4th edition D&D: game store owners take a sneek peak

[DidelotM1]

I took this from someone else's post in another forum I visit. For all you 4th Edition people that want spoilers on some of the 'new stuff'. Again the following is NOT my writing... enjoy.

* Nearly every class has 4 At-Wills available to chose from at 1st level, Wizard has 5. Same goes for Encounters. Fighter, Paladin and Rogue have 3 Dailys, everyone else has 4. More become available at higher levels.

* The Dragonborn breath type is chosen at character creation. Also, Dragonborn Females do have boobs, at least in the picture.

* Multi-Classing requires a related Stat of 13+. Each class has an Initiate Feat associated with it. Get to pick 1 Skill from class, also get 1 specified power. There are also 3 Power Swap Feats starting at 4th level. Swap any (Encounter Attack, Utility, Daily) Power you have for one of equal or lower level from your chosen Multi-Class. The 3 feats are of different levels, one for each power type (Encounter, Utility, Daily.)

* 2-weapon fighting is a feat, but just gives a damage bonus, not an extra attack. The ranger can take an at-will that gives him an extra attack.

* Shifters are actually cool. Once the hit bloodied, they get an ability that kicks in and last the last of the encounter that adds +2 spd and I believe + dmg (for shifter: razorclaw). The other shifter had another + ability that kicked in at bloodied and lasted the whole time.

* Rogues are AMAZING. Like seriously, damn near Op. At 3rd level they get a utility power that lets them re-roll any bluff check (Trigger: when player rolls bluff, and doesn't like the look of the roll.) They also have a nice garrotte ability that does 7w and can be held for a bit...fun thing about holding it is that attacks on the rogue have a possibility of hitting the person you're choking). They get auto-escpape grapple abilities, and lots of things playing off Combat advantage (including one that we figured could add 7W dmg +10d8 +dex mod). Very sick.

* Starpact warlocks can throw you into the stars and bring you back bent...and infernal pact locks can banish someone to hell for a time (keeping them there for up to 3 rounds with a minor action).

* If you take multiclassing paragon path option, you get an at will ability of your new class at 11, and a new encounter and daily at upper levels.

* Minotaurs are a MM race, and get a fun per encounter charge attack, and +2str and +2 con.

* Doppelgangers get a "look like another humanoid" ability that's at will effectively.

* Gnomes. GNOMES. Gnomes are insane. Gnomes can *turn invis* once per encounter after they've taken dmg. They can also choose to roll "hide" instead of intialtive at the start of an encounter. Hello Gnome Rogue. And by "hello" I mean, "Please, for the love of god, stop stabbing me in the back." My friends quote was "Man, I hate gnomes! They're stupid! But now I can't stop picturing a pack of gnomes sitting in the trees doing the clicking noise that the Predators make in the alien movies. Stupid stealth gnomes. I'm going to have to play one."

* Bugbears get a dmg bonus for combat advantage I believe.

* Rituals: range from cheap to learn and cast to expensive. As an example: Raise Dead costs 650GP to learn uses a 500gp reagent, and "scales" at levels. At lowever levels, it's "free" except for the reagent cost." At medium levels it's 5,000gp. And at epic levels it's 50,000. Oh, and the raised person gets a penalty of -1 until you've passed "3" milestones.

* Oh, and another interesting/weird feature....there is an easy to cast ritual that clears 1 status ailment (curse, disease, etc) each time it's cast, but with a catch. You make a heal check, and your result ='s how much dmg the TARGET sick player takes while being healed. SO, a low roll can kill outright, or can do dmg. A high roll causes very little dmg.

* Timestop is a spell in 4e. Gives you 2 extra actions, neither of which can be used for attack.

* Trapfinding is part of thievery.

* Tumbling is a Rogue Utility power. Once per encounter, shift half your base move.

* +1 to each of two different stats at about every 4th level, but there are a few levels (I think 11 and 21) where every stat gets a +1 bonus.

* Star Pacts - One ability throws the person into "A dark and twisted area of space", for 7d10 dmg (and this could be off, I didn't write it down) where they float for a bit then fall down "mad"...considering everyone there enemy. They take Opportunity Attacks on everyone, and consider everyone an enemy. I honestly got a psudonatural flavor...not in the "weird tentacle" way, but in the "things man was not meant to know kind of way."

