Dungeons and Dragons Preview Week 3!?!?!?!

[Oliver Upshaw]

Now that we have seen the cards for the figures I'll post my thoughts on this Master Set. There was some concern on the boards that we were going to get a lot of super powered heros out of D&D Scape, we were told this would not happen, it did not happen and yet there are still complaints as to the power of the figs. Overall I think that the design team did a good job on the stats. Not every unit can be A+ unless you want to play checkers and remove kings from the game. My three real complaints on this set are as follows:

1. Ana Karithon can not heal herself. Unless they took away a cleric's ability to heal themselves in 4th Ed this just seems wrong to me. I have wanted to try and move towards some more hero centered armies but the lack of healing in the game has stopped me so far. Solon is expensive and unreliable. Keldra can not heal herself so she tends to draw fire to take her out. This is the same problem that Ana Karithon is going to have. If you want to move this game away from Squadscape you are going to have to introduce a more reliable and harder to take out healer. If you want to try and draw in the D&D crowd you need to keep more of the flavor. I have a button that says "Death before dishonor! But only if the cleric can raise dead." Clerics in D&D give you the ability to try things that you normally would not do because they can heal you quickly from damage that you incured. I have played several more modern/Sci-Fi RPG games and without Clerics you quickly learn that the best way to engage an enemy is from behind, without warning and with rapidfire weapons. Thus leaving them dead before they can put a round into you that is going to take you out of the game for weeks or longer as you slowly heal. Clerics are what makes D&D "heroic fantasy" and not backstab your opponent on a dark path.

2. The Deepwyrm Drow being common and only having one squad of them in the boxed set. There really needed to be two of these squads in the box. The reason being to immediately introduce new players to the difference between unique and common figures. That way when Wave 11 and 12 come out there will be more demand for the commons which will help the games bottom line. I have seen a lot of Heroscape collections on ebay that say they have almost everything, and they do, but they do not have multiples of common figures. The word that they play better when you have two squads of them needs to be gotten out more. Here was a missed opportunity for that.

3. There is not enough synergy between the figures in the box and existing figures. Even if the figures in the Master Set have synergy with the figures in Wave 11 & 12 they are not being tied back into Classic Scape. Here is a missed opportunity to get the new player interested in Classic Scape. I do not want to see the new players buy this master set and then Wave 11 & 12 and then not buy a Wave 13 of Classic Scape because they are used to having only the D&D figures working togehter and had not felt the need to buy the Classic Scape before.

[nyys]

Originally Posted by skyknight

I completely agree with this. I play this game with my family and friends and we have a blast. My twins are sitting here right now eyeballing the pics of D&D Scape and are talking about all of the cool things they want to do. Granted they have been playing it for a while now but its not quite the same as the real set. Anyways, as many of you know I have gotten out of tourneys a bit....just not my cup of tea anymore. I love playing this game with themed armies against my friends and family. Too many people look like they are not having fun in the tournies as they try to squeeze every little point into their ultra uber army and then get upset when they lose. But I think if it's not fun then whats the point? Scape is a game....games are fun...when they cease to be fun they become Magic.

You should try to make a NESA tourney Sky, I've been to I think eight now, and have not run into that once. It's been as laid back as I can imagine, tons of fun too.

Originally Posted by Onacara

and win or lose...I always have fun. (I'm the guy who drove 6 hours roundtrip to play with an army that had 4 Dumutef Guards in it )

...and I lost to it...

[Jexik]

Originally Posted by Oliver Upshaw

3. There is not enough synergy between the figures in the box and existing figures.

There is a bit of synergy between Waves 11 & 12 with stuff before MS3. People will definitely have reason to go back and revisit it.

[Ace Histoli]

Apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere.

Question for the D'n'D savvy folks: About what level would our new heroes be? If Tandros is using a +2 Broadsword and has a "Cleave" special ability, does that mean he'd be a high-level Player Character?

