DDN Q&A: Wound Modules, Uncommon Choices, and Humans

There are two reasons that can pretty much sum up why I am unsatisfied with hit points in Next: you do not start with enough, and you are largely reliant on magic to get them back.

When I tried running Age of Worms in 3rd Edition several months ago, the characters ended up having to rest every few rooms due to the lack of a cleric. In my Next campaign Hit Dice have made things a bit smoother, but ultimately it depends on how many cure wounds spells the druid and ranger have on tap.

The talk of a variety of hit point modules is good, I guess, so long as at least one of them lets you play without having to have magical healing. I think I have said before that my ideal hit point system would be something like the vitality- and wound-point split that I first saw in 3rd Edition’s Unearthed Arcana (and that I maybe saw later in one of the Star Wars games), where wound points are based on your Constitution score, and vitality points are derived from class.

Wound points would recover more slowly over time, maybe based on your Constitution modifier. Certain attacks like poison, maybe critical hits, could directly apply to wound points. Vitality points would recover much more quickly, being the more abstract part generally reflected by combat skill, luck, etc. Things like warlord “shouts” could be used to recover them in combat, as well. I would also do something like Dragon Age: Origins, where getting reduced to zero wound points slaps you with a persistent injury that recovers over time.

As for halfling barbarians, I think that 4th Edition did oddball combinations best by making it so that while certain race/class combinations were more ideal, the rest were still capable of contributing in a meaningful manner. Like, a half-orc barbarian would probably start out with a Strength score of 18, but the benchmark was 16, which a halfling could still do. The ironic downside with Next is that given the 20 cap on ability scores, even before all the talk of stat-boosting feats, everyone will end up with the same score no matter their size category.

Humans used to be a very fun race to play because you got a variety of floating bonuses. Now its just a bonus to all your stats, and…that is it. Pretty easy to build with, but really boring. I do not think that humans should just be the “speed-building” race, especially when it means that they are as strong, tough, fast, smart, wise, etc as other races that are supposed to have those traits as a shtick.

D&D Next: Tiefling Homebrew

Ever since I got Planescape Campaign Setting back in high school, tieflings have been one of my favorite races.

In 2nd Edition they were supposed to be the half-breeds of a human and some other fiendish critter, though they initially had a standard set of racial traits. The Planewalker’s Handbook let you swap those out for multiple rolls on a Tiefling Abilities table (it also had a table with random physical traits), and if you were into the whole Skills & Powers thing there was an issue of Dragon that would let you spend character points to start with things like wings.

3rd Edition kept the flavor and standard tiefling traits of energy resistances and darkness 1/day. I did not like it very much, partially because it had a level adjustment, which meant that you could not play one unless you started at a certain level (in this case 2). It was a really poor way of dealing with races with more/better racial features than the norm, especially considering that they did not scale and gradually became worthless.

The other reason was that it lost a lot of the variety from 2nd Edition. I am not even sure if the devils, demons, and yugoloth could even all cast darkness. It made more sense to throw in a variety of spell-like abilities and resistances, to help you mechanically justify the lineage of your choice. I get that it would have given the race a lot of real estate, but there is no reason why this could not have appeared in Unearthed Arcana (which had a lot of variant races), or a Dragon article.

4th Edition changed the flavor, making tieflings the ancestors of a bunch of power hungry nobles that were cursed as part of making a literal deal with the devil. I actually liked this origin, and it explained why tieflings in the art all looked the same and had the same racial features. They even published some racial powers and feats that let you shake things up.

At any rate, I am not sure what origin story they will go for in D&D Next, but I do not see a reason why being the offspring of a fiendish creature or being cursed for making a deal need to be mutually exclusive, or need different racial features. The idea with this tiefling homebrew is that you get a basic set of generic features, and pick a heritage to give you some variety (at this point it is just ability bonuses and spells, though an ice devil lineage would change up the resistance).

