D&D Online

Currently there is no evil alignment in the game for players. So they can't really do pvp without badguys. I imagine they may do something similiar to city of heroes in this regard. Basically building up the game on the good side, then releasing the evil alignments as an expansion or whatever. (although I suppose a chaotic neutral could easily enough retain alignment going on wanton murder sprees, but might be just as likely to go on wanton healing sprees).

There's plenty of room for ass-hattery though. Some of the spells seem completely detrimental. Like the lvl 1 cleric spell 'obscuring mist' which blacks out a large area to everyone and some other spell which does a similiar thing except with light.

well, i have always been chaotic lawful...

No such thing.

It's Lawful -> Neutral -> Chaotic... and Good -> Neutral -> Evil

Lawful good, neutral, evil... neutral good, true neutral, evil... chaotic good, neutral, evil.

I don't recall seeing that alignment available in the game, much less the pencil in paper. Sorry

The D&D pencil and paper alignment wheels have law, neutral, chaos and good, neutral, evil.

Currently they've got available:
Lawful Good
Lawful Neutral
Neutral Good
Neutral
Chaotic Good
Chaotic Neutral

with these ones missing:
Lawful Evil
Neutral Evil
Chaotic Evil

Now some systems describe alignment differently, so if you mean chaotic lawful as in "random, but lawful", then any of the lawful alignments would probably work. If you meant, "randomly lawful", then one of the chaotic alignments is appropriate depending on how far whichever way you lean.

my bad. its been like 15 years since i have played the graph paper and dice version...

thats why i don't know the rogue character. i was always thief or assassin...

chaotic good would prolly be my alignment

Chaotic good is doing the right thing, no matter what laws you are breaking and things like that. Think Robin Hood. I always pick it too, Paladins are too stuffy

well, for me its either chaotic good or maybe str8 neutral

i dont always do the right thing, sometimes i will insert chaos as peace is too calm

but for the most part i do the right thing

chaotic good, lawful neutral or neutral

since SOMEBODY ( i am not saying Lianne "i don't kill other players" Marten) is nitpicking about my WoW alignment

I am a good guy, irl and in games, but i do subscribe that a certain amount of chaos is needed to keep people on their toes, in games and in real life

so in D&D terms, my alignment is is tough to figure out

I'm just talking about D&D stuff... no need to get so tetchy.

When I think about Chaotic Good, I think of Wolverine.

Here is a good site about Alignment:
http://www.geocities.com/vacred_dotal/align.htm#index

Here is Chaotic Good:

Chaotic good characters are strong indivualists marked by a streak of kindness and benevolence. They believe in all the virtues of goodness and right, but they have little use for laws and regulations. They have no use for people who "try to push folk around and tell them what to do." Their actions are guided by their own moral compass which, although good, may not always be in perfect agreement with the rest of society. A brave frontiersman forever moving on as settlers follow in his wake is an example of a chaotic good character.

1. Keeps his word to any other good person (unless it conflicts with his/her plans against neutral or evil characters in which case this would be explained to the good characters unless it may put them in harms way).
2. Lies only to neutral or evil people (see #1).
3. Never attacks or kills an unarmed foe, unless of course they are truly evil and need to be done away with.
4. Never harms an innocent... unless it is unavoidable
5. Never tortures for pleasure. Threats may be permissible... (Under extreme duress torture for information may be permissable).
6. Never kills for pleasure (yet destroying evil seems to pleasure them).
7. Always tries to help others.
8. Distrusts authority.
9. Works well in groups, but dislikes confining rules and 'red tape'.
10. Never takes dirty money or items except in extreme circumstances where the acceptance of money or items is a ruse and contributes to the greater good.
11. Never betrays a friend, unless that friend betrays them with bad intent.

I like Chaotic Good alignment too. I really resonate with it.

yeah!

chaotic good is my alignment

both in mmorpgs and rl

just so you know

like i said, been 15 yrs since i broke out the graph paper and die

aside from level needed to get abilities, why else do you think DDOs rogue is better for class performance/abilities/and such than WoWs?

Speaking of sneak, how does sneak attack work in DDO? Is simply having an opponent flanked sufficient?

And is the Tumble skill available? One of the most effectove rogue tactics I've seen in P&P DnD is to have super-high ranks in tumble, which is used to easily get into flanking position for a big fistful of sneak attack damage...

