Category Archives: Rules

Classes the WotC Way

[Stereotypes, anyone?]It looks like WotC has decided its website needs some more filler; they’ve taken it upon themselves to re-explain some character classes in a new series “Character Classes.” Unlike the mind-numbing depth and breadth of the Rules of the Game, These articles are brief and to the point, covering a handful of points about each class.

The Fighter article offers a rather narrow look at the Fighter-as-armored-lunk, treating ranged combat as an afterthought and largely ignoring the flexibility inherent in the Fighter class. The Rogue article does a better job of showing flexibility, but then with the high number of skill points and available class skills, the Rogue is more obviously versatile.

Overall, it reminds me that the articles I started out with a couple of years ago weren’t an entire waste of diskspace, including my looks at parties built around particular classes. I should probably go back through and make ones for the Iron Kingdoms classes of Arcane Mechanik, Bodger, and Gunmage.

Spell Descriptions

[Spells] You’d think that you wouldn’t have to tell a Wizard this, but it’s important to know what your magic spells do. If you select Illusory Wall when you really needed to cast Hallucinatory Terrain, your pointy-hatted spell-spinner may have a short adventuring career in front of him. Wizards of the Coast, every aware that the Dungeons & Dragons rules can never be written clearly enough to satisfy everybody, has dedicated seven webpages worth of clarification on spell descriptions. It doesn’t actually describe the spells, but rather goes in-depth into what kind of information you should be getting out of the spell description entries in the PHB and elsewhere. As we’re coming to expect from the Rules of the Game series, it is quite thorough, and I recommend it for anybody with a burning desire to be even more of a rules-lawyer than I am, or anybody suffering from insomnia. Enjoy!

Movement, in 6 easy steps

[Rules, Rules, Rules]Just when you thought that the D&D rules were reasonably straightforward, the kind folks at Wizards of the Coast do their level best to prove you wrong. We all knew that Polymorph was a bit of a sticky wicket. But that’s the domain of Wizards, Sorcerors, and other pencil-necked twerps. The noble Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue are still there for simple gaming pleasure, unfettered by complicated, nuanced rules, right? Wrong.

In the latest installment of their Rules of the Game series, All About Movement, we see that anybody interested in getting his character to where he needs to be amidst a pitched combat is in for some serious rules-applicaiton. Over the course of the last month and a half, we have been given six installments of rules explanations entirely limited to what should be the simple matter of moving from point A to point B, where you can hope to maybe stick +4 Holy Flaming Vorpal Greatsword C through monster D.

Read it if you have the stomach. Though it is more universally-applicable to characters of all kinds, it’s a rather thick six pages.