* Warforged were in the book too, but stripped down a bit. Less immunities. And their encounter ability felt to me a bit meh...once per encounter when blodied you heal con mod + 1/2 level. Still, not a bad race...but not so zomg overpowered as they once were.

* The following monsters were listed with some info for use as playable character races: Bugbear, Doppleganger, Drow, Githyanki, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Hobgoblin, Kobold, Minotaur, Orc, Shadar-Kai, Shifter (2 types), Warforged.

* These are the listed Dragons: Black, Blue, Green, Red, White.

* There are 5 Alignments: Good, Lawful Good, Evil, Chaotic Evil, Unaligned. Among the gods I did not see any evil or CE listed.

* I did get a bit on the Warforged: +2 STR, +2 CON, Speed 6, Vision Normal, +2 to Endurance Skill, Can wear armor.

[bibliophile20]

Oooooh... Given that I prefer to play rogues...

[Shoubushi]

I personally always preferred fighter but holy crap I can totally see what guy was talking about when it comes to gnome rogues.

[viridian]

I really hope they don't screw up warlocks, but from what I've heard the level of detail has been drastically reduced... :(

[unknown332]

You can get a moderately good idea as to what 4e will be like here:

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=221806

He has compiled a pdf of all the info on 4e thus far described at WotC site, in their handouts at cons, and so forth.

[Kodra]

So I played my first game of 4e.

Lots of Spoilers in this thread

Initial Thoughts: Wow, they simplified everything down. Playing this game felt like playing a turn based game of World of Warcraft: The Board game. Jokes about World of Warcraft reigned throughout the night.

Core Mechanic: Every d20 roll (except saves) you make has a base of 1/2 your level. This replaces BAB, Skill Ranks, etc. Also, you don't have saving throws persay, you have a Fort, Ref, Will defense score (like an AC) which is 10+1/2 level+Ability (Str or Con for fort, Dex or Int for Ref, Wis or Cha for Will).

I played a Dwarf Fighter Tank Type. This meant I had a high Strength, Con, and Wisdom score (16s or 17s in each). Fighter's core ability is that they can Mark (Read: Taunt) whatever enemy they attack that turn, hit or miss. A Fighter's "Combat Challenge" is special in that if the Marked character Moves (Even a Shift) adjacent to the Fighter OR makes an attack that does not include the Fighter as the target, the Fighter gets to take an Oppurtunity Attack (attack of oppurtunity) but I got a bonus to my attack roll equal to my wisdom. If I hit as a result of the enemy moving, they stop moving. Very effective at tanking stuff with this power.

My actual powers were less impressive. Cleave was good for swinging through minions (lol 1 hp). Tide of Irons pushes people around. Comeback Strike let me hit and heal. I had a power that gave me 5 regen for the rest of the combat after I was bloodied (1/2 HP) (this let me survive the end boss based on my Necro resistance and regen alone).

But on to other characters:

Rogue does rediculous single target damage. They hit have a power to hit Dex vs AC and deals weapon damage + Dex + Cha damage. Then if the enemy is flanked, they do +2d6 (+2d8 with a feat) damage. Needless to say, most of the big mobs were killed by our rogue while I tanked it. Rogues also can do stuns, move an enemy, really control and DPS an enemy.

The Mage does great AoE and Control. There are lots of minions (1 hp) that the Mage could rip through with his AoE spells.

Cleric can heal like crazy. From range. No more up front Clerics. They even have ranged spells that hurt enemies (Wisdom is used to hit) and gives buffs to allies.

Rangers do Ranged DPS and Mark Enemies.

Warlocks Curse Stuff.

Kobolds are really nasty. I mean, REALLY nasty. They can shift all over the place.

Even with the Instant Kill Trap, and the 8th level elite necro, we got beaten down way more thanks to the Kobold mob, than the final encounter of the adventure.

Effing lizards. When did they learn to do DPS.

[Wittgen]

That was interesting. So, was it fun? Better, worse, indifferent? What I'm curious about is whether there was any actual reason for them to release fourth edition now.

[Kodra]

My friend put it best: "Fighting stuff is fun, everything else blows."

If you thought third edition was way to complicated, 4th edition may be a welcome change to you. There are only a few powers you can choose from which makes it really easy. Wizards in 3rd edition had to choose 2-3 spells PER tier a day from a list of around 20 spells per tier (without splat books). That's a very complex decision process. In 4th edition, when they level up, they pick 1 power from a list of 4-5 and that's what they keep for most of the game, all the way up to level 30.