Since we are doing another playtest on Weds, I am going to see if someone will give this a shot with my infernal pact. If you use either of them, lemme know what you think.

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Tiefling

Traits

As a tiefling, you have all the following racial traits.

      Size: Medium.

      Speed: 30 feet.

      Low-Light Vision: If there is no light within 30 feet of you, you treat shadows in that radius as normal light, and you treat darkness in that radius as shadows.

      Deceitful: You have advantage on checks made to lie or deceive another creature.

      Language: You can speak, read, and write Common and Infernal.

      Infernal Heritage: Choose an infernal heritage. Two heritages are described here: horned devil and succubus.

Horned Devil

      Ability Score Adjustment: Your starting Constitution increases by 1.

      Fire Resistance: You have resistance to fire damage.

      Cause Fear: Once per day you can cast cause fear.  The save DC is Charisma-based.

Succubus

Ability Score Adjustment: Your starting Charisma increases by 1.

Fire Resistance: You have resistance to fire damage.

      Charm Person: Once per day you can cast charm person. The save DC is Charisma-based.

DDN: Tone & Edition

I find Rob’s proposal and reasons for adding race frequency to the game very…odd, to say the least, especially with 5th Edition’s purported goal of unifying all the editions. Tagging races as common, uncommon, rare, or whatever does nothing to inform the DM how these might fit into her campaign. It just sets a bar. A bar whose only purpose seems to be passive-aggressively enforcing someone’s idea of what races we “should” be using.

What makes this proposed mechanic even more bizarre is that 2nd Edition saw the introduction of numerous campaign settings that included more exotic races, such as: half-devils, half-angels, half-elementals, half-organic walking shapes, bug-people, half-dragons, bird people, hippo-men, and more. This begs the question, if tieflings are rare, but I am running Planescape, do I tell players that the common and uncommons are okay, plus tieflings? I guess I could just say common, uncommon, and rares are all good…but then what about warforged? Kalashtar?

And then there are the DMs that create their own campaigns. What if I create a world where tieflings and dragonborn are the most common races to be found, doing that whole war between Bael Turath and Arkhosia bit? What about a campaign that is largely restricted to mountains, with dwarves, minotaurs, genasi, and the odd warforged here and there (built by dwarf artificers I guess)?

I get that Rob grew up being exposed to certain media, and so prefers his game one way. Other players did not, or do not like the same things. Arbitrarily labeling races that he was “shocked” to see as being in 4th Edition’s first Player’s Handbook–while still ignoring the gnome write up in Monster Manual, I might add–as rare seems like he is both pushing an agenda and making assumptions about the game world, as opposed to the 5th Edition mantra of giving us the tools and then getting out of the way.

Ultimately this rule has no purpose or benefit. At best it is harmless; good DMs are just going to ignore it and give their players footnotes on what they can and cannot play in a homebrew campaign, and if issues arrive then hopefully they will come to a mutually fulfilling conclusion. Even in published campaigns DMs might still just ignore racial restrictions, such as if a player provides a compelling reason or the group comes to the realization that it is their game and they can do what they want. At worst it is hazardous for new groups, whose DMs might needlessly enforce it in a misguided attempt to “play by the rules”.

I think the only thing that needs to be done is to add a footnote somewhere in the rules, that gives DMs that for some reason need it the “go-ahead” to ban/create content for their table.

Making Race Count

The first in hopefully many articles brings power support for dwarves, half-elves, halflings, and humans. In 4th Edition race became a much more meaningful choice due to the feat support and race-specific paragon paths, and adding powers to the mix (especially in light of the vryloka and shade) is a natural progression. Each race gets a utility from levels 2-16, and there is no “cost” to take them except that if you have a spellbook and take a racial utility, you do not get an extra wizard one.

