Hurray!

I am starting to think about going back to WoW again, but everytime I vist the WoW website, I get reminded of how much time I wasted playing that game. Granted, for the most part, I did enjoy raiding with my Asian m8s, but the grinding in WoW is ridiculous. But, I can understand why they designed WoW that way... it keeps people playing it long after they've hit max level.

I also got to take a look at the D&D book called the Tome of Battle. This book has everything in it that I thought was missing from D&D melee classes. I was actually thinking of implementing something similar to maneuvers and stances in the game I was running, but they would behave more like feats that could be used once every few days depending on the power/level ratio. They would have been available to everyone, but there would be ones that only benefitted certain playing styles. They'd also cost quite a lot to use.

I like the way the Crusader gets to use maneuvers. At the beginning of an encounter, 2 of the crusaders maneuvers are randomly made available for him to use while the others remain unavailable. If the Crusader uses a maneuver, it gets spent and cannot be used until it is made available again. At the start of each turn for the Crusader, 1 random maneuver is made available. This continues for the entire encounter.

For the other 2 classes, they have all of their readied maneuvers available for use at the beginning of the encounter, but each maneuver can only be used once per encounter. It is a good thing to be able to use most of the Crusader maneuvers multiple times in an encounter like the healing attack or DR attack, but in order to constantly use them, you have to be lucky.

One of the other maneuvers I picked adds a +4 attack bonus to all of my allies that are attacking my target for 1 round. Another which I don't have access to yet cuz it is a max level maneuver, allows myself and all allies nearby to charge at an enemy or group of enemies without provoking any attacks of opportunity and if the charge is successful, my attack deals normal melee damage +50 and my allies' attacks deal normal melee damage +25 and the target(s) of the charge are stunned for a round. Also, the attacks made by the chargers gain an attack bonus of +2 for each person involved in the charge, including myself. Fun fun!

Stances are pretty cool too. The one I chose for the Crusader I made heals myself or a nearby ally for 2 points of damage everytime I make a successful melee attack. This means once I gain multiple attack bonuses (or god forbid I go duel wield), this healing would tick multiple times per round.

And since I'm on the subject of Crusaders, I'd like to mention a feature or 2 of their class. First, crusaders have a delayed damage pool. Basically, what this does is it prevents a certain amount of damage from affecting the crusader until the end of the crusader's turn. At low levels, the damage pool has a low damage cap, but at higher levels, the cap increases to a substantial amount. Also, if a Crusader attacks with damage in his delayed damage pool, he gains attack and damage bonuses to his attacks. Lastly, if the Crusader has damage in his damage pool and gets healed, he can choose to have the points healed to his hp, the damage pool, or split between the 2 (half goes to each).

The main reason I bothered writing about D&D is because Matt told me he didn't feel like doing Aberrant for awhile after the next game. Level 6 reroll IMO but WHATEVA.

And to my special viewers, the code word for this week is "Mild Hulkism". If you submit this before midnight tomorrow, you will add 3,000 points to your account (bonus points for Father's Day).

BTW, I can't believe I forgot to put this up before: bam