I’ve got some tutorials on my site about lighting in DAZ Studio – just plough through the tutorials section and should find them.

The best suggestion I can make though is to grab some of the V4 Pose Kits from MDC’s freestuff – they come with poses, light and cameras (set the camera’s focal distance to 65 for them to look right in DAZ Studio!) and you’re away.

The great thing is that they just use 2 or 3 lights and look terrific. Set the Deep Shadow Maps for all the lights to about 60% and render away. Seriously, you’ll learn more about how to place lights from those free sets than you will anyplace else.

Hope that helps!

Though I doubt it, maybe they will correct some of the mistakes in the last two movies

Keep up the good work!

When it comes to free clothes (or anything else for that matter), both ShareCG and Renderosity’s freebie section should be your first port of call. Both have very good search facilities too, so hunt for just Clothing for V4 or M4, and you should find plenty.

I also recommend MDC’s freebies – they’re mainly poses for V4 & M4 and they also include cameras and lights which is a also terrific way to improve your light collection.

Then there’s Aery Soul who makes beautiful, ethereal clothing for V4, and provides a some free items (such as her Elven Strapped outfit) which are viewed as pretty essential downloads.

Hope that helps!

I look forward to seeing your next one

I definitely agree that they are two very different systems. I see pros and cons to both (I still haven’t played 4th yet so you know) I will say that 4e seems to be easy for Hack and slash style of Role Playing where 3.x has all teh hack and slash but still allows more for the non hack and slash, especially for those who are not great speakers to begin with in real life. The other day my players and I had a quick conversation about this and one thing I compared the role play aspect of 4e to was the lack of RP mechanics in 2e.

I ended up “writing” my own homebrew rules (using the SRD as a starting point.) Curiously enough, when 4e came out, there turned out to be many similarities. My guess is that enough people were more interested in gaming than full simulation to warrant the rewrite.

I believe many of the details can be left to the role-player (so much so that in my homebrew, even the races are an RP-element only, there are no penalties or benefits to choosing different races as far as abilities are concerned.) I know that won’t satisfy some people, but I’d bet that WoTC sensed (or discovered through research) that it would satisfy enough of their audience to make it worthwhile (beyond just selling more products).

If it’s not really important… then why worry about it in the first place? Just train Athletics.

And if you want your fighter to have studied History or to know how to pick a lock? Much, much easier under 4e. Spend one feat and you’re set. In 3e, cross-class ranks meant you could never be good enough at it to succeed on picking any lock that was meant to be a challenge — and any lock you could pick, the rogue would have already opened. With his eyes shut.

The tradeoff in saved time, and versatility more than makes up for this little shortcoming, IMO.

D&D 4E is at once different and the same. It still has Dungeons, Dragons, and loot. It still has magic, heroes, and villains. What is it specifically that makes it “less” D&D than 3rd edition? Endless bookkeeping? Long drawn out character creation? Unbalanced Splat feats and classes? There are 100 games that have dungeons AND dragons in them…so which one is “Real” D&D?

I found that once I started playing and DMing, I became less and less tolerant of 3E’s quirks. It was a gradual process that has culminated in actually liking it.

Addressing your specific issue of Athletics. I’m a athelete, although admittedly, not as good a one as I was in the past… I’ve trained my reflexes, stamina, my hand-eye co-ordination, strength through a variety of sports, martial arts and exercises. I have friends who are not atheletes. When I go out and try out a new athletic activity, guess who picks it up faster and is competent more quickly? Me, or the non-athletic person?

Same pricipal with computers, or RPG’s. Someone who is experienced (dare I say “trained”) picks up new applications of the skill faster and more easily than someone who is less experienced. This system doesn’t address fine gradiations of various skills, but it addresses the general issues of who is good at what in a way that is both appropriate and consistent with the type of game that 4e is trying to be – more streamlined, more flexible, more action-hero style.

Sorry to rant, but I think you should step back from what you’re used to – what wanting to play DnD has made you willing to put up with, really, and take a look at why you play – what parts you really enjoy and what parts you just deal with. 4e seems to me to have minimized the “just deal with it” and maximized the “cool stuff with my friends”. I think that not knowing if my character is better at climbing than at swimming is no loss. I didn’t really care before unless I had to make a climbing roll, and I really don’t care now.

Saying “it sucks!!!!” is different than “it’s not what I want in a skill system.”

I love the streamlining of skills, because it fits with D&D very well. I can say my fighter is athletic without having to divide my skill points between climb and swim, and having him be anemic in both. It’s also easier to pick up a roleplaying-specific skill (like maybe my fighter is a history buff) instead of it being almost impossible to have a decent enough bonus.

There are some games where I love to have tons of skills to chose from and be able to say that my character is a good climber but not a good swimmer, but D&D has never been one of them for me. I’d much rather play something like GURPS that covers all the skills specifically, or another system where you make up your own skills, but 3e’s inbetween list between streamlined and general never jived with me.

No when I used bluff, diplomacy and Intimidate for an example I made a mistake. I got fixed on it because of something I was doing and misplaced it in my head and it ended up in here. That was just a stupid mistake on my part.

