Joseph Bulock

I don't even know what you're getting at here...

That's exactly my point. You can very must still die, but it won't because some grunt got a lucky hit, its because things went very wrong or you took a lot of stupid risks. That should get you killed at any level.

I agree that 1st level characters shouldn't be taking on an army of goblins without hesitation, I just don't enjoy when my 1st level character gets surprised by a goblin, who then roles a crit, and manages to kill my first level character. There is no fun in that situation. There is no challenge. There is no tactics besides try not to get surprised by goblins. Once characters have enough hp to survive a lucky crit for a grunt monster, the game really picks up, but until that point, it can be entirely frustrating.

That they are. They're not heroes, they're zeros. But in fourth edition they won't be. You won't be a weakling that gets murdered by a lucky hit from a goblin, or a wizard whose most powerful spell has a decent chance to either miss said goblin or not drop him if it does hit. That sounds a great deal more appealing to me, and I think it deals well with the fact that DnD 3/3.5 really isn't fun till around 4th level, when you character can actually get through most sessions doing things that are unique to their class, or at least flavored by their class abilities.

They might be changing it in ways that you don't like, but they definitely have their goals. Everything I've read about 4th edition mechanics points to a solid focus in simplifying the number games, making player characters actual heroes from level one, and making each aspect of your character (race, class, items, role) important instead of just your magic items and class. The designers also seem focused on making sure characters always have something to do, actively doing cool things to beat down bad guys and get through dungeons. If you don't like those sorts of ideas, that's totally acceptable, but that doesn't mean that its a simple money grab. I think they're really going to fix a lot of the issues that drove many players away from 3/3.5, mainly that too many classes didn't do very many special things, or ran out of their special bits very quickly. Whether or not they get the mechanics of everyone doing special things all of the time right, I have no idea, but it definitely seems like a big enough goal for a new edition to me.

All I can say is that attempting jumps before learning to turn while snow boarding is a bad idea. It was however, rather fun.

That sounds like a well informed decision that was made after many hours of careful consideration.

Looks like they are finally using feats in a more consistent manner, and using a class power scheme similar to Iron Heroes. I'm really starting to get my hopes up about the mechanics of 4th edition. Feats Development Post You'll need a log in and stuff.

In third edition, many of the players in game would go for a jack of all trades approach, and in doing so, have horrible dice pools for almost any action. Or specialists would over specialize in a single task instead of a role. These are not new PnP problems, I just thought that the way characters are built, along with the relatively slow speed of character progression in SR allowed for a very long learning process if the mistakes were made. 4th edition has made it a bit more difficult to make your character useless at nearly everything.

They are changing up the Pantheon of Gods a great deal, so I wouldn't expect the death/removal of any one diety to really be that big of a deal. I'm not imagining a great deal of consistency with previous 2.0 3.0, 3.5 etc... They seem to be ripping out so much to simplify/improve the new edition that I'm not looking to make much sense out of the info we're getting currently, as most of it seems entirely without context.

You should definitely check it out again. They've really fleshed out the world a lot more and cleaned up the mechanics. Still a little slow in some combats, but better.

I've been playing in a game as of late, my first with the new edition. I definitely like a lot of the changes. A bit less wacky when it comes to min-maxing, but still can have problems when you have characters running in three separate planes, especially if your GM is a bit new. It is fully of improvements across the board though, and is a great edition to start people with, whereas third edition had enough of a learning curve that noobs always seemed to find a way to cripple their characters pretty fast. Also, while I haven't managed to track them down yet, the supplements that are getting released look really interesting, and make it seem like 4th edition will get better support.

I'm hoping the hype their putting into 4 ED will live up, and the classes will actually have more define roles to take care of that are actually fun to do as well. The bard is good enough at what he does, which is buffing groups and secondary healing, but it's not fun in most tabletop games, so few people play the bard as intended, and he instead becomes a rouge lite without a back stab.

All I can say is that I used Final Cut Pro in college and find it very hard to go back to the consumer level programs. The interface and the quality of the features of the professional programs are just sooo much better. If you're looking to do anything that would actually be shown for anything more than family videos, you might want to save up for one of the big boys.

We had our first official goal...

What's not to enjoy about the absurdity of a bit of cereal holding out against a surging sea of milk? PBF is big here at work too.

All new 360s have that now. Though any boxes on the shelves right now may or may not have the new architecture. Do some web searching before you shop to find out how to check, as this could be a world of difference in quality of your gaming experience.

While it bothers me that we slaughter any sentient animal, I think the outcry here is about killing an animal that is as smart as a small child, but as people have posted already, many people eat a wide range of intelligent animals, include octopus, monkeys, dogs, etc.

I just upgraded and went with the E6750. Very few games support quad-cores, and the fsb speeds were more important to me, as I had much faster ram. It was also nice to keep costs down so I can afford a dx10.1 card when they come out.

Sounds like you just need to watch better horror movies.

Get in some QA time. Many of the producers I know worked their way up out of QA, and even if you can't get the promotion right from there, you'll better understand the realities of the industry. And Tale, I'm not sure if he'll get your answer. It's been three years....

For me, the situation and the mood were a lot worse than the monsters themselves. I've been rocking climbing a bit, though never in caves, and the idea of things trying to eat me while i was climbing got me good.

You're either a sick bastard or awesome. Or both. I'd vote both, though I'd say Gozu is by far the most deranged out of any of those. I got to see it in the theatre, and I was laughing with glee at the ending while most of the people walked out complaining about the whole film.

Gozu The Decent Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon Audition Spiral The Devil's Rejects (not exactly a horror movie, but some really great horrific scenes) Three Extremes The Host R-Point 28 Days Later Late addition: How to Make a Monster

If you buy a 360, try to get one made with the newer manufacturing process. They should be less disaster prone... I would put my vote down to pick up the full version. XBL silver is free, and allows for downloading all of the demos, as well as buying marketplace games, so if you have the hard drive, you'll be able to make lots of use of it without paying anything. Many XBox 360 owners seem to spend the first month or two just playing demos, and buying stuff from there.