Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum News (Jan. 25, 05)

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Here are today's Dungeons & Dragons Online forum highlights, collected from Dungeons & Dragons Online forums. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Xundau, Community Relations

Game localization

Tsk tsk ... if the original post wasn't almost five months old, I'd lock this thread. If it's been a significant amount of time since a question was asked (say, at least a week or two), we'd rather you just create a new thread than bump the old one.

Unfortunately, we don't really have anything to say on localization right now -- when we know what our plans our, we'll announce them.

Pirates, Zombies, and Ninja

• Pirates? Yes.
• Zombies? Yes.
• Ninjas? Not likely.
• Can players be pirates? Still to be determined.

Items Restricted?

Farlander, the dev response you're thinking of was probably in a twinking thread, and indeed, this issue ties in very closely with twinking.

In PnP D&D, there's nothing to prevent, say, a 3rd level fighter from wielding a +5 Vorpal Longsword. This would obviously make the fighter much, much more powerful than a typical 3rd level character.

Of course, in PnP D&D, a character isn't going to get a +5 Vorpal Longsword unless their DM gives it to them, and most sane DMs won't give their characters such a weapon, or will at least scale the difficulty of encounters to factor in the character's new-found power.

In DDO, we're going to have characters of all levels interacting with each other. This means that a 20th-level character can give their 3rd-level friend a +5 Vorpal Longsword, if they want. If we allow this to happen, and allow the 3rd-level character to use the weapon unimpeded, we're going to introduce a host of balancing and twinking issues.

Thus, we're going to be taking some measures to prevent and/or strongly discourage players from owning or using equipment that is way too powerful for their level. One of these options is a minimum level requirement to use an item -- this was used in NWN, and it was pretty successful, IMO. However, we haven't made a final decision yet, and there are definitely other options that we're considering.

As far as specific race/class restrictions go, I don't think we're going to deviate very much from the PnP game, which means that these types of restrictions should be pretty rare.

Pirates, Zombies, and Ninja

We have a ton of D&D books floating around the office. We have a near-endless supply of the PHB, DMG, Monster Manual, and Eberron Campaign Setting, and we have at least one copy on hand of all of the recent WotC books (Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Complete Adventurer, Races of Stone, Sharn: City of Towers, etc.)

We also have a healthy amount of 2nd and even some 1st edition material. The rules in these books are mostly obsolete, but we get a lot of good design ideas from this stuff -- our level designers draw a lot of their inspiration from the classic 1st-edition modules.

Our relationship with Wizards also gives us access to a lot of material before it's published. For instance, we had an early version of the Eberron Campaign Setting almost a year before it hit the streets.

All of that being said, our primary sourcebooks are considered the PHB, DMG, Monster Manual, and Eberron Campaign Setting -- most of the content in DDO is drawn from these four books.

Mailing list?

Yes, there's an official newsletter in the works. I'll channel Nik here and tell you that it'll be ready "soon."

Any word on system requirements?

There won't be a native Linux client -- DDO is being developed for Windows only right now.

That being said, you might be able to run the game using a Windows emulator such as WINE, but it won't be officially supported.

Armor Types and Character Appearance

Here's a post I made in a thread about Warforged that gives some insight into the way that our armor works:
http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16919#post16919

This is a bit easier to understand if you look at the following screenshot:
http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=70&gallery[gallery_id]=7&image[edit_image_id]=130

The character in this image (a cleric) is wearing some kind of plate armor (I can't remember exactly which type). In this case, the underlying texture, or jumpsuit, on the avatar's body is a suit of chainmail -- note the chainmail texture around his torso and upper legs. The gearset in the screenshot consists of the actual armor plates, which change the character's basic shape, or geometry -- notice the added bulk in his upper chest, shoulders, and shin plates.

Now, to get to the original questions, yes, we are planning on going with whole suits of armor instead of individual pieces, just like in PnP D&D. As far as characters looking the same goes, we have a lot of possibilities to play with here. I'm not sure if we'll let characters mix-and-match jumpsuits (base textures) and gearsets (added geometry). Quite frankly, this could result in some pretty odd combinations, and we want everyone to look nice and pretty.