At level 30 you have 2 at will powers, 4 per encounter powers, 4 daily powers, and 7 "utility" powers. These are the powers you have acquired over 30 levels of play. As you can see that's not exactly difficult to throw together a 30th level character.

Making an optimized 30th level character took a friend of mine around 20 hours of researching and planning to put together in 3.5. But he loved every minute of that planning, and he's pretty unimpressed with the level of oversimplification 4e is bringing to the table.

Beyond that, dealing with stuff in the world is odd. There are really no good monsters other than Angels at this point. Every thing in the Monster manual is designed for the PCs to fight.

It feels much less like a world and much more like a game. And that's what I think Wizards is trying to do. Create a system for people to play fantasy combat encounters in for fun. But the whole Role-playing thing just feels odd. You aren't supposed to sell loot if the DM doesn't want you to. You aren't supposed to buy magic items either. You can bring back a friend for 500 gp, and they don't lose a level, they just get a rez sickness.

Meh. I had fun, but that's because we skipped over all of the Roleplaying stuff and just went from fight to fight to fight.

It's a fun combat system. The rest of the game seems a bit lame. I wouldn't want to play a full fledged campaign in it. Fortunately Paizo's rewrite of the rules looks really promising.

Favorite Quote from the PHB:

"Play a Dragonborn if ...
* You want to look like a Dragon"

[Wittgen]

Thanks for the rundown. But roleplaying without out all the roleplaying? Personally, I think that sounds lame, but I bet it'll make it really successful.

Apparently, Penny Arcade did a advertising thing for Wizards of the Coast where they went over and played some fourth edition, and they're now releasing it as a podcast. Some of it is rules explaining, which is sort of boring, but some of it is the PA guys being themselves, which is hilariously jerkish.

I hope the geekery amuses. Check it out here.

[viridian]

From what you described it sounds like they are trying to turn it into a hack and slash MMORPG without a computer. Or the Massively Multiplayer part either.



I'm personally mortified that the hysterical doomsayers were right about "D&D for dummies"...

[forbin]

DnD 3.0 and 3.5 might have seemed ridiculously overcomplicated to newcomers (of which I was one just a few months ago) but it also allowed an incredible amount of versatility and detail in the campaign setting. It sounds like WotC has managed to remove the part of the game that made it all worthwhile to me.

Combat was fun and all, but it was the character interaction with the world and each other that made games truly entertaining. I can pretty much say for sure that I wouldn't be interested in playing 4e if all it turns out to be is a simplified combat system without the RP. I would give it a try to see for sure, but it just doesn't sound fun.

[Kodra]

It's important to remember that roleplaying is still roleplaying. The players can inject it however they want. To me it just feels like they've taken a couple of core thematic concepts and just pissed all over them. This is probably me just becoming an old hack, but things like the removal of Good Dragons, the addition of Dragonborn (which makes Dragons as common as humans in the world, reeks of fanservice to me), the merging of all the pantheons (Goodbye Heironious, Hextor, Hello Bane, Sehanine)... the flavor of the D&D world I loved just feels tarnished.

The one thing that I find interesting is that they've already marked the BBEG for the first set of adventures. It's pretty much a gaurantee that their first couple of Modules are going to focus around Orcus, as that's the guy they spent most of their time developing in the Monster Manual. (Subsequently, he's also the evil guy behind the first adventure arc).

There is probably supposed to be more Roleplaying involved, but we were brought together mostly to kick the tires of the new stuff.

Matt you pretty much hit it on the head when you said it's gonna be like an MMO without a computer.

My group of friends has taken to referring to it as "World of Dungeoncraft".

On a side note, our DM almost quit in frustration at the Marking system.

Already there is a Half-Elf Paladin Exploit that's been discovered, where a Paladin can Mark and Curse an enemy, forcing him to take damage whether he attacks the Paladin or not.

[viridian]

Just got my newsletter from Stiggybaby today, and it had this to say:

The big gaming news is the release of 4th Edition this Friday in time for D&D Game day. I have skimmed through the books and it reads like a pen and paper version of World of Warcraft with much less character customizations and faster Character advancement, with a much higher Character survivability. In fact, you get half of your total hps in negative before you die, ie. if you have 50hp the you die at -25, which is crazy to me. I will have to actually play the system before I can give it a thumbs up or down, but from just looking it over I am not too pleased.

