I was talking with a friend of mine, about how I’m playing in a D&D game now with my formerly-enslaved Eladrin Rogue, totally patterning after Conan. He said “hope you have fun with that in your little skirmish game.” I swore at him, and said…well, you should just take a look at the power I came up with:

The issue is now closed. You’re welcome, Internet.

Onto something more serious, freelancing life has kept me from being about to produce another Master Plan recently, but if you are interested in hearing a lot more about the reincorporation topic from Master Plan 52 (as well as a bunch of other thoughts), you can hear me on Clyde Rhoer’s Theory From the Closet 56. Two hours and twenty minutes of unedited chatter, baby!

- Ryan

(Yeah, I’m tinkering again. And I’ll cover how tinkering is really procrastination in a future Doing The Work. Still, I feel like tinkering today as I recover from the damned plague I’ve had all week.)

I’m not going to use 4/e legalese here, because I don’t think the time for that is this early in the thought process. Also, I don’t follow Dragon much (but I do some), so if there’s something I should follow, please let me know.

High concept: a mixed-power character class, someone who enhances (I would use “augments,” but that’s clearly psychic territory) their martial prowess with spells, but is a force on his own otherwise.

Influences: Avenger, Rogue, Psion.

Gimmick: (All new classes have to have one, right?) The at-will powers are all martial in nature, akin to the Ranger or Rogue’s at-will mojo. The encounter & daily powers are mostly minor actions that alter the next attack this turn the character does — which I call a “spell chain” — by adding damage, typing damage, changing what they attack is based on, shifting before/after, etc. Such chains turn the attack from being Martial to Arcane.

The narrative explanation: these people tried to be swordmages, but didn’t quite have that in them. Still, they had the spark of arcane power in them, and learned a different technique — channeling their innate arcane talent into their attacks with a moment of concentration.

Let’s say this is one of your At-Wills:

At-Will * Chained, Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage
Increases to 2[w] + Strength modifier damage at 21st level

Then you would have encounter or daily powers that would add or change your At-Will:

• Your next Chained attack this turn does an additional 1[W] damage, and all damage is cold.
• You may teleport two squares before or after your next Chained attack, as part of the attack.
• Your attack is changed to: Close burst 1, Target: two adjacent creatures
• Your next attack has the follow added: Hit: Target is knocked prone; and all damage is thunder.
• Your next attack has the following added: Miss: Half damage

etc.

Thus, if you used an action point or didn’t move, you could put two or even three of these minor actions before an attack, which means your attacks are rather different each time — once you get into paragon tier, at least.

(And yes, I think giving this power to affect basic attacks is too much — or, rather, it’s a Paragon tier feat to make your basic melee attack have the keyword Chained.)

So you can see where I’m influenced by the Psion, but instead of having a set augmentation path, I’m more about the protean nature of magic. You can switch it up each encounter. Which I think might prompt a working title: The Switchblade (I didn’t like Spellblade for this — too much baggage).

The way I see it, this has two basic paths the way all classes start: the Elemental Switchblade and the Dimensional Switchblade — the former getting buffs based on how many different types of damage are on the current attack (making it more badass if it does “cold thunder psychic” damage) and the other more badass based on how far it’s shifted or teleported this attack. Something like that.

I could also see this class being more Ranger-y, in that it could be a class that an also use ranged weapons.

I’m thinking the main stats for this are Strength (or maybe Dexterity, if this was a whatever-weapon class) for the obvious, and Intelligence for the way the path interacts with the class. This makes the Genasi an ideal race for the class, which I like — the protean class for the protean race.

Anyway, that’s the basic idea. Also, I think the name “Switchblade” sucks. I need a new working title.

Thoughts? Fire away.

- Ryan

For those familiar with my dragon-halfling war idea, the PCs were on a Halfling Flagship called Bahamat’s Doom — but they didn’t know the airship they were getting on was a Halfling ship, or the name of it. All they knew was “Man, we need to get to the Dragon Empire, where our new friends are!”  Two of there were (willingly and happily) psychicly bonded to a gold dragon traveling in a water ship below them, the Emir of Light. And they were on the ship that has killed dragonkind. They had a nice “oh, shit!” moment at the end of the session.

Now, we all knew the action would take place back in the city they came from, as they went to go kick a god’s ass and deal with the evil Eladrin mayor. But, I didn’t just want to say “and now you’re back!” or anything like that. I wanted to model a bit of a feel like “hey, you really just spent 9 levels being badasses in the Eastern Continent — what happened?”

So I came up with this Montage system. It’s simple:

• I have an index card for every level with a situation on it.
• Each player has 6 six-sided dice.
• I describe the situation that happened.
• They each describe something they do.
• All of them roll their dice, totallying them up.
• The highest gets to endcap the narration, and in the case of PvP (two people saying they’re doing opposing things), they decide which one actually succeeded.
• The winner hands me one of their dice, so they have fewer going into the next one.

The result was better than I had hoped for. They had a rich story of what happened, with new plot threads and hooks that wouldn’t have happened if I just simply asked “hey, what did you guys do there?”

I’ll describe all nine situations, for those interested in how I used this specifically. After that, I have a question, one prompted by a discussion I had with Leonard Balsera regarding what it means to “play” Fourth Edition.

That was my “warm-up” situation. Simple, straight-forward. Then I turned up the heat.

