J.E. Sawyer

This generation of consoles is priced very low and has a huge library of titles. The next generation will be expensive and have virtually no titles on launch. I'd say it's still very worthwhile to buy a PS2, Xbox, or GameCube.

I think the PS2 controllers are fine and the Xbox s-controllers are, too.

gamerankings.com has it with an 86% average review score. Some are extraordinarily high and others are quite low. It's not that surprising to me.

I'll hopefully have time to discuss this topic more tomorrow, but I would like to state that there is currently a CRPG with a mana system that very effectively prevents spamming: World of Warcraft. Every power has a "cooldown" before it can be used again, ranging from a second to sixty minutes. It is pretty much impossible for my paladin to spam anything. Though I can use healing powers back to back, their casting time is so long that it's far from a "spam". I have to switch constantly between various blessings, seals, my judgment effect, purify, exorcism, and all sorts of other, different effects. Mages and warlocks are the same way. I never see them using the same abilities over and over again. Even if they wanted to, it would be impossible. I have two full quickbars of twelve spells that I use and I'm about to start a third. I need to switch between those as well, often adapting for whatever new situation I am in. It works very well, and I think that "cooldown" is the key to ensuring a variety of tactics.

How many adventuring companies a) travel under cover of total darkness or b) camp with no fire whatsoever? In my experience, it's a very common event. "Now, are the things you're talking about things that you've actually seen used a lot? Or are you just theorizing that they could be used often to block magic missile?" Quote something I stated that implied this. Well, when the person tells you that the conclusion you reached from their statement is incorrect. That is, when you were audacious enough to tell me what I believed and I told you were incorrect, maybe it's time to re-evaluate how you reach conclusions from available information. So what? You're doing it right now. You also do this a lot. Why do you converse with people? Do you do it to learn, do you do it to "win", or do you do it for some other purpose? I'm trying to figure out what your goals are from how you carry on these conversations. In my limited observation, it seems to follow a similar pattern: * Statement of opinion, often with the disclaimer of "Period." * Period of somewhat even debate * You erect strawmen, building up and tearing down arguments that other people didn't make. * You get called on this behavior and tell the person they are free to not converse with you. Do you think you'd ever like to see a discussion through to its conclusion? Do you actually think it's beneficial to a discussion to construct arguments from another person's statements that the individual did not, and would not, state on their own? How is that helpful to you or the other person? What is your goal? I never equated those two spells, nor even implied it. I also never suggested that people should spam the equivalent of a third level fireball. What are you doing? Are you just getting desperate? Please cut the selective reading. I've stated: more often, less powerful, more flexible. I believe a magic user should frequently use magic. That's the purpose of their class, so I think it should be a common event. I don't think that magic users should overshadow the core competence areas of other classes. Given 3.5's current spells and their powers, I think that they should be effectively lowered in power by one or two levels. The equivalent of a magic missile would be a second or third level spell. The equivalent of a fireball would be a fourth or fifth level spell. Flexibility is the advantage they have, with the cost of low power and a slowly-regenerating fuel source (mana, vitality, whatever you want). I'd like to ask you this, Volourn: do you believe that a 1st level wizard should be able to climb walls better than a 1st level rogue dedicated to the task? Because really, that's what a spell like spider climb allows a wizard to do. The same could be said for a lot of spells. Personally, I don't like that.