Sneak attack works on any opponent that is engaged with another character or is not aware of the rogue.

Tumble is a skill, it is used actively by pressing [shift+(left or right)] and adds an armor class bonus. There aren't any Attacks of Opportunity in DDO, so they modded it to do this this. I think it probably works well, though I haven't made a rogue yet

The one thing I don't like about Rogues in DDO is that they are almost useless on a one on one fight because armor for them are very weak. But from what I've read and from playing a Rogue they are good in a group effort by taking out or heavily damaging the casters on a sneak attack, then using their ranged attack. On some of the creatures I've snuck up on, a sneak attack kills them on the first hit or gets them very close to death.

They just seem, to me, to be a more Rogue like class in that they use more of the skills that you think of when you think of a thief. With WoW I think they should have given more chances to use detect and disarm traps and to lockpick things, not just a way to get your skill level up in lockpicking.(Even though there are a few times you do use those skills skill in a quest) Thats why, to me anyway, that I feel that some of the rogue skills are an afterthought.

Lianne, the tumble skill also works going forward and backwards.

I can't really clarify how sneak works in relation to sneak attacks except that there is an active 'sneak' skill which combines the sneak and hide skills. Effectively it causes your character to darken and hunch over and display little eyes down near your feat. The more you have down there the more you are hidden (I think). Also when someone is attempting to see or hear you when you move, red circles flash out from you (like sonar). So it's fairly easy to sneak up and kill something.

Now if you want to try to sneak DURING a fight, that would be significantly harder. Having two or more people surrounding a monster does provide the flanking bonus, but that's different than a monster being flatfooted (denied their dex) for a sneak attack.

I believe that the sneak attack is just any attack while you are stealthed, I don't think you have to do it just from behind.

Actually its the least amount of eyes you see that says you are stealthed and all classes have the sneak skill, its just that the Rogues are better at it.

I haven't been in a group yet, but I have found out that it is harder to solo while you are a Rogue.

P.S. Fileplanet now has sign-ups for the DDO Preview and tuesday the 17th you'll be able to register it. Its just for next weekend Thursday Jan 19th through Sunday the the 21st.

I'M looking forward to the lightening of the loads on the WoW servers. No more 20 minutes queues, I hope.

So I was just at target to get yet another sims2 ep lol, and I see there something called Dragonshard, with the DND emblem on it and such. Is this it? or something else? Was about $50 so I didn't want to buy it before knowing for sure.


Thanks for any info


~Syd~

Dragonshard is a RTS game, not so much an RPG. I played the demo... it's alright I suppose, but only if you like that kinda thing. You can probably download it and try it out to see if you do.

Thats not it, it is called "Dungeon & Dragons Online: Stormreach" It is an MMORPG that is suppose to come out on 2/28/06. Its currently being beta tested. You can pre-order it from a major game store website and get a 10 day beta invite.

"Dungeon & Dragons: Dragonshard" is a Real-time Strategy game.

I see you beat me to it Lianne.

Ok thanks guys, glad i didn't buy that today lol

Anyone played this game at length? If so, how was it?

I played some command and conquer, then warcraft 2, then got hooked for like 4 years on Starcraft (only bad things are either play solo with lag or play ladder/ffa etc and get your ass handed to you by the Koreans and their damn zerg rushes 15 seconds into the game), but a D&D RTS sounds interesting...

and RTS fans played it? How is it compared to Starcraft?

I'm a beta tester for D&D Online and was a beta tester for Dragonshard.

Here's my thoughts on the two games.

Dragonshard is an interesting variation on the RTS genre, in as much as they have the building portion, but the way you gather resources is more like sending your chatacters out on a dungeon crawl.

I played a few games online and more than a few against the computer's AI.

Personally, I got more into the Dungeon Crawl part than the RTS, and would always lose, because I wanted to focus on the crawl, not defending my area and/ or attacking someone else.

DDO: Stormreach is built for a group multiplayer experience and not much else.

You can run through maybe the first 10 quests on your own before there isn't much you can accomplish without some (serious) help. I tried both a cleric and a fighter in the beta and both worked reasonably well, but I never got too far in the game because I just wasn't interested in going into a dungeon with someone named bamb1k1lla.