Section situation: Halfling blocade! — “A Halfling cross-navy (air & sea navy) sits before the port the sought to enter, as the closest port to Bahamut’s Jewel. They are repelling all those who would seek to enter.”  The human decided to rally the human servants on the ship to mutuny and take the ship for himself to charge through the blocade. The genasi (the one who wasn’t connected to the Emir of Light, but was bound to the god they have to kill) wanted to stop that from happening and simply protect the dragon. The half-elf wanted to use gentle diplomacy to get their way through…and won, so she decided part of that “diplomacy” involved the mutuny happening.

The guy playing the human ranger said “Holy crap, I have an airship! Okay, we really got to change the name of this.” The guy playing the genasi cringed. I didn’t expect the PvP element here, but I’m pretty happy with it.

Third situation: Negotiations with the Dragon Empires — “While the Dragon Empires are grateful for the return of the Emir of Light unharmed, they see little reason why they should aid you in reclaiming your Western city.” They did various methods for stating their case, including some strong-arm diplomacy and passionate rhetoric. While the system didn’t favor her mechanically for this reason, it was appropriate that the badass diploamt half-elf won that one.

In her narration, she also convinced the halflings to cease fire, for now.

Fourth situation: God-king Dracolich! — “A port city to the north is suddenly taken by the undead, with a dragon lich commanding them all!” They did various things, from attacking with their airship (still geared to kill dragonkind), to working to subdue the dragon lich, to finding survivors in teh city and helping them escape. The genasi won, and he wanted the dragon to talk before killing it.

Since he was my normal story game player, I turned the tables on him and asked him what the dragon told him about this sudden plague. He said that the dragon lich itself wasn’t part of the plague, but it got the plague from the Eladrin and used it to create an army here. Juicy stuff that just makes them want to take on the Eladrin even more.

Fifth situation: Assault on Bahamut’s Jewel — “Zealots unable to live in a peaceful world march on crusade and have attacked the capital city of the Dragon Empire.” Here’s another place where the party split: the half-elf did “diplomacy by sword,” the human lead a dragonkin army, and the genasi scuttled the biggest symbol of hate between the halflings & dragons — the dragon-killing airship.

The genasi player won, and suddenly the human was once again without an airship. He was bitter about that.

Sixth situation: The Son of Storm — “An ancient halfling sorcerer, one legend calls the Son of Storm, marches on Bahamut’s Jewel — not to engage the dragons, but to deal with the human who killed his descendants.” This was another juicy situation, as the human wanted the sorcerer’s head, and the genasi & half-elf wanted to talk sense into him and calm him.

The half-elf won and the end result kicked ass: the half-elf diplomacy, beautiful and rare, agreed to marry the Son of Storm as he felt in love with her. They would forge a peace between these two worlds. But before that, she had to finish her business of wiping the sourge from her home,  the Western City of Oceandawn.

(Quick note: This is the halfling sorcerer that Fred Hicks played a couple months ago. He emailed me with the character, saying “Dude, this guy is in your game!” He totally is.)

Seventh situation: The eastern cult of Aeyrholt — “A cult of the god Aeyrholt, the god they are by prophecy fated to kill, has made itself known. Lead by tieflings, it has halfings and dragonkin as members, terrorizing the populace.” I accidentally forgot a bit on this card when I described it to the players, so it turned into a “fight the cult” situation. I meant it to be another social one, but that’s what happens when you forget importnat notes! Still, I like what happened instead, because it told them, for sure, there the temple of Aeyrholt was.

(Oceandown is Fantasy San Francisco, with the Spiral Tower — yeah, the one from the paragon path for Eladrin Wizards — bring where Alcatraz is. And that’s where Aeyrholt’s temple is. They guessed that, but finally had evidence.)

Interlude: Ready, they set back to the Western Continent. Due to their influence, the half-elf commisioned an air armada to be lead by the human, crewed by halflings and dragonkin. Disciples of the Son of Storm travel with the half-elf as her personal guard. The son of the Emir of Light, a Gold Dragonborn, has chosen to follow the human into battle to earn his glory (a fact that I retconed in after the players left, because, hey, potential hostage). And they all set off.

Eighth situation: Challenge of the Sea God — “The sea-god Levithan attacks, knowing one of the PCs to be bound to Aeyrholt, an ancient foe.” Two of the, the genasi & half-elf, wanted to talk. The human wanted to humble the god. The human won (and it sounds more and more like we’re playing Mythender here), and the sea-god agreed to help, bonding himself with the genasi who is also bonded to his foe.

Seriously, the genasi player is on some sort of “collect the whole set” thing with gods. We jokingly retconed that he also bonded with Bahamut. I don’t know if it’s the sort of joke that did or didn’t happen, though.

Ninth & climatic situation: Eladria’s Armada — “Knowing her foes are coming, Eladria, mayor of the now-undead Oceandawn, supposed leader of the cult of Aeyrholt, sends her nay to stop them.” They describe various ass-kicking actions, with the winner cashing in Levithan’s favor by causing the sea to raise on both sides of the armada, turning into two hands and crushing the ships in between them.

So, that’s what happened. Here’s my question:

Were we playing D&D 4/e?

At the surface, you have to say “No, clearly not.” And true, we weren’t engaging in the system. But the same argument is used to say one isn’t playing the game during those sessions where dice aren’t rolled, and lately I think that’s a flawed argument.

I think we were, because we were playing within the context of D&D — they had a sense of what the warforged could do, because they fought one. The threat of the undead was faced first-hand by them. We’ve been playing this game for a few weeks now, and all that context poured into our montage. It’s one of those “setting vs. system” discussions, and while we created a custom setting, that setting is saturated in the D&D context.

But it’s an honest question. If we didn’t, why is context not enough to play a game? If we did, why do you think that?

- Ryan