Yeah, it's really silly when a wizard turns invisible across a river a hundred feet away and his enemies spend the next few rounds trying to figure out if he and his cronies are heading in for an attack or dispersing. It's called a psych-out, Volourn. Not a complex idea. Yeah, a third level spell to counter a first level spell -- that's efficient. Also, replicates the effect that I already covered. Extraordinarily rare. You're describing a rarely-successful counter to long-range spells as a viable counter to magic missile, a long-range spell? Oh, okay. No, it's still a handful. Throwing out general resistances to magic, especially ones that are infrequently used, is ridiculous. Why don't you write down "encasing yourself in lead, so you can't be targeted"? I can't even remember the last time any of my D&D groups went into a dungeon. In my games, they spend about 90% of their time in cities, forests, and doing general overland travel. I'd say towns are the worst places, because it's so easy to get ambushed in them, especially if magic is being employed by the attackers. Not all overland travel takes place in savannahs and deserts. Alarm has a much smaller AoE than magic missile -- and a lot of spells, really -- has range. In my experience, one-third to one-half of all D&D battles involve one side being unprepared. You can say it's the PCs or the NPCs, but it's a very common event -- you frequently don't have time to sit back and prepare buffs and protection spells. And if Team A does, chances are high that Team B certainly does not. No one in this thread has tried to say it was. What people have repeatedly stated was that it's an unerring attack that's does more damage than a dagger at long range at first level. Can you counter a dagger with stoneskin? Yeah, sure, just as you can counter a two-handed sword with stoneskin or a fist with dimension door. There are very few specific counters to magic missile and in my DMing and playing experience, it is rare that the spell is blocked/prevented. Now, are the things you're talking about things that you've actually seen used a lot? Or are you just theorizing that they could be used often to block magic missile? Conversations with you would be a lot less inane if you stopped putting words in peoples' mouths. You do this constantly. That's a really great rant against something I never suggested. I suggested taking the exact same list of spells in the PHB and dropping them in power by the equivalent of one or two levels and allowing wizards to cast more of them, and more often. Given the same overall body of tools, how does this suddenly make magic less wondrous? Ars Magica allows magi to cast spells a lot. To me, its magic sure as hell feels a lot more wondrous than D&D's. Not because it's powerful, not because it's rare, but because the casters get to use their powers a lot and in many different ways. In my opinion, freedom and mutability make magic feel wondrous. As a player, I feel like I have many choices that I can switch up on a moment to moment basis. Unless you're very high level, even D&D sorcerers don't have that ability.

One could argue that the fact that I got you to waste a spell slot on shield is a good thing. As a player and a DM, I've won more than a few battles by provoking a round of buffs, retreating, waiting, and returning to really start the battle. No, not really. You can a) Not be seen b) Wear a brooch of shielding c) Cast shield d) Employ a very small handful of other tactics that replicate these effects. The list really isn't very long. That's why people use it so much. It's much easier to use shield in a PC RPG because you can usually anticipate battle and you can really anticipate it on a reload. DMs are also much more capable of adapting to D&D tactics than a computer. The theory is pretty simple. Reduce the power of all available spells by about one or two equivalent "levels". Allow the wizard access to more of them. Give them all mana costs, with enough of a pool to cast four or five in an hour at first level. If a D&D wizard started with a set of four or five equivalent 0-level spells and could do that, I think that would be great. The wizard would be unable to cast spider climb and immediately climb better than the party rogue. The wizard would be unable to cast magic missile and unerringly hit a guy at 100 ft. for more base damage than a dagger. And instead of balancing that by saying, "Well, he can only do X of those at a time N times a day," you balance it by saying that they can't do any task as well, with magic, as the mundane specialist is capable of doing it. If the wizard wanted the equivalent of a D&D magic missile, allow them to use a basic attack with mana power-ups, like the L5R "raises". It would (or could) blow their pool for a long time, and that's their cost. In my opinion, anything that helps a wizard use magic more often and in more ways without allowing them to overshadow the core capabilities of other classes is a good thing.

And, with a few other rare exceptions, that is the only counter to it. Okay, and? How does that lessen the inflexibility of D&D's magic system?

I didn't say either of these. If you have the prescience to cast it. In pen and paper games, the number of times I've seen wizards/sorcerers get off a shield spell when they need it has been low -- whether they were enemies or PCs. The spell only lasts a minute a level, so a caster is almost never just "walking around" with it up. If a wizard puts it up, opposing casters often detect that it was cast and either a) target others with their magic missiles b) target the caster with other spells or c) cast from the direction opposite their shield. Mana is about having a common pool of energy from which a variety of effects are drawn. Specific implementations of mana systems don't discredit the type of system itself. A lot of times, the challenges of an adventure are unknown until they are encountered. That's why it's an "adventure" and not a plodding path through predictable encounters. A D&D wizard can plan for encounters for hours and still be caught completely unprepared by what awaits him or her in the session. The system mechanics fit how the designers built the cosmology of the D&D universe. Not exactly an awesome or even difficult task.

Yeah, if you're prescient enough to know when you need to cast it.

