Talk:Water Weird (4e Creature)

Featured Article Nomination

— This article became a featured article! --Green Dragon (talk) 12:34, 20 January 2013 (MST)

• Comment — Links need to be added to the 4e Index. I changed some things, like their Amorphize, and let me know if that works with this idea please. It looks pretty good though. --Green Dragon (talk) 07:55, 27 November 2012 (MST)

Thanks for taking a look. Well, you caught some grammar errors, which is good. But some of the other changes I believe need to be reverted:

• "piles of bullywug and human skulls" is to imply that the pile is comprised of both bullywug skulls and human skulls.
• Serpent lash must specify "(one creature)" as its target (just "creature" doesn't make sense).
• The intent of Amorphize is that, after being hurt, it withdraws into the water to allow other monsters to take the slack. Having it unable to attack during this period is deliberate, and in my playtest it worked well for pacing.
• With Drowning, I think throwing in the term "elemental form" confuses things, and the singular (rather than plural) terminology is deliberate - this effect is applied to each target specified in the attack. Marasmusine (talk) 14:53, 27 November 2012 (MST)

On a less critical note, I picked up the habit of bolding a word in the lead sentence from Wikipedia's style guide. What do you think about adopting this? Marasmusine (talk) 15:06, 27 November 2012 (MST)

Oh, so that is just a pile of skulls. Doesn't really matter either way.

For Serpent Lash then maybe it should be specified that the double attack effect can be applied to a new target.

My only problem with Amorphize is that it cant do anything in this form. Making the water elemental bloodied becomes, in effect, a free round for the opposition. It hinders the water elemental. I changed that to counter this problem, but I think that this needs to be addressed.

In any case the wording on Drowning can be made more clear. At level 3 that just seems like a lot of fluff wording added to the gaming table.

We will follow Wizards formatting to stay consistent with the game unless it can be improved in a good manner. I don't see why bolding anything would do that. --Green Dragon (talk) 12:13, 28 November 2012 (MST)

• Serpent Lash / Double Attack uses the wording used by WotC (example, the dire bear's claw / maul, and many others). The creature uses its at-will twice. Each time it uses it, it targets one creature. It doesn't have to be the same creature unless that's specified.
• Yes, I think amorphize does need something else. My first thought is to let the weird use its healing surge when it re-emerges, which is fine but it goes against the current trend of having quicker battles (this would serve to slow it down). Maybe it can get some other bonus, or do something particularly nasty to anything it is grabbing.
• Drowning - I do need to make this spot on, since it's a signature ability of the weird. Here are the key pieces of game information in this wording, which I've made as concise as I can in the statblock: 1) It can sustain the grab on all its victims as a minor action, instead of a minor action on each, 2) Victims are considered to be deprived of air (so an actual water terrain feature isn't a prerequisite), 3) It doesn't need to waste a standard action to attack its grabbed victims, and therefore have a chance at hurting, for drowning purposes (otherwise it would have to hold a victim underwater for over 3 minutes, which is outside the scope of an encounter). As far as I can tell, these are mechanics required for it to work as intended, so I'm not sure what you mean by "fluff wording". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Marasmusine (talk • contribs) 14:44, 28 November 2012‎ (MST). Please sign your posts.

I'll continue to give comments after you have implemented some of the above mentioned changes.

Maybe for Drowning something like "The water weird damages creatures it is grabbing as if they have taken damage for the purpose of holding their breath whilst deprived of air." That just seems to get the point across a little easier to me. --Green Dragon (talk) 14:27, 29 November 2012 (MST)

Because it is an attack, the effect description needs to be in singular tense, rather than plural. Compare with WoTC monsters with similar attacks, for example the Cave Roper's "reel" attack from the Monster Vault. The grab sustain also needs to be explicit. Marasmusine (talk) 16:22, 29 November 2012 (MST)

Amorphize seems much better now.

