TOPIC: Old School D&D Nostalgia Time

Picc wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Picc wrote:

Mike Coon wrote:

• I for one don't see a huge issue with Thor's Hammer (I don't have one, nor will I probably get one). That caveat out of the way I do see that a 20 Dex is kinda strange as a requirement. Maybe make it a 20 Dex and/or 20 Wisdom to use it, or a combined 36 score to use or something like that.

• I think that the Cleric class did get hit hard and they could use some help. I would love to see an item that heals them a few points when they heal another.

• Also I don't think any person that has the means to make/buy Thor's hammer should have any issue whatsoever fielding its requirements for use. I think it's intent was to make min/maxing more difficult to do, and an unfortunate side effect was it made it more difficult for Clerics (whom I agree thematically should be using them most) to wield.

So just an out of the blue idea, what if we say put +2 dex on the new LoDs most clerics who have the hammer would probably have lenses to trade in.

That said I still think 4/6/6 is a far more elegant solution.

That's a very Interesting idea.

Then we would have a ranged ranger asking for their +2 Dex so they can have that +1 to hit.

I agree with you on +4/+6/+6, I advocated for it, I sang its praises, I tried to take your idea and get everyone on board.

Unfortunately, it doesnt seem meant to be.

Sadly, agreed. We seem stuck with +4 DEX +2 CON instead

But we would have missed out on this pleasant conversation

Honestly I'm surprised by how little the conversation seemed to change stuff this year. Previous years have started with text and had items swap in and out of existence all the way through round f of edits. Seems like the TPTB had a more solid idea of what they wanted this year before we ever saw it.

It puts my mind in an odd place, kind of like there's an undercurrent of unseen things going on. Not saying that's good or bad, just odd.

It did definitely seem like the draft set was pretty close to the final set from the start. I was surprised as well, the player input made fewer changes than I can recall in past years. Jeff did make a lot of changes based on player input, which I really appreciate, but like you said there weren't the big changes like tokens being added and subtracted like in the past.

Mike Steele wrote: I was surprised as well, the player input made fewer changes than I can recall in past years. Jeff did make a lot of changes based on player input, which I really appreciate, but like you said there weren't the big changes like tokens being added and subtracted like in the past.

There were some significant changes.

* Made the Legendary Rogue Necklace not such an OP franken-token as its original draft.

* Made the Str Kilt more appropriate to balance its crazy Str boost

* Promised a Tome slot so Gregor's Tome wouldn't be a slotless boost

* Changed Gregor's from a skill-test bypass to just a focus item (not a change I wanted, but obviously he was moved by some arguments)

* Removed/reworked an OP crossbow

* Reworked Ring of less-than-Heroism to be more newbie friendly

* A lot of clarification in wording... but that always happens.

Raven wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: I was surprised as well, the player input made fewer changes than I can recall in past years. Jeff did make a lot of changes based on player input, which I really appreciate, but like you said there weren't the big changes like tokens being added and subtracted like in the past.

There were some significant changes.

* Made the Legendary Rogue Necklace not such an OP franken-token as its original draft.

* Made the Str Kilt more appropriate to balance its crazy Str boost

* Promised a Tome slot so Gregor's Tome wouldn't be a slotless boost

* Changed Gregor's from a skill-test bypass to just a focus item (not a change I wanted, but obviously he was moved by some arguments)

* Removed/reworked an OP crossbow

* Reworked Ring of less-than-Heroism to be more newbie friendly

* A lot of clarification in wording... but that always happens.

Not to mention moving the legendaries to the neck slot to not conflict with boots and belts

Phil Norton wrote:

Raven wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: I was surprised as well, the player input made fewer changes than I can recall in past years. Jeff did make a lot of changes based on player input, which I really appreciate, but like you said there weren't the big changes like tokens being added and subtracted like in the past.

There were some significant changes.

* Made the Legendary Rogue Necklace not such an OP franken-token as its original draft.

* Made the Str Kilt more appropriate to balance its crazy Str boost

* Promised a Tome slot so Gregor's Tome wouldn't be a slotless boost

* Changed Gregor's from a skill-test bypass to just a focus item (not a change I wanted, but obviously he was moved by some arguments)

* Removed/reworked an OP crossbow

* Reworked Ring of less-than-Heroism to be more newbie friendly

* A lot of clarification in wording... but that always happens.

