Tabletops Blog

It now appears that Wizards of the Coast’s upcoming Players Handbook II will not include the monk class, at some had hoped. A shame - the Third Edition monk had a lot of flaws, but it had style, and if Wizards of the Coast hadn’t shamelessly ignored the class in most of its expansion releases it could have turned out very nicely. I was really looking forward to seeing it in Fourth Edition - the Book of Nine Swords‘ Swordsage class now feels like an early look at the 4E monk and its ki power source, and I loved the Tome of Battle.

The PHB II appears to be focusing on the “primal” power source - the Warden and Sorcerer classes make that clear. (As written, by the way, the Warden will be ridiculously powerful if it’s not subject to a massive overhaul before publication.) This may not be a bad thing. WotC has promised that base classes won’t be presented outside of its Players Handbook series, and so I would love to see them start publishing “themed” Players Handbooks.

Specifically, I dream about an Oriental-themed set of classes, spells, feats, etc.. Just thinking of the 3.5E classes WotC officially released, such a book could contain:

• Monk (controller or striker depending on interpretation)
• Samurai (defender or leader)
• Ninja (striker)
• Wu Jen (controller)
• Shugenja (leader or controller)

Each of these classes, except perhaps the Samurai, could easily use the “ki” power source. The problem, of course, is that base classes require a complete set of powers, paragon paths, epic destinies, and equipment. That’s tough, and it’s tough for players and GMs to come up with homebrew solutions. (The monk’s gotten a lot of love in this regard; I’ll be collecting various homebrew takes on the 4E monk sometime in the near future for everyone to peruse.)

Still, the 4E rules present us with a way around this dilemma: Paragon paths.

If you think about it, with the exception of the monk each of the above classes is a sort of D&D specialist. A ninja is a rogue with a mastery of infiltration techniques. A wu jen is an elementally-focused spellcaster (wizard or, when it comes out, perhaps a sorcerer.) A shugenja is similar, except that she uses divine spellcasting. A samurai is a selfless fighter specializing in particular weapons. This is fertile ground for the mechanics and flavor of paragon paths.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be developing these paragon paths further, trying to come up with workable versions for use in your games (and mine.) If anyone knows of existing versions of these classes for Fourth Edition, however, I’d love to see them!

Looking for inspiration for your next campaign, or for something to help your character break the mold? Tabletops can help!

Peter’s Evil Overlord List - you know how fictional villains always seem to make mistakes? More than a decade ago, Peter Anspach decided to put together a list of things he’d do when he became an evil overlord. It’s not just a hilarious read, though; making sure that your BBEG avoids some of these archetypal pitfalls will quickly teach your players that clever villains are not to be trifled with. Be careful, though - you don’t want to go overboard and make your villain completely invulnerable…

A few favorites:

34. I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.

142. If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it’s important to spend quality time with the grandkids.

Marvelous.

Number two: The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches. Console RPGs - especially the stereotypical Japanese RPG - play by certain rules; when laid out clearly for all to see, they’re a bit ridiculous, but definitely funny. If your group tends to play a lot of these games, an awareness of the tropes involved and a willingness to go against them will serve you well.

Favorites:

2. “No! My beloved peasant village!”
The hero’s home town, city, slum, or planet will usually be annihilated in a spectacular fashion before the end of the game, and often before the end of the opening scene.

38. You Die, And We All Move Up In Rank
During that fake ending, the true villain of the story will kill the guy you’d thought was the villain, just to demonstrate what a badass he (the true villain) really is. You never get to kill the fake villain yourself.

54. I Don’t Like Gears Or Fighting
There are always giant robots. Always.

By the way, the folks at Project Apollo have a couple of very good sci-fi webcomics: The completed and delightful A Miracle of Science, and the still-going Afterlife Blues.

Last, but certainly not least, The Laws of Anime. A simple list of the physical laws of most anime universes, but as tongue-in-cheek as the previous two lists. Classic examples:

3. Law of Sonic Amplification (First Law of Anime Acoustics)
In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.

42. Law of Juvenile Omnipotence
Always send a boy to do a man’s job. He’ll get it done in half the time and twice the angst.