[bibliophile20]

Well, I just got the copies of the Player's Handbook for me and my sister...

I'll report back later with my initial impressions.

[Wittgen]

The PSA guys weigh in on 4th edition, via mostly fallacious rumors. Hilarious.

[bibliophile20]

Alright, initial impressions based solely on my initial look at the book, and not having played a game with it yet.

The Good:

The retraining system; being able to retrain one feat, skill or ability per level will allow for more experimentation on the part of the players, rather than being afraid of permanently committing to a potentially useful but potentially useless ability.

Good-bye spells per day; Vancian magic is no more, thank goodness.

Defining party roles; it allows for a formalized over-class concept that will help with straight comprehension with what a character class can do in the party.


The Neutral:

Gnomes are no longer a core player race

Dragonborn--heavy potential for Munchkinry there.

The new "tier" system; we'll have to see how it plays out; in concept, it's a good idea, but the execution is one that I'm curious about.

The character sheet is two pages. For everything.


The Bad

Barbarians, Bards, Monks, and Sorcerers are no longer core classes; it looked as if Sorcerers were folded into Warlocks, and all four are probably going to have to wait for the expansion books. So there are alot fewer options in terms of character class for beginning characters for the time being.

Skills have been folded into effectively gestalt skills; Jump, climb and swim are now all under Athletics, Open Lock, Slight of Hand, Disable Device and other similar skills are now all under "Thievery", and a few other points and details.

Hit dice and variable hit points per level are gone; a class now gets a certain base amount of hit points per level, adjusted by the Constitution modifier.

[to be finished later; I'm being called down for dinner]

[Kodra]

To weigh in from my own personal play sessions:

Unless a combat is trivial, your gonna need your dailies. So while yeah they got rid of Vancian Magic, now EVERY class goes Nova, and needs to sleep for 6 hours after every fight. Should've done away with Daily Powers altogether...or made them strictly non-combat powers.

[Kevin Schultz]

Read through the first part of the Player's Handbook before I got up to the Class descriptions and my eyes started to bleed...

(General thought - OK changes, but Star Wars Saga seemed to have kept most of the d20 elements I liked while simplifying those I didn't.)

The Good

Skill System - I actually like the gesalt nature of 'em: for me, one of the irritants of 3.0 was the fact that the only reason NOT to take Move Silently and not Hide (or whatever the names of the skills were: sight vs. sound) was if you forgot. This also shores up some of the lame skills (such as leaping) that I never took and blends them into actually more useful skills (climbing) that I did.

Consolidated Feat/Power level table - to me, this seems like a good deal: everyone gets the same amount of feats, and the same number of powers. It's a simplification and generalization of the system, and it looks to be a good balancing feature.

Goodbye Vancian magic! - While I liked the theory (keeping words of power in your head), I never cared for it as implemented in D&D; it felt too arbitrary and, for lack of a better word, artificial. (Note that I define a "good" magic system as Ars Magica.)

proscriptive guidance for monsters - and in flipping a bit through the Monster manual, I really did like how they recommended setting up encounters with different types of creatures, and suggestions for how to use them as a group. But it did feel like a boardgame...

The Neutral

The artwork - Personally, I preferred the detailed drawings and muted pallatte of the 3.0 Planescape-esque characters. Yeah, occasionally it got a bit fettish-esque, but I was OK with that.

Obviously influenced by MMORPGs - for me this actually wasn't a big deal, either: they seemed to have put a lot of thought into how to balance the game, and a lot of game balancing techniques come from MMORPG's. That being said, the language they used to describe character builds sounded like it came straight out of the City of Heroes forums.

Forget these alignments! - No more CG or LE - I'm guessing this was due to all the debates about what those 'actually' meant. Personally, I had my own system (pulled from Wraith: the Oblivion, actually) that I used to determine alignment. But I can kinda-sorta see what they meant.

The Not-So-Good

When did I sign up for Warhammer? - yep, this feels like a boardgame with leveling elements.

Roleplaying? What's that? - I'm so used to indie games with quirky rules that actively support genre elements (Call of Cthullu, Unknown Armies, Riddle of Steel) that I keep on being disappointed when I don't see stuff like that in D&D. Yes, they had the inevitable "what is roleplaying" section and "how to develop a character", but without anything to go along with it.