Not to mention moving the legendaries to the neck slot to not conflict with boots and belts

I'm still rather torn on moving it to the neck slot.

I think it'd be more interesting in the main hand slot. The neck slot has more interesting options than main-hand in higher-level builds already, so placing the Legendaries there feels like it is going to kill that.

Putting it in the main hand slot also means:

• Fewer issues with dealing with special things the DM needs to know about your attack (like affecting crit range).
• Fighters can get a fighter-worthy weapon before 2022 (granted, it sounds like they'd still be waiting until 2021). Until then, it seems like we'll be dealing with Fighters having a legendary weapon that is basically about the same as what Wizards can wield.
• Maybe we could make alternate recipes for those main-hand items that eat existing or future relic weapons, so we don't need additional legendary weapons further down the line.
• We can set some upper bounds on main hand items. Hopefully preventing something like the Hammers from coming into being again in the future.

Raven wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: I was surprised as well, the player input made fewer changes than I can recall in past years. Jeff did make a lot of changes based on player input, which I really appreciate, but like you said there weren't the big changes like tokens being added and subtracted like in the past.

There were some significant changes.

* Made the Legendary Rogue Necklace not such an OP franken-token as its original draft.

* Made the Str Kilt more appropriate to balance its crazy Str boost

* Promised a Tome slot so Gregor's Tome wouldn't be a slotless boost

* Changed Gregor's from a skill-test bypass to just a focus item (not a change I wanted, but obviously he was moved by some arguments)

* Removed/reworked an OP crossbow

* Reworked Ring of less-than-Heroism to be more newbie friendly

* A lot of clarification in wording... but that always happens.

The quck strike charm moved from neck to charm and its activation roll changed a few times.

The Polymorph transmute moved from waist to neck.

Fop: dog got restricted to healing classes

Bulwark runestone changed from immunity to 3 less from rd.

Totem paint changed its transmute category.

Dark disciples shirt went from adding a second use to an additional use, allowing for stacking psychic power boosters.

Eternal ice crystal was changed to also take up the ranged offhand slot.

That’s just from memory.

Plenty of changes.

Agreed. While tokens didn't move in and out of the lineup as usually happens, there were a lot of changes. I'm positive that Jeff read every single recommendation and seriously considered all of them.

Including letting people using Wands with Mystic Mouth and on their regular turns use just one consumable wand per turn instead of two.

Plus, I'm sure that the first draft of the token set incorporated suggestions everyone made on the development threads post-GENCON.

The UR barbarian flail got changed as well.

I think that the originally proposed weapon was going to lead to some headaches and dissatisfied customers down the line.

I want to say it again - that Charm is AWESOME now.

And.... we’re back in the room

Dave wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: If I had it my way, I'd be happy to drop the DEX requirement if we also dropped a bunch of classes who in my opinion shouldn't be able to use Thor's Hammer. Namely: Wizards, Rogue, Ranger, Druid, Bard, and Monk. I might have missed some.

I actually have no problem with this. Of course I carry Thor's hammer...because I can. But it feels weird as a wizard when I use it.

The downside of changing it now is the high cost to transmute it in first place. If you drop classes from using it, do you let them trade it for another legendary?

Make it trade-able for any of the new Legendary Class Specific Necklaces in perpetuity.

Wade Schwendemann wrote: What if we put +2 Dex on the Cloak of Shadowskin?

You're killing me, as I'm still getting over the double nerf on that token.

Brad Mortensen wrote: And.... we’re back in the room

How about just doing errata on it and declaring Clerics DEX requirement is now 18. Or 17, or whatever number seems good.

SnakeEyes (Eric) wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote: What if we put +2 Dex on the Cloak of Shadowskin?

You're killing me, as I'm still getting over the double nerf on that token.

That's why I'm trying to make it better

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

SnakeEyes (Eric) wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote: What if we put +2 Dex on the Cloak of Shadowskin?

You're killing me, as I'm still getting over the double nerf on that token.

That's why I'm trying to make it better

Adding +2 Dex to the Lenses of Divine Sight makes sense to me since it's primarily a Cleric token, and Clerics are the ones with the Hammer problem.

Druids can use LoDS also of course, but I'm not sure how much sense it makes for them now, maybe the Goggles of Instant Analysis makes more sense. Druids only have a few healing spells above one point, so splitting spells isn't nearly as useful for Druids as Clerics.