Anyone have any other suggestions? Great lists to share and enjoy?

Today saw the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. The historical significance of this moment, while unprecedented, has been discussed nearly everywhere today, and it hardly falls to me to add to the clamor. Neither do the particulars of the political positions of any given president have any relevance to this blog - while my own political views are quite strong, you won’t see me lay them out here.

Instead, I wanted to try to spark some conversation about how incredibly rare this moment is, as the 43rd President quietly hands power over to the 43rd individual to hold his office (a typo, you say? Nope - Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms. Tricksy!) The very fact that this transition goes off without a hitch every four years in the United States is remarkable, to the point that despite having happened each time without incident, commentators and pundits still remind us that we ought to be grateful for it.

Most players of roleplaying games live in very stable nations. Tabletop games are sometimes seen as an escape from troubles, but they’re a leisure activity that really don’t have a place in nations with severe political instability. As such, most GMs tend to forget how common unrest is on the death of a king, or even after a nominally fair election. Even the presence of an heir is often no protection against those willing to seize the opportunity presented; and custom may require that the heir be affirmed by some other body (religious or political) - a body that can often be swayed by bribes, threats or the mere appearance of readiness to lead.

GMs wishing to deal with a problematic succession need to read a bit of history. In the United States, European history is sometimes taught as the be-all and end-all of history up until the discovery of the “New World”, but an astute GM should also look elsewhere. Japanese history, especially in the 16th century, is a set of well-documented coups and seizures of power; the saga of the various Chinese dynasties is equally fascinating. While you certainly shouldn’t try to make things too complicated, borrowing the complexities of succession for when your players end up in such a crisis can add a lot of realism, as well as providing opportunities for players to actively change the balance of power in the afflicted desmense and feel influential.

I absolutely must have one of these.

Watch both videos in the linked post. What impresses me here is that they’ve designed not only a player interface, but a GM’s interface. With a projected grid as a background, this puts Wizards of the Coast’s still-theoretical Game Table to shame.

And dammit I want one of these now.

The Gamer Dome - a solid website whose name always brings Master Blaster to mind - has pointed out a fascinating variation on minions for Fourth Edition D&D games. The gist of it: Minions have a minimum number of hits to drop that’s usually above one (depending on level) unless they’re hit for a certain, increasing amount of damage.

Personally, I quite like the idea. The suggested thresholds could be tweaked a bit, but they have the convenience of following an extremely simple formula: Number of hits is 1/3 the minion’s level, and the “killing blow” threshold is twice the minion’s level. Like the Dome I quibble a bit with the numbers - four hits seems like too much for any minion, since the whole point is for them to be a sort of ablative armor for more serious threats. (The word “minion”, in the parlance of most villains, means a disposable tool and meatshield.) It’d be a little more work, but 1d3 hits per minion seems like a good way to keep players from expecting minions to go down too easily, and to be pleasantly surprised when they do.

Of course, minions also have higher defenses than standard monsters, so in a peculiar way this might make minions too tough… Thoughts?

At Will linked to a delightful tool I’ve not seen before: Playwrite’s Fourth Edition Power Creator. It’s still an early beta (the link points to v0.3), but it already looks like a tool I’ll be using a lot. One caveat: It’s a .NET application, so Mac and Linux users are probably out of luck.

One of the complaints I’ve heard a lot from my friends who don’t like Fourth Edition D&D very much has to do with magic and improvisation.

In Third Edition (and certainly prior to 3E) classes like the wizard and cleric could have a tremendous variety of spells prepared. While there were certain obvious uses for every spell, clever and inventive players could often find unexpected ways to make those spells effective in an emergency - arcane lock to keep guards in their guardroom during an escape, and so forth. Likewise, some spells were so incredibly versatile - Wall of Stone and Silent Image come to mind - that their uses were only limited by the player’s imagination.

