D&D Encounters: D&D Fortune Cards

Can’t say I am looking forward to this. I thought the FLR cards were awful, and so I was glad when plays had to at least earn reknown cards in encounters but these things are a whole new level of arbitrary nonsense.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Gathering.

Haha!

Anyways on a more serious note, I will try them see how they play out. I think it is a good idea for newbies, but for more experienced players, it will just make it easier to win encounters and harder for the DM to DM properly. Oh, well. We shall see.

I think I’d like the cards better if some bad fortune was included in the booster – the worst it apparently gets is having to discard or not be able to draw again. I’d like to see something like bad footing that slows your movement or being knocked off-balance and suffering an attack penalty.

Maybe WotC will provide similar cards for DMs, so that the monsters can have a few boons, too; I’d be okay with balancing things out in that way. But right now, this product just looks like a pack of free PC buffs in a game already weighted in favor of the PCs.

I think this is a good idea overall. You dont have to use em if you dont want to in oyur home game, and for a thing like encounters, it gives the FLGS that incentive with D&D as it may create the repeat buy customer like they see with magic cards during in store play.

Ill wait and see how it actually plays out, but I think its a good idea for that environment, and can be a cool addition to D&D if handled corectly.

hate these so much

My apologies for repeating this post, as I have posted this write up on Sunyaku’s blog as well.

I received a nice DM gift pack from Wizards with a cool calendar, some DM status tokens (if you buy their DM token kit in the wooden box, they are similar to those tokens), 1 special DM promo Fortune card and two packs of fortune cards. Now that I have a few packs of cards, I think I can talk about them without as much speculation.

Looking through the cards, some of them are straight up beneficial:

Defense – Only a Flesh Wound – Gain a +5 bonus to a death saving throw.

Attack – Full Speed Ahead! – Charge and gain combat advantage against the target.

Tactic – Distracting Banter – During your turn, take a move action to allow one ally within 5 squares of you shift 3 squares as a free action.

Others include risk, as Alric was hoping for:
Tactic – Risky Move – Shift your speed. At the end of the shift, roll a d20. On a result of 9 or lower, you fall prone.

Attack – Reckless Onslaught – Reroll missed attack roll. You must use second roll, even if it is lower. You then fall prone and take damage equal to your level.

I like Distracting Banter and a few others, but what it boils down to is an extra action for each person, each round (if they choose). This is exactly what I do not want, as it adds to a battle that takes too long anyway and is going to slow down the game. Essentials came out to minimize and simplify the game for new people, and the next second Wizards whips up additional rules and actions with these cards. I enjoy 4th edition, but one of my big criticisms are battles are much longer, I believe this has the potential to add to the length.

I am in a rough spot. As a DM, I do not have to allow the cards, but as the coordinator for my store, who pays nothing but is given tons of resources, I feel compelled to at least not block the possibility of sales, so I will still allow them.

My tentative solution is to only allow them to be played with the spending of an action point. I feel much better allowing someone to use an AP to play Distracting Banter before fireballing an area than to just letting someone take an extra action every round.

I may even make a community deck, so everyone can use cards and is not forced to buy any, though that would still favor people customizing their deck to some small degree. Since AP usually only occur once every two weeks, I do not see the advantage being too big.

I am a big fan of earned renown cards, and have already told my players they can use them next season as well. I am not going to hand over the 100 point cards on Wednesday just to tell my players they can never use them.

I see this as a way for wizards to make more money. I prefer the free encounter benefits that we have recieved. I think wizards is trying to recoup lost money from the promotional stuff. Fine by me but I doubt I will be buying any.

The rules for using fortune cards don’t say that they are for players only. Therefore DM’s can use them too. This may help with balance issues.

Admitedly the DM’s only got the one deck of cards, but with all the monsters on the table the odds that the DM can use the card he has
are better.

If you like the idea behind the cards, but dislike the collectible and radomized aspects, then Paizo’s “GameMastery: Plot Twist” cards might be more like what you are looking for.

It looks like basically the same idea, except:
– Paizo’s product is a complete, uniform deck of roughly 50 cards
– each card represents a plot twist theme, open to player and/or DM interpretation
– suggested interpretations on the cards include a purely mechanical effect, and four sample alternative storytelling effects, which might have positive effects on a player, or negative effects on an NPC (or vice-versa if the card is used by a DM)
– use of the card is subject to DM veto or alternative interpretation, leaving control of the story ultimately in the DM’s hands
– the DM may “build” the deck by removing troublesome plot twists, if desired
– the DM can use the Plot Twist cards between games to help with creating the story, the cards can also be used by NPCs, given out as rewards to supplement treasure, etc.
– the cards were designed to be system-independent, so they can be used in a variety of game systems (I am planning to use some of these cards as an optional rule for the “Castle Ravenloft” board game, for example.)

An example of one of these cards:

COVERT OPERATION – effect suggestions:
[Target receives +10 circumstance bonus on a Stealth check.] Or,
– An action has unseen ramifications.
– A hireling has motivations of his own.
– A secret society has designs against you.
– A mission has greater importance.

I am also an Encounters Organizer… and the I run at store has also decided not to carrythem.

As someone who has new players each week, when I gave out some of the free packs I actually had a new player ask “Do I have to use them?” and they decided to not even open the pack. It adds more steps, more things for new players to try and figure out each round and really adds another, unnecessary, complication for brand new players.

I was fortunate enough to have some left-over reward cards from previous seasons of encounters and I give one of these to each new player. For those that have both, I allow them a choice to use either fortune cards or old reward cards… and I find it is about 50/50 split.

I’m afraid a lot of the WotC decisions and products since September 2010 have done nothing for the game and have actually hurt the brand. I am up to 4 tables each week for encounters and allow 4e characters (not just Essentials) and the only people using Essentials are those that are new and use pre-gens or are new and have no books so buy a subscription to use the online generator. 100% of the remaining people do not use Essentials rules.