Still have room?

[Dark Heresy]

Just poking in to see if there's room for one more. If not, no big
deal!

[Josh Ervin]

Yes DH!  As a matter of fact, we have room for two more.

 

So far we have a Warden, an Avenger, and a Druid, so a leader of some sort would probably be pretty helpful, but anything's good. Let me know what you're interested in (or just send me a CB file) and when you're available to play.

 

We're still discussing scheduling right now. So far it looks like Wednesdays ,Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays are available for everyone. (Speak up if I'm wrong about that). Two of us also have upcoming vacations in the next couple of weeks, so unless we play this week (and we're still a player short), it's looking like it'll be mid-August before we can get started.

 

Quick question to Dark Heresy and Brian: have you played using Maptools before? If not we might want to meet at some point and get you set up on that, maybe run through a quick practice combat. That might be something to do just to keep up momentum until we're able to start the campaign.  
 

[Dark Heresy]

I'm a Maptool coder, so I'm comfortable with whatever. I'll probably
end up making my own custom macros (if that's okay with you).

Sunday's off-limits to me, unfortunately, but I'm good with any of
those other days.

I'll gen up a Leader ASAP!

[Josh Ervin]

Oh cool. Jeff and I actually already have our own set of macros we've created, along with our own set of states, campaign properties, etc. so it's probably easier if I just program your character's stuff.

 

Looking forward to seeing your character :)

[Jeff Eoff]

Right, and we don't use any of the other D&D macro sets for MapTool.  Most of them seemed too gaudy, incomplete, or it was difficult to tell where the system ended (what did it handle, what did it not, when?).

I'd say check and see what ours do and then see if you can improve on them.  Ours have a fairly consistent format displaying to-hit rolls, damage, and other effects.  Encounter and daily power buttons are red and blue respectively, but change to gray when used and reset after the GM runs a rest macro.  Powers infer bonuses, damage, and other properties from what the characters are wielding.  Macros interact with states too.  If you are reduced to half or less HP, you'll automatically gain the bloodied state.  If your reduced to 0, the dying state kicks in. Any healing can reverse these states too.  The system is fairly elaborate while, I think, not being too cumbersome to code to or too difficult for players to learn. 

- Jeff (sent from my iPad)

[Josh Ervin]

There's a chance of the group finding a few magic weapons/items, but most of the magic items found will probably be of a consumable nature (potions, salves, etc).

 

I've never looked to closely at the Artificer until now - they are pretty reliant on magic item daily powers.

 

How about this: Why don't we just take the words "Magic Item" out of both of those Class Features? In other words, instead of recharging a Daily Magic Item Power with Arcane Empowerment, you just recharge a Daily Power (Attack or Utility). The rule would still apply that you can only recharge any particular power once per day. Also, since I don't keep track of milestones (no magic items, and Action Points refresh after a short rest), let's have Arcane Empowerment refresh after a short rest as well. 

 

As far as Arcane Rejuvenation, that would trigger off Daily Power use as well, with the caveat that any individual character can benefit from it only once per encounter.

Does this sound like a solution? It sorta strays from the class flavor of infusing magic items, but we can always just say you're enchanting your allies' weapons/implements in a way that allows them to do more badass stuff more often, or heal when they try a particular taxing maneuver, etc. These changes certainly make Artificers pretty effective leaders, and the party's a bit more powerful as a result, but it doesn't make your character any more powerful than anyone else, so it seems fine to me. If it ends up making things too easy for you guys, I'll just throw more monsters at you :)      

I'm sending this to the whole group as well. Does anyone have a problem with these rules changes? Is there something I'm missing that will mess everything up?

 

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 5:12 PM, Dark Heresy <tg.dar...@gmail.com> wrote:

I did want to ask, however - one of the Artificer's class abilities is completely dependent on magic items having daily powers.  I know you're using some sort of intrinsic bonus but will there be magic items at some point in the campaign?

 

[Brian]

So no magic items, but Action Points every encounter and the Artificer
recharges a daily attack every encounter? Yes, I do love this idea:
I'd love to be horrendously overpowered! =D

Sarcasm aside, let's look at the math. Let's say our Level 6 Fighter
has a Level 1 Daily, a Level 5 Daily, and the highest level magic
weapon he can afford; in this case, a Level 7 magic weapon. So, once
per day, he can:

Use Lasting Threat, Level 1 Daily: is Reliable, deals 3[W] + Strength
damage, and marks the target until the end of the encounter or until
you're knocked unconscious.
Use Bedeviling Assault, Level 5 Daily: deals 2[W] + Strength damage on
a hit, no damage on a miss, but has an effect: until the end of the
encounter whenever an ally hits the target with a melee attack, you
can make a melee basic attack against the target with combat
advantage.
Use the Reproachful Broadsword: When you hit with an attack using the
weapon, the target takes a -2 penalty to attack rolls (save ends).

<i>one of these things is not like the other one...</i>

Now, if you'd like a benchmark for what's equivalent to your average
magic item daily power, look no further than the magical Wand
implements: each of them have either a Wizard or Warlock At-Will
attack usable once per encounter, or an Encounter attack usable once
per day. Viola! Instead of the Artificer giving us an extra magic item
daily use each encounter, just have him fill us with enough magic to
re-use one of our Encounter attacks each encounter.

Yes, I just may think about this game too much in my free time.

[Jeff Eoff]

I think that makes a lot more sense.

I too was thinking that perhaps the recharging of a daily power would be a bit too strong. I would have suggested perhaps recharging any Utility power, but that might end up being too weak, especially compared to some of the better magic item daily powers.

[Josh Ervin]

You make a good point. I knew Daily Powers were more powerful than item powers, but I was really just trying to go for simplicity.

 

So would the encounter power be chosen beforehand, or on the fly during combat? If they have to be chosen beforehand, that adds a whole other layer of things we have to keep track of. Off course, that +2 bonus the class feature gives has to be kept track of anyway...man, Artificers are inelegant. Their Healing Infusions are the only Leader heals that aren't just simple "twice per encounter" powers. They have that whole "you get two of these a day, but you can recharge one of them between encounters by spending a healing surge during the rest..."

 

Let me think about this for today, and I'll try to come up with something that keeps the same idea behind the class feature but works with my houserules.

 

 

One thing I do stick by is Action Points and other "Milestone Dependent" powers recharging every encounter. We've used that in a couple of campaigns now, and it just makes everything simpler and so far it hasn't led to vastly over-powered PCs (of course, we haven't played in the Paragon levels where you have all those Action-Point related Path Features).

[Josh Ervin]

I found a solution (which I can't believe I didn't think of immediately). I can't go into too much detail as it might spoil aspects of the campaign (the solution is campaign-specific). I can assure you it makes very little change to the Artificer, and makes the class no more or less effective than if there were no houserules and everyone had magic items.

 

I've emailed Dark Heresy separately with a slightly more detailed explanation.

[Dark Heresy]

The Artificer recharges a Daily Attack once a DAY, not encounter, and
can only use it during a Short Rest. I think you were misreading the
power.

[Josh Ervin]

It recharges after a milestone, which I don't really use (since the only other things that are based on milestones are Action Points, which refresh after a short rest as per my houserules). I was suggesting it recharge like the action points (which is pretty powerful). If you want to make it a straight once per day power, I doubt that's really that overpowered at all.

 

 If Arcane rejuvenation just keys of Daily Attack powers, that would work fine (most of the time people get one Daily Item power a day in the heroic tier, this would double the number of times it happens per character per day, but an extra 8 Temp HP per day isn't going to break the game.)