Timewaster's Guide Archive

It's going to be *very* hard to get excited about a system, no matter how cool they make stuff, if 5.0 is going to come out in 2013.  And that's the precedent they're setting.

If you look at Magic the Gathering, a new edition of that is released every two years like clockwork.  So uh, yeah I'd say you are right that 4e will never last as long as 2e or 1e.  But they are planning on releasing a new PHB every year with 4e (and a new MM, but they already did that in 3e, and a new setting).  3e only had PHB and PHB2, so its hard to say what a PHB6 might look like, but the PHB2 had a few rules changes (like the polymorph errata and swift/immediate actions).  So maybe it will extend the life of 4e, but I wonder if you'll still be able to get the errata for free online.  If you are stuck buying every new PHB just for errata, the whole idea is kinda DOA.

So 42 are you apart of the RPGA? Do you participate in any of their campaigns?

This seems like it'd be the most opportune time for any aspiring DMs or players to join the RPGA on a fresh, clean start. I've looked into the RPGA once or twice before, but it always just seemed so convoluted and at times daunting and confusing.

Yeah, we play Living Greyhawk.  I think their campaign rulebook makes it look a lot worse then it is.  If you can find someone who already does it, then it is pretty simple.

I got a 5th lvl elf cleric and a human cleric/rogue who's a few xp from lvl 10.  I think might try to fit in as many of the Living adventures with my elf and try to get him into this campaign-ending adventure.  Then try to do Expedition to the Demonweb Pits with my other cleric (that is a hardback adventure by WotC).  It will be a lot more fun to retire my living greyhawk chars with some cool adventures, then just some lame run-0f-the-mill adventure that just happened to be the one that got them to lvl 16 (your char auto-retires once they have enough xp to make lvl 16).

Well you could always just wait for 4.5, that will give you a few extra years of 3.5

I think you are pretty close Spriggan.  I'm not sure if everything is going to per encounter; I think there will be a lot of per encounter stuff, but will still need to rest up to compeletely regain all spells and abilities.

I have no idea about RPGA, but a little after the DnD page changed for the anouncement (which is only about 10 minutes away now), they accidently had the messageboards for 4e opened.  There was a bunch of pre-started threads to post in, and I think there was one about living campaigns.  So I guess we will have at least an idea of what is going on with RPGA.

If you go to the dnd website, there is a 17-hour countdown for "4Dventure".  An anouncement for 4th edition DnD maybe?  Guess we'll find out soon...

Strange, I was watching the Big Sleep this morning and was just thinking that you'd probably like it, Harbinger.  Humphrey Bogart with lots of witty jokes.

I don't remember all the details of this.  It seems like we were in some underground ruins by an old rock quarry or something, with giant insects.  Or might have been at the very end, when we climbed up the mountain, but I think we somehow got to lvl 6 by then and BJ was playing too, iirc.

We were up against a lot worse than those golems.  Everything the characters did was about sneaking around things that could smash them into oblivion, trying to gum up the works until our higher level characters could roll in and mop up.  It was more about commoners doing some heroic things to thelp the real heroes out.  My PC was still a teenager, and spent more time working a regular job than he did adventuring.

I've still never come up with a good name for my undertaker's spiked chain.

I probably played the old TMNT more than 1st edition, but if I have the facts straight, I think you got 1 xp for every 1gp of treasure you found, excluding magic items.  For those, you'd either idenify and sell them, and the whole group would get a certain amount of XP, or someone could use the item, and they would get XP for using it.  I think at least half of the XP you got was from treasure, killing monsters didn't give much XP.

When 42 pulled out his old books, another thing I thought was interesting was fighters and dwarves had an ability that dealed double damage when making a mounted charge with a lance, or double damage when using a spear set against a charge.  Now those are just interent to the weapons, but in 1st ed. they were actual class abilities.

I liked this adventure more than Barrow of the Forgotten King.  There is plenty of room for improvement, and it will teach you why oldschool gamers always search for traps, secret doors, and hidden treasure in every room, but overall its a decent dungeon-crawl.   When people do that in newer adventures, it seems almost a bit of a waste of time, but it is required for this type of mod.

Barrow of the Forgotten King seemed more linier, and a weaker story, despite this dungeon crawl ment to be RP/Story-lite.  The story I think starts to tighten up a bit toward the end, but the first does little to hold your attention, which should be the most key part of an adventure.  There are entire articles about adventure hooks... obviously because its an important part of an adventure.

Even though the fights in this mod gave us more trouble than in Barrow, I think Barrow actually had more unbalanced fights.  In this mod, our party was average at best; our PCs for Barrow were a lot more powerful, and a similiar number of PCs (3 PCs plus 1 NPC), but Barrow was built more around a 4-man group and Lost Vault was built more around a 6-man group.

Good review Spriggin, I agree with basically all your points.  Its pretty well-done over all and its got way more for true rogues than Complete Adventurer ever thought of having.  Complete Adventurer seemed to have a whole lot for adding a bit of rogue to other classes, only a handful of stuff for true rogues (a couple feats like Staggering Strike and Tactile Trapsmith, and a few prestige classes although the only one that comes to mind is Spymaster, which was pretty weak anyway).  This book is the opposite, lots of stuff for rogues, with some general advice on adding some rogue flavor to other classes and only a few PrCs and feats meant for purely multiclass rogues.

One thing I don't think you touched on was a return of the Complete Adventurer multiclassing feats that takes two classes and lets some of their class features stack.  IE, Swift Hunter lets scout (a wilderness/rogue base class from Complete Adventurer) and ranger levels stack to determine favored enemy bonus and skirmish bonus, plus if you skirmish a favored enemy, you get the bonus skirmish damage even if they are normally immune to critical hits.  There is another one for scout/rogue that lets all your rogue levels stack with scout to determine skirmish, one for monk/ninja (also from Complete Adventurer) to stack for ki pool and unarmed strike (and maybe some other stuff), a similar one for fighter/ninja, rogue/swashbuckler (base class from Complete Warrior), and maybe another one or two I'm forgetting.

One thing I noticed, you said that rogues could use Craft skill to make their own poison for 1/2 cost.  I think the Craft skill (vs magic item crafting) really only costs you 1/3 the normal cost.  There is also a rule that if the raw materials are readily avalible (like making purple worm poison after kiling a pair of purple worms or something like that), then it only costs 1/6 the price.