ED4 Preview #3

[zayven]

D&D without the d20 is a bit of a stretch. You also have to spend experience points to do things like crafting items and gaining access to epic abilities.

[zayven]

[Darth Quiris]

Making Durability an automatic gain attached to Circle and making it no longer a Talent is a strike against this edition of all the proposed changes so far and my opinion on this will never change... however I can see that from a certain perspective this change can fit within the scope of Earthdawn in as far as the fact that as long as this game requires us to spend Legend Points to increase our Talent Ranks to meet the requirements in order to gain the next Circle of our Discipline than I can see how that upon gaining the next Circle the character gets empowered by the magical increase that they would also gain Durability.

I think for future previews of changes the designers should really focus on how the changes are viewed from within the game world. Simply saying "We are changing Durability from it being a Talent to an automatic Discipline Ability because we feel that spending Legend Points on something that you will most likely spend them on anyways," is a pretty horrible reason to change it. If that's the case than all Talents should be free because we will pretty much spend Legend Points on the majority of them anyways. That's a house rule reasoning decision to me and that's how it came across to me from the preview whereas if the change was described from the perspective of the change within how Disciplines function and how the game world of Earthdawn functions... well, we might not react to some of them the way we have.

So far all the reasons of these changes basically say "We are changing this thing because we want to and we haven't fully playtested it out yet." That's how they have come across so far.

And to say that spending Legend on Durability has no direct effect is preposterous... gaining Death Rating is way more of a direct effect than gaining any Rank in a Talent that requires a die roll. The Death Rating increase is automatic whereas anything with a Die Roll requires a roll which means that just because you have 10 Ranks in something doesn't automatically mean you will succeed.

Regarding Karma... I think the whole process of spending Legend Points initially was a great idea, and it always gave the impression that Legend Points were a force of magic in the Earthdawn world. I can understand how some people can see spending Legend Points on this as a waste of points, but then that leads to the question:

What does Karma represent in Earthdawn? If it's freely available and we have access to it pretty much all the time than it's not special... Maybe changing the name of Karma to something else might work better... or keep Karma as it always was and then also include another thing that doesn't cost Legend Points that represents a more common yet less powerful pool of points, like Edge in Shadowrun.

[Henghyoke]

Personally, I don't see the fuss about the Karma Ritual and Durability proposals. The precedent for magical abilities that scale by Circle "without requiring the expenditure of Legend Points" is already there in Earthdawn, and has been since ED1. It's called Half-Magic. And you can't improve Half-Magic Talent Ranks, nor can you weave threads to them.

The Karma Ritual- and Durability-per-Circle changes don't bother me or my players at all. So player characters possibly lose a few hit points. I'm sure that there will be some adjustments of Strain/DR costs for abilities/blood magic to offset it. And it opens up options, such as Discipline abilities that improve the Karma Ritual or Durability bonus. For example, +10 DR per Circle for Warriors when they get to Eighth Circle. Or +1 to the racial Karma Modifier at Twelfth Circle. And so on.

But it also frees up two talents which characters would normally throw Legend Points into, meaning more Legend Points to put into other talents. First thing most of my players do when they get to Second Circle is pump 300 LPs into their characters' Durability to get it to Rank 2. Those 300 LPs can be spent on other abilities now.

[etherial]

[Henghyoke]

[Kasbak]

Don't forget the in game time costs to meditate. When there is a big battle on the horizon, and you have time for a meditation to prepare, there can be a LOT of different choices for what could use the boost, and a few extra hit points vs a higher roll on an active ability that you'll be using multiple times is a tough call. Though maybe I'm more jaded there since I'm used to spellcaster durability. That 4/3 bump is a lot less significant compared to better dice.

[Trejes]

[etherial]

[Henghyoke]