The geekiness strikes again! DND musing!

[sparkindarkness]

I’m actually a player in a new DnD game (new edition - which is BETTER. Seriously, it‘s so much better!) at last I don’t have to GM! Though I did change my character after the GM explained to us that this was a lot like WoW and we COULDN’T play without a tank and a healer. After much avoiding the issue two of us decided to retire our Wizard and Ranger for a Cleric and a Paladin- but they’d be sooooooorry.

Poor peasant who saved us from shipwreck: alas my brother has gone missing...
Paladin: Fear not, scabby peasant, we will quest for your lost kin! Praise the lord!
Cleric: hallelujah!
Paladin: amen.
party: *face palm*
Scabby peasant: But i have little to offer you...
Cleric we require no payment, it is only good and right. Amen.
Paladin: Hallelujah
Cleric: Praise the Lord.
Party: *cringing*

This? Could be fun.

Anyway, mah cleric

:
His father is a might Eladrin lord, obscenely rich ruler of a prosperous, thriving and beautiful duchy close to the feywild borders. His house has long ruled successfully because of their ancient traditions and devotion to perfection.

As was customary, the lord raised his children in the same way that he and his siblings were raised. The eldest child became a mighty Warlord, he would lead the armies of the House into battle, inspired by word and strong sword arm

The second child grew to be a mighty mage, that magical skill and power would never be far from the House

The third child was pledged to Correllon, as a faithful cleric the divine would always smile upon the house

As an added bonus it meant the 2 younger children are unlikely to contend for the eldest’s throne. Oh and if this character dies I can come back as either of his elder siblings trying to drag their little brother home).

But the old lord watched curiously to see how the last tradition of the House would manifest, and lo, in the third son it did. He became restless. It wasn’t that he didn’t revere Correllon - he did, fervently. But was the temple and the surrounding peaceful lands really the way to do it? The beauty, spring, goodness and glory of the land would be perfect without him. The powers god had given him were not needed here. And there was a whole world out there he could discover - a world he had read so much about but had never visited. A world that maybe could benefit from Correllon’s touch?

The lord rejoiced as he saw his youngest son’s plan to abscond. It was an old tradition, at least one child would feel the need to see the world - and they would return perhaps with wealth, sometimes with power, sometimes with half-breed children - but always with experience and knowledge that was invaluable to the House.

So as the Cleric made his plans, his parents acted. One night there was a banquet of travel rations, for some odd reasons - and far more made than could be eaten (many were left in surprisingly easily concealed places). The steward carelessly left copious amounts of gold coins outside his room. Why, he was even fitted for a full set of travel clothing for every weather (“don’t argue with your mother dear, better to be prepared.”) Perhaps a child who had led a less sheltered life would have been more suspicious, especially when a banquet was called on the day he prepared to leave, along with his horse being saddled and all the stable guards being mysteriously absent... but he was so used to things being arranged for him it never really registered.

So he set off into the great world, his bags full of gold and handy tools and magic items, all alone expect his purebred horse and 4 quiet gentlemen discreetly watching from a distance just in case.

And then there was the ship wreck. He came to shore in this new, unknown land. His gold gone, his packs empty and his bodyguards missing, presumed dead. At least this was a new human real, maybe it’s time to explore a little before he needs to truly worry. In the meantime he and his companions from the shipwreck will do what they can to repay the debt they owe the people who helped them recover from the wreck and maybe explore more of this new land.

RP notes:
A strange combination of confidence and uncertainty. All his life nothing truly bad could happen to him, he still has this idea of invulnerability - he will get home and dad will sort out everything. Everything WILL be alright no matter how unpleasant it is now. In many ways he’s very young.

But he’s only met the odd human before. Now he’s surrounded by them - and they’re really strange and don’t think right and do the weirdest of things. Sometimes he’s overwhelmed by how different and ugly and crazy everything is.

He’s having a minor crisis of faith. It’s not that he doesn’t revere and follow Correllon, because he does, and Correllon will always be his first god. But increasingly he feels the need to pay his respect to other relevant deities - Aveena and Malora. On some level he wonders if this is a betrayal.

Quirks:
Money isn’t important to him. Eventually he will return home and have the vast resources of his house again. Squabbling over anything less and a few million gold coins seems petty and beneath him

Aesthetics are important to him, and he’s stunned how little humans care for beauty.

Comments

[solid-squid.livejournal.com]

do you really think it's a big improvement over the previous version? I've heard a lot of negative feedback from friends of mine who seem to think they've made a bit of a mess of it. I'd be interested to know what you think is an improvement from the player point of view (I know for a fact that there's some pretty awesome improvements from the DM's point of view)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

HUGE improvement! For several reasons:
1) 1st level characters are no longer mauled by house cats
2) Parties need to be more balanced and, as such, actually work together much better. When you have a battle you have 5 people who MUST work together - not 5 people each doing their own thing.
3) All classes are interesting - your warrior isn't your basic "I swing sword. Sword hits. I swing sword again" because all classes have abilities. It's not only mages who have a choice in what to do.
4) The array of different abilities you have to choose from make 2 characters of the same class very different long before you need to worry about prestige classes
5) there is more class balance, especially at higher levels (old DnD, with all the source books and prestige classes was broken)
6) Classes are balanced throughout. Before a mage was pointless level 1-12. Then it was all equal. At lv 15 mages left everything else standing and warriors became magic item delivery systems
7) the to-hit system is much more streamlined

Because it's NEW there are a lot less shinies and options available (wait until 10 squillion more source books are produced) but the system itself is massively better

[solid-squid.livejournal.com]

Actually, the fact that fighters are better off might be one of the issues my friends have, they're pretty much die hard arcane players and are probably annoyed that they aren't "better" than fighters in the new version.