Just curious... I spent a lot of time reading over D'n'D books back in the day (25 years ago, I realize -- how did THAT happen?) but never really played much. Anyway, I've often wondered a little about this sort of thing. The Valkyrie Generals are summoning the very best warriors across all time and space, so theoretically even a lowly Blade Grut should be the prototypical "best rank-and-file wild barbarian soldier" ever, right? Having D'n'D characters with point values that can be compared to our classic heroes gives another benchmark of sorts... Is Marcus Decimus Gallus the equivalent of a 10th-lvl fighter? Is Agent Carr similar to a 9th-lvl assassin? Man, I think about Heroscape way too much.

Ah, the idle thoughts one gets a few weeks before a much anticipated release.

[Toad Rocket]

One thing that should be understood is that all figures cannot be all things in every situation. Not every figure will excel for tourney style games, just like every figure/unit will excel at campaigns/dungeon crawls.

Last night we did our first ever HS campaign style game. At least the first part of it. (The first part of the map got cleared out, but we decided to call it a night before starting into the next section). It was actually pretty fun refreshing game from the standard 'Kill-em-all' types of games we usually played. We will play tourney style games in the future still, but it is nice to have another style of game to play. Based on the scenario and the information given to the player the armies choosed will be radically different than anything normally taken at a tourney.

Speaking of which, I think it will be a bit of a challenge to organzie a Dungeon Campaign type Tourney. Typically for this time of game you need one player to be 'Bad guy/NPC Controller/Game master'. I would think that to make a tourney fair you would need one 'Game Master' at each map to controll the bad guys. Changing up the GM would not really be fair. And with one GM he will know exactly where the traps/trigger points/hidden stuff is arranged to keep it consistent.

[Darkmage7a]

Originally Posted by Jexik

There is a bit of synergy between Waves 11 & 12 with stuff before MS3. People will definitely have reason to go back and revisit it.

Well that's going in the sig.

[InfinityMax]

Originally Posted by Oliver Upshaw

1. Ana Karithon can not heal herself. Unless they took away a cleric's ability to heal themselves in 4th Ed this just seems wrong to me. I have wanted to try and move towards some more hero centered armies but the lack of healing in the game has stopped me so far. Solon is expensive and unreliable. Keldra can not heal herself so she tends to draw fire to take her out. This is the same problem that Ana Karithon is going to have. If you want to move this game away from Squadscape you are going to have to introduce a more reliable and harder to take out healer. If you want to try and draw in the D&D crowd you need to keep more of the flavor. I have a button that says "Death before dishonor! But only if the cleric can raise dead." Clerics in D&D give you the ability to try things that you normally would not do because they can heal you quickly from damage that you incured. I have played several more modern/Sci-Fi RPG games and without Clerics you quickly learn that the best way to engage an enemy is from behind, without warning and with rapidfire weapons. Thus leaving them dead before they can put a round into you that is going to take you out of the game for weeks or longer as you slowly heal. Clerics are what makes D&D "heroic fantasy" and not backstab your opponent on a dark path.

OK, but some of us are not elite game masters, and we don't really care if this is Dungeons & Dragons with Scape rules. It looks like more of a balance thing than a 'be true to a completely different game' thing. Though I don't know because I don't actually have the new set yet, and would probably feel pretty stupid if I were to complain loudly about the fairness of a game I hadn't played.

2. The Deepwyrm Drow being common and only having one squad of them in the boxed set. There really needed to be two of these squads in the box. The reason being to immediately introduce new players to the difference between unique and common figures. That way when Wave 11 and 12 come out there will be more demand for the commons which will help the games bottom line. I have seen a lot of Heroscape collections on ebay that say they have almost everything, and they do, but they do not have multiples of common figures. The word that they play better when you have two squads of them needs to be gotten out more. Here was a missed opportunity for that.

There's also an uncommon hero, and you only get one of him. I think one is fine. I have two Marro master sets, and that means I have a junkyard pile of guys I don't need. I'll get two D&D sets, and that will mean I only have a few spare figures and a lot of the new terrain.

3. There is not enough synergy between the figures in the box and existing figures. Even if the figures in the Master Set have synergy with the figures in Wave 11 & 12 they are not being tied back into Classic Scape. Here is a missed opportunity to get the new player interested in Classic Scape. I do not want to see the new players buy this master set and then Wave 11 & 12 and then not buy a Wave 13 of Classic Scape because they are used to having only the D&D figures working togehter and had not felt the need to buy the Classic Scape before.

