Stupidest thing Wizards of the Coast released?

[SaintRidley]

Hilariously, they actually justified it at some point in the DMG, if I'm remembering correctly. Something like "Hennet's player decides that his character likes collecting belts" when talking about roleplaying various quirks.

Suddenly I'm okay with Hennet's pants now, because that's hilarious.

[Nousos]

The best part of this is how well the signature fits with the post.

My vote for worst thing is the whisper demon art, and every other thing drawn by that guy who insists that everything is looking unnaturally at you with the weirdest head turning possible



just, why?

Hahaha, it's like someone didnt like the head it used to have, so they pasted on a misproportioned portrait and called it a day.

[NoldorForce]

WHYYY

It honestly looks like someone did an actually good drawing with it facing off to the left, but them some other terrible artist came along and drew a mis-proportioned, oversized head that he thought "was an improvement". Ouch.

Nah, that's just Wayne England being bad at drawing heads. Kinda like Wayne Reynolds being crap at drawing feet. (At least he's not Rob Liefeld.)

[Jormengand]

After reading this thread, all I'm wondering is what Hennet's pants have to do with anything, and why everyone on this forum seems to think I'm a different gender.

[Extra Anchovies]

After reading this thread, all I'm wondering is what Hennet's pants have to do with anything, and why everyone on this forum seems to think I'm a different gender.

Well, here's Hennet's pants:

Spoiler: pretty pretty picture

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It definitely looks like he's wearing one pant leg, the cape, the white thingy hanging off his waist, and about three dozen belts. Isn't it great?

[hamishspence]

Kinda like Wayne Reynolds being crap at drawing feet. (At least he's not Rob Liefeld.)

I thought he also had a tendency to draw weirdly overmuscled arms.

[Nettlekid]

Don't forget the Yuan-Ti save-or-lose-but-if-you-do-save-you-die potion/poison.

Sorry, what's that? I took a quick look through but didn't manage to find anything like that.

[Zanos]

Well, here's Hennet's pants:

Spoiler: pretty pretty picture

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It definitely looks like he's wearing one pant leg, the cape, the white thingy hanging off his waist, and about three dozen belts. Isn't it great?

His one pant leg is just covering the belts under it. His boot is also made of belts.

[Sgt. Cookie]

There was also another spell illustration where she struck a guy with lightning while chugging down a mug of ale. Can't for the life of me remember the name of the spell, though. That was funny as hell!

That's the art for the Deceptive Spell Metamagic feat. It's from Cityscape.



That aside, I kinda want to play as Hennet. Just to use that picture as justification for the number of magical belts I'm wearing.

[hamishspence]

Sorry, what's that? I took a quick look through but didn't manage to find anything like that.

That would be the potion that creates Tainted Ones or Broodguards. (Yuan-ti section of the first part of the book).

[heavyfuel]

Well, here's Hennet's pants:

Spoiler: pretty pretty picture

Show

It definitely looks like he's wearing one pant leg, the cape, the white thingy hanging off his waist, and about three dozen belts. Isn't it great?

After reading this thread, all I'm wondering is what Hennet's pants have to do with anything, and why everyone on this forum seems to think I'm a different gender.

Well, you can see the problem now? He's supposed to don that in one minute. Not possible unless he took the Wear Exotic Pants feat

As for why is everyone thinking you're of a different gender, your guess is as good as mine, but if it bothers you, maybe update the gender tag will help you

[Scots Dragon]

What's that? I've never heard of spell plague...

You know not what you have unleashed, but here goes;

The Spellplague was an event designed to update the Forgotten Realms from the game's third edition to the new upcoming fourth edition. And if that's all it wound up being, then we wouldn't have much of a problem worth discussing, but that really wasn't where it began or ended.

