ED4 Preview #3

[Mataxes]

A bit more on Disciplines, and some of the broader changes we're looking at for how they gain some of their abilities.

http://www.fasagames.com/blog/?post_id= ... ne-changes

[Slimcreeper]

Interesting - I like that we are thinking big and systematically. Will players have the option to boost up their karma or durability rank if they want to be tougher or more magically in tune?

[Mataxes]

It's not something that's being looked at right now, but perhaps something could be worked out as an optional/advanced rule down the line?

[Roth]

You're turning Durability into hit points per level?
Have always found the personal control over the Durability Talent the players have as a major plus compared to the other level based games on the market.

3e Karma rules, imnsho, blows chunks. It was a poorly thought out mechanical change done, from my prospective, merely for the sake of change. Who wants the Troll Sky Raider beating on a shield for 30 minutes when you're deep in a Horror infested Kaer? I thought is was plainly evident on the whys and wherefores of the old karma rules. Third Edition Karma gives a lot at high ranks(for some), surviving the low circles to get to those ranks was needlessly complicated for... some reason. Karma's affects on the system should not be downplayed as they were in 3e.

[Darth Quiris]

IF Durability is changed to hit points and they automatically go up like hit points do in D&D I am going to write this game off and will not back it. One of the most appealing choices of the design of Earthdawn was how Durability was a Talent that we could choose to level up or not, and we could level it up as far as we wished to. It gave Earthdawn a specific feel and vibe that was very different than D&D and one of the reasons why I always chose ED over D&D.

I hate how hit points work in D&D/Pathfinder and if Earthdawn goes that route than you lost one fan here.

Do NOT turn Earthdawn more into D&D. Seriously... why would you ever want to do that?

[Kasbak]

I don't think the intent here is to make ED more like D&D; I think the intent is to reduce having to spend separate LP's on a Talent that you don't get as much direct utility out of (read: not an action test). Remember, if you don't like the change, you can always keep Durability as a separate Talent in your game. One of the nice things about ED is how using Talents make the abilities modular, and thus more adaptable.

[Slimcreeper]

Do we need to have this discussion for every proposed change? We are all passionate about the game, but we have all house-ruled it whenever it seemed better for our purposes. How many people play the exact 1e rules exactly as they were laid down 20 years ago?

Also, ED is a direct descendant of DnD. Come on, we all know this. There certainly are reasons I prefer ED, otherwise I wouldn't be here, but you can't play a game with dwarfs and elves and not know that it is a lot like DnD. Lots of people have loved DnD over the years and it built the hobby. Those are giant's shoulders we stand on.

That said, I don't want all of my 5th circle warriors to have the exact same number of hit points. Even DnD accounts for this by using random hit point gain each level, right? How will 4thedED handle it?

[Slimcreeper]

To karma: one of the main reasons for the karma change in 3e was to make high levels of karma ritual meaningful, right? 1e limited karma gain by making it a LP cost, 3e by severely limiting the maximum karma in the pool. Still resource management.

[zayven]

Couldn't be happier with this change. I've always hated how the game essentially "forces" you to dump points into certain talents that are far more useful than others. Yes, you can obviously choose to not put points in Durability, but anybody that's played Earthdawn knows that this is really just choosing to let the rest of the party scrape your bloody remains off the kaer floor. Karma Ritual was the one that I always REALLY hated, but that's partially because I've never liked the way that karma worked in the first place. It never seemed to me that it accurately represented karma as it was described in the setting.

One of the other effects of this change is that it will put more emphasis on circle progression. It used to be that players would hold off advancing to the next circle so they could game the cost of increasing talents. Old editions put a hard cap on your talent rank based on circle, but I think third edition did away with that.

I'm all for any change that reduces the messy, number crunching paperwork of improving talents/circles. This is not because I'm "stupid," a "noob," or I "can't handle math." I've been playing this game for as long as anybody here and have put up with far more complicated rules systems in other games. As a GM, I just hate having to wait around while players dither and pour through the rulebook for hours trying to decide where to allocate those precious Legend Points to produce characters that are going to look roughly identical to ones that would have been produced by a partially automated progression.

Anything that streamlines that process is a positive change as far as I'm concerned. I might have worried that this brings Earthdawn too close to D&D character progression 15 years ago, but I really don't care about that sort of rules system orthodoxy anymore.

[Flowswithdrek]