Trash day

It being Trash Day here, this seemed appropriate.

Supreme Court Me

NPR ran a story today about a lawsuit in Texas where the owners of some beachfront property have a problem with the State of Texas. Seems they bought a house 25 years ago and since then the beach shrunk or the water level rose or something, but the house is now on stilts and occasionally tide gets under it.

Enter the State of Texas which says by law that all beaches are public parks upon which it is illegal to have a building. The State has demanded the house be torn down because the park has moved under it. Lawsuits ensued and the relevant detail is that the homeowners have been prohibited from conducting any repair on the property during appeal.

The only argument that interests me is the Constitutional one. Under the Constitution, the government can take land but must pay a fair value for it. I've blogged on this before. The homeowners claim the State is taking their property without compensating them for it. The State says it is the Gulf of Mexico which is taking the land.

In essence the State is citing to riparian law (rivers; I forget the name for the law as applied to lakes) principles that when the water changes the contours of your land gradually, you simply lose land. Accretion.

In my humble opinion, the State loses. It is not Accretion that is requiring the home to be torn down before the land is fully gone; it is the law of the State of Texas. Likewise, the law of the State of Texas prohibits any repair. Thus the law of Texas is TAKING property rights before the Gulf does. Compensation is due. State loses.

Obama's running mate

I will be dreadfully disappointed if "Hillary" becomes Obama's running mate. Surely he realizes that a lot of his support voted for him because he isn't a Clinton or a bush; because he's new and not so tarnished by partisan infighting. If he takes on Hillary Clinton, he will pick up all of her negatives without really attracting all that many new voters. It would be a HUGE mistake for him.

While I'm talking politics, Florida and Michigan should have had no votes in the Democrat convention. They broke the rules and this is a PARTY affair wherein the party is choosing its nominee. If you want to participate in the party's choosing, you need to play by the party's rules. Obama did. He did not campaign in Michigan because of the party rules. Clinton, ever the opportunist, did. She and those states should not be rewarded for breaking the rules and Obama should not be punished for following them. It would have sent a clear message about the integrity of the Democrat party had Clinton had her delegates seated.

4.0 is WOTC's Vista

I got to look over D&D 4^th ed this weekend. If you aren’t into RPG’s, skip this blog entry.

I liked some of the aspects of it. Rangers look good. The idea of taking 10 is pretty well thought out. Low level wizards don’t blow through their bag of tricks in 3 rounds and then sit around playing bridge with the opposing wizards while the combat finishes.

Some things I simply noted like there are less skills.

And then there is the other stuff:

SUMMARY: I think that someone at WOTC looked at how well WoW is doing and miniatures games and said, hey, let’s try to be everything to everyone. So now D&D is trying to compete with video games and mini games and will probably discover that it can’t do video game as well as, well, a video game. But in so doing, it will have alienated its core audience which liked it because it wasn’t, well, a video game. It wants to be everything to everyone.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Apparently, movement in terms of feet was too complicated for folks so now your character has movement in terms of “squares.” That’s right my dwarf now move 5 squares, but your elf moves 7 squares.

Now you advance in power much faster, piling on tricks, powers, ability score increases, etc. at a frenzied pace. We must have instant gratification! And if you don’t like what you picked, why you can swap out. It caters to the, “This one time I had this uber awesome PC who killed the Gods and took their place and had this magic hammer that blah blah blah.

There are now epic levels (21-30) where you can save not just the world, but several worlds. This is adventure on the scale of Frodo (or beyond), not the scale of Conan. And when you hit 30, you graduate to immortality and it’s time to start again. Just like a video game. You can win. Oh yeah, and it hints that every PC is “special” as in destined for great things.

It’s over-organized. We have not only classes, but roles like defender, leader, controller, and striker. Read that as “Damage sink,” “Support,” Mass effects,” and “Concentrated damage.” Every class is then assigned to one of the roles. It’s D&D for people who can’t write with capital letters.