Dwarf

• Avalanche Rush (level 2 encounter): When you bull rush a target, you can push them farther based on your Con modifier.
• Dwarven Pride (level 6 encounter): When you are subjected to most forms of forced movement, you gain a damage bonus for a turn based on the number of squares you were moved.
• Stone Stubborn (level 10 encounter): When you are dominated or stunned, you are instead dazed until the effect ends.
• Mountainborn Tenacity (level 16 daily): When you are dropped, you can spend a healing surge and gain damage resistance for a turn based on your Con modifier.

Half-Elf

• Help Is Here (level 2 encounter): You automatically use aid another on an adjacent ally.
• Sudden Switch (level 6 encounter): You swap spaces with a creature and gain combat advantage for a turn against all adjacent enemies.
• Lockstep (level 10 encounter): You and an adjacent ally shift 6 squares, and must end the movement next to each other.
• Persuasive Words (level 16 daily): You gain a bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, and Intimidate for the rest of the encounter.

Halfling

• Happy Feed (level 2 encounter): When a creature starts its turn, you can shift.
• Minor Threat (level 6 encounter): A stance that you can trigger while bloodied, granting you a bonus to defenses and Stealth.
• Pay Your Debts (level 10 at-will): If a flanked enemy moves, an ally flanking it still has combat advantage for a turn.
• Underfoot Hustle (level 16 encounter): You shift your speed with a bonus, can move through enemy squares, and they grant combat advantage to you for a turn.

Human

• Extra Effort (level 2 encounter): You can reroll a save with a bonus, but the next save takes a penalty.
• Rapid Move (level 6 daily): As a minor action you can take a move action.
• Flush With Success (level 10 encounter): If you hit with an attack, you gain scaling temp hps and can shift a short distance.
• Courageous Determination (level 16 daily): If a en enemy bloodies you, or hits you while you are bloodied, you can burn a healing surge, shift your speed, and gain a defense bonus for a turn.

Holy crap a lot of these are really awesome. Sure, avalanche rush is best suited for characters built around forced movement and charging, but I could see a lot of halflings taking minor threat (which is also very thematic for them). The human spread is really nice all around. I am really impressed by how much I like this article despite playing almost none of the featured races. Now to wait and see when/if tieflings get any power love.

Racial Ability Bonuses

If you’re the kind of group that has the kind of DM that needs to have WotC “allow” a rule before it can be utilized, and have yearned for the day when your deva, genasi, goliath, kalashtar, shadar-kai, or warforged could benefit from a floating ability score modifier, then your wait is over. Yeah, there’s some flavor content mixed in there, but the real gem here is the table tucked away at the end of page 2. Since the article doesn’t require a DDI account to view, I’ll just sum it up here:

• Deva: +2 Wisdom, +2 Intelligence/Charisma
• Genasi: +2 Intelligence, +2 Strength/Constitution
• Goliath: +2 Strength, +2 Constitution/Wisdom
• Kalashtar: +2 Charisma, +2 Intelligence/Wisdom
• Shadar-kai: +2 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence/Wisdom
• Warforged: +2 Constitution, +2 Strength/Intelligence

The rest of the races are organized on the table, too, which could be handy if a player is looking to skim for a race that best suits a class (or if you both don’t use Essentials or the Character Builder). Unfortunately, no word on bladelings, bullywugs, gnolls, or their ilk. Le sigh.

Edit: Was going to put this in the comments in response to dwarf74, but figure I might as well put it up here. While I don’t think that optimal stats is necessary for a concept to work, a few things come to mind that work a lot better with the flexible modifier.