Fourth Edition explicitly did away with this sort of on-the-fly use of powerful spells, and that’s one of its bigger deficits. While wizards no longer need to prepare certain spells, the trade-off of Ritual Casting is that those ritual spells are usually too slow to cast in combat. (The aforementioned arcane lock spell now takes ten minutes to cast!) While I can certainly understand WotC’s developers wanting to bring the power level of the Third Edition wizard back down to earth, in this case I think they went just a little too far.

So how to let players of ritual casters improvise with rituals - essentially turning them into utility powers - without handing the game back to spellcasters after all of the WotC R&D team’s hard work?

Prepared Ritual (Heroic tier feat)

Prerequisites: Ritual Casting

Benefit: A single known ritual with a casting time no greater than 10 minutes may be prepared in advance during a full rest. The standard cost of this ritual must be paid for when prepared, and all necessary foci must be present during the preparation and when it is cast; likewise, the requisite skill check must succeed for the ritual to be prepared successfully. The prepared ritual may be changed during a full rest if not spent, but the cost of the new ritual must be paid in full.
The prepared ritual may be cast once thereafter with a single standard action. All other variables, including range, targets, area, etc.. Treat this as a daily utility power.
At 11th level, you may prepare a ritual in this manner with a casting time of no greater than 30 minutes; and at 21st level, you may prepare a ritual with a casting time of no greater than one hour.
This feat may be taken more than once, allowing you to prepare a number of rituals ahead of time for each instance of this feat.

What do you think? This seems to strike a good balance; I might also require that you be trained in the skill tied to the appropriate ritual, but that seems unnecessary as most ritual casters would have that anyway.

UPDATE: What I get for working from memory: The casting time intervals are 10, 30 and 60 minutes. Thanks, Cort, for catching that - I’ve fixed it in the original post above.

So much for a good start.

Right when I was getting ready to get Tabletops off the ground and really start posting good some material, work went absolutely crazy. My company got bought, and while I (fortunately!) still have a job - and a job that could actually expand in responsibility - the timetable for the merger has been nuts. (You try to merge two large companies with completely different IT schemes in four months.) Thus the lack of posts. Work comes first, as I’ve a wife to support.

That hasn’t meant a lack of attention to gaming; in fact this has helped rather a lot, as I’ve got a number of interesting topics brewing in my mind. But it will still be a while before I can devote enough attention to this blog that anyone should bother to read it.

I realize I’m writing this before said blog actually has any readers. Still, I want anyone going through the archives (wishful thinking, I know) to have an explanation for the ridiculous gap between posts here.

Let me get a little more specific about what I’m planning for Tabletops.

Ideally, this blog space will talk about gaming (mostly tabletop, though some videogames too), science, plenty of humorous things out here in the Web (including plenty of webcomics), and I’ll probably drop a personal anecdote once in a while too. The focus will be gaming, though, from both a player’s and a DM’s perspective. Eventually I’d like to start publishing (in episodes) original material for GMs and players to use in their own games.

I also want to try to produce some tools for GMs and players to use to speed up their planning and gameplay - or just to provide that spark of inspiration. Right now, I’m working on a random magic item description generator geared towards D&D 4th Edition items. (Note that I didn’t say magic item generator - this is specifically for interesting descriptions to provide flavor to 4e’s notoriously bland magic items.) The other, much more complicated idea is a random tactical battlefield generator, again mostly for 4e use and complete with tiled graphics.

Of course, plenty of people have already done this sort of stuff, so you’ll be seeing plenty of links to them, too. That’s how it should be: Creativity can’t happen in a vacuum, and there are other extremely talented people who have produced some truly amazing material already.

So that’s what to expect from Tabletops. With luck, I can start things off right and put some things up that people will really be interested in!

Welcome to Tabletops! This blog will eventually be home to gaming news, tools, reviews, and much more. In the meantime, though, there’s still some back-end work to be done, so bear with us - we’ll be up and running soon.