The Core Worlds

Well, I said it was all about superheroes in my last entry, and I couldn’t repeat myself.

The latest from Wizards is minions, a concept that worried me when I came across it. In a nutshell, minions are foes who are a decent threat to the PCs but whom only have a single hit point. Once you hit one, it is dead.

My initial reaction was “Oh no. Ogres that die with one hit. That’s rubbish. So much for Willing Suspension of Disbelief.”

Wizards can’t be that insane though, can they? Well, yes, they can, but not in this instance. While killing Ogres with one hit seems silly, it becomes less so when characters get to very high levels and going up against mature dragons and nasty demonic princes. At low levels, I would assume that the minions would be goblins, and it isn’t unreasonable to expect a low level character to have no trouble dispatching a mere goblin. 

The concept works in other games, Spirit of the Century springs to mind. So I’m cautiously optimistic about this particular change for D&D 4e. 

It might make the fireball spell interesting though.

My first real exposure to D&D was with third edition, which features a wonderful economy… OK, so it doesn’t. It features an insane system where the raw materials to construct anything, anything at all, costs exactly one third of its retail price. This is compounded by the wonder that is the price list.

A ladder consists of a pair of ten foot poles with a number of rungs between them, but this costs less than a pair of ten foot poles. It is feasible that an enterprising merchant, given a large enough supply of nearby adventures, could make a living chopping ladders in half and selling the pieces to passing adventurers while having the rungs left over for firewood!

The Wizards of the Coast website is previewing 4e, and I’ve been keeping half an eye on it. I was pleasently surprised when I read:

Be sure to return Wednesday for a look at the economy!

What is this? Could they be making the economy sane?

No, of course not.

It seems that treasure is going to be made available to Dungeon Masters in preprepared baskets to hand out to monsters and NPCs. I wonder if they will be gift wrapped?