squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: June 2013
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A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Wednesday, June 12, 2013. Game Design (VIII): Minions, elites and Solos. Like a kind of messier, deadlier game of basketball, the default combat scenario in a 4E encounter has 5 guys on each side running around and beating on each other. As a consequence, your average monster. Is roughly equivalent to a single adventurer. Or for fewer, stronger opponents ( elites. All that well balanced. The value of a monster. All these comparisons a...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: Playtesting SF: Initial Package
http://squarefireballs.blogspot.com/2012/11/playtesting-sf-initial-package.html
A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Thursday, November 22, 2012. Playtesting SF: Initial Package. Before every encounter, the Game Master selects one of the monsters (usually the most powerful of intelligent one)as the Commander of that monster party. The commander gains the Commanding Word power:. Minor Action (2/encounter, 1/turn). Close burst 5. Target: You or one ally in burst. Effect: The target regains hit points equal to 5 (2.5* its level). Whenever a character s...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: The Magic Item reset (I): Why I hate magic items
http://squarefireballs.blogspot.com/2011/04/magic-item-reset-i-why-i-hate-magic.html
A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Friday, April 22, 2011. The Magic Item reset (I): Why I hate magic items. It’s the item selection. To sum up, the main problems I identified were the following:. 160; Most items are terrible. A very small fraction of items are extremely strong. 160; Items are too narrow. 160; There is just too much stuff. In future articles, you will see the design process I followed, and what came out of it. 1 Full item list. Compiled PDF, v1.13.
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: September 2012
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A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Saturday, September 29, 2012. Game Design (II): Simulating combat, healing and defending. In my previous article. I set the guidelines for the design of our combat system, and defined key concepts like turns-to-kill and focus fire, illustrating them with some very basic simulations, We also stated the primary system requirements: finish encounters in 5 turns. On average, have players win. Simulating a 5-vs-5 combat. Turn 0 represents...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: July 2012
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A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Tuesday, July 24, 2012. La Puerta de Ishtar: A friend’s crowd-funded RPG. Anyway, today’s post is a bit of an off-topic, since instead of our usual draconic dungeoneering, I will be talking about an upcoming indie RPG –. La Puerta de Ishtar. Which handily met its initial goal and is now in the process of beating stretch goal after stretch goal. La Puerta de Ishtar. Or the game website. Tags La Puerta de Ishtar. From this site we will ...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: January 2012
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A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Monday, January 30, 2012. My impressions on D&D Next. Well, it’s been an intense weekend! I’ve been too busy absorbing. 4E features I need. Here is the feature list, with comments on how they are getting implemented:. 8211; A battle map and lots of mechanics that care about movement and positioning. It seemed difficult to actually have this in a game that was also aimed at folks who hate minis and squares, but they are including i...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: Broken Bits: My list of broken paths
http://squarefireballs.blogspot.com/2010/06/broken-bits-my-list-of-broken-paths.html
A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Wednesday, June 23, 2010. Broken Bits: My list of broken paths. Broken Paragon Paths, Index. The other day I commented how paragon paths had dropped in power level. June 23, 2010 at 3:40 AM. You just posted an excellent overview of MM3, which had all of its monsters upgraded to be more threatening. I cant help but feel this is -because- most of the playerbase is taking strong options, and Wizards is already reacting to it. Ive explain...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: May 2012
http://squarefireballs.blogspot.com/2012_05_01_archive.html
A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Tuesday, May 29, 2012. D&D Next Playtest: My first game. So I finally got to play the playtest version of D&D Next. I just had time for a single session, and the rules are still at a very early and incomplete state, but I could conclude the following:. We all had a lot of fun. That said, this has given me many ideas to improve 4E. It’s the combat, stupid. If I have to point to one reason. And, yes, its balance. To that of 4E, and lose...
squarefireballs.blogspot.com
Square Fireballs: August 2014
http://squarefireballs.blogspot.com/2014_08_01_archive.html
A site for discussing Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition rules and news. Friday, August 8, 2014. Game Design (X): Balancing monster defenses, resistances. Monsters have a tendency to be big, dumb brutes (regardless of whether they are actual Brutes), and as a consequence, average defenses skew heavily towards strong Fortitudes and weak Wills. This means that a player character picking an attack power that targets Fortitude will be at a significant disadvantage (equivalent to roughly a -2 penalty to hit!
