FF14

Laga, I just hit the level cap for the free trial(20) and I was trying to decide if I wanted to just explore, or start a new character, when I realized - In this game you can join guilds for the other combat classes the same way you do the gathering/crafting classes! I could theoretically max out on all the classes with the same character! So I'm working my way through Arcanist now.

Hey, what did you mean when you said tanking was really rough in this game(I, er, haven't run a group quest yet.)?

FFXIV

Ah yes if you're following the story line... I don't want to give too much away. A thing happens that ends up in you visiting (I think you started in Ul Dah so...) Gridania and Limsa Lominsa. Then you'll be asked to go back to Limsa to deal with some pirates. I think the quest is called "It's Probably Pirates". This sends you to a dungeon called Satasha via the Duty Finder. The low level dungeons all require four players, a Tank, a healer, and two DPS. As Tank it is your job to get all the aggro (called enmity in this game.) However baddies tend to attack whoever is causing the most damage (DPS) and anyone who throws Healing Spells (your healer). When I'm tanking I find I am constantly losing enmity.

World of Warcraft is going to be setting up some kind of in-world memorial for Robin Williams.

Which reminds me, Laga, I don't think I ever thanked you properly for showing me the Gygax memorial in D&D Online.

aw you're very welcome.

I didn't find out RW was an avid WoW player until yesterday.

I didn't find out RW was an avid WoW player until yesterday.

I didn't know either, though I knew he was a D&D player when he was younger. I also didn't realize he grew up locally. (Chicago burbs).

The more dungeons I run as DPS the more I think maybe I'm not such a bad tank after all. At least I try to turn the mobs away from the party. More and more I find myself running with tanks who just charge straight in and, as my best attacks are from the flank or the rear, I find I have to run around or through the mob to get in position. Some tanks keep shifting back and forth so I can't even try to use my rear attack because by the time I set it up I never know what position the enemy will be in.

D&D: I've now read through the PHB, once at least, and I like it quite a lot. A few encouraging signs of the times:

Artwork. Females depicted in the book are dressed and posed sensibly. Characters aren't all white, and the styles of armour and clothing and such aren't all European.

In the character creation info, it has a couple of paragraphs with some very inclusive language about choice of gender identity, sexuality and such.

In the character creation info, it has a couple of paragraphs with some very inclusive language about choice of gender identity, sexuality and such.

So happy about this! I* haven't had a chance to check out the full PHB yet, let alone play the new rules, but some of the gender expression stuff was in the preview/starter-pack whatsis, and I'm so glad to hear they're following through with other signs o' the times in the full game as well.

* by which I mean my half-orc butch, Petunia, of course.

WotC has now made available a 60-page pdf of DM info, being mostly stats for a bunch of monsters (including Giant Weasel, Flying Sword and Awakened Shrub). [link]

I'm still reading through the classes section in my PHB (about halfway through Wizard) and I'm liking most of it so far. Kind of miffed about paladins no longer being paragons of righteousness and justice, but at least it's a decent step back from the "paladins of any alignment" mess that was in 4E. I'm not sure how much I like Smites being tied to spells (and no longer being Smite Evil) but I definitely like that they only trigger on a hit, so you're not wasting your extremely limited smiting ability for the day when you roll that natural 1. (Pathfinder's solution was that when you declared a smite, it lasted against the chosen foe the entire combat. Which made paladins awesome against big bad solo monsters like dragons and demons, but also meant you were hesitant to declare a smite against anything that wasn't clearly a "boss" monster.)

I did skip ahead to the feats section and read through that. None of them really blew me away, but I could see where they would be valuable enough to certain character concepts to forgo an ability increase for them.

I do agree that the diversity in the PHB art and text (which builds on what kind of started in 3E and Pathfinder greatly expanded with their own iconics) is welcome to see. It is weird, after almost 15 years, to see art of random adventurers throughout the book instead of specific iconic characters. But it definitely evokes the old-school feel of previous editions they were going for. I dug out my old 2nd Ed PHB (the original style, not the terrible black-and-red covered one) and was amused at how seemingly random a lot of the art was.