I think that "The water weird sustains its grab and damages a creature it is grabbing for the purpose of holding its breath whilst deprived of air" is more understandable. --Green Dragon (talk) 17:49, 29 November 2012 (MST)

I have tentatively moved it to a Trait instead. Perhaps using up two minor actions to sustain grabs on two victims isn't such a big deal. Marasmusine (talk) 15:44, 30 November 2012 (MST)

I find that much more understandable. This is still missing links to the 4e Index. I put the paraphrased text in {{quote}}, since it comes from a source. --Green Dragon (talk) 22:22, 30 November 2012 (MST)

Okay, stupid question: What's the point of the 4e index? Let's say I link to "cold" - the index tells me which book and page to look at (from the original set). If I don't have those books, that's no help. If I do have those books, I already know to look there. And if I'm not using the original 2008 core books, but their 2010 Essentials replacement (Dungeon Master's Kit and the "Heroes of..." books) it's both unhelpful and confusing. Marasmusine (talk) 02:28, 2 December 2012 (MST)

The 4e Index helps users find terms and things they may be unfamiliar with easily. Links to it should be added to those things which may help a user find something, but not to things which are in other books (like what you are talking about above) etc. --Green Dragon (talk) 11:58, 8 December 2012 (MST)

But the books I'm talking about aren't "other books", they are core books. I'll take an example from the top of the index: "action point". Let's say Bob is a new DM and he's not familiar with that term. The index refers him to page 41 and 123 of the Dungeon Master's Guide. He's a new player, so he has the newest 4e books. He checks his Dungeon Master's Book on those pages but doesn't find anything about action points on those pages. That's because it's actually page 153 in that 2010 publication. It would have been faster and less confusing for him if he had just used the index in his DM book (or used the online D&D Compendium). If you think this is acceptable, then fine, I'll go ahead and put the links in. Marasmusine (talk) 12:16, 8 December 2012 (MST)

Adding the links to accomplish the above that I mentioned will do a few things. After adding the links, the ones which have multiple sources need to be changed on 4e Index to read something like "multiple entries: entry1 location, entry2 location, etc". This will then help users navigate D&D content, like how the D&D Compendium does. --Green Dragon (talk) 18:24, 8 December 2012 (MST)

Hookay, there we go. I didn't link the Aquatic and Water keywords, because the blue-on-dark-green didn't look nice. Marasmusine (talk) 17:35, 17 December 2012 (MST)

I think it looks great. Please succeed this nomination, add Template:Featured Article to this page, and change Template:Featured Article Synopsis to this page. --Green Dragon (talk) 15:21, 18 December 2012 (MST)

Hang on, where did the idea for the humanoid appearance come from? Please bare in mind I wanted it as close to the 1st Edition creature as possible. Here are some points of reference:

1st edition	2nd edition	Baldur's Gate

Is there some bit of D&D lore regarding this creature I'm not aware of? Marasmusine (talk) 16:58, 18 December 2012 (MST)

SRD:Elemental Type makes mention of "unless generally humanoid in form" and a lot of elementals are humanoid in appearance. I found this image and thought that it was nice, and I thought that at this level it would be interesting to have the player's Perception checks make a difference for this creature. That was my reasoning. --Green Dragon (talk) 13:25, 21 December 2012 (MST)

If you don't mind I'll remove it. I would consider it if this was an original creature, but it's a "remake". Note also that this creature's type is "beast" (elemental is an origin in 4e). Should we get anyone else's input before finishing the nomination? Marasmusine (talk) 14:11, 21 December 2012 (MST)

Ya, that's fine you can keep it just as a serpent shape. I wonder if we could find another image though, since the human in that image is just so tiny compared to the Level 3 Water Weird. --Green Dragon (talk) 19:23, 21 December 2012 (MST)

I agree, it's not ideal. I will track down a better one. Marasmusine (talk) 01:10, 22 December 2012 (MST)