• Devas: Devas can make excellent Charisma-based paladins and prescient bards, as well as better warlocks and sorcerers. Hrmm…deva infernal-pact warlock?
• Genasi: Staff or tome wizard immediately springs to mind, as well as shielding swordmages. Unfortunately, having to pick between Strength or Constitution limits their utility in most melee characters.
• Goliath: A Wisdom bonus means that now they’re suited for the rest of the primal-suite, or any divine class they care to apply themselves to. Unfortunately, none of the primal classes except warden use Strength, and the same goes for the divine with the exception of paladin.
• Kalashtar: In 3rd Edition these guys were ideal for psionic classes, and now that they get an Intelligence bonus they’re good to go as psions, especially telepaths. Infernal and fey-pact warlocks also get something out of Intelligence, as to illusionist wizards and one of the bard-types. 
• Shadar-kai: Hrmm…never really cared for these guys much, but with a Wisdom bonus they make a much better fit for divine classes, especially pursuing avengers.
• Warforged: Artificer is a no brainer, but they can also better apply themselves as psions (psi-forged), and arcane classes like the shielding swordmage or tome/staff wizards. 

Heroes of Shadow: Vryloka

While this excerpt has a bit of flavor content for all the races that will be featured in Heroes of Shadow, it also showcases the racial features of the vryloka, meaning that we now know what to expect out of both of the new races (assuming revenant doesn’t see any radical changes). In short, they’re humans infected with vampirism, making them similar in concept to tieflings or shifters.

• +2 Charisma, +2 to either Strength or Dexterity
• Speed 7
• Low-light vision
• +2 Perception and Stealth
• Blood Dependency: When bloodied your healing surges heal you for less. Ouch.
• Human Heritage: You get a racial bonus to pretending to be human.
• Living Death: You’re both alive and dead, and get to pick how an effect applies to you in case it matters.
• Necrotic Resistance: 5 + 1/2 your level.
• Vampiric Heritage: You can swap out class utilities for racial ones (two of which are also shown).
• Lifeblood: Once per encounter when you kill or bloody an enemy, you can shift your speed, gain temporary hit points, or gain an attack bonus for a turn.

The two featured racial daily utilities are unnatural vitality and bloodwolf form. The first triggers if you kill a nonminion enemy, and gives you a bonus against death saves and ongoing damage, as well as allowing you to ignore many of the basic needs of mortals, such as eating, breathing, and sleeping. It lasts until you take an extended rest, which makes it a good thing to do as soon as you are able to. The other one only lasts for an encounter, and lets you change into a shadowy, wolf-like form. In wolf form, you gain darkvision and a hefty skill bonus to Athletics, Perception, and Stealth, and can ignore difficult terrain. On the downside you can’t attack, but you can switch back and forth throughout the encounter. I dunno, this seems pretty limited.

It’s an interesting race that puts in a minor penalty, which is something that hasn’t been seen since the shade (also in this book). I’m curious as to how far WotC will go with this sort of thing. It’s not a huge deal, and I don’t mind setbacks so long as they don’t invalidate a race from going into a class. Like, this makes them only slightly less than ideal for a defender class, though I’d say lifeblood makes up for it. What I’d hate to see are extremes like the halfling from 3rd Edition, which basically made it impossible to be a fighter or barbarian.

Essentials Powers, Feats, and Implements

Up until now, the stuff I’ve heard about the Essentials didn’t worry me at all. Classes built differently? That’s cool. Magic item rarities? I can work with that. The recently revealed changes? Well…they’ve given me pause. I mean, the team over at WotC has done an excellent job with 4th Edition thus far, so I’m willing to give the whole thing the benefit of the doubt, but some of the changes are starting to get me a bit worried in the way that only a fuck-ton of changes can.

Not all of it’s bad. For one thing, if you have two implement-using classes, then any implements work for your powers even if the normally wouldn’t. For example, if you’re a sorcerer/bard, then you can use daggers as implements. I don’t think it’s difficult at all to understand how implements work, but I can get behind making multiclassing less irritating (I’ve had players not want to multiclass because they didn’t want to have to try and maintain two separate +whatever-whatevers).