A couple of interesting things about DDO:

1. Instanced Dungeons: This is a good thing for those people who hate going on a large scale raid, only to have someone not with your group run in during the last 2 minutes of the battle and grab the item. The drawback being, if the server is too overloaded, you may have to wait to get into specific dungeon. I know Turbine has been working on this and it did seem to be better later on in the beta, but initially it made for a frustrating experience. For this reason alone, if they don't convert beta characters (I believe you can get a special beta invite by preordering) I suspect the first few days may get kind of frustrating.

2. Currently DDO is taking up about 3.5 gig's of hard drive space. It's the largest program I've got on my system. Alot, if not most of it is art. And yet, for all the artwork they have, I thought they could have done better. Yes, you spend a fair amount of time indoors or underground, but the game always feels too dark for me. Some of the poly's they used for character creating were too sharply edged and leads to awkward movement.

3. Like true D&D a lot of the quests involve not only fighting, but puzzle solving. Finding the various places to activate doors can be a challenge, in one case a door was so well hidden it took me 3 circuits through a smallish dungeon to find it. Now, Maybe if I'd been playing a rogue it would have been easier but....

4. Stormreach is set in Ebberon. Which means you get to play with warforged characters if you wish and you will encounter warforged creatures. Honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, it's neat to see the different creatures, on the other hand, it reminds me of the original AD&D S3 module, White Plume Mountain, which introduced alients in the D&D world: somehow it just feels wrong.

5. Unlike WoW, DDO doesn't rely too much on the "find xxx items" types of quest. Yes they are there, but more as side quests. The real meaty quests aren't about finding a treasure (though you do find alot) but rather the quests tell a story, and are often in multipart format. In this respect, it feels more like the campaign part of Warcraft 3 or Neverwinter Nights than a lot of other MMO's.

6. I said it initally, but I'll say it again, you need without question, a group of people to play this game. At least one healer, preferably two.

7. I was not thrilled about the levelling in DDO. You can fight a fair amount and, unlike pen and paper D&D you don't actually level up that much. Yes, they have sublevels within each level which have some rewards, but I really felt there needed to be more "reward" for fighting etc.

Which is extremely appropriate given that the standard pencil and paper D&D party usually consists of something like 3 to 6 players.



Yes, unfortunately people do exist who use such names, but they do have naming rules and they may expand on them to rule out numbers in names. For instance, you CANNOT name yourself Lord Something or Sir Anything. I did see someone named Cr Otch though, but you can report such names.



I have yet to see a server overload where you have to wait any length of time beyond regular loading to get into an area. I believe they mentioned improving just this recently. This may still be a problem at launch though.



Yes, it is quite huge, particularly the high res version which has better textures. Just for prettiness sake, I suggest turning graphics options all the way up for some amazing visuals, then down to playable levels. Some of the filters make being a ghost or swimming very hard.



There are actually places IMPOSSIBLE to get to without a high strength, a high int, the ability to find and disable traps, and spot secret doors, etc. Usually having a rogue and a wizard in a group coupled with a cleric and fighter make for an ideal basic questing group able to handle many kinds of challanges.



I kind of agree with this... Constructs and even intelligent ones aren't wholly new to D&D, but as a playable race? It seems to me the whole construct thing took a big hit and instead you get something with built-in armor and resistances with some hefty attribute penalties. Frankly, I'd rather have seen the half-orc make it into the game.



The attempt here is to make it feel like a pencil and paper campaign. Except what might take months of weekends in encounters can be accomplished in mere minutes and hours. This is why the voiceover will often, poorly, attempt to replicate the villain's voices. It's to faithfully create the feel that your group is all sitting around the table and the DM is once again trying to make his evil villain voice sound evil and scary. It's quite possibly one of the most endearing parts I have yet seen.



/signed



This basically boils down to DMing style (as well as various business cost analysis factors which involve the monthly fee and keeping people playing). To explain, one school of thought is to reward the adventure rather than the battle. Sure random encounters give xp, but not nearly what a successful adventure might. Further I've been in some campaigns where you don't see exp increase (or levels) for quite some time. I've been in others where you can get xp by pouring oil down the anthill (the minimum is 1xp and that must be a couple hundred ants, right?). So I think DDO does a good job by intruducing the sublevels to break up the time inbetween levels.