I agree that skills in 4th edition are probably more flexible. However I believe that to be a problem in its self. For example, look at Athletics. Someone who is good at climbing might not be a good swimmer. Someone might be a good swimmer but couldn’t jump more than an inch to save their life. In 4th edition if you take athletics as a skill you are good at climbing, jumping and swimming. Now there are some feats that will boost certain aspects of a skill, or at least appears that way. Example: Sure Climber. It allows you to climb at normal speed and +1 to all Athletic checks. So in 4th edition if you are good in one thing you are good in all things. 3x allows you to be good at one thing but not necessarily all. Now before you jump down my throat I am also away if the player is a good role player he will be able to decide on his and role play out if he is good at climbing but not at swimming. But that is still hard to do.

RE: Patriarch
I really like your idea of adding fluff to skills where characters explain how and/or why they are good at a skill.

My next 4th edition character should be out next week (classes just started so my time became more limited, and I am currently getting over a cold). I look forward to more comments so keep them coming.

4th editions best thing is the combat system due to the simplicity of it. It’s weakness however is not the character creation system. Social character will have their fun in 4th edition as well.. and if for some reason they don’t. That’s when you have to point the angry finger at your DM and not the system.

An interesting addition (house rule maybe) would be to add 1 “chrome” trained, non-combat skill that the player could fill in. So I could have “Sewing”, Susan would have “Armorer” and Tim would have “Gnomish Trivia”. It would be non-standard but might “fix” one of the issues with 4E.

I’d go one step farther and say that it lacks everything from the past 30+ years of D&D. 4e truly represents a complete break from all that came before. Sure, it’s inspired by 30 years of D&D, but so is World of Warcraft.

I have been creating a series of 4E pre-generated characters on NPC-A-Day (soon up to seventh level) in a manner similar to yours: I think about the character at each level and then choose feats and powers as suits them at that level.

I agree with the statement that it is somewhat more difficult to distinguish one character from another in the same class upon based skills, powers and feats. I agree that the skill set is rather limited and if it were not for the ever inflating DC’s the difference between trained and not would quickly become moot. In 3.5 a trained character that focus on a skill will become a god at that skill; those who don’t are reduced to “helping” or looking on in mock awe.

4E does fix “possibly over-fixes” the multi-class issues where characters have very high saves, most of the skill list, and a bevy of feats and features. It also removes the caster lag of 3.5. It also feels a good bit more balanced.

The big disadvantage with 4E character generation is the lack of everything when compared to the 5+ year body of work that is 3.5. I have little fear that WotC (though my wallet is shaking) will work to alleviate this issue.

I must say that it is taking me the better part of 2 hours to level 5 characters up one level: about 20-30 min to choose powers, feats, stats and assign magic items to all the characters; the rest, 15 min each, is spent updating the math and the character sheet. I figure that with HeroForge or PCGen I could probably finish each level in about 1/2 the time. This is more of a tool issue than a system issue.

Thanks,
Snorkey

It really comes down to how you think about character creation, and there’s a large segment of roleplayers who have been left out in the cold. It’s understandable that the ones who don’t think about character creation can’t figure out what the heck we’re talking about…those kinds of misunderstandings fuel most of the arguing about RPGs that goes on all over the web. It should be enough to simply say, “I can’t make a character the way I want anymore,” and leave it at that.

For a character in a real game, I would go a step further and attach “fluff text” to skill training or skill focus. Put down a note describing how your character became better. Did they receive formal training? Read a manual? Were they given an important bit of advice? Did they overcome some character flaw?

By linking skill improvements to feats, 4e elevates the importance of skills in the well rounded character. Gradual, general improvements come along with the experience of leveling up, but if you are going to excel in a particular area, it’s a big deal. A feat, if you will.

If you put a couple points into each of your class skills, what you end up with is a character who’s good at nothing.

In order to have a good chance of succeeding on a skill check of the appropriate level, you need to max out your ranks, or close to it.

Almost all skills in 3e either end up with max or near-max ranks for this reason, or with a very small number of ranks (for trained-only use, backstory Professions and Crafts, and synergy bonuses).

This is one of the things I disliked about 3e. 4e’s system seems better, so far.

If you want someone convincing then it’s built in much the same way as 3e with Training (and possibly Skill Focus) in Bluff, Diplomacy and/or Intimidate. The difference is that can be done for pretty much ALL classes, not just Rogues/Bards. 4e give you a route to create a convincing Charismatic character regardless of class.

And there’s none of that headache-inducing number juggling to meet Prestige Class prerequisites

And thanks for the link to the 4e character sheet – that’s excellent, easily the best fillable one I’ve seen so far.

I agree, the lack of information on habits, society etc. is a major downside for 4th edition

A thought on the fourth edition comment – go and take yourself a 3rd or 2nd edition supplement, you might even get a pdf or two for free over at the offical sites… It’s more than worth it, since most of the useful information on habits, society and way-of-thinking has been stripped in the 4th edition. (Which is one of my the few points that I think are bad with the 4th edition and newbies – it’s hardly about giving you a feeling as a dmg for the monsters – it’s more the killing aspect and less the social one).

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