While it's kind of easy to point at the Forgotten Realms as being the single most popular and enduring campaign setting for any edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the setting itself has had a lot of detractors over the years, with reasons that largely seem to consist of 'I just don't like it'. And that's when the reasons actually tend to make sense, unfortunately. It would not be unfair to say that there are some criticisms that basically boil down to people hating the setting for introducing a bunch of broken-as-hell classes and concepts, not really paying attention to the world so much as the classes it provides without figuring out a way to make things work. This despite the fact that they're really just poorly-realised attempts to update the setting to third edition standards despite the fact that it started in AD&D 1st edition and is still largely optimised for that. I've also seen entirely nonsensical reasons like the fact that the statistics for characters like Drizzt Do'Urden and Elminster are poorly built.

So when updating the setting they listened to many of these detractors and didn't listen to many of the people who were actual fans of the setting.

The result was that the insanely large number of redundant deities, many of whom were fan-favourites, were completely removed or retroactively stated to be aspects of other deities. The elven pantheon suffered a lot from this, with pretty much everyone who wasn't Corellon Larethian or Lolth being just plain forgotten about, outright killed or transformed into an aspect of a human deity. A very sore move was the slaying of the entire drow pantheon, such as Eilistraee, and the retcon that all of the good drow were subsequently transformed into surface elves as a result of her death because their black skin was a demonic curse or some such. Mystra was also killed off, as were her supporting deities of magic, and the whole thing where magic was reliant on the Weave was just plain ignored in terms of how it actually ought to work.

And that was what the Spellplague was, by the way. It was magical 'disease' caused by the untimely death of Mystra, and the subsequent effects on magic and the setting at large were a little too far-reaching for most people.

On the more human side of things, there was a one-century time jump meaning that every single non-immortal human character in the tie-in novels would have to be discontinued. This caused friction with a lot of the fans for fairly obvious reasons. Making things worse was the fact that a lot of fan-favourite regions like Dambrath, Halruaa, the Chultan Peninsula, Mulhorand, Unther, Aglarond, and the Sword Coast North were radically altered or outright annihilated by the events. Certain new changes were then shoehorned in to introduce some kind of easily-accessible origin for the new dragonborn, genasi and tiefling core races. It's also notable that every region that had non-white people as a majority was harmed much more by the Spellplague than the whiter regions; Calimshan and Chult and Turmish were all hit a lot harder than the Western Heartlands, Cormyr or the Dalelands.

They didn't stop there. Pretty much every remaining popular character who wasn't Drizzt Do'Urden was killed off, sent insane, or radically altered in such a way as to completely change their roles in the setting. Pretty much every single one of the Seven Sisters were killed off, for instance, and Elminster was unable to use magic without going insane.

All to 'fix' a setting so that it was tailored to the interests of people who didn't like it, while needlessly pissing off everyone who did in the process.

[Jormengand]

As for why is everyone thinking you're of a different gender, your guess is as good as mine, but if it bothers you, maybe update the gender tag will help you

It might also be because I'm genderfluid, so they're all entirely justified in thinking I'm different genders because I am.

It's just weird how surprised everyone gets by it.

[Sgt. Cookie]

and the retcon that all of the good drow were subsequently transformed into surface elves as a result of her death because their black skin was a demonic curse or some such.

Then how the f*** did they explain Sazarki (Albino) Drow? (Or however it's spelt).

[Scots Dragon]

Then how the f*** did they explain Sazarki (Albino) Drow? (Or however it's spelt).

Buggered if I know.

It's especially hilarious since the albino drow were first introduced in a Forgotten Realms adventure, but who cares about stuff like continuity, am I right?

[Urpriest]

It might also be because I'm genderfluid, so they're all entirely justified in thinking I'm different genders because I am.

It's just weird how surprised everyone gets by it.

If I may ask, what are your preferred pronouns?

[sleepyphoenixx]

They may as well have created an entirely new setting when they invented the Spellplague. As far as i'm concerned (and probably most other people who actually liked FR) the events of 4e onwards happened in a parallel universe or something like that.

[Jormengand]

If I may ask, what are your preferred pronouns?

*Prefers they, unless she refers to herself as something else in which case you should call her that for a while.*

[Sgt. Cookie]

While we're on the subject, Albino Drow.