We also took another step away from random stat generation. The book suggests (and the RPGA requires) that you have a stat line of 16 14 13 12 11 10. Period. Now, if you’re paying attention you will realize that depending on the race you choose, you can end up with an 18 in something. (Races now only have positive bonuses; no negs. Apparently, the new happier D&D felt negatives were a no sell.) Thus certain races have affinity towards certain classes because they will score higher. If this feels like a cave to the anti random side, it is. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to GURPS, the all point bases, all skill based, system.

EVERYONE gets magic. Depending on your role we call it different tings, but everyone gets it. For Wizards, it’s spells for example. In old D&D parlance it would be called special abilities or some such, but the lines have further blurred. Moreover, some of the old spells have become RITUALS. Anyone can learn the feat that lets them cast Rituals. Ergo, everyone gets magic. The only advantage to being a Wizard (the only member of the controller role) is that you get rituals easier, faster, and at first level.

Races – We added two new races. We got Eladininin or some such and we got Tieflings. The Eladrin (however it’s spelled) are essentially grey elves or high elves. They live in or on the boarder of Feyland (the local adventurer amusement park) and are arcane in nature. They are the mysterious, we do wizardry, kind of elf. Then there are elf elves who are the we skulk around in forests elves.

Tieflings… Tieflings are descendants of human nobles who made pacts with infernal beings. The infernal beings and the humans who made the deals were defeated, but the infernalism tainted the blood of their descendants. From a role-playing perspective they are incredibly interesting albeit perhaps limited to their world and their history. The book says they make natural warlocks…. Better explain that term.

We have three spell classes now. Clerics (who get their powers from being invested, not from their deity), wizards, and warlocks. Warlocks have the flavor of the old witch kit for mages from the old 2^nd Ed AD&D. They made a pact with some eldritch power. In the core book that is either Fey, Infernal, or Stars. (Who knew astrology and stars are eldritch powers.) It says nothing about having to serve the empowering entity’s ends or selling your soul or anything like that. Doesn’t say what kind of deal you made. Kinda unfilled in there methinks. We do know that the Fey Warlocks use Charisma to power their effects, Infernalists use Con, and Star Warlocks use both.

Anyway, Tieflings get bonuses to Charisma and Intelligence. Now you will realize that this means they can achieve 18s in those two areas. What uses those abilities. Well Int is the primary qualification for a wizard. Seems the Tiefling would be good at that, but if you look at the book, when it lists who are the good wizards, it omits Tieflings. Apparently since they don’t have a dex bonus to increase their AC, I guess. So they are supposed to be good Warlocks and part infernal. But they don’t have a con bonus. So that means that they probably would be best at being FEY warlocks. WTH? But if you look at their feats, they have racial feats that relate to fire and fear and the infernal stuff. Okay so we say they are infernal and are often warlocks, check. We give them feats that seem to back that us, check. And then we set up the warlock class so infernalism is the type of Warlock they are least qualified to be. Now that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? (The ones who get Con bonuses are dwarves and Humans (if they select to do so)).

And while we are ranting, why do we need two spell casting classes, Warlocks and Wizards. It smacks of Palladium RPG doesn’t it? Surely Palladium wasn’t taking market share.

We also have many more contested skill roles. If I want to affect Bob, I roll and attack and Bob roles a resistance. Doesn’t this sound White Wolf-esque? There is some small amount of trying to beat a target number like AC or ability DCs, but there is less of it. Saves are much dimished in roll as well, mostly to ending on-going effects.

D&D it seems has moved away from being its unique self and more towards being generic. Pity. Further, the changes are dramatic enough that the only way to see the thing is as an entirely new game. Well, if I want to learn an entirely new game, I have a lot of options: 5 Rings, Rune, Palladium, GURPS, Rolemaster, Exalted, and so on. The ONLY reason to stick with D&D is market share because WOTC has such a large part of the market share. No matter how awful the changes and how much they screw up, they are too large a voice in the market they have to be considered.

It’s kind of like Microsoft’s Vista that way. The shame is that there is no Apple in this market.