Its when you get to races and powers that things start to seem a bit…power creepy. Wizard encounter spells will have miss effects, which we already knew but didn’t know what they would look like. One of the examples is  burning hands, which will deal half damage on a miss. Now, if the base damage is reduced that’s fine, but if they are going to go through the entire wizard spell selection and alter all of it? Well, that’s a lot of modifications, and while I’m glad that DDI updates all this shit automatically I would appreciate them printing updated books to reflect the more radical changes they’ve made (magic missile, I’m looking at you).

Races from Essentials will all get a static modifier to one ability score and a floater between two others. I don’t think this is necessary, except for players that have to pick optimized race/class combos. What I like about 4th Edition is that you can mix and match any race and class and end up with a working character. The plus side is that this technically makes races more flexible in the sense that they will have key modifiers to a specific class, but I dont feel that it was necessary. I mean, I’ve made a functional gnome barbarian and Shazbot played a halfling dagger fighter for quite awhile and we perceived no problems with either.

On a similar note a lot of feats are getting changed, as well as a purportedly better organization method that uses categories like Enduring Stamina, which is for feats that make your character tougher and last longer. I’m guessing this time around we’ll have forum-goers bitching that a feat should be in this category or that. 9_9

Player’s Handbook Races: Tieflings Review

Though not exactly a fan of dragonborn I thought that Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn kicked ass. It added a lot of fluff and crunch to the race that helped inspire a few characters (that I’ll honestly probably never play, but still). Tieflings got kind of a bum rap at the start of 4th Edition, and thanks to numerous racial feats, a few Winning Races articles, and the infernal wrath update they’ve become a lot more viable (not that it stopped me in the past). Even so, Player’s Handbook Races: Tieflings adds a lot of cool shit to the race, following the same model that PHR: Dragonborn did.

You get eight solid pages of information on tieflings in general, in addition to their noble ancestry and history (including sample noble houses and noble backgrounds). It then moves on to discussing tieflings by power source–including the psychic source–with a paragon path for each, and all of this eats up 24 pages of a 32-page book. Like PHR: Dragonborn, I could easily see using all of these. Where before I was torn on a paragon path for my warlord, I’m absolutely sold on the Turathi hell-kite (head-butt attack? FUCK YES). Shit, the redeemer of the damned (primal paragon path) has you channeling the damned spirits of your ancestors.

And then, there’s feats. Its a hefty section with 31 feats, and I particularly love the tail feats. Clever Tail lets you use your tail to stow/retrieve objects, including making unpenalized Thievery checks, while Tail Slide lets you slide an ally when you shift. There are more warlock feats that help make tieflings the best warlocks possible, such as Blood Pact of Cania (damage bonus when you use warlock attacks that rely on Constitution) and Hellish Blast (eldritch blast becomes a fire attack and gains a damage bonus), but many classes get something and most of them are for tieflings in general.

The book then wraps up with some new magic item properties, fluff information on tiefling quests (two more pages), and the heir of the empire epic destiny. Heir of the empire gives you a Int and Cha bonus, bonus on Cha skills, causes infernal wrath to auto-prone targets, and lets you dominate the first creature you hit in an encounter (for free). Ruler of life and death lets you auto-dominate a slain creature, causing them to get back up and fight for you, and when they finally save against the effect they die.

This book is a fucking must-have for tiefling fans of any capacity.

Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn Review

Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn is a ten dollar…book, I guess…that weighs in at 32 pages. I’m a fan of the online articles that Wizards now delivers every damned day via Dragon and Dungeon. They are more often than not sweet and short. I can head over to the site, ignore all the Forgotten Realms articles (and not be terribly disappointed if thats all thats up for the day), and quickly plow through a few pages that get to the point. In a nutshell, small articles that deliver interesting content are better than walls of text that somehow do not.

However when it comes to dead-tree format, I prefer a larger book since it helps whittle away the hours in commute. It is mostly during these times that I can actually read, and with essentially nothing else to do I dont mind having hundreds of pages to plow through. So the size and subject matter didnt do much to bolster my hopes, yet…strangely, I thought it was alright.