In concept, they're perfectly fine. Drow that can pass for surface Elves. Great! I get my Drow fix but won't be instantly lynched for trying to do anything.

The stupid part is, Albino Drow are 100% mechanically identical to normal Drow. Would it have killed WoTC to give them a bonus to Disguise to pass as a surface Elf. Seriously, just a little note that says "Sazarki Drow get a +2 bonus to Disguise to pass as a Surface Elf" would give SOME mechanical nod to the fact that Sazarki Drow are different.

[Jeff the Green]

I'd say Hennet's pants fall under Rule of Cool.

Except, y'know, they're not cool.

[SVamp]

They may as well have created an entirely new setting when they invented the Spellplague. As far as i'm concerned (and probably most other people who actually liked FR) the events of 4e onwards happened in a parallel universe or something like that.

I keep hoping that the entire 4e happened in an alternate universe, and this is just a dream, but alas...

[Epinephrine_Syn]

I've got a few to state, so I'll just list each in spoilers below. Take your pick.

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That they made Mindrape a Good aligned spell in the BoED (and called it 'Sanctify the Wicked')

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CR: 9

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Dragon Magazines, just the whole thing, I can't pick a single portion.

[Psyren]

Divine Mind is the only thing I think had no right to exist at all. Both concept (a psionic class that can fall) and execution (a 3/4 BAB psionic paladin with weak powers and saves) were horrible.

Everything else - even Incantatrix, gods help me - had at least a cool concept behind it if nothing else.

[Zanos]

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Dragon Magazines, just the whole thing, I can't pick a single portion.

In my experience Dragon Magazine has about the same ratio of quality material as most splatbooks.

[Extra Anchovies]

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CR: 9

Oh god, yes, the Adamantine Horror. CR 9 construct, 16 HD. Spell-like abilities: at will — disintegrate, implosion, Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Caster level 14th, save DC 15+spell level (DC 21, 24, and 24, respectively).

Yes. The f**ker has at-will Disjunction. And at-will 28d6 disintegrate. And at-will save-or-die with a range of 60 feet and no attack roll. Two of those are ninth-level spells. This is a ninth-level monster. I feel like they may have forgotten a "1" in front of that 9.

[heavyfuel]

*snip*

That's a really good explanation. Makes sense that people were angry with WotC after something like that was done to a setting they really liked. Thanks mate!

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CR: 9

If we want to talk CR, should I mention That Damned Crab now, or do we save the discussion for later?

[heavyfuel]

In my experience Dragon Magazine has about the same ratio of quality material as most splatbooks.

Have to agree. There's a lot of really nice things in DM. Mystic Ranger seems like a favorite, but thinks like Knowstones, Fighter Variants from 310, a bunch of PrCs, among other things make Dragon Magazines a decent source. I just advocate more DM purview when dealing with it, but it's otherwise fine.

[Psyren]

What I dislike about WotC isn't the material they released, it's the lack of regard for it once published. If we were lucky, we got a single errata document and maybe an update if it was 3.0. If we were unlucky, we got nothing at all, and if we were really unlucky, we got what they did to ToB which somehow feels even worse.

This goes for Dragon material too.

[heavyfuel]

What I dislike about WotC isn't the material they released, it's the lack of regard for it once published. If we were lucky, we got a single errata document and maybe an update if it was 3.0. If we were unlucky, we got nothing at all, and if we were really unlucky, we got what they did to ToB which somehow feels even worse.

This goes for Dragon material too.

I have very limited experience with Pathfinder, but from what I've seen it's pretty much the opposite deal for Paizo. Really makes you wonder the current state of the game and especially of the Dysfunctional Rules thread if WotC would release an official document to fix stupid rules.

[Arbane]

Soulborns have a legitimate ecological niche in D&D - they are the only thing that stops the world from falling down to Shadowcalypse.

Undead replication in D&D is also one of the stupidiest things WoTC released.

Yeah, any monster feature that requires elaborate rationalization why the game-world hasn't ALREADY been destroyed is probably a bad feature.