So how many games have you played with the new set? I am still really waiting for mine to come, so I can't actually comment on it because I haven't played it. I'm curious to hear which units you've found were lacking synergy when they were on your maps.

And how did you get the set early?

[Jexik]

I suppose that's one good point. At face value, a unit like the Deathreavers has no synergy with anything, yet they work great with a wide variety of units because of their function.

Ana works well with any [small or medium] heroes. Tandros works well with melee stuff that might not want to be attacked, or as a Krav bodyguard. Etc...

[Agent Minivann]

I think there is plenty of synergy in this set, just not in the traditional Heroscape sense that a lot are looking for. I think that the healer not being able to heal herself is a good check on the power getting out of hand. In some ways she is kind of a mix of Raeling and Kelda. She is a boon to the party without having to invest a lot of order markers. Put her next to the fighter and she isn't as big of a target because of his special. It isn't bonding, or the other stuff we have come to expect, but there is a reason to get people working together in a party. They benefit from each other.

[Robotech Master]

Originally Posted by Ace Histoli

Apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere.

Question for the D'n'D savvy folks: About what level would our new heroes be? If Tandros is using a +2 Broadsword and has a "Cleave" special ability, does that mean he'd be a high-level Player Character?
.

Its not level specific actually. +2 Broadsword is an indicator that its a magically enchanted broadsword. It has no special effect like fire or whatever, but its considered a magic weapon, and the +2 means you get to add +2 to your attack roll when determining if you hit.

Cleave is a feat/power that fighters can select as one of their feats/powers at creation, though in some versions its possible that you selected other stuff and later added Cleave after gaining another slot at another level (not sure how 4.0 works on this). Its main prerequisite is having Strength 13, which should be a no-brainer for a fighter anyways.

[Faustus]

Originally Posted by Ace Histoli

Apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere.

Question for the D'n'D savvy folks: About what level would our new heroes be? If Tandros is using a +2 Broadsword and has a "Cleave" special ability, does that mean he'd be a high-level Player Character?

Just curious... I spent a lot of time reading over D'n'D books back in the day (25 years ago, I realize -- how did THAT happen?) but never really played much. Anyway, I've often wondered a little about this sort of thing. The Valkyrie Generals are summoning the very best warriors across all time and space, so theoretically even a lowly Blade Grut should be the prototypical "best rank-and-file wild barbarian soldier" ever, right? Having D'n'D characters with point values that can be compared to our classic heroes gives another benchmark of sorts... Is Marcus Decimus Gallus the equivalent of a 10th-lvl fighter? Is Agent Carr similar to a 9th-lvl assassin? Man, I think about Heroscape way too much.

Ah, the idle thoughts one gets a few weeks before a much anticipated release.

Actually, I'm kind of curious about this too. I spent some time "researching" whether light sabers could cut through adamantium when I was making Star Wars customs (and already had a Wolverine custom...)*

Having some sort of guide could help in coming up with a customizable character aspect to Heroscape. For example, you have 500 points, you can buy defense, life, attack, and special powers to create your character for the campaign.

*I think the consensus was that light sabers can cut through adamantium if given enough time, like what's shown in the opening scene of the phantom menace where Obi-Wan and Qwi-Gonn are cutting through the door, but that a swipe with a light saber would "hit" up against adamantium similar to another light saber or whatever...

[Grungebob]

Originally Posted by Agent Minivann

I think there is plenty of synergy in this set, just not in the traditional Heroscape sense that a lot are looking for. I think that the healer not being able to heal herself is a good check on the power getting out of hand. In some ways she is kind of a mix of Raeling and Kelda. She is a boon to the party without having to invest a lot of order markers. Put her next to the fighter and she isn't as big of a target because of his special. It isn't bonding, or the other stuff we have come to expect, but there is a reason to get people working together in a party. They benefit from each other.

There will be something for everyone in this DnD push. Tourney goers will undoubtedly find their gems in these releases, but tourney goers are not the only 'scapers. We have newbies we have old dogs we have scenario makers, and map builders, fanfic nuts, dads and kids, and boys of all ages and a few girls too. We are attempting, as we always have since the very beginning, to cover all of that. There are ample synergies in this offering.