The D&D wizard spell memorization/preparation system is bad because it is extremely inflexible on a moment to moment basis. It often trades off frequency of use for power. E.g., a magic missile only does 1d4+1 damage per shot, but it is unerring and has a long range. Sleep has the potential to affect a number of creatures, but many creatures have no resistance to it. Spells take an entire slot, which for wizards, must be prepared ahead of time, but the effects are often powerful. This gives the low-level wizard effectively one, two, or three chances to make a difference with their magic. At all other times, they are waiting around to get their spells back, running in terror, or making feeble attacks with their melee/ranged weapons. Compared to a system like the one found in Ars Magica -- well, there is no comparison. The flexibility of an Ars Magica system could be mated to a low power effect pool with more frequent hits on the caster's fatigue. It effectively becomes a "mana-based" system where minor spells are free (but not very powerful) and more significant spells weaken the caster.

The spell memorization system based off of Jack Vance's "fire and forget" concept has got to be one of the most awful game mechanics ever. It astounds me that people champion it. So, lovers of fire and forget, what are the "pros" of the D&D system?

Bj

It's kind of hard when LucasArts essentially gave it zero attention. It had one station at the last E3.

It was never a question of WotC publishing mature content. It was a question of allowing licensors of their IPs to publish mature content with their IP.

Reg "The Tornado" Arnedo made SH in IWD1. I think Steve Bokkes and Scott Warner did Upper Dorn's Deep. I did Lower Dorn's Deep.

Damien got a job working at Raven? Damn, when I looked for jobs there over a year ago (I grew up in Wisconsin), it didn't look like they would have any interest whatsoever in a "Black Isle-style" designer. ;__; You may notice that there was a several year gulf between Damien starting in IPLY QA and getting into Black Isle. He got his job as a junior designer on IWD2 because he seemed to be the most appropriate and available person at the time. Chris Jones was still at Troika when Damien came to BIS. I think Severed Hand was more like I wished other areas of IWD2 could have been. There are stylistic elements that I wasn't too fond of, but in terms of having lots of optional side stuff, being able to make meaningful choices, etc., I think it was well done. Granted, John Deiley and Damien worked together on that area, but Damien made a lot of smart choices there.

Hey wow Will you be finishing that? :D I work on it every week, so it will eventually be a lot more robust than it is. I just finished overhauling the combat system and the general die mechanics. Though the setting is Fallout and a lot of the names are Fallout, the system doesn't share much in common with SPECIAL at all. Do you know the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning? Also, I'd be interested to hear your definition of "simplistic". FFX's sphere grid immediately places its mechanics in the "not simplistic" category for me.

Front Mission 4 is a great game. I see you still haven't learned the fundamental difference between correlation and causation. Well done.

Also, mega laffz:

I'm currently playing WoW, which is the only MMORPG that has held my interest for more than a week. I'm playing a paladin on a role-playing server. There's a nice balance between talking ooc and talking in-character. It might be worse on standard or PVP servers. The graphic detail isn't as high as EQ2's, but I'd take Blizzard's lower detail art over EQ2's any day. The game seems pretty smooth and extraordinarily vast. Every time I take a new trip on a griffon, I wind up thinking, "What the hell is that?" when I fly over some new area. Areas like Darkshire and the Wetlands do a great job of creating mood. To be honest, WoW is the first MMORPG I've seen where I feel a sense of dread or awe when entering new areas. I think the huge worlds that dwarf anything seen in a conventional RPG might have something to do with it as well.

God of War Devil May Cry 3 Animal Crossing on Nintendo DS

No. Tom Hall works on third party titles out of San Diego. John Romero is the Creative Director for San Diego and is working as a designer on a map for Gauntlet. Harvey Smith is at Midway Austin and I don't know anything about Warren Spector. Dave Maldonado and Terry Spier (Slyle) are also working on Gauntlet.

Thanks, but my voice sounded pretty bad on the day that was recorded. I had a throat infection and a stuffed head. It took six or seven takes just to get through the song, and it wound up sounding uneven, poorly supported, and kind of nasal. It was for my nephew in Germany, but since he's about nine months old, he probably won't criticize it too much. I wasn't really a big fan of the reverb. The audio engineer put that in. It's actually toned down from what he originally set it at. However, I can't complain too much, since it does cover up a lot of the errors. Producing volume is actually pretty easy. Singing softly, well-supported, is difficult. Hell, if I had to sing that whole song at the volume of the first "Schlaf in himmlischer ruh", it would have been a lot easier.