Author Topic: Are they actually taking good feedback?  (Read 2734 times)

Offline SneeR

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Are they actually taking good feedback?
« on: June 25, 2012, 01:27:48 PM »
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd%2F4ll%2F20120625

This article seems to be full of good things! I like almost everything but the crit fumble table!

Skill bonuses for being trained, maneuvers for fighters, flavorful abilities for fighters (!), and what sounds like free action healing for clerics... All of these are great ideas!
« Last Edit: June 25, 2012, 01:29:52 PM by SneeR »
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Offline Demelain

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Re: Are they actually taking good feedback?
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2012, 10:18:11 PM »
 It only took 15 years, but WotC appears to be ready to listen.
I'm happy.

Offline WarlockLord

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Re: Are they actually taking good feedback?
« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2012, 02:10:47 PM »
I don't think they will produce a good narrative combat module at all.  Either:

a) Stunts are better than your normal attacks, so you do them all the time, or

b) Stunts suck and aren't worth using.

Or you limit them to once a fight or something, I don't know.

Offline linklord231

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Re: Are they actually taking good feedback?
« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2012, 02:44:35 PM »
The first thing that came to my mind with the narrative thing was Called Shots - make an attack with a penalty in order to hit their arm and disarm them, or their head and do bonus damage/blind/deafen, or their legs to reduce speed/trip or something. 
That might not be what's going to happen, but that's the first thing I thought of when they described it.
I'm not arguing, I'm explaining why I'm right.

Offline awaken_D_M_golem

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Re: Are they actually taking good feedback?
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2012, 04:42:11 PM »
It only took 15 years, but WotC appears to be ready to listen.
I'm happy.

There was quite a bit of !@#$ -ing about 3.0e
that resulted in the mini-nerfs going onto 3.5e.
And some of them did pay attention to the CO and
Psi boards about various details.  But nothing really
over arcing the whole game.

They do have Hasbro's resources now about
customer surveys --- which is probably why
they're running away from 4e as fast as possible.
(shrug)
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Offline Bozwevial

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Re: Are they actually taking good feedback?
« Reply #5 on: June 29, 2012, 05:31:01 PM »
I don't think they will produce a good narrative combat module at all.  Either:

a) Stunts are better than your normal attacks, so you do them all the time, or

b) Stunts suck and aren't worth using.

Or you limit them to once a fight or something, I don't know.
Stunts have to be weighed against the utility of making basic attacks. So if you cannot ever envision a situation where stunting is superior to hitting your opponent with a half-brick inna sock, your stunt is bad. There's no reason to use something that inflicts status effect X, Y, or Z when you have a perfectly good sock which inflicts the status effect "unconscious or dead" on a hit.

Now, with that in mind, then there are plenty of reasons where you would want to use a stunt even when you're fighting mooks, and they are all situational.

If you suspect that you won't be able to kill your opponent for a good long while, a debuff is the pretty obvious winner, and if you've got a crowd of mooks nearby, something that debuffs them all may very well be more useful than killing off one or two of them.

It's also possible that your immediate priority is neutralizing or hindering an opponent rather than causing them harm. Maybe you're fighting good guys and don't want to hurt them, the elven prince is about to put on the cursed crown, someone's about to strike a gong and wake up the tarrasque, whatever. For whatever reason, swording the obstacle in the face is going to have a less desirable outcome than stunting, so you stunt.

In fiction, stunts also usually come into play when your normal mode of attack fails to produce useful results. A fighter going up against a golem whose iron carapace deflects all his attacks will try tripping it, finding a weak spot in the armor, dropping a stalactite on it, or whatever. Again, this is situational. If he were going up against a flesh golem, it probably would be more efficient to hack it to bits than it would to spend several rounds luring it to the edge of a pit and then slipping through its legs to give it a push.

But it's entirely possible to have a stunt system that players will use, so long as you accept the fact that the most obvious and logical answer to the question, "What do you do to the goblin that popped out of the coffin?" is "I introduce it to my spear until it stops moving." That answer is predicated on the assumption that your normal attacks actually pose a threat to the local wildlife, though, so if choosing Answer B: Spear-stabbin' does not actually lead to a dead or severely wounded opponent, then yeah, stunts are going to be too good or even worse.
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