What we are going to have is multiple looks for the same type of common armor sets -- for instance, for full plate, we might have basic plate, shining knightly-plate, elven-looking plate, evil spiky plate, etc. All of these will have the stats of full plate, but they will make your character look very different.

Multiclassing question

The answers above are correct. For your reference, I did a fairly in-depth writeup of multiclassing a little while ago:
http://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php?p=20619#post20619

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the question you asked is actually a pretty tricky one. While class abiliites do usually stack, monks in 3.5 D&D who are using Unarmed Strike and/or their Flurry of Blows don't follow the normal dual wield rules. Therefore, you couldn't use two-weapon combat with the Unarmed Strike, although you could use it with a quarterstaff if you weren't doing a Flurry of Blows. But then again, any ranger with two-weapon fighting can use that feat with a quarterstaff, so this isn't really that special.

Of course, as you mentioned, we're not doing monks for release, so this is all kind of moot right now...

Multiclassing question

Yeah, this was a bug in NWN, which was based on the 3.0 rules. Taking just one level of monk gave you access to the monk's improved attack progression (extra attack every +3 BAB instead of the typical +5). The way the 3.0 rules were supposed to work was that a multiclass monk could either choose to use *only* their monk BAB and get the improved attack progression, or use their BAB from all of their classes and use the normal attack progression. Basically, monks in 3.0 just weren't supposed to multiclass.

It was a confusing rule, and 3.5 D&D did in fact change this by replacing the improved attack progression with the Flurry of Blows class ability, which gives extra attacks when fighting unarmed or using a special monk weapon. As long as these requirements are met, your full BAB from all of your classes applies.

However, you still can't combine two-weapon fighting with Flurry of Blows or the monk's Unarmed Strike -- the monk is already considered to be fighting with both hands (and feet, elbows, knees, etc.), so two-weapon fighting rules don't really make sense here.

Nik Davidson, Administrator

Will D&D online be free or pay monthly?

There will be a monthly subscription fee, it's an unavoidable fact of business for us. Going to close this one, as it's really not an issue for debate.

Possiblity of an multi-game account system?

We discuss a "Turbine Pass" subscription for all of our games quite frequently, and while we have not announced any plans to do this, I, for one, would be entirely unshocked should it come to pass.

New Pics???

Soon!

Dex question

The Weapon Finesse feat covers this issue pretty well, so we'll be using it. Weapon Finesse applies to all light weapons, plus the rapier and spiked chain, which makes good sense.

GM abuse

I once completely went off on a D&D GM of mine, after coming back to a game and finding that his girlfriend had gained two levels from a "side quest" between sessions. I yelled, "It's a roleplaying game! It's played with dice! PANTS ON!"

But I digress.

A couple comments on this - one, we really do log stuff like crazy, and we investigate any and all complaints.

Two, and this may come as a shock to you, not everything you read on the internet is true. Don't get me wrong, sometimes these incidents do happen. But then they get re-told, and re-re-told, and exaggeration turns some of the most famous stories into urban legends. More than once, we've investigated reports of GM abuse that turned out to be entirely fabricated, without any doubt, either out of boredom, or revenge for a banning.

It's an issue we take very seriously, and we have the tools in place to make sure that it doesn't become a problem.

Weapon Variety.

Argh! Damage control!

I was talking about the chain in the context of the 3.5 feat, Weapon Finesse. I'm sorry if I implied that certain weapons would be in, or not in the game. (Honestly, I'm not sure on that one, but it's not a certain yes or no today.)

Boy, QA position would be nice...

There's a saying from my frozen homeland: "There's a fine line between being smart enough to survive a Minnesota winter and being dumb enough to be one in the first place."

SIG, DDO QA Lead

Calling all Testers

Turbine Dungeons & Dragons Online is hiring Quality Assurance Associates. The posting for the position is located at http://www.careerexchange.com/cejobs/DetailTurbine.asp?turbinQATESTDDO. Come join the QA staff and help make DDO the game you want to play. If you have any questions, please private message me.

Please note that this position is located in suburban Boston, MA, and is only open to people who are local (preferred) or willing to relocate to the Boston area.

Look forward to hearing from everyone interested in this position.

"SIG"
Sr. QA Lead: DDO

 

Free or fee? Thread closed.