Also, as I understand it there are quite a few issues with the new licence that people creating the source books have to deal with, which people are suggesting could limit the number of source books that will be made

I guess I could give it a shot though. The fact that fighters are more balanced really does seem like a big advantage (and from the DM side, the "monster X is worth Y XP. Just add them all up" method of xp awards is much better than the CR in 3.5)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I know a couple of mage players like that. A mage can't just run on the scene and nuke everything. The other players add and work together, you can't steal the show with the flashy spell of flashiness (and this is from a mage who, with a time stop spell, could nuke entire armies with his spell combos).

I LIKE the new license. The worst thing that broke old DnD beyond class balance was the squillion of books written by anyone and his horse.

Critical miss actually covered it (check this siote out, it's hella funny even if it hasn't updated in years) http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue7/scenarioinflation1.html

Basically all these companies want to sell their books, aye? Now they could do it by publishing interesting stories, riveting plot or indepth role play. Or they could just put in the shineist item and the most unkillable prestige class. Now, tell me which will sell more...

I had long since insisted on a "core books" only policy. One advantage of Whitewolf is all the books were made by the same people so I could trust the balance. So if it limits the number of sources in my book that's a GOOD thing.

[cuglas.livejournal.com]

*snort*

My brother plays paladins and clerics like that. His favorite was a Deadlands blessed named Brother Elsiah Blue. Brother Blue was on a mission from God.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

*snorfle* oh dear gods

[drharper.livejournal.com]

*gigglefits*

Okay, you're making me want to make a cleric for my next D&D character instead of the barbarian I was originally toying with. (Nurg Stoneskull...the name says it all).

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I SMASH!

It's a shopkeeper

SMASH SHOPKEEPER!

[remote45.livejournal.com]

I loved playing a cleric. Francois was my first one and he is still one of my favorite characters. My DnD group (we play on two nights) has just started playing Mutants and Masterminds on the first night and we are in the Buffy/Angel-verse (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) on the second night. On the M&M night there has been some "cataclysmic" event that has given Superhero powers to certain people. No one knows who or why and we all have to figure it out and what we will do with our "powers". One of my feats is luck, and if you knew me, you'd know how terribly important this really is. (I am the only person in the history of my group to ever roll 8- one's in a row and another 5 of them spaced out through the rest of the night.) No one will touch my dice or allow me to touch theirs. LOL!
In the Buffy/Angel-verse game, the town we are working in (Miami) has fallen into Hell much like the comic series by Joss Whedon of "Angel-After the Fall". My present character is involved in a tragic love affair and has lost her soul. *sighs* She's one of my favorite characters of all time. (she and Francois are neck and neck). I love reading about other people's characters and the stories behind them. One of the greatest things about our Buffy/Angel game is that we don't just fight and do spells and trudge through hidden rooms and all but we seriously role play. Sounds like you guys do too! Our GM gives us moral dilemma's and makes us work through them with the other characters in the game. For example one of my original characters there was a Vampire slayer and in order to save her world from destruction she was forced to either let it happen or sign a contract with the evil group Wolfram and Hart. Well, she signed of course, but then was forced to do evil things from the Wolfram and Hart group. Hopefully she will be able to break the contract this season. It's truly a lot of fun. I don't think most people realize how fun it is to role play.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

M&M sounds a lot like the Whitewolf version - damned if I can remember what it's called though
Heee, we havce a player like that! We sit him next to the Gm and order him to touch the dice before the GM rolls. He's our wizard and has managed 3 fights without doing ANYTHING, his spells constantly go awry.

Serious role play is a major must for me, which is why I tend to be more of a Whitewolf fan than a DnD fan. There's only so much hacknSlash you can do before it gets old, you know? Roleplay is much more fun, exploring in depth and creating a STORY rather than an action film

[jerril]

Just a heads up - technically you don't need BOTH a tank AND a cleric. What I'd say is "You need a tank, and either a dedicated healer, OR a dedicated controller (which, currently, means Wizard)". Presumably more controllers will be introduced later.

Why you need one OR the other, is because everyone can do a LITTLE bit of in-combat healing (it's better than in-combat spirit-based recovery in WoW, but that's not a bad comparison to make). If you have a controller, ie, an aoe bot, you can take out large swarms of mooks quickly, and peoples in-combat healing will generally be enough to keep them alive until the end of the fight, when they can recover everything. If you DON'T have a controller, you'll NEED a dedicated healer, because a swarm of mooks pumps out a surprising amount of damage quickly and Second Wind just won't keep your ass on the line.

(You can probably do without a dedicated tank if you have a party full of clerics and relying on healing powers, but it'd be tricky)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Our current party is:
1 Paladin
1 Cleric
1 Warlock
1 Rogue
1 Wizard

I think we could manage without a cleric on some encounters (those second winds and healing surges are nice) but when we're fighting a big-bad-thing or a big-bad-thing and his buddies the healing is REALLY helpful - because the wizard's cc (when he actually HITS) doesn't mean much against a big monster o'doom. There have been several encounters where, without my healing word and splashing temporary hit points we'd have been screwed - but the GM may emphasise more swarm battles in that case.