Dragonborn - actually a fine race, but I've been burned (metaphorically) trying to 'roleplay' with dragon-kink fetishists whose idea of roleplaying was to say "I'm a dragon!" and then get huffy when I try to explain the game to them.

[viridian]

You know, balancing the entire game around what makes for a good dungeon-crawling party is really reducing things to a board-game level.

Most of the great campaigns I've been involved in did NOT revolve around a "one each of the big four" configurations of fighter, cleric, mage, and rogue. Any halfway competent GM and players can make any party configuration work - you just might have to be step away from the old standard tactics.

Our last Ptolus game had a warlock, a sorceror, an arcane trickster, a mystic theurge, and dread necromance. It took a little tinkering before we got comfortable, but we ripped through the banewarrens like tissue paper once we got our act together. Even a frigging warlock can tank (or in this case hold the doorway) if everything dies in two rounds.

Everything I've heard so far just screams "pencil and paper MMORPG" to me. I suppose the electronic version won't be long in coming now, but I think it's a mistake. I love MMORPGs, but I don't play them for the same reasons I play D&D. :(

[Kevin Schultz]

I don't have a problem with "balanced around a dungeon crawl" as much as I have an issue with "balanced soley around combat." It's the same reason I stopped playing City of Heroes - there was nothing to do but beat things up. And while there are some things you can do (like pick locks), it still seems that a rogue is no longer a guy that steals stuff, but rather a skirmisher who happens to wear dark clothing.

But that begs the question, of course: it is a roleplaying GAME, and games have balance. So what do you balance around? Personally, I liked the Exalted solution, in which every single darn thing you could learn came with an associated fighting technique. Diplomacy? Use it in a fight. Fishing? Use it in a fight. Fortune-telling? Use it in a...you get the picture.

[viridian]

I think 'balance' is overrated, especially when designers sacrifice playability on it's altar.

One of the more recent trends, both in D&D and MMORPGS is to make playing healing classes shiny and attractive. In the past (EQ1, second edition D&D), playing a healer was widely scene as drudgery that only appealed to self-sacrificing personalities (i.e. martyrs and drama queens). Yes, it's an over-generalized cliche, but there's a kernel of truth in there.

The problem is that you HAVE to have healers for the encounter mechanics to work correctly in 99% of the adventures. So people were 'forced' to play what they felt like were gimped classes so everyone else could enjoy themselves. See where the martyr syndrome kicks in? Look up the term "heal-bot" and brace yourself for the tide of vitriol...

Lately, efforts have been made to make healers more and more attractive to play. In 3rd edition D&D, cleric and especially druids are widely seen as borderline overpowered... but were never toned down. In WoW, druids are one of the better soloing classes, and a dark-specced Priest can do amazing DPS and cut through solo mobs like a buzzsaw once the players gets into a groove. In EQ2, there are six different healing classes using three very different and distinctive healing augmentations (ablative wards, wound-triggered contingency heals, and ye olde heal-over-time spells), and they appeal to very different sorts of play styles. Some of them solo quite efficiently, too.

Is this balanced? No, the designs mentioned clearly give a slight edge to the people willing to play healers. And I say bully for them. The MMORPG developers can run the numbers showing how many people play each class to what level, and nothing was more pathetic in EQ1 that listening to people spam OOC-chat begging for a healer to join their group so they can operate.

[Wittgen]

Aw, everyone wants to be healed, no one wants to actually be the healer? That is a recipe for annoyance.

I think balance is only important in fighting games. In a tabletop RPG, where you're going to be working as a group? As long as every class brings something to the table and can be interesting to play, a class being "weak" compared to others will only really matter in extremely high powered, high risk style campaigns.

[SilentWasteland]

Here's the way I look at it.

Good DM = Good game.

Bad DM = Bad game.

For me, it's that simple. A good dm can make almost any system workable, even if he has to tweak it.

[Wittgen]

So what, the players don't matter?

Anyway, the system should be judged on how good a job it does in helping a dm run a fun game. I think our critiques are mostly that 4e does almost nothing for non-combat encounters. Its combat system seems fine, but it doesn't do much for the role playing part of the rpg experience.

I'm actually going to be playing in a 4e campaign pretty soon, so I guess I'll be finding out first hand soon enough...