild Wars Ranger class. It provides the wizard with an auto-upgrading implement.

You might look at Telekinesis and think, “Aha! Here are the control powers!” But you’d be half-right. Force Spike is the true control power. Force Spike is indeed a minion-killer, but it’s more than that. You can tease a lot of damage from this power using superior implements like the Guardian Staff or Petrified Orb.

And speaking of implements, you’ll notice Implement Mastery is basically what it should have been all along. It allows a wayfarer to use implements to make basic attacks — I mean, what more did you really need? Oh, you can use Intelligence for attack and damage? Wow, the wizard can participate in combat now!

Inertial Barrier is like the Shield utility power but adds force resistance to the mix. You also totally get extra uses as you advance in level. It’s handy! And later on in the heroic tier, you can use it to send enemies that engage you in melee flying away!

Finally, we come to one of the deceptively simple class features, Dimension Step. The feature gives the wayfarer a teleport speed of 1. That might sound close to useless, but the important thing to remember is any bonus to speed increases your teleport speed. That means you can “run” to teleport 3 squares.

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Game of Roles: The Poisoner

by dither on May 8, 2013 at 5:01 pm
Posted In: Game of Roles, Start in a Tavern

Why would you want to waste your players’ time wedging a contrived, “daily-powered” crafting system into a game that went to such great lengths to simplify item creation? Why emphasize the consumable (yet renewable) nature of poisons when the damage type system was created to streamline and balance damage?

The poisoner answers these questions with, “huh, duh?”

Here’s the heroic Poisoner class for reference:
Essentials Dungeons & Dragons Poisoner Class (v0.1)

When I started work on this class, it was because I felt guilty for not having made any headway on the Star Wars classes since the weekend. I had an idea pop into my head like a blow-dart suddenly sticking out of my neck. As more ideas rushed to mind, I realized I was going to have to drop whatever I was doing and do this.

I initially based the design of the poisoner on the executioner (Heroes of Shadow) but switched to rogue when I realized I wanted to borrow the Artful Dodger class feature. Borrow might be a little too subtle. More like thievery. I rolled. You can check.

What I decided to do was make the poisoner the first in a series of “remix” classes, taking “classic” versions of the fighter, cleric, ranger, rogue, paladin, warlock, warlord, and wizard, and reinterpreting their features and powers.

Despite favoring Dexterity and Charisma, the poisoner is pretty relaxed about its reliance on those abilities. Weapon Finesse can be used with any one-handed weapon (melee or ranged), and the poisoner gets extra damage with any weapon.

Where this class gets awesome is when you acquire any fairly standard magic weapon (let’s say cold, fire, or lightning) — due to the fact that damage types combine to form a new types, this class becomes the most reliable striker EVAR. Radiantpoison much?

Also, I’ll admit this isn’t the first rogue class I’ve designed that doesn’t have Sneak Attack. It’s probably only the second, but I have to admit the idea of a rogue that doesn’t Sneak Attack is too hilarious to pass up — they do get Backstab though.

Knockout Poison and Poison Healer are a couple of odd powers, largely in there as an experiment in utility powers. Of course the first “utility” a poisoner gets is poison resistance, plus the ability to straight-up ignore the poison resistance of enemies.

This is a very straightforward class, elegant in its simplicity. The poisoner does poison damage. It does it a lot, and it does it well. What else do you need to know?

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That Star Wars Project

by dither on May 8, 2013 at 12:13 pm
Posted In: All About the Site, It's All About Me

Hi everybody, sorry if you thought I was dragging my feet or something — it’s just that despite having gotten tons of work done on the classes over the weekend, I was surprised with a project (it’s a secret for now) on Monday that absorbed all of my time from then until, well, this morning. So, back to our regular scheduled programming!

Since I have added or changed much to the classes since I mentioned them earlier this week, I still don’t have anything to show for them. Yet. Operative word. But I can tell you a few things about what I’m working on, why, and/or how.

I already gave you the names of the classes I was working on, which is cool unto itself, but now I feel the need to quantify somehow, the sorts of things I’m doing and how. For starters, there’s a greater emphasis placed on ranged attacks.

People in the future have firearms. Energy weapons, to be precise. And that makes melee-oriented characters feel a little inadequate when they stand to be vaporized where they uh, where they stand. (Charge attacks are pretty much mandatory.)

What this means is that melee-oriented characters need something they can do that doesn’t necessarily require them to charge into the fray to be effective. In the case of the Enforcer, this is by shielding his teammates until the fire dies down enough for him to close the distance. The Scoundrel uh, well, “improvises.”

I realized belatedly while plowing through the basic class features and powers that utilities make almost no sense in the grand perspective of the class to which they’re assigned. I’ve joked in the past about how utility powers vary from “worse than useless” to “game breaking,” and I’m starting to see why.

Fourth Edition utility powers are assembly-line class features. They usually make as much sense as your typical class features, and are just as powerful. Everything from the cleric’s situational “turn undead” powers to the ranger’s “Spitting Cobra Stance” that gives them ranged Opportunity Attacks (technically uses an immediate action).

Why would anyone choose these powers? I mean, especially when they’re all over the board like what I’ve described. I have to wonder if their limited usefulness is part of the reason why WotC is so content to give the player as many as they want without worrying about changing them out the same way they swap encounter/daily attacks.

So, I might need another 4e project to study utility powers before I really knuckle down on the Star Wars classes. I need to figure out where and how class features really qualify, and find some way to better distribute them across tiers of play.

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May the Fourth Project

by dither on May 6, 2013 at 11:00 am
Posted In: Create Expectations

I have written so little about Star Wars that I literally have no categories set aside, which seems strange to me considering how influential the series and related media have been to my life. Ah well, I guess there’s no time like the present.

Maybe six months ago, I did some research into the physics of firearms to better understand how they worked, so that I might better represent them in a turn-based combat system. I developed new cover and concealment rules, which are groovy.

I also worked with the players in my D&D group to come up with some classes for a Star Wars game that the group was interested in — since I’ve spent so much time working on character classes lately, I thought I’d try to put something on paper.

Off and on throughout Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I organized and developed features and powers for the classes we came up with over the winter — the Soldier, Enforcer, Marksman, Scoundrel, Trooper, Grenadier, Engineer, and Marshal.

Two classes are defenders, two strikers, two controllers, and two leaders. The way we originally imagined them, there were more eh, more powers involved. The classes I’ve built are a lot more oriented around their equipment and basic powers.

Now, if I had remembered to email myself the project files, I could have probably uploaded something for you to see today, but that isn’t how it went down, so I won’t have anything for you to see until tomorrow at the earliest.

After all the work I’ve done on Martial classes recently, this was an interesting project to work on — rather than make the Force a power source and try to build classes around it, I thought a better approach would be to make Force Sensitivity a thematic element that could be added to any existing class.

Races and themes will come second however, classes are taking a priority.

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