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Where I’ve Been, What I’ve Been Doing, and What’s Next
It’s been sometime since I’ve been able to sit down and work on an update for the site. So where have I been and what have I been up to?
After getting my computer working, I began working quite hard on re-working the Aleph Fantasy game to incorporate a number of changes and modifications that had come to me in my dreams the week before. Most of the changes are largely cosmetic and focused around filling in some blank spots and tying game elements together. Unfortunately, because my data files had not yet been restored, this meant that I had to re-type the ~90 pages by hand, reading the old hard-copy version and making changes as I went along.
Tuesday night I ran a quick test session to ensure that the changes didn’t have any unintended ramifications of impacts. If you’ve ever spent two solids days re-typing, modifying, formatting and editing information before staying up all night to run a game you can understand and appreciate the coma that followed.
I’ve had a lot of 4e rage lately, a lot of which resulted from reading the Races and Classes preview book, and being shocked by how uber the Dragonborn are and the knowledge that Tieflings would be in the core books, but not Aasimar because, to paraphrase, it’s hard to make them look cool. However! They will be introducing a new Celestial race that’s crafted out of the same pool of uber as the Dragonborn.
The next bit of 4e anger came when I read a Wizards article on Death and Dying in 4e, which included a little section on how to implement the 4e-style rules in a 3e/3.5 game:
If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20.
Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before
you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die.
10-19: No change.
20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your
full normal hit points.
…What? As far as I can tell, you’re not be healed or treated in this instance. This is for someone who is bleeding out on the ground by themselves. And there’s a 5% chance they go from dying to one quarter health. I simply can’t wrap my mind around that logic.
The article insinuated that the actual 4e numbers are likely to be a bit bigger, so we’ll see what changes are made there, how well it’s explained and how well the rules work together (the most important bit). If you’d like to read the article in it’s entirety, you can find it here.
Or if you don’t want to sign into Wizards to read it, you can read a copy of it here without signing into anything here.
One of the best things that can happen to me is getting an e-mail about some new gaming service/product/website from a reader or company, it always make me happy to see how much content there is out there and how much more good content there is for me to discover.
Recently I was e-mailed and alerted about a DnD Blog called the Tavern of the White Wolf. The content seems to exclusively be DnD-related, and a lot of the content can be pretty easily adapted to other systems. The content is all of a good quality, and since the site is still active and updated once or twice a day, you’ll likely find a good stream of DnD content here for at least some time.
I was also recently contacted by Trask from LivingDice.com who has started a nice gaming blog with some great content as well as a heads up about free d20 modules.
So what’s next? For the next week, I’m going to work on a series to help you build a campaign world. Information will be included on topics from map making to religion design.
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Remember: D&D hit points are not a measure of health. D&D rules don’t simulate the physics of anything.
Tommi’s last blog post..Appeasing the giant?
“Remember: D&D hit points are not a measure of health. D&D rules don’t simulate the physics of anything.”
D&D hit points are, among other things, a measure of health. While we don’t yet know what hit points will be in 4e, the current edition defines hit points in terms of health only. It is not so much the lack of realism which bothers me so much as the lack of logic.
I hate to get all rules-lawyery, but it is not like I can admit to being wrong. Here’s from d20srd.org (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/injuryandDeath.htm): “Your hit points measure how hard you are to kill.” and “Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one.”
Given those definitions (neither of which is about health): There is the chance that the character gets worse. I assume this is not controversial. There is the chance of nothing significant happening. I doubt this is controversial. Then there is the small chance that the character grits her teeth, gathers determination, etc. and gets back up, though pretty tired and weary (only 1/4 of hp).
In a random (action) movie, the significant character who was dropped but rises up and distracts the big bad from dealing the killing blow, after which is smacked into death by the big bad, or maybe even survives? That is pretty close to the effects of this rule.
Player psychology-wise, it makes the equivalent of the rolls to stabilise a bit more interesting, because there is the chance of the character getting up and saying “just a flesh wound”. And, let us say you are playing a halfling who is dropped to negative/zero hp by a troll, but who later rolls 20 and gets back up? Maybe it was explained in the movies by a suit of elven chain, but mechanically Frodo’s player just might have rolled a 20.
Tommi’s last blog post..Appeasing the giant?
“Hit points: A measure of a character’s health or an object’s integrity.”
3.5 PHB, glossary in the back. First sentence describing HP. Page 309, I believe.
Well, I don’t have the book, so I will take your word for it. The implication is that PHB is not clear on the subject.
I’ll ask a question: Assuming there were two possible ways to read a given rule (like hp), one of which creates nonsensical results and the other at least working ones, which one would you use?
Add-on: Does my explanation above work? If not, why?
I may just be a charitable reader, but I usually go along with the sensible one, unless I am especially criticising a game, which happens only if I review it or offer design advice for whatever reason.
Tommi’s last blog post..As the witch wills
I’m working on an entry which will explore exactly what hit points are, and how the different definitions apply to different mechanics/situations and which ones are universal.
I think it’s best that we continue this discussion after that, because even if you don’t agree with my conclusions you’ll be able to understand exactly where I’m coming from and what my logic is and I think explaining that would take up a large part of the upcoming conversation.
Thanks for the mention,
Chip’s last blog post..Welcome To My Tavern