Before I talk about why I like it, I’m going to complain about the low points (as I tend to do). First, its soft cover. I fucking loathe that. Also, there’s no table of contents…which I guess is mostly alright since its not exactly the largest book on the shelf. A much more legitimate complaint is that the book pamphlet is a pain in my ass to flip through. I just cannot seem to flip through a page or two at a time, and when I try it just flaps open to the middle part. Finally, almost all of the art (if not all of it) is recycled. I dont like this in any game, period.

Just be gentle with it. I’ve never had a D&D book collapse on me before, but there’s a first time for anything. Now, the pros.

The first nine pages are devoted to recapping the whole racial concept and some story exposition on their history and clan stuff. You get a sidebar for names and a shit-ton of backgrounds, too. Didnt bother to check to see if the information was taken from Dragon, but much of it is shit you already knew if you like dragonborn and kept up on that. Still, having a physical reference on hand has its appeal. I think people are going to bitch about this no matter what. I have a DDI subscription, and I dont really care.

After that its a series of sections that divide them up by power source, talking about how dragonborn in general cope, and also dishing out a pragon path at the end for your efforts. This is good for players that arent terribly sure how to approach building a dragonborn wizard, or barbarian, or whatnot. The paragon paths were well done and stuck to the popular dragonborn approach of a badass melee warrior. Were I to play a dragonborn I’d be tempted to take honorable blade and platinum templar, and the fact that it got me considering dragonborn for reasons other than optimization theory came as a surprise.

Then came feats. Whoo-boy, there are a lot. There is no feat table, and with damn near 40 of them that is bullshit. At least it’ll get lumped into CB so it’ll be easier to handle…next month. There are a lot of good feats in here, as well.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of the feats pertain to dragon breath, but some are thematic to the other aspects of a dragonborn. For example, Glorious Victory lets you burn healing surges when you drop monsters, while Draconic Zeal gives you an attack bonus when you burn a healing surge in addition to a level 12 utility power that lets you auto-heal when you get dropped. A couple let give you even more bonuses while bloodied: Io’s Challenge lets you do more damage with divine challenge, and Rage Drake Form gives you an untyped attack and damage bonus while in beast form.

Magic items has five weapon properties and an item set, Silver Dragon Regalia. The set seems mostly suited to warlocks and martial characters since it includes a rod and weapon, but frankly I could see many people wanting the tabard since it lets you save against all ongoing damage effects at the start of your turn. I really like the weapon because it deals a shitload of damage on a crit if you’re bloodied, and pimps out dragon breath by adding its bonus to both the attack and damage roll, but can also change it into a hefty close burst. This works well if you took the heroic feat that makes dragon breath ignore allies…except by giving them an attack bonus.

Lastly, there’s some pages on dragonborn quests and the avatar of Io epic destiny. Avatar’s of Io gives you a Strength and Charisma bonus, which immediately tells me that its gonna be best for sorcerers, the bard build that also likes Strength (or was it Con?), thaneblood barbarians, many paladins, and inspiring and resourceful warlords. There might be some other Str/Cha types that I’m missing. Probably. Anyway.

Again, it adds shit to dragon breath, this time by having it ignore any kind of damage resistance, changing the damage type on the fly, and gaining an attack bonus right after you do so. You also get an always-on fly effect and a very strange resurrection ability that should just read, “When you die, you are actually only dead (save ends).” The level 26 is kind of weak, letting you make a save right after you get hit by a save-ends effect. Yawn.

What this all boils down to is that I didnt think I was going to like PHR:D one fucking bit. It didnt help that I’m not exactly a fan of dragonborn, but at ten bucks I felt like I got my money’s worth. Lots of good stuff that dragonborn players are going to get a kick out of. I’m looking forward to the one on tieflings, now.

Mind Flayer Race

A mind flayer race that I made when 4E was launched. I based its mind blast on the dragonborn breath weapon, since they’re both area-effect attacks that target a non-AC defense.