Power Card Update

Well it’s been a long time since I last posted, and I wanted to update my opinion on the D&D power cards. I tried printing out my own, but its a lot of work and it doesn’t look as sharp off my ink jet as the professional ones. I got the Ranger pack and put them in color-coded card protectors. I then put a piece of scotch tape on each one and can write in my stats (e.g. +8 to hit, etc) with pencil. I still am using printed out ones for racial and feat powers, since they have not released cards for those yet. I’d say worth the money considering I use them on a weekly basis. However it still seems like a bit much if I were to roll up new characters regularly.

Player’s Handbook Power Cards

I was browsing wizard’s web site to see what products are up and coming. I guess a lot of the advertising they used to do is now only for paying customers on DDI.

I see that this month they are coming out with Player’s Handbook Power Cards. It’s a pack of power cards per class. Power cards are pretty awesome. We’ve been using them quite effectively in our group, and I’m all for having some high quality cards for this purpose. The box is $80 for sixteen packs, so I imagine that the retail per pack will be about $6-10, which is reasonable if they were everything I dream and hope.

However, I doubt this will be the case. If it’s a 100 class-specific cards, then I doubt they’ll have the race powers, feat powers, magic items powers that also require cards for the cards to be effective. And it seems dumb to release them for the PHB1 classes only in the month that the PHB2 comes out. I’d rather pay for a blank pack of 100 cards and fill out them out individually (especially since powers are gained infrequently in real life terms), if the cards are sufficient quality.

Minions have to wear the red shirts

I just listened to the latest round of D&D podcasts where the guys from Penny Arcade, PvP, and Wesley Crusher go dungeon crawling.  I didn’t listen to the first round of podcasts, thinking that it would be boring to listen to other people play d&d. It’s actually not. It’s more like a radio play with a lot of in-jokes (where the audience is “in”). I find myself actually caring about what happens to the characters in a similar way as I do with online comic like OOTS or chainmail bikini, etc. Of course I don’t think I’d like to devote an hour a week to listening to someone else game, but it has been quite instructive to listen in on someone else’s session, especially as I am still figuring out how to play 4e.

One of the biggest surprises for me is that the DM (Chris Perkins from Wizards) announces which of the enemies are minions, and reveals the monster roles (although this is sometimes discovered after a few rounds).  I think it makes a big difference knowing ahead of time which guys only have 1 hit point, and it certainly tailors what you do with the characters. The 1st & 2nd edition AD&D DM in me is hesitant to agree with announcing minion-ness, but the 4e player in me sees how this could be more fun and probably in line with the balance as designed chosen.  I could see myself using the gray magnetic markers from Alea Tools to indicate minion status on the game board.

I hope that the podcasts cover skill challenges and more roleplaying, but so far it has only confirmed my fear that 4e is much more about combat than role-playing. Also I’ve come to conclusion that combat itself is faster paced than previous versions but overall not any faster; the podcast encounters seem to take as long as they do at my game table.

Using up ammo

In our most recent gaming session, our courageous DM suggested a house rule governing the use and storage of arrows (and I think other ammunition). The seemingly harmess rule sparked a bit of debate will I will try to deconstruct below.

But first a bit of background…

My current game is a generic 4th edition campaign, and we’re doing the adventure in the back of the DMG. I’m playing an elven archer ranger. At the start of the third encounter Lucan, that’s the elf, snuck in and fired off a shot at max damage. A few rounds, an action point and a few special powers later, I managed to fire off at least a dozen arrows.

Once the room was cleared and we called it for the night, our DM decided to suggest a house rule covering the use and expenditure of ammunition. The proposed rule was: in exchange for counting individual rounds, I’d have to have an available quiver at all times, and an attack roll of 1 would force me to spend an action to refill it.

Writing it now, it seems much more reasonable than I first made it out be. My initial reaction, of course, was negative: partly due to being singled out, but also from having a new thing to deal with when I’m still learning the rules of a new game system. The benefit of the proposed would be not to get bogged down in having to count arrows. As someone who grew up with second edition which had a bigish area for counting off ammo on the character sheet, I never really had to think twice about. Counting’s really not that bad: (a) there’s a few minutes between my character gets to act, and (b) if you’re not a stickler, loosing track of an arrow here or there is not such a big deal.

I think too if the rule was something consistent, instead of applying just on a “critical miss” it would be easier to hold in my head, and not be as big a burden while learning a new system.

I understand the desire for realism and verisimilitude in a game, and I think personality clash made it a bigger deal than either of us thought it would be.  From this incident I have a few takeaways. I don’t mean these as a criticism of our DM (other than in the literal sense), but more as a general set of talking points that I want to explore in future posts.

Lessons learned:

1) Don’t propose new rules that limit actions at the end of the night, especially when those actions were the cause of much fun that night.

2) When creating new rules, start with something that affects everyone evenly, like rations or encumbrance, or gold exchange, etc.

3) There’s probably only a limited window where such rules are effective, as characters soon get unlimited quivers, backpacks, bags of holding, etc.

Has anyone tried house rules regarding ammunition? Have they been effective?

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